'That Lord Bountiful ability he had to bestow gifts upon less-affluent reps made Mister Hilliard a popular and respected House figure, far more so than his age or years of service ever would've suggested. Give the devil his due as well: Dapper Dan Hilliard's a likable man. Women, especially, like him,' Judge Foote's face remained impassive, 'which as we know finally got him in trouble, but his charm worked on his male colleagues as well.
'The combination was a potent one. Even as a lowly two-term rep he had considerably more power on the Judicidary and the Ways and Means Committees than many five-and six-termers. He wasn't above using it for private purposes, either. When he and his wife decided she could no longer care for their severely retarded daughter at home, Hilliard threw his weight around to jump the queue and get her into the Walter J. Fernald School ahead of some thirty other children whose parents had been waiting as much as sixteen months to get their children in. He may be playing the gracious academic these days, but his arrogance then knew no bounds.'
When he paused for breath the room was absolutely still.
Elizabeth Gibson, her fingers poised over the stenotype machine, stared at Bissell with her mouth open. Merrion and Cohen stared. Sandy Robey gaped. Judge Foote inhaled deeply but made no other sound.
Bissell seemed puzzled by the reaction. He frowned, but he was sufficiently unsure of himself so that he did not break the silence. At last Merrion, this time unrestrained by Cohen, said in a strangled low voice: 'Donna Hilliard died in that hospital almost twenty years ago.
She was fourteen years old. She'd never said a word, or laughed. She'd never recognized her mother or her father; never fought with her brother and sister. She'd never played with other children; never had an ice cream cone. She'd never been to school. No one ever heard her laugh. No one ever saw her cry.'
Gibson straightened up and typed into the machine what Merrion had just said. Cohen and the judge stirred, blinking. The judge cleared her throat. 'Yes,' she said, dragging it out and exhaling. She shook her head and blinked. She shook her head again. 'I certainly have to hand it to you, Mister Bissell,' she said, 'you're quite a piece of work.
Try to get on with what you were telling us. See if we can get out of here before you're challenged to a duel.'
'All I was trying to say,' Bissell said, appearing not to understand any of the reactions, 'is that political power is cumulative, iterative, in anybody's hands. The more Hilliard had of it, the more he found he could get. Because he had that kind of clout, he could make himself extremely useful to Roy Junior, pushing or retarding Senate bills on the House side. Roy in turn was only too pleased to reciprocate, guiding Hilliard's pet measures through the upper body.
That improved Hilliard's image on the House side, enabling him to do more for Carnes in the lower body.
'The result was that after a while there was a sort of merger of the Carnes and Hilliard interests. Now it was time for Hilliard and Merrion, in partnership with the Carneses, of course, to start lining their pockets, too. This was the second leg of their conspiratorial stool. Their ultimate goal was to obtain a high-paying lifetime sinecure for each of them in the public sector. Merrion's they wanted fairly soon; Hilliard would put off locating a cushy billet until he got tired of active politics, lost, or decided that he'd gone as far as he could go. But that didn't mean they were ruling out any good opportunities to steal that might crop up along the way to full employment.
'We're not clear whether Hilliard and Merrion expected to find their biggest bonanza in the Canterbury courthouse when Hilliard muscled through Merrion's appointment as third assistant clerk of court in Nineteen-sixty- six. What we do know is that events demonstrated that a bonanza did in fact exist: the Fourmen's Realty Trust. The Carneses, certainly never intending to divulge its existence to Hilliard or Merrion, much less share it with them, had been instrumental in its corrupt creation. But Mister Merrion, resourceful fellow that he is, found it. Six years later, he grabbed hold of a piece of it. From that point on, no matter what else came through or fell through, the Hilliard-Merrion partnership was a success.
'The Carneses Arthur in the Senate and Roy Junior in the House; Roy Senior still running the real estate business in Holyoke had made a fairly decent killing for themselves on the contract to build the Canterbury District Courthouse. So had their friends, as the first rule of crooked politics staying out of jail requires. Judge Spring was the head of the building committee. An ambitious young fellow named Larry Lane, an assistant clerk in the Chicopee District Court and desperate to get out of there, became Spring's first clerk. Spring knew he could therefore control him. He put him on the building committee, giving the Carnes family two votes out of five. Roy Carnes Senior got a third appointment. After that it was easy; the ballgame began in earnest.
