Authors: George V. Higgins
They conferred by glance and concurred by nodding, she now standing at the table to Dowd’s left, hesitating until Tim had rummaged in his lap and found his prosthesis, so that they could say “Yes” together. She sat down opposite her husband in the chair nearest Dowd.
Dowd separated two copies of the advice-of-rights form from the stack he had taken from his portfolio. He filled out the names and location sections at the top and put one in front of Tim and the other in front of Theresa, handing her his ballpoint. Ferrigno stepped up behind Tim and handed his ballpoint over Sexton’s right shoulder. The Sextons exchanged glances again before looking down at their forms and signing. “Thank you,” Dowd said, taking back the forms and recovering his pen; Sexton held Ferrigno’s back over his right shoulder and Ferrigno took it.
“I think I’ll just sit down now, myself,” Dowd said, bending over the table to date, noting the time—7:41
P.M.
—and initialing the executed forms before inserting them and the blanks into different compartments of the portfolio. Taking out a tape recorder and a spiral notebook, zipping the portfolio closed and putting it on the counter, he made his way around behind Theresa and pulled out the chair in front of the kitchen window. He sat down, putting the notebook and the tape recorder in the center of the table, then crossed his right leg over his left knee and rested his right hand on his right knee.
Fixing his gaze on Tim he said pleasantly, “So, Mister Sexton, you’ve gotten yourself and your dear wife as well into a huge lake of shit. What’ve you got to say for yourself?”
“I dunno what you’re talking about,” Sexton said, his blue eyes glowering, his left hand at his throat with the prosthesis. “All Terry and I’re doing tonight is we’re celebrating with our
friends Lou and Joie.” He used his right hand to gesture at the tape recorder. “That thing on?”
“Nope,” Dowd said, “and as you can see, I’m not writing in the notebook. Like to get to know my subjects first, a little, ’fore I trample on their rights. Your wife mentioned you’re doing that, having some kind of a little party tonight, your friends Lou and Joie. And using the five-star menu, too, filet mignon and Corona. That’s nice. Whatcha celebrating?”
Sexton studied his wife as though to make sure she was all right. Unaware what she had done, he too now tried to show defiance that would reassure her he was not afraid of Dowd and controlled the situation. He managed chiefly to communicate uncertainty, confusion and timidity. “I do know I don’t have to talk to you, if I don’t wanna, you know,” he said.
“I should hope so,” Dowd said. “Every mother’s son who ever saw a TV cop show knows that, and if you maybe missed it, I just got through reminding you.”
Sexton blinked. He looked at his wife for a cue, being as new to their situation as she was. Since it alarmed her to see this, she didn’t have one. She showed the alarm by moving in her chair. That rattled him more, and he licked his lips.
“Mister Sexton,” Dowd said, pouncing, “look, I know you’re nervous. You and your wife here, both. And you should be—you’re both in very serious trouble here. And the fact that you’re completely new to it—trying to pretend otherwise, act like you’re hardened criminals—this isn’t making it any easier for you, either.”
Sexton squirmed in his chair.
Dowd ignored his movements. “Trooper Ferrigno and I know all this, and so we’d like to—and
we’re
trying, ourselves, honest—to make it a little easier for you.”
Sexton looked incredulous. “Oh, don’t think so?” Dowd said. He smiled. “That shows I’m right. The usual way to go in to make
an arrest in a case involving charges as serious as the ones involved in this case is to come in with at least eight officers, in SWAT gear. Surround the house, and instead of ringing the bell and waiting for someone to come answer it,
open
the door, knock the door down with a ram and come in over it, guns drawn.”
Sexton looked thoughtful. “Sure,” Dowd said, “what you’re thinking now is right. The fact we didn’t do that oughta tell you something. Oughta tell you that we think there might be a way for you and your wife to make things a little easier on yourselves. But the only way you’re ever gonna find that out is if you two can first stop acting like you think you’re starring in some third-rate gangster movie. So that we can start
talking
to each other—like four more-or-less reasonable adults looking at a great big problem two of them’ve got. And the other two’re just as anxious as they are to help them get out of. See if maybe if they work together there’s a way get it
solved
, in such a way that it won’t leave the two who’ve got the problem in a situation where their lives’re utterly, completely, and permanently ruined.”
