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  Tuohey's glance swept over me like a searchlight. I did not know if it was my weakness or my honor that Brendan meant to exploit, but he was sure I would never mislead him, whether as a matter of highminded rectitude or out of knee-knocking reluctance to offend the mighty. Appropriate lawyerly conduct was to let Brendan's lingering question pass with no comment, but I knew that, given his suspicions of me, he would feel he could no longer count on Robbie.

  And so in this grand old ballroom, with its velvet-backed chairs and huge mirrors veined in gold, I swung like a spider caught in descent on its own web. I should have moved off with the myth of the waiting conference call, and let Stan clean up the resulting mess. But I stood my ground. I was driven by too many motives to know which was dominant-commitment to my client was part of it; so was what Sennett, with his craft, had long counted on, namely, my anger and disdain over Brendan's private appropriation of the power of the law. Whatever, as I'd always suspected, I was thrilled to tempt the fates. Well knowing where the line lay that I'd long drawn for myself, I marched across it, committed to making the man who in all likelihood would soon run all the Kindle County courts an enemy for life.

  I gave Tuohey a look as grave and level as I could muster and said that Robbie Feaver was a tough guy and not the kind to share his woes. He did not understand why anybody would want to make trouble for him, but he was a stoic and would take the weight of whatever came his way.

  From the withered depths that gave his light eyes an aspect of privacy, Tuohey's look remained on me as he evaluated the message.

  "Ah," said Brendan slowly. "So he's okay?"

  I was sure of that, I said with no wavering.

  "And you'll let me know if there's any change? I want to help however I can."

  Departing, Tuohey shook again with a fierce two-handed grip, pleased with me and himself and my assurance that Robbie was a stand-up guy. He'd given another bravura performance, finding out what he needed without admitting a thing. His remark that Robbie'd seemed `irregular' might even have loosed a weevil of doubt about the reliability of anything Robbie had let slip to me, although I'd done my best to convey the impression that Feaver had told me nothing.

  "You didn't have to do that, George," Robbie said, when I shared the details of my encounter with Brendan. We sat in the parking lot of a McDonald's near his home where I'd stopped on my way from the office that evening. Together we watched the young moms coping with the anguish of dinnertime. Robbie was sharp to the nuances of practice and knew the burden I was taking on if Tuohey escaped.

  I reassured him that I'd chosen to do it. But I had one request.

  "Anything," he answered.

  Let's not tell Sennett, I said.

  CHAPTER 35

  On Friday at noon, Evon made a trip to Feaver's, carrying an urgent message. She found him in no state for visitors. He answered the door in tears. Like a child, he wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his polo shirt as she stepped into the marble foyer Her first thought was to leave, but he took hold of her wrist, clearly craving company.

  "We were talking," he said. "About kids. I mean, you understand." His black eyes briefly rose to her as if the look alone betrayed a secret. And it did. Evon, for once, immediately made the connection. Rainey must have indicated that she did not have the same reasons to continue her life she might have if she were a mother.

  "I mean, you know-regrets?" he asked. "Millions. But that's number one. Kids." They were on the long white sofa in the living room where Robbie had first faced the IRS agents last fall. She had no place to ask for details, but Robbie, as ever, spoke.

  "It was always an issue. I was for kids. I mean, I was afraid of fucking up like my father, but, you know, I wanted the chance to do better. But Lorraine, with that screwy upbringing of hers? It became kind of a manana thing. She had her job, and wow, she made big money. And then, you know, I was trouble. I made trouble. She was always with one foot out the door, and I'd say I'd mend my ways, and I didn't. And then, to teach me a lesson, she did some stuff. But when we got the news, whatever it was, three years ago, I was like, No, wait one minute, we were just about to get this right. I think we would have. I do. Every New Year's, for maybe five years, it was my last loopy thought right before I crashed through into sleep: This year we're pregnant.

