Personal injuries (19 page)

According to Robbie, Skolnick had been bagged for several years by his court reporter, a Hasidic Jew by the name of Pincus Lebovic. Blue-eyed and foxy-looking behind the dense brown growth of his beard and pais, Pincus in his dark, outdated suits presided over the courtroom in a style bordering on tyrannical. He was cold-blooded and peremptory. It was even said that, on occasion, Pincus would halt proceedings, purportedly to change the paper in his stenographic machine, but actually to take the judge back to chambers to give him directions or, even, a scolding. The recognized brains of the team, Pincus handled all arrangements with the lawyers who `talked' to the judge.

Then, last spring, Pincus's seventh child, his first son, was struck with encephalitis. Like a body on a bier, the boy floated toward the gates of death and lingered there for days. Pincus and his wife and their daughters sat beside the boy's hospital bed, singing to him, praying over the small, somnolent form, and begging the boy, whenever he could be roused, not to leave them. He did not. No one knew exactly what the terms were of the bargain Pincus had struck with the Almighty, but he was a changed person. He grew almost affable, and was unpleasant only when approached in his role as intermediary. He was now adamant in his refusal to take part in any further ugliness. For some months there was, in effect, a corruption embargo in Skolnick's courtroom. Skolnick was far too kindhearted to dismiss his court reporter and not quite certain anyway what Pincus, in his reformed state of godliness, might say when questioned about the reasons for his departure by the likes of Stew Dubinsky, who covered the courthouse for the
Trib
. For a few weeks, the judge succeeded in convincing his secretary, Eleanor McTierney, to handle the envelopes, but Eleanor's husband was a police lieutenant, whose scruples stretched no further than to live and let live. At sixty-eight, Skolnick might have simply gone without, but that would have meant cutting off Tuohey as well. As a result, Skolnick would have had to accept demotion to a less esteemed courtroom-Housing Court or, worse, the ultimate hellhole, Juvenile-the kind of ego blow that Barney, like most victims of justifiable self-doubt, would have found devastating. Thus, in desperation, Skolnick began dealing hand to hand with a few well-accepted insiders, Robbie among them.

Skolnick, at least, had the sense not to allow money to pass within the courthouse. Instead, he established a schmaltzy routine in which the briber-to-be left a message from `tomorrow's luncheon committee.' The next day, at 12:30 p.m. sharp, the attorney would take a position curbside, right in front of the Temple, possessed of a cash filled envelope and a vexed expression. Skolnick, in his Lincoln, would tool by and, noting a familiar face, pull over, inquiring if there was a problem. The lawyer would then impart a tale of automotive woe-car wouldn't start, had been towed, stolen, sideswiped-and Judge Skolnick would offer emergency transportation. Skolnick would then circle through the Center City, while the lawyer in the passenger seat stuffed the envelope into the breach between the red calfskin backrest and the front bench.

Robbie had done this once last September, not long before Stan and his companions from the IRS

had arrived on the flagstone stoop of his home. Feaver was due for another visit with Skolnick now, in early March, because Skolnick had ruled in Robbie's favor only a day or two after the case reassigned from Judge Sullivan had arrived on his docket. In that matter,
Hall v. Sentinel Repair
, Skolnick had ruled that Robbie's client, a driver paralyzed when the brakes failed on his truck, was eligible to receive punitive damages from the repair service that had found the vehicle roadworthy. Unlike Malatesta, Skolnick had dealt with the matter summarily, issuing a brief written order. Bobbie would now tell the judge that the case had been settled favorably and would leave the envelope behind in appreciation.

Sennett was under increasing pressure from D.C. to justify the expense of the Project by scoring against one of the primary targets. Given that, and the fact that this would be Petros's first direct payoff to a judge, Sennett wanted it in Technicolor. The afternoon before Robbie was scheduled to see Skolnick, Klecker visited the section reserved for judges' cars on the first floor of the Temple parking garage, the same building where Robbie and Walter had met. With local agents covering Alf from all sides, he drove an ice pick through three of Judge Skolnick's tires. When Skolnick trudged out of the courthouse for the day, in an old rabbit hat and a lumpy muffler knitted by his granddaughter, the agents had him under surveillance. They radioed Alf, and just as Skolnick reached the lamed automobile, Klecker came ripping down the concrete ramp in a tow truck with a huge smoking engine. He jumped on the brake and leaped from the vehicle in a greasy jumpsuit and a seed cap. Alf had a bridge, a memento of his years as a high school ice hockey player in Minnesota, and he had removed his front teeth as part of his disguise. The agents said that when he talked he was pretty much a dead ringer for Sylvester, the puddy-tat.

