by Scott Turow
“Robbie Fever,” he said. Evon was sure he’d pronounced it that way: Fever. From a gold case in his suit pocket, he offered his card.
By herself, several seats down, sat the oldest child, who, perhaps, had insisted on coming along. Neatly dressed, she was about nine, with dishwater curls. She’d sunk down in her chair, looking into her lap. She alone seemed to have fully taken on the gravity of the situation, recognizing the emotional abyss over which the entire family now teetered.
After a while, Robbie took out his yellow pad and began to write. He followed each of the family members intently as they related the story. About ten minutes later, Mort arrived, with his slow-paced, shuffling limp, and took up the seat between the daughter and her father. He spoke first to the child. He was quiet and made no effort to humor her, but hovered, awaiting her responses. When at last he received a decisive nod, he reached into his briefcase and removed a book of crossword puzzles and a pencil. Mort turned next to the father.
The two lawyers were like that, literally enveloping the family from both sides, when a doctor called out, “Rickmaier, who’s with Cynthia Rickmaier?” He was in operating scrubs, including the green head cover, and he was followed, somewhat timidly, by two female residents, one also dressed for surgery, the other in a long white coat with a stethoscope at her throat. The surgeon, eager to get this over with, apparently took Robbie and Mort for family members. He motioned them all to an adjoining room and began speaking as soon as he had closed the door. He did not get very far before the old woman let out a primal shriek. Grief drove her to a corner of the room, where she looked up to a crucifix above her and cried out expressions that did not quite cross the threshold to words. Her husband cast a puzzled look her way and shook his head. The doctor had continued speaking and Robbie scratched a few things on the yellow pad beside him until one of the residents seemed to take note, causing him to lay the pen aside. At that point, he followed the dead woman’s mother to the corner and put his arm around her.
Mort, in the meantime, had steered the little girl to her father, who, even standing, still clasped his hands. He had said almost nothing, but tears coursed beneath his glasses, as his daughter leaned against him. Mort, on the other side, took her hand. He was quietly weeping himself. More startling to Evon, Robbie, when he returned to the other family members, was weeping, too, real tears leaving trails of light on both cheeks. She never cried. That was another lesson from the playing field. No tears, no matter how bad the blow.
Robbie, in time, began talking to the family about arrangements, offering assistance with a funeral home. He motioned to Evon and gave her a phone number. As she left, she saw him reach into his briefcase for the contract. She knew the form by heart now. “We hereby exclusively retain the firm of Feaver & Dinnerstein to represent us…” He passed it and the Mont Blanc pen down to the husband, now sitting limply in a chair. His arm was around his daughter and his eyes were fixed on the large clock. His mother-in-law was demanding he sign. They were going to get the shits who did this to Cynthia. She couldn’t leave this place, she said, without knowing the process had begun.
When Evon returned, Robbie was on his feet. His eyes were dry now. His coat was buttoned, the muffler was in place, and his briefcase was under his arm. No doubt the contract was in there. Robbie kissed the mother-in-law goodbye and said another private word to her. Before he left, he reminded the two men, even the little girl, to talk to no one else about the matter, especially not anybody from the insurance company. Refer all calls to them. Mort remained beside the little girl.
“Make a note,” Robbie said to Evon, as soon as they were in the Mercedes. “Call Ozman County and find out when the coroner’s inquest is. We need to be there. There’s a lot riding on when the coroner fixes the time of the major infarct. If he says it was three days ago, then the doctor’s going to claim all the damage was done and even if he’d made the correct diagnosis yesterday, it wouldn’t have saved her.” Robbie gave Evon the name of a pathologist he wanted to attend the inquest with them, an expert witness who could come to an opposite conclusion from the county coroner’s, if need be.
Feaver was pensive as he drove, allaying Evon’s worst fear that he might even celebrate. They were on the highway now and the Mercedes was a placid environment. Sisters of Mercy was far out, beyond the suburban sprawl. Here the frozen corn shocks of the autumn lay fallen, elbowing through the snows that filled the vast fields beside the road.
