A change of gravity

SEVEN

In 1964, when he won his second term on Beacon Hill, Hilliard felt his political future was secure enough to warrant borrowing money for the long-term rental of good space for a district office. Merrion found space on the second floor of a three-story brick building on High Street in Holyoke, last occupied by a businesswoman named Condon. "It's awful big, but except for that it looks good. I think it could work,"

Merrion said. "The Carneses own the building. They've had trouble rentin' it lately. The third floor's vacant, too. There's a tenant on the first floor but there might as well not be Saint Vincent de Paul Society runs a second-hand store there. Old clothes and used furniture. Only open weekends. Otherwise nobody's down there, makin' noise and leavin' food around, draw the rats. It's a very nice building. Old but very solid. Well-built, you know?"

Hilliard was familiar with it. He had been there many times, he said, 'but never once willingly. Lillian Condon's dancing school. Or, to be more precise: "Miss Jocelyn's Studio of the Dance." Jocelyn was her maiden name. She called it' he made his voice falsetto '"my stage name. I went under it during my career in the theater." We all called her the Dance Lady. "Hafta go the Dance Lady tonight."

"She was kind of a pathetic case, not that I thought that when I was a kid. My father said in the Twenties she used to quit her job in Condon's Drugstore every spring, travel up to Maine and spend the summer working as a chorus girl in summer-stock in one of the resort towns up there along the coast. Bar Harbor, Boothbay; someplace like that. Did it for three or four years.

Hoping for an offer that'd get her to New York; either get a job in theater or some rich guy who'd keep her on the side. And every September, she came back to the drugstore. Finally she got discouraged. Gave up on the bright lights of Broadway and came home, convinced what God wanted her to do was spend her life with her legs together, standing behind the counter.

"After a couple years I guess she decided it'd be all right with God if she made a slight exception and married Condon's son, Jimmy. He took after his old man; he had a degree from the Mass. College of Pharmacy and his lower jaw receded. Maybe his thing did, too. He didn't give her any kids. Or else one of the stories about her was true: she couldn't have any kids. Rumor was that one of those summers she'd had to have an abortion. Not that anyone really ever knew it for sure, so far's I know might've just been one of those nasty little secrets people like to make up about other people, put a little color in their own lives. No law says they have to be true.

"Anyway, Jimmy backed her financially when she started her dancing school. A couple years later he died. Maybe her being over there all the time giving lessons made him feel neglected or something."

The space had been perfect for Miss Jocelyn's gatherings. In the early afternoons, little girls in leotards and pink satin slippers chewed their lips intently as they pirouetted, whirling dust motes through the sunlight slanting through the big two-paned windows looking west over High Street. Late afternoons and weekday evenings, passersby heard the clatter of high school girls learning to tap-dance, making them smile.

Hilliard remembered the Friday evenings and Saturday nights: small crowds of older children ungainly and uneasy between the ages of seven and fourteen. The boys wore blue blazers and thin grey worsted trousers outgrown in the five or six weeks since their careful purchase one or two sizes too large, and ties clipped off-center to their collars. They huddled in a bunch and studied some openly, and boldly; most furtively, surreptitiously and apprehensively the girls across the room. Whispering excitedly and squealing in groups of five or six, in high-necked, short-skirted chiffon versions of long strapless gowns, the girls were learning to gossip. They were already covetous for future nights when they would have proms and they desperately both hoped and feared beautiful bodies and big swaggering boyfriends with half-curled upper lips and pants bulging at the crotch, begging urgently to feel them up; real adventures to tell and tell on one another.

"I guess the Dance Lady was fairly happy, though, with what she'd ended up with. She must've been; seemed like any time of day that you went by you could hear the music up there. She ran it about fifteen years.

Not the brilliant career she'd originally had in mind, but still, that's what life's about: making the best deal you can. If you end up the widow of a sterile chinless husband, with nothing to look forward to but teaching sullen little kids how to dance, instead of as a rich man's plaything named "Mitzi," you live with it.

"My mother's idea was I needed a gentleman's polish and old Lil'd give it to me. It was my idea of torture. Once a week, every week, during the school year. Friday afternoons, when I was seven. Saturday nights when I turned eleven. Until I finally turned thirteen and got parole.

Outlasted both of them, the one who made me go and the one who tried to teach me I still couldn't dance."

