Scott Turow - Pleading Guilty

But the great thing with people is that you never know. After two weeks of riding my fanny, chasing me everywhere, and spooking my dreams, Gino seemed to have run out of gas. Not that he believed me particularly. He knew better than that. But he was clearly afraid the prosecutor's office would toss him out on his keester because he was nowhere near beyond a reasonable doubt. Bogus or not, I'd touched all the bases; it was a comprehensive defense. And my history with Gino was enough to make a conscientious deputy PA think twice anyway. Pigeyes didn't come to these conclusions peaceably. When he looked at me, his eyes were stilled by a hatred entirely void of goodwill, like black being the absence of color, but I could see he knew I had him beat.

He turned to Dewey, who shrugged. Go figure. They both got to their feet. 'Great to see you again, Gino.' 'Yeah, really,' he offered.

Lucinda peeked in, beckoning, and I followed her out, departing with a cheerful wave as Brushy started with Gino and Dewey toward the door. Lucinda had a note: 'Bert's on the phone.' I picked up in my office.

'Listen,' I said. 'I've settled your problems. Those guys won't be looking for you anymore.'

The line gathered static. I could hear from the gray roar behind him that Bert was on a pay phone somewhere near a highway.

'Humor, right?' he asked.

'Don't ask me how. You're done. D, o, n, e. I've got it squared with the coppers too. What you oughta do is get down here. You'll probably need to answer some questions about Jake.' Mathigoris from TN security would want to go over the whole thing many times. The memo, the checks. Jake telling Bert to keep it strictly hush-hush. 'And what about — '

‘I covered both of you. Go rent a tux and get over here. It's GH Night.'

'God,' he said softly. I could tell that in the instant of relief the terror suddenly had hold of him. He'd been flying combat again. Now he was on the ground, torn up by what he'd been through, the great concussions of noise and the light that had rattled the plane and trailed him through the sky. 'God,' he said again. 'Mack, man, what can I say?'

'Just come back,' I repeated.

This was getting exciting, everything falling in place. My phone rang again. 'I'm waiting,' Martin told me.

Martin was dressing. He had on his tuxedo pants, striped in satin along the seam, and his wing-collared tuxedo shirt, into which he was nimbly inserting the studs, little diamond jobs that glimmered in the pearly light of the late-winter afternoon. In an hour or so my partners, all similarly dressed, would stroll down the avenue to the Club Belvedere, share a drink or two and some canapes, and then over dinner get a report on financial results and the size of their share. It promised to be an excruciating evening in every regard.

Martin did not speak at first. Standing, he worked over the shirt for some time. Every now and then he stopped to examine a small blue note card on his desk, reading it to himself. It was, I suspected, his GH Night speech. Rah-rah from the managing partner. Picking up his pen, he made a few corrections. I said nothing either. The large corner office, fully lit from the long windows, was quiet enough that you could hear the whirring of the gyroscope device that powered one of his clocks. I was tempted to play with some of his toys, the shaman stick or the coffee-table games, but I took a seat instead in a wooden sidechair painted up in Southwestern shades. I'd brought along my briefcase.

'I've been too fucking good to you,' Martin said at last. He didn't talk dirty and this was meant to be shocking. He wanted me to know he was pissed, that our partnership agreement didn't include a search warrant for his drawer. He continued fooling with the shirt.

'How much trouble is Bert in?' he asked in a moment.

'Now that I've had a little chat with the police, probably none.'

He glanced my way briefly to be sure I was serious. 'How'd you arrange that? This policeman an old friend?' 'You could say.'

'Very impressive.' He nodded. I was sorry, frankly, he hadn't been there to see it. In a law firm it took all types, and I was one of the best bullshitters in town. It was like having a guy in the bullpen who could get away with throwing spitballs. Witnessing that performance would have rewarded Martin's faith in me, all the time he'd spent telling our partners I might come back yet.

'I've been doing a lot of impressive stuff,' I said. 'I was in Pico Luan over the weekend.'

Martin's eyes stayed with me for the first time. Standing there, his figure was framed by the black iron circle of the enormous arc lamp that cut the space over the desk.

'Are we forestalling one another with humor?'

'No, I'm demonstrating my investigatory powers,' I told him. 'I'm telling you politely to cut the crap.'

I took one of the dupes of the International Bank signature form from my briefcase and threw it on the desktop, where Martin studied it at length. Finally, he sat down in his tall leather chair.

'What are you going to do?'

'I'm done doing. Mr Krzysinski has been informed.'

The last stud, which Martin still had within his thick fingers, caught his attention somehow. He considered it briefly, then let it fly at the windows. I heard it bounce but couldn't see where it went.

'Carl's up there with that document and the memo you were hiding, and Tad and he and everyone else are trying to figure out why Jake Eiger would do something like this.'

Momentarily Martin covered his whole face with his broad hand, blackly pelted on its back. From the hall I could hear through the closed door the phones, the voices of the workday.

'Well, that's not going to take very long, is it?' Martin asked finally. 'The motive is hardly elusive. Jake's planning for his future. He knows that Tad doesn't like him and that sooner or later, when Tad's alliances on the board are firm, Krzysinski is going to be opening the bays and dropping Jake without a parachute, golden or otherwise. So Jake provided one for himself. That's the explanation, isn't it?'

'Seems right,' I said.

Martin looked at me through one eye as he canted back in his chair. 'What else is Carl saying?'

'I covered your butt, if that's what you're asking. Which is more than you deserve. You were fucking around with me, Martin.'

He made some move to deny it and I challenged him.

'I can give you a hundred examples. I don't have to ask who Glyndora called for advice on how to get me out of her apartment last week, do I?'

'No.' He laughed suddenly, and I did as well. I was being a good sport, but a mood of disclosure was also beginning to lighten the air. I suppose it made a great story, the way I went running down the stairs like a little elf, trying not to stumble on my you-know-what.

'Didn't want anybody messing with your girl, huh?'

Martin rolled his jaw. He looked again through one eye. I wasn't sure how he'd take this assault on his secrets, whether it would make him frantic or if he would get up and try to throw me out of the room. But I guess he knew himself well enough, because he seemed to accept this with a faint resignation.

'Don't let me stop you,' I said. 'You were about to explain.'

'My personal life? That's before the flood.' It wasn't quite a rebuff. He was looking out the broad windows toward his city and its life, and his tone suggested worlds, universes of emotion suppressed. God, I thought, to have been a fly on the wall for that romance, to have observed these two characters surmounting the many barriers to get into each other's pants. Glyndora must have stuck out all her prominent parts and dared him to touch them — a way to put him in his place. I'd seen that routine: You think you're tough? I'm tough. I'm the best-looking woman in four city blocks. I'd wear you out. I'd get you up four times a night, I'd screw you dry and tell you I needed more, I'd be so much you'd want to unhitch it and put it in my trophy case. You didn't have wet dreams as a puppy 10 percent as good as me. And you won't dare touch it. Cause I ain't gonna have it.