Personal injuries

CHAPTER 32

The next morning when I came in, Danny, my receptionist, had taken a message from the U.S. Attorney, Stan Sennett, asking if I could arrange to see him in my office at 12:30, with my colleague, which was how he referred to Robbie. Feaver, who was at the nursing home to begin the dismal business of sorting through his mother's effects, was cranky about being summoned, but he arrived on time, still with bleared eyes and appearing vaguely disheveled, as he'd been when I'd made a condolence call the prior evening.

"What's this about?" he asked.

I hadn't a clue.

Stan's mood, when Danny showed him in, was quite formal. He was in his usual immaculate blue suit and he took the trouble to shake Robbie's hand, which I didn't recall him bothering with before. He expressed his sympathies and, finding them tepidly received, put himself down in the maroon chair Robbie usually occupied. Sennett spent a moment arranging himself, reaching down to straighten the crease on his trouser leg, before beginning.

"I wanted to advise you both of a very unusual meeting I had the afternoon before last. I would have done this sooner, but for Robbie's circumstances. It was with an old friend of ours. Of all of ours. Magda Medzyk." Stan looked into his lap at that point, his expression taut.

"She had consulted an attorney that morning, Sandy Stern." Stan nodded toward me. Stern, who reviles Stan for reasons I have never fully understood, is my best friend in practice. "That was our good fortune. Mr. Stem declined to represent her, telling her he had an undisclosed conflict, but he suggested she approach me, rather than the P A.'s office, where political allegiances could occasionally become problematic. She waited more than an hour before I got back, and when she came in, she told me a long, somewhat tawdry story about her relationship with a personal injury attorney named Robert Feaver.

"Mr. Feaver, she said, had asked her to throw a case the night before. He actually seemed to be offering her money to do it. She wasn't quite certain of that, because she was so upset, so alarmed, she didn't follow every word. But there was no mistake that he wanted her to alter the outcome of the case. The judge told me that she will enter an order recusing herself from the matter. But she wanted to inform me first because she was willing, if need be, to wear a wire against Mr. Feaver, prior to that." Trying to be grave, Stan still could not stifle a smile at the irony.

He said that Magda had willingly accepted his guidance. Aside from withdrawing from the case, she would undertake no action or alert any other party in order to allow the government to investigate. She'd await further word from Stan.

Sennett waved his chin around to loosen his neck from the grip of his shirt collar, before turning to Feaver beside him.

"She's quite an extraordinary person," Stan said.

Robbie did not move. His shadowed eyes remained on Sennett, who, to his credit, declined to look away.

"'An extraordinary person'?" Robbie finally asked. "Stan, do you know how Magda Medzyk spent the night after I left there? Have you got a clue? Because I do. I was sitting there burying my mother yesterday and I saw Magda, like a vision, like it was on TV. I saw her at that little kitchen table all night long. She barely moved. She only got up once. To get her rosary. She just sat there begging the Mother of God to help her find some little piece of herself that could go on with whatever was left of her life, only some sliver of her soul, because the rest of it had been swallowed up by shame." He stood up then. "'An extraordinary person,"' he repeated. He directed one last harsh look at Sennett, kicked over my wastebasket, picked it up, and left.

Stan took just an instant to recover. At my door, he tipped an imaginary hat.

I found his behavior oddly consistent with my lifetime experience of Stan. Just when I was ready to give up on him, he'd redeem himself. As a line prosecutor he'd shown all the tenderness of a blunt instrument, but when he became Chief Deputy P.A. under Raymond Horgan, he exhibited monumental strength in reforming the office and especially in loosening the grip of the Police Force, with its political crosscurrents, over prosecutions. Shortly before he'd married Nora Flinn, her mother, expecting the couple to have children, chose to reveal the fact that she was not Portuguese, as Nora and her brother had always been told, but black. Stan, so far as I could tell, had never flinched. Instead, he had been an admirable support, even an example, in helping Nora come to terms not only with her anger at her mother but with the uglier stuff that would seep out of the hearts of most white Americans in the same situation. And when, as luck would have it, age later prevented them from being able to conceive, it was Stan who first suggested adopting a child of mixed race.

