A change of gravity

"That Lord Bountiful ability he had to bestow gifts upon less-affluent reps made Mister Hilliard a popular and respected House figure, far more so than his age or years of service ever would've suggested. Give the devil his due as well: Dapper Dan Hilliard's a likable man. Women, especially, like him," Judge Foote's face remained impassive, 'which as we know finally got him in trouble, but his charm worked on his male colleagues as well.

"The combination was a potent one. Even as a lowly two-term rep he had considerably more power on the Judicidary and the Ways and Means Committees than many five-and six-termers. He wasn't above using it for private purposes, either. When he and his wife decided she could no longer care for their severely retarded daughter at home, Hilliard threw his weight around to jump the queue and get her into the Walter J. Fernald School ahead of some thirty other children whose parents had been waiting as much as sixteen months to get their children in. He may be playing the gracious academic these days, but his arrogance then knew no bounds."

When he paused for breath the room was absolutely still.

Elizabeth Gibson, her fingers poised over the stenotype machine, stared at Bissell with her mouth open. Merrion and Cohen stared. Sandy Robey gaped. Judge Foote inhaled deeply but made no other sound.

Bissell seemed puzzled by the reaction. He frowned, but he was sufficiently unsure of himself so that he did not break the silence. At last Merrion, this time unrestrained by Cohen, said in a strangled low voice: "Donna Hilliard died in that hospital almost twenty years ago.

She was fourteen years old. She'd never said a word, or laughed. She'd never recognized her mother or her father; never fought with her brother and sister. She'd never played with other children; never had an ice cream cone. She'd never been to school. No one ever heard her laugh. No one ever saw her cry."

Gibson straightened up and typed into the machine what Merrion had just said. Cohen and the judge stirred, blinking. The judge cleared her throat. "Yes," she said, dragging it out and exhaling. She shook her head and blinked. She shook her head again. "I certainly have to hand it to you, Mister Bissell," she said, 'you're quite a piece of work.

Try to get on with what you were telling us. See if we can get out of here before you're challenged to a duel."

"All I was trying to say," Bissell said, appearing not to understand any of the reactions, 'is that political power is cumulative, iterative, in anybody's hands. The more Hilliard had of it, the more he found he could get. Because he had that kind of clout, he could make himself extremely useful to Roy Junior, pushing or retarding Senate bills on the House side. Roy in turn was only too pleased to reciprocate, guiding Hilliard's pet measures through the upper body.

That improved Hilliard's image on the House side, enabling him to do more for Carnes in the lower body.

"The result was that after a while there was a sort of merger of the Carnes and Hilliard interests. Now it was time for Hilliard and Merrion, in partnership with the Carneses, of course, to start lining their pockets, too. This was the second leg of their conspiratorial stool. Their ultimate goal was to obtain a high-paying lifetime sinecure for each of them in the public sector. Merrion's they wanted fairly soon; Hilliard would put off locating a cushy billet until he got tired of active politics, lost, or decided that he'd gone as far as he could go. But that didn't mean they were ruling out any good opportunities to steal that might crop up along the way to full employment.

"We're not clear whether Hilliard and Merrion expected to find their biggest bonanza in the Canterbury courthouse when Hilliard muscled through Merrion's appointment as third assistant clerk of court in Nineteen-sixty-six. What we do know is that events demonstrated that a bonanza did in fact exist: the Fourmen's Realty Trust. The Carneses, certainly never intending to divulge its existence to Hilliard or Merrion, much less share it with them, had been instrumental in its corrupt creation. But Mister Merrion, resourceful fellow that he is, found it. Six years later, he grabbed hold of a piece of it. From that point on, no matter what else came through or fell through, the Hilliard-Merrion partnership was a success.