He paused, turned his head and looked at Theresa. “And Mrs. Sexton,” he said, hardening his voice and fixing his gaze on her until she lowered her eyes, “I hope you understand this, too. That based on what we know already, right now you are in this mess just as deep as he is, and if he’s looking at spending the next thirty years to life in a maximum security prison such as Cedar Junction, as he most certainly is, what you’ve got in front of you is a very long time in MCI Framingham. Where we send female offenders in this Commonwealth—and we’re talking
years
here, many of ’em.”
Dowd swung his gaze back on her husband and was pleased to see that Tim was now as troubled as he was frightened. “Mister Sexton, I’m sure you don’t want that to happen, any more than she does,” he said. “I realize you’ve been through a lot as a result of your military service, and that she must be not only one
good-
lookin’
lady, as any man can plainly see, but also a damned brave lady. To’ve signed up with you as she has, and helped you make what looks to me at least like a pretty damned good life—out of what has to’ve been a pretty damned depressing start.”
He hesitated, letting it sink in. “And whatever promises you may’ve made to her,” he said, “I know you were a soldier. Not the kind of kid who ran and hid, and found a way out of the draft. You didn’t bullshit her. You told her there’d be days—and might be nights as well; don’t know you get those flashbacks way some Viet vets claim they do—when she’d find it very tough, married to a damaged man.”
As Dowd had intended, Sexton looked miserable. “But as tough as I know you were, being the fair man you are, as straightforward as you must’ve been—when you told her things with you might sometimes get to be awful, awful hard—and as tough as I’m sure she was, when she told you she was sure that she could do it—
you
never in your life told
her
, and neither one of you imagined, that if she tied herself to you, she’d wind up doing
time.
”
He heard Theresa suck her breath in. He ignored her and continued to talk to her husband. “You haven’t got a record, but you’ve been as good as locked up, confined to one military hospital after another for as long as you were, no way to get out on your own. Technically you’ve never done time, but if you go away on this you won’t find the experience all that unfamiliar. A whole lot
longer
, sure, but you’ll recognize it.” He leaned in closer so that his chin was over Sexton’s right thigh, and he tapped him with his forefinger on the right knee as he spoke.
“
She
will.” He gestured with his right thumb back over his shoulder toward Theresa. “You know ’cause you’re a man, and all men’ve heard, what happens to young good-lookin’ guys when they get to prison. You of course got nothing to worry about in that respect now, given how old you are and the fact
you’re all beaten-up. Unless of course you
wanna
have something to think about, in which case you’ll be on your own—and good luck to you; I’m sure you’ll find companions without any trouble at all.
“
But
, so’ll she,” Dowd said. “Whether she wants ’em or not.” He sat up and turned in his chair and looked at her appraisingly. He sighed and shook his head. “Which both of you might wanna think about some,” he said, turning back to Sexton. “Think about what a couple-three of those two-twenty, two-forty black bull dykes they’ve got in there, look like NFL linebackers, wouldn’t love to try on that fresh white Danish pastry.” He glanced back at Theresa; she looked dark and resentful, but she slumped.
“Anyway,” Dowd said, sitting up straight again and folding his arms across his stomach, “that’s about where we are now. And it wasn’t so terribly bad now, was it? Getting to know each other just a little better, where we stand and so forth.” He smiled. “
And
, now that it’s over with, I do believe I had a question pending. What were you celebrating tonight? Anything to do with that poster?” He used his gaze and eyebrows to indicate the tube on top of the refrigerator.
The little doors above noon on the dial of the cuckoo clock snapped open over Ferrigno’s head, making him start, look upwards and laugh. A little red bird emerged slowly, halfway, and cuckooed seven times. Ferrigno and Dowd frowned and looked at their watches. It was 7:51. They both looked at Theresa. The little red bird retreated slowly and the doors closed over it. “It’s broken,” Theresa said. “It’s been broken forever. I keep asking him …”
Her husband fitted his prosthesis against his throat. “And I keep telling you,” he said, weary and annoyed, “that I
can’t.
Nobody can. It’s a cheap cuckoo clock I got in the PX in Quang Gang Bang or someplace—someplace I don’t even remember.
Probably cost a buck thirty-nine, made in Taiwan, and I was half in the bag. Dunno why I bought it. If I’d known I was doin’ it, I wouldn’t’ve brought it home, but of course I didn’t pack my stuff—I was inna hospital. Someone else did all that for me. My father put it up for me when I got home. Did it to surprise me one day, I was at the VA Brockton, getting therapy. Didn’t know how to tell him I didn’t
want
it put up, ask him to take it down—
I
wanted it thrown away. And when he was gone, I couldn’t reach it, take it down. Still can’t. Bothers you? You can reach it—you take it down. Either throw it away or
you
try to fix it yourself.” He paused, looking disgusted. “But for
Chrissakes
stop
talking
about it.”