Today, he had arrived here, the Mountain to Mohammed, with the clear intent to be what was once referred to as A Man, knowing Feaver would dish out exactly what he had gotten. He'd come anyway, not merely to concede an error, not only to apologize to Robbie or to grant that my anger had been well placed, but to acknowledge that Feaver, disingenuous and compromised as he was, remained an able judge of character. Being as coolly objective as Stan, one could say that he was better with principles than with personalities. But as he went on his way, doing his best to look uncrimped, he left behind the saving information that he remained subject to the discipline of his own beliefs.

The following Thursday, the week before Memorial Day, Robbie resumed his activities. With Evon, he returned to Judith's to deliver the money Sherm had demanded. Judith, who'd plainly had a merciless ruction with her brother, refused even to look at Robbie, but the envelope went in the register drawer. Amari and his watchers had better luck this time in trailing the funds. Crowthers himself arrived for a late lunch and casually took the small white envelope from Judith, his hand lowered to his side while he was joshing with the kitchen staff. His first stop in the courthouse, even before his own chambers, had been at Kosic's small office, adjoining Tuohey's.

The wiretap, briefly activated, revealed little more than greetings. Something hit the desk, but no one could say for certain it was money. Somehow Kosic knew the source of the payment already or perhaps, out of extreme caution, sources were never identified, because nothing about that had been said.

But there was no question Rollo had received a share. No more than two hours later, Kosic paid for steak dinners for Brendan and himself at Shaver's, an old-fashioned joint not far from their home. One of the surveillance agents, seated only two tables away, had watched Rollo lay a $100 bill in the plastic folder in which the tab was presented. The agent jumped up and asked if Kosic minded exchanging five twenties for the C-note, claiming he wanted to fill a graduation card for his nephew. Not only did the serial number match one of the bills Robbie had dropped to Judith earlier but lifts raised a thumbprint so large the agents were all convinced-correctly, as it turned out that it was Sherm's. Kosic was now a long way to being cooked. And Crowthers was fully grilled. There would be no argument that anything Sherm had said to Robbie was merely a rambunctious jest. Despite the middling results with the wiretap, Stan was confident that Judge Winchell would agree to a full thirty-day overhear in Kosic's office. Something on Brendan was bound to turn up.

Sennett reported this information to the UCAs that night, clearly aiming to inspire everybody as they moved into the critical stage. Evon had come back to the Center City to attend the meeting, then returned to her apartment.

A large mirror with a frame of beveled glass hung as a wall decoration across from the elevator on her floor. Even when she glanced in the usual solemn fashion at her reflectioR, she knew something was wrong. She could never have identified what was out of place, but once she turned the comer down the narrow hall, she could see the door to her apartment ajar.

She stole to the threshold and lined herself up, shoulder to the left jamb, using the palm of her left hand to slowly push the door open. For the one hundredth time since Walter told Robbie that Marty Carmody thought she was an FBI agent, she longed for her weapon.

Inside, she heard someone clear his throat, and then another voice. Call the locals, she told herself, meaning the Kindle County police. Back out and dial 911. She had a cell phone in her purse. But this was the stuff she lived for. The cowboy types on a bust were always there for the power, sticking their.44 Magnum in somebody's ear and calling him motherfucker, hoping for a `brownie'; she'd never been able to see that as a trophy, since you had to tolerate the stink when you brought the poor bastard in. But for Evon, all roads led back to game day, to the telling moment of precise reaction. She loved to win, loved herself when she triumphed, in the pure, uncompromised way she'd transplanted from that earlier part of her life. She was not calling the locals.

