"What?"

"If Arthur gets what he wants, he won't ask why. Maybe, if we're lucky, Jackson will let us hear Collins's story in private first."

"You can't give him immunity. The guy was running around with the murder weapon."

"I have no choice, Larry. You gave me no choice. I can't fight this. I can't say Collins may be the murderer and proceed to execute Gandolph. It's one or the other. h.e.l.l, Larry, with Erno's fingerprints on that trigger, we're back to square one. And Collins may be the best chance we have. Harlow is right. Collins could put Rommy in once and for all."

"No," Larry said. It was a general protest. He was furious about everything. "It's the election, right? You'd decided to give Collins immunity anyway. Ned already had you turned around. I'm just the excuse. You don't want to fade the heat with Harlow."

"Oh, f.u.c.k you, Larry!" She picked a pencil off her desk and threw it at the window. "G.o.dd.a.m.n it, don't you understand this? The election is the least of it. There's still the law. There are rules. And fairness. Christ, Larry, it's ten years later and listening to you right now, I wonder myself about what actually happened. Do you get that?" Leaning across her desk, she looked like she was ready to come over and throttle him.

"Oh, I get it." He went to the door. He said, "I'm just a cop."

Early in the summer evening, Gillian stood at the curb in front of Morton's downtown store, awaiting Arthur. The late office workers were largely dispersed and traffic had eased. A few feet away, two weary women sat slumped beside their large shopping bags inside a gla.s.s bus shelter.

By now, Gillian could mark the duration of her relationship with Arthur by the light, which was fading earlier these days. The sun, which they'd seen rise this morning, was now diving into the river, its hot glow spread like a hawk's tail across the light clouds on the horizon. In the shifting winds, there was the faintest omen of fall. Although she'd been told repeatedly that it was the sign of a depressive character, she'd never fully abandoned the inclination to treat natural phenomena"the onset of darkness, or the dwindling of summer"with superst.i.tious concern. Life was good. It would not last.

Arthur was late, but it was clear once the sedan arrived, he was excited.

"Another Muriel-gram," he said as Gillian slid in. He'd brought her copies of two short motions the P.A.'s Office had filed this afternoon in both the U.S. District Court and the Circuit Court of Appeals. Acknowledging receipt of "new and material information concerning the nature and circ.u.mstance of the crime," Muriel asked that all proceedings be stayed for fourteen days to enable the state to investigate.

"What in the world?" Gillian asked. "Did you call her?"

"Naturally. I demanded the new information and she wouldn't budge an inch. We fenced around for a while, but we finally agreed that if I give her the two weeks, she'll acquiesce in a motion to set aside the Court of Appeals' order and reopen the case. Essentially, she's taking the points off the scoreboard."

"My G.o.d!" Although Arthur was driving, she slid closer to embrace him. "But what could this be? Is she going to immunize Collins?"

"I can't believe that she'd concede in advance that he's credible enough to merit reopening the case. If she doesn't like what Collins says, she'll just call him a liar. It has to be more than that. It's got to be big."

For months now, Arthur had cleaved to an improbable vision of Muriel suddenly seeing the light about Rommy. Gillian held Muriel in much lower esteem, but Arthur refused to view anyone he had worked beside years ago in anything but a kindly light. In any event, she shared his suspicion that there had been a dramatic development.

"So you've had a wonderful day," she said.

"Okay," he answered.

"Some negative development?"

"Nothing on the case. And not really negative. Muriel pa.s.sed a comment about us. They know."

"I see. And how did that make you feel?"

He shrugged. "Uncomfortable?"

Gillian's harpy of a mother would have uttered a withering I told you so. All of Gillian's cultivated reserve was a means to recycle and restrain that voice which she would never really get out of her head. But poor Arthur always wanted people to like him. Being belittled and mocked for his choice of companion was affecting him, much as she'd always known it would. At 6 a.m., she'd found him lost in thought, staring out at the sunrise.

"Are you trying not to say you warned me?" he asked her.

"Am I so plain?"

"We're going to make it," he said.

She smiled and reached over for his hand.

"Seriously," he said. "What I was thinking this morning was that we should run away."

"Oh, really?"

"I mean it. Just pack up and find another spot. Start from scratch. Both of us. I've made some calls, Gil. There are states where a few years from now, a.s.suming everything stays stable, you'd have a good chance if you applied for readmission."

"To the bar?"

He dared to look at her, nodding stoically before returning to the traffic. The notion was breathtaking. She had never even considered that she might be eligible to return from exile.

"And your practice, Arthur?"

"So what?"

"After all those years to make partner?"

"That's all about fear of rejection. I wanted to make it because I wouldn't have been able to stand myself if I didn't. Besides, if this is what I think it is with Rommy, I'm going to be rich. If we clear him, Rommy's going to have an amazing civil suit. I can leave the firm and take his case. He'll get millions. And I'll get my share. I've thought about it."

"Apparently."

