there now, two assistant clerks so that means they need one more.'
'Well,' Hilliard said, 'I'm not sure that follows. They may have room for one more, but that doesn't mean they need one. Maybe Lane's a thrifty manager, conscientious public servant, saving a dollar or two the taxpayers' money here and there if he can, and he finds he can get by with two assistants. One of whom, incidentally, Spring says Lane doesn't like at all. Some protege of Roy Carnes's; Hammond, I think his name is. But what if we brace Lane and he says two assistants're a quorum? What do we do then?'
'Since when did that ever matter?' Merrion said. 'When a chairman on Counties not to mention mine's also on Ways and Means and Judiciary too has a friend and the buddy wants a job and the job he wants is open, when did it ever matter whether anyone else wanted it filled? Even if the guy dragging his feet was the guy in charge the office when did that start to matter?'
'Oh, I couldn't give you the original example,' Hilliard said, 'but I can tell you what the situation probably was. The guy in charge didn't want the vacancy filled. From the outside you never know what's going on inside courthouses. The people who're in them think of them as their private domains. Statute may say there's room for someone new, but that'll mean that someone they don't know'll then be learning all their business. Maybe they've got something going on they don't want publicized.
'Or someone in the courthouse, the judge or the clerk himself, is saving the slot until someone gets out of the army or finishes school.
Or the clerk reaches retirement age, which'll mean the guy he's hand-picked to succeed him'll be free to hire two new assistants. One of them being actually qualified; the other one being the retiring guy's bastard child by the fence-viewer's wife.
'You get the idea: one of the new guys would be someone he could not appoint himself, because it might not've looked right. Might've smacked of nepotism, started no end of loose talk — but if the guy succeeding him's the guy making the appointment, then it'll be perfectly kosher. The incoming chief clerk signs the bastard's paper, in order to get his own job.
'That's very often what the situation is, we find,' Hilliard said. 'And as soon as the Counties chairman sees that's what it is, the maximum heat he or anybody else outside the governor, of course can put on the guy who's set up the swap drops about fifty degrees. Technically, yeah, the chairman could probably make a demand; plant his feet and say 'I want this done and I want it done now, and until it is you get no funding.' He could do it once. But he'd be a fool if he did. He'd have to know once he's thrown his weight around like that, he'll never get anything else. He represents a client there, he'll have to wear a bulletproof-vest to make a safe trip to the bathroom.
'People don't like guys who threaten them. You put yourself in a position where you've got to be able to get a guy's job if he doesn't do what you want, you're not going to get many things done. You think you can get a clerk fired if he wont lose a ticket for you? Not likely. And even if you could, there'd still be a limit on how many guys you could get fired before you made enough people mad enough at you to get together and see if they couldn't get you. People rebelling like that, pretty soon you can't get anything done. All you've got're guys chasin' around, rantin' and ravin' all over the place, trying to pay off their grudges. That's counterproductive. You want things to be the way most people like them: everything peaceful, and calm.
'The system depends on nobody's toes getting stepped-on. Everyone gets what he wants. It begins to look like there may not be enough jobs to go so that everyone who wants someone to get one can get taken care of; well then, what we do is get together and we talk. See if maybe we can work something out. Chances are we can see our way clear to agree that the money can be found, if we all look hard enough, and therefore we can go ahead and create a few more of those very popular jobs.
'To be given, of course, only to people who'll be grateful after they get them: don't leave that out. Because in the future there's probably going to be a way for them to express their thanks that they are without makin' a lot of fuckin' noise and commotion about doin' it. By maybe holding a slot for us when two or three open up in their office.
It's more beneficial for everyone that way, everyone getting along.'
'Yeah,' Merrion said. 'Well, okay, but I don't think that's what's going on in the Canterbury court-clerk's office now, that's short one clerk. Judge Spring; you told me once he's got two kids, and both of them're now big high- powered lawyers someplace. One is down in Boston and the other's someplace else?'
'Right,' Hilliard said. 'One of Chassy's boys, I forget the kid's name now, but I know he's very large in one of the big firms in Boston. The other one, I think, went to New York very high up in the financial world, some outfit that underwrites bonds. Both making about a ton of money; bucks coming in hand over fist.'
'So they're outta my picture,' Merrion said. 'They're not leavin' jobs like that to come back here and take this job I want they're both fryin' much bigger fish.'
'That seems about right,' Hilliard said. He smiled. 'Be interesting to know how Chass really feels about that: both of his kids doing so well. Proud, of course, naturally; you'd assume that. But maybe kind of envious too? That maybe if he'd done something like that himself; gone out into the big world and made a huge mark of his own. Instead he plays it safe and comes back here; practices law, sends out calendars and Christmas cards every year, until the finale, he becomes the judge next town over. This's not what you call your big finish.
Got to ask yourself: Is this guy content? Was this really what he wanted out of life? Maybe; wouldn't've been my choice.
'I think about that. People who catch my attention for some reason, I begin to wonder how they feel about the way their lives turned out. If they think they made the right decisions. How the bad ones hurt them.
How far they've come; how far they could've gotten if they'd been a little smarter, had a little better luck. Are they happy now; or are they disappointed? How I'll feel some day when I'm their age and now I'm the one who's looking back and seeing how my decisions all turned out.'
'Well, he's made himself a bunch of money, hasn't he?' Merrion said.
'Didn't you also tell me Chassy plays the market like Chuck Berry plays guitar? That oughta happy him some.'
'Oh shit, yes,' Hilliard said. 'My father's the Spring family dentist.
Taken care of their teeth for years. Made a good many of them in fact;
Spring family's got very weak teeth. They've all needed bridgework and plates. He used to talk, they came in. He knew for a fact that Chassy'd made a huge amount of money, stocks and bonds and so forth.
That didn't bother my father; what did was that the judge never gave him a hot tip.'
'Bastard,' Merrion said.
'You'd think that, wouldn't you,' Hilliard said. 'Least the cocksucker could do, knows what stock is going up, is tell the people that he knows, so they could make some money too. Not everybody, no, just people that he sees around a lot like my father, for example, for his teeth. Not advising them, so you'd expect him to be calling them up every day or so and saying: 'Psst, buy GM; sell Coca-Cola,' anything like that. No, just that he'd at least have the common decency, he knows he's going to see them, like an appointment with my father, let them in on whatever he thinks might be looking especially good.
'Dad said it to him once when he had him in the chair. Said: 'Tell me, Chassy, aren't you just the tiniest bit afraid now? Doesn't it make you nervous to be sitting helplessly here in the chair with a bib on, and me standing over you with this high-speed electric drill I'm about to shove into your mouth? I could hurt you with this thing, if I'm not careful. I should think you'd want to do everything within your power to make sure you're in my good graces so I'm going to do my best not to hurt you.'
'Dad and Chassy were in high school together. Most of my father's patients're like that: people he's known all his life. So it's okay for him to talk to them that way, and they can talk that way to him.
'The judge opens his eyes he's like most people, my father says, closes his eyes so he can't see the drill or the needle sits up straight in the chair and he asks my father what the hell he's got on his mind. And Dad puts it to him: 'People say you make a lot of money in the market.
I believe them. Mind telling me how come you never see your way clear to letting me in on the deal?'
'Judge sits back and closes his eyes again. 'Don't mind at all,' he says. 'I've made some money in the market, as have many. I've also lost some money in the market, as many others have as well. All of my profits have come from investing my own money well, mine and Delia's.
I've risked it to increase it. When my risks have paid off, I've had profits, been happy. And when they haven't, I've had losses. Then I've been unhappy. I always try to buy stocks that are going to go up;
I can't claim I always succeed.
