position. Perhaps you Page 22
might be able to give us ... some sort of notes, possibly on the back of your business cards?"
Once he started, Meyer kept him going. Fifteen minutes later we were out on the broad sidewalk. Meyer leaned against the bank. I leafed through the little packet of cards. Devlin J.
Boggs wrote in a very neat small black legible hand.
They were directed to Harold Payne, to Walter Olivera of the Timber Bay Journal, to Lou Latzov of Glennmore Realty, to Julia Lawless, and to Hack Ames, the Sheriff of Dixie County; and one read, "To Whom It May Concern."
In his tight little script he said-that we had his confidence, and any help they could give us would be deeply and personally appreciated by Devlin J. Boggs.
Meyer was breathing deeply, eyes closed. "How was I?"
"You'll never be better. We start now from the top. A new sensation for Meyer and McGee.
Tools of the power structure. Servants of the establishment." He smiled modestly. "No, I was never better."
So we walked to where I'd parked, got into the car, and split up the cards. He took the lawyer and the real-estate broker. I took the Sheriff and the newspaperman. His were downtown, so I took the car.
Five
HAGGERMANN "HACK" Ames maintained his headquarters in the East Wing of the County Court House. Once it had been determined I was not an emergency, I was told to sit and wait in a cramped and dingy little room. The tattered magazines on the table were all hunting, fishing, and firearms oriented, looking as if some very sweaty-handed people had tried to escape into them.
Florida elects its sheriffs on a party basis, a shockingly bad system. Elections come around too often. Unqualified men can slip in. People with political clout are seldom harassed by the Sheriff.
Good politicians do lots of favors. Every time when, by a change in state law or by local option, they try to set the office up on an appointive basis with specific qualifications, thousands' of loud right-wing nuts rise up out of the shrubbery and start screaming about being deprived of their democratic rights and their voting franchise. Law enforcement has become so complex, technical, and demanding, so dependent on the expert use of expert equipment, one might as well say it would make as much sense to elect brain surgeons from the public at large as sheriffs.
A surprising number of them are very good in spite of having to be political animals in order to survive. An unsurprising number of them are ninety-nine-point-nine percent worthless. Having heard from Van Harder of the attempt to kick him awake, I expected the second kind.
But as time passed, I began to revise my judgment. The people who hurried by the waiting-room door were slender and young and in smart uniforms, male and female. No fat-guts, pearl-handled, hat-tilted-over-the-eyes, good-ol'-boy deputies. I could almost make out the words of the woman handling communications, calling the codes for various types of alarms.
Finally I was sent in to the Sheriff's small office. "Just a minute," he said. "Sit."
It was a tiny office with a steel desk, steel chairs, dark gray carpeting, off-white walls, and no window at all. A big steel floor lamp hurled so many watts against the white ceiling, it was bright enough in there to make a television series. Me and Hack. He was signing what appeared to be requisition forms. He was a medium man with dusty brown hair and an unhealthy pallor. He was carefully reviewing the list of items on each requisition.
When he had finished he pushed a button on the base of his fancy telephone, and a uniformed woman came briskly in and took the requisitions away.
"Between the damned state auditors and the god damn nitpicking Washington desk jockeys, a man can spend his life doing the paperwork," he said. He stared at me carefully for the first time.
His eyes were brown, and they looked as dry and dusty as his hair. "Didn't you get picked up here in Dixie County five-six years back?"
Page
might be able to give us ... some sort of notes, possibly on the back of your business cards?"
Once he started, Meyer kept him going. Fifteen minutes later we were out on the broad sidewalk. Meyer leaned against the bank. I leafed through the little packet of cards. Devlin J.
Boggs wrote in a very neat small black legible hand.
They were directed to Harold Payne, to Walter Olivera of the Timber Bay Journal, to Lou Latzov of Glennmore Realty, to Julia Lawless, and to Hack Ames, the Sheriff of Dixie County; and one read, "To Whom It May Concern."
In his tight little script he said-that we had his confidence, and any help they could give us would be deeply and personally appreciated by Devlin J. Boggs.
Meyer was breathing deeply, eyes closed. "How was I?"
"You'll never be better. We start now from the top. A new sensation for Meyer and McGee.
Tools of the power structure. Servants of the establishment." He smiled modestly. "No, I was never better."
So we walked to where I'd parked, got into the car, and split up the cards. He took the lawyer and the real-estate broker. I took the Sheriff and the newspaperman. His were downtown, so I took the car.
Five
HAGGERMANN "HACK" Ames maintained his headquarters in the East Wing of the County Court House. Once it had been determined I was not an emergency, I was told to sit and wait in a cramped and dingy little room. The tattered magazines on the table were all hunting, fishing, and firearms oriented, looking as if some very sweaty-handed people had tried to escape into them.
Florida elects its sheriffs on a party basis, a shockingly bad system. Elections come around too often. Unqualified men can slip in. People with political clout are seldom harassed by the Sheriff.
Good politicians do lots of favors. Every time when, by a change in state law or by local option, they try to set the office up on an appointive basis with specific qualifications, thousands' of loud right-wing nuts rise up out of the shrubbery and start screaming about being deprived of their democratic rights and their voting franchise. Law enforcement has become so complex, technical, and demanding, so dependent on the expert use of expert equipment, one might as well say it would make as much sense to elect brain surgeons from the public at large as sheriffs.
A surprising number of them are very good in spite of having to be political animals in order to survive. An unsurprising number of them are ninety-nine-point-nine percent worthless. Having heard from Van Harder of the attempt to kick him awake, I expected the second kind.
But as time passed, I began to revise my judgment. The people who hurried by the waiting-room door were slender and young and in smart uniforms, male and female. No fat-guts, pearl-handled, hat-tilted-over-the-eyes, good-ol'-boy deputies. I could almost make out the words of the woman handling communications, calling the codes for various types of alarms.
Finally I was sent in to the Sheriff's small office. "Just a minute," he said. "Sit."
It was a tiny office with a steel desk, steel chairs, dark gray carpeting, off-white walls, and no window at all. A big steel floor lamp hurled so many watts against the white ceiling, it was bright enough in there to make a television series. Me and Hack. He was signing what appeared to be requisition forms. He was a medium man with dusty brown hair and an unhealthy pallor. He was carefully reviewing the list of items on each requisition.
When he had finished he pushed a button on the base of his fancy telephone, and a uniformed woman came briskly in and took the requisitions away.
"Between the damned state auditors and the god damn nitpicking Washington desk jockeys, a man can spend his life doing the paperwork," he said. He stared at me carefully for the first time.
His eyes were brown, and they looked as dry and dusty as his hair. "Didn't you get picked up here in Dixie County five-six years back?"
Page
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