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.