“Can I ask something?” Evon said eventually. At her center, a storm of odd feelings was agitating. “When I met you, you said your name was pronounced Favor. Like ‘Do me a favor.’ But just now you said ‘Fever.’ You say it like that most of the time.”
“Fever. Favor. I answer to both. When I was going to be a star, I thought Fever was better. Hotter, right? I go back and forth. Maybe I was trying to be a hit with you that first day.” He shrugged, with his usual whimsical appreciation for his own deviations. Most of the people around him said ‘Fever,’ in fact. “And besides,” he said, “there’s the public relations thing.”
She didn’t understand.
“The name was Faber. In the old country. It’s one of those Ellis Island stories. The immigration officer couldn’t understand the accent and my grandfather tried to correct him, so F, e, a, v, e, r ended up on his papers. But, you know, some people who think this way, they’ll look at me, they’ll think Favor. Faber. Jew. So I’m Fever. With the Rickmaiers. Part of the play.”
She took her time with that. Robbie smiled briefly, pleased as always to gall her.
“And what about the crying? Is that part of the play, too?”
“I guess. That’s sort of our trademark. Mort and me. You know, out on the street, we compete, every guy, every gal in this business, we all think we’re the greatest trial lawyer who ever held a legal pad, we all want the work, it’s greed and ego. Like with these people. This is a good case, okay? Real good. Word’ll get around fast. Probably a dozen guys’ll have some kind of in, the aunt or the neighborhood cop or their minister, and all of them will come beat on the Rickmaiers’ door to say they know lawyers better than Feaver & Dinnerstein. I’m gonna have to stick closer to these people than the label on their shirts for at least three weeks just to deal with that. But anyway, when these other lawyers put the knock on us, they’ll ask, Did they cry for you? You know, like that’s our trick. Did they sit up and fetch?”
“But is it?”
“What?”
“A trick. Can you just do that?”
He asked her to hold the wheel and pressed his hand to his nose. He might have been meditating. When he finally faced her, beads of quicksilver brimmed in both eyes. He blinked, sending the tears down each cheek, but his grim expression gave way at once to a sly smile.
“I’m good,” he told her as he resumed the wheel. She watched him, easing back into the gray leather, his cheeks still moist from his dramatics, while he luxuriated in the shock he inevitably inspired. He found her contempt so reliable, she realized. And with that, some premonition broke through the inner commotion. Was she being played?
“And you can just tell yourself to cry? The way I tell myself to open and close my fist?”
“Not exactly. I think about stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“Sad stuff.”
“Well, what kind of sad stuff did you think about now?”
He gave his chin a querulous little shake. He wasn’t saying.
“I told you about the Olympics.”
“That’s different,” he said. “That’s like a fact. And besides, I guessed.”
“And I admitted it,” she said, adding, “like a fool.”
He glanced over, apparently seeking to determine whether the self-rebuke was sincere. She stiffened her face a bit for his benefit. They drove on a mile, the only sound the unnerving hum of the tires on the cold road.
“The girl,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
“I was thinking about
that little girl. I was thinking about what it’s going to be like for her tomorrow morning. When she wakes up. When her eyes spring open and she’s thinking something dopey, about school or the movies or something she dreamt, and then, like an arrow right through the heart, she’s going to realize that she lost her mother. And she’s just going to fall down and down into fear, horrible fear, because she’s smart and she’ll know she can’t even figure out yet how huge and horrible this is. That’s what I was thinking.”
“So it’s not a play. The crying?”
“Huh?”
She repeated herself.
“I thought I explained this to you,” he said. “About the play.” Irritated, he revolved his head between the road and Evon. “Don’t you see this whole thing? What am I doing at that hospital? Or a funeral home? Or anyplace else I go to pick up business? I say to these people, Hey, you’re in pain, terrible pain, but I can make it better. Trust me. I hurt for you. I’ll get you money. I’ll calm your outrage. But it’s a play. Remember chaos and darkness? I’d need the power to raise the dead before I could really do anything for that little girl. Right? The money’ll be nice. But hey—”
“So you don’t care?”