The space had stood vacant for three years since the dance lady's death at seventy-six. Hilliard remembered how she'd looked presiding over it: the brassy gold hair and the rail-thin body; the small breasts under the gold lame bodice sometimes askew, and oddly-shaped built-up, the girls reported knowingly, with wadded facial tissue but as high as they had been when she was seventeen. Either her imperial bearing required accompaniment or she feared quiet; she kept the room echoing with music, pounding out tap-practice tunes on an out-of-tune Chickering upright piano; cranking up an old Victrola that used steel needles to scrape Swan Lake, Les Sylphides, Tales of Vienna Woods and vaudeville tunes from her extensive collection of scratchy shellacs, proudly turning up the suitcase-shaped, grey tweed Columbia portable record-player. It remained 'our new, hi'fi, diamond' needle record-player" the six years he attended, groaning out ballads sung by Vaughn Monroe, Teresa Brewer, Vic Damone and Patti Page, the Singin'

Rage, for ballroom instruction.

"It's a pretty big room, though," Hilliard said. "Do we really need all that space? And can we afford it?"

"It is a lot of space," Merrion said, 'and we probably don't really need it. But we can afford it. It's not only more space'n we need; it's more space'n anybody in these parts right now seems to need.

Carnes people aren't giving it away that'd be against their religion.

But they also know that if the dancing-school lady doesn't come back to life or they cough up what it'll cost to partition it, they might not ever find someone who'll rent it. The room is just too fuckin' big."

"I wonder who it was originally built for," Hilliard said. "Wasn't for a dancing school, for sure. What'd someone want all that space forV "The agent said he thinks it was a meeting hall," Merrion said.

"Catholic Order of Foresters, something like that; one of those fraternal groups the new immigrants used to join. Organized to sell themselves insurance. Hire someone to teach them all altogether how to learn English, take the exam for citizenship." He snorted. "Kind of newcomers we got comin' up now could use that kind of ambition, you ask me. But then of course they've already got the right to vote, not that they use it. And speaking English don't interest them a lot. Don't need to speak English, get welfare."

"How much a foot?" Hilliard said. "You'll notice how I tactfully pretend I didn't quite hear what you just got finished saying, toward the end there."

"Yeah," Merrion said, 'you may not hear it, and you'll never say it; but you think it, pal; I know that. You think the same way as I do on that. You keep it all to yourself all the time, and deny it when you're out in public'

Hilliard sighed. "Some day I've really got to set some time aside, close the door and figure out how we reform you," he said. "It's something that we got to do. Otherwise some night you'll start showin' up for one of my debates wearing a sheet and a hood, calling yourself the Grand Kleagle. People'll start thinking I must have something wrong with me, I've still got you around, killin' time between lynchings. Definitely have got to do that, and I will, too, some day, right after I finish rebuilding the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

"But in the meantime, let's see if we can't talk about something less troublesome. How 'bout we start with the rent what're they asking for this place?"

"The agent's saying two-fifty," Merrion said. "I know he'll take two-twenty-five."

"What's that work out to, about?" Hilliard said. He liked strutting his mathematical skills. He had taught algebra, trigonometry and calculus during the six years preceding his election to the House. He looked forward to public budgetary debates; his calculating ability enabled him not only to show off but sometimes to intimidate his fellow aldermen and later on his colleagues in the House. "About twenty-five hundred bucks a year?" In private he played down his talent a little, deliberately only coming close to exact answers.

"About that," Merrion said, 'twenty-four-seventy-five."

"Two hundred a month and change," Hilliard said. "Let's see how he likes the sound of one-seventy-five. That'd bring it in under two grand, nineteen-and-a-quarter, one-sixty a month — quite a bit closer our speed.

"In fact," he said, 'more I think about this, what we ought to be saying's one-fifty. Sixteen-fifty a year, just under one-forty a month. We're going to be paying to heat the place. What do they burn there, anyway oil or coal?"

"I think the agent said oil," Merrion said.

"Good," Hilliard said. "Probably means the heating system's newer; wont be breaking down all the time. Tell him I'm terribly busy on the Hill and I wont have time enough to take a look at it until sometime next week. In the meantime, find out all you can, so when I do go over there, the two of us know more about the place 'n Carnes's fuckin' agent does.

"We're the ones doing the favor. Without us he's stuck with that space. Old Roy should be moistening his lips, getting set to pucker up and kiss me on the ass, I'm willing to be nice enough to take it off his hands."

