Personal injuries

CHAPTFR 46

The Grand Jury room was situated in the new federal building, a floor above the United States Attorney's Office. The Chief Judge, whose ostensible duty it was to restrain prosecutorial abuse, was a block away, across Federal Square, in the grand old courthouse to which the District Court judges all returned once the new building proved nearly uninhabitable. Built in Augie Bolcarro's heyday, with subcontracts sprinkled down upon his henchmen like sugar from a baker's hands, the new building had heat and air-conditioning systems that were eternally on the blink. The windows, until each one was replaced, frequently popped out in high winds, terrifying pedestrians on several blocks. For years it was commonplace to find a herd of attorneys standing twenty or thirty abreast in half a dozen federal courtrooms, bickering about one of the pieces of complex litigation the new construction had spawned.

The grand jury room's reception area looked as if it might be attached to a homeless shelter or a cheap motel. The low-grade plasterboard was marred and gouged, and the likes of the foam furniture, soft forms without armrests or separate cushions, had not been seen since the height of the sixties. The pieces had apparently been discovered in the recesses of some government warehouse and offered to various federal agencies at a price they couldn't refuse in the former Reagan era of suffocating budgetary restraint. Looking at the furnishings, you could just about imagine hippies in beads dropping acid and holding on to their headbands. Instead, for more than a decade, the witnesses awaiting their appearances had perched there, dejectedly hunched like molting birds.

Today there was an extraordinary assemblage. As always, Sennett had acted with cunning and subpoenaed everyone whom Robbie had recorded to any effect at all. Several obscure court clerks and deputies were here, as well as persons far more prominent. Sherm Crowthers sat like a lump of stone beside his lawyer, Jackson Aires, a skillful and obstinate government foe whose analysis of any case, much like Sherman's, reliably started and ended with race. Jackson had brought a colleague, a cat's-paw to represent the ravaged-looking Judith McQueevey, who by now had recanted her confession of two evenings before. There were thirteen or fourteen persons subpoenaed in all, and some obvious absences, Pincus Lebovic and Kwan, and, most notably, Barnett Skolnick, all of whom by now had folded and turned. Everyone else who stood in peril of indictment was present, even Walter Wunsch, whose pancreatic cancer left him unlikely to live until even the speediest trial.

The point of this exercise was relatively clear to me and not particularly pretty. To force an appearance, each of the prospective defendants had been served with a subpoena duces tecum, demanding the production of documents or physical objects in their personal possession. Datebooks seemed to be the chief item required, although two of the clerks had been summoned to bring merchandise Robbie had presented as `tips.' Gretchen Souvalek, Gillian Sullivan's clerk, clutched a Tiffany box containing a set of earrings Robbie had provided for general ingratiation. Walter Wunsch, seated with his attorney, Mel Tooley-who represented a number of those present had brought not only various court volumes but also the set of expensive graphite-shafted irons which Robbie had presented to him several weeks ago. Walter held the clubs, complete with a snappy black leather carry bag, against his knee, manifesting a state of glum agitation which made it look as if he'd discovered only after arriving here that he had not been invited to play. Following Robbie's testimony, each person would be called before the grand jury by Sennett or one of the phalanx of Assistant U.S. Attorneys assisting him, and, after various legal gymnastics aimed at skirting the Fifth Amendment, forced to surrender what they'd brought.

This exercise, however, would be largely pageantry. Stan had other motives in dragging his targets down here. He wanted them to confront Feaver, to see for themselves that his cooperation was not simply half-baked media speculation. He wanted them to face each other, familiar figures, silent conspirators, now brought low. Yet even this was ancillary to Stan's principal purpose. The morning papers had announced that the Petros grand jury was convening today, a result no doubt of one of Sennett's well-timed leaks. TV crews were downstairs, just outside the building's doors, and print reporters were stalking the hallways. They could not attend the grand jury sessions, which were secret by law, but they would report who had come and gone from the courthouse. As a result, each of the persons who could not find a comfortable spot on the uncomfortable furniture would be vilified by the end of the day. Still shots and video clips of them would appear in all the media organs. It was no less than a naked march through the streets, during which their presumptive criminality would be displayed like waffles and belly fat to the amusement or horror of every person they knew. That was Sennett's real aim-to crush them, to deal the first of many hard blows to be borne as the cost of refusing to cooperate, and to show them that most of the esteem they'd held in the eyes of others was already gone. Looking around the room, seeing everyone else similarly devastated, they would know that sooner or later one of them, probably many more, would do the only sensible thing-capitulate, snitch, do time, and move on.

