by Scott Turow
“Is he a target?” asked Stern.
“Maybe he has something to tell us.”
“Immunity is a possibility?”
“I think so.” Klonsky once more glanced downward; she was saying too much. “I understand your interest, Sandy. But this would be more appropriate with whoever represents him. As I say, this is a courtesy to you. Stan didn’t want another incident like the one at your home.”
“Most considerate,” said Stern. “My thanks to both of you.” He did not wish to sound particularly curt, but he was experiencing a fading lack of control.
Ms. Klonsky looked at him sadly. He could see who he was to her—a home-wrecked widower with one more enormous family problem. He had her sympathy, which was not at all what he had come here expecting to obtain.
Outside the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the elevator arrived, opened, and then refused to move. Stern, still spinning with anger, threw down his empty cases and pounded on all the buttons. Up. Down. Door open. Door close. The new federal building had been completed ten years ago, with every contract sprinkled down on cronies from the fingertips of Mayor Bolcarro like a confectionery topping. The structure had been intended as a courthouse, but the judges, after a brief period of occupancy, issued various orders and injunctions and moved themselves back into the ancient Federal Square building across the street. Nothing here worked. The elevators. The heat. The windows popped out in high winds or low temperatures and showered glass on the pedestrians below. It had taken six years to complete construction, and the litigation was still ongoing a decade later. The architect, the engineers, the general contractor, and virtually every tradesman who had touched the place were co-plaintiffs, co-defendants, or cross-parties in four or five separate suits. Now and then, Stern would see the herd of lawyers arrive for the various status calls. They would stand before the judge, twenty and thirty abreast, and bicker. In the meantime, the building grew so brisk during the occasional periods of Arctic cold that gripped this city that one federal judge, during the short period when court had been held here, mounted the bench in mittens and instructed the lawyers that they were not required to remove their hats.
At last, the steel box began to move. After the delay, it stopped at every floor. Stern, who had an appointment to meet Lieutenant Radczyk for lunch, simmered at the edge of outburst. Dixon. John. Gevalt. what an ugly mess his brother-in-law had made!
Headed down, with lunch at hand, the tiny space was jammed. The elevators, naturally, had been stintingly designed, too small for the building’s population. In his state of high agitation, crushed against the rear partitions, Stern took an instant to react when a woman in front of him, a tall brunette in her thirties, stepped back and made contact. Indeed, that put matters somewhat delicately, for she had not merely brushed against him or inadvertently driven her spike heel into his toes. Rather, this young woman had laid the cleave of her rear end firmly against his hand. And would the Sandy Stern of a month ago have politely pulled away? No question. Today he remained still; he was certain that she took him for the wall. But at the next stop the elevator stuttered on its cable, minutely rocking. And did she ease back even farther? So it seemed. And did Stern, as the floors went by, find himself, almost involuntarily, inclining his hand by the most subtle degree? He did. He did, so that by floor 4, his fingers, two or three, were delicately pressed against the parting of her buttocks and the filmy folds of her green dress and the elastic ridges of her undergarments below. By the natural movement of the car, this arrangement provided the most discreet stroking each time the elevator jolted to a halt.
From behind, Stern tried to study this young woman. Was she one of his casual courthouse acquaintances, another lawyer having fun in an offbeat fashion? He did not recognize her. Her eyes were green; one cheek was blemished. A professional person, he assumed, in an expensive green silk dress, carrying her briefcase. With each stop, she seemed to lean back a little more. Her jaw was set in a largely abstracted manner, but save for paralysis, there was no way she might not have noticed what was occurring. At the ground level, she let all her weight come back into him, so that for the briefest instant his hand fit snugly inside and—possible?—was vaguely squeezed before she stepped forward to exit. Across the metal threshold, she looked about for bearings, and when her view crossed his, her expression was far too indefinite to be called a smile. Hiking away, she reached back and gave a quick jerk at her skirt to free it from the rear cleavage where the material was gathered.
Dizzy and aroused, impressed, even inspired by this boldness, Stern followed her from the elevator. So this was the life of men and women in the modern day! It was Cincinnatus who was called back to battle from the plowfield, rearmored, remounted, and placed in charge of war and strategy. That was Stern—except that Cincinnatus had been a hero and an officer in his youth and Stern was never more than a buck private. He’d had more diverse sexual experience in the last four days than in his entire prior lifetime. And there was no hiding his pleasure from himself. His sweet interlude with Margy had revived him like a dose of water on a thirsting plant—he felt the strength of his own vitality from root to leaf. No wonder people so easily made fools of themselves. If he’d never known, he did now—this was fun. How did one pursue these leads? Coffee. A hotel room? What happened next? Amazed by himself, still toting his cases, he actually followed the young woman for a block before he recalled Radczyk. She never once looked back; apparently, she took her gratification from teasing. And yet, even when he’d stopped, he had no sure knowledge of his own capacities. He did not know what excesses were within him; he might sprout wings and fly, he might dance naked in the intersection. He felt like some soaring bubble, a thin surface containing the exciting weightlessness of freedom.
