Personal Injuries

by Scott Turow

  “The Olympics,” he said, in dazzled admiration. Guys were always like this, staggered that a female had lived out their fantasies. “You probably couldn’t even believe it was real.”

  Some would say it hadn’t been. It was ’84, so the Soviet bloc didn’t show, but none of those teams were a power that year, so for her the glow had been largely undiminished.

  “And you were great, right?” he asked. “To make the Olympics you had to be great.”

  Great? There was too much heat in the car and she was almost groggy. She had thought she was great. In high school, she was the best in Colorado, where no more than half the high schools even played. She was runner-up for Female Athlete of the Year in-state, and received a scholarship to Iowa, one of the great programs in the country, the absolute tops west of the Mississippi. She had gone off with high hopes. She was selected for the National Senior Team as a sophomore. It meant she was being groomed for the Olympics. But two of her teammates at Iowa were also on the squad, one a defender/midfielder like her, and both of them better than she was. They were stars, bigger stars than Evon. She played in the Olympics. But she did not start. Whenever she heard people talk about the Peter Principle, rising to your highest level of incompetence, she thought about her experience in field hockey. She had worked and strived and played against the best in the world and found, in the end, that the very best were better than she was. When the team took home a bronze medal, she thought, How appropriate, how doggone appropriate.

  For Feaver, she kept it simple: she didn’t start.

  “But you were there.” He was excited by the idea, clearly gripped again by some revived feeling of his own passionate hope for stardom. He was questioning her as an expert, as someone who’d arrived, who could tell him, perhaps, how he had missed the goal. How had she found the fortitude to pay the price? Where did it come from? The drive? The spark?

  Her responses were laconic. She described practicing until long after dark, the way she had fallen asleep with a stick in her hand, not once or twice but a hundred times, reviewing moves in her head. She’d been through a stretch at Iowa when she had not spent even a single holiday with her family, a period in which Thanksgiving to her only meant prep time for the NCAAs and Christmas the “A” Camp in New Jersey, when even the Fourth of July was lost to the National Futures Tournament and in which the time devoted to sport meant it took six years for her B.A. Field hockey became a tunnel in her life, a long passage in which there was little external light. When it was suddenly over, she was like some underworld person returned to daytime, blinded, dazzled.

  But beyond detailing her devotion, she could not share an answer to his questions. She was just not as open, or sloppy, choose the word, as he was; she could never take the joy or comfort he seemed to find in revealing himself. It had just been the path that was clear to her. Her father had been a baseball star. And it turned out his ability had leaped generations like an electrical arc. Evon had his power, his surprising speed from such a bandy build, and the precision to make that astonishing triangulation about where a flying ball, her body, and her stick were going to arrive. In the game, with the moving hand of the clock feeling as if it were winding her heart tighter, with the dimension of the known universe shrunk to 100 yards by 60 and its population reduced to the other twenty-one women on the field, with grace and fury possessing her as if they were visiting from somewhere else—at those moments she was finally, fully herself, not the odd, unknown, scowling girl lost in her tumbling home.

  Her father lit up like a lantern when she played, paced the side, at times too stirred up to watch, but her mother never really seemed to care for the sight of her, even when she ran from the field in victory. Her hair clung in damp ringlets to her cheeks, her uniform was mudspotted, and her knee pads and socks were dragging down. Often, at the end of the game, she could see that she was where she had started, odd and vaguely unwelcome. Not simply because she was a girl good at what many still thought was reserved for boys, but because in her passion, in the explosive furious way she crossed the field, she was revealing something about herself, much like her scowling, which others did not want to know.

  “I had the talent,” she said. “And I worked it. For whatever that was worth.” She shrugged, unwilling to express much more. The Mercedes by now had glided to a halt in front of the awning and the handsome refinished doors at her building.

  “How far did you get? The team? Did you guys get close to a medal?”

  She waved a hand, barring further inquiry. She heard her mother’s corrosive warnings about being boastful and showy, and she was still wary, on principle, about going too far, too fast. But neither concern was the real problem.

  “I did my best, Robbie, but it’s over now. I’ve had to let it go.”

