Scott Turow - Presumed innocent

Like me, like Nat, she was an only child, and she felt oppressed by her upbringing. Her parents' attentions had been suffocating and, she felt, in some ways false. She claimed to have been directed, used at all times as an instrument of their wishes, not her own. She told me often that I was the only person she had met who was like her-not just lonely, but always, previously, alone. Is it the sad reciprocity of love that you always want what you think you are giving? Barbara hoped I would be like some fairy-tale prince, a toad she had transformed with her caresses, who could enter the gloomy woods where she was held captive and lead her away from the encircling demons. Over the years I have so often failed in that assignment.

The atomized life of the restaurant spins on about us. At separate tables, couples talk; the late-shift workers dine alone; the waitresses pour coffee. And here sits Rusty Sabich, thirty-nine years old, full of lifelong burdens and workaday fatigue. I tell my son to drink his milk. I nibble at my burger. Three feet away is the woman whom I have said I've loved for nearly twenty years, making her best efforts to ignore me. I understand that at moments she feels disappointed. I understand at times she is bereft. I understand. I understand. That is my gift. But I have no ability to do anything about it. It is not simply the routines of adult life which sap my strength. In me, some human commodity is lacking. And we can only be who we can be. I have my own history; memories; the unsolved maze of my own self, where I am so often lost. I hear Barbara's inner clamor; I understand her need. But I can answer only with stillness and lament. Too much of me-too much! I must be preserved for the monumental task of being Rusty.

Election Day the weather is bright. Last night, when I sat in Raymond's office, with Mike Duke and Larren and Horgan, they thought that good weather would help. Now that the party belongs to Della Guardia, Raymond needs the voters who are inspired by their candidate rather than the precinct captain's wishes. The last week has been an odd lesson. Every time there's a negative development, you say it's hopeless. Then you look ahead. In Raymond's office last night, they were still talking about winning. The last poll, sponsored again by the paper and Channel 3, was taken the day of Bolcarro's endorsement and showed Raymond only five points back. Duke said that he believes things have improved since then, that Raymond seems to have gained some of his old momentum by being the underdog. We sat there, four grown men, acting as if it could be true.

At work, as ever, Election Day brings a loose feeling, all at ends. The employees of the prosecuting attorney's office, once a group of wardheelers and hacks, have been discouraged throughout Raymond's tenure from active political involvement. Gone are the days of deputies selling tickets in the courtrooms to the P.A.'s campaign outings; in twelve years, Raymond Horgan has never solicited a dime in donations, or even a minute of campaign help, from the members of his staff. Nonetheless, many of the administrative employees who came on before Raymond was elected have continuing political obligations to the party sponsors who secured employment for them. As part of the uneasy compact struck a decade ago with Bolcarro, Raymond agreed to give most of the P.A.'s staff Election Day off. That way the party types can do the party thing: knock on doors, distribute leaflets, drive the elderly, watch the polls. This year they will be doing that for Nico Della Guardia. For the rest of us, there are no established obligations. I am in the office most of the day, first mate at the helm of this sinking ship. A few others are around, mostly lawyers working on briefs or trials, or clearing up their desks. About two dozen younger deputies have been delegated to work with the U.S. Attorney's office on a vote-fraud patrol. This generally involves responding to junk complaints: a voting machine won't work; someone's got a gun in the polling place; an election judge is wearing a campaign button, or over counseling elderly voters. I receive occasional updates by phone and answer press calls in which I dutifully report that there is no sign of tampering with the democratic process. Around 4:30, I get a call from Lipranzer. Somebody's propped up a TV set in the hallway, right outside my door, but there is nothing to report. The polls won't close for another hour and a half. The early news is just happy-talk stuff about the heavy turnout.

"He lost," Lip tells me. "My guy at Channel 3 saw their exit polls. He says Nico's gonna win by eight, ten points, if the pattern holds." Again my heart plunges, my gut constricts. Funny, but this time I really believe it. I look out the window toward the columns of the courthouse, the flat tarred roofs of the other downtown buildings, the rippled black waters of the river, which turns, like an elbow, two blocks away. My office has been an the same side of this building for almost seven years now, yet the sight does not quite seem familiar.

"Nothing," Lip says. "Just thought I'd let you know." He waits. "We still workin on Polhemus?"

"You have something better to do?"

"No," he says, "no. They come down here today to get all my reports. For Morano." The police chief. "He wants to look em over."

"So?"

"Struck me strange. You know. His mother-in-law got stuck up at gunpoint three years ago, I don't think he looked at the reports."

"You'd understand that," I say, "if you had a mother-in-law." Lip takes my humor as intended: an offering, an apology for my impatience a moment before. "They're just trying to make sure Nico's briefed. Which is a joke," I say. "Molto's probably been getting copies of the police reports from the steno pool."

"Probably. I don't know. Somethin didn't sit right. Schmidt come in here himself. Real serious. You know. Like someone shot the President."

"They just want to look good."

"I guess. I'm goin over to the North Branch courthouse to finish up on those court files," Lip says, referring to the records we have been looking for since my visit to the 32nd District. "They promised they'd have the microfilm from the warehouse before five. I want to get there before they send it back. Where are you tonight in case I come up with somethin?"

I tell him I'll be around Raymond's party, somewhere in the hotel. It's beside the point by now to rush back with investigative results, but Lip says he'll be stopping in anyway, more or less to pay his respects.

"The Irish," Lip says, "always run a real fine wake."

Lipranzer's estimate proves accurate. The band plays loud. The young girls who are always here are still full of that soft glow of eventfulness, with banners across their chests and campaign boaters balanced neatly on their hairdos. HORGAN! everything says in lime-green Gaelic script. In the front, at either side of the unoccupied speakers' platform, two ten-foot enlargements of The Picture stand. I drift around the ballroom, spearing meatballs and feeling bad.

Around 7:30, I go up to Raymond's suite on the fifth floor. Various people from the campaign are moving through the rooms. There are three trays of cold cuts and some liquor bottles on one of the dressers, but I decline the invitation to consume. There must be ten phones in these three rooms, all of them ringing.

All three local TV stations have projected Della Guardia the winner by now. Larren-Judge Lyttle-comes by with a tumbler of bourbon in his hand, grumbling about the exit polls.

"First time," he says, "I've seen a body pronounced dead before it hit the floor."

Raymond, however, is sanguine. He is seated in one of the interior bedrooms, watching television and talking on the phone. When he sees me he puts the phone down and comes to hug me. "Rozat," he says, my given name. I know that this gesture has probably been repeated with a dozen other people this evening, but I find myself deeply grateful and stirred to be included in the grieving family.