She was halfway down the front hall now, spidering along with her backside to the wall. Recently, she'd been playing softball, a Sunday pickup game in a nearby park, kind of a boys-meet-girls event, but many of the participants competed seriously, and she'd bought a black graphite bat last week, which was still propped in a corner a few feet from where she was now, in the living room. Ahead, she saw a shadow move. She flattened herself and held her breath. Voices sputtered up once more. She had just placed the source when a middle-aged slope-bellied copper stopped at the end of the hallway and looked her up and down. He was pug-nosed and fairly cheerful-looking, despite his eyes, which were so small they had barely any whites. He reached to his belt to turn down his radio.

"Lady of the house?" he asked.

"Something like that." She showed him her key.

"Got a report," he said. "Burglary in progress. But I guess we missed them. You want to step back outside, I'll just finish. Take a minute. Or wait in the kitchen. I've already covered that."

The whole apartment had been tossed. Cabinets, dressers. The officer had a flashlight in his hand and was stepping carefully over the drawers of her bedroom wardrobe and their contents, which had been emptied out here on the meal-colored rug. He was agile for a big man, for somebody his age.

In the kitchen, the back door was wide open. There was nothing subtle. The dead bolt had been forced right through the plaster, leaving, even now, bitter white dust in the air and a crater in the wall the shape of a bowler hat. A piece of wallpaper hung down, as if exhausted, and the molding had been pulled straight off, revealing the three-inch straight nails with which the finish carpenters had applied it. Crowbar, she decided and was surprised, stepping to the threshold, to see the tool outside, still resting on the steel fire escape.

"The crowbar they used is on the back porch yet," she called. "You might want it for prints."

She'd returned to the living room. The copper looked back into the bedroom for something and took his time in responding.

"You don't get much from that kind of surface," he said. "But I'll take it along." In the kitchen, an empty plastic bag from the grocery produce section rested on the counter. He asked if she could spare it and he grabbed the crowbar with that He laid it on the white Formica breakfast bar, pulled a tiny spiral notebook from his back pocket, and asked her for her name and date of birth. She panicked for a second until she recollected that the birth dates were the same, Evon Miller's and hers.

"Probably kids," the cop said. "Doesn't look too professional, the way they went through that wall. Must have raised a racket Anything special they'd want with you?" She shook her head mutely. But his question unsettled her. Probably kids, she told herself. She asked if she could look around to see what was missing.

"TV's still there. Looks like most of the big stuff's in place. I must have scared them off. God knows what's in their pockets, though. You'll probably be finding stuff missing for days. But go ahead, look. Anything with some value could turn up in the North End. Be good to know about it."

She walked through the apartment. The wreckage was upsetting. Every closet door was open. They'd gone through her bedroom with vicious speed, probably looking for jewelry. Her dresses were all off their hangers and on most of the garments the pockets had been turned inside out. A small jewelry box on her bureau had been upended, the pieces strewn around the room. She'd never know what was missing, but it was all costume stuff anyway that the Movers had provided. Even her bed had been disturbed, The spread and covers had been ripped off and the mattress now sat crookedly on the box spring. A routine hiding place, under the mattress, jokes notwithstanding. Probably kids, she told herself again.

When she went under, the Movers had given her the option of keeping her FBI credentials. It was a rainy-day measure, worse coming to worst. But if a snoopy boyfriend found them, well, most likely you were blown. That was how the leader, Dorville, had explained it. Agents who were undercover in the world of dope, of fencing, many of them held on to their creds, because they were likely to get arrested. But she didn't figure to have that need and she was relieved now she'd made the decision to leave them behind. Even her gun, much as she missed it, might have been a problem. She finally saw the logic.

She went back to the living room. The drawers had been pulled out on a small desk theme. She had been dictating today's 302 before she left, and she pawed around through what was on the floor, looking for her Dictaphone. It was gone, as well as the spare microcassettes that had been in the drawer beside it. To her best memory, there was not that much yet on the recording-the case file number, her voice referring to herself as `undersigned agent.' Still, that cassette, in the wrong hands, would give her away.