"No, not like it sounds. I've just never been really good in private practice. I'm a worker bee. I'm not smooth enough to attract big clients. I just want to find a good case and work like h.e.l.l on it. Preferably something I believe in."

Years ago, from a distance, Gillian had thought of Arthur as middle-aged from birth. But that was a function of his looks and the fatalistic air he'd acquired from his father. With Rommy's case, he had come to terms with himself as someone who was happiest striving toward ideals, even if they were unattainable.

"And what of your sister?" asked Gillian.

This, too, ran true to form. In his face, the workings of Arthur's internal life were now as clear to her as if they were being broadcast on a screen, and she watched as his heart was pierced by reality and buzzed back to earth inside his chest.

"Maybe we stay in the Middle West. I couldn't go too far, anyway, if I was handling Rommy's civil case, because I'd have to be able to get back here a couple of times a week. How about I tell my mother she's on? She's been AWOL for thirty years. I've been the parent, she's been the child. What if I just say to her, Time to grow up?"

Gillian smiled, while Arthur actually seemed to reflect on the prospect. She'd never had Arthur's unbounded capacity to surrender to improbable hopes, which was one more reason she'd found refuge in drugs. But she loved watching him fly free. And now and then, recently, she'd found herself airborne with him. It endured no longer than one of those unstable isotopes created in a reactor whose existence was mostly in theory, but she laughed in the dark and closed her eyes and for that fragment of time believed with Arthur in a perfect future.

Chapter 38.

August 12, 2001 Another Story JACKSON AIRES took no small pleasure in being a pain in the a.s.s. Initially, he agreed that Collins could be interviewed before his testimony, so long as the meeting took place in Atlanta and the P.A.'s Office paid Jackson's plane fare down there. Then it turned out that Collins had returned to town to deal with Erno's estate. But, Jackson said, his client had now decided that he would speak only after having first been sworn to G.o.d to tell the truth. Muriel had the option of reconvening a grand jury to continue investigating the Fourth of July Ma.s.sacre, because there was no statute of limitations on murder, and she preferred that to a deposition. That way she could examine Collins without Arthur looking over her shoulder or leaking the parts of the testimony he liked, and she'd also avoid violating her office's policy against granting immunity in a civil case. Even Jackson favored the grand jury, since by law, Collins's testimony would remain secret.

On August 22, Collins arrived in the anteroom outside the grand jury chamber. He was in the same dark, stylish suit he'd worn to his uncle's funeral. In his hand was a Bible, encircled by a chain of wooden beads holding a large cross. The book had been thumbed so often it had softened up like a paperback. Along with Aires, Collins's big blond-haired wife was beside him.

Muriel presented the form immunity order, which Jackson read word for word, as if he hadn't seen it dozens of times before, then Muriel opened the door to the grand jury room. Jackson tried to enter with them, knowing full well that his presence was prohibited. Only the witness, the prosecutor, the court reporter, and the grand jurors were allowed inside.

"Got to be present," said Aires. "No choice about that."

After another half hour of negotiation, they agreed Collins would be sworn and his testimony then suspended. A recorded interview would take place at Jackson's law office this afternoon, with the tape supplied to the grand jury later. Muriel was just as happy to get out of the courthouse, where a reporter might get wind of something.

Jackson had several offices, one in Center City and another in Kewahnee, but his princ.i.p.al place of business was in the North End, not far from DuSable Field. Like Gus Leonidis, Jackson had refused to give up on the neighborhood where he had come of age. His office was in a one-story strip mall, which Jackson owned. The anchor tenant on the corner was one of the national pharmacy-convenience chains that he'd cajoled into renting years ago. On the other end of the strip, Jackson's suites branched off beyond the gla.s.s vestibule.

Muriel had driven separately from Larry and Tommy Molto. The week had brought intense heat, gusts from the south, and a sun that was a scourge. Tempted to wait outside for the other two, Muriel, after a few minutes, retreated indoors for the air-conditioning.

Eventually, they were all a.s.sembled in Aires's large inner office. Given Jackson's vanity, Muriel would have expected that he, like so many others, would have treated his walls as a monument to himself, but most of what surrounded him were photographs of his family"three children, all lawyers in other cities, and, if Muriel's count was accurate, nine grandchildren. His wife had been gone a few years now. Looking at the office, hearing the bustle beyond where Jackson employed two other attorneys, Muriel wondered whether he would tell you that America was a great country, or that he shouldn't have had to sc.r.a.p so hard for what he deserved. Both were true.

"Muriel, you sit here." In an act of unexpected gallantry, Jackson was offering her the large chair behind his desk. The furniture throughout the room was square and functional, Danish modern in the hands of an office discount store. In the meantime, Aires took an armchair at the front corner beside his client. Like a chorus, Collins's wife and Larry and Molto all found seats behind them. Jackson, being Jackson, took out his own small tape recorder and laid it on the desk next to the one Muriel had already placed there.

