Scott Turow - Personal injuries

"Only a minute," she stated at last and gave him the address.

Earlier this afternoon, McManis had filed an emergency motion under the Extraordinary Writs Act to set aside the prior judgment in Hall v. Sentinel Repair, the contrived case that had gone from Judge Sullivan to Skolnick. The original complaint had alleged that Herb Hall, a truck driver, had suffered severe burns and been rendered a paraplegic when the sixteen-wheeler he was driving for a hauling company had lost its brakes on a downhill grade. Hall had sued the repair service that had supposedly examined the truck immediately before it went out on the road. According to McManis's motion, Moreland Insurance, in behalf of the service, had settled soon after Skolnick issued Judge Sullivan's ruling allowing Hall to seek punitive damages.

Now Moreland had learned-through Herb's former mistress-that Herb in reality had fallen asleep at the wheel. It was this fact, not brake failure, that accounted for why no tire marks had been found at the crash site. McManis further alleged that the idea for Herb to blame the repair company, rather than himself, came from Herb's attorney, Robert Simon Feaver, who'd tutored Hall on what to say.

The hope, as always, was that if Robbie was successful in reaching Magda, the judge would rule on the basis of briefs. But if a hearing was necessary, I'd agreed with heavy heart to appear in court, acting as the attorney whom Feaver, if he wasn't being the proverbial fool, would be expected to hire.

As soon as the call to Judge Medzyk was finished, Klecker wired Feaver. They were sending Robbie out tonight not only with the FoxBlte but also with the portable camera Klecker had installed in the briefcase matching Bobbie's. A fiber-optic lens was hidden in the hinge, and the camera, the same kind as the one installed in Skolnick's Lincoln, was powered by a lithium battery the size of a brick, concealed in the case. The point, however, was not improved evidence-gathering. Robbie's instructions were to keep the camera pointed at all times not at Magda but at himself. They wanted to be sure he didn't signal her somehow.

Before Robbie left, McManis took me aside, stating tersely, "We expect the usual Academy Award performance." He made no apology for not trusting Robbie, and Feaver, when I spoke to him alone to impart the warning, required none. His mind was on Magda, anyway.

"I want you to realize something," he told me, pausing to impart a stark look. "I did the right thing in the first place when I didn't tell these guys about her."

At her door, Magda Medzyk grabbed her housedress by the throat and looked both ways down the hallway before letting Robbie in. With the weight of the case, Bobbie couldn't keep from swinging his arm, and as a result they were both in and out of the fish-eye. But you could have seen from the street she was worried. Given the tight look of her hair, I imagined that she'd spent the time while Robbie was on the way taking down her pin curls. They stood in the dim front hall of her apartment.

"I hope this is really necessary? I'm so uncomfortable, Robert. I can't believe I allowed you to talk me into this. I was hoping I was mistaken, but I have the papers right in my briefcase. A motion was filed this afternoon. Did you realize you're at issue before me?"

"Hey, I've talked you into a lot of things you think are terrible." Stepping forward, he set the briefcase down and was momentarily out of sight. But Magda's voice was clear.

"No, absolutely not! Not now. Really," she said. More quietly, she added, "My mother's asleep right down the hall." She'd stepped back into the picture again and cast a desperate look over her shoulder. In the fun-house mirror distortions of the lens, I could see the apartment behind her, a railroad flat with heavy dark furniture in the living room, including a console TV with a thirteen-inch screen, the likes of which hadn't been manufactured in at least a decade. As they moved off to the kitchen, the image bounced along impossibly on the monitor in the surveillance van. We were parked beneath one of the grand century-old elms that rose in the parkway in front of the hulking three-story tenement. The sound also took on a bit of a buzz under the kitchen's fluorescent lights as Feaver tried to make conversation. She cut him off abruptly.

"It's probably best, Robbie, if you just state your business."

As he pretended to wrench the cover story from himself, she sank down to a wooden spindle chair by a small table. He had some trouble here, Robbie told Magda, referring directly to the motion McManis had filed. It hadn't been the way they made it sound, he'd never trump up a case that way, but he'd beaten the tar out of Moreland over the years and the insurance company wanted him. They were cutting a deal already with Herb Hall to roll over against Robbie. If she granted this writ, Robbie said, the company would sue him, instead of Hall, to recover everything it had paid out. Then, once they'd picked a million bucks out of his pocket, they'd turn him over to BAD and the Prosecuting Attorney. He'd be lucky to stay out of Rudyard, and the only thing of value in that license on his wall would be the frame.

Robbie had set the briefcase down on the kitchen counter and we had a good view of the scene. He was opposite Magda at the small maple table where she and her elderly mother had dinner each night. With his long hands, he reached toward her and tossed his head about in distress. She listened at first with her hand over her mouth. By the time he had finished, she refused even to look at him or to speak.

"I need this, Magda. And I'll make it okay, for you. I'd want to. No number's too high. But this is my life, Magda. This is my whole screwed-up life passing before my eyes. You can't let these bastards take it from me. I mean, for Chrissake-"

"Not another word." With her face averted from Feaver and the camera, her voice was somewhat disembodied. Even so, a sound of despair choked out of her with the effort of speech. "When you called, while I was waiting-" She stopped. "I actually prayed this had nothing to do with your case. I prayed. I actually called upon the Mother of God. As if I deserve her mercy. I have only myself to blame, don't I?"

"Magda, come on. Stow the melodrama. I've been before you a lot in the last ten years. You've ruled for me."

"And against you. You know better, Robert. You know much better. I won't have you sit here pretending you don't understand the magnitude of this. Of what you're asking. This isn't business as usual and you know that." Merely contemplating it forced her to look away from him once more. "Oh, God," she said. "God."

"Please, Magda. Think about this. Magda, look, you don't know what goes on around you. You've never stopped to notice. You don't have any idea."

"And I don't care to know." Her sharpness seemed to surprise even her, and she planted her mouth on the heel of her palm.

He went on pleading until she covered her ears.

"Go," she said weakly. "Go."

Even then, he begged-she had to, had to-until she had finally lost even the power to tell him to stop and her head of tight graying curls appeared to droop in assent.

"Thank you," he told her. "For seeing me. For doing this. Thank you." He repeated that a dozen times more. When he came around the table to embrace her, she recoiled with her thick arms held aloft. In the last frames before he jerked the camera off the counter, she was bunched in her simple frock, virtually formless in her grief

"She's gonna do it," said Alf in the van, while Robbie was on the way down. I had reached the same melancholy conclusion myself. McManis and Evon both nodded.

But Robbie had a judgment of his own. Once inside the Mercedes, Feaver had apparently taken hold of his briefcase, bringing the lens right up to his face. On the monitor, his features flattened monstrously in the fish-eye. But he didn't want anyone watching to miss a word.