Authors: George V. Higgins
“I——” she said.
“And only thing that
I
can do right now for
anybody
listenin’ is say, ‘So long for now, folks, here around Tim’s Cracker Barrel.’ ” The piano refrain of “The Entertainer” began in the background. “But leave your radio tuned here with us now, if you will, please. Music for the Dinner Hour, coming right up, featuring tonight the Boston Pops. And then later on at eight, your favorite Nashville Sounds. This’s Tim, at CTN, your friendly neighbor here in Canton—do call in again real soon, tomorrow if you can, just love to hear from you, and we’ll do it all again.”
The ragtime piano music came up louder and became the foreground sound.
Dowd reached over and shut off the radio. “Shit,” he said, sitting back. “I hate it when they do that.”
“Who?” Ferrigno said. “Do what?” The light changed to green at the brightly lighted intersection ahead of them as they passed the A-frame church set back from the road on the left, and he turned south onto Route 138.
“This Sexton guy,” Dowd said. “He doesn’t know it but he just went and humanized himself. Just like you and me. Cheerful enough guy, got that Darth Vader echo voice you get with a cheap speaker phone, but still, cheerful enough. Probably about twenty-eight percent bullshit, ’bout the same’s the rest of us. If either one of us knew anything at all about screech owls and raccoons, hollow trees, we’d probably be bustin’ our guts laughing now, all the
shit
he’s just handed that poor woman about what’s goin’ on in her backyard pear tree. Surprised he didn’t tell her she’s got a partridge in it; her true love sent it to her, Christmas’s early this year. And she swallowed it, like honey on toast. But she doesn’t know shit about owls, or any other critters he says’re involved there—any more than we do, or anybody else does, got a job to do and kids to raise and a wife or a husband at home to keep happy; doesn’t have
time
to study raccoons, read up on what lives in pear trees.
“And along with one other thing, he
knows
this—that’s his secret. Same as every other con man, scam artist, politician, ballplayer—you go ahead and name it,
any
occupation. If you seem confident; if you can make it
sound
like you know what you’re talkin’ about—and it’s not something everyone has to know, just to get along in this world—you can tell people almost anything. Most of them’ll believe you.”
“What’s the ‘one other thing’?” Ferrigno said, the Impala
crossing over Route 128, the traffic thinning out on the interstate below.
“He knows how to make it sound plausible,” Dowd said. “Even though
he
knows it’s probably bullshit—in this case with the owls, a wild guess, it
might
be true—he doesn’t laugh while he’s slingin’ it. You have to keep a straight face—that’s mandatory.”
“So why’s this bother you?” Ferrigno said. Route 128 was well behind them now; the Impala was descending into the hollow at Cobb’s Corner.
“It bothers me because the good arrest is a work of art. You do it right and you can change a two-bit crook into a major law-enforcement asset, in the twinkling of an eye.”
“Riiight,”
Ferrigno said.
“So I exaggerate,” Dowd said. “But hear me out. You need to go into the arrest in the right frame of mind. The point of view you as a cop want to have when you go to grab a guy is controlled but righteous anger. You’re a policeman. Guardian of the law. A professional law-enforcement person, employed by society at disgracefully low wages to exert the authority to discourage individuals from flouting the rules. Making it possible for all of us to live together in peace, harmony—and, if possible, prosperity.
“Now, being realistic, you can’t expect every criminal you grab is going to be the Boston Strangler. Or the guy OJ’s looking for, mostly on the golf course—the guy who really killed Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. A murdering genius that hanging’s too good for, go in hoping he’ll resist, so you can
shoot
him. Several times. But depending on what he’s done, the very least the suspect should be’s a pain in the
ass.
One cut below a damn
nuisance.
”
He brooded. “Every self-respecting criminal has a moral obligation to present himself at all times as at least a miserable
prick.
So a cop can get some pleasure outta roustin’ his miserable ass. Time enough after he’s been arrested and his lawyer’s talked to him, start look hangdog and fakin’ remorse. Practicing the rehabilitated look. This dodge of acting like a basically nice guy
before
you’re arrested; this’s unfair to police.”
“Sexton isn’t meeting his responsibilities,” Ferrigno said.
“He’s
scorning
them,” Dowd said. “On the score of that performance. The effect it had on me.”