Most of these persons didn't know me. When I emerged after escorting Robbie to the attorney/witness room down the hall where Evon and McManis were now keeping him company, only one or two of the future defendants cast spiteful looks in my direction. Sherm Crowthers, who sat clutching his sister's hand, clearly wished me dead. But the enmity that I felt broil me like microwaves came from another source: the lawyers. As the persons charged with protecting their clients from just the kind of savaging Sennett had delivered, the attorneys here Tooley, Ned Halsey, Jackson Aires, several others-were in a nasty mood. Tooley came to pal around first. With his silly toupee, like the coat of a shaggy poodle, and his tight Continental tailoring, ill suited to his hogshead physique, Mel was a vision of disingenuousness.

"I'd like to talk to your guy. Down the road, you know. Possible?"

Unlikely.

"Will you get me the answer to a question or two?"

That was more in the realm.

"I'll call you," said Mel. "You know," he said, turning back, "the one with titanium testicles is you. Your guy got squeezed. But nobody was forcing you to help him, George. I hope I don't have the co-defendant the next time you're in state court."

It was advocacy of a kind, the underhanded variety in which Me] specialized. He was suggesting I'd better quickly disassociate myself from the prosecution and help out the defendants if I wanted my practice to survive.

I had already turned heel without comment when, at the stroke of ten, Stan appeared. He was tight as a bowstring and in the happy clutch of the intense precision that sustained him. It had not all worked out as he hoped, but it was still a bright moment for him. He stood among the despised as the man who had vanquished them. He said good morning only to the grand jury clerk. Then, as he reached the door of the grand jury room, he faced me.

"Give me a second," he said, "to tell the jurors what this is all about."

"I'll tell them!" yelled Walter Wunsch. He was closest to the door. "I'll tell them plenty. American citizens! I fought for this goddamned country and now it's like Red China with spooks and bugs. Lemme in there." Walter had risen to his feet, a somewhat pathetic exercise, because he was already wasting. His flesh hung just enough to leave the impression that in the degenerative processes of the cancer his skin was attempting to slough itself from the muscle and bone. Tooley advanced from my side and made his client sit down.

"He's just tellin it like it is," said Sherm Crowthers wearily from across the room.

Stan took this in with an indulgent smile. At other moments he would have hated the disorder, but now he knew he'd caused it. He suggested I get Robbie ready.

I returned to the small attorney/witness room down one of the interior corridors. The space was often used for coffee breaks and quick lunches by the court reporter and the clerk. Arriving earlier, I'd nearly reeled from the driving odor of the white onions arising from a half-eaten sandwich that had remained overnight in the drab metal trash bin. Although I'd removed the can, the odor was still strong.

Except for questions about the tape, Robbie's testimony was predictable. Once he entered the small windowless room where the twenty-three grand jurors waited like the audience in a small theater, a desultory exercise would take place. He would identify his initials on the dozens of reelto-reel tapes and computer magazines, and say, `Yes, that's accurate,' when Evon's 302s describing various critical events were read to him. When that was over, come what may, Robbie could not change his account of what had happened without risking a conviction for perjury. There was even some chance this would be the last time he testified. Understandably, Stan had never wanted to stake his prosecutions on Robbie's credibility, and he'd constructed the evidence, especially the recordings, so he could prove his cases without putting Feaver on the stand. If he called him at all it would only be as a show of openhandedness for the juries.

We had brought Robbie in through the back corridor and secreted him in the witness room, but there was only one door to the grand jury room. As Stan had planned it, Robbie would have to run a gauntlet of more than a dozen persons who felt their trust in him had been primitively violated. But the notion that they were all out there seemed to amuse him.

