A change of gravity

"But now it was too late. They were afraid that if they kept you out, Dan might retaliate, prevail upon his pals on Beacon Hill to refuse to grant racing days for that damned racetrack the Chief was so obsessed about. They were obsessed by that damned track. They virtually ordered me not to use my blackball.

"I didn't, but I warned them. I told them no good would ever come out of letting the pair of you in. I said nothing but trouble would ever come out of it. I told my dad that, and I told the Chief, too, it was an awful idea.

"I couldn't know then exactly what form the trouble would take, what repercussions there'd be. I must confess it didn't cross my mind that somehow your joining some day might form the basis for a tax evasion case, which seems to be the way they're heading. But there was no doubt in my mind that some day, sooner or later, something bad was certain to happen. Now my ugly premonition seems to be coming true.

"I want to emphasize that none of this was personal. It was not that I had a thing against you. Even though wed had that confrontation over the Humphrey candidacy, that was irrelevant. Nor had I anything against Dan Hilliard, or anyone who'd gotten where he is today by means of his own good hard work. More power to him, I say. I just knew that trouble was bound to come out of it some day, if your applications went through. My father and the Chief knew it too. I suspect you both knew, regardless of whether you admitted it to yourselves, that the two of you did not belong at Grey Hills. You didn't have the stuff.

"By rights you didn't have the means, the resources, to be members. How you came by them, I don't know, and I don't want to. I do know some kind of shady business was involved. Had to be; you had no other way, no honest way, to have laid your hands on that amount of money that fast. Sixteen or seventeen thousand dollars? An assistant clerk of courts and a state rep on the lower rungs of power? I'll give you your due: you were cute. No one's ever found out what you did or how you did it. But cleverness purifies nothing: the dirty politician's still like a rotten mackerel in the moonlight: so brilliant, and yet so corrupt, he shines, and stinks."

Merrion glared at him. "You piece of yellow shit," he said, 'getting me in here to say that to me. The next time we meet where some of my friends're around, so I'll have witnesses, I'm gonna call you out, dare you to repeat that. If you don't I'm gonna call you a fuckin' coward, and spit on you. And if you do, you'd better have a friend with you to hold your fancy bridgework or you're gonna swallow it."

Pooler smiled. "Sorry, Amby, but there's no other way of putting it, wasn't then and isn't now, and your reaction to the statement of that fact just proves it: you're not Grey Hills material and you never were.

Neither of you ought to've been allowed to place yourselves in the position where you'd have to do whatever it is you've done to meet the obligations membership entailed. As the fix you're now in proves conclusively. But back then, no one would listen to me."

He nodded, pouching his cheeks with air like an industrious squirrel with a cargo of acorns. "And now the day of reckoning has come, just as I predicted. But now it's too late for my cautions to do any good."

Merrion said to Hilliard: "I considered getting up and winding up and letting him have it, popping him one in the chops. Pasting him six or eight good ones, glasses and all, right in his smug little, fat little, face. Hair on the walls and blood on the floor; teeth in the nap of the rug. Change his nose from convex to concave. But I restrained myself. For one thing I don't want his yard-man to wind up behind the wheel of my car, using my house as an equipment shed. Particularly since I'd most likely still be in jail when he won the civil suit turning all of my goods over to him. Besides, my impression is that at least until one of us belts him, he's at least got to pretend he's on our side."

"Hell, if you think about it," Hilliard said, 'he may actually manage to get us to agree with him about Grey Hills. He's a third generation member. He's never seemed to use his membership much; I've seldom seen him there. But up 'til now I've always assumed it was because he was working all the time. Or else he just didn't like golf. There are people like that, you know. But now you've got me wondering: Maybe it's fear of rubbing elbows with riffraff like us, using showers that we've used, that's made him scarce up there. Is he really that petty?

If he is, he's right saying we're not fit to be members. What kind of asshole'd pay money to hang out with him? The very idea's disgusting.

Fine mess you got us into, Ollie, you and your grandiose ideas."

"Hey," Merrion said, 'my intentions were good. I'd had an unexpected bit of good fortune. Shared it with a friend."