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  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 fully 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 got 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 straightbacked 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 Bobbie 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 blackframed 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 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. Klecker had stopped the FoxBIte and removed it from Feaver by the time Jim returned to the conference room from the courthouse.

  "`But, Your Honor'?" screamed Robbie as soon as he saw Jim. McManis was too low-key and measured to be vulnerable to ribbing very often and Robbie made the most of the opportunity. "What were you going to do?" Robbie shouted. "Try to talk the judge into changing his mind?"

  Caught somewhere between sheepishness and amusement, McManis sat in one of the conference room barrel chairs. His tie was lowered and he appeared drained by the entire experience. It had been such a confusing moment, he finally said. After all the preparation, his instinct was to react like any other loser. McManis's brief protest in the courtroom actually amounted to good cover, which made it that much easier for Robbie to give him the business. Evon and Klecker hailed several other agents in from the hallway to listen.

  "You're the patsy," Feaver screamed. "You're supposed to lose."

  Both Sennett and I had arrived while Robbie was carrying on. Klecker had downloaded the recording magazine to the computer equipment in the cabinet and replayed for us the brief exchange in the courtroom. Listening, McManis shook his head and said he remained utterly lost about what Malatesta had been up to. He couldn't understand then or now why the judge would schedule a hearing only to announce he'd reached a decision last night. But Sennett, running at warp speed, saw what had happened.

  "That's a snow job for the record," he answered Jim. "It's wallpaper for the derriere. This guy is really clever," he said. "Mere's going to be a perfect excuse for everything. The motion's a close call. So Malatesta staged the hearing to show he had so little interest in who won or who lost that he even forgot he'd already ruled. If anybody ever questions him on the case, today's transcript will be Exhibit A for the defense. We can't drop a stitch or Malatesta'll go right through the opening."

  A second of hushed admiration for Stan's deft intelligence penetrated the still air of the conference room. For the agents, perhaps, it had never been quite as clear why Sennett was in charge. He held the floor an instant longer, the smallest man there, looking about, impressing his warnings and his discipline on each of them.

  CHAPTER 11

  For all his overenthusiastic openness about everything else, Robbie was guarded concerning Lorraine. At the start, he said next to nothing to Evon concerning his wife, as if to emphasize that, notwithstanding his deal with the government, in this arena they could not intrude. But after six weeks around him, Evon had absorbed a lot about Rainey and her illness. She'd learned bits from Mort or the staff. And coming and going from Robbie's office, she'd overheard dozens of his cheerful phone calls with his wife, as well as more sober conversations with the legion of caretakers in Rainey's life-doctors, physical therapists, occupational therapists, masseuses, nurses, and the home health care aide whom he employed twenty-four hours a day. By now he'd even ventured isolated observations to Evon about Rainey, but only a sentence or two, rather than his usual extended digressions. Recently, he'd glumly reported on the need to puree everything Lorraine ate. "Puree of steak, can you imagine? Pureed muffin? She can still taste, at least." His lean face took on the longing, distant look of a man at sea.

  It was something of a surprise one day in mid-February when he invited Evon in to meet Lorraine. They had been in the neighborhood, down the block, in fact, meeting a prospective client. Sarah Perlan, a short and portly woman, wanted to sue the local tennis center for the Achilles tendon she'd torn when she'd stumbled on a wayward ball. When they were done at Sarah's, Robbie had suggested a visit with Lorraine. Evon was reluctant to intrude, but he insisted Rainey wanted to meet his new paralegal.

  "I guess I've talked a lot about you." His furry brows crawled up his forehead as if this phenomenon struck him as unaccountable.

  From the entry, you could imagine the interior as it had once been. Something of a neat freak, Rainey Feaver had tended to the austere, and had furnished almost exclusively in white. The living room, as Robbie had once observed, was the sort of place where a three-year-old with a chocolate bar could do as much damage as a tornado.

  But sickness had a design sense of its own. Outside the house, Robbie referred to it as the Disease Museum, a proving ground and display space for every device, simple or complex, that might somehow improve the li
fe Lorraine had left. Along the handcrafted walnut railing that ran up the turret staircase dominating the foyer, an electric hoist now whirred along a grease-blackened track. Metal hospital rails had been applied to all the walls, and there were a number of electronic doorbells visible that Rainey had once used to summon help.

  On the first step of the staircase, he turned to Evon. "Sure you can handle this?"

  He might have thought of that before, but it was too late to turn around. The truth was that she was not good with illness. Maw-Maw, her grandmother, paralyzed after disk surgery went bad, had moved in with her parents when Evon was fifteen. Her entire existence by then was founded on physical well-being, and she was often frightened in the presence of the old woman, even sickened when a sheet or hem slipped away and she caught sight of her grandmother's legs wasted to the width of a hockey stick. She kept what distance she could. `You know, it isn't catching,' her mother finally told her one afternoon in her customarily brutal fashion.

  This encounter would be worse. Maw-Maw's decline had been long but natural. Rainey Feaver was thirty-eight years old and dying. There was really no hope. Some-a distinct minority of ALS patients-lived twenty years with the disease as it smoldered through their bodies. Stephen Hawking was by far the most famous of these slow-progressing cases. But Lorraine was `normal'-walking one day, falling down the next, and in a wheelchair within eighteen months. Her hands had weakened to the point that she could no longer hold a pencil or lift her arms above her head. And now, two and a half years after diagnosis, she could not feed herself or swallow well. She needed assistance even to remain upright on the toilet. She could not control her salivary glands, and shortly before Evon had arrived on the scene, they had been irradiated to keep Rainey from drowning in her own spit.