by Scott Turow
All four of them rushed back down the block to the surveillance van. Alf cued the tape, and the image of Robbie in his wet clothes resolved out of the jumble between scenes. He had one arm around himself as he rocked back and forth on the red leather of Skolnick's auto. He was fiddling with the heater controls when he suddenly started in response to Tuohey's motions offscreen. Robbie groped for a second before he found the chrome button to lower the automatic window. From the way he drew back, it was clear that Tuohey had leaned in, but he wasn't fully visible. Only the top of his gray head and his gnarly hand appeared within the frame. Out of the wind, though, his voice was clear as he pointed.
"Speaking of your best pal, Robbie," he said, "when Morton came to warn me on Tuesday about what you were up to, I left him with a message for you. Mind now, Bobbie. So many tongues are wagging about you, you might get confused. So I want you to remember, when you get this, that it came from me." On the screen beside Feaver, Tuohey rotated the hand with which he'd been pointing. His thumb suddenly came up. With the extended index finger it had the form of the imaginary pistol little boys forever point at each other. And then, to remove any ambiguity, Brendan, in a bare second, let his long thumb fall like a firing hammer and his hand jump in recoil.
"He's threatening you," said Meeker. "My God, we have him on tape threatening a federal witness!"
"I'm telling you," said Amari. "It's a dead-bang obstruction."
Amari and Klecker cuffed each other, then Alf shook Evon. Klecker started for Robbie, but Feaver had already gotten up to rewind. He wanted to see it again. He replayed the tape, standing right near the screen so he could listen, and then rewound and replayed it once more. By the third time, it was clear which line of Tuohey's he was recuing. `When Morton came to warn me on Tuesday about what you were up to…' She was baffled herself about what it meant.
Alf hailed her up front so they could all call McManis together.
"Off the skyscraper, through the window, off the scoreboard, nothing but net," said Jim. He permitted himself a single giddy laugh.
They had yet to remove the camera from the Lincoln's roof. They drove both vehicles to the federal building, where the entire company, save Robbie, left the van and worked with two evidence techs to extract the equipment without any permanent damage to the auto. Then they returned to the LeSueur, where, they'd been told, a substantial audience was already gathering to watch the tape.
Robbie was too cold to come along, preferring to get into a change of clothes he kept in the office. For his protection, Evon accompanied him up. This morning, there had been frantic calls from the office about TV crews parked in reception, but building security had routed them by now. Two rent-a-cops were guarding the door.
This was the first look any of his employees had gotten of Robbie since the news broke, and he strolled through the overdecorated corridors of his own office to a remarkable silence, deepened both by his bedraggled appearance and by the presence of Evon, who seemed to vacillate between friend and foe on an hourly basis. Outside his door, Bonita, looking a bit bleary, shook her dark tresses.
"You don't want none of these messages," she told him.
Evon made Robbie promise not to leave the office without calling; then she returned to McManis's, where they'd held off the viewing until everyone was together. McManis and all the other UCAs, as well as the local gents from the surveillance squad, were elbowed into the conference room. Sennett came huffing in last and delayed one second further to call me, but my office reported I was with a client.
Alf slid the cassette into the recorder and worked the controls.
The screen filled with snow.
Alf rewound and fast-forwarded. He fiddled with the connections. Eventually he realized the tape was blank. He went back to the van to search and returned only with an empty box. It was quite some time before they started looking for Robbie, and that was long after he'd brought the tape they wanted down to me. ROBBIE HAD BEEN A SIGHT in my reception area. His clothing was still wet, and for warmth he'd put on a heavy overcoat, a spare he kept in his office. His hair was clinging to his face, looking, without its blow-dried buoyancy, like the plumage of a crow that had been jumped by a cat.
He asked to see me alone. I was in a meeting, but he promised to be only a minute. In the little reading room side my office, he handed me the cassette and told me what was on it.
