Scott Turow: Presumed innocent

"We're looking for a bum. We don't need fucking Sherlock Holmes. Don't try to get ahead of the murder dicks. Keep your head down and walk in a straight line. Okay? Catch me a perpetrator and save my worthless ass." He smiles at me then, a warm, savvy look. Raymond wants me to know he is bearing up. Besides, there is no need to further emphasize the implications of catching Carolyn's killer. In his reported comments about Carolyn's death, Nico has been base and exploitative and relentless. 'The prosecuting attorney's lax approach to law enforcement for the last twelve years has made him the accomplice of the city's criminal elements. Even the members of his own staff are no longer safe, as this tragedy illustrates.' Nico has not explained how his own hiring by Raymond as a deputy P.A. more than a decade ago fit into Raymond's liaison with lawlessness. But it is not the politician's lot to explain. Besides, Nico has always been shameless in his public conduct. That is one thing that made him ripe for a political career. Ripe or not, Nico is widely expected to lose the primary, now eighteen days away. Raymond Horgan has wowed Kindle County's one and a half million registered voters for better than a decade. This year he is yet to win the party endorsement, but that is largely due to an ancient factional dispute with the mayor. Raymond's political people-a group that has never included me-believe that when the first of the public polls are published in the next week and a half, other party leaders will be able to force the mayor to reverse field, and that Raymond will be safe for another quadrennium. In this one-party town, victory in the primary is tantamount to election. Cody turns back from the front seat and mentions that it is getting close to one. Raymond nods absently. Cody takes this for assent and reaches below the dash to let the siren go. He uses it in two brief spells, almost like punctuation in the traffic, but the cars and trucks part neatly and the dark Buick noses ahead. The neighborhood here is still marginal-older shingle-sided houses, splintering porches. Kids with a kind of potato-y pallor play with balls and ropes at the edge of the street. I grew up about three blocks from here, in an apartment over my father's bakery. I recall them as dark years. During the day my mother and I, when I was not in school, helped my father in the shop. At night we stayed in one locked room while my father drank. There were no other children. The neighborhood today is not much different, still full of people like my father: Serbians, as he was; Ukrainians, Italians, Polesethnic types who keep their peace and their own dim outlook.

We are stopped dead in the heavy traffic of Friday afternoon. Cody has driven up the back end of a city bus, which emits its noxious fumes with an intestinal rumble. A Horgan campaign poster is right there, too, and Raymond looks out overhead, six feet wide, with the hapless expression of a TV talk-show host or the spokesman for some canned cat food. And I cannot help myself. Raymond Horgan is my future and my past. I have been a dozen years with him, years full of authentic loyalty and admiration.

I am his second-in-command, and his fall would be my own. But there is no silencing the voice of discontent; it has its own imperatives. And it speaks now to the image overhead in a sudden forthright way. You sap, it says. You are, it says, a sap.

As we turn down Third Street, I can see that the funeral has become an important event for the police department. Half the parked cars are black-and-whites, and there are cops in pairs and threes moving up and down the walks. Killing a prosecutor is only one step short of killing a cop, and whatever the institutional interests, Carolyn had many friends on the force-the sort of loyal lieges a good P.A. develops by appreciating skilled police work and making sure it is not squandered in court. Then, of course, there is the fact that she was a beautiful woman and one of modern temperament. Carolyn, we know, got around.

Nearer the chapel the traffic is hopelessly congested. We stutter only a few feet before waiting for the cars ahead to disgorge passengers. The vehicles of the very important limousines with official plates, press people looking for spaces nearby-clog the way with bovine indifference. The broadcast reporters in particular obey neither local ordinance nor the rules of common civility. The Minicam van of one of the stations, complete with its rooftop radar dish, is parked on the sidewalk directly in front of the open oak doors of the chapel, and a number of reporters are working the crowd as if they were at a prizefight, thrusting microphones at arriving officials.

"Afterward," Raymond says, as he bulls through the press horde that encircles the car as soon as we finally reach the curb. He explains that he is going to make some remarks in eulogy which he will repeat again outside. He pauses long enough to pet Stanley Rosenberg from Channel 5. Stanley, as usual, will get the first interview.

Paul Dry, from the mayor's staff, is motioning to me. His Honor, it seems, would like a word with Raymond before the service begins. I relay the message just as Horgan is pulling free of the reporters. He makes a face-unwisely, for Dry can certainly see it-before be walks off with Paul, disappearing into the gothic dark of the church. The mayor, Augustine Bolcarro, has the character of a tyrant. Ten years ago, when Raymond Horgan was the hot face in town, he almost ran Bolcarro out of office. Almost. Since losing that primary, Raymond has made all the appropriate gestures of fealty. But Bolcarro still feels the ache of his old wounds. Now that it is, at last, Raymond's turn to endure a contested primary, the mayor has claimed that his party role demands neutrality and he has designed to withhold the party's endorsement as well. Clearly he is enjoying watching Raymond struggle on his own toward shore. When Horgan finally hits the beach, Augie will be the first to greet him, saying he knew Raymond was a winner all along.

Inside, the pews are already largely occupied. At the front, the bier is ringed with flowers-lilies and white dahlias-and I imagine, notwithstanding all the bodies, a vague floral scent on the air. I make my way forward, nodding to various personages, and shaking hands. It is a heavyweight crowd: all the city and county pols. Most of the judges are here; most of the bright lights of the defense bar. A number of the leftish and feminist groups with whom Carolyn was sometimes aligned are also represented. The talk is appropriately low key, the expressions of shock and loss sincere. I back into Della Guardia, who is also working the crowd.

"Nico!" I shake his hand. He has a flower in his lapel, a habit he has acquired since becoming a candidate. He asks after my wife and son, but he does not await my answer. Instead, he assumes a sudden look of tragical sobriety and begins to speak of Carolyn's death.

"She was just-" He circles his hand for the word. I realize that the dashing candidate for prosecuting attorney aspires to poetry and I cut him off.

"She was splendid," I say, and am momentarily amazed by my sudden rush of sentiment, and the forte and speed with which it has wrenched itself from some hidden inner place.

"Splendid. That's it. Very good." Nico nods; then some mercurial shadow passes across his face. I know him well enough to recognize that he has found a thought which he believes is to his advantage. "I imagine Raymond's pressing pretty hard on that case."

"Raymond Horgan presses hard on every case. You know that."

"Oh ho. I always thought you were the one who was nonpolitical, Rusty. You're picking up your lines now from Raymond's copywriters."

"Better than yours, Delay." Nico acquired that nickname while we were both new deputy P.A.'s working in the appellate section. Nico never could complete a brief on time. John White, the old chief deputy, called him Unavoidable Delay Guardia.

Читать дальше