The light was green at Cobb’s Corner and Ferrigno going through it let up on the accelerator, allowing the steep grade where Route 138 as Washington Street becomes the Turnpike to slow its progress beyond the front lawn of the Ponkapoag Golf Club. Near the crest of the hill he signaled a right turn and took the Impala into the development on Peaceful Hills Drive. “Well, maybe you could get yourself worked up about
that
,” Ferrigno said. “Get yourself psyched on the scorn—so you can be happy to arrest him.”
Two low-slung eight-room ranch houses facing Turnpike flanked the entrance to Peaceful Hills, illuminated by the streetlights on the main road and two more close together near the front of the development. The house on the left was cocoa-brown with a grey roof and bright turquoise trim; the drapes in the front picture window were open on a table lamp with a cocoa-brown shade. The shrubbery along the foundation had overgrown the window sills. There was a white Plymouth Voyager minivan in the driveway; a two-wheeled trailer with two shrouded Sno-Cats was parked next to it under the only tree on the shallow lot, a budding maple.
“If we were still a ways away,” Dowd said, “then, maybe. But not now—we’re here. Won’t have time enough to come at it from that angle. Oh, I’ll arrest him anyway. After all, it is my job. But unless he acts up some, gives us at least a little guff, I won’t get any
enjoyment
out of it.”
T
HE
HOUSE
ACROSS
THE
STREET
was dusty rose with a grey roof and white trim. The garage doors were down. There were ten birdhouses, five red and five white, with silver stars on blue roofs, in the maple tree next to the garage; the low shrubs along the front of the house were bagged in burlap. The drapes were drawn in the front picture window so that only a sliver of light showed at the center. The streetlights on Turnpike were very bright sodium arcs; those in Peaceful Hills were incandescents spaced two or three hundred yards apart, so that the entire neighborhood appeared to be in hiding and only the picture window treatments—drapes closed or drapes open—distinguished the houses from one another in the dark.
Ferrigno seemed to make the Impala sneak among them, taking the first left off Peaceful Hills onto Mockingbird Lane and at the end of it the left into Chickadee Circle without pausing to read street signs. There were three low-slung six-room ranch houses on each side of the approach to the circular turnaround and two more at the circle. There was a streetlight on the left at the edge of the circle. The house positioned in the quarter-to-the-hour quadrant was pale grey with a grey roof and maroon shutters. The one in the quarter-after
quadrant was lima green with a grey roof and dark green trim.
“The one onna right, pea-soup color,” Ferrigno said. The drapes were drawn partway in the front picture window. A lamp with a maroon shade and a base of a rearing grey stallion made of grey-silver plastic was centered in it on a table. The metallic blue Dodge Ram Maxivan in the driveway blocked the view from the street of the garage that Sexton had converted to his studio and office. There was a light on in the room behind the reception area, visible through the door next to the studio. The outside light was on, illuminating the brass 68 numerals over the big black mailbox, and the ramp leading up to the door. Ferrigno stopped the Impala behind the van, blocking it in the driveway. He shut off the ignition.
Dowd chuckled. “Okay,” he said, “if he tries to make a break for it, he finds his wheels blocked, just like any other bad actor. But’re you sure you’re allowed to do this? Don’t you have to give handicapped suspects an escape route, take their disability into account?”
“That’s what I’m doing,” Ferrigno said. “In the Marathon the wheelchair guys always come barrel-assing down Heartbreak Hill into Brookline
miles
ahead of the runners. I’m givin’ him at least an even shot here. I figure, I have got his van blocked; if he decides to bolt, he’ll see this; and come wailin’ out the door and down that ramp like he was
launched.
That’ll give him a big lead; he’ll be halfway to the main road ’fore I get the key back in the ignition. I don’t care what anybody says—that’s a sporting chance, as much any felon, able-bodied or not, oughta get.”
