Once inside, the Movers swept for bugs, checked the angles from all windows and the thinness of the walls, then delivered a lengthy list of do’s and don’ts. The team leader, Dorville, handed her a wallet with a driver’s license, credit cards, social security number, even private health insurance and photos of three little girls who were supposed to be her nieces. ‘Don’t be thinking about a shopping spree,’ Dorville had told her as he’d thumbed through the plastic. ‘We pay the bills out of your check.’
In the small entry, she stood before an illuminated mirror, prodding her shoulder to see how bad the damage was. Maybe she’d find someplace this weekend for a massage. Something hopeful spurted up at the thought, an unearthed memory of the lost body pleasures of the training room and the prospect of some balm for the tedium of the weekend. Monday through Friday, she was in motion. Once Robbie dropped her off, she’d go work out at the U., and on the way home grab something she could heat up in the microwave. Somewhere during the evening, in the midst of laundry or ESPN, she’d dictate her 302s, reporting on the day’s activities, and drop the microcassette into a zipped compartment in her briefcase. Tomorrow, under some pretext, she would deliver it to The Law Offices of James McManis.
But the weekends dragged. On Sundays she called her mother, or her sister Merrel, from a pay phone, a different one each week, sometimes miles from her apartment. The airport was a favored location, because she had a clear view up and down the long corridors to make a tail. Next month, when it wouldn’t look so strange to an outsider, she could get together with some of the other UCAs working in McManis’s make-believe law office. For now, she was alone. She was going to watch the Super Bowl by herself in a sports bar a few blocks over, where she’d drink O’Doul’s. She could handle that. She had before.
She was staring at herself. Even a month along, there were times she passed a mirror and thought she was wearing a mask. All that makeup! She’d worn contacts for years on the field. But the dye job and the hairdo still made her knees buckle; she looked like she’d run into a stylist who was seasick. It was the falseness she hated. When she was eleven, dressed for church—it was Easter, she believed—she’d heard an exchange between her mother and Merrel in the hallway. Merrel had twisted up Evon’s hair in a curling iron, primped her skirt. ‘Doesn’t she look wonderful?’ Merrel asked. ‘She does, she does,’ Momma had responded then let the weight of worry force itself out in a sigh. ‘But she’s never going to be that much to write home about.’ Not like Merrel, she meant, the beautiful daughter, who actually represented the county twice for Miss Colorado.
It had always been a primary discipline to look into a mirror and see what was there. There seemed a cruel put-down in the fact they’d made her go around painted and hidden. Wasn’t life confusing enough? How had she allowed that?
She knew this was where she had been heading, downward to confront the raw disappointment that this assignment, once so sweetly anticipated, had now become. She winced once more, with the pain in her shoulder and the accompanying memory of that tussle with Feaver. When she opened her eyes, the light from the bar of clear bulbs hanging over the mirror seemed painfully intense. She could see the granules of powder on her cheeks, the phony color of the blush. Her own green eyes were drawn tight into little points of black that somehow seemed the tiny hiding place of truth. She knew the reason she was here now. She couldn’t answer McManis in Des Moines, but tonight she knew why she’d been so eager, and why she now felt so dashed.
She was thirty-four years old. She had a life about which some people—even an ineradicable fragment of herself—believed that the best was past, summed up by a four-inch metallic disk hanging in a special plastic box on her parents’ rec room shelf. She had her work. Her cases. Her cat. Her sibs and their kids. Church on Sunday and choir practice Thursday evenings. But she awoke in the middle of the night, often for long stretches, her heart stirring with nameless anxieties, her dreams just beyond the grasp of memory, while she was drilled by the knowledge that life was not turning out right. And then there was a little yellow Teletype from the Deputy Director. High voltage to her heart. Caps. Initials. FBI-speak. But she could decode the message, and she felt as if every word were set to song. Adventure. Importance. A step ahead of the boys, instead of a step behind. But the best, the very best part, the deepest secret, the sweetest note, was one only she could hear. For six months to two years. Maybe forever. Someone else. The blessing. The chance. She could be someone else.
