Personal injuries (40 page)

Èven then,' Robbie told me, Ì was scared of Brendan. You had to be. There was this thing that came off of him, like a smell. You knew he didn't completely like anybody, that he was pretending just a little bit with everyone, except his sister.' The stories he liked to tell were of his rough encounters on the street, shellacking some mouthy blackguard he'd caught up with in a gangway. Sometimes on Sundays, Estelle also came next door with Robbie for supper. For a period, he said, she actually seemed to have taken some kind of shine to Brendan, and Robbie could even recall a cockeyed childhood hope that Brendan would become his stepfather. But Estelle was a decade older and not really of interest to Brendan, and Robbie's mom, for her part, would have no more considered marriage to a gentile than to an ape. She always came home talking about how much Tuohey and Sheilah drank, expressing a kind of sorrowing wonder that Mort's dad, Arthur Dinnerstein, could put up with it. For Robbie, starstruck by Brendan, these criticisms were incomprehensible.

Eventually, Estelle stopped accompanying her son. Brendan passed the bar, joined the Prosecuting Attorney's Office, and appeared on Sunday in the suit he'd worn to church, rather than his police regalia.

Ìt was all downhill,' Robbie told me. Something came apart. He wasn't specific, but his eyes froze in the past, pinched for the shortest moment by obvious regret. Then they swung back to me with a lingering dark look.

'So whatta you think, George. Is it just silly chatter when I talk about Brendan having me waxed?'

I didn't think it was silly. There were certain practical incentives. If Robbie's car blew up, if he were run down by a speeding auto, if his remains were found tangled in the limestone crags along the river, Tuohey's cause would be immeasurably advanced, not so much because Robbie would no longer be available as a witness, but because anybody else with thoughts of flipping would be bound to think several times.

But in twenty-five years in practice, I'd had only a single client who'd found turning fatal. John Collegio was an oil executive who'd played ball with the wiseguys as a young man and then, after he'd risen up the phylum, went to the G to complain about the way gasoline was distributed, the mobbed-up companies getting the first supply. He'd been killed with a shotgun blast when he answered his front doorbell at dinnertime. But within the outfit, that would have gone down under the rubric of internal affairs. They seldom took aim at civilians.

All in all, killing a federal witness was recognized as a very poor idea. The FBI did not take it lightly. As a threat to the entire process, it ranked just below killing an agent or a prosecutor or a judge. For that reason, it would bring down heat that would make the effort poured into Petros look restrained. The truth was that if Robbie was going to have a problem, the most likely time was afterwards, in prison. He'd go to one of the federal prison camps-Sandstone or Oxford, or Eglin in Florida-where the inmates played golf and tennis after work. In the old days, before Reagan and Bush had federalized street crimes, that was not really a concern for someone like Robbie. The worst damage another inmate was likely to inflict was to take you badly at cards. But these days there were plenty of thugs in the federal prison camps, dopers who were inside for clean offenses like money-laundering, the only crime the government could prove. Wounded, braggart, futureless boys, they had killed before and gotten away with it and would do it again for a lark and the right price. Robbie would have to do his time in segregation and, even at that, watch his back. But I had always regarded as remote the chance that Brendan would actually orchestrate something on the street now.

Robbie stared out the window, toward his neighbors' vast homes and smooth lawns, trying on my reassurance for size.

`No matter how you slice it, the best thing for me is to bag him. Right? Go in and get him. The whole thing topples.' He had thought this through clearly. Robbie would be safest the day Brendan was indicted and pried away from the levers of power.

Accordingly, Robbie'd had an air of resolve when we'd met today at 5 a.m. to go over the scenario. Then he'd walked by himself to Paddywacks, while we took up our station across the street. He held his shin-length Italian raincoat of a fashionable muddy shade closed at the collar, although the day was not particularly brisk.

Brendan had been easy to find. His morning rituals were unvarying. At 5 a.m., he attended Mass across the way at St. Mary's Cathedral, one of the few men among the elderly female devotees. Then he joined Rollo Kosic and Sig Milacki here at Paddywacks, where Plato customarily opened the doors for them long before the usual gala breakfast crowd had assembled. The three sat at a small round table near the windows, where Brendan, the master of public relations, could throw off a hale salute to the many important citizens approaching the front door. When I turned on my seat in the van, I could see them clearly through the pale whorls of the one-way bubble-window. Milacki chattered. Brendan showed occasional signs of amusement, while Kosic finished his breakfast first, then stared at his cigarette as it burned.

