Personal injuries kc-5

by Scott Turow

  Lutese, who'd remained for Robbie's order, had cut off all her hair. Her dark scalp was gristled with the sandpapery nubbins the clippers had left behind. "Kind of radical," she acknowledged. If anything, she was more striking, nearly six feet, with cascading earrings that looked like the crystals from a chandelier.

  Kosic was taking in the usual byplay between Robbie and the bartender when he suddenly turned toward the room. Beneath his chin, where he showed most of his age in the stringy grayish wattles that hung there, his Adam's apple bobbed several times and he finally knocked his elbow on Feaver's.

  Evon was three or four feet behind them, holding a glass and yukking it up with the agent who'd just vacated the barstool.

  "Oh shit," Robbie said when he faced back. "Figures. She's busting my balls. Hell hath no fury. She's sky-high cause I gave her two weeks' notice."

  Kosic spoke for the first time. "Two weeks?"

  "Sure. Like I said, I want it to look normal. I told her I'm ramping down cause of Rainey. But she's not going gently. She's breaking real bad on me in the office. And following me around half the time when I leave. I can feel a lawsuit coming on," said Robbie, "the way Grandpa felt bad weather in his lumbago."

  Kosic watched Evon in the mirror, his look as unfeeling as some cats', then broke off and returned to his doodle. Now that she'd been noticed in accord with the plan, Evon drifted off to a safer distance, while Robbie continued speaking about his problems with her.

  "I mean, Rollo, I'm asking myself, What the fuck am I doing? You know. Maybe it's not that way and I'm turning her into an enemy. Maybe I'm shooting myself in the foot letting her go. Could be the uncle was wrong when he said to fire her. I'd like to go over it with him again. Explain. I don't wanna piss him off, but maybe we should be thinking about this."

  As ever, there was no way to tell if Kosic had even heard Feaver's remark. He doodled again for a minute, then turned toward the room, his eyes drifting over Robbie's shoulder as he apparently took in the tumbling scene, the women and men joshing, tippling, holding their cigarettes overhead to avoid accidental burns to passersby. On the monitor, Rollo looked straight at the three agents and their camera without any change in his unpleasant expression. Watching the tape afterwards, you could see that as he was surveying, he slid the little cocktail napkin he'd been writing on in Robbie's direction. What attracted him, Robbie said subsequently, was that Kosic had unfurled the bad nail and tapped it a couple of times. There was writing amid several geometric shapes, the first two lines slanting off from what was inscribed below them:

  FBI FOR SURE.

  GET RID-NOW.

  DON'T TELL ANYONE ANYTHING. EVEN MASON

  On the replay, Rollo could be seen taking the most fleeting glance to be certain that Robbie had the message, then he crushed the napkin within his fist and slid it in his pocket.

  "Whoa," Robbie said finally. He'd taken a tight grip on the bar. "Motherfuck. Are you sure?" Kosic looked up toward the piano. "Where the hell does this come from, Rollo? Why me? Does anybody know?"

  Kosic took the bad nail and tapped it on his lips a little too precise to be random.

  "Rollo, cut the crap. I'm trying not to have a bowel movement in my trousers here, Gimme some help. What's she there for? How do you know all of this? Listen, what I'm hearing is that they've been looking at accident swindlers, okay? Guys setting up phony accidents and suing. Fella I saw thinks that's what this is. Okay? Does that match?"

  Kosic delivered his lethal glance, then scooped up the four cherries and popped them in his mouth all at once. He ate them after coming to his feet beside his stool. Bobbie grabbed Kosic's sleeve between two fingers to keep him from getting away.

  "Listen, I'm the one hanging out there, Rollo. Way out there. That's okay, I'm a big boy. But I'll be fucked if I won't be treated with some respect. Anybody's got any more messages for me to take on faith, wanna hear them from the organ-grinder, not the monkey. You tell Brendan I said that, too."

