Reversible Errors

by Scott Turow

  On July 4, 1991, I happened to see a lady I knew through the window and I went inside. Her name was Luisa Remardi and I used to say hello to her and stuff when I was hanging at the airport.

  When I come in on July 4, Gus said I was figuring to mope around the place and hide till he closed so I could steal something. I had taken a dose of PCP and Gus made me angry. We started in shouting with each other. Gus headed under the register to get that revolver, but I got there first. Gus kept yelling and stuff at me and went for the phone to call the police and I just shot him. I wasn’t thinking.

  Luisa was screaming out that I was crazy and all and wouldn’t shut up. When I went over to tell her to keep quiet, she jumped at the gun and I ended up shooting her, too. There was one other guy in the restaurant, a white guy. He was hid under the table, but I seen him. I pointed the gun and told him to pull Gus and Luisa down to the cold place in the cellar. Once he done it, I didn’t wait but another second to shoot him. I stole what I could off of everybody and then left out of the place. I got rid of the gun. I’m not completely. sure where.

  I had taken a lot of PCP and I don’t remember all of this too clear. This is the most I ean remember right now. I am very sorry for what I done.

  Muriel sat across from Squirrel in the interview room. Nearby, an evidence tech focused a video camera on a tripod, the unit’s small floodlight casting an intense beam over Squirrel, who was now clad in an optic-orange jail jumpsuit. Batting his eyes in the brightness, Squirrel had stumbled at several points as he’d read, asking Muriel to remind him of certain words. The first time, about halfway through they’d rewound and started again. His hands had been shaking as he held the paper, but otherwise he appeared all right.

  “Is that all there is to your statement, Mr. Gandolph?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And is that statement in your words?”

  “The Detective over there, he helped me.”

  “But does this statement reflect your best memory of what happened on July 4, 1991?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “This is how you described to the Detective what happened?”

  “Yeah, after we talked it over some, yeah.”

  “And did anybody hit you or threaten any violence against you to get you to make this statement?”

  “No, not how I ‘member.”

  “Well, would you remember if somebody hit you?”

  “Ain nobody hit me.”

  “Did you have food and water?”

  “I had some now. Didn’t feel much like eatin ’fore now.”

  “And do you have any other complaint with your treatment?”

  “Well, you know, I messed in my trousers. That wasn’t so nice. I was like a kid or somethin sittin here in it.” Squirrel gave his disorganized hairdo a solitary shake. “Best not to talk ’bout it now.” Then he added, “And they mostly freezed me to death, too.”

  Muriel looked to Larry.

  “I had to open the window because of the stink.”

  There was still a reek when she’d arrived. ‘Sure-shit case,’ Larry had joked. She’d responded with the line her father had always uttered as he entered the one bathroom her family shared, ‘Smells like somebody died in here.’ Later, she reminded Larry to inventory Gandolph’s pants for evidence—talk about proof of a consciousness of guilt.

  She asked Rommy if there was anything he wanted to add.

  “Still and all,” he said, “I just can’t believe I done nothin like this. I’m not the kind to hurt even a fly. I never done nothin like this before.” He put his head into his hands.

  “We’re going to discontinue taping now. The time is now 12:32 a.m. on October 9th.” When Muriel nodded, the tech killed the light.

  A copper from the watch desk came to put Rommy back in the holding area until 6 a.m., when they’d take him down to the House of Corrections. His hands cuffed behind him, Rommy remained dazed and subdued.

  “See you, Rommy,” Larry said.

  Rommy briefly looked back and nodded.

  “What’d you do to him?” Muriel asked, when he was gone.

  “Nothing. I did my job.”

  “You’re pretty amazing,” she said.

  Larry smiled like a kid.

  Greer had arrived outside during the taping. At one in the morning, Harold was clean-shaven with nary a wrinkle in his starched shirt. Greer was an acquaintance of Talmadge’s, and Muriel had sat beside him only a week ago at the City of Hope Dinner, where he’d struck her as one of those black men who’d always accepted that he had to be better, the type never to let down his guard, especially if somebody white was around. He’d done it so long he didn’t even know it. Hands on his hips as he addressed Larry, the Commander did not seem completely pleased with his Detective. He asked first how Larry had found Gandolph.

