Everyone turned to look at the green-padded swinging doors. Both of them swung open very slowly, tumbling a short, stocky woman with swarthy skin and short black hair, wearing a red, white and green flowered blouse and a short red skirt and red high-heeled shoes off-balance backwards perhaps two feet in the air into the room and then hard onto the floor, so that she landed crashing seated on her large buttocks with her arms outstretched and her feet in the red shoes sticking up in the air. She wore eyeglasses with red frames and her face was contorted, and she had a small silver automatic pistol in her right hand, pointed at the ceiling.
TWENTY-ONE
Cavanaugh left hurriedly right after the gunshot. Following several minutes later, Merrion found him, sitting at his desk, still wearing his robe, his hands loosely clenched on the blotter, looking like a man recovering slowly from a sharp, unexpected blow.
"He looked the way he looked the day he got the million-dollar letter from his Uncle Andy," Merrion said. He and Hilliard were having a late dinner that evening at Grey Hills. "One that said he's giving up the lonely bachelor's life. The old boy over ninety now, still going strong has got a bale of money, and Lennie's more'n just his favorite nephew; since his mother died he's the old guy's only living blood-relative. Ever since I'd first known him, Lennie's been genuflecting to him on the phone at least once a week, goin' down to see him at least once a year. He pretended Red Sox spring training was the reason for the trip, but it wasn't. It really was to keep in touch with Andy. And it was sincere; he wanted his uncle's money, sure, but that wasn't all of it; he really does like the old gent. Even now, Lennie still calls, and goes to see him every year. But you can see the thrill is gone; mostly he was doing it for the money. Before he got that letter, when he was going down there to take a view, his uncle, try to check his vital signs without him noticin', you could see he was lookin' forward to the mission. Now it's obviously a chore, but he still hasta do it; otherwise Andy'll know he never really meant it, all those other years, when he thought he was gonna get alia dough.
Andy gets that idea, he's liable, cut out Lennie entirely. Can't have that happening'.
"Although my guess is it already did. The uncle made a good part his bundle selling used cars, for Christ sake. You know he had to've seen right through Lennie. Probably tickled him. No matter where the Red Sox moved their training camp Sarasota, Winter Haven, now Fort Myers Lennie always got to Clearwater, where Andy lives. "I always make it a point to spend a few days with him, long's I'm in the area." There was one stretch when the Sox trained in Arizona, Scottsdale, I think it was, so that's where Lennie took Julia on their winter trip. But they still got to Clearwater to visit his uncle. I guess Clearwater was in the Arizona area those years.
"The rest of the year he's callin' every week at least, listenin' for wheezin', any shortness of breath, hopin' maybe to hear about a few chest pains; wishin' there's a way to take his pulse and get a urine sample by phone, fifteen hundred miles away. For years he's been doin' this, and all the time he's thinkin': "How much longer can he last?
This must be the year I get rich."
"Then when Andy's eighty-eight, he sends his happy tidings, not by phone, by letter. He's getting' married. He's fallen in love with this forty-year-old broad "Elaine the fair," Lennie calls her who comes in every day and does his cookin' and his cleaning. Lennie thinks she probably performs other services of a more personal nature that a lonesome old bachelor'd enjoy, "like makin' sure he gets his cookies every now and then." Lennie's still very bitter. The letter said they were gonna get married that spring, asked Lehnie to be his best man.
That day Lennie looked like someone dropped an anvil on his head, and that's exactly how he looked today."
The judge had stood up at 10:43 and hurriedly retreated from the bench into his office, moving clumsily but quickly, making quite a bit of noise and plainly not caring that he did so, as though he had been suddenly awakened from a sound sleep by a strong smell of smoke and discovered the building on fire around him.
"By then it seemed like a good ten, eleven minutes've gone by after we first heard the shot," Merrion said. "I know it couldn't possibly've been that long, really, probably less'n a minute, but it seemed like a lot longer. We'd just been suspended by that sound, like a thunderclap so close the lightning had to've hit your house, right beside it anyway. It froze you. Everything just stopped, including time. My thinking did, anyway; I went into a trance; sittin' there totally stunned. Lennie came back to life first.
"By then I was facin' the courtroom. I'd been talkin' to him when the gun went off. That made me turn around. Now I hear this second sound behind me. I turn around again. It was Lennie, jumpin' out his chair, hightailing it off the bench. They must teach you that in Judge School. "A gun goes off in your courtroom, fuck everybody else; save your own ass first. Run like hell and find yourself a place where you can hide until it's over." No hero medal for Lennie.
"When he jumped up the chair banged on the Lucite pad it rolls around on. Everyone inna courtroom starts duckin' down. "Another shot" hadn't done that with the first bang; they didn't have the time. Lennie woke me up. "Hey, maybe I should get outta here. There could be more shooting anna next one might hit me." But I didn't; I just stood there. I was frozen.
"Then time started up again. It was like I hadda catch up on what'd gone on right in front of me. "Let's see now I was looking at him when the gun went off so my back was to the lobby doors. I turned around and this woman came flying through them, hit the floor, ka-boom."
Merrion clapped his hands. "Like that. She was lucky that was all the distance her husband got when he picked her up and threw her as we later find out he did after she shot him. Pissed him off somewhat, I guess. He'd gotten another foot or so on her, gone to a little more club, say, a seven iron, no question she would've banged her head on the end of one of those solid oak benches. Would've at least knocked her out, given all of us more time to figure out what she had in her hand and what we should do about it. Because as it was I didn't realize at first what it was.
"Then I think: "My God, that woman's got a gun. That's afuckin gun, her hand. She could shoot someone. That must be the sound I just heard."
"They never could fool you, Amby," Hilliard said, digging into a large mound of chicken salad on a bed of lettuce, flanked by three small bunches of fat tawny grapes. Merrion had sent his steak back as over-cooked and was waiting for a plate of chicken salad.
"Not a chance," Merrion said. "I know what's go in' on, 'specially when I've got my eyes open and it's happening right in front of me. So I grab the phone on the desk and punch in 0, and, wonder of wonders, someone was actually there, and picked up, on the other end of the line.
"Inna courthouse, this is astonishing, much more unusal'n having someone shoot a gun off. But there she was; Corinne was on the case. I could hear her breathing. I couldn't believe it. She must've also been in a state of suspended animation. That's the only way, account for her being there and picking up and breathing loud enough for me to hear her. The switchboard's right there inna cubicle right off the main foyer; shot must've been even louder — she may even've seen the shot fired. But I'm givin' her the news just the same, I am makin' it official; I say "Corinne, calla cops up in here quick, annie EMTs too.