12
BY THE KINDLE RIVER, near the docks on the Kewahnee side, an underground world had grown up. Stern always marched down the iron stairwell from the boulevards above with a sense of significant descent, somehow related to entering darkness in the daytime. These piers where the bargemen would unload their cargoes of fruit, rice, and coal brought up from the South retained an economic importance for Kindle County well into this century. In the 1920s, the local movers and shakers, full of the improbable hope that the tri-cities, like an urban Cinderella, could be made to resemble Paris, decided to pretend the docks were not here. On concrete pilings driven down into the sandy banks of the Kindle, the downtown section of Kewahnee was extended; great roads were built and modest skyscrapers rose. Beneath, the gritty dockmen and barge hands continued to work in a netherworld barely reached by daylight, while the suit-and-tie crowd rushed about above, dealing, suing, buying and selling the labor and commodities being delivered to the city in the dark below.
These days, Lower River, as this area was known, was eerie with the garish yellow glow of sulfur lamps. Abutting the streets, the docks of the trucking concerns which had located here originally to carry off what the barges brought and which eventually had supplanted them were littered with crates and spoiling produce. The air sang with the racing pitch of tires on the roads above and the windy commotion of that traffic. For many years, this was the locale where bodies were dumped and drug deals done. The flow of hot merchandise across the trucking piers, by rumor, was still steady. In his early years in practice, Stern was always going about down here to visit one crime scene or another. A thousand people passing by and nobody knew nothin’. The situation was usually far more frustrating to the police than to Stern.
Rather than joust in the noontime traffic, he had walked across the bridge, carrying his two large empty cases. He met Radczyk at a place called Wally’s. It was hardly scenic. As with each establishment in Lower River, one entered from the rear. The windows at the back of the restaurant faced the river, which was otherwise inaccessible, looking out to the pilings and the iron underpinnings of the roads. Toward the top of the horizon, a line of daylight broke through and, depending on the angle of the sun, sometimes lit the slaty surface of the water bri
ghtly enough to show the floating silt and the industrial debris. Radczyk was at a table smoking a cigarette and, for unknown reasons, studying his shirt when Stern approached.
“Ah, Sandy!” The copper’s ruddy country-boy face was radiant. This warmth, whose source Stern still could not recollect, continued to make him uneasy. Radczyk had phoned this morning, saying he had some results. He suggested Wally’s, a policemen’s hangout, which suited Stern, who was always just as happy not to walk into the station house. Here Stern was more impressed by the size of the man than he had been in his home; Radczyk barely fit into his chair, a hulking figure being slowly diminished by age. He wore a tweed sport coat and the bright red golfing shirt he had been examining when Stern arrived. He explained now that it was an Easter gift from his children. “You get the grandkids over and they tear the place apart, makes you glad you can send them home.”
Stern smiled obligingly. It occurred to him that he, too, would soon be entitled to these fond complaints. The prospect today seemed considerably less consoling. The thought of John briefly scuffed at Stern’s heart.
“So,” said Stern. “You had success?” He sought to bring Radczyk to the subject. He was the kind who would chat about anything else.
The old cop reached to the inside pocket of his sport coat and came up with a single grayish page, a copy of something. He put on his reading glasses and considered the paper as if he had never seen it before. Then he removed his eyeglasses and pointed the temple at Stern.
“You give any thought to talkin with her doctors? That’s what I’d do in your shoes.”
Immediately, Stern felt the same vexation that had overcome him on his way from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Why had lie bothered with this policeman? He was old, and probably never terrifically competent. Trust Radczyk to suggest a starting point where Stern had already been. He was not fully able to conceal his irritation.
“Lieutenant, I am afraid I have already attempted that course.”
“Mind if I ask what come of it?” asked Radczyk.
“What came of it,” said Stern, “was that Clara’s personal doctor tells me he did not order this test, and I have been unable to determine which physician did.”
“Huh.” Radczyk looked back down to the sheet he held. “No name here,” he said. “Suppose I coulda asked when I was out there.” The notion that the name of the treating physician might have been relevant occurred to Radczyk remotely, a far-off idea, like the notion of life on the planets. Stern was finding it increasingly difficult to stifle himself.
“You were at Westlab?”
“Oh, sure, sure. Done just like I told you. Went out there, got the administrator, you know, showed her my star. Nice gal. Liz something or other. Very professional, you know. Looked to be a little Mexican or Italian gal. I said I was doin routine follow-up, what records did they have? She showed me the whole file right there in her office. Give me a copy of the results.” Radczyk hoisted the paper in his hand, and Stern, without invitation, reached across the table and quietly took it.
The hangdog waitress came by with her green pad, saying only “Yours?” to each man. Stern ordered as he studied the copy. It was a half sheet on the letterhead of Westlab. The rest of it contained computer-printed figures. Numbers. Codes. A meaningless scramble. In his frustration, Stern nearly groaned.
“Did they tell you, Lieutenant, what this test was for?”
“Sure,” he said. “‘Viral culture.’” He took the paper back and with a dirty fingernail showed Stern a tiny box which had been x’d.
