I'm not that kind of person. But I'm not so sure about them. I think if they wanted, get rid of a person, you know? That they might start thinkin' how to do it, that would hurt their reputation. And if they couldn't find something out, well, it's not like I'm sayin' I know they've done this, they got you all concerned here like you are today, so you thought you had to see me.'
'I have to see you every month, Janet,' he said wearily. 'It's part of our arrangement, and by now I shouldn't have to tell you again, every month when you come in. When I have someone call you and remind you to come in, it doesn't necessarily mean I've heard something about you. Or that I haven't, either. It's just time for you to come and see me and let me see how you're doing.'
'I know, but I'm just sayin',' she said, 'that if they told you something then they must've made it up. 'Cause they didn't see nothin'. All I am sayin' here is that they could've, they could've done that, it's the kind of thing they might do.'
She looked anxious and wrung her hands. 'You see what I'm sayin' to you? They're the type of people that would, would do something like that, make up some bad things, just to get someone in trouble. These are very mean people. They would do that to me. They would do that to anyone, really. They wouldn't stop at anna thing It wouldn't matter to them. Somebody really should do, you know, something about them.
Someone really should. Before they go and hurt somebody else. They really don't care what they do, as long as they get their own way.'
She paused and thought, frowning, looking at the floor. She nodded, as though satisifed she had settled something in her mind that had troubled her. 'I could do it myself,' she said, looking up and nodding again. 'I could fix them myself if I hadda. I don't know if you know this, if this's something I told you, before, but I can take care of myself. A lot of people; all my life a lot of people've been always thinking I couldn't do that, take care of myself. And some of them thought, well, they tried to do things to me. And then they were very surprised. I gave them a big surprise. I can do things. So I could, if I hadda, do something. And I would, too. Except for this thing I got, that you got over me; maybe it'd be better this time if you did it instead. If you did something to them for me. That I shouldn't, you know, do anything? Might get me in more trouble here?'
'No, you shouldn't,' he said. 'You have to stay out of trouble. That's your most important job right now: you stay out of trouble for a year.
You're almost home now; only one month more to go. Then you'll have done it, the year. You can do that, you'll be free. You wont have to come in and see me anymore, which I know you don't look forward to.
Being on your own again, and we'll hafta see if we can get you not her job. So that's what you want to concentrate on. Just a little bit longer: proving that you can behave.'
Janet wasn't bright but she was clever. She was playing for time.
Sooner or later he'd become tired or hungry; have to go to the bathroom; meet his next appointment; decide to go home. Then instead of it being necessary for her to plead fatigue, played-out memory, generalized confusion, or something else, anything, in order to escape, he would call it off and let her go.
Merrion had first encountered play-acting during his indoctrination as a rookie clerk working the juvenile court session under the carefully reserved supervision of Larry Lane: Brylcreemed up swept wave of hair and the heavily spiced Jade East after-shave lotion; flared trousers and the counterfeit Gucci loafers; bushy grey-black mutton-chop sideburns: Lawrence D. Lane, Clerk of the Court, acting monarch of every damned thing he surveyed. 'You're only young for a while.'
Larry did it with panache; he did not like training novices. 'No mercy,' he said, telling Merrion how to deal with beggars seeking undeserved favors or asking them on days when Merrion did not feel like granting any, even to the worthy. 'For any damned reason at all, or for no reason at all. No quarter. Especially when they start in on you, giving you the old routine. They're trying to distract you. Get you to thinkin' about something else, and then actually discussin' it, talkin' about it with them, something' you weren't even thinkin' about when they came in.
'When they do that, you start saying 'Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit.' And you keep on sayin' it, all right? Until they get discouraged, go away, and stop trying to do it. I tell you, son, I tell you true: it's the only way.'
