but no regular thing. It was a pretty long drive.
''We never had things that we did on a regular basis with him. But it was all right, you know? It really was. He worked hard, six days a week, and when he got a day off he worked around the house, cut the lawn, I dunno painted the hallway. He's been dead forty years. I don't recall now exactly what he did with his spare time. But I know he didn't collar me and Chris and tell us that we couldn't play baseball with our friends over Curtis School field, or go swimming up the pond, because he had a day off and we hadda spend it with him. Pat just wasn't like that, and I guess neither was I. So it was really okay.'
'Sammy looked very confused. Flustered. Like he'd said something that he shouldn't've. He said: 'And of course, you couldn't after that. You never had a son.' And then he got even more upset and looked at me and said: 'Amby, you know, I didn't mean to say that. I'm sorry. It came out.'
'And I said to him: 'Didn't mean to say what, Sam? That I never had any kids? Well, so far's I know, at least. But I knew that. And yeah, sure, now I sort of envy you, all my friends with grown-up kids.
Envy you now I didn't used to, when you've got the heartache of bringing them up. Naturally, you do that; you get to be my age and you think it must be nice to have the kids. After it's too late for it: that's when it crosses your mind, like lots of things, everything else you missed out on. 'I should've gone to Rio. Would've been nice, to see Rio. Should've done that, I was younger.' ''It's just cheap regret, tinsel. Fact is, I didn't. And it wasn't that the right girl never came along, so I never hadda chance. Even back when I was going around with this woman I thought I was probably gonna marry, kids were not on my mind. I don't think they were on hers, either. I don't think she ever mentioned the subject. I think I could've been a father; far's I know I wasn't shooting blanks. One time, kind ah scary, I was still in school, it looked as though I might gonna be one, but it turned out she was just late. After that I always took the precautions.
''So I never made an actual decision, I wasn't gonna get married and have kids. I just never got around to it. But I knew it. You didn't hurt my feelings, saying it.'
'I'm not sure he believed me,' Merrion said to Cavanaugh. 'He looked awful contrite. But anyway, that's what it is: to Sam what him and Jeff do with the Red Sox every summer is a holy thing.
'Six times a season,' Merrion told Cavanaugh. 'I used to think they must go at least once every week that the Red Sox were home. Every time the two of us met for lunch during the baseball season, it seemed like they'd gone to the game the night before. Not that we started meeting to talk about baseball; it was for business, a pleas anter way to discuss things we needed to talk about anyway, in the course of doing our jobs. So you and I know what we're doing here. Larry never did that, and Richie didn't, either. But I think they should've. A certain amount of regular, ongoing coordination between the state and the federal systems: I think it's essential these days. There's so much overlap now, especially with all the drug stuff. I know:
Probation. But the state probation guys don't do it enough, at least in my estimation. Maybe the ones in Superior do it, but on the District level, they don't.
'Anyway, we both just figured that since we gotta do this, and since, you know, you're both gonna have lunch anyway, well then, why not meet and have something to eat the same time? Made sense.'
'And you're good at having lunch, aren't you, Amby?' Cavanaugh said.
'Hey,' Merrion said, 'you're tellin' me I'm fat, is that it? Jesus, what I have to take in this job anna pay's not all that good either.'
'But by judicious use of the expense account,' Cavanaugh said, 'you're able to make the ends meet.'
'Oh, what's this we got now?' Merrion said. 'Now I got you also getting' on me, claimin' I cheat onna gyp sheet?' '1 don't know,' Cavanaugh said, waving his hand. 'I also don't care.
That's between you and your God. Or Theresa in the treasurer's office.
Whoever it is, it's not me.'
'Well, okay, then,' Merrion said. 'Anyway, now you're gonna meet Sam and see for yourself. He's a little like his uncle, the chief: he's got enthusiasm. He's really into his work.'
'As many times as I've seen them do it, your Honor,' Paradisio said over the sandwiches, 'and it must be hundreds now, it never ceases to amaze me. They try to make me think they've become attached to me. And therefore I've become attached to them.