"Anything gone?" called the copper.

"Hard to tell," she answered. There was so much disruption, so many odd things thrown here and there, that she knew the Dictaphone and the tapes could still be here. She picked through clothing, books, CDs on the floor. She went into the bedroom and systematically worked her way around the room. In the living room, she found the Dictaphone, but today's tape had been removed. Hoping, she checked her briefcase, but the microcassette was not in the side pouch where she routinely zipped the tape when she was done. Two inches by one, though, the cassette would be easy to miss. It was going to turn up, she told herself.

She walked around the apartment one more time, looking things over. Nothing else seemed to be missing. Then she realized that a birthday card she'd written to her mother, sealed in its white envelope and addressed, had also been removed from the desk. Fear darkly bloomed near her heart. She'd signed it 'DeDe.' Still, that was nothing, who'd make anything of DeDe? Only Marty Carmody, she realized. And Walter.

As the anxiety began knifing deeper, she added it up. Would kids skip the CDs and go for a birthday card? Would they take the tapes and not the Dictaphone? That's why the pockets of her clothing had been rummaged, why her bed had been overturned. Carmody's information had finally made the circle, from Walter to somebody who cared.

The cop was ready to go. He stooped for his hat on her coffee table. As he did, the white corner of an envelope peeked up out of his rear pocket and Evon missed a breath.

Lots of things came in envelopes, she told herself. Lots of people carried stuff in their back pockets. But she recollected all of Robbie's warnings about Brendan's enduring connections on the Force. The brass, almost all of them, were Brendan's pals. He'd served on the Force with most of the Area Commanders and had cultivated the others over the years. Milacki, in fact, was still on the job.

"How'd this call come in anyway?" Evon asked, trying to sound casual.

The copper wiped a thick hand across his mouth. "One of the neighbors, I suspect."

"You know which one? I really oughta go say thank you."

"Fraid not. Just a 911. Beat hell over here, you know how it is." He was looking around the living room as if he'd left something. Maybe he didn't want to meet her eye, Or perhaps he was already wondering what tipped her.

She'd gone back to the front window and looked through the miniblinds down to the avenue. There was no squad car outside.

"It was just a real surprise to find you in here," she said. "I didn't even see a police car outside."

The copper looked at her with sudden directness. His tiny eyes had hardened and she cursed herself. She might as well have handed the guy a note that he'd been busted. And like a bat suddenly flying through the room, Evon abruptly realized this man was weighing the thought of killing her. It was not necessarily something he wanted to do. It was just that he had never really considered his alternatives. But if she beeped the Bureau for assistance, if they searched him and found that card and her Dictaphone tapes in his pockets, his life was over. There was a Chief's Special, a.38 Smith amp; Wesson, on his hip. And he could use any excuse: she snuck in; he mistook her for another bandit.

"You know the old trick," the cop finally said. "Come up on foot. I didn't want the perp to catch sight of a black-and-white." He kept his pinkish face half-averted, checking with one eye to see how this was being received. "What kind of law enforcement you in?"

"Me?"

"You sorta sound like you know what you're doing. With the fingerprints and all. Way you were crawling the wall there." She noticed his nameplate over his shirt pocket for the first time. Dimonte. Then again, it might not even be his.

"I just watch a lot of TV"

She got a laugh with that, albeit somewhat obligatory. She desperately wanted to unheat this guy, put him at ease. Bad enough that they were on her, but even worse if they realized she knew. She went to her cupboard in the kitchen. It was open, too. The vodka was on the front of the shelf. Did she leave it there? Somebody trying to pick through her cover would be looking for liquor. She brought the bottle out with her, as well as a box of cookies, and offered Dimonte both.

"Not on the job, lady. I'm pretty much a beer guy anyway. Poor man's pleasures." She made excuses about the bottle. Her boyfriend bought it. She didn't take alcohol herself, the way she was brought up.