  “I got a tip. Doper in the jail said he saw him with this cameo.”

  “And Gandolph had it on him when you grabbed him?”

  “Yep.” Larry nodded several times. “I’ll make sure Lenahan and Woznicki are on paper on that, too.”

  “What about the sex?” Greer asked. “He won’t wear it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So what’s our theory?” Greer asked both of them.

  “My theory,” said Larry, “is he had the hots for Luisa, he assaulted her at gunpoint and did it again after she was dead. But I say don’t push it in court. We’re missing something and we’ll just stumble around.”

  When Greer turned to Muriel, she explained why Larry was wrong, trying to be nonchalant in order to not show him up. But the assault had to be charged.

  “You won’t get the evidence in, unless you do,” she said. “And with a capital case, you want to make sure the jury hears that stuff. The evidence is light on that count, but my guess is you’ll get a conviction. It wasn’t the bogeyman who did that to her. Rommy’s either the doer or an accomplice. He’s legally responsible either way.”

  Greer’s eyes didn’t move as he listened, clearly impressed. When Muriel rolled out of bed in the morning, there was an endless list of things she did not know for sure about herself, whether she wanted to be single or married, what her favorite color was, whether she could ever stand to vote for a Republican, or even if she’d made a mistake by never having a fling with a girl. But when you put a case file in her hand, her judgment was as perfect as the sun. Problems were like buds, which in her mental hothouse blossomed into solutions. In the law-enforcement community, her legend was already growing—she was leaving a vapor trail, they said.

  “Is there an accomplice?” Greer asked.

  “He says no,” said Larry. “When he realizes we’re talking about the needle, you’re gonna find out. He’s not taking the long walk, if he’s got another name.”

  Greer contemplated, then finally offered Larry his hand. While he was at it, he shook with Muriel, too.

  “Very good work,” he said. There were reporters outside. He asked Larry and Muriel to stand with him while he faced the cameras to make a brief statement. The lights flared on as soon as they entered the old brick lobby in Six, which was as far as the reporters were allowed to go. Even at this hour, each of the stations had a crew on hand, and there were two print journalists as well. The media crowded around while Greer announced the arrest, providing Gandolph’s name and age and criminal record. They already knew about Luisa’s cameo; there weren’t many secrets in a police station. Greer confirmed that Squirrel had the piece in his pocket last night. With that, Harold called it quits. The cameras had plenty for the newscasts all day.

  Greer pointed at Muriel when they separated. “Regards to Talmadge,” he said. Neutral enough, but she could feel Larry react. She walked toward the parking lot with him. Larry seemed on the verge of saying something dumb again, but Stew Dubinsky from the Trib, round as a cherub, came dashing up. He wanted to do a feature on Larry—intrepid investigator scores again. Larry declined, but was uncharacteristically polite to a reporter. He seemed to kno
w that Stew, who covered the courthouse, was important to Muriel.

  Once Dubinsky gave up, Larry and she stood between their cars. The parking lot was as bright as a night game. Nobody cared to read about muggings behind the police station.

  “Your jury do the right thing?” Larry asked.

  “They came back this afternoon. Guilty, all counts.”

  He smiled for her sake. Larry clearly was tired and, in his weariness, starting to look old. His thinning hair stood up when the wind blew, and he had that fragile northern European skin, the same as Scandinavian blonds, already growing ruddy and dry. She still thought of Larry as a fixed piece of her youth, and it was almost incomprehensible that time was starting to work him over.

