Scott Turow - Personal injuries

Robbie had done this once last September, not long before Stan and his companions from the IRS had arrived on the flagstone stoop of his home. Feaver was due for another visit with Skolnick now, in early March, because Skolnick had ruled in Robbie's favor only a day or two after the case reassigned from Judge Sullivan had arrived on his docket. In that matter, Hall v. Sentinel Repair, Skolnick had ruled that Robbie's client, a driver paralyzed when the brakes failed on his truck, was eligible to receive punitive damages from the repair service that had found the vehicle roadworthy. Unlike Malatesta, Skolnick had dealt with the matter summarily, issuing a brief written order. Bobbie would now tell the judge that the case had been settled favorably and would leave the envelope behind in appreciation.

Sennett was under increasing pressure from D.C. to justify the expense of the Project by scoring against one of the primary targets. Given that, and the fact that this would be Petros's first direct payoff to a judge, Sennett wanted it in Technicolor. The afternoon before Robbie was scheduled to see Skolnick, Klecker visited the section reserved for judges' cars on the first floor of the Temple parking garage, the same building where Robbie and Walter had met. With local agents covering Alf from all sides, he drove an ice pick through three of Judge Skolnick's tires. When Skolnick trudged out of the courthouse for the day, in an old rabbit hat and a lumpy muffler knitted by his granddaughter, the agents had him under surveillance. They radioed Alf, and just as Skolnick reached the lamed automobile, Klecker came ripping down the concrete ramp in a tow truck with a huge smoking engine. He jumped on the brake and leaped from the vehicle in a greasy jumpsuit and a seed cap. Alf had a bridge, a memento of his years as a high school ice hockey player in Minnesota, and he had removed his front teeth as part of his disguise. The agents said that when he talked he was pretty much a dead ringer for Sylvester, the puddy-tat.

"Got you too?" asked Alf.

"Hah?" replied Skolnick. He was still shaking his head in embittered wonderment at the sight of the flats.

Alf related that miscreant youths had apparently gone through the parking garage popping tires on a number of cars. He offered to tow Skolnick's Lincoln. Given the hour, he could not return it that night, but he promised to drive the car back to the judge's house by eight the next morning. He'd give Skolnick a great price on tires and would even reduce the towing fee, assuming the judge wouldn't forget Alf next time he needed to talk to somebody with a little pull in the courthouse when one of his guys got in a scrape on a repo.

When the vehicle was returned to Skolnick, it was somewhat enhanced. As promised, it had three fresh Dunlop X80s. It also sported a new rearview mirror, a one-way, into which a fiber-optic lens and a mike had been inserted. The input devices were wired to a 2.4 GHz cordless sound camera resting on the ribs of the auto's ceiling. Leads ran down from the roof, through the hollow temple beside the windshield, to an existing junction box under the hood, so that the car's battery powered the camera.

"Fry the guy with his own juice." Alf beamed at his achievements. He described the apparatus to Robbie when we met at McManis's about eleven-thirty on the morning of March 5 to prepare for the encounter with Skolnick. The camera, which was turned on and off by remote, operated much like a cordless phone. It emitted a black-and-white video signal over four channels. Along with the audio output, the impulse could be picked up from a surveillance van as far away as four hundred feet. The transmission was admittedly subject to occasional interference, and as a backup, Robbie was also wired with the recording component of the FoxBlte. It was Velcroed today to the small of his back in order to avoid any revealing bulges at the thigh when Feaver sat with the judge on the lipstick-red leather seat of the Lincoln.

Along with Sennett and McManis, I had my reserved spot in the surveillance van. We circled in front of the Temple, waiting for Skolnick to pick up Feaver. Amid the thick electrical odors, Klecker crawled around on the van floor in a snake pit of cables. A small monitor with a twelveinch screen and a VCR had been added atop the pyramid of equipment that had been there the day Robbie paid off Walter.

"We're going," Joe Amari called from the front, meaning that Skolnick had arrived and Robbie was on board. Joe's responsibility on Petros was surveillance. Sennett had allowed him to put together a select group of local agents from the Kindle County Division to help. As he weaved through the traffic, he made hand signals to the other cars. He wore a radio headset with a mike, which dented his smooth hairdo, but Klecker wanted him to stay off the air, if possible, to avoid disrupting the camera's signal, the same reason he'd removed the broadcasting component from the FoxBlte.

For the moment, Joe's assignment was to pull close enough to Skolnick that the camera could be activated by way of the remote Klecker held. Although the camera functioned from some distance, the infrared remote that controlled it worked only within thirty feet. It was plain from the tense instructions Stan issued to both Alf and Joe that he'd had some trouble convincing Moira Winchell, Chief Judge of the Federal District Court, to sign the warrant authorizing installation of the camera. The nature of the intrusion had seemingly mortified her, inasmuch as Moira was both a judge and a car owner. Stan had reminded the agents that Judge Winchell had directed that the camera could be turned on only when Feaver was seen with Skolnick in the auto.

"Hit it," Amari yelled out now. The small black-andwhite monitor sprang to life, and we all canted forward in anticipation, while Klecker activated the VCR.

The bribery of judges is eternal. At common law, before there were statutes and codes, the word `bribe' meant only this: a benefit conferred to influence a judge. It began as soon as King John signed Magna Carta and set up the courts. Probably before. Probably when Adam tried to reason with God about Eve, the first man offered Him something on the side. What we were there to see held the fierce primal attraction of any elemental wrong.

The initial picture was unfocused, a Hadean scene in which Robbie and Skolnick were reduced to images as indistinct as smoke. Klecker called directions to Amari, while Alf frantically squeezed buttons on the tiny remote. As al ways, the picture got worse before it got better, and then Skolnick detoured through Lower River, a covered roadway where the light was poor. But when he emerged, a relatively crisp image appeared, Feaver and Skolnick each slightly distorted by the wide-angle lens. If we fell farther behind, the digital imagery became weirdly aligned, so that little pieces of Robbie and Skolnick slid off the screen. But when Amari was able to stay within seven or eight car lengths, there was good reception.

The two men started out with warm greetings and ranged companionably over a number of topics. At McManis's instruction, Robbie also complained about having had his tires punctured yesterday in the courthouse garage, and he and Skolnick bemoaned their shared misfortune and the deterioration of society.

"These kids! What momzerim," said Skolnick and held up a thick finger. "They're almost as bad as we were!" He laughed, very much the genial, bovine creature Robbie had described. He was portly and florid, with a large broad nose, and that majestic spume of pure white hair cresting in a high old-fashioned pompadour. Skolnick asked after Mort, whose father he apparently knew from some shared affiliation with a Jewish organization, and then, more gently, about Robbie's wife.

"Ay, Robbie," he said after Feaver finished his matterof-fact rundown on the crushing grip of the disease. "My heart goes out. Truly. You've been a rock for this girl."