  "Before she got diagnosed we were talking about it more. We even named this kid we didn't have. I mean, goofy names. Sparky. Flipper. We'd toss around funny things the kid would do. Don't get pizza with olives, she won't eat olives. It was always a girl, I don't know why. And somehow we got to doing that just now." He'd been staring straight into the high pile of the white carpet, but, unexpectedly, a comic thought came to relieve him, impelling a brief laugh.

  "We got a great name today. I said, I want a nice Jewish name. We'd just finished this book she really liked, so she looks over there and says, `Nancy Taylor Rosenberg' So that's who we were going on about, Nancy Taylor Rosenberg. Nancy Taylor Rosenberg needs sunglasses for her big blue eyes. Nancy Taylor Rosenberg has an outie like her mother. Every screwy thing. Nancy Taylor Rosenberg loves chocolate cake and has terrible allergies. We really got rolling. We were both bawling our eyes out, but we kept going for twenty minutes. So," he said in abrupt conclusion and slapped his thighs. "What's up?"

  She eyed him, not sure he was ready for business, but he indicated she should proceed. Sig Milacki had called this morning and wanted Robbie to phone. The next move was at hand.

  "Sig," he said and considered the message slip. She'd brought the phone trap. The device used to record the call was a tiny earpiece, the size of a good hearing aid. The earplug was miked to pick up both the signal from the telephone handset and Robbie's voice, which was transmitted through the bones of his skull. The lead ran to a portable tape recorder she'd brought in her briefcase. Alf had wanted to do this himself, but, as always now, the fear was he might be tailed.

  Listening in on an extension, Evon could hear Milacki approach the phone from a distance, assailing his underlings with gruff wisecracks.

  "Feaver!" He proceeded with his standard banter, jibes about attorneys. His daughter, Milacki said, had now finished her first semester in law school. "I'm watching her real careful," he confided, "to see just when it is she grows the second face."

  "Fuck you, Sig."

  "Be the best piece of ass you ever had." Milacki exploded in raw laughter. He loved that line and repeated it several times. Finally he explained himself. "Sort of wanted to catch a look at your ugly mug. Thought maybe we could have a soda pop. Six okay at that yuppie-duppie joint of yours with the six-dollar brewskis?'

  Robbie tried to get a hint what the meeting was about, but Milacki roared as if Robbie had told another joke, and with no more ended the call. At five after six, Robbie strolled into Attitude, as he had on many another Friday night. Perhaps it was the familiar atmosphere or his acting skills, but he looked far better than he had in days. He was in an Italian sharkskin suit, his big hair blown dry, his cologne, as always, redolent for yards around.

  For Klecker, getting a decent recording amid the shattering ambient noise of a Friday night crowd presented a technician's nightmare. To deal with that, Alf had wired three of Amari's surveillance team members with directional mikes in the hope they could work their way close to Robbie and capture better sound. To augment the problematic audio, both Klecker and Sennett wanted cameras. The jostling in the hurly-burly of the bar made a stable picture unlikely, and in the meeting at McManis's beforehand, Feaver had claimed that he'd dislocate a shoulder if he had to stand there holding the ponderous briefcase-camera for an hour. Ultimately, Klecker had dispatched another member of the surveillance squad with that unit, instructing her to take a table on the loft level where she'd get a good wide-angle image of the entire scene. A second camera was manned downstairs by three agents of Asian descent, two Japanese and one Korean, whom Amari had requisitioned on short notice. The three men were in the middle of the barroom floor. In another of Klecker's inspirations, t
hey played the role of happy tourists, passing what looked to be a video camera back and forth among themselves, as they endeavored to record every moment. Only one of the agents spoke any foreign language, but he crowed at volume and the other two laughed and bowed in a vigorous parody of American expectations.

  To conserve the batteries, none of the cameras were switched on until Robbie entered the bar. In the van there was the inevitable Zantac moment waiting to see if the equipment would function. The space here in the rear was extremely confined tonight. It now looked like a TV studio. Klecker had added two video monitors and three additional sound receivers to the pyramided equipment. Tex Clevenger, trained in the Army as a sound tech, worked with Alf, helping spin the dials. Sennett, McManis, and I did not have room to spread our elbows.

