Scott Turow - Personal injuries

Inside the van, Amari was screaming instructions into two different walkie-talkies. When I looked back, Sennett was crouching, gripping the monitor by its sides, his face close enough to be colored by the gray glow.

Robbie was still alive. He had both hands in the air and he was nodding vigorously to the cop, who had hold of the hat. The policeman shook it several times, while Bobbie yammered what, given his nature, was all but certain to be a ludicrous explanation. As it turned out, he had told the officer that the hat was equipped with a biorhythm meter to help promote an even golf swing. The copper appeared to be considering that, but all the same, he put the hat under the arm in which he was holding the gun, and ripped out the lining. He stared for some time into the crown, where the complex electrical equipment was wound tight within a cocoon of colored wires. Then he lifted the weapon straight at Robbie. For the first time the copper looked seriously angry.

"No!" wailed Sennett again. "God no!"

The officer claimed later he'd thought it was a bomb. BEFORE SHE REACHED THE BEND where the police cruiser was parked, Evon hopped the guardrail and began breaking through the woods, swinging her arms to clear the thorny undergrowth. By the time she reapproached the road, she saw the cop with his arm fully extended and his service revolver two feet from Feaver's head. Her own handgun was over her belly in something called a Gunny Sack, an enlarged fanny pack that could be pulled open, exposing the firearm. She extracted the 5904 that way and assumed position, yelling as loudly as she could.

"FBI! FBI! Drop the gun or I'll shoot."

The cop's head swung a quarter turn. She was about fifty yards from him in the trees and he was obviously uncertain where the voice had come from.

"I am Instructor-Qualified at Quantico. I can put a bullet inside your eardrum fifty times out of fifty from where I am. Drop the gun."

The cop crooked his arm instead, keeping the revolver directed at Robbie, but from a foot farther away. He tucked the FoxBIte under his armpit, and with his left hand squeezed the transmission button on the radio fixed to his shoulder and spoke into it.

She repeated her instruction, but the cop's posture had slackened and she realized for the first time she would not have to fire. She could hear the cavalry rampaging through the leaves and the brush, and an entire posse of agents suddenly poured out of the woods, five or six of them, all screaming "FBI!" Three wore blue plastic parkas with the Bureau initials in huge yellow letters. They surrounded the cop and Robbie, crouching in a semicircle directly behind the policeman. Evon ran up to join them, and McManis arrived right behind her, badly out of breath. He put his hands on his thighs to recover his wind, then came around to where the coo could see him.

"I want to ask everyone to lower their weapons on the count of three," he said.

At three, the cop cheated a look back to make sure the agents had complied, but then directed his gun toward the ground. The FoxBlte remained in his other hand.

McManis told the cop he'd gotten himself in the middle of a Bureau operation.

"So you're saying this guy is yours?" the cop asked about Robbie. Robbie's hands had sunk when the cop lowered his gun, but they were still held at a small distance from his sides as a gesture of compliance. His eyes remained grimly fixed on the officer. At one point, he caught sight of Evon to the rear and winked, but under the circumstances, he'd been unable to manage a smile.

McManis avoided the cop's question. What he wanted was the FoxBIte. Drawing on the military heritage of many of its agents, the Bureau lived by a code which said that the next worst thing to losing a body to the bad guys was losing your equipment. Even if they couldn't salvage Bobbie's cover, they needed the FoxBIte back to maintain the security of future operations. Besides, the unit was cuttingedge, borrowed by Klecker from the Bureau's black-world spooks who worked foreign counterintelligence. Evon knew it was in capital letters this time: Don't Embarrass The Bureau.

The standoff was still ongoing when Sennett jogged up. I was about one hundred yards behind, Stan having outrun me as usual. He had just approached the cop when I got there.

"I'm the U.S. Attorney." From his blue suit coat, Stan withdrew his own federal credentials. "I'll take that, please." He reached out for the FoxBIte.

The cop pulled the unit farther away, but he looked down to what he held and for the first time put his revolver back in the holster. He watched TV like everyone else and recognized Sennett from the news. He was finally convinced these were really the feds.

Sennett took a step closer and asked for the equipment again. He was almost a foot smaller than the cop, but he gave no quarter and appeared hard enough to seem threatening.

"You want it, call my C.O.," said the cop. "Which is who?"

"Brenner, Area 6."

"Six?" said one of the agents standing in the narrow semicircle to the rear. "What the hell are you doing out here? You're fifteen miles from the North End."

"I live out here. He told me to look into this on my way in for roll call."

From the distance, I could hear sirens keening. In less than a minute, another black-and-white made a squealing halt at the roadside. Two other Force cars shortly appeared from the other direction. The six cops trooped down together and stood beside the officer who'd been surrounded.

Everyone held their places for some time. The sun had broken through an early morning haze and shone pleasantly. Eventually, several cops, including the first one, removed their caps. There was not much joviality, even though a couple of the local agents who'd been working for Amari were vaguely acquainted with a few of the policemen. It was the usual thing, Evon figured, the Bureau and the locals. The agents frequently viewed cops-less educated, more intuitive, and lower paid-as slugs, often embittered ones, because many had failed the Bureau's qualifying tests. The cops tended to see the Bureau types as pansies who knew more about filling out paperwork than dealing with real crime.

Amari suddenly came trotting up the road, waving. He had one of the large walkie-talkies in his hand and two other agents were behind him. McManis met them on the shoulder. After he heard them out, he gathered a number of us, including Stan and Evon and me, about fifteen yards farther up the pavement.

The unit tailing Tuohey had reported that about fifteen minutes ago he had abruptly changed course. Brendan had just arrived at St. Mary's, an hour late for his usual Mass. Amari had sent an agent into the clubhouse. The locker room attendant, who'd just come in, said Tuohey hadn't been out here for two weeks because of bursitis. Jim looked at us, his graying forelocks lifted from his brow on a breeze.

"We have a city cop sitting out here just waiting for him? And no Brendan? And Robbie ends up completely blown? We just fell through Tuohey's trapdoor." He looked away, trying to cope with the bitterness of getting beaten this way.

"Christ, this guy is smart," Stan said. He screwed up his face to absorb his own distress, then said something I'd never heard in the more than twenty-five years of our acquaintance. "This guy," he said, "is smarter than me."

At the door to Barnett Skolnick's modest house in suburban Chelsea, Sennett and his party, which included Evon, were greeted by a stout older woman. She wore an inexpensive housecoat, her nightdress trailing below with an uneven hem. Her old face, spotted and wrinkled, glistened with Vaseline or moisturizer. In her free hand she held a half-eaten chocolate bar.

Sennett introduced himself as the U.S. Attorney and pointed to the people behind him-Evon, Robbie, McManis, and Clevenger.