Scott Turow - Personal injuries

Naturally, Sennett and Robbie and I were urgently summoned in the aftermath. This problem was only going to get worse. Beyond Standard Railing, Dinnerstein would soon be looking for a settlement check on the case of the poor painter with cancer which had been before Skolnick, and also on King v. Hardwick, the sexual harassment suit on which Robbie had informed Judge Crowthers' clerk of a settlement two days after the hearing. Things were only half as bad as they looked, since Feaver would immediately refund his end to the government. But retrieving the money from Mort, whenever the Project was over, might be a complicated legal undertaking, especially if Mort was angry, as he figured to be. The folks at UCORC, who were forever hounding McManis and Stan about the significant costs of the Project, seemed unlikely to let go of $250,000 they might never see again.

We all watched Sennett calculate, banging his fingers against his lips. It reminded me a little of one of those game shows I watched in childhood, where the audience waited for the correct answer to come spinning down in a sheaf of IBM cards dropped from the bottom of Univac.

"They'll do it," he said suddenly. "I know how to handle it." Around the table, we awaited a further explanation, but it wasn't forthcoming. Sennett gave us a dry smile, but his idea, whatever it was, was locked in the need-to-know treasure chest. Yet he was right. The money was wired from a code-named account to McManis two days later.

"You know," Robbie told Evon the night he'd presented Mort with the check, "I wasn't really scared. I've always figured with Morty that if push comes to shove, I can just tell him to shut up and trust me."

Sennett would not like that-what if Mort let something slip to his uncle?-but Robbie was right. For all his lapses and deceptions, Robbie was committed to Morty's wellbeing, and Dinnerstein knew it. Years ago, despite some qualms from Joan about Robbie's philandering, Mort and his wife had named Robbie in their will as their children's guardian, recognizing the powerful bond Robbie had formed with both boys. He was `Uncle Robbie,' and had coached Mort's older son, Josh, in Little League for several years, in `the good old days' as Robbie called them, when he would show up for practice at eight on Saturday morning still in his suit. The younger boy, Max, was not an athlete. But from an early age, he'd been an exuberant performer, a talent Robbie had helped cultivate by directing the annual children's theater production at the local Jewish Community Center. Last summer, for the first time, he had bowed out because of Rainey's deterioration, but Evon heard Robbie on the phone with the boy often, coaching him for different parts.

"You have any friends like that?" Feaver asked her now. "Like Morty and me?"

"Me?" Evon was somehow startled by the thought. Her first impulse was to mention her sister. But family wasn't quite the same. She knew that. No, was the honest answer. The bare facts sank her, but she told him the truth.

"Not many people do," he offered for comfort, clearly having read her reaction.

But it was not a good night after that. When she got up to the small apartment, she was reeling. She felt fierce anger at the way Robbie managed to sneak up on her, and she hated herself for being who she was, so simple and manipulable in her longings. She sat on the couch in a blanket for quite some time, before she even had the spunk to put on Reba singing "It's Your Call." She was going to have to go out and call Merrel. There was no choice about that. Downtown, in a couple of the fancy hotels there were luxurious phone booths, elegant enclosed spaces, with brass fixtures and a little shelf of granite, a place where she did not feel in peril when she spoke in her old voice.

She took a box from the freezer, unsure exactly what entree was in it, and punched the beeping buttons on the microwave. She went to shower while her dinner twirled under the rays. When she'd stripped down, she considered herself in the small mirror on the bathroom vanity, whose corners were already being glossed over with vapor. Good tits. She had that much going for her. The sight, without any expectation, brought on the first vivid fantasy of being with Feaver that she'd experienced in all these months. It was sudden, enrapturing, and brief: just an intense image of him in darkness. An exact tactile memory of the unanticipated male hardness of his limbs revisited her. Her nipples peaked at once; she knew if she lowered her hand for consolation she'd be wet. But she twisted away from that, almost like a wrestler escaping from a hold. No. No. And then she prepared herself to recoil from the shock. But she wasn't upset. It was just a piece of something she'd tried out, knowing all along it would never fit, just one more thing rocking and rolling inside her.

She looked to the mirror, hoping for some confirmation from the woman there, but her face was already obscured by the steam.

Theday after Robbie's televised payoff of Skolnick, Stan had met with Chief Judge Winchell and played the tape for her. He wanted her to know Petros was on the right track, that Feaver's accusations were proving out. Stan's hope, yet again, was that she'd be willing to authorize the installation of a bug in Judge Malatesta's chambers. The Chief Judge was careful not to give him any advice; she was the judge, not the prosecutor. But Sennett felt that if he could specify a limited time frame, a few days in which the government was watching for a particular event, she'd sign the warrant. Therefore, Sennett sought Robbie's help in devising a scenario for an emergency motion, one Malatesta would have to rule on quickly, which would give the government an event to earmark in applying for the bug.

There were still two contrived cases on Malatesta's docket. Given Walter's warnings, they had remained largely dormant, supposedly snoozing along through the interrogatory stage in discovery. One of the cases, Drydech v. Lancaster Heating, concerned a gas water heater that had supposedly exploded in the barn of Robbie's client, a farmer. Drydech, based on an out-of-state decision Robbie had read, was known as `The Fart Case' around McManis's office. The planned defense was that combustion resulted not from the water heater but from a buildup of high quantities of methane emitted by a barn full of cows.

To create the emergency, Robbie now proposed that he file a motion to advance the deposition of a company engineer who allegedly had warned of the potential for flash explosions if the heater was installed in an enclosed space occupied by livestock. The motion would require an immediate ruling because the engineer, supposedly, was seriously ill and slipping downhill.

As soon as the papers were typed, Robbie and Evon dashed to the courthouse to file them and visit with Walter. The predicate for the bug would be a conversation, much like the one in Peter Petros's case, in which Feaver told Wunsch that the outcome of the lawsuit would hinge on Malatesta's ruling. The government would then watch to see how Wunsch brought this news to the judge and how Silvio reacted.

When they arrived, Walter was already in the courtroom, getting ready for a hearing at 2 p.m. Once court started, Robbie would have a hard time holding any conversation with Wunsch, and they galloped across the corridor. As Evon flew through the swinging door behind Robbie, she nearly knocked over a burly guy twice her size. He was somebody she'd seen around here before, a cop or a deputy from the looks of him. While she apologized, he stared incredulously, not so much angry as unaccustomed, Evon figured, to taking that kind of wallop from a female.

Walter was walking back and forth on the yellowish birch tier beneath the judge, with his customary ill-humored expression, giving directions to the bailiff and court reporter regarding the session about to get under way. Evon hung back, allowing Robbie to approach Wunsch on his own, although the voices were clear through the infrared. Handing over the motion, Feaver declared, between his teeth, "This guy is my case, Wally."