Personal Injuries

by Scott Turow

  Feaver was enraptured with his Mercedes, which he had purchased only a few months before. He often spouted the staggering price, $133,000, unabashed that the car had cost more than some of the four-bedroom houses they passed in outlying developments. Secure within the elegant cabin and its fortress feel, Robbie was apt to become a random element. He zoomed around as if he were in a spaceship. On the way back from the Greenwood County Courthouse, he would pop in on his mother, who was at a nursing home along the way, or visit Sparky, a scalper who was holding tickets for a Hands game which Robbie was sending to a referring attorney. Feaver also loved to shop. He was a devotee of sales and fancy name brands and frequently made impulsive stops at the malls. Under the bright store lights he’d serutinize the merchandise, then call his wife from the car to describe what he was bringing home, as if he were a big-game hunter.

  In every venue Feaver entered with a sense of membership: he was known; there were friends of decades and tireless stories. For Robbie, all the world was in some measure a fraternity, a place for upbeat banter, tasteless jokes, and booming laughter. Arriving for a dep where he hoped to eviscerate the opposing party, he nonetheless greeted the other lawyer with cheerful enthusiasm. At the tony haberdasher where he acquired his expensive wardrobe, Robbie had his own salesman, Carlos, a Cuban refugee who welcomed him with the palms-up grip of a brother. The store was full of men like Robbie, with careful haircuts and a showboat air, guys who considered the fit of their garments in the mirror with an exacting look at odds with the carefree swagger with which they strolled down the avenue.

  One day in the third week of January, apropos of nothing, Feaver cried out that they had to go see Harold, who turned out to be a client disastrously injured in a collision with a delivery truck. Evon could barely stand to look at the man. He was hunched to one side in a wheelchair; there were sores on his arms and face. Robbie, however, took Harold’s hand and with barroom gusto told him he looked great. Feaver chatted away for nearly twenty minutes about highlights of the basketball season in the Mid-Ten. Afterwards, in the car, he told her he was determined to keep Harold alive. The defendants—the auto manufacturer, the state highway department, the trucking company—had dragged the case out nearly nine years in the clear hope Harold would die. If he did, a case presently worth $20 million, with comps—compensatory damages for lifetime care—might bring one-fifth of that, most of which would go to repay his medical insurer. There would be zilch for Harold’s mother, a large-bellied, middle-aged woman in a shapeless dress, who had greeted them and who had cared for her son since his wife deserted him shortly after the accident.

  “What about your fee?” Evon asked dryly. “That goes way down, too, doesn’t it?”

  “Hey,” Feaver answered. “You ever meet Peter Neucriss, he’ll tell you before he says hello about all the good he’s doing for the world, sticking up for everybody who gets abused. Not me. The rules of this game are that we give people money to make up for their pain, and everybody who steps on the field knows how we’re gonna keep score—the judges, the jury, me, the client, the folks on the other side. It’s money. How much do we get, how much do they keep. Whatever people say, let me give you a fast translation: You can dress it up and make it say Mommy, but this baby’s really talkin do-re-mi.” He nodded firmly. “That’s the play.”

  As always, his smugness was exasperating. Of all the people to think he’d figured everything out.

  “What is ‘the play’ anyway?” she asked suddenly. “It’s always the excuse. And I never get it. Are you saying, like ‘I made the play’ in sports? Or ‘I have a part in a play’? Or ‘I played a trick on you’?”

  “Right,” he said.

  “Come on.”

  He waved a hand past his nose at the difficulty she was inviting. They were in the suburbs, a land of recently built houses with peaked roofs and few exterior graces. From the highway, she saw two little boys across the distance, smacking at a tetherball in the cold.

  “Well, shit,” said Feaver, unable as always to endure his own silence. “It’s just The Play. It’s like life, you know? There’s really no point, except getting your jollies, and even that doesn’t add up to anything in the end. You think any of this makes sense when you stand back from it? You think God made an ordered universe? That’s the laugh with the law. We like to pretend it makes life more reasonable. Hardly.”

  She groaned. Which made him more insistent.