“A virus?”
Radczyk nodded.
Stern took this in: Clara had seen the doctor for a virus. So here was the outcome of nearly two months’ pursuit. His wife had the sniffles. A persistent cough. No wonder she had bothered only Peter. He smiled faintly. For all the pain, it had the quality of a burlesque.
“And they had no more to report?”
Radczyk seemed to have settled himself elsewhere. He considered Stern with his pleasant, rosy look and huddled closer.
“Still don’t remember me, do you?”
Stern, who would ordinarily go to considerable lengths to avoid admitting something so unflattering, simply shrugged. He had better sense than to try to fool an old policeman.
“Didn’t think so.” The cop edged forward. “Marv Jacoby.”
It hit Stern like lightning. “The brother,” said Stern. The orphan, he thought. “That was some time ago.”
Childishly pleased to be recalled, Radczyk sat there smiling. “Hadn’t taken the tags off my sergeant’s stripes yet.”
So this was the orphan. Stern instantly recalled the entire tale. Radczyk had been raised by his grandfather, who ran a paper stand, one of those metal shanties on a street corner; in the winter, they took heat from a fire in an oil drum. One day two young neighborhood hoods, looking for nickels and dimes, tried to stick up the grandfather, and ended up shooting him dead. The beat cop was Harold Jacoby—Jews did not become lieutenants in those days—and he took the grandson home and raised him with his own. Harold had two natural sons, as Stern remembered, and all three became policemen. Ray was the eldest. Eddie eventually quit the force and went to California, where he’d done well in the security business. It was the youngest son, Marvin, who became Stern’s client.
Lord, what a thug he was, Stern thought when he remembered Marvin. Gum-chewing, wisecracking, with little black eyes and, as they said on the street, an attitude. Marvin was a wrong cop from the day he got his star. And a daily heartache to Ray here, who took over Marvin’s guidance when the father passed away.
Almost a dozen years ago, certain police officers, disgruntled by the usual departmental rivalries, had begun to assemble evidence of wrongdoing in the city’s North Branch district. This effort required no intrepidness. The North Branch was wide open: cops on the pad; bail bondsmen steering cases; judges on the take. Marvin was not the worst offender, but one of the least popular, and at the time he first met Stern he had a subpoena to appear before a state grand jury that was looking into allegations that Marvin had taken monthly payments from certain narcotics dealers to warn them of ensuing police raids.
“I still owe you for all of that,” said Radczyk.
Stern shook his head. It had not been much. He had simply touched the pressure points. Like someone who knew jujitsu. Stern had paid discreet visits to certain politicians whose alliances he’d estimated would be disturbed by sudden havoc in the North End. The county prosecutor, Raymond Horgan, who had friends like everybody else, had seen fit to quash the investigation. For these efforts, Radczyk had been unreasonably grateful; he had attended each of Marvin’s visits, fretting like a mother; he was as garrulous then as now. Marvin simply sat there in his uniform, cracking his gum, while Ray went on reinterpreting every remark and arguing in behalf of Marvin’s exculpation. He seemed determined not to believe the worst, the kind of devoted big brother every man should have. None of it had done any good for Marvin, who was discovered a few years later in the trunk of a car being towed from a parking lot in the North End. As Stern heard it, Marvin was stark naked, with blowtorch holes burned black through his privates.
Stern said that out loud, that he might not have been much help to Marvin in the end.
“Gave him a chance,” said Radczyk. “He was three times seven. Can only give a fella a chance.” Stern and he both pondered that observation. “I shoulda known he’d never make a cop. Hell,” said Radczyk, “I don’t even know what kind of cop I made.” Radczyk, caught in his own tender reflections, smiled crookedly. There was something unavoidably touching about this confession—the very plainness of it. Radczyk was pushing retirement but remained in doubt about these fundamental judgments. His woe Stern did not feel; he had no question about his fitness for his calling, no regrets about what he would have done with greater diligence or harder work. It was the costs of that kind of dedication he was now attempting to assess. The thought brought him back to where they had started. Glanc
ing about to find his cases, Stern stood.
“I thank you for all your good work on this matter, Lieutenant. I am in your debt.”
Still apparently anchored in the past, Radczyk considered Stern with a tentative, saddened look and for the first time had no comment.
“Did my wife have a virus, by the way?” Stern asked. He wondered how remote the glimmer was that he had been chasing.
In answer, Radczyk showed the paper. His thick finger lay in the findings section of the form. Stern squinted across the table: “HSV-2 Positive.” When Stern looked to him inquiringly, Radczyk shrugged. Whatever that meant. Medical gibberish.
“Maybe I oughta go back there and get that doc’s name for you,” said Radczyk.
This time Stern caught it, a savvy flash that passed through Radczyk’s worn cheerful face, sharp and sudden as the reflection off a blade—something you see, then don’t. He had seen this clever gleam in Radczyk before, Stern realized, and let it go by. It amazed him, after all these years, that he could still be taken in by the police.
Stern set down his cases and resumed his seat. He spoke precisely, as he would in court.
