"She had a place on State Street way the hell out up beyond the Armory there, up near Winchester Square. Not a bad place at all, pretty roomy; should've been enough for her. Three bedrooms, small dining room, big living room, reasonably good-sized kitchen, not that you'd wanna try and cook a banquet in it, anything; but still, you know, for nothin'? Should've been okay for her. Plus it had a bath-a-half. It's a mostly minority section, African-American and Puerto Rican. That does make it sort of surprising she'd seek that out, want to locate herself up there with them. Lookin' for the trouble, the first place, or else she wouldn't've gone there. But in her circumstances? She's got three kids and she's on welfare: how much choice'd she have? And besides, Lowell's mixed blood himself, half black and white, half Hispanic. He knew he was getting' out, maybe he wanted to live there.
"Anyway, that's where she was when Lowell showed up and moved in. Eight or nine weeks after that, it's June, and now Bennett joins the party here, and then not too long after that, they all hadda move out. Which brings us up to the events of this weekend. And that's where you come in here, I guess, Amby."
"Okay," Merrion said. "Putting together what the Rangers and then the cops were able to get out of this woman last Saddy night, plus what I was able on my own before court this morning, managed to pry outta Daggett, everything was hunky-dory with Shepard and the kids until Chappelle showed up. Everyone was doin' fine. Wasn't workin', of course, nothin' quite as dramatic as getting' a job, maybe doing something now and then to earn her keep, but with the Essesseye and the Food Stamps and the AFDC and the rent subsidy, well, they're getting' along. They're warm and they're eatin' and they've got clothes to wear and the kids seem to've been going to school.
"Bennett may've already been there, against the welfare rules, when Chappelle showed up and made him get out. Then Bennett wasn't there for a while. For about six weeks after Chappelle got there, things were quiet. But that changed. The neighbors start complaining about noise in the Shepard apartment, and then the cops get called. And then Shepard decides one night, fuck the neighbors, and throws a party that turns into a round-robin fistfight, everybody goin' at it, fightin' everybody else. Naturally the night wont be complete until the cops're called. So she gets on the telephone herself and invites them to come up.
"Cops arrive and what they find is that there are about a dozen people in the place, and all of them seem to be either drunk or stoned. Some of them're also bleedin'. Except for Mister Chappelle. He's as sober as a judge, begging your Honor's pardon here, and he takes it upon himself to inform the cops that he's been visiting his niece, Miss Shepard, since he got released from jail, and frankly he don't like the way she lives. Doesn't approve of her life-style. Tells the cops confidentially he's got reason to believe she's been supplementing her income by entertaining gentlemen callers and taking money from them.
Which is another activity not allowed welfare recipients.
"Naturally the cops are shocked. But feeling that it's only fair to give this woman a chance to defend her good name and reputation, they take her aside and ask her if she'd care to comment on reports that she may be doin' a little light hookin'. She's understandably upset to hear that someone's been saying such things about her, and after telling them that she's a good girl and wouldn't think of doing such things, worms the name of the stoolie out of them. Then, while they are still there, the cops're still in the apartment, she flies into a fucking rage and goes berserk, grabs ahold of a rum jug, and goes after Brother Chappelle, screaming like a fuckin' banshee. Before the cops can grab her she bangs him on the head with the jug, and breaks it.
It's not empty. The booze goes all over the place, all over him an' the gas stove. He falls against it. That turns on the stove, which sets the rum on fire. So you've got flames leaping up from the stove and his clothes; cops're beating them out with dishtowels or something.
And while that's going on, she's still got the handle and the jagged neck of the jug left, so she goes after him with that and opens up his face before the cops can separate them again.
"This throws a damper on the party, so the cops decide to have some of them arrest Miss Shepard and take her down to the station. And never mind the EMTs, just have some of the other cops who after all're right there on the scene transport Chappelle to the ER and get him repaired.
The next day after the judge has heard all about this in Springfield District Court, the upshot of it is that Miss Shepard gets a stern lecture and a year's probation — because she has no money to pay a fine and nobody to stay with the kids if she goes to the cooler, and it seems like that's about the only thing anybody can do to her without going to a hell of a lot of trouble finding foster homes for the kids.
"Mister Chappelle, on the other hand, all stitched and bandaged up like he is, is ordered to stay away from her, or the first thing that he knows he'll be back in the federal lockup for violating probation by making a nuisance of himself under State law. Mister Chappelle states his opinion this is a gross miscarriage of justice, him being threatened with going back to jail. He points out that after all, she's the one who did all the damage, cut his face up with a broken bottle, so she's the one should go to jail. The judge is unmoved and tells Mister Chappelle that if he doesn't like getting his face all cut up and Miss Shepard is the one who last did it to him, all he has to do's obey the order, stay away from Miss Shepard, and he should be fine. Oh, and also inna future maybe think twice before he starts going around telling cops any hostess of his is also selling her ass.
That isn't exactly what the judge said just pretty much what he meant."
"Except that nobody in Springfield then ever gets around to telling me about this," Paradisio said.
"Or else they did call but you were out, and they got that bitch of a secretary of yours, and she had something else to do, like pick her nose, so she didn't bother telling you," Merrion said. "As we know's been known to happen."
"That could be," Paradisio said.
"As a further result of all of this brouhaha," Merrion said, 'at least according to Louella, a week or two later when Miss Shepard's landlord he lives over in Agawam; owns a number of apartments, all of which are slums finally gets wind of what went on in the one up in Winchester Square that night, he decides it's his turn to get upset.
So he orders her to quit and vacate the premises. Says he's trying to run a classy joint there and she's not helping him to do this, so therefore out she goes. This gets the social workers started digging into the whole mess, trying to resettle Miss Shepard.
"They find no sign of Chappelle. He seems to be gone from the scene probably because he's now taken up with our Janet in apartment fourteen at Sixteen-ninety-two Ike, but this fact hasn't yet reached either Sam's attention or ours. What the social workers do find is that Bennett is now keeping Miss Shepard company. Miss Shepard is informed that she can't expect to get another subsidized place for herself as long as Bennett's with her. At least under the statute, he's an able-bodied male. He's supposed to work. She takes offense at this and says what they're planning to do is get married. The case worker says weddings're nice, but that the money she's been getting isn't for supporting unemployed fiances or husbands, either, as far as that goes.
They put her and the three kids up in a motel temporarily, 'til they can find an apartment for her, but with strict orders to Bennett to stay out, and to her not to let him come in. He ignores his orders and she ignores hers and the case-worker catches them and boots the whole bunch of them out. That's the last that anyone at DSS hears of any of them until the Ranger posse rounds them up on Saturday and dumps them here in our lap."