  In front, Shirley drove. Evon was beside her in the passenger seat. Like the rest of us, she'd been provided with headphones, but she listened through only one side, the other ear being already equipped with the infrared receiver hidden under her hair. Robbie's assignment tonight was direct: try somehow to get another meeting with Brendan. In order to dramatize Feaver's desperate need for further advice from Tuohey, Sennett and McManis had worked out a scenario around Evon. Executing this plan depended on how long Robbie remained inside and what Milacki wanted. On that score, there was still no clue.

  From the audio output alone, it was clear Attitude was rocking. The crowd, packed tight from the door, was full of libertine energy. They'd survived another week, had taken the punch, and were ready to make the most of it. Alf flipped between the radio channels sampling the sound, almost all of it a waterfall of unintelligible chatter, while the tape decks turned. One of the miked agents had already i.d.'d Milacki and was drinking next to him. A second had followed Robbie through the door.

  A woman whom Robbie knew, a legal secretary who once had worked at Feaver amp; Dinnerstein, pushed up to greet him as soon as he cleared the tall glass doors. Carla. We could see her on the output from the video cam with which the three agents were posing. She was smoking a cigarette and barely remembered to remove it before kissing Feaver on the lips. She was conventionally pretty, near Robbie's age. She clutched Robbie's arm above the elbow as she asked him about Mort and shared stories of her two sons, both now in the Marines. Her straight blond hair, heavily sprayed and treated, divided like a stream around the rock of her shoulders. She licked the ends absentmindedly as they spoke.

  "I'll see you, hon," Robbie said eventually. "I gotta get with a guy."

  "That's how it is anymore. Everybody's always running. I'm over by the window by Rick and Kitty."

  He blew her a noncommittal kiss and worked his way toward Milacki, who was in the second row of standees near the bar. He had one finger in his ear as he yelled into his cell phone, apparently reaming out somebody who worked for him. When Robbie arrived, Sig pointed at the phone and mouthed an insult about the person on the other end.

  In the van, Alf signaled, instructing us to switch our headphones to channel three. The mike in the briefcase of the surveillance agent who was beside Milacki funneled far clearer sound than Robbie's FoxBlte.

  "Say, listen," Milacki said, and caught Robbie by the arm, after they had said hello. "We just had a thing at the courthouse. I swear to God, I nearly soiled my skivvies. One of these macaronis with the aluminum foil hairdo, you know, so they don't get too many of them weirdball radio signals from outer space, one of these wackheads goes right through the metal detector. Holy Tamoli, we got bells and lights like a pinball machine. So the boys pull him over to the wall to frisk him. Here," said Milacki to Robbie, "here, pick up your arms. I gotta show you this."

  On the second monitor, we could see Milacki spread his hands, ready to pat Robbie down.

  "Oh shit," said McManis. He tried to stand up, forgetting his seat belt, and was jolted back. After popping it free, he crowded closer to the monitor. There was no mistaking Robbie's hesitation either. After a second, McManis pushed Evon's shoulder and told her to get in there. She looked into the side-view to be certain she was clear and jumped out in a rush.

  "Whatsa matter?" we heard Milacki ask. "Ticklish?"

  "Very"

  "Come on, Roberta. I won't pinch. This is a scream." He hitched his head, and still appeared to be smiling. Even in black-and-white, you could see he had high color and a beautiful widow's peak. Years ago, he'd been a dirty blond but his oiled hair was now mostly gray.

  Robbie raised his arms vaguely, like a suspect unsure about giving up.

  "I paid two grand at Zegna for this suit, Milacki. I oughta make you wash your hands."

  "Right, it's very pretty. So they go like this"-he frisked Robbie, starting from the boot tops, while he maintained his patter-"and so help me God, the jamoke has a threefoot salami in there, wrapped in tinfoil." He reached right into Robbie's jacket at that point to feel under the arm. "Can you imagine? We were all laughing so hard, I thought somebody'd bust an artery."

  In the van, not a breath was taken in the interval.

  "Where is it?" Sennett asked quietly.

