Scott Turow - Presumed innocent

"I think he's got it in the bag." In the last week, that is all you hear from coppers. They've never pretended to like Raymond.

"You can never tell. Maybe I'll crack this thing and save Raymond's ass."

"God come down from Sinai ain't gonna save him, the way I hear it. Downtown they say Bolcarro's coming out for Nico this afternoon."

I chew on that one. If Bolcarro endorses Nico six days before the election, then Raymond will be no more than a political memory.

Guerash enters. He looks like half the young men on the force, handsome in an old-fashioned way, with an erect bearing and a military order to his person. His shoes are spit-shined and the buttons on his jersey gleam. His hair is cleanly parted.

Kenneally addresses him.

"You remember this lady P.A. was out here-Polhemus?"

"Nice set of lungs," says Guerash.

Kenneally turns to me. "See, this kid's gonna make a copper. Never forgets a bra size."

"She the one that got it over by the riverside?" Guerash asks me.

I tell him she is. Kenneally continues with Guerash.

"Okay, Rusty here is the chief deputy P.A. He wants to know if she took anything when she come out here?"

"Not that I know of," says Guerash.

"What'd she look at?" I ask.

"She had one day where she wanted to see the bookings. She told me there'd be like sixty, seventy people booked on public indecency. We're talking back forever, eight, nine years ago, or something. Anyway, I hauled up the boxes, right here."

"How'd she come up with one day?"

"Beats me. She seemed to know what she was looking for. She just told me look for the day when there were the most arrests. So that's what I did. I mean, it must have took me a week to go through that crap. There were like five hundred arrests for 42's." A 42 is a public-indecency violation. One day. I think again about the letter. There was nothing in the file I saw that narrowed the time frame like that. Maybe Carolyn gave up before she started, figured she'd just do a sample.

"Did you find what she wanted?"

"I thought so. I called her back and she came out to see it. I left her with the stuff right here. She told me she didn't find nothin."

"Do you remember anything about what you showed her? Anything common about the arrests?"

"All in the Public Forest. All guys. I thought it was probably some demonstration or something. I don't know."

"Jesus," says Kenneally to Guerash in disgust. "For public indecency? This is the faggots, isn't it?" he asks me. "Back when Raymond got some balls for about a day and a half."

"Did she tell you anything about what she was looking for? A name? Anything?"

"She didn't even have a last name. Just a first. I wasn't real clear on whether she knew this guy or what." Guerash pauses. "Why do I think it had something to do with Christmas?"

"Noel? She gave you that name?"

Guerash snaps his fingers. "That's it."

"Not Leon?"

"No way. Noel. She told me she's looking for Noel LNU. I remember that because she wrote it down for me, and the Christmas thing went through my head."

"Can you show me what she saw?"

"Boy, I don't know. I think I put it away."

"Fat fuckin chance of that," says Kenneally. "I fuckin asked you three times. Here, help yourself."

He points us to the transfer cases in the corner.

When Guerash opens the first case he swears. He picks up a clutch of loose sheets lying on the top of the file folders.

"She wasn't real neat, I'll say that. These records were in nice order when I gave them to her." I would ask Guerash if he's sure, but there's no point. It's the kind of thing he would remember, and I can see the orderly ranks of the remaining records. Besides, that would be like Carolyn, to take records that other people have spent years maintaining and treat them like debris.

Guerash out of instinct begins to sort the booking sheets and bond slips, and I help. Kenneally pitches in, too. We stand around his desk, cursing Carolyn. Each booking jacket should contain a police report, an arrest card bearing the defendant's photo and fingerprints, a complaint, and a bond slip, but none of these sixty or seventy files is complete. Papers are missing from each and the sheets inside have been turned back to front, and at angles. The numerical order is gone.

Kenneally keeps saying cunt.

We are about five minutes along before the obvious strikes me-this disorder is not accidental. These papers have been shuffled.

"Who the hell has been at these boxes since Carolyn?" I ask Kenneally. "Nobody. They been sittin in the corner for four months, waitin for fuckhead here to put em back. Nobody but him and me even know they're here. Right?" he asks Guerash. Guerash agrees.

"Lionel," I ask, "do you know Tommy Molto?"

"Fuck yes, I know Tommy Molto. About half my life. Little fuck was a P.A. out here."

I knew that, if I had thought about it. Molto was notorious for his battles with the North Branch judges.

"Was he out here at the same time Carolyn was with probation?"

"Probably. Lemme think. Shit, Rusty, I don't keep a duty roster on these guys."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

Lionel ponders. "Three, four years. Maybe I run into him at a dinner or something. You know, he's all right. I see him, I talk. You know me."

"But he hasn't been looking at these records?"

"Hey," says Lionel, "watch my lips. You. Me. Guerash. Her. That's it."

When we are done sorting, Guerash goes through the files twice.

"One's missing, right?" I ask.

"We're missing a number," he says. "Could have been a mistake."

"You book sixty faggots, you don't exactly worry about keeping a perfect count," says Kenneally.

I ask Lionel, "But it could be that the file is gone?"

"That too."

"There would still be a court file, wouldn't there?" I ask. Kenneally looks at Guerash. Guerash looks at me. I write down the number. It should be on microfilm. Lipranzer will love doing this.

When Guerash is gone, I spend one more moment with Kenneally.

"You don't want to say what this is about maybe?" he asks.

"I can't, Lionel."

He nods. But I can tell it grates.

"Oh yeah," says Lionel, "those were funny old days around here. Lots of stories." His look lingers casually, just so I know that we both have our secrets.

Outside, there is real heat, 80 degrees. Pushing a record for April. In the car, I turn the radio to the news station. It's a live feed from the mayor's office. I just catch the tail end, but I hear enough of His Honor's blarney to get the drift. The P.A.'s office needs new blood, a new direction. The people want that. The people deserve that.

I am going to have to start looking for work.

Tee ball. In the waning light of the spring evening, play commences in the second-grade Fathers/Students League. The sky hangs low across the open field, a meadow of landfill laid over what was once a marsh, while Mrs. Strongineyer's Stingers idly occupy the diamond, boys and girls sporting windbreakers zipped to the collars and baseball gloves. Dads creep along the baselines calling instructions as the dusk gathers in. At the plate, a behemoth of an eight-year-old named Rocky circles his bat two or three times in the vicinity of the rag doll perched atop the long-necked rubber tee. Then, with an astounding concentration of power, he smashes the ball into outer space. It lands in left center, beyond the perimeter of the Stingers' shaky defense.

"Nathaniel!" I yell, along with many others. "Nat!" Only now he wakes. He reaches the ball a step ahead of an agile sprite named Molly, whose ponytail flows behind her baseball cap. Nat grabs it, whirls, and wings it-in a single motion. The ball travels in a tremendous arc back toward the infield and lands with a dead thump between shortstop and third, just as Rocky lopes across the plate. Following the local etiquette, I alone may scold my son, and so I stroll along the foul line, clapping my hands. "Wake up! Wake up out there." For Nat, I hold no fear. He shrugs, throws up his gloved hand, and displays the full range of his gap-toothed jack-o'-lantern smile, his new ragged-edged teeth still looking a little like candles stuck into a cake.