"Got you too?" asked Alf.

"Hah?" replied Skolnick. He was still shaking his head in embittered wonderment at the sight of the flats.

Alf related that miscreant youths had apparently gone through the parking garage popping tires on a number of cars. He offered to tow Skolnick's Lincoln. Given the hour, he could not return it that night, but he promised to drive the car back to the judge's house by eight the next morning. He'd give Skolnick a great price on tires and would even reduce the towing fee, assuming the judge wouldn't forget Alf next time he needed to talk to somebody with a little pull in the courthouse when one of his guys got in a scrape on a repo.

When the vehicle was returned to Skolnick, it was somewhat enhanced. As promised, it had three fresh Dunlop X80s. It also sported a new rearview mirror, a one-way, into which a fiber-optic lens and a mike had been inserted. The input devices were wired to a 2.4 GHz cordless sound camera resting on the ribs of the auto's ceiling. Leads ran down from the roof, through the hollow temple beside the windshield, to an existing junction box under the hood, so that the car's battery powered the camera.

"Fry the guy with his own juice." Alf beamed at his achievements. He described the apparatus to Robbie when we met at McManis's about eleven-thirty on the morning of March 5 to prepare for the encounter with Skolnick. The camera, which was turned on and off by remote, operated much like a cordless phone. It emitted a black-and-white video signal over four channels. Along with the audio output, the impulse could be picked up from a surveillance van as far away as four hundred feet. The transmission was admittedly subject to occasional interference, and as a backup, Robbie was also wired with the recording component of the FoxBlte. It was Velcroed today to the small of his back in order to avoid any revealing bulges at the thigh when Feaver sat with the judge on the lipstick-red leather seat of the Lincoln.

Along with Sennett and McManis, I had my reserved spot in the surveillance van. We circled in front of the Temple, waiting for Skolnick to pick up Feaver. Amid the thick electrical odors, Klecker crawled around on the van floor in a snake pit of cables. A small monitor with a twelveinch screen and a VCR had been added atop the pyramid of equipment that had been there the day Robbie paid off Walter.

"We're going," Joe Amari called from the front, meaning that Skolnick had arrived and Robbie was on board. Joe's responsibility on Petros was surveillance. Sennett had allowed him to put together a select group of local agents from the Kindle County Division to help. As he weaved through the traffic, he made hand signals to the other cars. He wore a radio headset with a mike, which dented his smooth hairdo, but Klecker wanted him to stay off the air, if possible, to avoid disrupting the camera's signal, the same reason he'd removed the broadcasting component from the FoxBlte.

For the moment, Joe's assignment was to pull close enough to Skolnick that the camera could be activated by way of the remote Klecker held. Although the camera functioned from some distance, the infrared remote that controlled it worked only within thirty feet. It was plain from the tense instructions Stan issued to both Alf and Joe that he'd had some trouble convincing Moira Winchell, Chief Judge of the Federal District Court, to sign the warrant authorizing installation of the camera. The nature of the intrusion had seemingly mortified her, inasmuch as Moira was both a judge and a car owner. Stan had reminded the agents that Judge Winchell had directed that the camera could be turned on only when Feaver was seen with Skolnick in the auto.

"Hit it," Amari yelled out now. The small black-andwhite monitor sprang to life, and we all canted forward in anticipation, while Klecker activated the VCR.

The bribery of judges is eternal. At common law, before there were statutes and codes, the word

`bribe' meant only this: a benefit conferred to influence a judge. It began as soon as King John signed Magna Carta and set up the courts. Probably before. Probably when Adam tried to reason with God about Eve, the first man offered Him something on the side. What we were there to see held the fierce primal attraction of any elemental wrong.