  The streets glistened in the warmth of a night thaw that would bring fog by morning. In the reflected light, she could see the fixed way he watched her. He knew about that, she realized, letting loose of the grandest hopes. Loss freighted his expression.

  “Yeah,” he said. He took quite some time before he spoke again. “If I said, Let me buy you dinner, that wouldn’t be right, would it?”

  Would it? She sighed on reflex, weighing it. But it was still too chancy. He was dashed, of course.

  “Well, okay,” he answered, but was too raw to look her way for long. His hurt, like almost everything else, was so open.

  What the hell, she thought. What the hey.

  “We took a bronze,” she said.

  “No way. Really?”

  She indulged them both by absorbing his momentary worship. A medal. An Olympic medal! You could see his heart fly at the thought. She did not surrender often to pride, fearing she could remain stuck there for life, but tonight, under his influence, she felt it fill her out. She had done that. Set her mind, scaled the heights, and returned with the vaunted trophy. Ironically, he recognized the cost, too.

  “That’s a lot to climb down from.”

  “It is,” she answered. “You realize you’re a lot later than other people in getting started on a life.”

  They talked another moment. Before she left the car, he held out his hand to shake. Congratulations, probably. Alighting, she had another thought.

  Peace.

  13

  “PEOPLE TALK,” ROBBIE TOLD US, “ABOUT Brendan, because Kosic and Milacki are always stuck to him like gum on your shoe. You know, it’s like, What gives? Especially with Rollo, cause Rollo’s lived for more than thirty years in the basement apartment in that big stone house of Brendan’s out in Latterly on the West Bank. And Rollo’s sort of been Brendan’s loyal liege his whole life. The story is that they’re both from the same parish, but Brendan’s a few years older, so they didn’t really get hooked up until they ended up in the same platoon in Korea. Anyway, they’re in some hellacious firefight charging up Pork Chop Hill or wherever, the Commies are kicking their living ass, and Brendan looks around and some Chink jumps out of a bush and just about empties his rifle in Rollo. When they tell the story, and I’ve heard it only about seven or eight hundred times, it’s like in the movies where the guy sort of stands there rattling from the bullets, dead already and only the recoil keeping him on his feet. Rollo’s ripped to shreds, but good brave Brendan, under no circumstances will he say quit, he throws Rollo over his back and carries him up the hill for half an hour until he gets him to a corpsman. And this, by the way, is not just a story. Brendan’s got the Silver Star at home to prove it.” Robbie paused to direct a look across the conference room table at Sennett, a warning that Brendan Tuohey would risk his life to defy his enemies.

  “Anyway, when Rollo recovers, he’s like some character in an old novel or the Book of Ruth, My life is yours, whither thou goest. I don’t know exactly what he pledged, but he’s had his nose in Brendan’s hind end ever since. Brendan becomes a cop, Rollo becomes a cop. Brendan becomes a deputy P.A., Rollo gets assigned to the P.A.’s investigation unit. Brendan becomes a judge, and pretty soon, Roll
o’s the bailiff in Brendan’s courtroom.”

  Given the living arrangements, Robbie said, there was occasional sniggering. But his bet was what you saw was what you got—two crusty old bachelors, farting and walking around in their underwear. For one thing, Robbie said, Brendan’d had a thing on the side, his secretary Constanza, for more than twenty years now. Constanza was married, which suited Brendan just fine. He had once told Robbie he would no more care to live with a woman than with a parrot. ‘Love the plumage,’ he said, ‘but too much jabber. Easier this way.’ Indeed, in one of his acidic, if antic, moods, Robbie told us Tuohey had delivered a fairly entertaining monologue about why liquor was a more dependable companion than a woman. Kosic, who said almost nothing to anyone, seemed to share these attitudes. He, too, had a girlfriend, a widow, his second cousin, whom, conveniently, he could never marry.

