Scott Turow - Personal injuries

He took his time. Reflections from the road ran up the front window as the car started forward again from a light. With his serious mood, his handsomeness once more took on depth.

"And you?" she asked. "What's your Big One?"

"Me?" He shook his head.

"Come on."

"No laughing, right? That's definitely part of the deal. I never laugh. I mean, a girl once told me she was afraid that as she got older she'd get ugly feet. And she meant it. I didn't even laugh at her."

She promised, but he took another moment.

"Sometimes I wake up at night-I mean, this is ridiculous-but sometimes I wake up, it's dark, and I don't know who I am. I'm just petrified. I don't know if I can't remember because I'm so terrified or if it's the other way around. I mean, I can remember my name. If someone called me Robbie, sure, I'd answer. But I don't really feel a part of anything else. I'm just sort of floating, groping along in the dark, waiting, waiting and waiting, until it comes back to me, who I am, what I am, the center. And I'm just terrified. Does that sound too weird?"

“Uh-uh.”

"You're being nice."

"No, I'm not." She tried again for one second to call herself back, to think about what she was doing, and then once again succumbed. "Now. Doing this. Being UC. Undercover? I wake up and that's exactly how I am. `Who am I? Who am I?' As if I have to wait to be told." They were in front of her apartment.

"Frightening," he said.

"Really," she answered.

She turned to him then, but he had the good sense, whatever you'd call it, the intuition to make no move. He was going to let her come to him and in some infinitesimal fraction of time seemed to know that even now that was not what she'd choose. She endured an instant of pain so intense and familiar that it seemed almost a friend, then with a single solemn nod in his direction she left the comfort of the Mercedes and, in the harsh wind of the midwestern winter, picked her way between the ice patches on the street, returning to the place where she lived.

"There are dead men," said Robbie Feaver, "who are not as dumb as Barnett Skolnick. You stand before the bench, you think, God, how did this ox ever pass the bar exam? Then you realize he didn't. Knuckles, his brother, fixed it."

Knuckles, long gone now, was said to have fixed much more in his time than the bar exam. An associate of Toots Nuccio, he drew on the same wellsprings of influence, political clout enhanced by substantial mob ties. His nickname referred to his right hand, misshapen as the result of an infamous racial brawl at Trappers Field in the 1940s. He had been a downtown party committeeman, and the proprietor of a vast insurance agency that enjoyed uncanny success in underwriting municipal agencies.

"As the story goes," Robbie told us, "Knuckles had to put Barney on the bench because he was too dim to practice. The guy can't zip his fly without an instruction book. These days, at least, he looks like a judge. Beautiful head of white hair. But he just sort of sits there with this sweet, terrified expression. `Gosh, I like you all, please don't ask me any hard questions.' Rules of evidence? This schmo's been on the bench twenty-six years and he couldn't guess what hearsay is if you gave him multiple-choice. God only knows what Brendan owed Knuckles. Skolnick's been here since Brendan became Presiding Judge."

It was late afternoon. The sun was dying with style, looking, in its descent, as if it might burn a hole in the river. We sat with pretzels and soft drinks in the conference room while Robbie went on. By now all of the UCAs would make it a point to crowd into the room for Robbie's debriefings, extended adventures, as they were, in the oral tradition. With his shirtsleeves rolled and his hands flowing through the air, Robbie worked his audience with care, aiming some gesture of connection-a deft smile, a decisive nod-at every person. Watching, I often thought about how magical he must have been before a jury.

"For all of it, it's still hard to hate Barney. I know you'll never believe this, Stan, but he's a sweet guy. Doesn't want to hurt a soul. Honest to God, he takes the money because his big brother told him to. They even tell a story about Skolnick, Lord knows if it's true, but it's a great tale. About twenty years ago, he's sitting in Divorce, not long after he first came on the bench. I can't remember who the lawyers were, two of the gods over there, guys who can talk to the judges. Well, apparently Skolnick's getting ready to start trial, and all the sudden he calls the attorneys back into chambers, just them, and he gets the two into the far corner and in this iddy-biddy little voice he says, `Just so you know, the dough is even, so I gotta decide this straight."'

According to Robbie, Skolnick had been bagged for several years by his court reporter, a Hasidic Jew by the name of Pincus Lebovic. Blue-eyed and foxy-looking behind the dense brown growth of his beard and pais, Pincus in his dark, outdated suits presided over the courtroom in a style bordering on tyrannical. He was cold-blooded and peremptory. It was even said that, on occasion, Pincus would halt proceedings, purportedly to change the paper in his stenographic machine, but actually to take the judge back to chambers to give him directions or, even, a scolding. The recognized brains of the team, Pincus handled all arrangements with the lawyers who `talked' to the judge.

Then, last spring, Pincus's seventh child, his first son, was struck with encephalitis. Like a body on a bier, the boy floated toward the gates of death and lingered there for days. Pincus and his wife and their daughters sat beside the boy's hospital bed, singing to him, praying over the small, somnolent form, and begging the boy, whenever he could be roused, not to leave them. He did not. No one knew exactly what the terms were of the bargain Pincus had struck with the Almighty, but he was a changed person. He grew almost affable, and was unpleasant only when approached in his role as intermediary. He was now adamant in his refusal to take part in any further ugliness.

For some months there was, in effect, a corruption embargo in Skolnick's courtroom. Skolnick was far too kindhearted to dismiss his court reporter and not quite certain anyway what Pincus, in his reformed state of godliness, might say when questioned about the reasons for his departure by the likes of Stew Dubinsky, who covered the courthouse for the Trib. For a few weeks, the judge succeeded in convincing his secretary, Eleanor McTierney, to handle the envelopes, but Eleanor's husband was a police lieutenant, whose scruples stretched no further than to live and let live. At sixty-eight, Skolnick might have simply gone without, but that would have meant cutting off Tuohey as well. As a result, Skolnick would have had to accept demotion to a less esteemed courtroom-Housing Court or, worse, the ultimate hellhole, Juvenile-the kind of ego blow that Barney, like most victims of justifiable self-doubt, would have found devastating. Thus, in desperation, Skolnick began dealing hand to hand with a few well-accepted insiders, Robbie among them.

Skolnick, at least, had the sense not to allow money to pass within the courthouse. Instead, he established a schmaltzy routine in which the briber-to-be left a message from `tomorrow's luncheon committee.' The next day, at 12:30 p.m. sharp, the attorney would take a position curbside, right in front of the Temple, possessed of a cash filled envelope and a vexed expression. Skolnick, in his Lincoln, would tool by and, noting a familiar face, pull over, inquiring if there was a problem. The lawyer would then impart a tale of automotive woe-car wouldn't start, had been towed, stolen, sideswiped-and Judge Skolnick would offer emergency transportation. Skolnick would then circle through the Center City, while the lawyer in the passenger seat stuffed the envelope into the breach between the red calfskin backrest and the front bench.