Scott Turow - Personal injuries

"Brendan, you're not impressing me with this routine. I'm not wearing my electronic underwear anymore. Some big boy stole my toy." With that, Robbie stepped over the side of the fountain and into the low retaining pool. It was only knee-deep, but, looking in Tuohey's direction, he flopped down for a second into the frothing basin, then spun up like a dog, shaking off water in long silvery spangles. Feaver extended both arms laterally to demonstrate the lack of telltale bulges in his clinging garments. The temperature still hadn't reached much over fifty and Feaver eventually drew his arms back, encircling himself in the chill. His designer sweater now hung to his thighs and he still hadn't left the pool.

Tuohey watched him with his mouth pulled to the side. puzzling it through.

"You're a dramatic fellow, Robbie. I'll give you that. Master of the scene. I remember you, six years old and singing show tunes like your front stoop was Broadway. Only it wasn't, was it?"

"No, Brendan, I'm not in a Broadway musical. But neither are you. It seems kind of shitty that only one of us is going to the can."

Tuohey took his time, assessing this bitter reassurance and the mood in which it had been offered. Robbie was doing a great job of punching his buttons, and in the whirlwind of feelings, Tuohey had drifted a few steps but was unable to make himself simply walk away.

"You've always lacked perspective, Robbie. You've had blood in your eye whenever you heard my name since you were nine years old, lad. You never much cared for the way I'd take your Maine out on that sleeping porch in your apartment and give her a recreational screw on Sunday night. But you know, Robbie, mother or not, the woman had her needs. I've always realized what the burr was under your saddle when it came to me. And been good to you a hundred times over, ever since. For her sake. And yours. Not that it made an acorn of difference to you." The rage, so rarely near the surface with him, boiled over again as he pondered Robbie, still up to his knees in the turning water. "Just a mercy fuck now and then for a horny divorcee, and look what it's come to. Can you imagine? And a dead fuck, at that."

Having driven the nail in as far as he could, Tuohey turned in the direction where Evon was seated and swept by her and Feaver, without a glance at either of them. Bobbie hopped out of the fountain. He was tightly bound in his arms and bent nearly double in the cold, but he wasn't finished. He called Tuohey by his first name.

The judge paused to deliberate, but remained unable to resist the contest and turned halfway.

"Pity about Rollo," Robbie said. Across the short distance that separated the two men on the plaza, Evon half expected the sizzle of a high-voltage arc. It was even now. They'd each trampled on the other's grave, but Robbie had one more shot, purely for vengeance. Apparently, he was well past the point of calculation. "You just remember, Brendan, while you're out in the free air, that the big difference between you and me is that I looked after my best friend."

He'd struck Tuohey dumb with that, much as intended. A victor of kinds, Feaver sprinted the twenty or so yards to Skolnick's Lincoln in a metered space at the curb. Klecker had not recovered the key from him, and Robbie slid inside. He was not thinking about much, he told me later, besides getting out of the cold and turning on the heater full blast.

Evon approached Klecker on the other side of the fountain. "Whoa," Alf suddenly said. Wheeling, she caught sight of Tuohey, hiking rapidly back toward Robbie and the Lincoln. She began running, but Tuohey was already motioning for Robbie to roll down the window. If Tuohey went to the briefcase, she realized she'd have to draw on him, but instead the judge set the case on the curbside and briefly poked his gray head inside the car. He reached in with one arm. When he turned back to the courthouse, there was a discernible spring in his walk.

Whatever Tuohey had said, it had troubled Feaver. He shook his head dumbly when she asked for an account. In the meantime, Amari, in his cowboy boots and his sportcoat, had come dashing across the avenue to the car. Joe, who was far more intense than McManis but generally as contained, was rattling both hands in the air.

"You're the greatest c.i. I ever worked with," Amari cried. He grabbed Feaver by both shoulders through the lowered window. "The sharpest. The best. Definitely the best." After a moment, she understood. Once Robbie had jumped in the Lincoln and turned the ignition, the camera had revived. Amari had been able to start the taping system, capturing the interlude when Tuohey leaned into the auto. "If I saw what I think," said Amari, "you just bagged this guy."

All four of them rushed back down the block to the surveillance van. Alf cued the tape, and the image of Robbie in his wet clothes resolved out of the jumble between scenes. He had one arm around himself as he rocked back and forth on the red leather of Skolnick's auto. He was fiddling with the heater controls when he suddenly started in response to Tuohey's motions offscreen. Robbie groped for a second before he found the chrome button to lower the automatic window. From the way he drew back, it was clear that Tuohey had leaned in, but he wasn't fully visible. Only the top of his gray head and his gnarly hand appeared within the frame. Out of the wind, though, his voice was clear as he pointed.

"Speaking of your best pal, Robbie," he said, "when Morton came to warn me on Tuesday about what you were up to, I left him with a message for you. Mind now, Bobbie. So many tongues are wagging about you, you might get confused. So I want you to remember, when you get this, that it came from me." On the screen beside Feaver, Tuohey rotated the hand with which he'd been pointing. His thumb suddenly came up. With the extended index finger it had the form of the imaginary pistol little boys forever point at each other. And then, to remove any ambiguity, Brendan, in a bare second, let his long thumb fall like a firing hammer and his hand jump in recoil.

"He's threatening you," said Meeker. "My God, we have him on tape threatening a federal witness!"

"I'm telling you," said Amari. "It's a dead-bang obstruction."

Amari and Klecker cuffed each other, then Alf shook Evon. Klecker started for Robbie, but Feaver had already gotten up to rewind. He wanted to see it again. He replayed the tape, standing right near the screen so he could listen, and then rewound and replayed it once more. By the third time, it was clear which line of Tuohey's he was recuing. `When Morton came to warn me on Tuesday about what you were up to…' She was baffled herself about what it meant.

Alf hailed her up front so they could all call McManis together.

"Off the skyscraper, through the window, off the scoreboard, nothing but net," said Jim. He permitted himself a single giddy laugh.

They had yet to remove the camera from the Lincoln's roof. They drove both vehicles to the federal building, where the entire company, save Robbie, left the van and worked with two evidence techs to extract the equipment without any permanent damage to the auto. Then they returned to the LeSueur, where, they'd been told, a substantial audience was already gathering to watch the tape.

Robbie was too cold to come along, preferring to get into a change of clothes he kept in the office. For his protection, Evon accompanied him up. This morning, there had been frantic calls from the office about TV crews parked in reception, but building security had routed them by now. Two rent-a-cops were guarding the door.

This was the first look any of his employees had gotten of Robbie since the news broke, and he strolled through the overdecorated corridors of his own office to a remarkable silence, deepened both by his bedraggled appearance and by the presence of Evon, who seemed to vacillate between friend and foe on an hourly basis. Outside his door, Bonita, looking a bit bleary, shook her dark tresses.