Scott Turow - Presumed innocent

I don't think so.

You don't?

No.

Ah, I said.

Still smiling wonderfully, she put her arm through mine and moved me back down the street.

The jury returned a little before 7:00. Guilty on all counts. Raymond had remained in the office awaiting the verdict, and he came downstairs with us to meet the press, cameras not being allowed above the lobby of the County Building. Then he took us out for a drink. He had a date, and so around 8:30 he left us in a back booth at Caballero's, where Carolyn and I talked and became drunk and moony. I told her that she had been magnificent. Magnificent. I don't know how many times I said that.

TV and the movies have spoiled the most intimate moments of our lives. They have given us conventions which dominate our expectations in instants whose intensity would ordinarily make them spontaneous and unique. We have conventions of grief, which we learned from the Kennedys, and ordained gestures for victory by which we imitate the athletes we see on the tube, who in turn have learned the same things from other jocks they saw on TV. Seduction, too, has got its standards now, its slow-eyed moments, its breathless repartee.

And so we both ended up coming on smooth and wry and bravely composed, like all those gorgeous, poised movie-time couples, probably because we had no other idea of how to behave. And even so, there was a gathering in the air, a racing current that made it difficult to sit in place, to move my mouth or lift my glass to drink. I don't believe we ordered dinner, but we had the menus, something to stare at, like coquettes with their silk fans. Beneath the table Carolyn's hand was laid out casually, very close to my hip.

I didn't know you when this started.

What? she asks. We are close on the plush bench, but she must lean a bit nearer because I am speaking so softly. I can smell the liquor on her breath.

I didn't know you before this case, before this started. That amazes me.

Because?

Because it just doesn't seem that way now that I didn't know you. Do you know me now?

Better. I think so. Don't you?

Maybe, she says. Maybe what it is, is that now you know you want to get to know me.

That's possible, I say, and she repeats it:

That's possible.

And will I get to know you?

That's possible, too, she says. If that's what you want. I think that is, I say.

I think that's one thing, she says, that you want.

One thing?

One thing, she says. She brings her glass up to drink without looking away from me. Our faces are not very far apart at all. When she puts her glass down, the large bow on her blouse almost brushes my chin. Her face seems coarse with too much makeup, but her eyes are deep and spectacularly bright, and the air is wild with cosmetic scents, perfume, and body emanations from our closeness. It seems as if our talk has been drifting like this, circling languorously, like a hawk over the hills, for hours.

What else do I want? I ask.

I think you know, she says.

I do?

I think you do.

I think I do, I say. But there's one thing I still don't know.

There is?

I don't quite know how to get it-what I want.

You don't? Not quite. Not quite?

I really don't.

Her smile, so arch and delicately contained, now broadens, and she says, Just reach.

Reach?

Just reach, she says.

Right now?

Just reach.

The air between us seems so full of feeling that it is almost like a haze. Slowly I extend my hand and find the smooth edge of her bright satin bow. I do not quite touch her breast in doing that. And then, without turning my eyes away from hers, I gradually tug on that wide ribbon. It slides perfectly, and the knot breaks open so that the button at her blouse collar is exposed, and at just that moment, I feel Carolyn's hand fluttering up beneath the table like some bird and one long fingernail skates for an instant down my aching bulge. I almost scream, but instead, it all comes down to a shudder, and Carolyn says quietly that we should get a cab. "So," I said to Robinson, "that was how my affair began. I took her back to her fashionable loft and made love to her on the soft Greek rugs. I just grabbed her the minute she set the bolt in her front door, hiked her skirt up with one hand, and put the other down her blouse. Very suave. I came like lightning. And afterward, I lay on top of her, surveying the room, the teak and walnut and the crystal figurines, thinking how much it looked like the show window of some tony shop downtown and wondering in this idle way what in the fuck I was doing with my life, or even in a life where the culmination of a long-cultivated passion passed so quickly that I could hardly believe it had happened at all. But there was not a lot of time to think about that, because we had a drink, and then went to her bedroom to watch the story about our case on the late news and by then I was capable again, and then, that time, when I reared up over her, I knew I was lost."

"Whatever I can do for you, Rusty. Anything you need."

So says Lou Balistrieri, the police department's Commander of Special Services. I am sitting in his office in McGrath Hall, where the P.D.'s central operating sections are housed. I can't tell you how many Lous there are over here, fifty-five year-old guys with gray hair and guts that hang on them like saddlebags, phlegmy voices from smoking. A gifted bureaucrat, ruthless with any person in his employ and a shameless toady to anyone, like me, who has sufficient power to harm him. He is on the phone now, calling down to the crime lab, which is under his control.

"Morris, this is Balistrieri. Get me Dickerman. Yeah, now. If he's in the can, go in there and get him off. Yeah." Balistrieri winks at me. He was a street cop for twenty years, but he works now without a uniform. His rayon shirt is sweated through under the arms. "Dickerman, yeah. On this Polhemus thing. Rusty Sabich is over here with me. Yeah, Sabich. Sabich, for Chrissake. Right, Horgan's guy. Chief deputy. We got a glass or something. Yeah, I know there latents, I know, that's why I'm calling you. Whatta you think? Right, I'm a big dumb gumba. Right, and don't fuckin forget it. This big dumb gumba can send you home with your nuts in a paper bag. Right. Right. But why I'm calling is this. Can't we do a computer scan with that laser thing against our knowns? Yeah, you got three good prints there, right? So get what you need and run them through the computer and let's figure out if they're anyone we know. I hear the cop on the case has been asking for ten days now you should do this. Murphy? Yeah, which one?

Leo or Henry? Because Henry is a horse's ass. Good. Well, tell him to un-onload it. Don't give me the computer crap, I don't understand that shit anyway. No. No. Not good enough. All right. Call me back. Ten minutes. Ten. Let's figure this thing out."

The problem, as it gradually emerges, is not equipment but the fact that the computer is under another section's jurisdiction. The department owns only one machine, and the people who do things like payroll believe it should be regarded as theirs alone.

"Right. I'll ask. I'll ask," says Balistrieri when he gets the return call. He covers the receiver. "They want to know how big a field you want to run against. We can do all felons or all knowns in the county. You know, everybody who's ever been printed. County employees. Shit like that."

I pause. "Felons is probably enough. I can do the rest later if we ever need it."

Balistrieri makes a face. "Do it all. God knows if I can get back on." He takes his hand away before I get a chance to answer. "Do all of it. Yeah. How soon? What the fuck is gonna take a week? This man's runnin the biggest murder case in the city and he's got to kiss your ring? Well, fuck Murphy's statistical analysis. Yeah. Tell him I said so. Right." He puts the phone down. "A week, probably ten days. They gotta get the payroll out, then the chief needs some statistics for the LEAK'-Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. "I'll push, but I doubt you'll see it any sooner. And have your copper get the glass back out of evidence and bring it to the lab, case they need it for anything."