“What? You think I stay up four nights in a row when I’m on trial because I don’t care?” Staring at her, he was suddenly paying no attention to the highway at all. He directed the Mercedes into a small wayside, where the picnic tables had been turned over so they would not be crushed by the snow load. The brown legs, cross-membered, looked like arms waving for someone’s attention. “Is that really what you think?”
She was afraid to answer. In ire, his eyes had darkened. He was going to spout again, speechify. And she didn’t mind. She was glad actually. Except for remote moments of anger, Robbie Feaver could rarely be motivated to be fully sincere. But now something elevated was transmitted into his overorchestrated handsomeness.
“Look, I love the spotlight. I dig the bucks. I adore getting the chance to strut around on my victory lap down Marshall Avenue whenever I win a case. But hell,” he said, “you actually think I drop to these judges just for myself? Get real. I can’t bear to come back to these people and say, I lost, you lost, fuck hope, it’s only pain, and it’s only going to get worse. I can’t do that. That’s why it’s a play. They need it. And I need it.” Carried away, he had briefly taken hold of her hands. She did not know if he drew back then because he had woken to the precariousness of that gesture, or simply in refuge from what must have flooded from her eyes. He touched his bright muffler and softly said one more thing before he again put the Mercedes in gear.
“It’s a play.”
14
A FEW DAYS LATER, AS ROBBIE AND EVON were about to leave for the night, McManis called. Amari had followed Rollo Kosic to Robbie’s old hangout, an upscale spot called Attitude. After a hurried stop downstairs for their equipment, Evon and Robbie buffeted through the after-work crowd, the walks illuminated by the autos gridlocked in the avenues. Feaver was surprisingly chipper. His apprehensions about Kosic seemed momentarily eased by the prospect of returning to the place where many good evenings had been spent until about a year ago, when Rainey’s debility was no longer impending doom but a calamity that had arrived.
Attitude’s long windows fronted Cahill Street, but the bar was entered through the lobby of a fancy retail arcade where headless mannequins posed elegantly in the windows. Dr. Goodbody’s, the health club at which Robbie had formerly exercised every evening, was also here in the basement. He said that the serious fitness types remained in the cellar after their workouts, sipping carrot juice and eating soy burgers. The crowd that hurried up to Attitude was more to his liking. They went to step classes, played racquetball and tennis, lifted weights for an hour, then stopped in here for tequila and cigarettes, to see if their strict physical regimen could yield any benefits more immediate than good health.
A stylish black sign hung over the doorway and the decor within was sleek—granite tables and polished chrome railings, Italian fixtures in the shape of inverted calla lilies casting a low light. The crowd was all suits. Some prowled the tumbling scene around the bar, a long are of granite and wood. Others were settled in for the evening at the narrow tables in the slate loft, suspended overhead amid the smoke.
A chorus rose up as soon as Robbie came through the revolving door. “Hey, ambulance chaser!” a man yelled and arrived through the bustle to embrace him. He was a beefier version of Feaver, dark, elegantly dressed, with shining black hair moussed back into a bullet-shaped do. “Where you been for Chrissake? You hanging out at the rehab hospital, trying to get the nurses to pass out your card to all the quads? I’m waiting for this guy to get a toll-free number. 1-800-PARALYZED.”
This was Doyle Mersing, a commercial real estate agent. He put an arm around Evon as he was shaking her hand.
“Come on, have a pop,” said Doyle. There were two women beside the stool he’d briefly vacated, one in her late thirties, the other slightly older, both with big hair and bright manicures, both smoking cigarettes and pleasantly drunk. Divorcees, Evon guessed. Neither wore a wedding ring and there was something beaten-down beneath their good cheer. Evon watched as one of them, Sylvia, darker and thinner than her companion, began focusing on Robbie. It seemed astonishingly predictable, like something in nature, a flower turning toward the sun. Sylvia began asking him questions and tossed her hair back from her face so she could give him her full attention. At Robbie’s wisecracks, Sylvia and her friend rattled in delight. After one of these explosions, Evon noticed that Sylvia had laid her hand on Robbie’s arm, apparently regarding Evon as no impediment.
