Personal injuries kc-5 Page 13

  "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."

  CHAPTER 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 caila lilies casting a low light. The crowd was all suits. Some prowled the tumbling scene around the bar, a long arc 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 Bobbie. 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, Bobbie 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 clinki
ng. 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 marriages 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.

  "Rollo the K, how's tricks?" Robbie slipped into the usual open space beside Kosic. Rollo nodded a bit and worked on his cigarette. Up above, the pianist began a rendition of "Yesterday." Dressed entirely in black, the musician crooned along lethargically, bearing up through one more night of indignity in which any attention he received came only when the patrons reached an awkward juncture in their come-ons. Evon knew the music was going to be a problem on the recording, but there was nothing to do about it now. Kosic had yet to say a word, anyway.

  When Robbie introduced her, Rollo cranked his face over his shoulder and looked her up and down in far too frank a manner. He was out of place in here, where the air throbbed with pretense and fashion. He wore a very old tweed sportcoat and a washed-out plaid shirt. His black hair, the soggy remnants of an old d.a., spilled over his collar. His face looked dried out by drink.

  Robbie motioned to the piano bar up above and told Kosic a quick joke: A guy comes into a joint, opens his briefcase, and on the bar puts down a miniature Steinway and a little man one foot tall. The little man plays for an hour and the guy collects a number of tips. When the barkeep expresses his admiration, the man with the briefcase grimaces. `Whoever heard of a genie with a hearing problem? You really think I asked for a twelve-inch pee-nist?'

  Rollo took it the way he might have tried to shake off a punch, twitching out the sour leavings of a smile. He crushed his cigarette and shook his head. He drank oldfashioneds, and kept his right hand on his glass most of the time, his index finger curled inward. Robbie had explained that the nail had a sinister look, a little like the shell of a rotting walnut. It had been crushed in the service while Rollo was hauling an artillery round. It grew back black and rimpled, and was ordinarily hidden. Feaver said that was the only way to tell when Rollo was angry, since he otherwise maintained a morbid and haunting lack of affect. But when he extended that index finger at you, with that ugly token at the end, it was not a good sign.

  At the moment, Kosic took the stem of his cherry between his thumb and third finger. He gave it a twirl, then knocked the glass back, draining it and taking one of the ice cubes in his mouth. He chewed on it as Robbie and Evon stood beside him in silence. When Lutese came their way, Robbie put a fifty on the bar and surrendered his stool to Evon, asking Lutese to refill Rollo and to tell Evon her fortune. She and Robbie, even Kosic, watched while Lutese shuffled and smoothly dealt out the tarot cards, despite the glistening obstruction of her yellow nails, each curved like a parrot's bill.

  "Home?" she heard Kosic ask Robbie very softly, apparently thinking Evon was distracted. His voice was high, a virtual countertenor. She wondered if its feminine quality accounted for his reluctance to speak.

  "Not good," Robbie answered.

  Kosic grunted. It was not clear if that was a response to Lorraine's condition or to the fact that Lutese had just put down his drink.

  "Listen," Robbie said to Kosic, "I'm happy to bump into you, I got a little something. I've been trying to figure out who to talk to. Maybe you can give me a pointer. You don't mind listening, right? It's a barroom. Everybody's gotta tell you their problems." Robbie laughed. When Evon's eyes drifted sideways, she saw Kosic toss another ice cube into his mouth.

  "Anyway, I got some problems in a case I filed a couple weeks back." Robbie named it.

  "Who'd you draw?" Kosic asked neutrally. There was no way to tell if he truly didn't recall.

  "Malatesta."

  "Good judge," said Kosic, then added, "Knows the law."

  Lutese continued dealing on the granite bar top, talking to the figures on the cards as if they could hear her.

  "Right," Evon heard Robbie say in her earpiece. "Normally, you know, I'm really happy to get him. But I got a very big problem. Case is a Structural Work Act. Client's painting an atrium and a scaffolding collapses. Serious, serious back injuries. Herniations, L-4 and -5. So I call to tell him we filed, they always want to know, and he says, `I'm a little numb, I just saw my internist and I've got stage four cancer of the lung.' Cancer! Now I got a hellacious problem. Case is worth zip if the insurer finds out he's a goner, right? No loss of future earnings."

  With considerable circumspection, Robbie detailed his troubles in having the case before Malatesta. For Robbie to have any hope of recovering much, the judge would have to quickly suspend the discovery process while Bobbie attempted to settle. But Malatesta never agreed to stay discovery, a practice only Judge Skolnick ordinarily allowed. Walter's warning made it certain that Malatesta would not consider a deviation in this case.

  "So I got a bellyful on this one," Robbie told Kosic.

  Robbie, as usual, had laid down the pitch just as Sennett and McManis had scripted it. He wasn't asking for relief so much as issuing a warning. Everybody would end up a loser if the case remained before Malatesta. As he spoke, Robbie concentrated on the TV over the bar where mud bikes were spinning through glop. Evon was pretending to watch the piano. Looking back, she saw Kosic's small eyes aimed at Feaver. A pure, deadly light beamed from them. He was flicking nervously at the notch over his lip, touching it again and again with his blackened fingernail. He said absolutely nothing.

  Taking the cue, Robbie shifted at once to talk of the Indiana basketball team which had clobbered the Hands, the U.'s team, last week. Kosic showed no interest. He got off his stool and threw back the diluted remains of his drink. Lutese, at that moment, laid out the last of the cards, a red queen, and stared down at it. When her wide brown eyes rose
to Evon, they held a look of alarm.

  "The two-faced queen lives a lie," she said.

  It was not clear Kosic had heard that as he pushed out, with no word of goodbye. THE RECORDING WAS TERRIBLE. At the critical moments, Robbie, just as Klecker had instructed, had rounded his shoulders and hunched forward to funnel sound toward the mike, which tonight had been placed under his tie. But the piano and the singing intruded into every sentence; it was as if Robbie was speaking between measures in a karaoke bar. A woman to whom Evon had paid no attention could be heard distinctly now, whining along. `Now I long for yes-ter-day, ay, ay, ay.' The recording offered no proof Kosic had even heard Robbie. But he had. Evon had been palpably frightened by the wave of primal menace he transmitted. As had Robbie. Sennett and I had hurried to McManis's conference room to hear the results and Feaver now directed his attention to Stan.

  "They're gonna make me dead," he told him, "if I keep pushing like this. I said way too much." Sennett frowned.

  "Listen, Stan," said Robbie, "you may think I'm just afraid of the big bad wolf, but Brendan's the only guy I know who's an actual killer. I mean, killed with his bare hands in Korea. And would do it again today, if he thought he had to. He's ordered hits. I mean it. That's why he's stayed hooked up. It's not just for money. He wants to be able to push a button on somebody if he has to."

  Even I had trouble believing that. Most talk of violence, even in mob cases, was gas, and I had a hard time imagining a Presiding Judge orchestrating a murder. Robbie looked around the table, where he was encountering similarly skeptical expressions from Alf and Jim and Joe Amari. As McManis had told him long ago, c.i.'s were always scared by what they were doing.

  "Here, I'll tell you a story," Robbie said, looking about to each of us. "I've told you before that Brendan's had the same thing on the side now for more than twenty years with Constanza in his office. Constanza is like a jewel, this tiny, exquisite thing, five feet tall, perfectly shaped, and this noble Mexican face, Irish features and Indian cheekbones. Fifty plus now and still this very quiet, dignified beauty. Married lady-which is another story-with two kids, a boy, never meant for much good, and a daughter, completely the opposite.