else to do, like pick her nose, so she didn't bother telling you,' Merrion said. 'As we know's been known to happen.'
'That could be,' Paradisio said.
'As a further result of all of this brouhaha,' Merrion said, 'at least according to Louella, a week or two later when Miss Shepard's landlord he lives over in Agawam; owns a number of apartments, all of which are slums finally gets wind of what went on in the one up in Winchester Square that night, he decides it's his turn to get upset.
So he orders her to quit and vacate the premises. Says he's trying to run a classy joint there and she's not helping him to do this, so therefore out she goes. This gets the social workers started digging into the whole mess, trying to resettle Miss Shepard.
'They find no sign of Chappelle. He seems to be gone from the scene probably because he's now taken up with our Janet in apartment fourteen at Sixteen-ninety-two Ike, but this fact hasn't yet reached either Sam's attention or ours. What the social workers do find is that Bennett is now keeping Miss Shepard company. Miss Shepard is informed that she can't expect to get another subsidized place for herself as long as Bennett's with her. At least under the statute, he's an able-bodied male. He's supposed to work. She takes offense at this and says what they're planning to do is get married. The case worker says weddings're nice, but that the money she's been getting isn't for supporting unemployed fiances or husbands, either, as far as that goes.
They put her and the three kids up in a motel temporarily, 'til they can find an apartment for her, but with strict orders to Bennett to stay out, and to her not to let him come in. He ignores his orders and she ignores hers and the case-worker catches them and boots the whole bunch of them out. That's the last that anyone at DSS hears of any of them until the Ranger posse rounds them up on Saturday and dumps them here in our lap.'
'Okay,' Cavanaugh said to Merrion, 'so, where does that leave us all now with Janet? Is the ball in your court here, this afternoon? Or can you kick it back into Sam's?'
Merrion stared at Cavanaugh. He did not say anything. 'I didn't say anything,' he told Hilliard that night, 'because I didn't know what to say. Sam said that Well, as far as he was concerned, he's already looking for Chappelle. Now that the guy is officially missing, or whatever you call it when his probation officer who's supposed to know at all times where he's living, and Sam doesn't, it's his job to find him. As far as I'm concerned, I thought once I'd spoken to Louella, gotten her onto the case with the woman and the three kids, that then until the dame comes into court, as she's now going to do tomorrow, the only thing I have to do is sit tight and see what the hell happens. And anyway, where's the judge fit in all this? This's the part I don't like. It seems like Lennie's saying he's got nothing to do; he's just a spectator here. Janet's now completely my responsibility, like the whole thing was my idea. So I didn't answer him.
'And then after that, Sammy's gone, I'm still there in his chambers, I dunno, picking up, something, throwing the sandwich wrappers away, and the bastard does it again. 'What plans've you got to handle this damned problem with Janet? Think you can find her today?'
'I looked at him. 'Len,' I said when we're by ourselves, we're on a first-name basis 'you're making me nervous, talking like that. Like Janet's now my foster child. I've told her what we want done. Had her in Saturday for that. If she doesn't do what I said; keeps on entertaining the guy, then the only thing I can see that we can do is call up her case and get rid of it. It wont cause any stir. It's only attempted larceny and she's been outta trouble almost a year. It'll look okay if we broom it. And there's no way we can try the fuckin' thing now, as both of us very well know. The cops haven't got any witnesses left. So the way that I look at it, that's our only choice.'
'So that was when he said to me could I get on that and track her down right this afternoon after work there, mark it up for tomorrow and bring her in right after lunch, 'when no one's around. Call it up, blow it out and get rid of it here. Or maybe just lose it, like Chassy and Larry used to do, when they were playing their games.'
'Well, I wasn't gonna argue with him. So I just said I couldn't do that or anything else today. I said I hadda see Pooler. And that's when he said to me, outta the blue: 'Bob Pooler? Why've you gotta see Pooler? Are you in that too? That federal mess I've been hearing about? I assumed he'd be Hilliard's lawyer.'
