Scott Turow - Personal injuries

On the second monitor, we could see Milacki spread his hands, ready to pat Robbie down.

"Oh shit," said McManis. He tried to stand up, forgetting his seat belt, and was jolted back. After popping it free, he crowded closer to the monitor. There was no mistaking Robbie's hesitation either. After a second, McManis pushed Evon's shoulder and told her to get in there. She looked into the side-view to be certain she was clear and jumped out in a rush.

"Whatsa matter?" we heard Milacki ask. "Ticklish?"

"Very"

"Come on, Roberta. I won't pinch. This is a scream." He hitched his head, and still appeared to be smiling. Even in black-and-white, you could see he had high color and a beautiful widow's peak. Years ago, he'd been a dirty blond but his oiled hair was now mostly gray.

Robbie raised his arms vaguely, like a suspect unsure about giving up.

"I paid two grand at Zegna for this suit, Milacki. I oughta make you wash your hands."

"Right, it's very pretty. So they go like this"-he frisked Robbie, starting from the boot tops, while he maintained his patter-"and so help me God, the jamoke has a threefoot salami in there, wrapped in tinfoil." He reached right into Robbie's jacket at that point to feel under the arm. "Can you imagine? We were all laughing so hard, I thought somebody'd bust an artery."

In the van, not a breath was taken in the interval.

"Where is it?" Sennett asked quietly.

Evon had initiated today, but McManis said that since acquiring his new footwear Robbie had made a habit of placing the FoxBIte in a holster in his boot.

"Could he miss the lead?" Sennett asked.

It was taped along Robbie's inseam, McManis said, so it was possible. Indeed, Milacki so far had not dropped a beat. He put his arm on Robbie's shoulder, then patted him up and down the back as he racked with laughter. Robbie, onstage again, showed no further sign of flinching, even when Milacki gave him a cheerful clap on the butt.

Sensing he'd passed, Robbie, as he explained afterwards, figured the only credible reaction was outrage. He grabbed his suit coat by the lapels to settle it on his shoulders and pointed at the cop.

"Why didn't you just bring the fucking metal detector, Sig?”

Milacki didn't bother with pretense. "Better safe than sorry, bunky. Times we live in. Your lady friend's made everybody a little jumpy, maybe it rubs off on you. Couple folks been worrying about you, anyway. Said you seemed a little frayed around the collar." Crowthers and Walter, probably. This wasn't good news, either.

Robbie kept up his front. "Is that right?"

"Yeah, there's talk. It's like what Minnie Mouse told the judge when she asked to divorce Mickey? You heard that? She said she had to get out because he's been fucking Goofy." Milacki, taller than Robbie, could see he was getting nowhere with the efforts at humor, but he pounded Feaver's shoulder anyway as he roared.

"I got a lot at home, Sig."

"Hey, fuck, who loves you, baby?" Milacki took his large ruddy hand and jerked Robbie by the neck, as if trying to shake him into a better mood. "Fellow down the bar would like to see you." In the van, McManis tapped his heart. In the meanwhile, Sennett leaned toward the top monitor, which displayed a panorama of the entire establishment. Bulling through the happy throng, Robbie seemed to know where he was going.

"Tuohey," Stan whispered. "Make it Tuohey."

"Kosic," Alf said and stood for just a second to touch the top screen. Rollo again was at the extreme end of the bar under the white piano. One of the surveillance agents who'd been tailing Kosic for weeks had spotted him before and turned out to be on the stool beside him. The pianist, a different one than last time, was accompanying himself, crooning in the style of Tony Bennett, and the music piped up loudly on every channel. Alf spun his dials to little avail and griped, saying what everybody knew: these guys were smart.