The landlord's agent, Brian Fontaine, looked to be in his late forties.

He had reddish-blond hair that he combed back, and) rather sharp features. He shifted a lot in his clothes, as though confined in them. He spoke softly and admiringly to Hilliard and Merrion about the building's many advantages, as though he had been calling their attention to subtleties of composition in a fine painting. Their conversation reverberated in the empty building.

Citing the fact that Hilliard's older or less able constituents would have only one flight of stairs to climb when they came for appointments, Fontaine pointed out that the broad wooden staircase was equipped with a pipe handrail in the middle as well as those fitted to the walls. He said the sturdy fixtures to hold onto with both hands would make older visitors feel secure while using the stairs. Hilliard remembered climbing those steps, treads worn even then, as slowly as he possibly could, and then after dancing school was over, vaulting down them two and three at a time, using the handrails as exercise bars.

"Yes," Hilliard said, 'there's that. But they'd feel even better if there was an elevator, so they wouldn't have to lug their old bones up two flights, holding on for dear life with both hands."

"One flight," the agent said. "You'd be on the second floor."

"Two flights," Hilliard said. "One flight up to the landing. Then, after you catch your breath, you've got to climb another flight — making two to reach this level."

"The staircase was built that way to save floor space in the building," the agent said with weary testiness. "It's one floor above the ground floor only one flight of stairs."

Merrion nodded. "That sounds right to me, Mister Hilliard," he said obsequiously, as though as anxious to ingratiate himself with Fontaine as he was to please Hilliard. "It's a reasonable thing that he's saying. You could have two landings, three landings, four, you didn't mind how narrow and steep they hadda be. Still only the one flight of stairs."

Fontaine took that as vindication. He let the reaction show on his face, sneaking a glance at Hilliard. Hilliard nodded and looked thoughtful.

"In fact," Merrion said, the conciliatory tone vanishing, 'the only problem I still have is do you think your elderly constituents, the ones with the cardiac conditions, pains in their chest all the time; ones who're all crippled-up and lame, need to use a cane; and in wheelchairs, even do you think they're gonna find Mister Fontaine's explanation as reasonable as I do?

"Or are they maybe gonna say: "Hilliard'! Second-floor Hilliard? He doesn't want to hear from me, what I need to have him hear. He said he did, when he was runnin', but that was to get elected. Now he's not mnarested anymore. Next election he's gonna find out something from me: I'm the one not innarested. I'm voting whoever the other guy happens to be." I'm afraid that's what those voters'll do, Mister Hilliard. You know how demanding they are.

They think we ought to cater to them."

Fontaine had to work his facial muscles to dispel the expression of chagrin that displaced the look of victory on his face, but he did his best to agree smoothly, pointing out the availability of similar space on the second floor of another brick building nearby, owned and managed by the Carnes family. "It's almost identical space, except that it's newly renovated and refurbished. Brand new Westinghouse elevator's just one of the many improvements. Best one they make, four-man car, top-of-the-line but very compact; so you don't lose that much of floor space where you put in your shaft. And at the same time it operates almost silently, very nice, and quiet. Most of the machinery's down in the basement. So that means you don't hear it start grinding and banging away up there over your head on the roof, every time someone enters the building or leaves. Be equally glad to show you that. Take you over right now, in fact. Got the key with me, right here.

"But I have to warn you: That machine wasn't cheap. Neither were the other renovations and improvements. We've had to raise the rent. It'll cost you a dollar a foot more for it'n Mister Merrion here told me you could afford which as I'm sure you realize isn't that great a deal for us. If the figure that he gave me, around two dollars a foot or so's all you can see your way clear to paying, well, that does limit what I can show you. But now if what you're telling me's that you think you may be able to go a bit more to get what you've got to have, we've got what you want."

Hilliard scowled and started to say something, but Merrion held up his hand. "Danny," he said, 'if I could get a word in here? I may be getting a little confused. It might help if I could get things cleared up here a little."

Hilliard shrugged. "Anything you think might help move this thing along."

"I must've given you the wrong impression, Brian," Merrion said. "I never said two-bucks-a-foot was the most we could afford. I never gave you any dollar-figure. When you showed me this space last week I said it looked pretty big. Maybe double what wed had in mind. And when I asked you how big it was, you said you'd have to check "but around a thousand feet, I think, eleven hundred feet." So I just did the easy thing, took the thousand-foot guess and multiplied it in my head, using two-bucks-a-foot as the number. Just trying to get some idea of what that would work out to be. Dollars-per-square-foot doesn't mean much to me; what I want is how-much-a-month.