TWENTY-THREE
Robert Pooler in a dark blue suit, medium-blue broadly striped white-collared shirt and red-and-blue geometrically patterned tie had a rural-looking goat-shouldered younger man by the right elbow when Merrion spotted him. The younger man, bald except for an inch-wide fringe of brown hair from ear to ear, wore a narrow maroon knit tie, a homespun-grey shirt, voluminous pleated grey pants, brownish suede shoes and a worried expression. They emerged from a doorway partway down the long corridor leading away from the reception area into the southeasterly corner of the eleventh floor of the office tower in the Bay State West complex on Main Street in Springfield.
'I haven't been in there since they had the time for the governor back in Eighty-eight. Five hundred a head for cocktails and peanuts, not even cashews for Christ sake, and then the bastard's a no-show. No wonder he lost. But they've still got that hush, like a shrine.'
Merrion and Hilliard had the bar at Grey Hills to themselves that evening, the honor system operating on weekday nights that attracted few members in the off-season. 'Still very classy. Maybe even a bit deeper, more luxurious, like they had it reupholstered in a heavier fabric. They must have to have somebody come in every year or so to clean it, don't you think? 'First of May again, Fleason. Time to call the hush-cleaning people; steam all the wickedness out, freshen up the deception area.'
About half a minute earlier the receptionist, a light-skinned middle-aged black woman with a blunt haircut and a hangdog expression not quite masking undifferentiated hostility had patronizingly taken his name, nodding, 'to see Mister Pooler.'
'Not actually saying, but obviously meaning,' Merrion told Hilliard, ''Oh, well, then, you must be in one heavy peck ah shit there, chile, you here to see Mister Pooler.'
She had responded by keying a button on her telephone desk set when the light glowed steady red, in a tone verging on insolence she said: 'A Mister Merrion to see you, sir.' Then she had said haughtily to Merrion: 'Mister Pooler will see you shortly. If you'll just have a seat.'
Merrion told Hilliard 'the attitude's about the same as ever, too, I'd have to say. Every time I've had any kind of contact with Butler, Corey no more'n two or three other times in my life; don't see much of their ilk in the lowly district court I've always kind of wondered what gives with that bunch. They've got more attitude'n the fuckin' IRS.
What is it with a law firm that looks down on people who've got problems like they're dirt? They should be glad to see us. Isn't that what they're for, for the luv va Mike? Help people with their problems if they've got 'em; help them not to get 'em if so far they've been lucky isn't that what lawyers do?' ''Do,' yes,' Hilliard said. 'Talk about, no. The good ones're sort of like successful call girls. Truly elegant call girls never took many calls anyway, even before they moved up. They considered themselves 'models' or 'actresses,' sometimes 'flight attendants.' In Europe a century ago they were 'courtesans.' Their looks brought them to the attention of refined gentlemen. Their skills prompted the gentlemen to display them to their friends, also gentlemen of taste and breeding. If fate was kind, one of them made a flattering offer of an exclusive arrangement. The working girls became fine ladies, far above their previous calling, so far above it they may never've done it. They live at stylish addresses, two or three of them: city; winter; summer. Their clothes are in excellent taste. They have cars and drivers, to carry them to shops and lunch. They arrange formal but intimate dinners for thirty or forty, all without batting an eye. They talk about the theater and the ballet, and what's going on in the art world. What they do for what all of this costs still goes for about the same price they charged while they were on a fee-for-service basis, now under exclusive long- term contract to the one refined gentleman, one of marriage. What they act as though they do and prefer to talk about are not that sort of thing at all. Your top law firms behave the same way.'
The slope-shouldered younger man had a manila folder thick with yellow papers in his left hand. Pooler was talking as the two of them walked up the corridor toward where Merrion sat in a red leather wing chair next to a reading table with a brass lamp. He could not recall ever having seen Pooler when he had not either been talking or else waiting with poorly concealed impatience for someone else to finish saying whatever was taking so long. Then Pooler would expel 'Yes,' from his mouth in a whinnying sigh of relief implying: regardless of that and resume talking.