With Robbie's arrival, Tuohey smiled faintly at the mess he had made of himself, surrendering the Bismarck, still swollen with dark jam, to the plate in front of him. Then he tidied himself carefully with his napkin before extending a hand to Robbie. Kosic and Milacki offered greetings and Milacki drew his chair aside to allow Robbie to join them. Instead, mindful of the camera, Robbie moved to the opposite comer. It was a few minutes before six, and in the background two waitresses in their white uniforms stood in the corner of the smoking section, a few feet behind Tuohey's table, gabbing before the morning crush. It was the Tuesday morning following Memorial Day, and despite occasional ringing china and shouts from the kitchen, the restaurant, on the FoxBlte transmission, seemed sweetly still, as the world slowly shook off the slackened tempo of the holiday.

"We were just raising good thoughts about poor Wally," Tuohey said. Robbie didn't understand.

"Wunsch," said Milacki. "You didn't hear? The Big C." Walter, it developed, had been diagnosed last week with pancreatic cancer. In the van, Sennett moaned when he heard the news. It was hard to turn a man who had no hope of living.

"Doc gives him six months with the chemo and shit," said Milacki. `Wally says his wife's already marking off the days on the calendar. Have to hand it to him. Same brick. Guy always looks unhappy and this didn't make it any worse.”

The thoughts of mortality turned the conversation to Robbie's mother. Tuohey and Kosic had appeared briefly at Robbie's home the week before last to pay their respects. It was a predictable gesture from Tuohey, who favored ceremonial occasions, but Robbie now unctuously expressed his appreciation.

"Not at all, Robbie. Lit a candle for Mom this morning. Lord's truth. Estelle was a grand lady. I've been thinkin about both of you, son." In the image on the monitorlike a sight seen through a rainstreaked glass-Brendan daintily lifted his hand in Robbie's direction and took the occasion to dispense further advice. Along with Mort's mother, Tuohey had been born in Ireland, emigrating by the time he was five. On occasion, when he spoke, you could still hear the piping echoes of a brogue. "You're in a tough patch now, Robbie. We know that. With Mom, and Rainey in such a difficult way. You have to keep your faith, though. I can still remember the day I lost my Maine like it was yesterday. The best consolation is prayer." With a long gnarly finger, Brendan pointed his way.

Milacki, voluble in his appreciation of Brendan's many pieties, uttered Amen. Robbie in the meantime saw his opening.

"Shit, Judge, I'm praying, but not how you mean." His chair scraped the floor as he came closer and hunkered over the table. Like a bungled tape delay, the image ran some milliseconds ahead of Robbie's bare whisper as he told them about Evon. Sennett had wanted Feaver to try to get Tuohey alone, but Robbie said Brendan would be far more relaxed in the secure presence of his henchmen. Leaning in, Robbie had cut off a bit of the camera's angle and I turned back to the bubble, where I found the sight through the front window of four heads gathered in such plain conspiracy almost amusing. Life, generally so subtle in its textures, is disarmingly blatant now and then. Barely a foot separated the crowns-Brendan's tidy gray head, Milacki's greasy do, Rollo even now touching his thinning hair to keep it in place--each trained on Robbie as the story grew more dire. He described what Walter had said about Carmody. The girl had laughed it off and he had consequently dismissed it. But it ate at him, Robbie said, and the following week, treating it as a dare, he'd asked her to let his secretary look her over in the john for a wire. She'd refused, then agreed the next day, when the secretary, predictably, found nothing. But the paralegal was getting buggy. She'd been burglarized last week and came to the office on Friday positively frantic. She'd spent nearly an hour searching her cubicle, asking her coworkers if they'd seen some Dictaphone tapes. The problem, Feaver said, was that no one in the office had ever used a Dictaphone-their system required different cassettes. What was she doing with her own tape recorder?

"I mean, Jesus, do FBI agents look like that?" he asked. "Hell, this babe was crawling around in the sack with me."