"So when I said to you: "At two bucks a foot that'd work out, something in the neighborhood of two hundred bucks a month." And then: "Who pays for the heat?" that really was all I was doing. Just getting an idea, you know? Then you said you thought Mister Carnes'd say you couldn't let it go for less'n two-fifty, as though I'd just offered two, which I hadn't. I never gave you any figure at all, or anyway, never meant to.

I was just thinking out loud."

The agent looked bored and annoyed.

"And wouldn't my friend Roy'd say that since it's me," Hilliard said, 'who'd be renting this other space with the elevator, you should charge me the old rent? Roy's my campaign finance director. His office keeps my records. He knows how strapped for cash I am. Don't you think he'd want you to give me a break?"

"Mister Hilliard," the agent said, grinning, "I'm absolutely sure he wouldn't, and I'll tell you why that is. After Mister Merrion'd called and told me he was representing you, I decided maybe I'd better see Mister Carnes and fill him in. Because I know that Mister Carnes and Roy Junior, his son, and his brother, the Senator, all think very highly of you.

"I remember when you ran the second time for alderman Mister Carnes then told me when I went to vote for Roy Junior, for rep — his brother Arthur may've been running that year too, re-election to the senate he hoped not only that I'd vote for them but also vote for you. He said you were a very nice guy, and an excellent candidate all the Carneses were behind you.

"Well, if Mister Carries says it, that's enough for me. I took his suggestion, and not only did I give you my vote but I made sure my wife, and my sister, and father and mother, I asked them to vote for you, too. And I think they all did it, too, and every time you've run since then too. Which would mean, if they have, you've gotten five votes from our family every time you've run, ever since Mister Carnes said that to me. Although maybe not from my father, the first time. He went to school with Mister Gilson that may've swayed him the other way.

"So as soon as I found out who was interested in this space, I thought that maybe Mister Carnes'd want me to give you some sort of a discount which in this case would mean taking a loss. But seeing as how it was you, he might want to give you special treatment.

"So I asked Mister Carnes how I was to treat you, and quick as a flash, Mister Carnes came right back at me, and he said to me: "Why, the same as anyone else. You treat my young friend Daniel just the same way as you'd treat any other tenant prospect. Show him what we've got available that you think might meet his needs and give him the best price we can. The same one we always charge everyone in our buildings: the fairest and lowest price possible."

"That answers my question, I guess," Hilliard said.

"And he went on to say," the agent said, with delight, 'if you don't mind me saying this, also, that the Carnes family's already made quite a few large contributions to the various campaigns you've run. And to tell you he's got no intention throwing in the rent on top of that. He said: "Tell him we said wed support him. We never said wed adopt him."

Hilliard looked at Merrion. Merrion shrugged. "Hey," he said, 'always said there's no harm in asking. And besides, since I'm gonna be the one in there most of the time, the more people those stairs keep from coming up to bother me, the more I like no elevator."

The agent mentioned the amplitude of free parking on the steeply sloping lot out back: "That's what makes it so well-drained, when it rains," he said.

Merrion said: "It's also what makes it so slippery it's useless half the year." The agent looked perplexed. "You tellin' us you never heard inna wintertime cars go sliding down it backwards, end up crashing into the ones parked onna street? Even with their brakes on and the transmissions in gear. Mountain goats'd slide down that hill, they're on it, we get ice. Which's most likely why you got those iron posts on both sides of the curb-cut, you pull in the lot. Anna chain there you can hitch across it, block the entrance inna winter anytime we got a storm. So people like you who don't know about ice, never dream a thing like that could happen, can't drive their cars in there and park them, and end up where they cause a lotta damage. Which the Carnes family might then wind up getting' sued for, which is why there's no cars in it when we're gonna have a storm.

"Which is why it's most likely useless half of the year, when there's any chance of ice and that's the fifty percent that you really need it, there's no place to park onna street. A selling point that back lot is not. In fact what it is is a drawback."

The agent looked incredulous. "Really?" he said. "I never heard that before."

"Then you must've never worked inna car dealership here where they had their own body shop," Merrion said. "I did. You'd've been the guy who ordered trim parts and glass and mirrors for cars that got hit, and the taillight lenses and chrome; and then you hadda sit there and take it when the parts didn't come and the car-owners didn't like it, and blamed you when it happened; then you would know that it prolly did happen. Any number of times."

