Scott Turow - Personal injuries

"The two-faced queen lives a lie," she said.

It was not clear Kosic had heard that as he pushed out, with no word of goodbye. THE RECORDING WAS TERRIBLE. At the critical moments, Robbie, just as Klecker had instructed, had rounded his shoulders and hunched forward to funnel sound toward the mike, which tonight had been placed under his tie. But the piano and the singing intruded into every sentence; it was as if Robbie was speaking between measures in a karaoke bar. A woman to whom Evon had paid no attention could be heard distinctly now, whining along. `Now I long for yes-ter-day, ay, ay, ay.' The recording offered no proof Kosic had even heard Robbie. But he had. Evon had been palpably frightened by the wave of primal menace he transmitted. As had Robbie. Sennett and I had hurried to McManis's conference room to hear the results and Feaver now directed his attention to Stan.

"They're gonna make me dead," he told him, "if I keep pushing like this. I said way too much." Sennett frowned.

"Listen, Stan," said Robbie, "you may think I'm just afraid of the big bad wolf, but Brendan's the only guy I know who's an actual killer. I mean, killed with his bare hands in Korea. And would do it again today, if he thought he had to. He's ordered hits. I mean it. That's why he's stayed hooked up. It's not just for money. He wants to be able to push a button on somebody if he has to."

Even I had trouble believing that. Most talk of violence, even in mob cases, was gas, and I had a hard time imagining a Presiding Judge orchestrating a murder. Robbie looked around the table, where he was encountering similarly skeptical expressions from Alf and Jim and Joe Amari. As McManis had told him long ago, c.i.'s were always scared by what they were doing.

"Here, I'll tell you a story," Robbie said, looking about to each of us. "I've told you before that Brendan's had the same thing on the side now for more than twenty years with Constanza in his office. Constanza is like a jewel, this tiny, exquisite thing, five feet tall, perfectly shaped, and this noble Mexican face, Irish features and Indian cheekbones. Fifty plus now and still this very quiet, dignified beauty. Married lady-which is another story-with two kids, a boy, never meant for much good, and a daughter, completely the opposite.

"And Brendan, you know, he's been good to these kids, like he's been to me, frankly, always looking out and concerned. Anyway, the daughter goes off to the U., with a full boat ride, and does the college-age breaking-away stuff, takes up with a boyfriend. Black kid. And not a bad kid, really. Full of himself, but hell, he's nineteen years old. Constanza was having none of it. Not just cause he's black. I think if he was black and Catholic, she maybe could handle it. But that's a two-fer with her. And the daughter, of course, she kicked and moaned originally, but eventually, you know, she loves her mom, life goes on, she adioses the black guy and meets a nice boy, Puerto Rican, which is next worst to Mom, but this one's been in the seminary, so he otherwise fills the bill. Only this black kid, Artis, he won't take no for an answer. He calls. He follows the daughter around. He won't back off. And his life is going to hell in the process. He drops out of school. He gets strung out on something. He's more and more desperate, and finally one night, he's dusted his brains out, he jumps the daughter and the P.R. boyfriend, he pistol-whips the Rican, holds the girl at gunpoint, threatens to rape her, and finally, for whatever kind of jolly this is, makes her watch while he pulls his own pud.

"Well, Constanza goes straight to Brendan. Now, Brendan, when it comes to power, Brendan gets every channel. So he's never let go of his alliances on the Force. If he gives the call, he can have thirty uniformed coppers looking for this kid. He can make sure Artis doesn't get bail, that he gets the treatment at the jail till his anal sphincter has the same consistency as Cream of Wheat. But that's not good enough. Because Brendan, I guess, personally told this kid on a couple occasions, Cut it out or else. So now it's Or Else. He gets on the phone. He calls Toots Nuccio, who was always his connect. And Brendan's Brendan, he doesn't ask for anything out loud. He just shoots the breeze with Toots, he tells Toots this story in passing, about this horrible thing that happened to his secretary, Constanza, and her family. `Can you believe this gorilla son of a bitch, what zoo'd they let him out of? It's a shame to call yourself a human being with the likes of that walking around on the same planet. I can't stand to breathe the same air.' That's all. T, h, e end for Artis. Ciao, au revoir, sayonara, bye-bye. When they found him, he had battery acid dumped on his genitals sometime before they finished him off. And it goes on the police blotter as a gang hit. `Pity what they do to each other.'

"And here's why Brendan's a genius: because he made sure everybody close to him knew the story. His fingerprints aren't anywhere on the hit, of course. But he tells the tale about poor Artis and smiles. `Makes you think there's a God in heaven.' But he was trying to make a different kind of believer.

"So Uncle Brendan, he ever finds out I set him up, it'll be the same for me, if he gets the chance. He'll have them gut me like a fish and come by to watch my heart beat its last on the pier."

As it turned out, no more than a week later, Judge Gillian Sullivan, still under relentless press criticism for her insobriety, took a ninety-day administrative leave from the bench. Officially, she was hospitalized for 'stress.' In the interval, much of her docket was reassigned. The two contrived cases Robbie'd had languishing on her call were both transferred, one to Judge Crowthers, one to Judge Barnett Skolnick. In the course of that reshuffling, the suit of the painter who'd developed cancer was also sent to Judge Skolnick from Judge Malatesta. The only explanation on the order was 'Reassigned for the convenience of the court.' Kosic, whatever his suspicions, had done just as Robbie had asked. But we did not know that, that night. What we knew was only what Robbie with his skills at impressing himself meant to convey.

These were dangerous men. Anyone who crossed them was in peril. AFTERWARDS, IN THE MERCEDES, the shadows of fright and disappointment kept them silent for quite some time as Robbie maneuvered through the dwindling traffic in the dark streets. At a stoplight, they were caught under the flickerings of a mercury lamp going bad. It reminded Evon of a question.

"'Glows in the dark'?"

"Implants," he answered, smiling wearily.

She laughed, but there was no admiration in it. She made a remark about men.

"Hey," he said, "you think the women in there are better? They're looking for rich guys and a free ride."

"It's so angry. That kind of talk."

"They're all angry. Most of them. Because they're lonely and setting themselves up to feel worse by the time the evening is through. And they know it. Every one of them. The guys. The gals. They're lonely and they're burnouts. They know they're taking what they can get. If I was gonna rename that place, I'd call it Sadder But Wiser."

"So why did you like to go?"

"You telling me you've never hung out in joints like that?"

Not like that. Not that she hadn't had her nights, her sorties to secret places. After the Olympics, after her body stopped being such a holy shrine, she'd go out to get juiced so she could see what she'd been missing. She'd been part of the good-time group getting smashed on Friday nights in agent hangs across the nation. And there were evenings of abandoned, obliviated drinking aimed really at nothing more than getting ready to have sex. But none of it lasted. For her, these evenings were at best mistakes, at worst harshly struck notes of personal shame. And she remembered none of it with Robbie's wistfulness. Far from sad, he'd ignited the minute they were through the door. When she repeated that observation, he seesawed his head, something short of a denial.