  When they’d met, she was supposed to be helping him with Torts, and she ended up sleeping with him instead, the first time while her husband was in the hospital with the heart troubles that killed him two years later. It was stupid, of course, but it was stupid in an adolescent way—she had merely been seeking the borders, engaging in a little bit of outrage as she sank into the bland world of law and adult responsibility. But the relationship had gone on. In a strange, fitful way. After Larry remarried. After Rod died. They would say it was done, and then she’d see Larry in the courthouse and one thing would lead to another. The quest, such as it was, continued, full of the yearning and willingness that belonged to the time when you knew nothing for sure about who you wanted. For her, that time was finally passing. She felt strangely sorry for them both.

  “I’m starving to death,” Larry said. “You wanna eat something?”

  She was reluctant to abandon him again. He’d looked like she’d stabbed him the other night, outside the jail. Then she thought of something perfect.

  “What about Paradise?”

  “Great.” Larry hadn’t been able to share much with John on the phone and had promised to connect when he could. John was supposed to be at the restaurant all night.

  When they got there, John was nowhere to be seen. It turned out he was working the kitchen. Through the narrow stainless steel opening where the waitresses hung their orders and the cooks passed the food, John noticed them and emerged holding a spatula, an apron wound twice around him. Its sheer size made it obvious it had belonged to Gus.

  “It’s true?” He pointed to a radio which was next to the register. When they said yes, he took a seat on one of the stools. He fixed for a moment on a darkened patch in the paneling, then dropped his face into his hands and broke down completely. Glossy with tears, John began thanking both of them obsessively.

  “It’s our job, John,” Muriel kept saying as she patted him on the shoulder, but she nearly wept herself. The nerves lit up across her body in a starburst of feeling, a sense of living connection to what was right.

  “You don’t know how hard it is,” John said, “thinking the person who did it is still walking around. I felt every minute like I had to do something, that I was letting my old man down if I didn’t.”

  Muriel had spoken often with John since July, and over the months it had become clear that in death Gus had grown far dearer to John than he had ever been alive. Muriel had seen this happen before, but she did not fully understand the transformation. Necessity had forced John to take over the restaurant, and a few months of standing in Gus’s shoes had undoubtedly enhanced a son’s appreciation for his father’s viewpoint, not to mention the rigors of Gus’s life. But she was often startled when she received John’s calls to hear the ferocity with which he talked about his father’s murderer. At momments, she suspected he hated the killer for inspiring that shameful instant in which John had welcomed his father’s death. However it had happened, she sensed that the pain and shock of the killing—and the fact that it had ended any chance of healing between father and son—had wrapped themselves around the prior misery between the Leonidis men, so that John could no longer tell one from the other.

  John launched himself into more abject thank-yous, and Larry finally saved them all by cuffing John’s neck and saying he’d really come around for a free meal. Eager with gratitude, John rushed back to the kitchen.

  They moved toward the tables. Being Muriel and Larry Together, a sort of Outward Bound experience in which taboo was the wilderness, they lingered near the booth where Luisa Remardi had been murdered. Muriel found them sharing another telegraphic glance and they sat simultaneously on either side. She had to look down for a minute to be sure she didn’t laugh. She smoked when she was on trial, and had a pack in her purse. Larry held out his fingers and took one puff before passing it back.

  “I hope you noticed I haven’t mentioned Talmadge.”

  “Until now.”

  Larry tipped his chin down so he took on an inquisitorial look.

  “You’re going to marry this guy, aren’t you?”

  It was two o’clock in the morning. And Larry, whatever he was, deserved nothing less than the truth. Functionally, she had been dating for nineteen years, trying on men as if they were dresses, hoping all the while that she would look in the mirror one day and recognize herself. She was sick of it. She wanted the other side of life now—kids, stability, the sense that she was good enough to matter to somebody worthwhile. Talmadge excited her. He had a life she craved to be a part of. She shared his need to act eventfully, to have consequence. He was funny. He was rich. He was nice-looking. And he counted in the world—enormously.

  She peered across the table. It was always a shock to her to find she cared so much about Larry, that there was not only a sensual buzz but sympathy and connection. And knowledge. More than anything else, they shared the same intuitions, as if they had both been wired the same way in the factory. Years from now, she realized, she’d identify this as the moment she’d made up her mind.