  Evon had initiated today, but McManis said that since acquiring his new footwear Robbie had made a habit of placing the FoxBIte in a holster in his boot.

  "Could he miss the lead?" Sennett asked.

  It was taped along Robbie's inseam, McManis said, so it was possible. Indeed, Milacki so far had not dropped a beat. He put his arm on Robbie's shoulder, then patted him up and down the back as he racked with laughter. Robbie, onstage again, showed no further sign of flinching, even when Milacki gave him a cheerful clap on the butt.

  Sensing he'd passed, Robbie, as he explained afterwards, figured the only credible reaction was outrage. He grabbed his suit coat by the lapels to settle it on his shoulders and pointed at the cop.

  "Why didn't you just bring the fucking metal detector, Sig?”

  Milacki didn't bother with pretense. "Better safe than sorry, bunky. Times we live in. Your lady friend's made everybody a little jumpy, maybe it rubs off on you. Couple folks been worrying about you, anyway. Said you seemed a little frayed around the collar." Crowthers and Walter, probably. This wasn't good news, either.

  Robbie kept up his front. "Is that right?"

  "Yeah, there's talk. It's like what Minnie Mouse told the judge when she asked to divorce Mickey? You heard that? She said she had to get out because he's been fucking Goofy." Milacki, taller than Robbie, could see he was getting nowhere with the efforts at humor, but he pounded Feaver's shoulder anyway as he roared.

  "I got a lot at home, Sig."

  "Hey, fuck, who loves you, baby?" Milacki took his large ruddy hand and jerked Robbie by the neck, as if trying to shake him into a better mood. "Fellow down the bar would like to see you." In the van, McManis tapped his heart. In the meanwhile, Sennett leaned toward the top monitor, which displayed a panorama of the entire establishment. Bulling through the happy throng, Robbie seemed to know where he was going.

  "Tuohey," Stan whispered. "Make it Tuohey."

  "Kosic," Alf said and stood for just a second to touch the top screen. Rollo again was at the extreme end of the bar under the white piano. One of the surveillance agents who'd been tailing Kosic for weeks had spotted him before and turned out to be on the stool beside him. The pianist, a different one than last time, was accompanying himself, crooning in the style of Tony Bennett, and the music piped up loudly on every channel. Alf spun his dials to little avail and griped, saying what everybody knew: these guys were smart.

  The trio of Asian agents had apparently kept pace with Robbie crossing the room, as a clear image of Kosic suddenly came into focus on the bottom monitor. Rollo was on his third old-fashioned by now. The glasses were lined up on the bar in front of him, the other two empty except for the maraschino cherries whose stems looked like hands waving for rescue as they sank between the melting cubes. When Feaver arrived and greeted Kosic, the surveillance agent seated beside Rollo abruptly picked up his drink, allowing Feaver to slide onto the brushed-steel
stool. Feaver's initial words to Rollo were largely lost by the time the applause died down after "Three Coins in the Fountain," but Robbie could be seen addressing Kosic, looking forward to the mirror in a dead-eyed, humorless fashion. When his voice came through again he was talking indignantly about his encounter with Milacki.

  "Yeah, we just had a touchy-feely, Sig and I. The wrong kind. I had the impression he sort of expected my balls to go beep."

  Kosic, much as last time, showed no reaction. Dressed in a golf windbreaker, he lifted his hand toward Lutese, the index finger crooked to hide the bad nail as he signaled for another drink. Then he removed a pen from his jacket pocket and began doodling on a cocktail napkin, while Robbie went on.

  "You know, I respect you, Rollo. Mama brought me up right. And maybe, okay, maybe my trolley's a little off the tracks these days. I don't need anybody's shoulder, but I got a load now. But I gotta tell you, after all the beer that's flowed from the brewery, I don't think I deserve to be treated like somebody nobody knows." As if he half expected to be poisoned, Kosic raptly watched Lutese shake the bottle of bitters over the new glass and drop in another cherry. "You tell Brendan I said that."

  Kosic, who had started to reach for the drink, flinched, reacting as a religious conservative might if Feaver had said `Jehovah.'