The agent looked chastened and said: "Well, I stand corrected." He called to Hilliard's attention the fact that the space was served by its own two separate restrooms. "So your people who work here wouldn't have to share these with anybody else. The way that all people in the other offices in the halls here on this floor have to do."

"Would have to," Merrion said, 'if there was anyone in those offices, now. Which there hasn't been any since the S-and-H Green Stamp people moved all their operation here down to Springfield."

"And I'll bet you a quarter," Hilliard said, 'that if I go in what used to be the boy's room sixteen years or so ago when I was one of the poor boys Miss Jocelyn was making their lives miserable for here, I would find that the toilet nearest the door still doesn't flush all the way unless you hold the handle on the chain down and then it sprays you so you look like you pissed your pants and that it's still got the same old wooden seat it had then; never been replaced."

"Mister Hilliard," the agent said, "I really don't know, I'm just the guy who does the rentals. I don't handle repairs or do maintenance, anything like that. They give me a list of the premises vacant. I rent them as best I can. You know more about toilets than I do.

"Now I have a question: How much're you willing to pay? "Cause I know you've decided and you wont budge, and you know what Mister Cannes told me: I don't have much latitude either."

"A buck anna half," Merrion said.

"Your original two," the agent said.

"We split the difference," Hilliard said.

The agent looked sour. "Good," he said grimly, 'that was fun. Glad it's over." He looked at his watch. "I may even get lunch today."

They shook hands. "I'll have the lease ready this afternoon. Otherwise tomorrow is fine. Just give me a call. Oh, and bring in the deposit and the first month's rent, too. That'll come to a total of three-twenty-eighty-two. We'll need to have that 'fore you get the keys."

"I'll give it to you right now," Hilliard said. He reached into the right inside pocket of his jacket and brought out a folding checkbook.

He opened it and tore out the first check. Merrion positioned himself so that Hilliard could use the checkbook as a pad and Merrion's left shoulder as a desk. Hilliard made the check out to the Carnes Company for $320.82. On the back he wrote: "First month's rent and security deposit High St. dist. off."

The agent took it and gazed at him. "Can I put this in the bank on my way back to the office?" he said.

Hilliard shrugged. "Sure," he said, "Roy knows it's good."

It was a bleak, painfully resonant room with varnished matched-board oak floors and oak wainscoating. Hilliard walked over to the left along the inside wall, passing the doors opened into the toilets and grabbed the ballet-practice bar still in place there. He tried to shake it. It was firm. "Handy," he said to Merrion. His voice boomed in the emptiness. "We used to put our coats here in the winter. Fold 'em over it."

Down below the front door slammed. Hilliard went to the window in the middle of the front wall. "There… goes… Brian," he said.

"First a stop at the bank and then off to enjoy his well-earned lunch.

Brian's an unhappy man. He thinks he has a hard life." He turned and looked at Merrion, still standing in the doorway. He grinned and said:

"Our first home, dear," he said. "Are you as excited as I am?"

Merrion laughed. "I might say that to you," he said. "I don't think I'd say it to Brian."

"You think Brian's a little light in his loafers?" Hilliard said. "He did mention he has a wife."

"He was careful to mention he had a wife," Merrion said. "He might even actually have one. Who's a woman, I mean I understand some of them do. Wife is a perfect disguise."

"Ever think about getting one for yourself?" Hilliard said, putting an arm around his shoulder as they left the big room. "Not that I'm saying you need camouflage. Just a matter of: Wouldn't you like to?

Maximum of temptation with a maximum of opportunity?"

Merrion shrugged. "I brought it up a couple times with Sunny. The last time she was home, in fact. She told me she'd think about it.

Said that the time before, too. I don't think she thinks she's ready.

Maybe just not ready for me. I'm only twenny-three. Don't think I hafta worry that much yet."

Hilliard followed Merrion down the stairs, their footfalls echoing.

Three steps above the landing he paused and said: "That stuff about cars sliding down the back lot did all of that actually happen?"

Merrion stopped on the landing and turned around. "You didn't believe me?"

Hilliard paused two steps up from the landing. "No," he said, "I didn't mean that. It's just that I've lived in this town all my life, and I never heard that'd happened. I'd've thought I would've."