Ostensibly, he wanted legal advice about whether he had any grounds to retain the tape. We both knew that was dubious, but Robbie was shopping for time. He had visions of Sennett making a nighttime visit to Mort's home. The tape would be the feature presentation on Mort's big-screen TV, while Stan banged away, trying to find out what Tohey had meant when he said it was Dinnerstein who'd warned him what Robbie was up to. Robbie wanted to get the answer to that one himself, and, more important, ensure that Mort knew he had no more time before hiring an attorney. Sennett's terror tactics, especially his threats of prison, would turn Morty to pudding.
I asked Robbie if he'd told Mort he was working for the government. I'd long suspected that Robbie had informed Dinnerstein months ago, but Feaver insisted he'd kept his partner in the dark, not out of any commitment to Sennett, but because he had realized that telling Mort would place Dinnerstein in an impossible position. Sheilah Dinnerstein would never have forgiven her son if she knew he'd done nothing when he had a chance to save his Uncle Brendan. Even on Monday, after Evon's melodramatic appearance at the office, when she'd identified herself as FBI Special Agent DeDe Kurzweil and served that subpoena, Robbie had told Mort only that he had the situation 'completely covered.'
"He must have scoped it out on his own," Robbie said. "I don't know how. But I figure Brendan was up his alimentary canal with a router the past couple weeks. You know, `What's the story with Robbie, why's he so strange?' I still can't believe Morty told him what he figured. I mean, it's Brendan, for Godsake. What'd he think his uncle would do, throw me a tea party?" Robbie was abject, unable even to face me, which was just as well, since I could not think of an appropriate consolation. Blood thicker than water? I realized Robbie had been protecting himself from just this moment when he'd chosen not to tell Mort in the first place.
He headed back up to see Dinnerstein, promising to call e as soon as they were done. By six, I'd heard nothing. I had several urgent messages from Stan Sennett by then which I'd failed to return. I was sure, though, that agents id fanned out seeking Feaver, and I expected McManis Stan at my door any moment. My inside line rang at that point. It was Robbie on his car phone. He'd just been driving around, he said. He told me I should call Mort's lawyer, Sandy Stem. Feaver was about to hang up and I shouted to him to wait.
Had Mort explained, I asked. Had he said how he came tell Tuohey?
"Yeah," said Robbie. For a moment he seemed determined to say no more. Then he gathered himself to the task and added, "He said Stan Sennett asked him to do it."
CHAPTER 43
Although he is only a few years older than I am, Sandy Stern has always been something of my hero. I met him immediately after law school. We were two Easton graduates practicing as defense lawyers in the inferno of the North End courthouse, and I was instructed by Stem's example. He showed me that no matter what the crime or the client, an advocate could remain an emblem of dignity. He is not much to look at, portly, bald, dark, with a face whose small features are engrossed by too much flesh. But his presence is imposing. He is Argentine by birth, his family the wandering Jews of the saying. A muted Hispanic lilt sings its own rhythm in his careful speech, in which the central cadence is always one of a precisely balanced intelligence. Much like me, he can be remote and chary of feeling. Our friendship has its tidy boundaries that are never crossed. But I came of age here thinking of him as the best lawyer I knew, and for that reason I'd never resented the fact that, in informed minds, he remained, more than me, Kindle County's lawyer of choice in delicate criminal matters. Besides, whatever the wounds to my pride, they were salved by his generous refe
rrals. I was the first outlet for the overflow.
Sitting that evening in a comer, amid the precise Chippendale surroundings of Stern's club atop the Morgan Towers, he told me a disturbing story. One night last June, Stan Sennett and three agents of the Internal Revenue Service had appeared at Mort's home. Sennett claimed to have reliable information-from Moreland's records, as it turned out-that Dinnerstein had a pattern of remarkable success in the Common Law Claims Division, over which his uncle, Brendan Tuohey, presided. Sennett was going to find out why, one way or the other. Here and now, Mr. Dinnerstein could receive complete immunity and speak with total candor. The alternative was to watch the government wreak havoc in his life, issuing grand jury subpoenas to his bank, his accountant, his clients, his employees, even his neighbors. When Stan found what he expected, Mr. Dinnerstein wouldd be sitting in a federal penitentiary long after both his children had finished college, assuming they'd received scholarships, since Sennett would use the racketeering statute to forfeit every penny Mort had made practicing law.
