Scott Turow - Personal injuries

"Don't let Feaver know what's wrong," McManis instructed her. "But before you deactivate, you have to get him to describe in detail what went on. Then frisk him carefully. If he says Skolnick took the money, that'll be our only corroboration."

Feaver sailed into the conference room a few moments later. When Evon asked how it, had gone, he raised both thumbs in his cabretta gloves, but signaled toward his back, where the recorder was still rolling. One of the protocols Feaver attempted to follow with mixed success was to avoid idle chatter while wired. Even the most innocuous remark could come back to bite him on cross-examination.

"Today we need to talk." Evon promised to explain later.

Robbie said he had simply waved off Skolnick's suggestion to take back the money. There had been a few quarreling gestures between them, but in time Skolnick had succumbed with an elaborate shrug.

She then asked him to stand. "I have to frisk you."

His eyes narrowed with an odd light, veering between disbelief and lechery, but he came to his feet with his arms thrown wide. All yours.

She had frisked men before, of course. Regs didn't favor it. But when you were first to the subject on an arrest, you didn't twiddle your thumbs waiting to see if he'd pull a six-inch switchblade. But she'd never frisked someone she knew. It was strange. As when they'd wrestled, he seemed larger and more solid than she imagined. She squeezed her way up his pants legs, turned out his pockets, and passed as quickly as she could over the crotch. She had a sudden fear he'd try something awful, hold her hand there or boost his hips forward. At that moment, she realized she should have asked Shirley to be here. But Robbie did not react. He had enough stage sense to realize how bad he could make both of them sound on the recording. She was the one who was tense. She turned him around and repeated the procedure from behind. At the end, she searched his briefcase and his overcoat, then described all her findings, before grabbing the remote and turning off the FoxBlte.

"Was it as good for you as it was for me?" he asked then.

"Listen, buster, I nearly said I found absolutely nothing in this boy's trousers."

He clutched his heart but he was smiling. The insinuations, the joking. She knew he felt he had her going his way.

He had figured out by now that the camera had not worked. McManis had asked her to listen immediately to what the FoxBlte had captured and to let them know in the van. Robbie pulled the mike back through his buttonhole and removed his shirt, and happily unhitched the unit. His back was sore from sitting against it. Klecker by then had left instructions with Shirley about how to load the recording magazines in the computer. Shirley, a curlyheaded woman in her late forties, helped, and the three of them listened together. At the critical point, as Feaver and the judge had exchanged their dueling gestures about the envelope, there were a few words-both of them, in fact, said "Come on"-but nothing clearly indicated what had become of the money. The only direct proof that Skolnick had accepted would be Robbie's word. From the start, Sennett had known that an admitted felon against a judge was a losing contest before most juries.

"Figures," said McManis, when Evon called him. "Everything that can go wrong will." He asked to speak to Bobbie so he could tell him he'd done a great job.

Afterwards, Feaver, who'd draped his shirt unbuttoned around himself, took it off again and asked for Evon's help removing the FoxBIte harness. It had been secured with yards of tape circling his abdomen.

"Pull the tape fast," he told her. "It's going to hurt like a bastard." He was right about that. Unruly black hair stretched densely over his upper body, gathering to the thickness of a pelt across his chest and down the medial line of his stomach. He looked like a lemur or something else you might want to pet. Klecker had suggested shaving, but McManis said no, it could lead to too many questions at the haberdasher's, or the doctor's office, or the locker room of the health club where Robbie still appeared occasionally on weekends.

"I lived my life pulling off adhesive tape," she told him. She cut through it with scissors, then peeled back the ends, making an opening right over his hipbones where the flesh became soft. She was standing inches from him, close enough to take in all his cosmetic scents and his body heat and his size, the coarse feel of all that hair on his upper body. Beautiful people-women and men-knew it. Pride, a sense of attention, and confidence in his effect radiated off Robbie Feaver at all times. With him half-unclothed, it was as if some lead vest containing that emanation had been removed.

"Ready?" she asked.

He put his hands on her shoulders to brace himself. "Tell me you're not going to enjoy this."

"Mommy brought me up not to lie. Hold tight." She squared her knees against his for leverage. There was a pulse of something at that moment. Perhaps he shuddered, or his grip on her shoulders tightened. It lasted only a second and she avoided his eye. Then she pulled off the front layers with a single heave, amazed by the vigor, the sheer wildness of the laughter that raced through her as he emitted a half-stifled outcry of pain.

Having promised D.C. a judge and having failed to deliver Skolnick, Sennett turned his attention to Silvio Malatesta. Stan told us he had proposed bugging Malatesta's chambers, but Judge Winchell would not approve an overhear that risked prolonged eavesdropping on innocent judicial functions. She wanted proof, just as she'd had before the camera went into Skolnick's car, that a specific criminal incident was about to take place.

Thus, the only way to get direct evidence against Malatesta was if Robbie had a wired encounter with the judge. Outside court, Feaver had never had a conversation with Silvio Malatesta that lasted longer than thirty seconds, and he regarded the idea as far-fetched. But Sennett felt that without a judge, D.C. could pull the plug within a few weeks, at the next review. The case against Walter was solid, but there was no certainty he'd roll on Malatesta. If not, there wouldn't be enough evidence against the judge to charge him if the Project was cut short. Therefore, Sennett reasoned, it was better to send Robbie in against Silvio now. McManis reluctantly agreed, even though Feaver continued to predict it would be fruitless.

Amari began round-the-clock surveillance on Malatesta, but it showed that the opportunities for a chance meeting between Feaver and the judge were limited. Aside from work, Malatesta seldom left home without his wife on his arm, a miniature human being four foot eight or nine, who minced along on huge high heels. Amari referred to her as 'Minnie Mouse,' and Minnie Mouse was omnipresent. She was with her husband when they went to church, when they visited their daughter and her children, when they attended concerts at the symphony. Minnie was a harpist and Judge Malatesta was observed hauling her instrument to and from their ancient station wagon several times a week. Most evenings, he accompanied her to her performances at weddings or other large events where her gentle playing was usually lost in the clatter of china and voices. Silvio sat unobtrusively, studying briefs and memos and applauding demurely at the end of every selection.

After a week, Amari concluded the one moment to accost the judge was when he taught. Now an adjunct professor at Blackstone Law School, where he'd previously been full-time, Malatesta continued to meet a single Torts class. Each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, he trudged the two blocks from the courthouse to Blackstone's seventy year-old building. Head lowered as he recited today's presentation in his mind, he passed beneath the law school's elaborate concrete facade into the interior of dark oak. Outside his classroom, Amari said, Malatesta invariably observed the habit of many older gentlemen and took a moment in the rest room. And it was there Robbie would get his chance. In order to prevent intrusions, Klecker would play the role of janitor, barricading the entrance with the little yellow plastic signs used by Blackstone's regular service, whose crews actually visited each day at 4 p.m. Klecker was certain no one would think much of somebody swabbing the floor in the john. There were a hundred ways this could fail, especially if another person followed Malatesta in, but the risks were viewed as tolerable. If questioned, Alf would answer in Polish and go on his way, while Robbie made small talk with the judge.