Scott Turow - Personal injuries

When Lorraine recovered, she resumed where she had left off. The interruption was unnoted. Life was what could be grasped in the intervals. She asked Evon about work. How long? Where from? She mustered only two-word questions. Robbie hovered over the chair and mediated. Even this woman in extremis Evon answered in her undercover identity. Robbie, who had shared nothing of his own situation with Rainey, would have wanted nothing else.

"Whah rif?" asked Rainey. "N'by?" She was asking if Evon lived nearby, apparently curious about why Evon was here in the dwindling hours of the afternoon. Robbie explained their meeting with Sarah Perlan and said that he was going to have to drive Evon back to her place. Something struck him as he spoke, a wayward implication in the detail, and Rainey responded at once to his apparent anxiety. In the faltering moment in which Robbie vamped to cover, explaining that Evon was new to town and still without a car, a different air came into the room. Rainey Feaver had heard her share of tales from her husband, especially regarding other women, and she clearly knew she was hearing one now. Her narrow, long jawed face could show little in the way of expression, but even at that, her eyelids fluttered in a labored way and her lovely eyes grew darker.

"Co' heah," she told Evon. Evon pitched a look at Bobbie, but his doting manner with his wife apparently comprehended no way to deny her. He let Evon take his place beside the chair. She bent closer because she could not hear when Rainey first spoke.

"He rise." It took a moment. Great, Evon thought when she understood. Perfect for the government witness. A testimonial to his dishonesty from the person who knew him best. Rainey, after a moment of recovery, had more.

"He rise a-bow everfing," she said. "Remember'."

Evon suddenly understood that she was receiving a warning- vengeful in Dart. but also perhaps shared in a sisterly spirit. Robbie was not to be believed. If he said he cared, pay no attention. If he said he'd marry her when Lorraine was gone, it was only another lie. Rainey's eyes bore in as her message fired home. Robbie intervened to save Evon.

"She already knows that, sweetie. Everybody who hangs around me for a while knows that." Back beside the chair, Robbie was alone in smiling at his joke. "It'll just take her a few years to see my good side."

"Yes," said Rainey. Years, she meant and went on deliberately in her watery monotone. "Then I be dea'. And you be happy."

Robbie took quite a while with that. His tongue was laid inside his cheek. He gave her a look, a dignified request: Don't talk that way. But he said nothing. He bent to adjust Rainey's legs on pieces of foam cut to cushion them, and, still without a word, turned to take Evon back to the city.

In the car, after some time, he said, "They say things. PALS? People with ALS. It's part of the disease. Because of the neurons that get affected in the brain stem. They lose impulse control. It's actually funny in a way. You know, ironic. Lorraine was always one of these people who couldn't say anything. It just built up. She burned holes in my suits. She threw my Cubans down the toilet. She once put cayenne pepper in my jockstrap. You can imagine what that was about." A brief smile flickered up in admiration of his wife's spunk. "But she couldn't say what was on her mind. Now? Criminy. God, what I've heard."

Facing him, Evon had no idea what to say. Her sense of the size of what was bearing down on Rainey and Robbie was still gathering. The whole episode had left her heart feeling as if it wanted to scurry around her chest.

The car slid to the curb beside the brown awning extending from her building. Pedestrians rushed beneath it along the refurbished brick walks in their hats and heavy coats, eager to reach the warmth of their homes. She still knew none of her neighbors. There was an insular mood to the area. Despite extensive renovation and renewal, bums and addicts could often be found in the mornings, asleep in the sandblasted doorways or beside the struggling saplings in their fancy wooden planter boxes. Local residents were in the habit of moving on with their business without greeting anyone.

She reached for the door handle, then looked Feaver's way. Somehow, after all her ungainliness, she managed something in her expression. In response, a hundred emotions seemed to swim through his face.

"You know what a Yahrzeit candle is?" he asked her then. She didn't. "It's what Jews do to commemorate a death in the family. Mother. Brother. Every year, you light this candle. On the anniversary. And it's the saddest goddamn thing. This candle burns for twenty-four hours in like a water glass, and even if you get up in the middle of the night, the thing is flickering, the only light in the house. My ma always lit one for her sister. And right before her stroke, I was there, you know, I go see her early in the morning, it was still dark, and I looked at this thing, sitting on the stove, this forlorn kind of light, spurting and wavering, charring the sides of the glass and getting lower all the time, and I suddenly said to myself, That's Rainey. That's what she is now, just a long sad candle melting, burning down to this soft puddle of stuff which will finally drown the light. That's Rainey."

He'd drooped against the wooden steering wheel. She waited what seemed to be forever, but he never looked her way. Instead she left the car and watched as he zoomed from the curb and executed a smooth U-turn despite the heavy traffic, speeding back toward home.

UCORC'S protocols aimed at avoiding trials in the contrived cases. A full courtroom showdown with witnesses for two sides would require both the manpower and the budget of a Hollywood production and would greatly enhance the risks of detection. Plan A was that Bobbie would either win a motion that disposed of a whole case, or prevail on some other significant ruling, then declare the matter favorably settled and make a payoff. Thus, Judge Malatesta's denial of McManis's motion to dismiss set the stage for Robbie to make his first recorded drop, this one to Walter Wunsch. With that, the Project would move beyond what the agents called `talking dirty' to real criminality. Assuming no foul-ups, Walter would become the first trophy, the fast dead-bang conviction, and the first person to squeeze when Stan began the ultimate castle siege meant to bring down Brendan Tuohey.

About two weeks after the session in Malatesta's courtroom, Robbie phoned Walter, imparting the good news that the judge's ruling had forced McManis to settle Petros v. Standard Railing and arranging the drop at their customary site, the parking garage adjoining the Temple. That afternoon, Klecker arrived at McManis's with another of his clever devices, a portable video camera with a fiber-optic lens that fit into the hinge of a dummy briefcase matching Robbie's. McManis looked it over, then quickly vetoed its use.

"Robbie's never passed money before wearing hardware. It's tough enough to keep up the cover without worrying about aiming and focusing. We'll use the camera later."

"Jim," argued Sennett, in obvious distress, "Jim, a jury will want to see the money change hands. If it's only audio and Robbie can't get Walter to say something about the dough, this whole thing won't be worth much."

Jim would not budge. He rarely asserted the authority that UCORC had given him over operational details. In theory, Stan determined what evidence was needed, and Jim made the tactical decisions about how to obtain it, but usually Jim let Stan have his way. The best Stan could manage now was cool courtesy to hide the fact he was bridling.

Instead, the discussion turned to how Robbie could make an overt reference to the money, something which this dark world's strict etiquette severely discouraged. Feaver came up with the idea of delivering $15,000 to Walter, instead of the usual ten. The rationale for this largesse was found, oddly, in a problem that had been irritating Sennett for several days.