"Well," Merrion said, becoming more offended, 'all I was just trying to do here was…" when there was a sound almost like someone with a chest-cold coughing during a lull in conversation and then someone with a deep baritone voice who was outside in the main corridor made a loud noise combining a scream of pain with a roar of outrage that stopped all the conversations in mouths-open progress in the courtroom.
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.
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.