"Curtain call," he said. His mood was somewhat dislocated. He was clearly too exhausted to be going through this today, but because of his refusal to surrender the tape, I had no ability to appeal to Sennett. At that point, Moses knocked and beckoned us.

"Ready?" I asked.

Feaver wanted one second and motioned for Evon to follow him the other way down the corridor.

"When Stan asks me for that tape," he said to her, "if I tell him to go scratch, where does that leave me with you?" The cassette was in my briefcase, but I still had no idea what Robbie would do. I didn't expect Stan to try to coerce Robbie into surrendering the tape before the grand jury, because I had the upper hand on the law. If Sennett forced me to go to Chief Judge Winchell, he stood a good chance of losing the right ever to use the tape against Tuohey. Instead, I anticipated a personal appeal at some point, an apology to Robbie, and a request he give up the tape and sign a form acknowledging, somewhat fictitiously, that he'd consented to the recording. I thought in the end it would come down to whom Robbie hated more, Brendan or Stan, although shame was also a factor: in a way, the tape memorialized Mort's betrayal. In arriving at a decision, however, Robbie was worried about something else.

"If you feel like I'm screwing you over by not letting him have it," he told Evon, "then I'll give it to him."

She weaseled at first, said it was his decision, not hers, but he wouldn't let her off that way.

"You know me," she said. "It's black-and-white. That's why I have such a damn hard time with myself. Two wrongs don't make a right. That's where I come out. Personally. But I'll stand up for you either way, bub. You tell him to go spit, I'm right here behind you." She stiffened her chin and nodded. Her only hesitation was McManis. She cared about what he would say, the same way Robbie cared about her, and she told Feaver that. They returned to the conference room and Robbie put the same question to Jim. Would he feel personally messed over if Sennett didn't get the tape? Would he feel like he'd wasted his time?

Jim adjusted the large frames on his nose. His demeanor betrayed some of the intense calculation going on within, but his tone was placid.

"I think we did a lot of good work here. I'll always be proud of it. I'd like to get Tuohey. He's a bad guy. But I've lived twenty-two years on this job convinced that the government comes out the loser if you get a bad guy a bad way. So I'll handle whatever you decide. Personally, I'd say take some time. Sort it out."

Feaver nodded and looked at the three of us.

"I can't give it to him," he said. "Not today."

We all lingered there, perhaps waiting to see if hearing him say it changed anything, but it didn't seem to. Evon was as good as her word and patted his arm.

"Show time," Robbie said then, and opened the door himself.

"I think I'll come along just to keep you company," said Evon. "Just to make sure nobody gets disorderly."

Robbie reminded her that there were metal detectors at the entrance of the courthouse. The firearms and switchblades had presumably been left behind. But he seemed content to go forward with his honor guard, Evon leading and Jim covering him from behind and me at his shoulder. Robbie emerged from the shadowed corridor with his eyes fast and his stride certain. He looked handsome and heroic, fitting snugly once again into his role. His life as a lawyer was behind him and he had celebrated by appearing in a black shirt, beneath his suit, and no tie.

"Judas Iscariot!" cried Walter as soon as Robbie had stepped around the corner. The news that he was dying had filled Walter with abandon and rage. Evon immediately fronted between Robbie and Wunsch, and Tooley returned from one of his other clients to take hold again of Walter's arm. He was not easily stilled. "Fucking Judas Iscariot!" cried Walter. "You're just another loudmouth, stinking sell-out."

Robbie's wits remained in order.

"Right, Walter," he said, "and you're the Messiah."

His delivery was perfect and the acid rain of humiliating laughter drizzled down on Walter, even from a number of his confreres. Despite his condition, malice had revitalized Walter and it took a considerable effort from Tooley to push Wunsch back down into his seat next to his golf clubs.

At the door to the grand jury room, Sennett stood, his hands folded primly.

"Mr. Feaver," he said with imposing formality. He wanted Robbie to know he was prepared for anything. "How are you this morning?"

"Sick and tired," said Robbie, "especially of you."

