Scott Turow - Personal injuries

"Before she got diagnosed we were talking about it more. We even named this kid we didn't have. I mean, goofy names. Sparky. Flipper. We'd toss around funny things the kid would do. Don't get pizza with olives, she won't eat olives. It was always a girl, I don't know why. And somehow we got to doing that just now." He'd been staring straight into the high pile of the white carpet, but, unexpectedly, a comic thought came to relieve him, impelling a brief laugh.

"We got a great name today. I said, I want a nice Jewish name. We'd just finished this book she really liked, so she looks over there and says, `Nancy Taylor Rosenberg' So that's who we were going on about, Nancy Taylor Rosenberg. Nancy Taylor Rosenberg needs sunglasses for her big blue eyes. Nancy Taylor Rosenberg has an outie like her mother. Every screwy thing. Nancy Taylor Rosenberg loves chocolate cake and has terrible allergies. We really got rolling. We were both bawling our eyes out, but we kept going for twenty minutes. So," he said in abrupt conclusion and slapped his thighs. "What's up?"

She eyed him, not sure he was ready for business, but he indicated she should proceed. Sig Milacki had called this morning and wanted Robbie to phone. The next move was at hand.

"Sig," he said and considered the message slip. She'd brought the phone trap. The device used to record the call was a tiny earpiece, the size of a good hearing aid. The earplug was miked to pick up both the signal from the telephone handset and Robbie's voice, which was transmitted through the bones of his skull. The lead ran to a portable tape recorder she'd brought in her briefcase. Alf had wanted to do this himself, but, as always now, the fear was he might be tailed.

Listening in on an extension, Evon could hear Milacki approach the phone from a distance, assailing his underlings with gruff wisecracks.

"Feaver!" He proceeded with his standard banter, jibes about attorneys. His daughter, Milacki said, had now finished her first semester in law school. "I'm watching her real careful," he confided, "to see just when it is she grows the second face."

"Fuck you, Sig."

"Be the best piece of ass you ever had." Milacki exploded in raw laughter. He loved that line and repeated it several times. Finally he explained himself. "Sort of wanted to catch a look at your ugly mug. Thought maybe we could have a soda pop. Six okay at that yuppie-duppie joint of yours with the six-dollar brewskis?'

Robbie tried to get a hint what the meeting was about, but Milacki roared as if Robbie had told another joke, and with no more ended the call. At five after six, Robbie strolled into Attitude, as he had on many another Friday night. Perhaps it was the familiar atmosphere or his acting skills, but he looked far better than he had in days. He was in an Italian sharkskin suit, his big hair blown dry, his cologne, as always, redolent for yards around.

For Klecker, getting a decent recording amid the shattering ambient noise of a Friday night crowd presented a technician's nightmare. To deal with that, Alf had wired three of Amari's surveillance team members with directional mikes in the hope they could work their way close to Robbie and capture better sound. To augment the problematic audio, both Klecker and Sennett wanted cameras. The jostling in the hurly-burly of the bar made a stable picture unlikely, and in the meeting at McManis's beforehand, Feaver had claimed that he'd dislocate a shoulder if he had to stand there holding the ponderous briefcase-camera for an hour. Ultimately, Klecker had dispatched another member of the surveillance squad with that unit, instructing her to take a table on the loft level where she'd get a good wide-angle image of the entire scene. A second camera was manned downstairs by three agents of Asian descent, two Japanese and one Korean, whom Amari had requisitioned on short notice. The three men were in the middle of the barroom floor. In another of Klecker's inspirations, they played the role of happy tourists, passing what looked to be a video camera back and forth among themselves, as they endeavored to record every moment. Only one of the agents spoke any foreign language, but he crowed at volume and the other two laughed and bowed in a vigorous parody of American expectations.

To conserve the batteries, none of the cameras were switched on until Robbie entered the bar. In the van there was the inevitable Zantac moment waiting to see if the equipment would function. The space here in the rear was extremely confined tonight. It now looked like a TV studio. Klecker had added two video monitors and three additional sound receivers to the pyramided equipment. Tex Clevenger, trained in the Army as a sound tech, worked with Alf, helping spin the dials. Sennett, McManis, and I did not have room to spread our elbows.

In front, Shirley drove. Evon was beside her in the passenger seat. Like the rest of us, she'd been provided with headphones, but she listened through only one side, the other ear being already equipped with the infrared receiver hidden under her hair. Robbie's assignment tonight was direct: try somehow to get another meeting with Brendan. In order to dramatize Feaver's desperate need for further advice from Tuohey, Sennett and McManis had worked out a scenario around Evon. Executing this plan depended on how long Robbie remained inside and what Milacki wanted. On that score, there was still no clue.

From the audio output alone, it was clear Attitude was rocking. The crowd, packed tight from the door, was full of libertine energy. They'd survived another week, had taken the punch, and were ready to make the most of it. Alf flipped between the radio channels sampling the sound, almost all of it a waterfall of unintelligible chatter, while the tape decks turned. One of the miked agents had already i.d.'d Milacki and was drinking next to him. A second had followed Robbie through the door.

A woman whom Robbie knew, a legal secretary who once had worked at Feaver amp; Dinnerstein, pushed up to greet him as soon as he cleared the tall glass doors. Carla. We could see her on the output from the video cam with which the three agents were posing. She was smoking a cigarette and barely remembered to remove it before kissing Feaver on the lips. She was conventionally pretty, near Robbie's age. She clutched Robbie's arm above the elbow as she asked him about Mort and shared stories of her two sons, both now in the Marines. Her straight blond hair, heavily sprayed and treated, divided like a stream around the rock of her shoulders. She licked the ends absentmindedly as they spoke.

"I'll see you, hon," Robbie said eventually. "I gotta get with a guy."

"That's how it is anymore. Everybody's always running. I'm over by the window by Rick and Kitty."

He blew her a noncommittal kiss and worked his way toward Milacki, who was in the second row of standees near the bar. He had one finger in his ear as he yelled into his cell phone, apparently reaming out somebody who worked for him. When Robbie arrived, Sig pointed at the phone and mouthed an insult about the person on the other end.

In the van, Alf signaled, instructing us to switch our headphones to channel three. The mike in the briefcase of the surveillance agent who was beside Milacki funneled far clearer sound than Robbie's FoxBlte.

"Say, listen," Milacki said, and caught Robbie by the arm, after they had said hello. "We just had a thing at the courthouse. I swear to God, I nearly soiled my skivvies. One of these macaronis with the aluminum foil hairdo, you know, so they don't get too many of them weirdball radio signals from outer space, one of these wackheads goes right through the metal detector. Holy Tamoli, we got bells and lights like a pinball machine. So the boys pull him over to the wall to frisk him. Here," said Milacki to Robbie, "here, pick up your arms. I gotta show you this."