Scott Turow - Personal injuries

All in all, killing a federal witness was recognized as a very poor idea. The FBI did not take it lightly. As a threat to the entire process, it ranked just below killing an agent or a prosecutor or a judge. For that reason, it would bring down heat that would make the effort poured into Petros look restrained. The truth was that if Robbie was going to have a problem, the most likely time was afterwards, in prison. He'd go to one of the federal prison camps-Sandstone or Oxford, or Eglin in Florida-where the inmates played golf and tennis after work. In the old days, before Reagan and Bush had federalized street crimes, that was not really a concern for someone like Robbie. The worst damage another inmate was likely to inflict was to take you badly at cards. But these days there were plenty of thugs in the federal prison camps, dopers who were inside for clean offenses like money-laundering, the only crime the government could prove. Wounded, braggart, futureless boys, they had killed before and gotten away with it and would do it again for a lark and the right price. Robbie would have to do his time in segregation and, even at that, watch his back. But I had always regarded as remote the chance that Brendan would actually orchestrate something on the street now.

Robbie stared out the window, toward his neighbors' vast homes and smooth lawns, trying on my reassurance for size.

`No matter how you slice it, the best thing for me is to bag him. Right? Go in and get him. The whole thing topples.' He had thought this through clearly. Robbie would be safest the day Brendan was indicted and pried away from the levers of power.

Accordingly, Robbie'd had an air of resolve when we'd met today at 5 a.m. to go over the scenario. Then he'd walked by himself to Paddywacks, while we took up our station across the street. He held his shin-length Italian raincoat of a fashionable muddy shade closed at the collar, although the day was not particularly brisk.

Brendan had been easy to find. His morning rituals were unvarying. At 5 a.m., he attended Mass across the way at St. Mary's Cathedral, one of the few men among the elderly female devotees. Then he joined Rollo Kosic and Sig Milacki here at Paddywacks, where Plato customarily opened the doors for them long before the usual gala breakfast crowd had assembled. The three sat at a small round table near the windows, where Brendan, the master of public relations, could throw off a hale salute to the many important citizens approaching the front door. When I turned on my seat in the van, I could see them clearly through the pale whorls of the one-way bubble-window. Milacki chattered. Brendan showed occasional signs of amusement, while Kosic finished his breakfast first, then stared at his cigarette as it burned.

With Robbie's arrival, Tuohey smiled faintly at the mess he had made of himself, surrendering the Bismarck, still swollen with dark jam, to the plate in front of him. Then he tidied himself carefully with his napkin before extending a hand to Robbie. Kosic and Milacki offered greetings and Milacki drew his chair aside to allow Robbie to join them. Instead, mindful of the camera, Robbie moved to the opposite comer. It was a few minutes before six, and in the background two waitresses in their white uniforms stood in the corner of the smoking section, a few feet behind Tuohey's table, gabbing before the morning crush. It was the Tuesday morning following Memorial Day, and despite occasional ringing china and shouts from the kitchen, the restaurant, on the FoxBlte transmission, seemed sweetly still, as the world slowly shook off the slackened tempo of the holiday.

"We were just raising good thoughts about poor Wally," Tuohey said.

Robbie didn't understand.

"Wunsch," said Milacki. "You didn't hear? The Big C."

Walter, it developed, had been diagnosed last week with pancreatic cancer. In the van, Sennett moaned when he heard the news. It was hard to turn a man who had no hope of living. "Doc gives him six months with the chemo and shit," said Milacki. `Wally says his wife's already marking off the days on the calendar. Have to hand it to him. Same brick. Guy always looks unhappy and this didn't make it any worse.”

The thoughts of mortality turned the conversation to Robbie's mother. Tuohey and Kosic had appeared briefly at Robbie's home the week before last to pay their respects. It was a predictable gesture from Tuohey, who favored ceremonial occasions, but Robbie now unctuously expressed his appreciation.

"Not at all, Robbie. Lit a candle for Mom this morning. Lord's truth. Estelle was a grand lady. I've been thinkin about both of you, son." In the image on the monitorlike a sight seen through a rainstreaked glass-Brendan daintily lifted his hand in Robbie's direction and took the occasion to dispense further advice. Along with Mort's mother, Tuohey had been born in Ireland, emigrating by the time he was five. On occasion, when he spoke, you could still hear the piping echoes of a brogue. "You're in a tough patch now, Robbie. We know that. With Mom, and Rainey in such a difficult way. You have to keep your faith, though. I can still remember the day I lost my Maine like it was yesterday. The best consolation is prayer." With a long gnarly finger, Brendan pointed his way.

Milacki, voluble in his appreciation of Brendan's many pieties, uttered Amen. Robbie in the meantime saw his opening.

"Shit, Judge, I'm praying, but not how you mean." His chair scraped the floor as he came closer and hunkered over the table. Like a bungled tape delay, the image ran some milliseconds ahead of Robbie's bare whisper as he told them about Evon. Sennett had wanted Feaver to try to get Tuohey alone, but Robbie said Brendan would be far more relaxed in the secure presence of his henchmen. Leaning in, Robbie had cut off a bit of the camera's angle and I turned back to the bubble, where I found the sight through the front window of four heads gathered in such plain conspiracy almost amusing. Life, generally so subtle in its textures, is disarmingly blatant now and then. Barely a foot separated the crowns-Brendan's tidy gray head, Milacki's greasy do, Rollo even now touching his thinning hair to keep it in place-each trained on Robbie as the story grew more dire.

He described what Walter had said about Carmody. The girl had laughed it off and he had consequently dismissed it. But it ate at him, Robbie said, and the following week, treating it as a dare, he'd asked her to let his secretary look her over in the john for a wire. She'd refused, then agreed the next day, when the secretary, predictably, found nothing. But the paralegal was getting buggy. She'd been burglarized last week and came to the office on Friday positively frantic. She'd spent nearly an hour searching her cubicle, asking her coworkers if they'd seen some Dictaphone tapes. The problem, Feaver said, was that no one in the office had ever used a Dictaphone-their system required different cassettes. What was she doing with her own tape recorder?

"I mean, Jesus, do FBI agents look like that?" he asked. "Hell, this babe was crawling around in the sack with me."

"That means she's G for sure," Milacki whispered. Everyone at the table laughed, even Kosic. It had sounded like a joke at Robbie's expense, particularly considering the source. A robust, big-bellied man, a plainclothes copper from central casting, Milacki always had a good time. He wore an old-fashioned hairdo, with slicked-back sides in which the comb tracks were grooved precisely in the Vaseline.

Milacki had been Brendan's partner during his brief time on the street. Tuohey had not remained a patrol officer for very long, but like all old soldiers, he maintained a permanent nostalgia for his period of fortitude and courage, and he carried Milacki with him as an enduring emblem. At this point, Robbie had said, he felt he had heard an account of virtually every day they'd had riding in Squad 4221. During Tuohey's years in the Felony Division, Milacki had been detailed by the Force to run the Warrant Office, losing the arrest warrants that Brendan wanted destroyed, usually for the benefit of his mobbed-up pals. In one of those mysterious arrangements that no one outside the Police Force could ever be made to understand, when Tuohey had moved to Common Law Claims, Milacki had gone with him. He remained a cop so he could qualify for his pension, but he was now assigned directly to the Presiding Judge's chambers as the police liaison to the sheriff's deputies in the courthouse. In reality, he did Brendan's bidding, everything from squiring him about in a black Buick owned by the Force to fielding calls like the ones Robbie made from time to time, aimed at denoting certain cases as `specials.'