  Kosic finished chewing with his face lifted into the smoky air, then leaned Feaver's way before he departed. It looked as if he was going to whisper some final word, but instead he suddenly took hold of Robbie's necktie. Improbably, Feaver jerked back, virtually strangling himself, as he braced his arms on the smooth mahogany curve affixed the leading edge of the granite bar. At the time, it was unclear what was happening. But, looking at the tape later, you could see that as Robbie had first been elevated off the seat by Kosic's grip on his tie, Rollo had reached under the bar with the other hand and grabbed Feaver's genitals. As Robbie reported it, Kosic had one testicle and his penis inside his fist and he squeezed for quite some time, until he finally whispered in his high ladylike voice. What he said was too soft for the FoxBlte pick up in the clamor, but Robbie heard it and took note as well of the sick smile with which the message was delivered.

  "I'm the only organ-grinder you know," Kosic had told him.

  CHAPTER 36

  Evon did not see what was coming.

  After they left Attitude, she sat in McManis's conference room while Jim went through the debriefings of Feaver and the surveillance agents. They replayed the tapes. On the audio, critical points in the conversations were frequently obscured by the piano and the raucous laughter; occasional odd remarks were sucked in by the directional mikes as unpredictably as coins rattling up in a vacuum. Someone complained bitterly about Clinton's proposed tax increase; another moment revealed the passing of insider information on an upcoming corporate spinoff. The listening took more than an hour and a half.

  Including the surveillance agents, the core group was now up to fifteen, far more bodies than there were chairs. They passed around pop and chips, since no one had had dinner, and as ever tried to figure the next move. Sennett was still talking about another shot at Tuohey.

  "As long as you can give me a transplant down there." Robbie answered. There was a lot of laughter. "Kosic'll pull it off, Stan, the next time I use Brendan's name."

  Sennett looked toward McManis for his evaluation. Jim thought there was no chance of getting to Tuohey.

  "They're writing notes, for fear of speaking."

  "But Robbie passed the frisk. They have to trust him more now."

  "Only so much. Stan, these fellows know better than to trust anyone. They told Robbie about Evon because they don't want him to get himself in any deeper. But they know he's radioactive-he's about to get it from the feds and all bets are off then. You can run all the scenarios you want with Tuohey. We'll just stack up the tapes he can play during his defense case. He's never going to step in quicksand with Robbie."

  "They all do," Sennett shot back. "If you find the right thing, they all do." His eyes flashed over to me. This was a bit of prosecutorial parlor talk probably best not shared in front of a defense lawyer.

  Jim's advice was to abandon the frontal assault. The best approach to Brendan was from the flanks. They had to hope that someone turned on him. Someone like Kosic-or Milacki-might be able to catch Tuohey unawares. If they kept pushing with Robbie, they could blow that chance.

  The eminent good sense of what Jim was saying seemed to win over everyone else. But Stan was unwilling to say quit. His great scheming intelligence worked in service of the gratification he got from winning in the direct showdown. The triumph he craved was to outduel Brendan, one-on-one.

  Near the end of their argument, the two stepped outside. When they returned, McManis waved Evon into his office. She still didn't realize what he was going to say. "We're pulling you in," he said. "It's over."

  She felt like one of those eggs from which, as kids, they'd blown out the yolk and the white to make Easter decorations. That frail. That hollow.

  "Because you're worried about what Kosic meant about getting rid of me?"

  "We're not going to wait to find out. But that's not the problem. You're burned and Robbie's supposed to know that. He has to get you out of the office on Monday. There's nothing left for UCA Evon Miller to do."

  "What d
oes Sennett think?"

  "This isn't Sennett's call. And he recognizes the logic." "Maybe I can stay in town, though? Maybe they'll make a move. "

  "No," he said. "I'm done saying I dare you. There's no operational need. After Monday, it's adios."

  She felt absolutely desperate. She couldn't go back.

  "Go home," he said. "See your family. You've got accumulated leave for months. We'll probably pull you back when we start the flips. You won't miss the grand finale. But for now I want you out of harm's way. Orders," he said. He watched her absorb it, seeing how little good he was doing. "I told you," he said, "this isn't easy. The whole journey. Start to finish. It's rugged."

  When Jim opened the door, Sennett was waiting. She hoped he was there to argue with McManis, but instead, he took her hand. He said all the right words. And meant them as near as she could tell. Extraordinary, she heard him say. He said Courage, more than once. He said Patriot.

