Scott Turow - Presumed innocent

Painless is smiling hugely, and without generosity, when I look up again.

"We're saying this woman used contraception?" I ask.

"Not sayin. She did. Contraceptive jelly. Two percent concentration. Cellulose gum base. Used with diaphragm."

"Diaphragm?" I am extremely slow. "You missed a diaphragm during an autopsy."

"Fuckin no!" Painless hits his desk. He laughs at me out loud. "You been in autopsy, Savage. Slice her right open. No diaphragm in that lady."

More time. Painless smiles and I watch him. I'll bite.

"Where'd it go?"

"My guess?"

"Please."

"Somebody took it."

"The cops?"

"Coppers ain't that dumb."

"Who?"

"Look, Mr. Savage. Ain't coppers. Ain't me. Gotta be the guy."

"The killer?"

"Fuckin-A right."

I pick up the report to read it again. When I do, I notice something else, and our conversation suddenly comes clear. I try to steady myself, but my temper is rising. I can feel the heat all the way to my ears. Perhaps Painless can see that, because after baiting me for ten minutes, he finally levels. He probably figures that sooner or later I would get it anyway.

"You want to know what I think? I think it's a setup. This man who kills her is her lover. He comes over. Has drinks. This lady has intercourse with man, okay? Real nice. But he's angry guy. Picks up somethin, kills her, tries to make it look like rape. Ties her up. Pulls out diaphragm. That's what I think."

"What does Tommy Molto think?" I ask him.

Painless Kumagai, the sadistic little shit, has finally been cornered. He smiles insipidly and tries to laugh. 'Laugh' is actually not the right word. He wheezes. His mouth moves but he does not speak.

I hand him the report back, which, I notice in passing, is dated five days ago. I point out his own handwritten note at the top. It says: "Molto 762-2225."

"Don't you want to copy this down, make sure you can reach Molto when you need him?"

Painless is gaining speed again. "Oh, Tommy." He does better at seeming genial. "Good guy. Good guy."

"How's he doing?"

"Oh, good, good."

"Tell him to give us a call sometime. Maybe I can find out what's happening in my own fucking investigation." I stand up. I point at Kumagai. I call him by the name I know he detests. "Painless, you tell Molto and Nico, too, that this is cheap. Cheap politics. And cheap police department bullshit. God better help them and you, that I can't make a case for tampering." I snatch the report from Painless's hand and leave without waiting for an answer. My heart is hammering and my arms are weak with rage. Raymond, of course, is not in when I get back to the County Building, but I tell Loretta to have him reach me, it is urgent. I look for Mac, but she, too, is elsewhere. I sit in my office and brood. Oh, how fucking clever. Everything we asked for. And nothing more. Give the results-but not the opinion. Call when the forensic chemist reports, but don't mention what it says. Let us run as long as possible in the wrong direction. And in the meantime, leak every goddamn thing you know to Molto. That's the part that gets me worst. God, I think politics is dirty. And the police department is dirtier. The Medici did not live in a world fuller of intrigue. Every secret allegiance in the community comes to bear there. To the alderman and your bookie and your girlfriend. To in-laws, your no-account brother, the guy from the hardware store who has always cut you a deal on screws. To the rookie you have to look out for, the junkie whose base sincerity gets to you, or the snitch you've got to watch. To the licensing inspector who helped out your uncle, or to the lieutenant who you figure has got an in with Bolcarro and is going to make captain soon and maybe more. Your lodge brother, your neighbor, the guy on the beat who's just a plain good sod. Every one of them needs a break. And you give it. In a big-city police department, at least in Kindle County, there is no such thing as playing by the book. The book got trashed many years ago. Instead, all two thousand guys in blue play it for their own team. Painless was simply playing it like everybody else. Maybe Nico told him he could make him coroner.

My phone rings. Mac. I go through the connecting door.

"Well," I tell her, "we finally know what Tommy Molto is up to."

As I am leaving for the evening, I see lights on in Raymond's office. It is nearly 9 p.m. and my first thought is that someone is visiting who should not be. My encounter with Kumagai three days ago has left me edgy and suspicious, and I am actually somewhat surprised when I see Raymond at his desk, staring at what seems to be a computer run, and looking uncharacteristically at ease behind the wastrel fog of his pipe. At this point in the campaign this is a rare sight. Raymond is a hardworking lawyer and there have always been late nights when he was here with the stacks of prosecution reports, or indictments, or at least an upcoming speech; but with his job up for sale, most of his evenings lately are spent on the stump. When he's here, Larren and the other moguls of his campaign are with him, plotting. This moment is sufficiently unusual to be taken as private, and so I let two knuckles graze the old oak door as I am passing in.

"Tea leaves?" I ask.

"Sort of," he says, "but a lot more accurate. Unfortunately." He adopts a public tone: "The Channel 3-Tribune poll shows challenger Nico Della Guardia leading incumbent Raymond Horgan, with eight days remaining in the campaign."

My reaction is succinct: "Bullshit."

"Read it and weep." He shoves the computer run in my direction. I can't make anything of the grid of figures.

"The bottom line," says Raymond.

"'U' is undecided?" I ask. "Forty-three, thirty-nine. Eighteen percent undecided. You're still in it."

"I'm the incumbent. Once the public realizes that Delay's got a chance, they'll head his way. The new face is a showstopper in a primary." Raymond's political wisdom is usually Delphic, particularly since it represents not only his insights but Mike's and Larren's as well. Nonetheless, I try to remain upbeat.

"You've had a bad couple of weeks. Nico's played Carolyn's murder real well. You'll come back. You've just gotta let him have it. What's the margin of error on this thing, anyway?"

"Well, fortunately or unfortunately for me, it's 4 percent." Mike Duke, he tells me, is over at the TV station trying to convince them that their story should pitch the poll as reflecting a neck-and-neck race. Larren, dispatched to do the same job with the newspaper, has already gotten an agreement from the editors there, contingent on Channel 3's position. "The paper's not contradicting the TV station on the interpretation of a joint poll," Raymond explains. He puffs his pipe. "And my bet is that's the way it'll run. They'll throw me the bone. But what's the point? The numbers are the numbers. Everybody in town will smell the odor of dead meat."

"What do your own numbers look like?"

"They're crap," Raymond tells me. The campaign hasn't had the money to do a decent job. This poll is the work of a national outfit. Everybody-Larren, Mike, Raymond himself-had the impression that the situation wasn't quite this bad, but nobody can dispute it.

"You're probably right on Carolyn," he says. "it hurt. But it's the whole loss of momentum." Raymond Horgan puts down his pipe and looks straight at me. "We're gonna lose, Rusty. You heard it here first."

I look at the worn face of Raymond Horgan, my old idol, my leader. His hands are folded. He is in repose. Twelve and a half years after he got started talking about revolutionizing the idea of law enforcement, and a year too late for the best interests of us both, Raymond Horgan has finally pulled the plug. It is now all someone else's problem. And to the little incubus that argues that principles and issues are involved, there is, after twelve years, an exhausted man's reply. Ideas and principles are not foremost here. Not when you do not have the jails to hold the crooks you catch, or enough courtrooms to try them; not when the judge who hears the case is too often some hack who went to night law school because his brother already had filled the one slot available in their father's insurance agency, and who achieved his appointment by virtue of thirty years' loyal precinct work. In the administration of Nico Della Guardia there will be the same imperatives, no matter what he's saying on his TV spots: too many crimes and no sensible way to deal with them, too few lawyers, too many calls for political favors, too much misery, and too much evil that will keep on happening no matter what the ideals and principles of the prosecuting attorney. He can have his turn. Raymond's ease at the abyss becomes my own.