The speaker played “Little Brown Jug.” Theresa Sexton stared at her husband for a long time, her eyes vacant, as though trying to remember where she’d seen him before. At last Dowd cleared his throat. The sound brought her out of her reverie. “No,” she said, turning to look at Dowd, “it doesn’t matter. I’ll show it to you.” She pushed back from the table and stood up. Her husband made a sound but she disregarded him and reached up, pulling the tube off the top of the refrigerator and putting it down on the table, taking the elastic off and unrolling it. It was a three-by-five-foot color poster. Standing next to her husband’s left side and bending over the table she reached into his lap and lifted up his right hand. She put it down on the poster saying, “You hold the top.” He looked resigned and left his hand there.
She straightened up and unrolled the poster, walking back to where she had been sitting, and leaned over the table so that she could hold the bottom down with her left hand in front of Dowd. He found that looking down her neckline he could see the tops of her nipples, dark brown circles among small freckles. Looking up at him she said, “No, at the poster,” and along with his gaze he shifted position to his right on the chair, placing his
right hand on the edge of the poster precisely at the top of her black panty and looked down it.
It was a harshly lighted three-quarter-angle frontal torso shot, with excellent sharpness. She stood with her arms akimbo, proudly. In addition to the panty she was wore a thin grey cropped tee shirt. She had been drenched, so that her hair streamed down around her gleaming face, shining grin and flashing eyes, and the tee shirt plastered to her showed the shape of her right breast and the fullness of both of them in detail, the nipples standing out in full arousal.
“Mercy,”
Dowd said admiringly. Without looking up, he said to Ferrigno, “You see this all right, Henry?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ferrigno said uncomfortably, attempting to sound listless, shifting his position at the door behind Sexton in his wheelchair, “I can see all right.”
“Well, but upside
down
,” Dowd said practically, without looking up, shaking his head. “And you’re lookin’ over
him
there. What you have to do is come around this side the table. Look at ’em right side up. I mean—these’re really something. Gorgeous.”
He looked up inquiringly, as though innocently meaning to seek Ferrigno’s gaze, but quite deliberately locked eyes with Sexton in his chair and held his gaze. There was savage helpless anger in Sexton’s eyes. “I take it, Mrs. Sexton,” Dowd said blandly, without looking at her, taunting her husband with his gaze and tone and the faint smirk at the corners of his mouth, “this was some kind of contest? Wet Tee Shirt Night or something? That they had at this place where you’d gone, with your husband and your friends, and you entered it, and
won
? And that’s what you’re celebrating tonight? When we interrupted?”
“Well,
yeah
,” she said. “But I mean, is it okay now to roll it up now? I mean, you guys seen enough now?”
“Oh yeah, sure,” Dowd said, smiling now on the left side of his face. “We’ve seen all we need to see. You can roll it back up now.” He lifted his hand off the poster and returned to his former position in his chair.
Keeping his furious eyes on Dowd, Sexton lifted his hand immediately and fast off the top of the poster, holding it straight up, palm open and flat, fingers and thumb rigid, the fascist salute. Dowd widened his smile and flicked two fingers of his own right hand to receive it. The poster rolled up toward the center as she took away her left hand, so that the bottom and the top met in two rolls in the middle. She began rerolling it from the bottom to the top.
“At first I didn’t want to,” she said. “You know, when we first got there to Rocky’s and we saw the sign and all—to
expose
myself like that. All those people there. But then we had a few beers, and Lou, you know, started saying, ‘Jesus Christ, ’re you guys
nuts
? What the hell’s the difference, huh? Everybody in here can already
see
what you got, best pair inna house—no woman here can beat ’em. You’re turning down a hundred
bucks
, you can have for the
taking
?’ And Joie, you know, said the same—‘It’s not like they can’t
tell
, you know, lookin’ at you, way you come in.’ And ‘All you’d be really doin’s givin’ them a little better
look
—it’s not like you exactly
hide
’em.’ And like I say, we’d
had
some drinks, and then me and Tim, we sort of just looked at each other, like, you know—‘a hundred
bucks
?’ And so we said all right.