FEBRUARY
10
I’D LONG CONFESSED TO ROBBIE HOW SURPRISED I was about Silvio Malatesta. I had worked with Malatesta on a judicial committee while I was President of the Kindle County Bar Association and had found him intelligent and honorable, if somewhat woolly-headed. Immediately before going on the bench, he had been a law professor at Robbie’s alma mater, Blackstone Law School here in town, a Torts scholar who liked to argue the occasional unusual case in the Appellate Court. That didn’t strike me as a career path to corruption, but Robbie rarely bothered with character assessment in this area. Some took. Most didn’t. Who would, he said, was never predictable.
The story told by Walter Wunsch was that Malatesta, like many legal scholars, longed for the bench and the chance to make the law he’d spent years studying. Silvio lacked political connections and had turned to the overlord of his old neighborhood, Toots Nuccio, the legendary pol, mobster, and fixer. Toots had Silvio on the bench within six months. Only then did Silvio learn that his genie required more in return than a rub on his lamp.
Now and then Toots would phone with suggestions about the way matters pending before Malatesta ought to proceed. The first time the judge had told Toots he didn’t think his call was proper. Toots had laughed and made reference to a local reporter who’d been blinded when some unknown assailant threw a beaker of muriatic acid in his face. He was the last person, Toots said, who’d asked a favor from him and refused to reciprocate. You get, you give, Nuccio told Malatesta. Silvio was much too frightened to do anything other than comply. In time, he’d learned to accept the envelopes that arrived after Nuccio’s calls, and even worked up the nerve to ask for another favor, assignment to Common Law Claims. Now Tuohey’s guys, Kosic and Sig Milacki, were the persons who stopped by with occasional guidance about the lawyers to favor. Malatesta went along in the hope he’d eventually be promoted to the Appellate Court, where he could deal more in the realm of scholarship and theory, and where the three-judge panels that decided each case reduced the prospects for venality.
Perhaps because he remained unsettled about his situation, Malatesta’s behavior on the bench, according to Feaver, was often confounding. It surely was in Peter Petros’s case. One morning early in February, Evon found a notice in the mail setting oral argument on McManis’s motion to dismiss. Both Stan and Jim were alarmed, albeit for different reasons. Malatesta could have denied the motion without a hearing, by filing a brief written order. Sennett saw no reason for the judge to call attention to the case by holding a public session. Stan was worried that Wunsch and Malatesta were somehow onto Robbie. Feaver shrugged it off. Silvio, he said, never made sense.
McManis’s concerns were more practical: he’d never been to court as a lawyer. Undoubtedly, during his years as an agent, he’d testified. But he’d never had to argue to a judge and he betrayed the first nervousness Evon had seen from him. The day of the hearing, Robbie stopped briefly in Jim’s office to strap on the recording equipment and to sign the consent forms. Because the FoxBIte’s batteries might run out during a lengthy wait in the courtroom, Evon would carry the remote and activate the recorder there. McManis was noticeably taciturn. Robbie assured him that the worse he looked, the better it would be under the circumstances, but McManis seemed too taut to take much comfort from the jest. He had on a blue church suit and a white shirt, and his hair, usually slightly astray, was gelled in place like a helmet.
Evon and Robbie set out for the courthouse separately from Jim. Feaver today was ful
ly relaxed. In fact, as he was about to enter the elevator in the Temple’s vast rotunda, something caught his attention and he jumped out, marching to the sundries counter across the way. He addressed the blind proprietor by name.
“Leo!” The man was elderly, close to seventy and stout. His striped cane hung from a hook beside the rear displays of cigarettes and aspirin and newspapers. He wore a starched white shirt, buttoned at the collar without a tie, but he was poorly shaven. His dark glasses for some reason had been laid next to his register and he faced forward with his still, milky eyes.
Leo and Feaver exchanged sad remarks about the Trappers, a never-ending lament now renewed with spring training imminent. As they spoke, Robbie picked up two packs of gum from one of the counter racks.