Turning away, Evon lifted her face to the smoke, the music and laughing, the smug but desperate emanations that lingered like fumes in Attitude’s atmosphere. She had never been much at ease in this kind of place. They could have used a plastic surgeon and an erector set to make her over at Elizabeth Arden and she’d still never count for much here. Even pretending to be someone else, she couldn’t project the air of frank and fearless interest that wafted off the Sylvias of the world. How did they do that? To Evon, it remained an enduring mystery.
The bartender, Lutese, was a gorgeous black woman with strong features and perfect makeup, including dramatic shadings around the eyes. She was nearly six feet tall and in beautiful shape. She had yellow nails the length of talons. Lutese was a fortune-teller by profession, Robbie told Evon. She took that at first for a joke.
“Speaks the truth,” said Lutese. “Happens every now and then. You better keep your eye on this boy around this place,” she warned Evon. “He’s got more lines than a zebra.” Robbie laughed but Lutese wouldn’t let up. “Watch him, I’m tellin you. He’s like a snake, strike anything that moves.”
“I’m a one-man menagerie.”
“Part jackass, too.”
Mersing, who’d gone off for cigarettes, beat the pack on the heel of his palm as he returned to his stool.
“So what’s going on in here?” Robbie asked. Despite the din, Evon could hear Robbie clearly in the earpiece. The way the instrument imposed Feaver’s voice on the hubbub was slightly disconcerting. Klecker had applied the FoxBIte units to Feaver’s thigh hurriedly, complaining about the idea of recording in a crowded saloon. ‘Way too much ambient sound. You get glasses clinking. Other people’s conversations. The defendant always ends up claiming that the guy saying “I did it” was sitting at another table.’ Robbie remained adamant that his only chance with Kosic was here after Rollo had had a couple of belts. For the moment, however, Feaver seemed in no hurry to search for him.
“Same old,” Mersing answered. “Your friend, the one you used to call s.b.d., she’s been coming in again.”
“Oh yeah? Tell her I say howdy.” Robbie tilted his glass back and watched the bubbles rise. “S.b.d.,” he said softly and smiled.
Short black dress, Mersing explained when Sylvia asked. Robbie and he then conversed about a fellow named Connerty. He’d had three mar
riages which, all told, had not lasted a year. Currently, he was seeing someone whom Mersing referred to as “the Sicilian girl.”
“Glows in the dark,” Robbie said.
“Really?” The two men shared a laugh.
Sylvia was fully entwined with Robbie now. Her arm was wrapped around his and she’d drawn him close as she sat on the polished steel barstool. Her knees, on which her nylons shone, were parted vaguely, and Feaver’s hip occupied the resulting space. A huge swell of laughter rippled through Mersing and Robbie and the two women. Evon had missed the joke.
Looking away again, from nowhere she felt herself nearly knocked flat by longing. It arrived something like her period, always a little surprising and unwanted, with such sudden focused intensity that for a single instant she was afraid she might even cry out. And then blessedly, as ever, it passed, leaving her in the aftermath still throbbing like a bell after an alarm. The thought of a real drink, instead of her Perrier lime, tempted her briefly, but Feaver suddenly shed Sylvia. He’d spotted Kosic. He left a large tip for Lutese, before motioning Evon onward.
Robbie had said Kosic looked like an anchovy fresh out of the can, and with that description Evon had no trouble spotting him, a stringy, sallow, silent man, who sat at the end of the bar. Just above him, a pianist played show tunes in the loft. Rollo was alone. He was always alone, according to what Robbie had said. If somebody sat down beside Rollo, he moved to the next stool, and if there were no stools left, he just stared at the wall or the bottles on the bar in front of him. He generally spoke only to Lutese or the other bartenders. He was genial with them, if you could call the exchange of a few words geniality. He laid two twenties down when he assumed his stool and quit when there was only a ten, which he left as a tip. As they came upon him now, Kosic had stolen a look at himself in the bar mirror and was patting his thinning hair back into place.
