Read Online Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Scott Turow
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smart-ass, brassy and irreverent. She makes a number of suggestions concerning the B file, all of which I've already tried. "It doesn't figure," she finally admits.
As chief administrative deputy, Lydia MacDougall is in charge of personnel, procurement, and the deployment of staff. It is a lousy, thankless job with a nice-sounding title, but Lydia is accustomed to adversity. She has been a paraplegic since shortly after we started in this office together, nearly twelve years ago. It was one of those early winter nights where the mist is half snow. Lydia was driving. Her first husband, Tom, was killed in the plunge into the river.
In the general run of things, I would say Mac is probably the finest lawyer in this office, organized, shrewd, gifted in court. Over the years she has even learned to use the chair to advantage before a jury. There are some tragedies that run so deep that our comprehension of them is evolutionary at best. As the jurors get a couple of days to think about what it would be like to have their legs flapping around, loose as flags, as they listen to this woman, handsome, forceful, good-humored, absorb the wedding ring, the casual mention of her baby, observe the fact that she is — impossibly — normal, they are full of admiration and, as we all should be, hope.
Next September, Mac will become a judge. She already has party slating and will run in the primary unopposed. The general election will be an automatic. There are not, apparently, a lot of people who feel they can beat a lawyer with support from women's groups, the handicapped, law-and-order types, and the city's three major bar associations.
"Why don't you ask Raymond about the file?" she finally suggests.
I make a noise. Horgan is not a detail man. He is unlikely to know anything about an individual case. And these days I am reluctant to advise him of problems. He is always looking for someone to blame.
Going down the corridor to the next courtroom, where Mac is scheduled to observe, I talk to her about Tommy Molto and the problem of his unaccounted-for status. If we fire Molto, Nico will make capital, alleging that Horgan is on a witch-hunt for Delay's friends. If we keep Tommy on the staff, we increase Nico's profit from the defection. We decide, at last, that he will be placed on Unauthorized Leave, an employment category which previously did not exist. I tell Mac I would feel more comfortable about this if somebody I trusted had seen Molto alive.
"Let's get a posse out. We have one deputy P.A dead already. If some lady finds little pieces of Molto in her trash tomorrow morning, I'd like to be able to say we'd been searching high and low."
It is Mac's turn. She makes a note.
His Honor, Larren Lyttle, his large dark face full of wiliness and majesty, is the first to notice me. A black man in a club in which only whites were members until three years ago, the judge shows no sign of yielding to the atmosphere. He is at ease among the leather club chairs and the servers in green livery.
Larren is Raymond's former law partner. In those days, they were agitators, defending draft dodgers and possessors of marijuana, and most of the local black militants, as well as a paying clientele. I tried one case against Larren before he took the bench — really just a juvenile proceeding against a very rich kid from the West Shore suburbs who liked to break into the homes of his parents' friends. Larren was an imposing figure of robust stature, shrewd and bullying with witnesses, and possessed of a rhetorical range of operatic dimension. He could adopt a refined demeanor and then move with the next utterance into the round oratory of a pork-chop preacher, or squealing ghettoese. The jury rarely noticed there was another lawyer in the courtroom.
Raymond made the break for politics first. Larren managed the campaign, quite visibly, and brought out black voters in substantial numbers. Two years later, when Raymond thought he could be mayor,
As chief administrative deputy, Lydia MacDougall is in charge of personnel, procurement, and the deployment of staff. It is a lousy, thankless job with a nice-sounding title, but Lydia is accustomed to adversity. She has been a paraplegic since shortly after we started in this office together, nearly twelve years ago. It was one of those early winter nights where the mist is half snow. Lydia was driving. Her first husband, Tom, was killed in the plunge into the river.
In the general run of things, I would say Mac is probably the finest lawyer in this office, organized, shrewd, gifted in court. Over the years she has even learned to use the chair to advantage before a jury. There are some tragedies that run so deep that our comprehension of them is evolutionary at best. As the jurors get a couple of days to think about what it would be like to have their legs flapping around, loose as flags, as they listen to this woman, handsome, forceful, good-humored, absorb the wedding ring, the casual mention of her baby, observe the fact that she is — impossibly — normal, they are full of admiration and, as we all should be, hope.
Next September, Mac will become a judge. She already has party slating and will run in the primary unopposed. The general election will be an automatic. There are not, apparently, a lot of people who feel they can beat a lawyer with support from women's groups, the handicapped, law-and-order types, and the city's three major bar associations.
"Why don't you ask Raymond about the file?" she finally suggests.
I make a noise. Horgan is not a detail man. He is unlikely to know anything about an individual case. And these days I am reluctant to advise him of problems. He is always looking for someone to blame.
Going down the corridor to the next courtroom, where Mac is scheduled to observe, I talk to her about Tommy Molto and the problem of his unaccounted-for status. If we fire Molto, Nico will make capital, alleging that Horgan is on a witch-hunt for Delay's friends. If we keep Tommy on the staff, we increase Nico's profit from the defection. We decide, at last, that he will be placed on Unauthorized Leave, an employment category which previously did not exist. I tell Mac I would feel more comfortable about this if somebody I trusted had seen Molto alive.
"Let's get a posse out. We have one deputy P.A dead already. If some lady finds little pieces of Molto in her trash tomorrow morning, I'd like to be able to say we'd been searching high and low."
It is Mac's turn. She makes a note.
His Honor, Larren Lyttle, his large dark face full of wiliness and majesty, is the first to notice me. A black man in a club in which only whites were members until three years ago, the judge shows no sign of yielding to the atmosphere. He is at ease among the leather club chairs and the servers in green livery.
Larren is Raymond's former law partner. In those days, they were agitators, defending draft dodgers and possessors of marijuana, and most of the local black militants, as well as a paying clientele. I tried one case against Larren before he took the bench — really just a juvenile proceeding against a very rich kid from the West Shore suburbs who liked to break into the homes of his parents' friends. Larren was an imposing figure of robust stature, shrewd and bullying with witnesses, and possessed of a rhetorical range of operatic dimension. He could adopt a refined demeanor and then move with the next utterance into the round oratory of a pork-chop preacher, or squealing ghettoese. The jury rarely noticed there was another lawyer in the courtroom.
Raymond made the break for politics first. Larren managed the campaign, quite visibly, and brought out black voters in substantial numbers. Two years later, when Raymond thought he could be mayor,
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