Dowd laughed and got out of the car. He opened the right rear door and lifted a black leather zippered three-ring portfolio off the back seat. He closed the door and turned toward the house. It was just after 7:10. He was first at the door with the portfolio in his left hand and his badge case ready in his right,
Ferrigno slightly behind him on the ramp to his left, when Theresa Sexton—in grey suede boots with two-inch stacked heels that made her 5′11″, teased reddish-blond big hair that made her seem even taller, tight white jeans and a tight yellow deeply scoop-necked short-sleeved jersey over an extreme pushup bra—answered the doorbell. She had a pilsner glass in her left hand; her long fingernails were painted gold. She took a swallow of beer as she opened the inside door with her right hand, smiling invitingly, merry, her eyes sparkling and wide, the brows lifted, her lips parted in “Yes?”
Dowd held up the badge and she frowned, half opening her mouth, freshly lipsticked dark pink, as she stared at it through the glass of the storm door. Blinking, she began to shake her head, either to indicate confusion and try to clear it, or to indicate No, when Dowd, having stowed the badge case in his left inside jacket pocket, opened the storm door with his right hand and stepped up onto the threshold, moving her back and explaining, “State Police, Mrs. Sexton. We’d like to come in.”
She retreated, stepping backward toward the front of her desk in the reception area, somewhat off balance, using her right hand to grope behind her for the front of the desk. The speakers played a Boston Pops recording of “Moonlight Serenade,” lush with trombones, saxophones and muted trumpets, from a medley of Glenn Miller Band favorites. “I don’t …” she said.
“We need to talk to your husband, Mrs. Sexton,” Dowd said, moving forward relentlessly, crowding her back toward the desk, slapping the portfolio down on it, making room enough for Ferrigno to enter behind him, look through the window into the studio and satisfy himself that it was unoccupied, then push past Theresa and the desk, going directly to the right of the doorway leading to what had been the breezeway before the garage conversion and was now the entryway to the kitchen,
drawing his dark grey Glock 9mm service pistol from the holster where it rode butt canted forward at the top of his right hip.
Dowd continued to close in on her, his voice gentle and soothing but also as insistent as his forward motion. “Since his truck’s there in the drive, probably doesn’t go too far without it, we assume he must be home. Out there in the kitchen, is he?” Calculating that she would not want or try to flee, he had her effectually cornered now between the front of the desk, the green molded plastic chair in front of it and the door. He stood close to her, filling her field of vision, so that to see clearly what Ferrigno was doing she would have had to turn her head to the right, taking her eyes off Dowd, making it so that she would fear doing it would make her seem furtive and guilt-conscious, and therefore wouldn’t do it.
She leaned back as far away from him as she could, using her right hand now to steady herself against the desk, backing around; calves pressed against the green chair, she held the beer glass aloft in her left hand, nearly at eye level, trying not to spill it, the posture thrusting her breasts out and upward toward Dowd like offerings, her chin down against the top of her chest above them. Her breathing was shallow and rapid, making the breasts heave; her nostrils flared and her mouth was now completely open, her eyes very wide. “Could you call him for us, please? Tell him we’re here? And we need to talk to him? Ask him a few questions? We don’t want to alarm him. Startle him, you know?”
She shook her head wildly, chewing now on her lower lip, and Ferrigno, moving diagonally from right to left, sprang lightly and almost soundlessly through the doorway, landing combat-crouched on the balls of his feet, facing to the right of the door, his forearms and two-handed grip on the Glock now in the kitchen area beyond the frame of the door. Theresa turned her
head to the right just as Ferrigno’s coattails disappeared into the kitchen.
“Tim,”
she said, crying her husband’s name.
Dowd put his left hand on her right forearm. “Now Mrs. Sexton,” he said reproachfully, “there’s nothing to be upset about here. We’re here simply because we need to talk to your husband. I’ve already told you we’re police. We’re with the Special Investigations Bureau of the Massachusetts State Police. Now this’s important.”
In the kitchen Ferrigno called authoritatively, “Mister Sexton. State Police. Need to talk to you. I’ll come to you. Just stay where you are. Say something so I can tell where you are.”
“I’m Lieutenant Jim Dowd,” Dowd said, stepping back half a pace from her, “and my partner’s Trooper Henry Ferrigno. We’re assigned to the detective division. We work in plain clothes. That’s why we’re not in uniform. And we’ve made an arrest today down in Mansfield, this afternoon, and as a result of that we have a man in custody whom another officer’s talked to, and as a result of what this man told this other officer, we now have to talk to your husband.” He locked her eyes with his. “I have to emphasize,” he said, “this’s all very important.