Right now he had a moderately ugly situation on his hands.
"Nothing got into me," Keeton said sulkily, and smoothed back his hair. Norris took some satisfaction in noticing that Keeton's hands were also trembling. "I'm just good and goddam tired of selfimportant pricks like this man here... I try to do a lot for this town... hell, I accomplish a lot for this town... and I'm sick of the constant persecution. He paused a moment, his fat throat working, and then burst out: "He called me Buster! You know how I feel about that!"
"He'll apologize," Alan said calmly. "Won't you, Norris?"
"I don't know that I will," Norris said. His voice was trembly and his gut was rolling, but he was still angry. "I know he doesn't like it, but the truth is, he surprised it out of me. I was just standing here, looking in the mirror to make sure my tie was straight, when he grabbed me and threw me against the wall. I smacked my head a pretty good one. Jeer, Alan, I don't know what I said."
Alan's eyes shifted back to Keeton. "Is that true?"
Keeton dropped his own eyes. "I was mad," he said, and Alan supposed it was as close as a man like him could get to a spontaneous and undirected apology. He glanced back at Norris to see if the deputy understood this. It looked as if maybe Norris did. That was good; it was a long step toward defusing this nasty little stinkbomb.
Alan relaxed a little.
"Can we consider this incident closed?" he asked both men.
"Just kind of chalk it up to experience and go on from here?"
"All right by me," Norris said after a moment. Alan was touched.
Norris was scrawny, he had a habit of leaving half-full cans of jolt and Nehi in the cruisers he used, and his reports were horrors... but he had yards of heart. He was backing down, but not because he was afraid of Keeton. If the burly Head Selectman thought that was it, he was making a very bad mistake.
"I'm sorry I called you Buster," Norris said. He wasn't, not a bit, but it didn't hurt to say he was. He supposed.
Alan looked at the heavy-set man in the loud sport-coat and open-necked golfer's shirt. "Danforth?"
"All right, it never happened," Keeton said. He spoke in a tone of overblown magnanimity, and Alan felt a familiar wave of dislike wash over him. A voice buried somewhere deep in his mind, the primitive crocodile-voice of the subconscious, spoke up briefly but clearly: Why don't you have a heart attack, Buster? Why don't you do us all a favor and die?
"All right," he said. "Good dea-"
"If," Keeton said, raising one finger.
Alan raised his eyebrows. "If?"
"If we can do something about this ticket." He held it out toward Alan, tweezed between two fingers, as if it were a rag which had been used to clean up some dubious spill.
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.