  “Tell me what sense there is that Lorraine is sick like she is. Any? Why her? Why now? Why that terrible motherfucker of a disease? It doesn’t add. Or take a look at our cases: forty-eight-year-old lathe operator. Machine goes down and he turns the power off on the line to fix it. The foreman comes back, figures some joker is fucking with him like they do twice a day, and throws the switch. Hand is cut in half. Off-duty fireman’s at somebody’s house washing the storm windows. He’s gone for two minutes to get more Windex and the three-year-old climbs up on a stool to look outside, and goes right through the open window, DOA at Mount Sinai. Or Harold, for Chrissake. One minute you’re a cheerful salesman on the highway, the next minute you’re a meatball in a wheelchair. It’s The Play. Ball hits a stone on the infield, hops over your glove, and you lose the World Series. You go home and cry. It’s really chaos and darkness out there, and when we pretend it’s not, it’s just The Play. We’re all onstage. Saying our lines. Playing at whoever we’re trying to be at the moment. A lawyer. A spouse. Even though we know in the back of our heads that life is a lot more random and messed-up than we can stand to say to ourselves. Okay?” His black eyes lit on her despite the highway traffic. Something—his intensity—was frightening. “Okay?” he asked again.

  “No,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  She crossed her arms, deliberating on whether he deserved an answer.

  “I believe in God,” she told him.

  “Me too,” he said. “But He made me and this is what I think.”

  An exasperated sound gargled up from her involuntarily. Didn’t she know? Who told her to try to argue with a lawyer?

  ONE OF THOSE MORNINGS IN JANUARY, Feaver and Evon were in the 600 only a few blocks from work when they became snarled in a honking line of stalled traffic. Far ahead, heavy plumes of what appeared at first to be smoke expanded in the frigid air, swirling above the yellow blinkers atop a cordon of striped barricades and emergency vehicles. Approaching by inches, they eventually saw a covey of city sewer workers in quilted vests and construction helmets leaning on the yellow rail they’d erected around an open manhole. They were engaged in no visible labor other than shouting down to a couple of their colleagues who had descended. A young woman in a hard hat waved a red flag, sending the traffic along through a single lane. When she stopped them abreast of her, Feaver lowered his window, admitting a sudden riffle of cold.

  “How come the cutest girl’s always holding the flag?” he asked her. She was African-American, with a broad face and wide eyes and lovely, peaked cheekbones that plumped with an enormous grin while she flagged him on.

  “How do you know her?” Evon asked as the Mercedes spurted ahead in the traffic.

  He looked puzzled. “I don’t.”

  “And you just say that to her?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Because she might mind.”

  “Did it look like she minded?”

  “But what’s the point? Can I ask? What’s the point of saying that?” Her tone was careful, hoping not to be incendiary. But she’d always wanted to ask his kind of man this question.

  “She’s cute,” he answered. “You think it’s easy to look cute in a construction helmet? I don’t. You think it’s an accident she looks cute? I mean, she got up in the morning. She tied that bandanna on her head, even though she’d be wearing a hard hat. She looked at her tush in her jeans. Who was she doing that for?” On the morning ride, he drove in without a topcoat, and he laid the long hand with which he’d been gesturing on his bright tie. “For me. A
million guys like me. And so I say thanks. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Maybe I’ll come through her intersection again someday. Maybe the light turns red. Maybe she’s just getting off for lunch. I mean, I can imagine anything. But right now, it’s thanks. That’s all.”

  That was Feaver. He wasn’t a mouth-breather, not the kind of jerk always hopping along on his erection as if it were a pogo stick. He had some style. But he was still on alert, a heat-seeking missile shot through the sky and waiting to lock on. He stood too close when he was speaking. His wife lay at home, dying by the inch each day, and he did not wear a wedding ring. Falling into his car each morning, Evon almost gasped at the sickly mix of sweet smells from his eau de cologne, hair spray, fancy shaving cream and body lotion. He was his own most deeply prized possession and he liked to advertise this, as if the sheer power of his vanity might overcome a woman.

  When she’d met McManis the first time in Des Moines, he’d warned her.

  ‘Our c.i.’—confidential informant, he meant, a polite term for snitch—‘apparently has a big rep as a ladies’ man. You’re gonna have to act the part, and he’s the type who might want to blend fact and fiction.’ Jim had given her three rules. First, don’t put up with anything that bothered her; they’d back her completely. Second, don’t be offended, because she wasn’t going to change him.