"Methodist?" the cop asked.

"No, no. Mormon. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

He shook his head to show he'd never heard of them. "Each to his own," he said. He looked her over one more time, plainly still deliberating, then seeing no harm, reached over and took a cookie.

He was gone a moment later. She thanked him lavishly and he tipped his hat. She leaned against the apartment's painted steel door as soon as she'd closed it. That had been a bad minute there. Her knees were jumping around like fleas. Back in the kitchen, she found the crowbar, still resting on the counter in the bag bearing the grocer's logo. But that made sense. Officer Dimonte had already found all the evidence he needed.

Sennett did not want to believe it.

"A birthday card?" he asked. "If I was a burglar, I might lift a birthday card. Maybe there's a twenty inside."

But Joe Amari had gotten agents from the Kindle County Division who worked regularly with the locals to tear this up. Over in Area 6, Dimonte had filed a report that said he'd responded to a burglary in progress. But Joe's guys had burned a copy of the 911 tapes and a number of evidence techs had listened to all twelve tracks. There was no break-and-enter logged anywhere in DuSable between 8 p.m. and 10.

McManis knew Sennett well enough to realize he'd have to hear this news directly. Heavyset but smooth, Joe sat calmly at the end of the table and delivered the report. Sennett began to speculate about why the call might not be recorded and Amari lost patience.

"Stan, nobody sends a single unit, let alone a one-man car, to answer a burglary in progress. You end up with officers down that way. And from what Evon says, this critter had way enough wear on him to know better." Amari, who was seldom reticent with his opinions tucked his chin against his chest and gave Sennett the full measure of his solemn brown eyes. "Face it, Stan. These guys are on her. They've got the Dictaphone tape. And they know that Carmody said he was fooling around with an FBI agent named DeDe, and that's the name on that card."

The weak light of a rainy morning leaked into the conference room through the open blinds. Trying to take this in, Sennett popped his middle finger rhythmically against the small dark `o' he made of his lips.

Stan had his vision. He was going to round up every corrupt lawyer and judge in the tri-cities. He was going to use all of law enforcement's latest technological gadgets and put together a cinch case on every on of them, dozens, maybe a hundred. He was going to drive them like a herd of branded cattle down Marshall Avenue in the full sight of the world, clopping along with their heads down as they moved on toward Stan's personal slaughterhouse in the federal building. And at the head of this legion of disgrace would be Brendan Tuohey, the guy everybody told Sennett he'd never get. And now he wouldn't. The bad guys were on alert.

Finally, he turned to Evon and asked her what she thought.

"I'd like to stay out there," she answered.

Across the table, McManis's smile was almost sweet.

"We know that, Evon. We all do. But the boss wants your opinion. You were there. Do you think you're burned?"

She might have fooled around with Sennett, but she would never dis McManis. She believed in all the same true blue stuff he did.

"Cremated," she answered.

Even Sennett managed a smile. He got up and walked around the room for quite some time while he weighed the real question. What did they do now? Everyone else hung there in the usual suspense. The beeping and scraping of the traffic down on the avenue wandered up here. Suddenly, Sennett faced them with a vague smile and his head at the same inquisitive angle practiced by most mammals.

"What if we go with this?" he asked. "Assume they know she's FBI. We can't afford not to. But what says they realize what she's doing? Maybe Robbie's the guy under the microscope, the one she's investigating." Sennett, hurtling with the momentum of his idea, was happy again. N o one else seemed to see what pleased him. "We can get a clean shot at Brendan this way. Robbie thinks he's got an FBI mole in his office. So he goes to Brendan for advice: What should I do? Knowing who she is, Tuohey can't afford not to warn Robbie."

Evon had always felt grudging admiration for this part of Sennett. He was like a screw that kept turning, no matter how impregnable the surface it was supposed to penetrate.