Stan didn't flinch. God knows what he thought he deserved. Without a word, he opened the door to the grand jury room and extended a hand to show Robbie in.

I told Robbie I would be just outside and reminded him he had the right to stop Sennett at any time to consult me. Robbie smiled generously. He shook my hand and, as he often did, thanked me for everything I'd done, before he advanced to the threshold.

The sequence of events after that has always remained jumbled. In the ensuing moments, my reactions remained a step behind; I was still attempting to make sense of the first sensation by the time I was hit with the next one. Initially, I heard a sudden crescendo of voices, culminating in a drilling female scream. As it turned out, it was Judith, but for some reason I thought it was Evon and swung in her direction as something flew past me, stunning the air. A bird was my first impression, a pigeon, some silvery form. I jumped back in panic, and at the same time heard a flat sound, vaguely like the noise I knew as a boy when for mean sport we'd smash melons on the hot tar of the road. I realized, though, that something was broken. A small hard pellet ricocheted off my face and I was spattered with what I took first for mud. There was an animal smell from somewhere, sudden heat, then the low, guttural sound that Robbie Feaver made as he slumped against me.

I caught him and his completely inert weight pulled me to the floor with him. The back of his suit and the arm I had around him were warmed with what I improbably took first for soup, then realized was blood. There was enormous turmoil now, people yelling for the phone and for doctors, screams from inside the grand jury room, and Walter Wunsch hollering to leave him be, as Jim and Evon and three or four other persons subdued and disarmed him. In the process, they broke two of his fingers, but they pried from his fist the number two iron whose blade Walter had driven straight through Robbie's skull.

I saw the wound then, which looked wildly out of place, a welling gash distinct in spite of the gobs of thickened blood that already matted Robbie's crown. Somehow it resembled an open mouth, almost that wide, with red matter that might have been skin crushed inward and a single protrusion, white and ghastly, which I knew was a piece of Robbie's cranium. I had no idea what to do. For the moment everything in the universe seemed open to doubt. Realizing there was absolutely no point to it, I applied my handkerchief to the wound, watching the spreading bloodstain creep over the cloth. Evon had reached us by then and I told her quietly what I'd sensed from the first instant he'd fallen against me: I was afraid Robbie was dead.

Evon grabbed his wrist for a pulse, then tried his neck, and finally brought her face to his lips to feel for breath.

"Turn him over!" she screamed. Several of us helped her. She pounded his chest three times, then she grabbed his nose, from which a thick line of blood had already emerged, and, after a tremendous inhalation, applied her mouth to his. She went on with this for at least a minute as every person in the room, even those scurrying about at the periphery, watched. A phone rang repeatedly and no one picked it up.

A moment later, two Secret Service agents with paramedical training bolted in. They'd been summoned by one of the Assistant U.S. Attorneys who'd gone screaming for help. In another minute, an M.D. who had been testifying down the hall as an expert witness crashed through the door and took over. He placed his fingertips on the carotids, then got on his hands and knees and lifted Robbie's head gently to examine the wound.

"Jesus Christ," he said. "Somebody say it was a golf club? It looks like a hatchet."

The club, brown from the shaft to the toe, was still in McManis's hand. Walter, confronting what he'd done and the phenomenon of death that would soon claim him, sat in the same foam chair. His head looked almost unstrung from his body, leaning against the metal doorframe of the grand jury room. He held his broken hand rigidly in the air. A private security guard had appeared from somewhere and stood over him.

The 911 paramedics arrived then. They were wheeling oxygen tanks and they fastened the mask over Robbie's mouth and strapped him to the cart.

"No, I don't want to pronounce him," the M.D. said.

Evon sat on the floor with her back against the wall. Her hand, blood-painted up to the knuckles, was over her mouth and she stared out unseeing. Sennett, who had run for help, dashed back into the room. When he saw me, he averted his eyes. He addressed McManis and asked how the hell it could have happened. Jim did not bother to reply. I stood and helped Evon to her feet. I realized we should go to the hospital. As we headed out, Mel Tooley, who had dug his hands in his trouser pockets, passed a remark to the man guarding Walter.

"I don't think this is going to do much for his handicap."