  “That’s my best guess.”

  Larry sat straight back against the blackish planks of the booth. He’d just told her what she was going to do, but he looked astonished.

  “Yeah, well,” said Larry at last, “the rich guys always get the girls.”

  “You think that’s the attraction, Larry?”

  “I think it’s the whole scene—rich, famous, powerful. Talmadge can do a lot for you.”

  This conversation was a wrong turn from the beginning. Muriel looked away rather than answer.

  “Don’t tell me no.”

  “No,” she replied.

  Larry’s wide face ground through a series of self-containing expressions. Despite his efforts, he was about to say something else, but John arrived with a plate of steak and eggs for each of them. After asking if anybody minded, John stole one of Muriel’s cigarettes from the pack on the table and smoked while they ate. He remained unsettled, pulled at his earring, bit at his fingernails, and couldn’t stop asking questions or adjust to the idea that the killer was finally caught. What seemed to bother him most was that it wasn’t some ghoul who crawled out of a sewer, but a guy John had frequently seen in here.

  “I mean, what’s blowing my mind is, I mean, Gus thought the guy was funny. He was a pain. But for my dad, chasing this screwball away was kind of entertaining. If I’m remembering, there was one time my old man went after him with a butcher knife and a sandwich. He gave him a hamburger and then told him he’d kill him if he ever came back. It was a contest. For both of them. This guy—Gandolph?—he’d look through the window to see if my dad was around, and come sauntering in like he owned the place, then run like hell if Gus came out of the back. That went on in here once a week.”

  John kept going over it, and Muriel and Larry slowly tried to explain the pure accidental nature of these calamities.

  “Look, it doesn’t make it any better,” Larry said, “but you know, your dad probably did like this guy. And if Squirrel hadn’t taken a big dose of wack and didn’t see this lady he had a yen for sitting right here, it would have been the usual dance steps. But it wasn’t. Not that night. That night there was all this shit Squirrel wanted that he couldn’t have, a lifetime of it, and he
went off. It’s the same thing as if the gas main blew up under this restaurant. I mean, this is dumb, but it’s true, John: it’s life. It doesn’t always work out right.” She noticed that Larry stole a glance her way when he said that.

  IT WAS NEARLY FOUR when they left Paradise. Larry was so damn beat that he felt he was unraveling from the edges, the slouching demons and unseen locales of dreams already sneaking at him from the periphery. Across the street the great highway roared. Urgency put you on the road at four in the a.m.—truckers who wanted to make a quick pass through the city, futures traders with an eye on the overseas markets, lovers who’d left somebody’s bed in the middle of the night in order to stop home before morning. That universe of special needs went zipping by overhead.

  Inside the restaurant, Larry had tried hard to console Gus’s kid in order to comfort himself. It hadn’t worked. John was still talking about all the tough guys his old man had faced down—mobsters who wanted to force him to take kitchen linens, and gangbangers who tried to stick him up—and standing here with Muriel, Larry still felt like his heart had exploded.

  “Muriel,” he said in the same plaintive tone he’d heard from himself outside the jail, “I need to talk to you.”

  “About?”

  “About Talmadge—” He threw a hand through the air in frustration. “About everything.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Talmadge.”

  “No, listen to me.”

  He was weary enough to feel dizzy and a little sick to his stomach—but he was ill mostly with himself. For several days, he’d known why he’d been pouring energy into this case like a medic trying to revive a dead body, until he finally had. For Muriel, for Chrissake. Yet even seeing that much, he hadn’t seen it all. He didn’t just want to hang with her and trade snappy lines. Or get another shot at her in the rack. No, in his mushy, teenaged brain, until a little while ago some horse opera had been playing. He’d lasso the bad guy, and with that, Muriel would come to her senses and recognize he was the best fella around. She’d shuck Talmadge and her march to glory. Recognizing his own devices, too late and so clearly, he was crushed. Some great detective, he thought.