A change of gravity

Merrion shoved him toward the hallway door. Brody lurched forward. "Go over there and shut the fuckin' door, Steve," he said. "Shut the door and lock it and then lean against it, and don't let nobody out, while I get the cops up here and tell 'em how Janet LeClerc killed her boyfriend in the bathtub by switchin' on her hair-dryer an' throwin' it inna tub with him after he fell asleep inna warm water. He'd had a hard day's work getting' his belly full of beer and beatin' his meat and givin' his girlfriend a good beatin'. Betcha when that Conair splashed it got his attention. Helluva thing to do to a man, I must say. Jesus, what a surprise. Bops the daffy girlfriend in the eye, just a little innocent fun, and what does she do but electrocute him.

I don't know how long he lived after she did it, but I will bet you one thing sure: not long enough to forget it."

"I can't," Brody said, after he had shut the door and had shaken himself to regain his composure, watching Merrion punch numbers on the phone while Janet snored efficiently by the window, "I can't believe she'd do that. She could've done that to him. I never saw a side of her that'd make me think she'd do an awful thing like that, just go and kill a man. Never in a million years."

"I know it," Merrion said, hearing the phone begin to ring at the police station. "I'm the same way too. I can never believe it either.

As many times I've seen it happen, I still can't make myself believe it. They always tell you, every time, they promise you, that they will be good boys and girls. And then something like this happens. It shakes your faith in human nature… Hello? Yeah, Amby Merrion. Got a homicide to report. No, I'm not a cop, I'm the clerk of court. Yeah that's me, I am the guy: I know everything."

TWENTY-SIX

At 1:45 on the afternoon of the second Friday in November, US District Court Judge Barrie Foote stood up scowling at the end of the table in the library of her chambers. She wadded the bag containing the debris of her lunch and threw it overhand, hard, at the wastebasket in the corner, clanking it off the near edge. "Bummer," she said, 'shit." She walked over to the corner, picked it up and threw it down hard into the basket. Then she returned to the head of the table, sat down and pushed the buzzer on her phone, saying: "Tell Sandy to send in the clowns."

She was refolding her New York Times when she heard Sandy Robey, talking to someone behind him, open the outer door and come through her office into the library. Geoffrey Cohen, Arnold Bissell and Merrion followed. The judge cast the paper aside and stood up. "Gentlemen," she said.

"Lizzie'll be right along with her machine, Judge," Robey said. "I assume you want this on the record." He took his usual chair at the opposite end of the table, near the door.

"Oh, by all means on the record," the judge said. "If you'll all be seated gentlemen, we'll be able to get underway on whatever it is we're doing here I'm not entirely clear on it myself, so you'll have to enlighten me as soon as she arrives. I'd suggest you, Geoff, here on my left, and your client, next to you. I'm assuming he's Mister Merrion."

"That's correct, your Honor," Cohen said. He wore grey flannel trousers, a heather-blue Harris tweed two-button jacket, a blue button-down shirt and a pine-patterned dark blue silk tie. His brown van Dyke was faultlessly groomed.

"Mister Merrion," the judge said.

"Afternoon, your Honor," Merrion said, neutrally. He wore a dark blue blazer, grey flannel slacks, a grey shirt and a tie that Cohen had affably described as 'hideous," red, with gold triangles interlocked kaleidoscopic ally His face was taut and although he had nothing in his hands he moved gingerly, as though carrying a possibly explosive parcel.

"And you, Arnie, here, on my right," the judge said.

Elizabeth Gibson, a stocky black woman in her forties in a tight brownish-grey striped suit with a brown sueded collar, her greying hair bunned tightly back, stomped into the room on her two short heavy legs carrying her stenotype machine by the chrome standard connecting it to stubby tripod legs. She set it down next to Bissell, sat and began to type.

"All right," the judge said, 'we're now in business. If you'd identify the matter for the record here now, Sandy."

This'd be United States of America versus John Doe, civil docket number Ninety-five-dash-eight- hundred-seventy-four, In re Ambrose Merrion,"

Robey said.

"And if counsel'd identify yourselves now for the record, please?"

Foote said.

"Assistant United States Attorney Arnold Bissell for the government,"

Bissell said. He was thirty-four years old, six-two, about a hundred-fifty pounds, his blond hair in a Fifties-retro pompadour up swept in the front. It made his head look disproportionately small.