Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

'Six point zero for Artistic Impression. Zero point zero on substance.'

'How's that?'

'You don't watch these alley cats day in and day out like I do. It's standard defense melodrama. Letting rabbits loose in the courtroom. Eddgar's the big name so Hobie figures he'll raise the most dust that way. But it's a smoke screen. Take it from me. I know what I'm talking about on this one.'

On reflection, my assessment has not been much different. The craft was impressive, but it's hardly a shock that the target of the murder scheme had things to say that drew suspicion to Nile. The other man maintains his doubts. Hobie, he says, seemed to have a point.

'Listen, why ask me what he was doing?' says Stew. 'Talk to Hobie.'

'I keep telling you, he won't say anything to me about this case. Not word one. I came two thousand miles and I'm sitting in the Hotel Gresham at night playing computer games.'

It's Seth! With Dubinsky? How interesting. In the midst of my spying, I hear within a discordant note, a fugitive thought calling for later reflection.

'You know,' Dubinsky says, 'you call me suspicious -'

'I called you "paranoid." '

' "Paranoid," fine. But look at you. You think Eddgar's Darth Vadar's misplaced twin. His constituents admire the guy.'

'Shit,' answers Seth, 'talk about the American electorate. I think about Eddgar in the State Senate and I can't believe we're not on Twilight Zone.'

Dubinsky recounts Eddgar's emergence in local politics more than a dozen years ago. Eddgar had become a green. He forged a coalition of anti-capitalists, ecologists, and animal-rights supporters. When a large cosmetics company made a grant to one of the labs at the university, Eddgar led demonstrations.

'College kids didn't want rabbits to die to make eyeliner. Christ, they didn't even wear makeup,' says Dubinsky. 'After that, he gets elected to the City Council in Easton first, then Mayor. Then a State Senate seat opens up. He ran for controller two years ago. Nearly won.'

'Don't people know about him? His history?' Seth asks.

'Hey, you know, you've given me the heads-up. I've done the articles. Twice, in fact. But being a former radical is very -what?'

'Trendy?'

'It makes him trustworthy in a certain way. I think that's what it is. It goes to show he has a commitment to reform. And besides, Eddgar never burned down anything around here. Christ, everybody was crazy in the sixties. And it's not like he's representing Orange County anyway. His district's a college town and some East Kindle housing projects. Lincoln would lose that district if he ran as a Republican.'

‘I can't imagine that guy backslapping and glad-handing, though.'

'No, no. He's shit on a stick. These big dos, everybody breathing on each other, looking for the biggest ring to kiss, I see him half the time, shrinking against the wallpaper, nibbling his lip. But you know, he' s a professor. People figure he' s a dead fuck anyway.'

'How about a woman? He ever show up with a companion?' A moment passes. Perhaps there's an expression of discomfort from Dubinsky, long divorced, as I remember. His own social life is probably far from scintillating, but Seth persists. 'Any talk?' he asks.

'Ah shit,' says Stew, 'people talk, they don't talk. Nothing really. I don't know – boys, girls, pygmies. Christ, he's old. He's sixty-what? Five. Sixty-five, sixty-seven. I'd guess he's retired in that department.'

'Yeah,' says Seth. 'I was just curious. Did you ever reach out for June?'

'Sure. Remember? During the election? When he ran for controller. You gave me that tip. I dug her up. She's in this little burg in Wisconsin?'

'Right.'

'Told her I wanted to talk about Eddgar. And I get the oh-fuck five-minute pause. And then she says, "I'm too old to remember that." Friendly enough otherwise. Ready to tell me anything I didn't want to know. She sounded like an old drank. You know, ditzy middle-aged dame, chasing every butterfly dancing through her brain. Afterwards, I get a call from Eddgar's flack. I'm "delving into his personal life." I'm like "Fuck-you, give-me-abreak. This guy's got secrets he wants to keep, let him join the CIA.'"

'He's got secrets,' Seth says, somewhat ponderously.

'So you keep telling me. But say what you want, maybe he was a bigger jag-off than Captain Hook, but he's gotten it done now. Christ, he gets awards. The whosycallit. Women,' he says.

'The League of Women Voters?'

'Exactly. Twice. Best legislator. Bleeding Heart of the Year. The century. You get him in the statehouse? He's in his element, he's high. You should feature this bird in his office, with four phones ringing and the staff people running in and out, the pols, the interest group people coming by to smooch his derriere. I mean, this is the guy. Manipulating. Plotting. The other side of it, you know – getting elected? Making them love him? I think he really hates campaigning. But the back doors? The back rooms? The deals. The doing. We're talking high, high on that stuff. And he gets his shit through. We got a new juvenile-justice scheme. He's got a program now where the state pays 250 bucks to poor kids who finish high school. College Preparation Awards, he calls it. Day care. Mental health care. And you know, he's czar of penal reform, prisons. Any warden sees him coming, they start moaning, he's all the time in their faces: Job training! Job training!'

Just as Dubinsky on the other side of the partition explodes in laughter at a joke he's made – probably the most inappropriate remark I've heard yet – Gwendolyn reappears. I rise at once and greet her some feet from the table.

'Are you done?' I ask.

She wants coffee and I suggest the bar.

'What's wrong with the table?'

I raise a finger to my lips. We bear her packages into Gil's noted barroom, where the lawyers and law enforcers mix each week in a burly Friday-evening scene. It's another gorgeous room, if somewhat dimmer, centered on the oak bar, where carved pillars and vines surround a beveled mirror that runs forty feet above the whiskey bottles. We pile the shopping bags along the brass boot rail below and hike ourselves onto the stools. My explanation to Gwen about the occupants of the table adjoining ours is briefly interrupted when our heavy-browed Greek waiter bursts in, certain we ditched the check.

'You mean the columnist?' asks Gwen. 'Your old squeeze? He's around now, too?' Gwendolyn's inquired once or twice about the case, because of the articles in the paper, but she's heard nothing of these events. 'Ooh,' she says, 'how cinematic. What's he look like?' She elevates herself on the stool in hopes of seeing over the stained-glass divider to the restaurant. Gwendolyn has a bold attitude toward romance and, particularly, sex. She's made love to colleagues in the Doctors' Lounge. Privately, I regard this as unconvincing feminist bravado, particularly since I've followed her counsel on a few occasions in the last year or so and each time found the experience alien and sad. She has been married three times, most recently to an Israeli doc several years younger than she, whom she was training. She met him, had his child, and booted him out the door in a whirlwind period of eighteen months.

'He looks like he's approaching fifty, the same as I do,' I answer now.

'Don't be dour, dear.'

'Sorry. I'm a little sensitive. Marietta's giving me the business again. She's just biting her nails until I take up with him.'

Gwen rolls her eyes. 'You're the only woman I know who got divorced and still has to put up with a mother-in-law.'

I laugh heartily. It's too true. And Charlie's mother was easygoing, a delight.

'It's crazy,' I say. 'This is complicated enough. Just sitting on this case, I feel like I'm Humpty-Dumpty ready to fall off the wall.' Above the demitasse from which she' s drinking an espresso, Gwendolyn's reddish face narrows.