Scott Turow - Presumed innocent

"No? What do you think?"

"I think you were set up."

"Well," I say, after an instant, "I've thought that a lot longer than you."

"I believed it," says Kemp. "Most of the time." I am sure he is thinking about the phone records again, but he does not mention them. "Do you know who did it?"

I take a moment with that.

"Why wouldn't I tell my lawyers?"

"What do you think about Molto?"

"Maybe," I say. "Probably."

"What does he get out of it? Keeps you from looking into that file? What do you call it? The B file?"

"The B file," I repeat.

"Except he can't believe you're not going to mention it, if he puts it to you."

"Yeah, but look at the position I'm in. Would you rather be accused by the chief deputy P.A., or some wild man you're trying to nail for murder? Besides, he wouldn't know how far along we were. He'd just want to keep anybody from going forward."

"That's pretty amazing, don't you think? Bizarre?"

"That's probably one reason I don't quite believe it."

"What are the others?"

I shake my head. "I'll have a better idea tonight."

"What's tonight?"

I shake my head again. For Lipranzer's sake I cannot take any chances. This will be between only him and me.

"Is this do-it-yourself night?"

"That it is," I say.

"You better be careful. Don't start doing Della Guardia any favors."

"Don't worry," I say. "I know what I'm doing." I stand up and consider my last statement, one of the most farfetched I have recently made. I bid Kemp good night and go back down the hallway to look for the champagne.

Like Santa Claus or the demons that come out in the woods, Lipranzer arrives at my home after midnight. He seems lively and unusually good-humored as Barbara greets him at the door in her nightclothes.

Awaiting Lip, I have felt not the slightest inclination to sleep. Instead, the events of the day have combined in such a fashion that for the first time in months I have a sensation which I recognize as something more than hope aborning. It is like the closed eyelids' trembling reception of new daylight. Somewhere inside, there is faith reignited that I am going to be free. In that mellow luminescence, I have passed the most pleasant time in weeks with my wife. Barbara and I have been drinking coffee together for hours, talking about the demise of Painless Kumagai and Nathaniel's scheduled return on Friday, the prospect of a renewed life a balm upon us.

"Downtown they're sayin some wild things," Lipranzer tells both of us.

"Right before I pulled out of the Hall, I talked to a guy who had just heard from Glendenning. They say Delay's talkin about dismissin the case and Tommy is kickin and screamin and tryin to think up a new thing. Could that be right?"

"It could be," I say. At the mention of Nico dismissing, Barbara has taken hold of my arm.

"What the hell happened in that courtroom today?" Lip asks.

I start to tell him the story of Kumagai's cross-examination, but he has already heard it.

"I know that," he says. "I mean, how is it possible? I told you that little jerk said the guy was shootin blanks. I don't care how many times he denied it. One thing, Ted Kumagai is history. There ain't a soul in the Hall not sayin he'll be suspended by next week."

As Kemp predicted. By now, I find my feelings of sympathy pinched.

Barbara sees us out the door. "Be careful," she says' Lipranzer and I sit a moment in the driveway in the unmarked Aries. I perked another pot of coffee-this one with caffeine-when Lip arrived, and Barbara has given him a second cup for the road. He is sipping on it as we sit there.

"So where are we going?" I ask.

"I want you to guess," he says. It is, of course, a little late to go visiting. But I learned this approach from the coppers a long time ago. If you've got to find someone, the best time to be looking is in the dead of the night, when almost everybody's at home. "Gimme your shot on Leon," Lip says. "You know, tell me about him."

"I have no idea. He's got some kind of job that he wants to keep. That was clear from the letter. So he has to make a good buck. But he lives on the edge. I don't know. Maybe he owns a restaurant or a bar, with some straight partners. He could be anything semi-respectable. He runs a theater company, how's that. Am I close?"

"You'd never get close. Is he white?"

"Probably. Pretty well off, whatever he is."

"Wrong," says Lipranzer.

"No shit?"

Lipranzer is laughing.

"All right," I say, "twenty questions is over. What's the scoop?"

"Feature this," says Lipranzer. "He's a Night Saint."

"Come on."

"Sheet as long as my arm. Gang crimes has got all kinds of intelligence on him. This guy's like a lieutenant now. Whatever they call them, a deacon. Runs things on two floors in the projects. He's been up there for years. Apparently, he figured that all his hard-ass pals wouldn't think much of him if they found out he's runnin out to the Public Forest to suck white boys' cocks. That's his thing. Majoleski's got a snitch, gay as a jaybird, teaches high school, who gave him all kinds of information on this jamoche. Seems like he and Leon went sneakin around together for years. This guys was Leon's teacher. Eddie somethin. Nine out of ten, that's the fella who's been writin letters."

"Son of a bitch. So where are we going? Grace Street?"

"Grace Street," says Lipranzer.

The words are still enough to settle a shiver near my heart and my spine. Lionel Kenneally and I spent a few evenings in there. Early mornings, actually. Three a.m., four. The safest time for a white man.

"I give him a call," says Lipranzer. "He's an affluent type. Got a phone and everything. In his own name, by the way. That P.I. Berman did a hell of a job. Anyway, I called about an hour ago. Said I was given away newspaper subscriptions. He wasn't interested, but he said yeah, when I asked if I was talkin to Leon Wells."

A Night Saint, I think as we drive toward the city. "A Night Saint," I murmur out loud.

I became familiar with Grace Street projects during my fourth year as a deputy P.A. By then, I had joined Raymond Horgan's fair-haired coterie, and he selected me to lead a large-scale police/grand-jury investigation of the Night Saints. This assault on the city's largest street gang was announced by Raymond just in time to become the centerpiece of his first re-election campaign. For Raymond, it was an ideal issue. Negro gangsters were not popular with anybody in Kindle County, and success would permanently dispel his bleeding-heart image. The Saints investigation was my initial trip to the spotlight, the first time I worked with reporters at my side. It took almost four years of my life. By the time Raymond ran for re-election again, we had convicted 147 identified gang members. The press heralded Raymond Horgan's unprecedented triumph, and never mentioned that more than 700 Saints remained on the street, doing all the old things.

The Saints' genesis would make some sociologist a reasonably good dissertation. Originally they were the Outlaws of the Night, a small, not particularly well disciplined street gang in the North End. Their leader was Melvin White. Melvin was a fine-looking American, with one sightless eye, milky and wandering, and, for balance perhaps, a dangling turquoise earring, three inches long, in the opposite ear. His hair tended toward the straight and was worn in Gorgon fashion, resembling, if anything, an unkempt Rastafarian tangle. Melvin was a thief. He stole hubcaps, guns, mail, the change from vending machines, and all manner of motorized vehicles. One night Melvin and three of his pals killed an Arab gas-station owner who drew on them while they were emptying his register. They pled to involuntary manslaughter, and Melvin, who up until then had only visited state youth camp, went to Rudyard, where he and his three buddies got to meet men to admire. Melvin emerged four years later in a caftan and phylacteries and announced that he was now Chief Harukari, leader of the Order of Nighttime Saints and Demons. Twenty other bloods dressed just like him settled in the same part of town, and within the next twelve months they all began, as they put it, involving themselves in the community. Melvin gathered his followers to him in a deserted apartment building he called his ashram. He preached from a loudspeaker on weekends and evenings. And during the day he taught those inclined how to steal. Initially, it was mail. The Saints had people in the post office. Many, in fact. They stole not only checks and the tickets to events but account information, so that they could pass forgeries at any bank. Harukari had what for lack of anything else has to be called the vision to recognize the principles of capitalist enterprise, and his profits were reinvested, usually in decimated real estate in the North End purchased at county scavenger sales. Eventually entire blocks were Saint-owned. The Saints drove up and down in their big cars. They blasted their horns and played their radios. They hustled the daughters of the neighborhood and made hoodlums, willingly or not, of the sons. Harukari, in the meantime, emerged as a political figure. The Saints gave away food on the weekends.