Scott Turow - Pleading Guilty

'Bert,' I said.

'Oh, Bert,' he said. 'What's with him? Big trial or some-thin? Where all's he gone to?'

I took a beat with that. I had figured that would be my line. I could feel the heat now, agitating my blood and drying my nostrils, and I moved down a level. Where does a fellow go with five and a half million dollars? I wondered. What are the logical alternatives? Plastic surgery? The jungles of Brazil? Or just a small town where nobody you'd know would ever appear? You'd think it's easy, but try the question on yourself. Personally, I figured I'd favor a simple agenda. Swim a lot. Read good books. Play some golf. Find one of those women looking for a fellow who's honest and true.

'Maybe he's got someplace with Archie and them,' said the old lump. 'I ain't seen him too much neither.'

'Archie?'

'Don't you know Archie? He's a character for you. Got a big position. Whosiewhasit. Whadda they call it. Hey. Lucien. Whatta you call what Archie does with that insurance company?' He addressed a guy sitting near the oven, a man who looked more or less like him, with a sloping belly and fleshy breasts pink from the heat.

'Actuary,' answered Lucien.

'There you go,' said the guy, sending suds flying as he gestured. He went on talking about Archie. He was here every day, the guy said. Clockwork. Five o'clock. Him and Bert always together, two professional fellas.

‘I bet that's where-all he's gone, Bert. Hey, Lucien. Bert and Archie, they together or what?'

This time Lucien moved. 'Who's asking?'

'This guy.'

I made some demurrer that they both ignored.

'Name of?' asked Lucien, and squinted in the steam. He'd come in without his glasses and he stepped down to get a better look at me, clearly sizing me up, one of these guys too old to apologize anymore for anything. I gave my name and offered a hand, which Lucien limply grabbed backhanded, his right paw holding fast to the bedsheet around his middle. He took a breath or two through his open mouth, red as a pomegranate.

'You lookin for Kam Roberts, too?' he asked finally.

Kam Roberts. Robert Kamin. I was sure it was a joke.

'Yeah,' I said, and brought out some blarney smile. 'Yeah, Kam Roberts,' I repeated. Don't ask me why I do these things — I'm always pretending to know more than I do. Since I was a naughty kid, I've been like that, faking one thing or another; there are so many selves rollicking around in here and it is a harmful indulgence for a man often out of control. I had the thought that 'Kam Roberts' was like the secret password, I could ask a few more questions once I'd said it, but something, the peculiarity of the name or my odd tone of enthusiasm, seemed to deaden the air in the room.

In response, Lumpy and Lucien more or less withdrew. Lucien said he wanted to play cards and nudged his pal along, both of them shoving off with only a bare goodbye and a quick look back in my direction.

I stayed put in the steam, blanching like some vegetable and considering my prospects. Heat has its odd effects. In time, the limbs grow heavy and the mind is slower, as if gravity's increased, as if you'd taken a seat on Jupiter. This thing of men being men amid the intense heat revived some lost thought of my old man and the firehouse where all those guys spent so much of their lives together, bunking down in that single large room in which they dreamt uneasily, awaiting the hoarse call of the alarm, the summons to danger. We always knew when there'd been fires. You could hear the engines tearing out of the little fire-house four blocks away, the clanging of the bells, 'the sheens', as my father said, the enormous roaring motors that sounded big enough to power rocket ships. My dad came home sometimes still carrying the fire with him, a penetrating scent that hung around him like a cloud. 'Smellin like the sinners down in hell' was how he put it, weary and beaten in by physical exertion and fear, waiting for The Black Rose to open so he could have a snoot before he slept. My dreams since are full of fire, though I can't say for sure if that's from my pa or the way my ma, when she was scolding, would pinch my ear and tell me I was in league with Satan and would need to be buried in britches of asbestos.

Cooked out, I stumbled back up to the seedy locker room. I was trying to squint up the number from my key when I heard a voice behind me.

'Hey, yo, mister, you. Jorge wants to see you.' It was a kid with a bucket and a mop. I wasn't sure he was talking to me, but he tossed his head of sleek jet hair and waved for me to follow, which I did, clip-clopping after him in my thongs and wet sheet, leaving the locker area for something a hand-drawn sign called 'The Club Room'. Maybe somebody wanted me to buy a membership, I figured. Or to tell me about Bert.

Here again the furnishings were the latest, if the year happened to be 1949. Cheap mahogany paneling. Brown, speckled asbestos floor tiles such as would give any OSHA inspector an instant coronary. Red vinyl furniture with the stuffing oozing out the corners and, in one case, a black spring so long exposed it was beginning to rust. At a gray Formica table, with one of those old designs of vague forms like the sight through an unfocused microscope, four men were seated, playing pinochle. The youngest of them, a smooth-looking Mexican, nodded, and behind me the kid with the bucket scooted a chair.

'You lookin for Kam Roberts?' the Mexican asked. His eyes were on his cards. Lucien and Lumpy were nowhere in sight.

'I'm a friend of Bert Kamin.'

'I asked you "Kam Roberts."' He considered me now. This fella, Jorge, was a thin guy, one of those unshaved stringy-looking Mexicans who make such amazing lightweights, always whipping the fannies of these sleek black guys with bulging muscles. Unforeseen strength like that always impresses me. 'You got some ID?'

I looked at my sheet, heavy and almost translucent from the steam.

'Give me two minutes.'

'How far you think you get in two minutes?' he asked and threw down a card. I took a while on that.

'My name is Mack Malloy. Bert's my partner. I'm a lawyer.' I offered my hand.

'No, you ain,' said Jorge. Story of my life. Lie and I make you smile. The truth, you only wonder.

'Who are you?' I asked.

'Who am I? I'm a guy sittin here talkin to you, okay? You're lookin for Kam Roberts, that's who I am. Okay?' Jorge studied me with what you might call Third World anger — this thing that really goes beyond skin color and echoes back across the epochs, some gene-encoded memory of the syphilis that Cortez's men spread, of the tribal chieftains that the helmeted European troops tossed into the steaming volcanic crevices. 'Mr Roberts here, that's Mr Shit. You know what I mean?' 'I hear you.'

He turned to a guy beside him, a thick old brute who was still holding his cards.

'He hears me.' They exchanged a laugh.

Overall, this was not a good situation, being naked with four angry men. Jorge put both hands down on the table.

'I say you're a cop.' He wet his lips. 'I know you're a cop.' Those dark Hispanic eyes had irises like caves and emitted no light, and I was lost in there; it was a second before I heartened with the thought that a copper was unlikely to end up beaten in the alley. 'I'd make you nine days a week. You got a star tattooed on your tushy.'

The three guys watching thought this was a terrific line.

I smiled faintly, that primate fear-flight thing, still trying to figure what it was this guy thought he knew about me. It had been more than twenty years, but I would bet I could remember every guy I cracked. Sort of like the kids from grade school. Some faces you don't forget.

'Whatever you lookin for, hombre, you don' find here. You check with Hans over in Six, you'll find out.'

'I'm looking for Bert.'