Merrion turned back down the stairs. "I would've too," he said.

"Well, did it?" Hilliard said, crossing the landing and starting down the second flight behind Merrion.

"I dunno," Merrion said. "It could have."

"You said it did," Hilliard said.

At the foot of the stairs Merrion stood on the black-and-white tiled floor and smiled at Hilliard. "Not exactly," he said. "You told me to go find out about this building, who built it and so forth, and why.

Well, it turned out there wasn't much to find out. A guy named Reynolds built it, along with seven others, almost just like it, between Eighteen-seventy-nine and Nineteen-oh-one. Office space, for the people who managed the mills. And just like Brian told me, the dancing school was originally the Foresters' Hall. But I didn't find out anything, really, that would've helped us to drive down the rent.

"Therefore I asked him about ice. I don't think I ever actually said there was any. Or that any cars slid down the hill. All I said was I was surprised he hadn't heard about it. And I said I guessed he never worked in a car dealership ordering parts, because if he had've done that, then he might've heard about it. Then he'd know the reason for the two posts and the chain across.

"The chain and the posts're definitely there. I'm completely sure of that." '"But ice could be the reason," Hilliard said on the ground floor, laughing. He clapped Merrion on the back. "What do you think's going to happen, when he tells Roy and asks him how come he never heard about the ice, and Roy tells him he never did, either?"

Merrion laughed. "Well," he said, 'nothing, as far's we're concerned.

Brian's putting the check in the bank. Once he's done that, he can't back out. The deal's been cut."

By the end of the next week the room was spaciously furnished, leaving plenty of standing-and-arguing room among four old wooden desks and a scuffed-up oaken conference table long and sturdy enough to accommodate ten telephone desk sets on election nights and eight strong oak armchairs large enough for Hilliard and Merrion and six other robust adult males. Four of them came from the district and worked in it. The two who lived outside it were interested in doing business with the state.

They strenuously and passionately shared the purpose of making Hilliard look good, so that they would prosper along with him. But they didn't always agree on what ought to be done to achieve that. When they did agree they were often united in profane displeasure at some opponent's action or remark. So when they gathered at the table Friday evenings during off-years; daily and nightly during election years they often wound up shouting 'stupid bastard' and 'dumb fucking asshole' either at each other or in reference to rivals and opponents, pounding their fists as their faces grew red from exertion and anger.

At night the space that had been gently burnished in the evenings by the soft light from six floor lamps with golden-fringed red shades, when the lady with the brassy hair had held her Friday and Saturday evening waltz and fox-trot lessons for polite young girls and sullen little boys 'one-two-three, sfy-ud; one-two-three, sfy-ud; yay-uss' was now starkly lit by eight one-hundred-fifty-watt bulbs overhead, enclosed in white-frosted glass globes suspended from green-tarnished brass chains plaited with silk-covered power cords descending from white-spattered green-tarnished-brass ceiling fixtures. The fixtures were mounted flush against the chalky, white-washed, tobacco-browned, stamped-tin false ceiling, ornament ally filigreed at the corners with has-relief representations of palm fronds.

It was a good location. High Street was busy then and the new office, three doors north of the Transcript office at its center, was close to the Sportsman's Cafe where the newspapermen went to pie their own type after work, filled with inside stuff they couldn't print but liked to trade with those they trusted. So a politician facing a late night in the office and a makeshift supper at nine, aware that his best asset is curiosity and a relaxed mind works better, could take a short break around five-thirty and run down to the cafe without coat or umbrella through a light rain for a couple quick beers without getting his clothes very wet, 'just to find out what's going on." In the Sportsman's several of the men who sometimes shouted at each other and belabored the oak table in the second-floor office often met on better terms to drink Hampden Beer, CC or Dewar's and water, and denounced other men and each other in similar rough terms and the newspapermen laughed with them, feeling fortunate to be alive and important in exciting events, and to have such splendid tough friends.

Late that Saturday morning in the spring of '66, after the week's slate of routine but persisting annoyances had been discussed and new plans made to deal with them, perhaps even effectively 'this fuckin' time,"

Hilliard had cleared his throat and asked Merrion what it was he wanted.

"Because whatever it is that you want, my friend," Hilliard'd said, meaning every word of it, 'you'll have it. If I can get it for you, it's gonna be yours. You've earned it. If it's within my power, I'll do it, you know. I'll move heaven and earth if I have to. This you know's a true fact."