  "The people of this district will never know how much they owe you, DeDe. You're a tremendous pro. Everyone in the Bureau is proud of you. And I'm so honored to have worked with you."

  They said that about Stan, that he could scrape bottom and then reach the stars. Whatever bitterness he felt over McManis's decision, he allowed it to have no impact on the way he spoke to her. His dark eyes glistened. At the oddest moments with this guy, you saw what was really important to him. She felt as if she were getting another Olympic medal.

  Then the three of them went back to the conference room and announced that Evon was coming in. The fifteen or so people assembled stood and applauded. Klecker popped an empty chip bag and every person in the room hugged her or jostled her shoulders.

  It was happening, she realized. Really happening.

  She was done. FOR SEVERAL WEEKS NOW, a large garbage truck, painted in the red and blue colors of County Sanitation, had been periodically touring the alley behind Brendan Tuohey's home, picking up the trash from every house on the block. The truck, with its two-story walrus back and predatory iron maw on the rear, was the property of the DEA, but it was lent freely to the other federal agencies and even had a predetermined route each day, albeit one that frequently covered an area one hundred miles wide. Because no warrant is required to seize property the law views as abandoned, the confiscation of trash has become a standard armament in the war on crime. Tuohey's neighbors' trash was discarded, while the dark green bags from Brendan's cans were delivered to Joe Amari so that he and his crew could go through them with rubber gloves. Interesting tidbits had turned up. Brendan, improbably, had a deep interest in the lives of the saints, and there were several receipts each day for money orders, which the IRS bloodhounds would trace when the investigation surfaced.

  Early Monday morning, when Evon arrived at McManis's for a final debriefing before going up to Feaver amp; Dinnerstein for the last time, Joe Amari placed the cocktail napkin on which Rollo Kosic had writen his warning to Robbie Friday night on the conference table. It was already in a plastic folder and every UCA entered to take a look, as if were a piece of the True Cross. The napkin, sporting Attitude's black-lined logo and the heavy geometric doodles in the comer, had been torn in four, but the pieces fit neatly. It would go out for fingerprinting and handwriting analyses as soon as Feaver identified it.

  He arrived at nine-thirty to set the scenario for Evon's curtain call upstairs. After the weekend at home, he again looked a wreck.

  "That's it." He smiled as he held the plastic envelope, but it seemed to require a second effort. Kosic was a lock now. Dead-bang on obstruction and without much room on the conspiracy overall. McManis wanted to start planning an effort to flip him. Rollo was key. There was still no direct evidence against Tuohey, nothing to actually prove he was in league with Kosic and the others.

  McManis gave the napkin a second look and asked Bobbie about the reference to Mason, which he hadn't mentioned Friday night. Feaver shrugged. Apparently, Brendan figured he'd gone to Mason because he hadn't knocked on Tooley's door.

  Robbie went up to his office first. When Evon got there, the receptionist, Phyllida, a lean Australian whom Robbie had employed because he loved her accent, told Evon that he wanted to see her. When she closed the door to Bobbie's office, an unexpected swell of melancholy gripped her; she experienced the fine cityscape through the broad windows and the harmony of the spring light and took in yet again that she was leaving. In memory, she'd realized, this experience was going to be similar to hockey-another broad marker in her life, something to live up to, another stream she couldn't step in twice.

  "So," he said. His eyes were dead. "Blah, blah, blah, you're fired."

  He should have been sticking with the cover. Evon was supposed to yell at him and call him names, which was likely to bring some of the office folks close to the door. The idea was to create the impression of a final lovers' row. But he clearly wasn't ready to begin.

  "So do we get together again or is this sayonara?" he asked her.

  She was leaving in half an hour. Amari was going to take her to the airport. She told him that McManis said she would be back whenever they began the effort to flip the investigation's leading targets. He sat in his tall black chair and shook his head, smiling at himself.

  "You know," he told her, "I always thought one of the greatest things about women was they stuck around." He looked in the direction of the red rug for a while. "Times change," he said. She smiled sadly at that, and then, on impulse, crossed the room and hugged him, waiting what seemed to be quite some time for him to let her go.

  "You better raise your voice now," she told him. "Let them hear `You're fired,' like you mean it."