  In Robbie’s opinion, the motive for Kosic’s and Tuohey’s living arrangements was not sex but money. Brendan had extended Kosic’s duties as bagman far beyond the usual role of a simple intermediary. The ‘rent,’ as Robbie called it, which certain Common Law Claims judges paid to remain in their courtrooms, was delivered to Kosic and never went farther. For more than a decade, Robbie had never seen Brendan reach into his pocket, even for a quarter for a newspaper. Kosic handled everything—he paid all household expenses, the light bill, the phone company, with money orders purchased at random currency exchanges and banks. Brendan had no credit cards and rarely used his checking account. Meals, vacations, clothing, his debts from his card games at Rob Roy, his country club, even the little bit on the side he had always given Constanza, were always handed over by Rollo. ‘Forgot my wallet’ was the excuse with those who did not know him well; others did not bother to ask. Occasionally, apropos of nothing, Brendan would mention his mother’s Depression-learned lessons about the evils of credit and the virtues of hard cash. Robbie had never heard anything similar from Sheilah, Mort’s mother. It was just Brendan’s play, always a step or two ahead of his imagined enemies.

  This debriefing about Kosic followed Robbie’s payoff to Walter by several days. It was occasioned by Wunsch’s warning that Robbie couldn’t expect a ‘miracle-of-the-month club’ regarding the three new contrived cases that had landed on Malatesta’s docket. From the start, Sennett and McManis had known that there was a finite number of complaints they could file in a short period. Tuohey’s cohort would feel put upon and suspicious if there were too many ‘specials’ Mort could become curious about the extraordinary volume of referrals coming upstairs from me; and the judges might grow wary if Robbie and McManis kept showing up as matched opponents, like Tracy and Hepburn. On the other hand, Stan was under continuing pressure from D.C. to keep the Project moving forward. By now he’d taken a small coterie of Assistant U.S. Attorneys into his confidence, never seen by us and rarely mentioned, but whose presence was indicated by the volumes of paperwork forthcoming in connection with each of the new complaints Stan had produced every ten days or so.

  But the judicial assignments on the new cases continued to fall out inconveniently. Besides Malatesta, two cases had gone to Gillian Sullivan, who was temporarily unapproachable. At the moment, Judge Sullivan was under intense media scrutiny that resulted from some ridiculous inebriate remarks she’d made to a Hispanic attorney who’d arrived late in her courtroom. Only one case had gone to Sherm Crowthers, who was proceeding with it at his usual phlegmatic pace. And none had been assigned to Barnett Skolnick, the only judge who accepted money from Robbie directly and the one whom Sennett was dying to bag as a way to quiet the doubters in D.C. When Sennett had suggested trying to transfer a case or two from Malatesta to Skolnick, Robbie had scoffed.

  “Sure, Stan, I’ll just give Rollo Kosic a bang on the phone and tell him the FBI prefers Judge Skolnick.” Besides, Robbie pointed out, Kosic was clearly favoring Malatesta at the moment, probably because his docket had been consumed by a lengthy environmental tort case that had limited the business he could do on the side. But now McManis had recognized that an opportunity was presented by Walter’s warning that for a while Malatesta wouldn’t risk more favorable rulings for Feaver.

  “That’s your excuse to talk to Kosic,” McManis said. “Because you need results on one of these cases right now.”

  Naturally, Stan was excited by the prospect of breaching Tuohey’s inner circle so soon. But Robbie continued to insist it was impossible.

  “I don’t do Rollo. I mean, I talk to him. He’d bounce into my usual pop stand now and then, so sometimes I’d buy him a beverage. But Rollo’s the kind of guy, you hear from him when he wants. I never call him. And no matter what, I don’t talk dirty to the guy. I couldn’t sell it. ‘Always act in your own person,’” Robbie concluded, another quote from Stanislavsky.

  “Sure you can, Robbie,” said McManis soothingly. Jim had removed his glasses. He did this whenever he became intent, so much so I’d become convinced that the glasses were windowpanes, merely part of a disguise. Now he extolled Robbie’s abilities as an actor and a salesman, and told him there’d be no problem setting up a meeting to appear accidental. “We have this little thing we do called surveillance,” said McManis. He pointed outside, meant to indicate Joe Amari. “We’ll tail Kosic for a while. When he shows up at your spot, you’ll get a call.”