"That means she's G for sure," Milacki whispered. Everyone at the table laughed, even Kosic. It had sounded like a joke at Robbie's expense, particularly considering the source. A robust, bigbellied man, a plainclothes copper from central casting, Milacki always had a good time. He wore an old-fashioned hairdo, with slicked-back sides in which the comb tracks were grooved precisely in the Vaseline.

Milacki had been Brendan's partner during his brief time on the street. Tuohey had not remained a patrol officer for very long, but like all old soldiers, he maintained a permanent nostalgia for his period of fortitude and courage, and he carried Milacki with him as an enduring emblem. At this point, Robbie had said, he felt he had heard an account of virtually every day they'd had riding in Squad 4221. During Tuohey's years in the Felony Division, Milacki had been detailed by the Force to run the Warrant Office, losing the arrest warrants that Brendan wanted destroyed, usually for the benefit of his mobbed-up pals. In one of those mysterious arrangements that no one outside the Police Force could ever be made to understand, when Tuohey had moved to Common Law Claims, Milacki had gone with him. He remained a cop so he could qualify for his pension, but he was now assigned directly to the Presiding Judge's chambers as the police liaison to the sheriff's deputies in the courthouse. In reality, he did Brendan's bidding, everything from squiring him about in a black Buick owned by the Force to fielding calls like the ones Robbie made from time to time, aimed at denoting certain cases as `specials.'

Milacki now insisted he wasn't kidding. He claimed to have heard lots of tales. It was a favored stunt of feds undercover, especially the females, to sleep with the suspects in order to establish themselves. Of course, they denied it on the stand. It was like the coppers who posed as johns and said they'd announced their office before the blow job instead of after. The four men laughed about that as well.

Robbie, in time, again asked what he should do.

"Fire her," said Milacki. Both Tuohey and Kosic sat stonily, as though Milacki hadn't made the remark. Looking at the tape later, I had the strong impression that Milacki knew less about Evon than the other two. Robbie, as always, held to his role, and doe-ishly turned to Tuohey to confirm Milacki's advice.

"If you have an employee you don't trust, it's probably sensible to consider firing her." The mildest shrug elevated Brendan's slender shoulders, The thought was hardly revolutionary.

"But does it look like I'm guilty, if I fire her? I mean, she knows I'm hinky because I talked to her after Walter. I mean, I keep wondering. Is there something I can do to throw her off the track?" Tuohey was long and narrow, with a thin but agreeable face. With Robbie's last remark, he retreated somewhat. The tidy gray head came up and on the monitor you could see him appraising Feaver.

"These are questions, Robbie, I think you'd best ask yourself"

"Well, I thought you'd be concerned."

"Do
I
look concerned? A man shouldn't wear his troubles on his sleeve, Robbie."

"Well, Judge, you and I have never talked about things-"

"And we shouldn't be starting now." Tuohey took a measure and popped out a short exasperated laugh. "Robbie, you're past the age where I can be looking after the two of you every moment. I can't call the precinct house the way I did when you and Morton were fourteen and nicking lewd magazines."

"Well, this isn't about naked ladies, Brendan. You know that."

"I do? No such thing. How would I know that, Robbie? I don't keep track of your doings. I can't. You appear in my court. You understand how I must behave. If you've done something that scares you"-
skeers you
-"then I'm sorry, Robbie, but I'm a judge, not a father confessor. You start telling me your sins, I've got no choice but to turn you in, and Lord knows, neither of us would care to see that." Tuohey sat straight in his chair now, delivering his brief monologue with appropriate gravity.

"He's hosing him," Sennett said with anguish behind me. But it was a better performance than mere denial. Brendan was a master, the kind of man who did not say good morning to you with only one thing in mind. Ulterior purpose clung to every remark as if it had been greased, and he was actually letting Robbie down easy with this speech, explaining his position.

"He's got to go for it," Sennett demanded. "Right now. Lay it right there. Come on, Robbie.

`What do you mean you don't know what I'm doing?"'

But it did Stan as much good to coach the screen as any armchair fan. When Robbie repeated Tuohey's first name, the judge refused him with a stern rattle of his narrow face. He would hear no more. Milacki and Kosic, who had hung back, certain Tuohey would know best, now inserted themselves. Milacki actually raised a tempering finger in Robbie's direction. In the silence, Brendan Tuohey looked down and brushed some more of the confectioner's sugar from the lapels of his straitlaced suit.