  ‘And third,’ McManis had said, hesitating long enough that she knew this was the important one, ‘don’t fall for it.’

  No chance of that, she’d answered. So far, there hadn’t been many problems. One time in his office, she’d gotten a sly, sidewise look as he asked, almost offhandedly, when it was Bonita was supposed to stumble upon them going at it on his leather sofa, a portion of the scenario that Evon was still hoping to skip. She’d stiff-armed him with a quick look and had heard no more about it.

  But there wasn’t a woman in the office who wouldn’t have warned her. The female employees gathered for coffee breaks and lunches in a narrow interior area that was referred to as ‘the kitchen,’ a place where a male never visited for a period longer than half a minute to retrieve coffee or the brown sack containing his lunch. Setting her cover, Evon had casually mentioned how kind Robbie had been, stopping for her each morning. Oretta, one of the file clerks, had hooted.

  “Girl,” she said, “you get in his taxi, sooner or later he’ll be askin for the fare.” Shrill, lascivious laughter from each woman reverberated off the steel cabinets. But later, as Bonita was filing, she made it a point to catch Evon in the corridor.

  “You know, when I started in here, I was single, you know, we partied some.” She did not use a name but glanced over her shoulder and tipped the teased-up tufts of jet hair toward Robbie’s office. Bonita would not have gotten through the interview without catching Robbie’s attention. She wore all her clothing a half-size too tight, her pleasing contours well displayed. “But pretty soon, I went back in to seein Hector. And you know, you’ve got a relationship or somethin, he’ll flirt a little, but he won’t push or nothin, if you really mean it. He wants you to like him. That’s how he is. Like a little kid.” Bonita slammed the long white file cabinet back into its recess in the wall. “And you’ll like him,” she said. Within the raccoonish circles of shadow, Bonita’s dark eyes glimmered with the penetrating light of conviction. Then she moved off, leaving Evon with a momentary feeling akin to fright.

  7

  THE JEALOUS RULER OF ALL THE BLINKING equipment housed in the conference room cabinet was an electronics expert detailed to Petros named Alf Klecker. Alf was a happy pirate, burly and pie-faced, with more curly reddish hair than I would have thought the FBI tolerated. Klecker, as I came to learn, had spent many years in D.C. as a ‘black-bag guy,’ who’d done the surreptitious break-ins when a judge had approved installing a bug. He was renowned in the Bureau for having remained more than a full twenty-four hours in a janitor’s closet in the U.S. Senate Building in order to avoid being detected during ABSCAM.

  Immediately before this assignment, Alf had dwelled on the ‘black world’ side of the Bureau, working what the agents called FCI, foreign counterintelligence. He arrived on January 27 to prepare Robbie for his first recorded encounter with Walter Wunsch, carrying a bagful of gizmos that were only now being released for domestic use. Tape recorders, he said, were out. And the standard radio transmitter c.i.’s usually wore, the T-4, was dangerous these days, when any kid with a police scanner could stumble on the signal. Instead Alf had brought a device called a FoxBIte. It had been developed by a retired Bureau tech guy, who’d licensed the design to his former employers for a fortune. It was about half the size of a package of cigarettes, was less than an inch thick, and weighed only six ounces. It did not contain enough metal to set off the courthouse magnetometers and it recorded not to tape but to memory cards, which were downloaded to a computer for replay. To provide an ear on what was happening, and a backup in case the FoxBlte failed, Robbie would also wear a slightly larger transmitting unit, ‘a digital frequency hopper,’ as Alf called it, which would broadcast an encrypted signal across a randomized series of channels. A field playback unit, programmed to receive and record the FoxBIte’s signal, would be housed in a surveillance van parked near the courthouse.

  Robbie shook his head as he hefted the two units.

  “I got a pen that records to a microchip,” he told Klecker.

  “Son,” Alf said, “you let a defense lawyer loose with the kind of fidelity your microchip gets and there’ll be twelve people nodding when he claims the defendant was saying ‘honey,’ not ‘money.’ No offense, George.”

