Scott Turow - Presumed innocent

And what do you want from me, Rusty? It was her turn now, looking dead into the mirror.

Something, I said.

Advice?

If that's all I can get.

She put her drink down on the bar. She put her hand down on my shoulder. She looked straight at me for the first time.

Grow up, she said, and walked away.

"And for a minute then," I said to Robinson, "I felt the most desperate wish that she were dead."

Around the office, Tommy Molto was nicknamed the Mad Monk. He is a former seminarian; five foot six inches if he is lucky, forty or fifty pounds overweight, badly pockmarked, nails bitten to the quick. A driven personality. The kind to stay up all night working on a brief, to go three months without taking off a weekend. A capable attorney, but he is burdened by a zealot's poverty of judgment. As a prosecutor, he always seemed to me to be trying to make facts rather than to understand them. He burns at too high a temperature to be worth much before a jury, but he made a good assistant to Nico-he has qualities of discipline that Della Guardia lacks. He and Delay go all the way back to grade school at St. Joe's. Dago society. Molto's one of the guys who were included before they were old enough to worry about who was cool. Tommy's personal life is a cipher. He is single and I've never seen him with a woman, which inspires the usual conjecture, but if I were to guess, I'd imagine he's still celibate. That singular intensity seems to have a subterranean source.

Tommy, as usual, is whispering to Nico, hotly when I come through the reception room. There's been a lot of rubbernecking in the office, file clerks and secretaries rushing to the receptionist's window to see what the new boss looks like. As if they could have forgotten in nine months. The TV crews followed Nico up here and did their takes of Nico and Tommy sitting in hard wooden chairs, waiting to meet with Horgan, but that is over now. The reporters have dispersed, and the two of them actually look somewhat forlorn when I come by. Nico does not even have his flower. I cannot resist giving it to Molto.

"Tommy Molto," I say. "We once had a guy of that name who worked here, but we think he might be dead. Keep those calls and letters coming, Tom." This joshing, which I intend in all good humor, seems not merely to fall flat but to inspire a look of horror. Molto's heavy brows knit and he actually appears to recoil when I offer my hand. I try to ease the moment by turning to Delay. He takes my hand, although he, too, seems somewhat reluctant to accept my congratulations.

"I will never say you did not tell me so," I admit.

Nico does not smile. In fact, he looks the other way. He is extremely ill at ease. I do not know if the campaign has left a wake of bitterness or if Delay, like so many of us, is simply scared to death now that he finally has what he so long wanted.

One thing I am certain of after this encounter: Nico will not be bidding to retain my services. I go so far as to call the file room and ask them to begin putting together some boxes. Late in the morning, I call Lipranzer's number at McGrath Hall. His phone, which is never answered when he's out, is picked up by someone whose voice I do not recognize.

"Dan Lipranzer?"

"Not in. Who is this, please?"

"When do you expect him?"

"Who is this?"

"No message," I say, before hanging up.

I knock on the adjoining door to see what Mac makes of all this. She's gone. When I ask Eugenia where, she tells me that Mac is in Raymond's office, meeting, as she puts it, "with Mr. Della Guardia." She has been there almost an hour, I stand next to Eugenia's desk, battling my own bitterness. All in all, this has not worked out. Nico is now Mr. Della Guardia. Mac is on his staff, until she takes the bench. Raymond is going to get rich. Tommy Molto has my job. And I'll be lucky if next month I can pay the mortgage.

I'm still standing by Eugenia, when the phone rings.

"Mr. Horgan wants to see you," she says.

In the face of all the stern rebukes I have given to myself while I was marching down the hallway, the juvenile rush of sensation I feel when I see Nico in the P.A.'s chair astonishes me. I am immobilized by anger, jealousy, and revulsion. Nico has assumed a perfect proprietary air. He has removed his suit coat and his face is gravely composed, an expression which I know Nico well enough to realize is completely affected. Tommy Motto is sitting beside him, his chair somehow dropped a few inches back into the room. It strikes me that Tommy has already mastered the art of being a toady.

Raymond motions for me to sit. He says that this is really Nico's meeting now, so he offered him the chair. Raymond himself is standing up beside his sofa. Mac has her chair wheeled up to the window and is looking out. She still has not greeted me, and I realize now, from her demeanor, that Mac wants to be nowhere near this scene. The old saw: harder for her than for me.

"We've made some decisions here," Raymond says. He turns to Della Guardia. Silence. Delay, in his first assignment as P.A., is word-struck. "Well, perhaps I should explain this first part," Raymond says. He is extremely grim. I know his forced expression well enough to realize that he is angry and laboring to remain composed. You can tell, just from the atmosphere, that there were bruises raised during the preceding meeting.

"I spoke last night with the mayor and told him that I had no desire to remain in office in light of the voters' preferences. He suggested to me that as long as I felt that way that I ought to talk it over with Nico to see if he wants to come on early. He does and so that's what's going to happen. With the County Board's concurrence, I'll be leaving Friday."

I can't help myself. "Friday!"

"It's a little faster than I would have thought myself, but there are certain factors-" Raymond stops. Something is precarious in his manner. He is struggling. Horgan straightens the papers on the coffee table. He drifts to the sideboard and looks for something else. He is having a miserable time. I decide to make it easy for everybody.

"I'll be taking off then, too," I say. Nico starts to speak and I interrupt. "You'll be better off with a fresh start, Delay."

"That's not what I was going to say." He stands. "I want you to know why Raymond is leaving so soon. There's going to be a criminal investigation of his staff. We have information-some of it came to us during the campaign, but we didn't want to get into that kind of gutter stuff. But we have information and we think there's a serious problem."

I am confused by Nico's apparent anger. I wonder if he is talking about the B file. Perhaps there's a reason for Molto's connection to that case.

"Here, let me butt in," Raymond says. "Rusty, I think the best way to deal with this is to be direct. Nico and Tom have raised some questions with me about the Polhemus investigation. They're not confident in the way you've handled it. And I've agreed now to step aside. They can examine that question in any way they think is best. That's a matter for their professional judgment. But Mac suggested-well, we all agreed-to make you aware of the situation."

I wait. The sense of alarm spreads through me before the instant of comprehension.

"I am under criminal investigation?" I laugh out loud.

From across the room Mac finally speaks. "Ain't funny, McGee," she says. There is no humor in her voice.

"This," I say, "is a crock. What did I supposedly do?"

"Rusty," Raymond says, "we do not need that kind of discussion now. Nico and Tom think that there are some things you should have spoken up about. That's all."

"That is not all," Molto says suddenly. His look is piercing. "I think you've been engaged in misdirection, hide the ball, ring around the rosy for almost a month now. You've been covering your ass."