Merrion had been politically insinuated into Lane's office as a reward for more than six years of doglike devoted service, the first two as an unpaid volunteer, in behalf of the electoral ambitions of Assistant by de facto House Majority Leader Daniel Hilliard. Roger Hulsman of Wey-mouth retained his clawlike hold on the title, the perquisites and pay, for what he had announced would be his final term thus 'laming his own fuckin' duck,' as Hilliard said.
That political experience had made Merrion mistrust any tactic of dismissing a voter or disappointing a potential ally except the familiar one getting rid of the petitioner by soothingly lulling him into the hopeful but mistaken belief that if at all possible his wishes would be granted; sending him away already softened up for the gradual accretion of the understanding that he wasn't going to get what his patron had already made painfully clear was going to be extremely hard to bring about. A neutral party seeking a favor was a loyal friend in prospect. If circumstances made it necessary to reject his proposal, the prudent politician tried to do it so that he did not go away an enemy.
Lane smelled Merrion's reservation. 'This isn't politics you're playing now, not while you're in here. Not when you're dealing with the scum that we have to deal with. These bastards can't do a thing for you or to you. What these bastards are's fuckin' helpless. In here you don't have to be nice, even pretend to be nice. You're official; you are real; and this's the real fuckin' world, where you are right now. They are the real people in it, the dirt off the street that's tracked in here.
'The outside where you used to be may've looked like the real world to you and Hilliard, but trust me, my friend, it was not. Out there you were dealing with other real people who wanted to be doing what they were doing, in the place where they were doing it. Sometimes it was the same thing you wanted, or Hilliard wanted, so you had to fight those other people to get it. Sometimes you beat them and sometimes they beat you, but most times either way, you could respect them.
'What you're doing in here is dealing with scum. They don't want to be in here. They don't want anything except Out, so they can go back to doing what they did want that got them hauled in here. They hate you but they respect you. You're god to them, at least for that day that they're here. But don't let it go to your head; every other day somebody else's money, somebody else's car, the booze or the white powder is their god. It's not like they're choosy. But just the same, that day when you're their god is a long one. It's the rest of their lives. That's what it looks like to them. That's as far as they can see; it's the way that they think and they live. The only way they can think, you see? Because that's the way that they live.
'They got a short attention span. A long weekend for them's as long as your whole baseball season. They think in terms of how long they've got left to be high on what they just smoked or injected or sniffed, before they have to go out and get some more money, one way or the other, to get stuff to get high again before otherwise they crash and burn. Our week is a month in their lives, and six months in the County House for these bozos's the same as the rest of their lives. It's further'n their eyes can see.
'So that's the new power you got now. It's you who decides what it's gonna be for them. Whether they live or whether they die: doesn't matter. Good reason; bad reason; no reason at all, except you got a hair 'cross your ass. All totally up to you here.
'Most of them already know. They know if they don't like what you say you will do for them or to them, even if it's nothin', they're up shit creek. Nowhere else to go. Your bad mood is their tough shit. Any place else they go, over your head, upstairs: if they get anything at all they'll get less, or else so damned much more that when they leave this place they'll wish they'd known enough just to've stopped at you.
'You're thinkin': 'What if one of these bozos gets mad, what if he gets really mad? What if he goes to his rep, to my rabbi? What'll happen to me if he does?'
'I'll tell you what happens then, he tries to pull any that shit,' Lane said. 'Not one fuckin' thing's what happens. Not one fuckin' thing.
Because you know what? There'll come a day, this year or next, when His rep or your rabbi's gonna need a big favor, and this'll be the only place in the whole fuckin' world he can get that favor done. His kid takes a bust or his wife's drivin' under; some guy he owes big takes a collar for asking' a lady cop in plain clothes if she'd like to give him a blow-job. Lemme tell you something', pal: When that day comes that this guy's rep or your rabbi has to make that phone call, here, to get it straightened out as he knows it will he doesn't want havin' you remember how he stuck it up your ass when some shit bird-civilian complained. As he knows you will if he ever does.