The trio of Asian agents had apparently kept pace with Robbie crossing the room, as a clear image of Kosic suddenly came into focus on the bottom monitor. Rollo was on his third old-fashioned by now. The glasses were lined up on the bar in front of him, the other two empty except for the maraschino cherries whose stems looked like hands waving for rescue as they sank between the melting cubes. When Feaver arrived and greeted Kosic, the surveillance agent seated beside Rollo abruptly picked up his drink, allowing Feaver to slide onto the brushed-steel stool. Feaver's initial words to Rollo were largely lost by the time the applause died down after "Three Coins in the Fountain," but Robbie could be seen addressing Kosic, looking forward to the mirror in a dead-eyed, humorless fashion. When his voice came through again he was talking indignantly about his encounter with Milacki.

"Yeah, we just had a touchy-feely, Sig and I. The wrong kind. I had the impression he sort of expected my balls to go beep."

Kosic, much as last time, showed no reaction. Dressed in a golf windbreaker, he lifted his hand toward Lutese, the index finger crooked to hide the bad nail as he signaled for another drink. Then he removed a pen from his jacket pocket and began doodling on a cocktail napkin, while Robbie went on.

"You know, I respect you, Rollo. Mama brought me up right. And maybe, okay, maybe my trolley's a little off the tracks these days. I don't need anybody's shoulder, but I got a load now. But I gotta tell you, after all the beer that's flowed from the brewery, I don't think I deserve to be treated like somebody nobody knows." As if he half expected to be poisoned, Kosic raptly watched Lutese shake the bottle of bitters over the new glass and drop in another cherry. "You tell Brendan I said that."

Kosic, who had started to reach for the drink, flinched, reacting as a religious conservative might if Feaver had said `Jehovah.'

Lutese, who'd remained for Robbie's order, had cut off all her hair. Her dark scalp was gristled with the sandpapery nubbins the clippers had left behind. "Kind of radical," she acknowledged. If anything, she was more striking, nearly six feet, with cascading earrings that looked like the crystals from a chandelier.

Kosic was taking in the usual byplay between Robbie and the bartender when he suddenly turned toward the room. Beneath his chin, where he showed most of his age in the stringy grayish wattles that hung there, his Adam's apple bobbed several times and he finally knocked his elbow on Feaver's.

Evon was three or four feet behind them, holding a glass and yukking it up with the agent who'd just vacated the barstool.

"Oh shit," Robbie said when he faced back. "Figures. She's busting my balls. Hell hath no fury. She's sky-high cause I gave her two weeks' notice."

Kosic spoke for the first time. "Two weeks?"

"Sure. Like I said, I want it to look normal. I told her I'm ramping down cause of Rainey. But she's not going gently. She's breaking real bad on me in the office. And following me around half the time when I leave. I can feel a lawsuit coming on," said Robbie, "the way Grandpa felt bad weather in his lumbago."

Kosic watched Evon in the mirror, his look as unfeeling as some cats', then broke off and returned to his doodle. Now that she'd been noticed in accord with the plan, Evon drifted off to a safer distance, while Robbie continued speaking about his problems with her.

"I mean, Rollo, I'm asking myself, What the fuck am I doing? You know. Maybe it's not that way and I'm turning her into an enemy. Maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot letting her go. Could be the uncle was wrong when he said to fire her. I'd like to go over it with him again. Explain. I don't wanna piss him off, but maybe we should be thinking about this."

As ever, there was no way to tell if Kosic had even heard Feaver's remark. He doodled again for a minute, then turned toward the room, his eyes drifting over Robbie's shoulder as he apparently took in the tumbling scene, the women and men joshing, tippling, holding their cigarettes overhead to avoid accidental burns to passersby. On the monitor, Rollo looked straight at the three agents and their camera without any change in his unpleasant expression. Watching the tape afterwards, you could see that as he was surveying, he slid the little cocktail napkin he'd been writing on in Robbie's direction. What attracted him, Robbie said subsequently, was that Kosic had unfurled the bad nail and tapped it a couple of times. There was writing amid several geometric shapes, the first two lines slanting off from what was inscribed below them: