Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

Tommy's right, of course, but I can't help briefly wondering what Eddgar lied about. Which is why Hobie did this. Very clever. He always was. I tell him he's too far afield for the time being and he lays the report beside Nile on the light-oak defense table. Nile, with his bedraggled haircut and errant mood, has observed most of this morning's proceedings with his mouth slightly parted, as if he's largely amazed this is taking place.

'All right,' says Hobie. 'Here's the point: On September 7, in terms of your investigation, Lieutenant, the big thing was to find Hardcore, wasn't it?'

'I don't know about the "big thing." I don't know what that means. I wanted to find him, I can say yes to that.' Montague's dark eyes steal toward me, to be sure I've noted how accommodating he's become in the face of my rebuke.

'And did you find him?'

'Eventually. Word was on the street, and on September 11, he came into Area 7 for questioning.'

'With his lawyer, wasn't it? Mr Jackson Aires? That was your testimony on direct?'

'That was my testimony.'

'And did you talk to Mr Aires before you saw Hardcore?'

'I had a number of conversations with Mr Aires that morning.'

'You and Aires talked about what-all Hardcore might say if he turned himself in and what kind of a deal he could get, right?'

'Yep. That's how it went,' says Montague in a tone meant to remind Hobie that's how it's always done.

'And without going through all of it word for word, the nitty-gritty here is that Attorney Aires let you know that Hardcore was willing to say this whole killing, the entire thing, had been the idea of his probation officer, Nile Eddgar? Right?'

'Close enough.'

'And that was pretty interesting to you, wasn't it?' ' "Interesting"?'

'You knew June Eddgar's murder was all over the news?'

'I don't know. Personally, I don't read the papers much.' From Lew Montague, a hard-boned cynic, I tend to credit this assertion more than I might from some. With his rough-complected face, bare of expression, he seems to be without enthusiasm for much. You catch criminals because it's better than letting them go. I doubt he nurtures, even in his dreams, thoughts of a more perfect world.

'It was an important case,' Hobie suggests. 'They're all important, counsel.'

'Oh, are they, Detective? You knew the PA's Office would be willing to make Hardcore a pretty sweet deal if he put it on Nile Eddgar, didn't you? Son of a prominent politician? Everybody'd get their names in the paper. Folks in the PA's Office don't mind that, do they?'

Tommy jerks Rudy to his feet to object, but Montague, shaking his head throughout the question, is answering already.

'You got the wrong picture, counsel. Molto approved the deal,' says Montague. 'On his own say-so. And I don't think his bosses liked it very much. Couple of them seemed like they'd rather the whole case just went away.'

In his chair, Molto sags a bit. Eager to score, Montague has spoken out of school. We all know now why Tommy is stuck trying this case. He got ahead of the office pols and they're making him carry his own water.

'So it was Molto who wanted his name in the paper?' asks Hobie.

Rudy comes to his feet again. His teak-colored hand is poised to note his objection, but Montague is headstrong and again keeps talking.

'He wanted to do what was right,' Montague answers. 'My captain and me brought Molto the case. None of us thought your client should get away with this.' 'You wanted the deal,' says Hobie.

'I wanted the deal,' says Montague, more or less acknowledging what Hobie said to start. Hobie knows better than to ask what made Montague so eager, realizing that would elicit a lyric to Hardcore's credibility. Besides, to the courthouse veterans in this room, Montague's motives are obvious anyway. The downfall of the mighty always tickles the police, who generally see themselves as unappreciated vassals keeping the world safe for the airheads on top.

'Okay,' says Hobie, 'okay, but here's my point.' With the concession he wanted, he's striding about, full of excitement. 'You were willing to make this deal with Hardcore, even though your investigation had given you no reason at all to think Nile Eddgar was involved in this crime.'

'I wouldn't say that,' answers Montague coolly.

Hobie freezes with his back to the witness. Struggling toward his predetermined point of arrival, it takes him a moment to absorb what Montague has said.

'You suspected Nile Eddgar? By September 11 you were looking at him?'

'What I thought? Yeah, I'd say I was.' Hobie's cross, the big windup he had planned – showing that nothing until Hardcore's appearance implicated Nile – has been derailed. I'd caught his drift, which was that the whole investigation was shaped to fit Hardcore's information. He was suggesting that the prosecutors and cops, hungry for the excitement of a heater case, had been less skeptical than they should have about what Hardcore was saying.

'You suspected Nile Eddgar,' Hobie repeats. 'Why? Because he'd talked to a community service officer when he came to tell him his mother was dead? You weren't there for that, were you?'

'I heard about it.'

'And that's why you suspected him?'

'In part.' Montague is even now and confident. He is sitting a little straighter in his chair, while Hobie is blundering. He has lost all form, propounding two or three questions at once, quarreling with Montague and forgetting to lead him. Hobie's like a terrier hanging on to a trouser cuff and getting kicked each time.

'And what was the other part?' asks Hobie. 'You didn't hear anything from Lovinia Campbell, right? Or on the canvass?' 'We'd talked to his father.' 'His father! The senator?' 'That's right.'

'So it was what his father told you that made Nile a suspect?' 'Basically,' says Montague. 'Yes.'

And just that quickly something happens in the courtroom. It's like that extraordinary instant in the theater when an actor comes through the curtain to take her bow, and the character she has been for hours suddenly has been shed like some second skin. Hobie, too, is someone else. He lifts his face to a refractory angle, and briefly allows a cryptic, constricted smile across his lips, like a lizard darting through the sun. He's apparently gotten just the answer he wanted, and scared me badly in the process, because I was taken in like Montague, like everybody else. Hobie ponders the witness one more moment, then looks straight to me and says serenely, 'Nothing more.'

*

Once each month, as a matter of solemn commitment, I have lunch or dinner with my friend Gwendolyn Ries, without our kids. She is a large cheerful woman, emphatic by nature, one of those people who proudly regards herself as an element of the life force. She wears too much perfume, too much makeup, too much jewelry; there's a reddish wash in her hair too bright to call 'henna.' She appears today in gaucho pants and a woolen vest of South American weave, bedecked with matte-gold buttons in the shape of lizards.

Since the birth of her son, Avi, eight years ago, Gwen, a radiologist, has worked four days a week. Today, she has taken the morning to herself for shopping, long her favorite pastime, and dashes from the taxi into the restaurant, arms abounding with bags full of gold and silver boxes. We have met at Gil's, a renowned spot, and surely the best meal near the courthouse. Years ago, this place was known as Gil's Men's Bar, and it retains an Old World atmosphere, with its splendid century-old interior. The vast room is a gorgeous wooden box, the wainscoting, the floors, the tables, the paneled ceiling, all hewn of quarter-sawn oak, heavily grained and varnished, accented by various polished brass fittings and great cast-iron chandeliers suspended on heavy chains from the high ceiling. One of the only real perks of judicial life is that 1 can always get seated here. As soon as Gwen arrives, she and I are swept past the long line of lawyers and other courthouse regulars crowded behind a red velvet rope to one of the many square tables for two aligned in dual rows at the center of the restaurant. For the sake of privacy, the abutting tables are separated by handsome partitions of yellowish wood, into which some clever craftsman long ago burned graceful images of German mountain scenes. The brusque waiters, in black cutaway coats, and the busy patrons speak at volume. With its solid surfaces, Gil's is a cascade of noise.