Scott Turow - Personal injuries

"Yeah, well, I'll go," Walter said, "but listen, since I had to carry your water so far uphill on this thing here, I had a thought. I been looking at some irons. Oversized Graphite shafts. You seen these Berthas? Nice clubs."

With appropriate grumbling, Robbie now agreed to add the irons, then slid the conversation toward the topics Sennett wanted him to cover.

"Listen, Wally, I gotta ask you one thing about the old man that's always bugged the hell out of me. I look at him up there on the bench. The guy dresses like a hobo." From the sound of it, Walter enjoyed the description. "And whenever I see him tooling around the courthouse, he's in some old heap, right?"

"'83 Chevy."

"And he and the wife still live in his mom's old bungalow in Kewahnee, right? Isn't that the story? So what gives? It makes me nuts wondering: Where's it going?"

Over the speakers, there was a momentary lapse, during which the grinding motion of the elevator mechanism and the stiff wrinkling of the brochure going inside Walter's topcoat were audible. It was clear Wunsch did not welcome Robbie's curiosity.

"Feaver, this ain't a fuckin game show. You think I ask questions. I don't care if he's using it in the outhouse. What's it to you? I can't make no sense of whatever's goin on in Silvio's little noggin, anyway." Another silence followed, punctuated almost at once by the terrifying sound of the elevator brake being applied. The doors rumbled again as they retracted, followed by the scuffling of Walter's departure. Then there was an unexpected bouncing noise and Walter's voice was heard once more. He had apparently thrown a hand between the rubber bumpers on the closing elevator doors. Across the van, McManis tensed, anxious about the meaning of Wunsch's return.

"And listen," he said. "They got a big demand on these clubs. They're on back order. Okay? So you know, to get em, you know, they gotta be ordered right now."

"Gotcha," Robbie answered. The doors, finally closed, sealed off the sound of the city clamor heard in the background in the open-air garage.

In the van, as we listened to the elevator creak, to Bobbie padding back to the auto, to the engine rumbling to life, there was an immediate air of celebration. Walter Wunsch now had a confirmed reservation in a federal penitentiary, and he'd said enough damaging things about Malatesta that the recording would be useful both in forcing Walter to turn on the judge and in corroborating him once he did it. Stan shot a thumb in the air and unfastened his seat belt so he could move around the van, hunched from the waist, shaking hands. I noticed he made it a point to start with Jim.

Yet as Amari drove back, I felt somewhat removed. I was happy enough to see the Project succeed, but I was more stunned than I'd anticipated by the events. I had always known there were monkeyshines of some kind going on in the Kindle County Superior Court. When I began practice as a new assistant State Defender, late in the 1960s, Zeb Mayal, a bail bondsman and ward boss, still sat in open view in the Central Branch courtroom issuing instructions to everyone present, often including the judge. But in the felony courthouse, on the other side of the canyon created by U.S. 843, 1 was always an outsider. I'd come to the law at my father's table, listening to him speak about the great principles of decisions, moments that remain in memory magical and intense, like the spotlight's circle of white on a darkened stage. I didn't understand those who saw the law only as either a commodity or a social lubricant, nor, frankly, did they know what to make of me. I had no committeeman, no parish to name, and was primly disdainful whenever someone suggested that I take steps selling tickets, for example, to a fund-raiser-to overcome these deficits. Over time, I realized that the system that existed, whatever it was, had as one of its principal aims closing out fellows like me, with my faint Southern accent, my unfaltering manners, my Brooks Brothers apparel, and my Easton degree. I was someone who had prospects in the Center City among the suits and the towers. Most of the regulars in the felony courthouse knew they counted for little in that realm, which was one of their foremost, if unspoken, excuses for taking care of each other. And eventually, as they expected, I departed for that other world, to the federal courts, where there was officiousness, but virtually no known corruption, beyond what was suspected about a few rogue drug agents.

Robbie's tales of retail justice were appalling, but also somehow titillating to me, because they suggested again some stifled secret I'd been searching for during my years across the highway. And now in the banter between Bobbie and Walter I heard it, the hard wisdom of their clandestine world. A strange message was communicated in the passing of cash: I know the worst about you, you know the worst about me. The claims of law, rules, the larger community, the fabled, phony distinctions of class, are all, in the end, as insubstantial as dreams. Palaver aside, the black truth, which only we dare speak and which, as a result, gives us insuperable power, is that we are all servants of selfish appetites. All. All of us.

All.

"Field Hockey?"

"Yes, field hockey. It's been an Olympic sport longer than basketball."

"I know. Really, I know that. Guys get killed, right? In Pakistan? Somebody's always getting brained with that thing. The cudgel."

"The stick."

"Stick. It can be dangerous."

She stopped and lifted her lip to show him where there was still a pink scar. His black eyes, silvered by the streetlights, shifted back and forth from the traffic. Now that he was past his initial surprise, he nodded gravely, almost slavishly, clearly hoping to forestall any dread on her part that she had finally told him.

But she felt little regret. It was a good night. Neither one of them was down yet from the thrill of getting Walter. And, in truth, he'd guessed. About two weeks ago, he'd bought something called The Olympic Factbook and once or twice on the ride to or from work, he'd toss an event at her, usually as a non sequitur. He'd started with archery and went right through the alphabet. He was cute about it, of course, making his determination a joke, putting on a poor-mouthing, little-boy look. This morning he'd gotten to fencing, and tonight he'd had no trouble reading her smile. She was revealing only a fraction of what would come out about her eventually, now that there was certain to be a prosecution. And he'd been right at the start; he was too good an actor to blow the cover.

"The Olympics," he said, in dazzled admiration. Guys were always like this, staggered that a female had lived out their fantasies. "You probably couldn't even believe it was real."

Some would say it hadn't been. It was '84, so the Soviet bloc didn't show, but none of those teams were a power that year, so for her the glow had been largely undiminished.

"And you were great, right?" he asked. "To make the Olympics you had to be great."

Great? There was too much heat in the car and she was almost groggy. She had thought she was great. In high school, she was the best in Colorado, where no more than half the high schools even played. She was runner-up for Female Athlete of the Year in-state, and received a scholarship to Iowa, one of the great programs in the country, the absolute tops west of the Mississippi. She had gone off with high hopes. She was selected for the National Senior Team as a sophomore. It meant she was being groomed for the Olympics. But two of her teammates at Iowa were also on the squad, one a defender/midfielder like her, and both of them better than she was. They were stars, bigger stars than Evon. She played in the Olympics. But she did not start. Whenever she heard people talk about the Peter Principle, rising to your highest level of incompetence, she thought about her experience in field hockey. She had worked and strived and played against the best in the world and found, in the end, that the very best were better than she was. When the team took home a bronze medal, she thought, How appropriate, how doggone appropriate.