  Jim had never pushed Feaver before. He was a model of reason and caution, but he’d clearly noticed what I had in Robbie’s quick-eyed resistance, something I hadn’t observed in the months I’d been his lawyer. This wasn’t a down mood, or even pre-game butterflies. Robbie Feaver was flat-out scared.

  ONE AFTERNOON IN LATE FEBRUARY, as Robbie and Evon were prepping a client, Heidi Brunswick, for her dep, Bonita put a call through to Robbie. He was sitting in the tall leather chair behind his desk, and as he listened he did not move. Evon assumed Lorraine had taken another bad turn. Instead, he ended by saying, “You’re the greatest,” and buzzed Bonita to get Mort, who was defending a deposition in the Palace. “Let’s go,” he told Evon. Suzy, the other paralegal, was summoned to finish with Heidi, and Robbie, with apologies to the client, ran to the door.

  “New one,” he told Evon in the elevator. By now she recognized the look. After nearly eight weeks in his office, she’d seen Feaver through major depositions, even one day of a trial that settled after jury selection. Yet nothing excited either Robbie or Mort like the prospect of signing up a new client. They reached a state of high alert, as if they’d smelled gunpowder on the air. The fact that Robbie’s days in practice were limited and that he could expect to share in the fee on these cases, even from a jail cell, did nothing to lessen his enthusiasm. But for Robbie, charming and landing a new client was a thrill in its own right, a supreme moment of performance in which success meant he’d persuaded at least one person he was a better lawyer than anyone else in the tri-cities.

  The present matter was what Robbie referred to as a “good case,” meaning there were prospects for a huge recovery. The would-be client was a thirty-six-year-old mother of three. Yesterday her doctor had sent her home from his office telling her that her chest pains were bronchitis. The paramedics had just brought her in to Sisters of Mercy’s emergency room, unconscious and fibrillating in the aftermath of a major coronary infarct. Evon understood enough of the grim alchemy of this practice, in which misfortune was turned into gold, to realize that the damages could escalate dramatically if she died, leaving three motherless children. Feaver pushed the Mercedes toward eighty on the highway. He had been tipped on the case by the administrator of the E.R.

  “We were real good friends for a while,” Robbie explained.

  He clearly knew his way around the hospital, slamming the pressure plate on the walls that swept open the doors to the E.R. with a hydraulic whoosh. His open topcoat floated behind him like a cape as he hustled to the administrator’s office.

  The woman was striking, African-American and something else, Polynesian perhaps. There was a trace of some high-cheeked ancestral beauty. Sh
e was in her mid-thirties and carefully put together, wearing a large designer scarf that covered her shoulders and was knotted mid-chest. Robbie kissed her on the cheek. She placed an arm around him in greeting and directed him at once down the corridor into the waiting area for the emergency room.

  The space was crowded, most of the people in the four rows of plastic chairs evincing the beleaguered blown-apart look of anxiety so intense it had grown numbing. A bloated young woman, with a ratted hairdo in some disarray, cradled one child, a newborn, while two more, both boys, near three, climbed around the seats, raising a commotion. She spoke to them harshly and occasionally flicked out a hand to deliver a swat that each child was already skilled in avoiding. She finally caught one of them and his howls filled the small area.

  In spite of the cold, an African-American teen was dressed on top in nothing but a white T-shirt, on which blood had already dried brown. He held one arm with the other. A crude bandage of gauze and tape was visible near his shoulder. An older woman, his mother, Evon guessed, sat beside him, humped up in a bulky brown winter coat, tossing her head in chagrin every now and then. The boy, Evon took it, had been stabbed.

  In the very last row were the people Robbie and the administrator, Taylor, were looking for, the family of the woman who was somewhere behind the curtains a hundred feet away, struggling for her life. A lumpy-looking younger man with the pallor of a potato and thinning hair appeared to be the husband. He had his hands folded piously and looked completely bewildered. Beside him was an elderly couple, a porky, hard-faced man with black hair and a pack of cigarettes bulging in his shirt pocket, and his wife, whose jaw was already trembling from the strain of prolonged weeping. She cried again as soon as she saw Robbie with Taylor. She could not wait to tell her story. Still in his coat, Robbie slid into the chair beside her and immediately took her hand.