Read Online At End of Day by George V. Higgins - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: George V. Higgins
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that he
wouldn’t
. ‘Well, if I have to,’ he would’ve said. ‘If the guy gives me no choice. But it’s noisy. Bad for business.’ He was smart enough to know if people thought you’d stop at nothing, do anything, they wouldn’t be as likely to try something out on you you probably wouldn’t like.
“Put that same question to McKeach, you wouldn’t
get
an explanation. McKeach’s never ruled out any tactic absolutely. Brian thought he could rule by being smart. McKeach’s nowhere near as smart, but he spotted something Brian G.’d overlooked. If you would do something to a friend and mentor that your friend’d only do to a mortal enemy, you could take your friend’splace. And his money. Ruthless beats smart. That’s why we’ve never gotten McKeach.”
The waitress approached with the tray carrying their meals.
Naughton said, “The problem now is that we don’t know the new kids, the blacks anna spics, dealing dope. And we still haven’t nailed the old gunmen.”
6
T IM S EXTON ’ S HOUSE AT 68 C HICKADEE Circle was a low-slung lima green vinyl-sided six-room ranch house with an attached two-car garage in a development of thirty-eight low-slung six- and eight-room ranches with attached two-car garages built on one-third-acre plots parceled out of what had been the fourteen-acre Peaceful Breeze Dairy pasture overlooking Route 138 in Canton, first offered for sale at $27,500 and $32,500 in 1958. Sexton was nine and his sister Patricia was seven when their parents, Jay and Lorraine, became the first owners.
Trish relinquished it as her home address in 1972 when she graduated from Simmons with a degree in physical therapy and moved to Burlington, Vermont, for a job in the University of Vermont Athletic Department. Tim, having retained it during his two hitches with the First Cavalry Division, Airmobile, in Vietnam, and his six years of restorative surgery, convalescence, occupational therapy and training in VA hospitals to equip him for life as a paraplegic, in 1976 saw no reason to go elsewhere when he was at last discharged at twenty-seven to begin life on his own.
So on the cold grey March afternoon in 1998 Rascob gloomily pulled the old Lincoln into the driveway in front of the garagethat had become Tim’s broadcast studio and office. It remained the only permanent residential address he had ever had.
“I would’ve had enough on my mind then anyway, finally going out on my own, without trying to do it somewhere else,” a reporter from the
Quincy Patriot Ledger
quoted him as saying in a Veterans Day profile and interview published nine years after he came home. “Dad was 62. He and Mother both wanted early retirement; they could move to Arizona and get started playing golf—while they could still walk the courses. Made a lot of sense for all of us, I took this place off their hands.
“The resettlement lump sum for my disability was supposed to set me up—I could live as much like everybody else as you can when you’ll never walk again. Just about enough for a down payment to take this house off their hands, and get it fixed up the way I needed. And it was a place I
knew
, familiar. If you spend as many years as I did, one strange place after another, you get so that word ‘home’ means an awful lot to you. It gets so just about all you can think about is going back there,
home
, someplace that you know. So that’s what I did. They moved to Arizona. He still hasn’t broken a hundred and five. Every time she comes back here, Mother says she misses the seasons. So I guess I’m the only one who came out of the deal completely satisfied. But I did—I’m real glad of it. It made a real nice fit.
“Probably had a lot to do with the success I’ve had in business, too, my coming home like this. Things’re a lot easier in life, people recognize your name.”
The reporter noted Sexton had been a
Boston Globe
Division Three All Scholastic two years as a running back in football and once
wouldn’t
. ‘Well, if I have to,’ he would’ve said. ‘If the guy gives me no choice. But it’s noisy. Bad for business.’ He was smart enough to know if people thought you’d stop at nothing, do anything, they wouldn’t be as likely to try something out on you you probably wouldn’t like.
“Put that same question to McKeach, you wouldn’t
get
an explanation. McKeach’s never ruled out any tactic absolutely. Brian thought he could rule by being smart. McKeach’s nowhere near as smart, but he spotted something Brian G.’d overlooked. If you would do something to a friend and mentor that your friend’d only do to a mortal enemy, you could take your friend’splace. And his money. Ruthless beats smart. That’s why we’ve never gotten McKeach.”
The waitress approached with the tray carrying their meals.
Naughton said, “The problem now is that we don’t know the new kids, the blacks anna spics, dealing dope. And we still haven’t nailed the old gunmen.”
6
T IM S EXTON ’ S HOUSE AT 68 C HICKADEE Circle was a low-slung lima green vinyl-sided six-room ranch house with an attached two-car garage in a development of thirty-eight low-slung six- and eight-room ranches with attached two-car garages built on one-third-acre plots parceled out of what had been the fourteen-acre Peaceful Breeze Dairy pasture overlooking Route 138 in Canton, first offered for sale at $27,500 and $32,500 in 1958. Sexton was nine and his sister Patricia was seven when their parents, Jay and Lorraine, became the first owners.
Trish relinquished it as her home address in 1972 when she graduated from Simmons with a degree in physical therapy and moved to Burlington, Vermont, for a job in the University of Vermont Athletic Department. Tim, having retained it during his two hitches with the First Cavalry Division, Airmobile, in Vietnam, and his six years of restorative surgery, convalescence, occupational therapy and training in VA hospitals to equip him for life as a paraplegic, in 1976 saw no reason to go elsewhere when he was at last discharged at twenty-seven to begin life on his own.
So on the cold grey March afternoon in 1998 Rascob gloomily pulled the old Lincoln into the driveway in front of the garagethat had become Tim’s broadcast studio and office. It remained the only permanent residential address he had ever had.
“I would’ve had enough on my mind then anyway, finally going out on my own, without trying to do it somewhere else,” a reporter from the
Quincy Patriot Ledger
quoted him as saying in a Veterans Day profile and interview published nine years after he came home. “Dad was 62. He and Mother both wanted early retirement; they could move to Arizona and get started playing golf—while they could still walk the courses. Made a lot of sense for all of us, I took this place off their hands.
“The resettlement lump sum for my disability was supposed to set me up—I could live as much like everybody else as you can when you’ll never walk again. Just about enough for a down payment to take this house off their hands, and get it fixed up the way I needed. And it was a place I
knew
, familiar. If you spend as many years as I did, one strange place after another, you get so that word ‘home’ means an awful lot to you. It gets so just about all you can think about is going back there,
home
, someplace that you know. So that’s what I did. They moved to Arizona. He still hasn’t broken a hundred and five. Every time she comes back here, Mother says she misses the seasons. So I guess I’m the only one who came out of the deal completely satisfied. But I did—I’m real glad of it. It made a real nice fit.
“Probably had a lot to do with the success I’ve had in business, too, my coming home like this. Things’re a lot easier in life, people recognize your name.”
The reporter noted Sexton had been a
Boston Globe
Division Three All Scholastic two years as a running back in football and once
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