  "You're fired," he said listlessly and then, staring miserably at her, began to cry. "Don't take it as a compliment. I cry about everything these days." He got out his handkerchief. "You better do the yelling. Now's your chance. Tell them what a lying heap of dung I am."

  She settled for slamming the door and, as she emerged, muttering under her breath. Four steps away, she stopped in order to pull back from the precipice of disordering emotions. Bonita, with her raccoon eyes and piles of black hair, brittle as fiberglass, was staring. So was Oretta from the file room. Perfect, Evon thought. Perfect play.

  ***

  Midweek, she flew out to Denver to see Merrel. She arrived Thursday, and on Friday afternoon they drove up to Vail to see the brand-new condo. It had cost three quarters of a million dollars and Evon felt she could put her hand through the walls if she knocked on them too hard, but Merrel and Roy were thrilled, as they always were by their possessions. Together they showed off everything in the place-the patio, the mountain view, the hot tub, the rumpus room furniture, even the stove and microwave. In Roy's view, this was the same thing as Jesus handing them a report card telling them they were doing good. Roy spent five days a week riding on airplanes. Evon had picked up the phone sometimes when she was visiting and heard him say he was in the most ridiculous places, Sumatra or Abu Dhabi. But the longer she knew him, the more she realized he was a lot like her father, clinging to a few simple things and otherwise completely baffled.

  Merrel's girls, ages fourteen to three, were wonderful. Grace and Hope, Melody and Rose were all blondes and all their mom's kids, each with painted nails and arguments about how Merrel should do their hair. Evon took especially to Rose, the littlest, who was said to favor her aunt. It wasn't really a compliment. Poor Rose had not been born with the silky, long-legged look of her mother. She was what Merrel called a 'pudge.' Rose was never neat and, at the age of three, already somewhat frantic, incorrigibly committed to screaming whenever she wanted to be heard. But for whatever reason she loved her aunt. She drew Evon into her games and could already throw a ball accurately.

  Saturday night, dinner got messed up. Roy was on the patio, getting exercised about the gas grill that wouldn't ignite, and the meat sat out there with him, as the light dwindled and shrank the bulk from the mountains. The smell of cedar rose up from the forest floor as the chill began
to drain the little bit of moisture from the air. Merrel, trying to ignore Roy's growing agitation, finally fed the smaller girls noodles, while she and Evon ate half of a wedge of Brie and drank most of a bottle of wine.

  Evon tried to entertain the little ones. Rose told her that Momma said she'd be the flower girl when her Aunt DeDe got married.

  "Oh, honey," she said, "I don't think your Auntie DeDe is the marrying kind."

  Merrel, who was still unpacking boxes in the kitchen, heard this and sang out with a story about a colleague of Roy's, a woman named Karen Bircher, who at the age of forty-one had gone from being a powerhouse career gal to a mom at home in the space of fifteen months.

  "It just takes the right guy, De," Merrel told her, crossing into the small dining room carrying a tray of glassware.

  Lightly, laughingly, actually strangely happy, Evon said, "Oh, I don't think it's a guy."

  Who knows why these things happen? Her sister stood stock-still, her anxious glances divided between the tray of Orrefors, which she plainly feared she might drop, and Evon. Merrel was terrified. No other way to describe the look that evaporated much of her beauty. She literally snatched up Rose, stating that it was time for bed, and ran away with her daughter.

  When Merrel returned to the kitchen, she was furious. Evon was stacking plates in the cupboard.

  "Please, DeDe," Merrel whispered, "please don't ever say anything like that to Roy."

  Roy. Evon laughed again. She was instantly afraid it was another of those moments when her reactions were dead-wrong. But she was so happy. And the thought of saying anything to Roy was purely amusing. Simple Roy was just a fellow walking through a tunnel looking for the light.

  "Oh, hon," Evon said, "it's been fifteen years before I could even say it to myself." She still felt like a bubble rising in a soft drink. She found her sister's eyes. It took a moment for Merrel to reorganize herself. She was working her way back toward something. Love. Merrel loved her. In their family, they loved each other best. And there was a reason for that, because there was a piece of one another they always carried around, the someone else they might have been.