McManis took a minute.

"You want to do this while Evon's still working in Robbie's office?"

"Why net?"

"These guys have too many ways, Stan. They showed is that last night."

"Evon's a big girl," Evon said. Sennett opened a palm n her direction. McManis, who'd heard the line before, made a face, then stole a look at Amari, who also shook its head no. Stan continued pitching. After all the work, all the months, they had to take a shot at Brendan. They had to. And she had to remain in place to give Robbie credibility when he went to Tuohey to ask about what he should do. The fact that she was still here would mean;he-and the Bureau-didn't suspect who that copper, Dinonte, had been fronting for, didn't realize she'd been uncovered.

"Stan," said McManis, "these boys don't lack for hormones. There's a real chance they'll make a move."

"All the better," Sennett answered brightly. At moments,.t was shocking how little Stan cared whether or not people liked him. His logic was cold-blooded. If Robbie went o Brendan on Monday, and on Tuesday they found some punk snipping Evon's brake lines, it would close the circle, make the case. Jim, the steady master of his emotions, was visibly shocked. His lips parted once or twice before he spoke.

"I don't bait traps with agents. Not if I can avoid it. And neither does UCORC."

"Jim, I can handle this," she said.

His eyes came to her without the slightest movement of his head. She was out of place. He closed the file folder before him and said he needed some time with Stan. Evon and Amari quickly left together.

"Big stuff," said Shirley from behind the red oak receptionist's station. Evon had taken a seat across from her. Plump and reliably cheerful, Shirley, in her real life, had been a state cop somewhere before joining the Bureau. Neither she nor the other UCAs knew exactly what had happened last night, but they all seemed to feel something was up. Klecker came through from the other side of the space.

" Que pasa?" he asked.

Evon shook her head as if she didn't know.

McManis came out in another ten minutes, and pointed her to his office. The Movers had decorated with a minimal concession to his tastes. There were photos of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia on the paneled walls. The supposed mementos of a lifetime were displayed on the office's open shelves. He had a bronzed Letter of Achievement from the Chairman of Moreland Insurance in a brass frame, and a pewter triple block from his bygone sailing days. There was also a signed photograph of Mike Schmidt taken at the Vet in Philly, inscribed to `Jim.' The autograph was a phony, but McManis had confessed to Evon that his family-the wife and the kids-were in the photo somewhere, probably, she supposed, in the stadium's seats. The only other thing Evon knew about Jim was that he had been an Eagle Scout. Literally. And at least one of his sons was as well. He'd said something about that at a party.

He sat, then thought better of something, and got up to shut the blinds. From now on they were going to assume that Tuohey had a full countersurveillance going. Jim leaned against his desk on her side. She knew before he started that he was pulling her in, and she began talking him out of it before he could find his words.

"Jim, I know what I'm doing."

"It's not your choice."

"You can put the whole surveillance squad on me."

"DeDe-" He hadn't called her that since the day he'd met her in Des Moines. "We had surveillance on you. And this creep walked right past them. We're lucky he didn't kill you. The next time they catch hold of you, it'll be guys in ski masks thumping you all night long to find out what we've got."

"Then make sure I've got company. Twenty-four hours. Have Shirley move in with me. And I can pack again now. I'll be safe. Jim, I know what I'm doing."

"No you don't," McManis said, but he was smiling gently again, much as before. With admiration. At moments, she was amazed to realize how much he liked her. He'd liked her from the beginning.

She begged. He had a thousand more objections. About UCORC, and the feasibility of Sennett's plan. But she could see he was wearing down.

"Jim, we all deserve the shot at Tuohey. I do. You do. Sennett does. We can't stop here." She was almost desperate with that thought. How could she just go back to Des Moines? To bank thefts and church choir and thinking about getting a new cat? "I mean, Jim," she said and spoke one of her errant pieces of humor, a joke that was not really a joke at all, "I'm Evon Miller."