'It's ridiculous. It should be pretty clear, no matter how stupid you are, how much you wanna believe what you gotta know just isn't so, it isn't gonna matter if I like you; I think you caught a bad break or you're a nice guy, or if you make me laugh. I imagine you also run into this yourself, Judge, now and then, this same phenomenon: sometimes it just about drives me crazy. The law's put someone in your power, and he knows it, but he seems to have the idea that if he can ingratiate himself with you, you wont exercise it.
'Well as we all know, it isn't that way and it can't be that way. You can't allow it. Instead what the situation is is this: 'If you give me a reason, so I have no choice, what I'm gonna do, my friend, is violate your sorry ass. Callin' me your buddy, or any of that shit, just wont do the job for you. Cryin' wont help either, do you any good at all.
Get your mind clear on this: If you violate the terms of your release, and I find out, as soon as we catch up with you you're goin' away again. And nothin's gonna change that.'
He wore, as usual, a frayed and starched long-collared broadcloth shirt that had taken on a greyish cast, frayed at the cuffs and collar, and one of what must have been a large collection of flimsy neckties, modestly patterned and shy, that made tiny knots when tied.
Merrion found them embarrassing. To Hilliard: 'I hate those neckties of his. They're offensive. It's so hard to remember what they even look like, five minutes after you've left him. Almost like he's daring you, you know? He's gonna call you up later and test you. 'See? I knew it: You don't remember what color tie I've got on. That's how much attention you pay me.' The only other time you see ties like his is when you're in a Filene's Basement or some charity thrift shop and they're hanging up in bunches, wooden pegs. They should stay there. He buys his pants out of catalogues and they come with Ban-roll waistbands I don't know that but I'd bet.'
In cold weather Paradisio wore tweed sport coats that lacked heft, and in warm seasons he wore shapeless hop sack blazers. 'His sports coats look like there's nobody in them, when he's got them on. He looks like he gets dressed inna morning hoping no one'll notice him all day. Even see him; like his ambition's to become transparent. His haircuts make him look like that's what he wants. Boys' regular, short back and sides. He's been going to Harding's ever since his father started going there in Nineteen-fifty-one. He may've never liked the way Russ Harding cuts his hair, but that wouldn't make any difference. He wouldn't have it in him to change barbers over such a little thing as not liking how the guy cut his hair.
'Not that I don't really like him or respect the guy at all; I do. He's the nicest guy the world. It's just that he's perfect. He looks like he is what he actually is and most likely always was, even before he officially became one a conscientious government worker. You look at him and you just know it. Everything about the guy screams Government at you.'
He had gotten his nickname in the course of his government work. His job had obliged him to start 'keeping exactly the kind of company,'
Merrion said, 'that you'd imagine a guy named 'Sammy Paradise' getting' into on his own, water seekin' lower ground: Hangin' around with the gangsters. Only I would've thought they'd be other gangsters; his colleagues.
'I tell you, it's wonderful. Among hundreds of things that Sammy is not, Sammy isn't a gangster. He's in the world to do good, and nothing wrong with that notion. You and I, that's what we try to do. Don't always succeed, but we try. We're just not as ambitious. Sammy's faith in his fellow man's far greater'n ours: He tries to do good with the hoods.
'This is a very big difference. Knowin' what they are, knowin' that they'll never change, most of the time he can still manage to believe that they might reform. That's Sammy's natural mission. He knows his work is hopeless, but he also knows that if he ever lets himself think that, he wont be able to do it anymore. Somehow he convinces himself he doesn't know what he knows.'
For Paradisio it was essential to persuade himself he didn't know what his clients meant when they told him that with his help they now understood where they had gone wrong. They told him they had come to see that the way that they'd been living before they had gotten caught was what had made them move so fast and make mistakes. 'They hadn't taken time enough to think the whole thing out. Quickness's what's really counted in the acts that got them into trouble. It's surprising how big a part that plays in what they have to say to me, about the lives they've lived.'
From listening to them for so many years he believed he had learned to think a little bit like they did. 'Which
