Alan sighed. “Come on in the office, Danforth. We’ll talk about it.” He looked at Norris. “You’ve got the duty, right?”
“Right,” Norris said. His stomach was still in a ball. His good feelings were gone, probably for the rest of the day, it was that fat pig’s fault, and Alan was going to forgive the ticket. He understood it-politics-but that didn’t mean he had to like it.
“Do you want to hang around?” Alan asked. It was as close as he could come to asking, Do you need to talk this out? with Keeton standing right there and glowering at both of them.
“No,” Norris said. “Places to go and things to do. Talk to you later, Alan.” He left the men’s room, brushing past Keeton without a glance. And although Norris did not know it, Keeton restrained, with a great-almost heroic-effort, an irrational but mighty urge to plant a foot in his ass to help him on his way.
Alan made a business of checking his own reflection in the mirror, giving Norris time to make a clean getaway, while Keeton stood by the door, watching him impatiently. Then Alan pushed out into the bullpen area again with Keeton at his heels.
A small, dapper man in a cream-colored suit was sitting in one of the two chairs outside the door to his office, ostentatiously reading a large leather-bound book which could only have been a Bible.
Alan’s heart sank. He had been fairly sure nothing else too unpleasant could happen this morning-it would be noon in only two or three minutes, so the idea seemed a reasonable one but he had been wrong.
The Rev. William Rose closed his Bible (the binding of which almost matched his suit) and bounced to his feet. “Chief-uh Pangborn,” he said. The Rev. Rose was one of those deep-thicket Baptists who begin to twist the tails of their words when they are emotionally cranked up. “May I please speak to you?”
“Give me five minutes, please, Reverend Rose. I have a matter to attend to.”
“This is-uh extremely important.”
I bet, Alan thought. “So is this. Five minutes.”
He opened the door and ushered Keeton into his office before the Reverend Willie, as Father Brigham liked to call him, could say anything else.
5
“It’ll be about Casino Nite,” Keeton said after Alan had closed the I office door. “You mark my words. Father John Brigham is a bullheaded Irishman, but I’ll take him over that fellow anytime. Rose is an incredibly arrogant prick.”
There goes the pot, calling the kettle black, Alan thought.
“Have a seat, Danforth.”
Keeton did. Alan went around his desk, held the parking ticket up, and tore it into small fragments. These he tossed into the wastebasket. “There. Okay?”
“Okay,” Keeton said, and moved to rise.
“No, sit down a moment longer.”
Keeton’s bushy eyebrows drew together below his high, pink forehead in a thundercloud.
“Please,” Alan added. He dropped into his own swivel chair.
His hands came together and tried to make a blackbird; Alan caught them at it and folded them firmly together on the blotter.
“We’re having an appropriations committee meeting next week dealing with budgetary matters for Town Meeting in February-” Alan began.
“Damn right,” Keeton rumbled.
“-and that’s a political thing,” Alan went on. “I recognize it and you recognize it. I just tore up a perfectly valid parking ticket because of a political consideration.”
Keeton smiled a little. “You’ve been in town long enough to know how things work, Alan. One hand washes the other.”
Alan shifted in his chair. It made its little creakings and squeakings-sounds he sometimes heard in his dreams after long, hard days. The kind of day this one was turning out to be.
“Yes,” he said. “One hand washes the other. But only for so long.”
The eyebrows drew together again. “What does that mean?”
“It means that there’s a place, even in small towns, where politics have to end. You need to remember that I’m not an appointed official. The selectmen may control the purse strings, but the voters elect me. And what they elect me to do is to protect them, and to preserve and uphold the law. I took the oath, and I try to hold to it.”
“Are you threatening me? Because if you are-” Just then the mill-whistle went off. It was muted in here, but Danforth Keeton still jumped as if he had been stung by a wasp.
His eyes widened momentarily, and his hands clamped down to white claws on the arms of his chair.
Alan felt that puzzlement again. He’s as skittish as a mare in heat.
What the hell’s wrong with him?
For the first time he found himself wondering if maybe Mr.
Danforth Keeton, who had been Castle Rock’s Head Selectman since long before Alan himself ever heard of the place, had been uP to something that was not strictly kosher.
“I’m not threatening you,” he said. Keeton was beginning to relax again, but warily… as if he were afraid the mill-whistle might go off again,)just to goose him.
“That’s good. Because it isn’t just a question of purse strings, Sheriff Pangborn. The Board of Selectmen, along with the three County Commissioners, holds right of approval over the hiringand the firing-of Sheriff’s Deputies. Among many other rights of approval I’m sure you know about.”
“That’s just a rubber stamp.”
I e d. From his inside “So it has always been,” Keeton agr e pocket he produced a Roi-Tan cigar. He pulled it between his fingers, making the cellophane crackle. “That doesn’t mean it has to stay Now who is threatening whom? Alan thought, but did not say.
Instead he leaned back in his chair and looked at Keeton. Keeton met his eyes for a few seconds, then dropped his gaze to the cigar and began picking at the wrapper.
“The next time you park in the handicap space, I’m going to ticket you myself, and that citation will stand,” Alan said. “And if You ever lay your hands on one of my deputies again, I’ll book you on a charge of third-degree assault. That will happen no matter how many so-called rights of approval the selectmen hold. Because politics only stretches so far with me. Do you understand?”
’ Keeton looked down at the cigar for a long moment, as if meditating. When he looked up at Alan again, his eyes had turned to small, hard flints. “If you want to find out just how hard my ass is, that way.”
Sheriff Pangborn, just go on pushing me.” There was anger written on Keeton’s face-yes, most assuredly-but Alan thought there was something else written there, as well. He thought it was fear. Did he see that? Smell it? He didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. But what Keeton was afraid of… that might matter. That might matter a lot.
“Do you understand?” he repeated.
“Yes,” Keeton said. He stripped the cellophane from his cigar with a sudden hard gesture and dropped it on the floor. He stuck the cigar in his mouth and spoke around it. “Do you understand me?”
The chair creaked and croaked as Alan rocked forward again.
He looked at Keeton earnestly. “I understand what you’re saying, but I sure as hell don’t understand how you’re acting, Danforth.
We’ve never been best buddies, you and I-”
“That’s for sure,” Keeton said, and bit off the end of his cigar.
For a moment Alan thought that was going to end up on the floor, too, and he was prepared to let it go if it did-politics-but Keeton spat it into the palm of his hand and then deposited it in the clean ashtray on the desk. It sat there like a small dog-turd.
“-but we’ve always had a pretty good working relationship.
Now this. Is there something wrong? If there is, and I can help-”
“Nothing is wrong,” Keeton said, rising abruptly. He was angry again-more than just angry. Alan could almost see the steam coming out of his ears. “It’s just that I’m so tired of this… persecution.”