"What in the hell do you think you're doing, Ridgewick?" he asked.
Norris had forgotten all about the ticket he had slipped under the windshield wiper of Keeton's Cadillac the night before. Now it all came back to him.
"Let go of me!" he said. He tried for a tone of indignation, but his voice came out in a worried squeak. He felt his cheeks growing hot. Whenever he was angry or scared-and right now he was both-he blushed like a girl.
Keeton, who overtopped Norris by five inches and outweighed him by a hundred pounds, gave the deputy a harsh little shake and then did let go. He pulled the ticket out of his pocket and brandished it under Norris's nose. "Is this your name on this goddam thing or isn't it?"
he demanded, as though Norris had already denied it.
Norris Ridgewick knew perfectly well that it was his signature, rubber-stamped but perfectly recognizable, and that the ticket had been pulled from his citation book.
"You were parked in the crip space," he said, stepping away from the wall and rubbing the back of his head. Damned if he didn't think there was going to be a knot there. (and Buster had jumped the living Jesus out of him, he couldn't deny that) As his initial surprise abated, his anger grew.
"The what?"
"The handicap space!" Norris shouted. And furthermore, it was Alan himself who told me to write that ticket! he was about to continue, and then didn't. Why give this fat pig the satisfaction of passing the buck? "You've been told about it before, Buh... Danforth, and you know it."
"What did you call me?" Danforth Keeton asked ominously.
Red splotches the size of cabbage roses had grown on his cheeks and jowls.
"That's a valid ticket," Norris said, ignoring this last, "and as far as I'm concerned, you better pay it. Why, you're lucky I don't cite you for assaulting a police officer as well!"
Danforth laughed. The sound banged flatly off the walls. "I don't see any police officer," he said. "I see a narrow piece of shit packaged to look like beef jerky."
Morris bent over and picked up his hat. His guts were a roil of fear-Danforth Keeton was a bad enemy for a man to have-and his anger had deepened into fury. His hands trembled. He took a moment, nonetheless, to set his hat squarely on his head.
"You can take this up with Alan, if you want-"
"I'm taking it up with you!"
"-but I'm done talking about it. Make sure you pay that within thirty days, Danforth, or we'll have to come and get you." Norris drew himself up to his full five-foot-six and added: "We know where to find you."
He started out. Keeton, his face now looking a little like sunset in a nuclear blast area, stepped forward to block his escape route.
Norris stopped and levelled a finger at him.
"if you touch me I'll throw you in a cell, Buster. I mean it."
"Okay, that's it," Keeton said in a queer, toneless voice. "That is it. You're fired. Take off that uniform and start looking for another j-"
"No," a voice said from behind them, and they both looked around. Alan Pangborn was standing in the men's-room doorway.
Keeton rolled his hands into fat white fists. "You keep out of this."
Alan walked in, letting the door swoosh slowly shut behind him.
"No," he said. "I was the one who told Norris to write that ticket.
I also told him I was going to forgive it before the appropriations meeting. It's a five-dollar ticket, Dan. What the hell got into you?"
Alan's voice was puzzled. He felt puzzled. Buster had never been a sweet-natured man, not even at the best of times, but an outburst like this was overboard even for him. Since the end of the summer, the man had seemed ragged and always on edge-Alan had often heard the distant bellow of his voice when the selectmen were in committee meetings-and his eyes had taken on a look which was almost haunted. He wondered briefly If Keeton might be sick, and decided that was a consideration for some later time.
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."