Scott Turow - Personal injuries

"I'll never live through this," he told Sennett when it was over. "Never. I'm a dead man. I'm totally a dead man."

"You'll survive, Judge. It's up to you to decide how hard this goes for you."

Skolnick issued a tiny disgusted sound. Even he wasn't stupid enough not to recognize the pitch.

"Sure." He pointed to Robbie. "I should be a schtoonk like him. Right? That's what you want to tell me, right? That's why you're in my house in the middle of the night." Sennett remained himself, calm and unrelenting. The Angel of Death. Skolnick was exactly where he wanted him. Already broken.

"You can help yourself. You can help yourself a great deal. A great deal. You have a lot to tell us. But I can't offer you the same opportunity later. Right now, tonight, you have to tell us everything and agree to help with the people we should be concerned about. We don't think you're the mastermind." Again, for the fleetest instant, a nasty grin played at the corners of Stan's mouth. "We know somebody put you in that courtroom. We know that not every dollar you receive remains with you. There's one name especially." Sennett sat down on Skolnick's new coffee table and, virtually knee to knee with the man, spoke in a low, intense tone.

"Judge," he said, "what can you tell us about Brendan Tuohey?"

Skolnick's mouth flapped around. "Tuohey?" he asked weakly.

"Judge, have you ever had occasion to deliver money to Brendan Tuohey personally or received instructions from him of any kind-explicit or implicit about how he wanted you to deal with a lawyer or a case?"

"Per-sonally?" He seemed astonished, even flattered by the notion. "I barely talk to the man. My brother, Maurice, you know, Knuckles, he talked to Tuohey. Me? I talk to his schmuck. Whatchamacallit. Kosic. I talk to Kosic. "

"But you do talk to Brendan Tuohey, you say, from time to time. You could have a conversation with him? You could try, for example, to ask his advice about how to deal with us, what to say?"

Skolnick's reddened eyes enlarged as he got the picture.

"With a jimjick on my stomach like him?" He pointed at Robbie. "Oh, sure," Skolnick moaned. "Sure. I'd be dead for sure. I'll have a bullet through my brain."

"This is the government of the United States," said Sennett. "No one's killing anybody here."

"Oh, right, hotshots. What, am I going to live with bodyguards and a nose job and a new name?"

"You'll be safe where you are. And afterwards your security can also be assured."

Afterwards. Skolnick's mouth fell open when he realized that Sennett was speaking about the penitentiary. He had not even considered that. He had been thinking about shame and scandal. Ugly gossip. About losing his judgeship and his pension. Now another intense spasm constricted his face. With a humbled moan, he fell again to uncontrollable tears.

"I think you should consider some other people," Sennett said. He pointed to the display shelves with the family photos.

"Ach!" remarked Skolnick in apparent rejection of Sennett's suggestions. He started to stand up, and it was only as his hand suddenly shot to his throat that Evon could see he was in trouble. His left leg came out from under him and he canted backwards at an oblique angle, lingering an instant, like a leaf in an updraft. Then gravity took hold and he tumbled heavily to the floor, his shoulder striking the arm of his new sofa and his hip flipping over the coffee table on which the court documents rested.

Everyone rushed toward him. He was conscious when they eased him to his side. He seemed able to respond, but for the fact that he was again overcome by weeping. He cried in great waves.

"Should we call 911?" Clevenger asked. It was only then that Skolnick spoke, getting to his knees and weakly waving a hand.

"Angina," he said in a wee voice. "I get light-headed. I'll take a pill. I just need some time. I need some time with this thing." McManis had him by an arm now and pulled him back up to the sofa. They all stood in a circle around him while the old man held his face in his hands and poured out tears.

Eventually McManis motioned to Sennett and Evon, and Tex came as well. They stood like the infielders around a manager and the pitcher at a tense spot in the late innings. The only one not part of the circle was Robbie, who'd taken a seat on the bottom tread of the stairwell, appearing far too blown out to absorb much.

"Stan," said McManis quietly, "if we keep this up, we'll croak this guy."

"For Godsake!" responded Sennett. Tomorrow, tonight, while the bad guys were all scrambling like ants after their nest was flattened, something might slip. Once they were organized, layered off by lawyers who'd share information and forbid the government to contact their clients, nothing of value would happen. "Give him a few minutes. He'll calm down." He asked Clevenger to get Skolnick water, but McManis detained Tex.

"Stan," said McManis slowly, "Stan, this is not our guy. He can't do Brendan. Not face-to-face. He never talks to him. Tuohey will see hin coming a million miles away. He'll do the three monkeys, the same way he did with Bobbie. And this guy won't be one-tenth as good as Feaver. It could be the Titanic. By the time Tuohey's done with him he'll have Skolnick swearing Brendan didn't know anything "

Sennett stared bitterly into a comer of the room.

"Stan," said McManis quietly, "this guy can testify. We can make him a witness. Let's preserve that possibility. Let's not kill him tonight."

"Shit," said Sennett. He thought another moment, then gave in with one of his unpredictably ugly remarks. "I suppose that's not the first headline we want to make." Skolnick in the meantime seemed to have made up his own mind. He was wandering drunkenly toward the narrow, paneled stairwell.

"I can't do this. Not now." He wobbled and braced himself, applying both hands to the walls. His wedding band glistened under the basement track lights and seemed to attract his attention. "Oh God, Molly," he said. He took the first step and wavered again, clearly on the brink of collapse. Robbie, who was nearest him, reached Skolnick before he could go down. He threw an arm around the old man and, once the judge was righted, helped him up the first stair.

"One at a time, Barney," Robbie said. "One at a time. Let's just take it slow." With their arms entwined, they slowly made their way up together.

Sherm Crowthers lived in Assembly Point, a spit of land jutting into the Kindle River which had been the site of a French fortress in the pre-Colonial days and of various tanning facilities when the city was first settled. By the 1930s, as barge traffic diminished, it had become the most prominent enclave of Kindle County's small black middle class. After the Second World War, some pioneering residents who were not afraid to mix-or to bear what inevitably went with it-moved to University Park, one of the first integrated neighborhoods in the United States. Later, there was some exodus to other areas of the city which had become more welcoming. Recently, a strange transformation had started in Assembly Point, with younger white and Asian families buying houses here, prompting outcries from some long-term residents that the Point was losing its `unique character.'

For African Americans, however, Assembly Point retained a special significance. Many had been raised within earshot of envious conversations about the Point, the better life lived there, and the events-the country club golf, the debutante balls-that were otherwise alien to African American life. A large number of black folks of means still refused to consider residing anywhere else.

Sherm Crowthers was one of them. His house on Broadberry was a mammoth redbrick Georgian, replete with white columns that supported a portico three stories above the circular drive. When Evon and the rest of Sennett's company arrived, it was only a few minutes shy of midnight, but Stan and McManis had agreed to proceed. Not only timing, but tactics, compelled them. They wanted these men at home unaware and literally undressed, in the bosom of their families, close to the comforts from which they would be exiled in the penitentiary. This was one of many hardball maneuvers Stan had learned while he was at the Justice Department in D.C., supervising prosecutors around the country. After indictment, Stan loved to swoop down on white-collar defendants-presumed innocent by lawand lead them off in handcuffs before waiting cameras. He called it a deterrent. Despite the howls of protests arising from the defense bar-me included-the Court of Appeals continued to tolerate these harsh techniques as if they were wartime necessities.