Dinnerstein begged time to speak to an attorney, who turned out to be Stern. Fully briefed by his client, Sandy knew two things with reasonable confidence. The first was that Sennett had nothing concrete at the moment; immunity wouldn't have been offered otherwise. The second was that as soon as Stan reached Mort and Robbie's secret checking account at River National, he'd have a good foothold on proving what Mort had acknowledged to Sandy, namely, that under his uncle's guidance, Dinnerstein and his partner, Robbie Feaver, had been paying off judges of the Common Law Claims Division for years.
What Stem offered, therefore, and what Sennett ultimately accepted, was that Dinnerstein would become a true confidential informant, and only that. Dinnerstein would fully and truthfully answer any questions Sennett asked. None of the information he gave, and nothing that came from it, could ever be used in any way against Dinnerstein, and he would never be called to the witness stand. His identity as an informant would be revealed only if Dinnerstein chose, an unlikely event given the tumult the news that he'd turned on his uncle would cause in his family. In the best case, if Sennett's investigation foundered, Dinnerstein would suffer no disadvantage at all. In the worst, if the full truth about him emerged from other sources, Dinnerstein would resign his law license and attribute escaping prosecution to his attorney's sly manipulations of various legal technicalities arising from the fact that Mort had never actually had the stomach to deliver any money.
And my client? I asked. On his own?
Stem allowed his eyes to slowly close, then open.
"Just so," he said. "It was quite painful."
Quite, I thought, reflecting almost against my will on the lies Robbie had blithely told to save Mort.
The only consolation Stern had offered Mort was that Feaver was likely to negotiate an arrangement to guarantee his freedom. Since Robbie alone had had the fortitude to actually make the drops, he was an indispensable witness for Sennett. Stern suspected that Feaver's deal might include an undercover role, but they knew nothing for certain until mid-April. At that point, Sennett had been forced to tell them because of Dinnerstein's relentless pursuit of the settlement money due poor Peter Petros-and his lawyers-for Peter's fall from the stadium balcony. To keep Feaver in the dark, Mort had agreed to a ruse in which he, like Robbie, immediately recycled his portion of the settlement check which the government briefly advanced.
"Our agreement with the government," said Stern, "is quite clear that Dinnerstein need only answer questions, not volunteer information. But Sennett is a treacherous fellow and I warned my client from the start that sooner or later the U.S. Attorney would utilize even the most paltry inaccuracy so he could renegotiate. And, natura4Jy, that came to pass." Stem eyed me across the top of his drink, scotch neat in a short tumbler etched with the club's crest. "Your client's phantom law license," he said.
As I'd surmised last month, Mort had known about that since law school. A few months ago the IRS agents who'd remained Mort's keepers, much in the way the FBI Special Agents worked with Feaver, had noticed something in the financial information Mort gave the firm's CPA every year. He listed only his own annual dues to Bar Admissions and Discipline as a deductible partnership expense, never Feaver's. By then, Morton had referred a hundred times to Robbie as an attorney, to having practiced law together. Sennett regarded this as a critical deception rather than a figure of speech.
"You can imagine the back-and-forth. But it gave Sennett the opening he wanted. On Monday of this week, three days ago, he informed me that all could be forgiven if my client agreed to play a speaking part in the elaborate drama in which your client was involved. There was again quite a bit of to'ing and fro'ing. But it was less, frankly, than my worst fears. He simply wanted Morton to tell his uncle that Feaver was going to join hands with the government and turn on all of them. I took this as some complicated strategic gambit, part of an endgame. At some point in the future, we'll have a number of brandies and you'll tell me how it fit in. I was puzzled, and had some dark thoughts. But I have never really followed the tortuous path traveled by Sennett's mind."
