Facets by Barbara Delinsky

Eugene’s hand went to his shoulder, ostensibly restraining. “Deep breath,” he murmured in a low voice.
    Cutter took a deep breath, then a second when the first one was ragged. After a third the dizziness began to ease. In the next instant Eugene released the pressure on his shoulder and helped him sit up. With all eyes on him, Cutter shrugged off the helping hand.
    “So what you got to say for yourself, sonny?” Verne repeated.
    “To you, nuthin’,” Cutter answered in a voice deliberately made deep.
    “You want to say it to the judge?”
    “It don’t much matter. He ain’t gonna give any more of a damn about me ’n you do.”
    “Then we might as well give it a try,” Verne concluded and straightened. “Okay, folks. Back to what you was doin’ before Cutter Reid got you out in the rain.” He watched while the first of the onlookers turned to leave. “Judd, you gonna press charges?”
    “Damn right I am. He got no right lookin’ to wipe me out that way. I work hard for my money. He ought to try doin’ that for a change.”
    Verne turned back to Cutter, who was gingerly pushing himself to his feet. Upright, he was taller than the police chief. He knew that from experience and wanted the advantage it gave.
    “You hear that, sonny? You’re in trouble this time. Judd’s gonna press charges, an’ what with everythin’ else you done in the past, it ain’t gonna be good.”
    “Nuthin’s good,” Cutter said, in the grip of a familiar bleakness. “Tell me somethin’ I don’t already know.”
    “You know what it’s like in prison?” Eugene asked.
    Cutter looked off in the opposite direction, not caring what he saw as long as it wasn’t Eugene. He might have gained a physical superiority over Verne in the last year, but he had a way to go to catch up with the big man who owned half the town.
    “It’s mean,” Eugene went on, “meaner than anything you ever known. Meaner than anything you ever dreamed. It’s dark and hard and unforgiving, and once you’re in there, you’re a con, then an ex-con. You think it’s tough goin’ through life with your daddy’s name? Well, tack ex-con after it, and see how that feels.”
    Cutter thought of Eugene’s big house and his big car and his big bankbook, and made a disparaging sound. “How would you know?”
    “I had a friend once. Born right here, just like you. Alvie Joplin, remember him, Verne? No, I guess he was before your time.” He addressed Cutter again. “Car theft was his specialty, only he didn’t do it here, he did it down in Boston. After a time they caught him and put him away, and when he got out, he tried to find a job, only he was an ex-con, and people were nervous hiring an ex-con. Since he wasn’t good at much of anything but stealin’ cars, he tried it again, and they sent him away again. He was longer in gettin’ out that time, and he wasn’t a kid anymore, older and hardened, so when he needed money to eat, he took a job for some quick money. It was right down his alley, stealin’ a car, only he used the car to help his two buddies get away after they robbed a bank.”
    “What happened to him?” Verne asked, fully taken with the tale.
    But Eugene kept looking at Cutter, who was looking right back at him. “Cops got ’im. Shot ’im. I read that he was in serious condition, so I went to the hospital. Didn’t even recognize him. It had been ten years since I’d seen him. He looked thirty years older. But that was as old as he got. He died the next day.”
    Cutter was used to people lecturing him, and there was always a moral to their stories that was tailor-made for him. It was too convenient. “Nice tale,” he said.
    “True tale,” was Eugene’s comeback.
    “So you gonna learn somethin’ from that, sonny?” Verne asked.
    Coming in the breath after Eugene’s vow, Verne’s gloating voice was a rude abrasive to Cutter. “I ain’t gonna learn nuthin’ from you,” he spat.
    “Well, that’s just fine,”