Identical
Page 35
Also present are a few key administrators on the court staff and several friends who remain practicing lawyers. My former attorney, Sandy Stern, round and robust but bothered by a summer cough, is here with his daughter and law partner, Marta, and so is the man who more than twenty-five years ago made me his chief deputy, former prosecuting attorney Raymond Horgan. Ray evolved from friend to enemy and back again in the space of a single year, when he testified against me at my trial and then, after my acquittal, put in motion the process that made me acting PA. Raymond again is playing a large role in my life as the chair of my supreme court campaign. He strategizes and shakes the money tree at the big firms, leaving the operational details to two she-wolves, thirty-one and thirty-three, whose commitment to my election seems about as deep as a hit man’s.
Most of the guests are or were trial lawyers, an amiable group by nature, and there is great bonhomie and laughter. Nat will graduate from law school in June and, after the bar, begin a clerkship on the state supreme court, where I, too, was once a law clerk. Nat remains himself, uncomfortable in conversation, and Barbara and I, by long habit, drift near from time to time to protect him. My own two law clerks, who do a similar job to the one Nat will be taking, assisting me in researching and writing my opinions for this court, have assumed less distinguished duty today as waiters. Because Barbara is perpetually ill at ease in the world beyond our house, especially in larger social gatherings, Anna Vostic, my senior clerk, serves more or less as hostess, pouring a dribble of champagne into the bottom of the plastic glasses that are soon raised for a lusty singing of “Happy Birthday.” Everyone cheers when it turns out I still am full of enough hot air to extinguish the forest fire of candles on the four-tier carrot cake Anna baked.
The invitation said no presents, but there are a couple of gags—George found a card that reads, “Congratulations, man, you’re 60 and you know what that means.” Inside: “No more khakis!” Below, George has inscribed by hand, “P.S. Now you know why judges wear robes.” In the box he handed over, there is a new death-black gown with braided golden drum major epaulets fixed at the shoulder. The mock finery for the chief inspires broad guffaws when I display it to the assembled guests.
After another ten minutes of mingling, the group begins to disperse.
“News,” Ray Horgan says in a voice delicate enough for a pixie as he edges past on his way out. A grin creases his wide pink face, but partisan talk about my candidacy is forbidden on public property, and as chief judge, I am ever mindful of the burden of being an example. Instead, I agree to come by his office in half an hour.
After everyone else is gone, Nat and Barbara and I and the members of my staff gather up the paper plates and glasses. I thank them all.
“Anna was wonderful,” says Barbara, then adds, in one of those bursts of candor my odd duck of a wife will never understand is not required, “This whole party was her idea.” Barbara is especially fond of my senior law clerk and often expresses dismay that Anna is just a little too old for Nat, who has recently parted with his long-term girlfriend. I join the compliments for Anna’s baking, which is locally famous in the court of appeals. Emboldened by the presence of my family, which can only mark her gesture as innocuous, Anna advances to embrace me while I pat her back in comradely fashion.
“Happy birthday, Judge,” she declares. “You rock!” With that, she’s gone, while I do my best to banish the startling sensation of Anna full against me from my mind, or at least my expression.
I firm up dinner plans with my wife and son. Barbara predictably prefers to eat at home rather than at a restaurant. They depart while the odors of cake and champagne linger sadly in the newly silent room. Sixty years along, I am, as ever, alone to deal with myself.
I have never been what anybody would call a cheerful sort. I’m well aware that I’ve had more than my fair share of good fortune. I love my son. I relish my work. I climbed back to the heights of respectability after tumbling into a valley of shame and scandal. I have a middle-aged marriage that survived a crisis beyond easy imagining and is often peaceful, if never fully connected. But I was raised in a troubled home by a timid and distracted mother and a father who felt no shame about being a son of a bitch. I was not happy as a child, and thus it seemed very much the nature of things that I would never come of age contented.
But even by the standards of somebody whose emotional temperature usually ranges from blah to blue, I’ve been in a bad way awaiting today. The march to mortality occurs every second, but we all suffer certain signposts. Forty hit me like a ton of bricks: the onset of middle age. And with sixty, I know full well that the curtain is rising on the final act. There is no avoiding the signs: Statins to lower my cholesterol. Flomax to downsize my prostate. And four Advil with dinner every night, because a day of sitting, an occupational hazard, does a number on my lower back.
The prospect of decline adds a special dread of the future and, particularly, my campaign for the supreme court, because when I take the oath twenty months from now, I will have gone as far as ambition can propel me. And I know there will still be a nagging whisper from my heart. It’s not enough, the voice will say. Not yet. All this done, all this accomplished. And yet, at the heart of my heart, I will still not have the unnameable piece of happiness that has eluded me for sixty years.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
I.
1.: Paul—September 5, 1982
2.: Pardon and Parole—January 8, 2008
3.: Horgan—January 10, 2008
4.: Tim’s House—January 11, 2008
5.: Heather—January 12, 2008
6.: Georgia—January 17, 2008
7.: Holes—January 17, 2008
8.: DNA—January 28, 2008
9.: Knowing—January 28, 2008
10.: On the Trail—January 30, 2008
II.
11: Cass—September 5, 1982
12.: Aunt Teri—February 1, 2008
13.: Du Bois Lands—February 5, 2008
14.: Dickerman—February 5, 2008
15.: The Scene—February 9, 2008
16.: Sofia—February 11, 2008
17.: The Ruling—February 20, 2008
18.: Objections—February 20, 2008
19.: Her Ring—February 22, 2008
20.: Win or Lose—February 28, 2008
21.: Name Day—February 29, 2008
22.: The Results—March 6, 2008
III.
23.: Lidia—September 5, 1982
24.: Family Tree—March 10, 2008
25.: St. Basil’s—March 12, 2008
26.: The Deal—March 20, 2008
IV.
27.: Dita—September 5, 1982
28.: Changing Partners—May 14, 2008
29.: One Man—May 18, 2008
30.: Follow—May 30, 2008
31.: He Speaks
32.: The New Paul
V.
33.: Zeus—September 5, 1982
34.: Good-Bye—May 31, 2008
35.: Truth—June 1, 2008
A Note About Sources
Also by Scott Turow
A Preview of INNOCENT
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Excerpt from Innocent copyright © 2010 by Scott Turow
Cover design by Anne Twomey
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Cover copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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ISBN 978-1-4555-2721-2