“Whatta you god there?” asked the old man.
“One pack of spearmint.”
“‘One’! Sounded like you took the whole damn display.”
“Just one, Leo.” Robbie turned to Evon and winked as he showed her both packages. She was too appalled to speak.
Feaver again insisted that one pack was all he’d taken. Then he withdrew his alligator billfold from his pants pocket and laid a one-hundred-dollar bill in the plastic dish resting on the glass counter. There was a photo molded into the contours of the tray of a carefree young woman and the logo of Kool cigarettes. The old man picked up the bill and fingered it carefully. He rubbed at a corner a long time, rolling it between his index finger and thumb.
“What is this?”
“It’s a one, Leo.”
“You got yourself stuck on ‘one’ today. I ask you how many in a dozen, you gonna say ‘one’?”
“It’s a one, man.”
“Uh-huh. I know you, Robbie.”
“I swear to you, Leo, there’s a number one right on it.” His voice barely contained his laughter, he was having so much fun. “Only don’t put it in the drawer with the ones. Put it underneath. In the bottom of the register. It’s a special One.”
“Yeah, special.” The old man made a tiny tear in one corner and lifted the cash drawer. He dropped four dimes and a penny in the tray on the counter and Robbie scooped them up.
“You gotta stop doin this, Robbie.”
“No, I don’t, Leo. I got no reason to stop. I’ll see you next week.” He grabbed the old man’s spotted hand to draw him forward, then kissed him squarely atop his glistening bald scalp.
As Robbie walked back toward the elevator, he explained to Evon that Leo was his father’s first cousin.
“He was my dad’s best friend as a kid. He went blind at thirteen from the measles, but my old man stuck by him. Even after my dad took off, my ma always gave him credit for that. ‘He didn’t turn his back on Leo, your father, I’ll say that much, he didn’t forget his cousin.’” Evon had heard Robbie’s mother’s voice emerging from the speakerphone in his office and her son had caught the old lady’s inflection precisely. Evon had to laugh and Robbie laughed himself once she did.
“My ma used to invite Leo around. You know, I’d find them sitting there, having tea, when I got home from school, laughing like a couple of old guys in a tavern. I loved to see him. Leo can be a real card. And he told me stories about my dad. Nice stories, you know. Nice for a kid to hear. How they used to run from Evil-Eyed Flavin. Or flatten pennies on the railroad tracks. Or play ball. I’d see him sittin there with my ma, and naturally I’d think what a kid would think, you know, wishing that it was my father instead.” He looked down the hallway wistfully. The elevators dinged and the smell of bacon drifted from the cafeteria. “And you know who got him this stand here?” Robbie asked.
“You?”
“Well, I mean, I asked for him. But I’m dick. I ask them to hold the elevator around here, they don’t even do that. You know who I went to? You know who listened to Leo’s whole sad story and arranged it with Judge Mumphrey and the committeemen and all the other heavyweights who had to have their rings kissed? Can you guess?”
She couldn’t.
“Brendan Tuohey. Yeah, Brendan.” He made a sound then and another sad face. With no other recourse, she suddenly tapped her watch. Robbie had forgotten. “Shit,” he said and scowled, despairing momentarily over everything. In his hand, he noticed the packages of chewing gum and handed them to Evon. He tapped his jaw.
“Bridgework,” he said and entered the elevator as it arrived.
LIKE THE REST OF THE TEMPLE, Judge Malatesta’s courtroom had a leaden, functional air. There were straight-backed pews of yellowing birch and a matching installation of squared-off benchwork at the front for the court officers. The witness stand stood lower than the judge’s bench to which it was joined. The court reporter and clerk had desks immediately before the judge, and the lawyers’ podium was centered yet another yard or so ahead. Everything was square. The great seal of the state hung behind the judge, between two flags on standards. On the west wall, across from the windows, hung a gilt-framed portrait of the late County Executive Augustine Bolcarro, referred to by everyone as the Mayor.