  None taken, I replied. The five of us—Evon, Robbie, McManis, Alf, and me—filled the small conference room. The design of McManis’s suite had made this the most secure meeting place, since it was not visible from reception. The furnishings were somewhat spartan, a long rectangular Parsons-style conference table surrounded by black vinyl barrel chairs on casters, a contrast to the lavish improvements left by the prior tenant. McManis’s personal office and the conference room each had two walls wainscoted in the same red oak as the entry. Expensive, rosy Karastan carpeting softened sound throughout.

  “This puppy gives you the highest fidelity possible,” Alf said. “You can tell what kind of heels a perp’s got on his shoes. No joshin.”

  Klecker showed Robbie the Velcro holster which he’d secure on Feaver’s inside thigh to hold the equipment. The lead for the tiny omnidirectional mike, black and smaller than the nail on my little finger, would come out the top of his zipper, hidden under the flap on his trousers. Feaver had been told to wear a dark suit for that reason. Holding the two units against his thigh, he remained dubious.

  “This stuff’s gonna feel like it weighs two tons.”

  “Robbie, all c.i.’s say that the first time they put on a body recorder,” McManis told him. Both Robbie and I had taken well to McManis. Jim was the sort of level, unflappable person that FBI agents are on television. I knew he was an attorney by training; UCORC would not have let him play this role were he not. But beyond that, his background, like that of all the other UCAs, was opaque. Long after Petros was over, I learned that his father was a retired detective in Philadelphia, which, somehow, was not a surprise. I had always recognized in Jim the enviably settled air of a man content both with where he’d come from and with his own enhancements of his fundamental lot.

  Jim had a soothing touch with Robbie now, reminding him of all the safeguards in place. Evon would be wearing an earpiece, lacquered under a lick on the long side of her haircut, that picked up an additional infrared signal from the FoxBIte, allowing her to listen in on the conversation with Wunsch. She’d be right outside, in case anything went wrong. Jim himself would be downstairs with Alf in the surveillance van, prepared to call the cavalry, if need be.

  “It’s all covered,” said Jim.

  “I hope so,” said Feaver. He had an almost superstitious fear of Tuohey and was convinced that if he
were ever caught with the recorder, he would be killed, or at least seriously harmed, before getting out of the courthouse.

  “Suppose you better step outside,” Klecker told Evon. He was ready for Feaver to let down his trousers so he could strap on the harness.

  “Right,” said Robbie. “We want her to be able to keep her mind on her work.”

  “Yeah, really,” said Evon.

  Sennett arrived while she was out there, and they reentered the conference room together as McManis was going through the final formalities with Robbie. For each recording, Feaver was required to sign a consent form. Federal law provides that before the government records anybody, there must be either an interception order, signed by a judge, or consent by one party to the conversation. UCORC’s protocol also required the FoxBIte to be turned on and off via a remote which one of the agents would hold on to, ensuring that Robbie could not exercise any choice over what he recorded. McManis threw the switch now and took a seat in one of the barrel chairs, discreetly directing his voice toward the mike at Robbie’s belt line.

  “This is Special Agent UCN James McManis,” he said. It was months before I figured out that ‘UCN’ stood for ‘undercover name.’ He gave the date and time and described the anticipated meeting between Feaver and Wunsch.

  Evon and Robbie waited while Sennett repeated last-minute instructions. Make sure Walter spoke. Nods, head shakes, facial expressions—none of that would be captured by the recorder. Feaver flexed his forehead and circled his shoulders, undertaking what he purported to be relaxation techniques suggested by Stanislavsky. Finally, McManis gave a thumbs-up and we all lined up at the conference room door to shake Robbie’s hand. It was still stone cold when he got to me.

  THE KINDLE COUNTY Superior Court Law and Equity Department, the civil courthouse, was built in the 1950s and its architecture reflects that confused American era when, appropriately, all buildings were square. It has the proportions of an armory, half a block around and equally high, constructed in yellow brick and walled in the interior with six inches of plaster, ordered up out of Augie Bolcarro’s enduring gratitude to various trade unions. To add some sense of the grandeur of the law, a classical dome, in the manner of Bulfinch, was plopped atop the building, bleeding weak light down through a central rotunda. There is also a variety of silly concrete festoonery spaced along the flat cornice, including masks of Justice and other Greek figures, and a cantilevered portico, supported by greened chains. The building has always been known as ‘the Temple,’ a term so timeworn that it has lost the ironic inflections with which it was spoken during the structure’s first years.