Scott Turow - Presumed innocent

"What would you say if I told you that Carolyn seems to have had something to do with a case on which a deputy P.A. was bribed? And the P.A. on the case was Tommy Molto?"

Sandy takes a very long time with this, his look tightly drawn.

"Please explain."

I tell him in a few moments about the B file. These are, I explain, grand-jury secrets. Until now, I have preferred to keep them to myself.

"And your investigations led where?"

"Nowhere. It stopped the day I left."

"We must find some way to continue. I would suggest an investigator ordinarily. Perhaps you have some other idea." Sandy puts out his cigar. He grinds the stub down carefully and looks at it an instant reverentially. He sighs, before he stands to put on his coat. "To attack the prosecutor, Rusty, is a tactic that is almost always pleasing to the client, and seldom convincing to a jury. These matters I mentioned before-your political opposition to Della Guardia, your firing of him-are items that will tarnish him, diminish his credibility. They will help us explain the prosecutor's zeal to accuse on insufficient evidence. But before we venture down the road to actual accusation, we must consider the matter very carefully. Successes by suggesting sinister motives in the state are, as you well know, quite rare."

"I understand," I say. "I wanted you to know," I tell him.

"Of course. And I appreciate that."

"It's just," I tell him, "that's the way I feel. That it isn't a coincidence it lays out this way. I mean," and now, on sudden impulse, I finally bring myself to say what vestigial pride has so long prevented: "Sandy, I'm innocent."

Stern reaches over and, as only he could do, pats me on the hand. He has a look of deep, if practiced, sadness. And as I meet this brown-eyed spaniel expression I realize that Alejandro Stern, one of this town's finest defense lawyers, has heard these ardent proclamations of innocence too many times before.

At ten minutes to two Jamie and I meet Barbara at the corner of Grand and Filer and advance with her to the courthouse. The press horde is waiting for us on the steps beneath the columns. I know a back entrance through the heating and cooling plant, but I figure I can use that trick only once, and I have had the dismal thought that there may come another day when I am particularly eager to avoid this clawing mass, with their halogen lights, their boom mikes, their shoving and their shouting. For the moment, I am content to push my way through, saying, No comment.

Stanley Rosenberg from Channel 5, splendidly handsome except for particularly prominent front teeth, is the first to reach us. He has left his camera person and sound crew behind and approaches me alone, walking beside us. We address each other by first names.

"Any chance you'll do something on camera?"

"None," I answer.

Kemp already is trying to intervene, but I hold him off as we continue walking.

"If you change your mind, will be promise to call me first?"

"Not now," Jamie says, and lays his hand on Stanley's sleeve. Stanley to his credit maintains his good humor. He introduces himself and makes his pitch to Kemp instead. Right before the trial, Rosenberg says, a broadcast interview with Rusty would be good for everybody. Stern will never let me make statements to anyone, but Kemp, as we approach the steps and the waiting crowd of cameras, lights, and microphones, says merely, "We'll think about it." Stanley remains behind as we start up, Kemp and I flanking Barbara, more or less boosting her by the elbows as we shove our way through.

"What do you think about the fact that Raymond Horgan is going to testify against you?" Stanley shouts as we are parting.

I pivot quickly. Stanley's bad teeth are fully revealed. He knew he'd get me with that one. Where does that come from, I wonder. Stanley may have made assumptions upon reading the court file where Nico's witness list was filed. But Rosenberg has long-term connections to Raymond, and instinct tells me that he would not use Horgan's name loosely.

The cameras are barred by judicial order inside the courthouse, and as we swing through the brass revolving doors, it is only the print and radio reporters who follow us in a pack, thrusting out their tape recorders and shouting questions to which none of us respond. As we hurry down the corridor toward the elevators, I reach for Barbara's hand, which is around my arm.

"How are you doing?" I ask.

Her look is strained, but she tells me she is fine. Stanley Rosenberg is not as good-looking as he appears on TV, she adds. None of them is, I tell her.

My arraignment is before the Honorable Edgar Mumphrey, chief judge of the Kindle County Superior Court. Ed Mumphrey was leaving the P.A.'s office just about the time that I began. He was regarded with a kind of awe even then, for one reason: he is very rich. His father opened a chain of movie theaters in this town, which he eventually parlayed into hotels and radio stations. Ed naturally has labored to appear immune to his fortune's influence. He was a deputy for almost a decade; then he entered private practice, where he remained for only a year or two before the call came to the bench. He has proved a straight, capable judge, short just enough candlepower to keep him from being regarded as brilliant. He became chief judge last year, an assignment which is primarily administrative, although he hears all arraignments, and negotiates and takes guilty pleas when they are offered in the early stages of proceedings.

I take a seat in Judge Mumphrey's dark, rococo courtroom, in the front row. Barbara is beside me in a fine blue suit. For reasons that baffle me, she has also chosen to wear a hat, from which descends a coarse black mesh, presumably intended to suggest a veil. I think of telling her that the funeral is not yet, but Barbara has never shared the blacker side of my sense of humor. Beside me, sketching madly, are three artists from the local TV stations drawing my profile. Behind them are the reporters and the court buffs, all awaiting my reactions upon first being called a murderer in public.

At two o'clock Nico enters from the cloakroom, with Molto close behind. Delay is without restraint and goes on answering the questions of reporters who followed him into the little side anteroom. He talks to them through the open door. The prosecuting attorney, I think to myself. The fucking P.A. Barbara has taken my hand, and with Nico's appearance she grips it a little tighter.

When I first met Nico, a dozen years ago, I recognized him instantly as a smart-ass ethnic kid, familiar to me from high school and the streets, the kind who, over the years, I had self-consciously chosen not to be: savvier than he was smart, boastful, always talking. But with few others to look to, I formed with Nico the sort of fast association of fresh recruits. We went to lunch together. We helped each other with briefs. After our first few years, we drifted, a result of our native differences. Having clerked for the Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court, I was perceived as lawyerly. Nico, like dozens of deputy P.A.'s for decades past, arrived in the office with his political network already thick. I would listen to him on the telephone. He had been a precinct captain in the organization of his cousin, Emilio Tonnetti, a county commissioner who had secured Nico's position, one of the last political hirings Raymond agreed to. Nico knew half the hacks and functionaries in the County Building, and he never stopped buying tickets to the political golf outings and dinners, and making the rounds.

In truth, he proved a better lawyer than was expected. He can write, although he hates to spend time in the library; and he is effective before a jury. His courtroom persona, as I have observed it over the years, is typical of many prosecutors: humorless, relentless, blandly mean. He has a unique intensity which I always illustrate by telling what is known as the Climax story. I told it last week to Sandy and Kemp, when they asked about the last case I tried with Della Guardia.