'F.D. Barrows Construction Company rigged the bid and won the contract.
Barrows cut the corners on materials and labor; Spring and Lane and Roy Carnes approved each stage of construction and the progress payments therefore due. Spring set up the trust, Fourmen's Realty, to receive the money Barrows skimmed off the construction and kicked back to the other three. It wasn't a great deal of money, by today's standards: just under a hundred-forty grand. But we must keep in mind that they didn't steal it today; they took it before Nineteen-sixty. A good annual salary then was less than a tenth of that boodle creamed off the courthouse budget; by the standards of today what they stole would amount to about six-hundred-thousand dollars, a very respectable amount of loot.
'Over the years there were some changes made in the trust. The real estate-insurance man from Hampton Falls, Philip Fox, came in soon after it was formed. The reason was that he'd handled the construction bonds on the courthouse. The Commonwealth was having one of its periodic fits of public outrage about corruption. A state crime commission had been appointed. Fox knew too much to leave him out and maybe make him mad enough to talk. So the first four brought him in, diluting their shares but keeping him quiet hush money.
'Years went by. Fox died and his grandson Walter took his place. Lane died, leaving his to Merrion, in thanks for befriending him. Shrewdly.
The money kept on rolling in. Walter Fox died and his widow, Diane, took his place on the trust. Later on, she agreed to fill the place her husband had expected to serve on the building committee for the new Canterbury Municipal Complex. Mister Merrion was also on that committee. Mrs. Fox wasn't originally from around here. She's from Wisconsin. Fairly soon after these developments, she and Mister Merrion entered into a close personal relationship.'
'Is that supposed to mean something?' Merrion said, growling.
'Take it easy, Amby,' Cohen said. 'Take it easy here.'
'Stay away from the personal stuff, Mister Bissell,' the judge said.
'We avoid private matters in this corner of the world.'
'I meant no aspersion on Mrs. Fox or Mister Merrion, either, in that regard,' Bissell said. 'The point I was making is that Mrs. Fox, being from Wisconsin, probably wasn't familiar with the Massachusetts politics of self- enrichment. So, to enlist her in any later scheme to skim contracts for construction of the Canterbury Municipal Complex, as the make-up of the committee would suggest that he and Hilliard had in mind, Mister Merrion would've had to explain the procedures to her. He perhaps feared she might not like the idea of milking state contracts might even strongly disapprove. And because they do appear to have embarked on what's now a long-standing relationship quite soon after her husband's death, our surmise is that his fear of her disapproval, and what she might do to express it, caused him to abrogate any plans he and Hilliard might have had to plunder the project. Whatever the reason, so far in our review it doesn't appear to have been skimmed.'
'Hurrah, hurrah,' Merrion murmured, before Cohen could silence him.
'Mister Merrion,' the judge said calmly, 'I know this must be very trying for you, very hard to sit through without making some response.
But I also know you're a court officer, not only made of good stern stuff but also aware of the rules of decorum we enforce here, even when we're in chambers.
'I'll make an allowance for you this time, because I do think,' shifting her gaze to Bissell, 'that the assistant US attorney has gone about as far as I'm willing to allow without disciplining him.' Bissell worked his mouth and swallowed. She returned her gaze to Merrion, stretching her left arm out on the table and lowering her head to sight along it at him. 'But please don't do it again.' She kept her smile very small. 'Do we understand each other, Mister Merrion?'
'Yes, your Honor,' Merrion said, looking chagrined.
She straighted up and nodded. 'Good,' she said with satisfaction. She turned to look at Bissell. 'And how about you, Mister Bissell? We're both on the same page too, I trust?'
'Oh yes, your Honor,' Bissell said without repentance, 'I understand your view. But once again, when I said that, I did not mean…'
