Scott Turow - Personal injuries

"This stuff's gonna feel like it weighs two tons."

"Robbie, all c.i.'s say that the first time they put on a body recorder," McManis told him. Both Robbie and I had taken well to McManis. Jim was the sort of level, unflappable person that FBI agents are on television. I knew he was an attorney by training; UCORC would not have let him play this role were he not. But beyond that, his background, like that of all the other UCAs, was opaque. Long after Petros was over, I learned that his father was a retired detective in Philadelphia, which, somehow, was not a surprise. I had always recognized in Jim the enviably settled air of a man content both with where he'd come from and with his own enhancements of his fundamental lot.

Jim had a soothing touch with Robbie now, reminding him of all the safeguards in place. Evon would be wearing an earpiece, lacquered under a lick on the long side of her haircut, that picked up an additional infrared signal from the FoxBlte, allowing her to listen in on the conversation with Wunsch. She'd be right outside, in case anything went wrong. Jim himself would be downstairs with Alf in the surveillance van, prepared to call the cavalry, if need be.

"It's all covered," said Jim.

"I hope so," said Feaver. He had an almost superstitious fear of Tuohey and was convinced that if he were ever caught with the recorder, he would be killed, or at least seriously harmed, before getting out of the courthouse.

"Suppose you better step outside," Klecker told Evon. He was ready for Feaver to let down his trousers so he could strap on the harness.

"Right," said Robbie. "We want her to be able to keep her mind on her work."

"Yeah, really," said Evon.

Sennett arrived while she was out there, and they reentered the conference room together as McManis was going through the final formalities with Robbie. For each recording, Feaver was required to sign a consent form. Federal law provides that before the government records anybody, there must be either an interception order, signed by a judge, or consent by one party to the conversation. UCORC's protocol also required the FoxBIte to be turned on and off via a remote which one of the agents would hold on to, ensuring that Robbie could not exercise any choice over what he recorded. McManis threw the switch now and took a seat in one of the barrel chairs, discreetly directing his voice toward the mike at Robbie's belt line.

"This is Special Agent UCN James McManis," he said. It was months before I figured out that 'UCN' stood for 'undercover name.' He gave the date and time and described the anticipated meeting between Feaver and Wunsch.

Evon and Robbie waited while Sennett repeated lastminute instructions. Make sure Walter spoke. Nods, head shakes, facial expressions-none of that would be captured by the recorder. Feaver flexed his forehead and circled his shoulders, undertaking what he purported to be relaxation techniques suggested by Stanislavsky. Finally, McManis gave a thumbs-up and we all lined up at the conference room door to shake Robbie's hand. It was still stone cold when he got to me. THE KINDLE COUNTY Superior Court Law and Equity Department, the civil courthouse, was built in the 1950s and its architecture reflects that confused American era when, appropriately, all buildings were square. It has the proportions of an armory, half a block around and equally high, constructed in yellow brick and walled in the interior with six inches of plaster, ordered up out of Augie Bolcarro's enduring gratitude to various trade unions. To add some sense of the grandeur of the law, a classical dome, in the manner of Bulfinch, was plopped atop the building, bleeding weak light down through a central rotunda. There is also a variety of silly concrete festoonery spaced along the flat cornice, including masks of Justice and other Greek figures, and a cantilevered portico, supported by greened chains. The building has always been known as `the Temple,' a term so timeworn that it has lost the ironic inflections with which it was spoken during the structure's first years.

True to his view of himself as a stage veteran, Feaver's jitters had largely passed once the drama was in motion. He alighted from the elevator on the eighth floor and led Evon toward the rear corridor and the office of Judge Malatesta's clerk, Walter Wunsch. Walter had been a creature of the Kindle County Courthouse since the age of nineteen, when his ward committeeman found him his first job running the elevators, a position which some patronage appointee continued to fill until two years ago, long after the cars were fully automated. These days Walter was a precinct captain himself and an alternate ward committeeman, a man of considerable political swack. According to Robbie, he'd been bagging for various judges for decades.

Walter was angular, long-nosed, and moody. By Feaver's description, Wunsch, dressed with Germanic discipline in heavy wool suits, even in the heat of summer, would stand behind his desk, his hands always in his pockets, as he offered stark opinions on all matters. As revealed by the recordings, he had a sour, piercing sense of humor that occasionally reminded me, privately, of Sennett's.

"You know how some people are always talking to you like they hate your guts?" Robbie explained to us. "Sarcastic? Making fun? That's Walter. Only he isn't kidding." Wunsch's poor humor was attributed to a hard-knocks childhood, but Robbie had few details.

Walter was in his office today, dourly contemplating the stacks of court filings on his desk, when Robbie and Evon arrived at his doorway. He looked up grudgingly.

"Hey, Walter!" cried Robbie. "How was Arizona? Good weather?" Robbie had financed a golf trip for Walter late in the fall, at the conclusion of a lengthy damage prove-up which had gone quite well for Robbie and his client.

"Too damn hot," said Walter. "Hundred six, two days. I was hugging the sides of those buildings when I walked down the street, trying to find some effing shade. I felt like a lousy cockroach."

"How about the missus? She like it?"

"You'd have to ask her. She was happy I couldn't go golfin. She seemed to like that part. I don't know how she liked the rest." He moved papers from one side of his desk to another and asked what was up.

"Reply brief." Robbie turned to Evon for the document and introduced her, light-handedly laying down Evon's cover. Attempting warmth, Walter failed. His smile, as Robbie had suggested to her, was mean. In any mood, he was not very pleasant-looking, sallow, with gravelly skin. He was goatshouldered and potbellied, one of those narrow men on whom nature had hitched an almost comical hummock of fat. His large, ruddy nose veered off noticeably at the point and his hair was almost gone. What remained was pasted in unwashed gray strands across his crown.

"All right, lady," said Robbie. He squeezed Evon around the shoulders for Walter's benefit, well aware that she was onstage and could offer no resistance. "Why don't you give me one sec with Walter? I want to tell him an off-color story."

Evon took a seat on a wooden bench across the corridor, within range of the infrared.

"Your latest?" she heard Walter asking as soon as she was gone.

"Latest what?"

"Yeah, right," said Walter.

"I wish I got half as much as people think."

"That'd be about a tenth of what you say."

"Walter, you used to like me."

"Tunaftsh used to be twenty-nine cents a can. So how long will she entertain you?"

"Awhile." Robbie's voice, as it next emerged, was leaking oil. "Suck a golf ball through a garden hose, Walter."

Evon started and reflexively glanced down the hall. In Wunsch's office, there was a long pause as Walter loitered, perhaps with disconsolate thoughts of his wife.

"So whatta you got besides gardening tips?" he finally asked. She could hear the envelope crinkling as Robbie handed over the reply brief. He asked Walter to make sure the judge read it.