Several years ago, I was one of the lawyers who assisted Stern when Stan Sennett was threatening to jail him for contempt. Despite my all-night work on a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Sandy, his formal manner prevented me from ever learning-or even asking-precisely how the matter was resolved. Stem was free but somber in the aftermath and more inclined to speak kindly of vermin than Sennett. I usually tried to avoid any mention of Stan in conversation. A waiter in a green frogged coat approached and fulsomely inquired whether either gentleman wished another cocktail. Another unemployed thespian, he was heavily committed to his role as a servant and actually backed off three steps before turning about.
Sennett had wanted recording devices and testimony about Mort's encounter with his uncle, all of which Stern stoutly refused. Dinnerstein had bargained to remain forever in the background; he would be a messenger and no more. Proof was Sennett's concern. But Sennett was resourceful. After years of surveillance, the government knew a great deal about the cast of characters at Paddywacks. On Monday evening, the Immigration and Naturalization Service paid a visit to one of the busboys, who held a counterfeit green card. At five o'clock on Tuesday morning, a local IRS agent named Ramos presented himself at the back door of the restaurant to fill in for his cousin, the busboy, who'd purportedly taken ill. An hour later, Mort joined his uncle for breakfast.
Mort had been instructed to withhold his revelation about Robbie until the agent playing the busboy was close enough to overhear it. Dinnerstein had barely been able to keep his eyes off the fellow as he circled the tables in his checked pants and white tunic. Finally, when Ramos began swabbing the adjoining four-top, Mort blurted out his news to his uncle and his cronies. Not long after Evon had stormed into the office on Monday, announcing she was an FBI agent, Feaver's secretary had supposedly approached Dinnerstein, mortified by a phone conversation she'd overheard: Robbie had just called a lawyer and told him to cut a deal with the government under which Feaver would turn and testify against everyone-the judges, Kosic, Tuohey, even Mort.
It seemed at first that the agent would have no more to report. Tuohey said absolutely nothing. Milacki uttered a variety of curse words, but Brendan had reached immediately for Sig's hand to still him. Instead the three men watched as Tuohey deliberated. They were drinking coffee out of the heavy, crash-proof crockery at Paddywacks, and Brendan picked one of the plastic stirrers up off the table and fiddled with it at length, occupying himself. Then Brendan Tuohey, Presiding Judge of the Common Law Claims Division, had held up the brown stirrer by the very end and Mort had seen what his uncle had fashioned: a noose. Brendan had tied a noose. He twirled it for just a second between his fingers so that Kosic and Milacki could view it, then let it fall to the table. Special Agent Ramos picked it up as he cleared the breakfast dishes, dropping the stirrer in his pocket.
A noose? I asked.
&nbs
p; "In the eyes of a prosecutor. Or a best friend. Sennett appeared ebullient. But perhaps it was the letter `b.' Or `R,' for Robbie. Or simply a nervous gesture. A matter of opinion, no? And at any rate, it might be passed off as table talk, an impulse. Without some subsequent act to make the meaning more specific, it's worth very little as evidence. No?" Stem swirled down the last of his scotch and held it in his mouth a moment to enrich the descent.
"Those are the major details. My client instructed me to report them, for whatever they might be worth. Your discretion, as always, George, is depended upon and appreciated." He took my hand then and squared himself to seek my eyes. "There is deep feeling between these men," he said. "Your client has already heard this directly from Dinnerstein, amid a predictable flurry of tears."
And how had Robbie reacted? I preferred not to touch tissue so raw with my client. But these were the imperial moments of the criminal lawyer's life. What did humanity say and do in extremis, when a death sentence was pronounced, when a jury set a guilty man free, when a fellow found that the dearest friend of a lifetime had betrayed him? How could the impoverished gestures of daily existence accommodate such a momentous change in understanding? Stem needed no explanation why I wanted to know. Instead, he let his eyes go to the oak beams crossing the ceiling, sharpening his recall of the answer to the question he, too, had asked.
"I am told," he said, "that Feaver said, `What else could you do? With the kids? With Joan? What else could you do?"' Stem brought his small alert eyes back to mine. "Interesting fellow," he added.