Malatesta’s call was already in progress. Lawyers bustled in and out with their briefcases and topcoats in their arms. Jim entered by himself and sat stiffly on the opposite side of the room, waiting for the case to be called. He was careful not to look in their direction, nibbling absentmindedly on his lips now and then.
Walter, in his heavy suit, was at his crowded desk in front of the bench. He called each case and exchanged papers with the judge, receiving the ones from the concluded matter as he handed up the briefs and orders Malatesta would need next. He, too, acted as if he had not noticed them, which Evon did not take as an especially welcome sign. Sennett’s fretting about the hearing had affected her. If for some reason Malatesta ruled for McManis today, the whole Project was going to be in trouble. It would be hard to explain in D.C., or anywhere else, why their fixer had failed. This was the first concrete test to see if Robbie Feaver was more than hot air.
“Petros v. Standard Railing, 93 CL 140,” Walter finally called out lethargically, after they’d been there nearly half an hour. Evon reached into her briefcase and clicked the remote for the FoxBIte. From the birch podium, Robbie and McManis identified themselves for the court reporter, a young black woman, who took the information down without glancing up at either of them. Evon followed Robbie up, and stood, as she’d been instructed, a few feet behind him. McManis had carried several pages of inked notes on yellow foolscap to the podium with him.
At near range, Silvio Malatesta did not really look to Evon like a crook. That was not surprising. Crooks often didn’t run to type. Con men all had a self-impressed air, but bank robbers, on the other hand, seemed to come from any direction, plenty of gang toughs and thugs, but often the guy next door. Public corruption cases, they said, were the same, enmeshing plenty of obvious hustlers, but, often, the seemingly trustworthy.
Malatesta fit in the latter category. He appeared pleasantly avuncular, with thinning grayish hair and heavy black-framed glasses, his small quick eyes swimming within the distortions. Even in the robe he looked slightly too thin for his clothing, his shirt gapping at the neck. He licked his lips before speaking in his mildly officious tone, a bit like a clergyman’s.
“Well,” he said and smiled at the lawyers. “This is a very interesting matter. Very interesting. The papers here are very well drawn on each side. Both parties have had the advantage of top-rate advocacy. Now, counsel for Standard Railing—McMann?”
Jim repeated his name.
“Mr. McManis makes the appealing argument that a person ought not be allowed to drink himself to the point of senselessness and then blame someone else for the mishaps that follow. Mr. Feaver counters that Standard’s position is a bit of a red herring: balcony railings, he says, must needs be built of a sufficient height and durability to prevent a fall, whether the plaintiff stumbles because he’s deliberately tripped by an usher, or gets caught up in his own feet, or keels over drunk. In Mr. Feaver’s view, a railing is like a lawn
mower or a pharmaceutical drug, where the manufacturer is strictly liable for any injuries that result from use of the product. The cases in other jurisdictions admittedly go in both directions.”
With a sudden manifestation of his usual irritable look, Walter rose up from his desk and interrupted the judge. The bench was at eye height for him and he was on his toes, reaching over it like a window ledge to point out a paper he’d handed the judge before. Malatesta was evidently confused, and he covered the microphone for the courtroom’s public address system with his palm as Walter spoke to him. He was smiling faintly when he resumed.
“Well,” he said. “I had intended to hear argument, but the calendar is crowded and Mr. Wunsch reminds me that, in light of that, I signed and filed an order last night denying Mr. McManis’s motion to dismiss. So no need to do again what’s already done. That will be the ruling of the court, with due apology to counsel. The case will proceed.” Malatesta emitted another somewhat tentative smile and directed Walter to set a date for a status. In the brief hush, the only sounds were the heat from a register below the podium and Walter’s pen scratching out an order to confirm what the judge had said.
“But, Your Honor,” said McManis suddenly. Robbie’s head shot around. McManis was sagged over the podium with a forlorn expression. Before he could say more, Feaver thanked the judge and, as he wheeled, kicked Jim in the ankle, while he steered Evon out by the elbow. Glancing back, she saw McManis slowly gathering his papers.