The initial picture was unfocused, a Hadean scene in which Robbie and Skolnick were reduced to images as indistinct as smoke. Klecker called directions to Amari, while Alf frantically squeezed buttons on the tiny remote. As al ways, the picture got worse before it got better, and then Skolnick detoured through Lower River, a covered roadway where the light was poor. But when he emerged, a relatively crisp image appeared, Feaver and Skolnick each slightly distorted by the wide-angle lens. If we fell farther behind, the digital imagery became weirdly aligned, so that little pieces of Robbie and Skolnick slid off the screen. But when Amari was able to stay within seven or eight car lengths, there was good reception.

The two men started out with warm greetings and ranged companionably over a number of topics. At McManis's instruction, Robbie also complained about having had his tires punctured yesterday in the courthouse garage, and he and Skolnick bemoaned their shared misfortune and the deterioration of society.

"These kids! What
momzerim
," said Skolnick and held up a thick finger. "They're almost as bad as we were!" He laughed, very much the genial, bovine creature Robbie had described. He was portly and florid, with a large broad nose, and that majestic spume of pure white hair cresting in a high old-fashioned pompadour. Skolnick asked after Mort, whose father he apparently knew from some shared affiliation with a Jewish organization, and then, more gently, about Robbie's wife.

"Ay, Robbie," he said after Feaver finished his matterof-fact rundown on the crushing grip of the disease. "My heart goes out. Truly. You've been a rock for this girl."

"Not me, Judge. She's the one who's amazing. I look in her eyes every night and it's solid courage." Robbie's voice curled around the edges, and Skolnick, while driving-and in the very center of the broadcast image-briefly touched Feaver's hand. Watching across from me, Sennett scowled, apparently contemplating the effect of Skolnick's tenderness on a jury. Shaking off despair, Robbie reached into his briefcase and circumspectly removed the envelope the agents had prepared. Knowing the sight line of the camera in advance, he held the package against his chest so it was fully visible. Then with the stylized rigmarole these scenes apparently required, he let the envelope slip from his fingers to the seat and, not quite on camera, jammed it into the crevice under the backrest. Skolnick, who was supposed to remain blind to these maneuvers in order to have deniability later, predictably forgot his role. At one point he actually turned from the road to watch Feaver, although he was wise enough to avoid any direct comment.

"So, Robbie, what's doing?" he asked neutrally. "I haven't seen you in a while. I was surprised to see you called."

"New case, Judge," he answered, and described the matter which Kosic had transferred from Malatesta. Stan insisted Robbie had to ask for a favor now on that matter. If Robbie simply delivered a payoff on the first case, the one concerning the truck driver that had passed to Skolnick from Gillian Sullivan, a defense lawyer might attempt to characterize the payment as akin to a gift, inasmuch as Robbie had never spoken to Skolnick about the trucker's lawsuit. Thus, Stan wanted to make sure that money changing hands was linked to a request for favorable action, albeit on another matter. Robbie told the story of the painter with cancer movingly. But he made it plain he was hoping to bamboozle his opponent.

"See, Judge, I gotta get a stay of discovery. The defense, this lump McManis, they've got no idea about the c.a., the cancer? If we start with deps and medical records, then boom bang bing, they find out. After that, the lostwages component in my case? Out the window. `Sorry for your disability, but you're gonna be dead anyway.' So I need the stay, while I try to
hondle
with McManis. And the worst part, Judge, this poor bird's a widower. So if I don't bring home the bacon, we got three kids with no mother, no father, and not even a pot to pee in."

"
Oy vay
," said Skolnick. "How old, the
kinder
?"

"The oldest is eight," said Robbie.

"
tray iz mir
," said Skolnick.

Sennett winced again at the last part. Robbie was making this up as he went, lying with his customary eclat, but by painting a bleak picture of the consequences to the family, Robbie was lending an element of humane justification to the misconduct he was requesting. Skolnick, in fact, was quick to explain that from his perspective the whole matter was rather routine.

"In my courtroom, Robbie, you know how it is, somebody makes a motion to dismiss, a motion for summary judgment, something that can dispose of the whole case, I stay discovery. Everybody else, these days, they want litigation to be like an express train. Who cares what it costs, so long as it moves fast? But I stay discovery. That's my practice for twenty-six years. So you make a motion, say, for judgment on the pleadings, I stay discovery. That's how it is.
Nu
?" Skolnick shrugged as if it was all quite beyond his control. "Now you want help with your judgment on the pleadings?