As soon as both recorders were rolling and tested, Collins looked to Aires and asked, "Can I talk now?"

"Let the lady ask you a question, why don't you?" said Jackson. "This isn't drama cla.s.s. You don't give a soliloquy."

"There's only one thing worth saying," Collins answered.

"Which is?" asked Muriel.

"My uncle Erno killed those folks and Gandolph was no part of it."

She asked how Collins was so sure. He looked to Aires, who lifted the back of his hand to him.

"Well, you started in, you can't hardly stop now," Jackson said.

Collins closed his remarkable umber eyes momentarily, then said, "Because, may Jesus forgive me, I was there to see him do it."

Aires's chair was too tall for Muriel. Her high heels hung off her feet and she had to kick a couple of times at the carpeting so she could turn to get a better look at Collins. His hair had receded a bit, and he'd thickened, but Collins remained one of G.o.d's unearthly beauties. His face was fixed as if he were attempting to show courage in the face of the truth.

"I don't ever want to tell this story again," Collins said. "That's why I need Anne-Marie to hear it now, so it can be said and done with. My Lord and Savior, He knows I was born in sin, but it is a sad thing to think about the kind of man I been without Him."

When Muriel glanced at Larry, he was slumped in his chair next to the air-conditioning register. In the intense heat, he'd removed today's sport coat, folding it carefully on his knee while he studiously observed his own foot tapping the carpet. They were just at the beginning, but she could tell that Larry had already heard too much about Jesus. Over the years, he'd listened to a lot of it, naturally, dudes who'd sliced gang signs into somebody's abdomen and then came to G.o.d about thirty seconds before their sentencings. That stuff never bothered Muriel, though. G.o.d could sort it out. That was why She was G.o.d. Muriel's job was a.s.signing responsibility here on earth.

Muriel backtracked for a minute, spoke the date and time, explained the nature of the proceeding, and asked everyone in the room to speak up briefly so the tape bore a specimen of each voice.

"Let's start with your name," said Muriel to Collins. After he gave it, she asked him for any aliases he had used as an adult. He rattled off at least half a dozen.

"What about Faro Cole? Have you used that?"

"True."

"As an alias?"

"More a new life," he said, and smiled to himself in apparent chagrin. "I'm like a lot of folks," Collins said. "I kept on trying to have a new life until I finally got one." He looked over at his lawyer then. "Can I tell this how I want to?" Aires pointed to Muriel. "I got this in my head a certain way," said Collins to her. "You-all can ask what you like, but first off I'd like to tell it how I know it."

He would anyway. Muriel knew that much. Collins could frame it however he wanted to"as a sinner repenting, as one of the earth's wounded and ill used. At the end of the day, she'd stuff it back into the rigid little boxes of the law. She told him to suit himself.

Collins took a moment to smooth his jacket. He'd worn a white shirt and a smart tie. He still kept himself neat.

"End of the day," he said then, "this is really just a story about my uncle and me. Not that there aren't a lot of other folks who should have mattered. But they didn't. That's the first thing you-all have to see.

"Me and Uncle Erno walked a long road. May never have been on the face of the earth two men who hated each other more than we did sometimes. I think it was because we were the best the other had. I was all he had that might be like a child, and he was near as I had to any kind of father, and it wasn't either one of us who thought he'd got a specially good deal. Here I am, black to everybody who sees me, and this long-nosed hunky, what he really wanted is for me to carry on just like him, and how was I ever gonna do that?"

Collins looked down to the cross and the Bible in his lap.

"I couldn'ta been more than thirteen, fourteen years old, I was done with all them in the old neighborhood. I was black whether they were gonna say so or not, and I was the baddest brother that ever would be. Only it was like I said"Uncle Erno, he was never gonna leave hold of me. I was on those streets, doin the dumb stuff I did, selling crack cocaine mostly and smokin it too, and my uncle, he'd make like he was the po-lice"he loved to do that"come pull me out of those h.e.l.lholes and tell me I was wasting my life. Was my life, I'd tell him, and just go right back to it. Course, soon as the po-lice had me, I'd call Erno and he'd help me out and tell me never again.

"First adult conviction was in '87. Erno got me in the Honor Farm. And when I came out, you know, I really meant to do good. If you mind yourself, they wipe the slate clean for you. Erno and my ma sent me to Hungary, get away from the influences, and I took my own self to Africa. When I came home, I asked my uncle for help getting into the travel business.

"In 1988, that was the happiest Erno ever was with me. I did all that stuff he was forever telling me I had to do. I went to school, and I studied, and I pa.s.sed my travel agent's exam and got a job at Time To Travel, and made the scene at work every morning. I walked past the brothers on the street I'd kicked with like I didn't know them. And man, it was hard. It was hard. Erno, you know, he and my mom, they were always tellin me how bad they had it in Hungary"they ate squirrels and sparrows they caught in the parks, all of that"but I was workin and workin and I didn't have money. Twenty-some years old and back to livin with my ma? When I moved up to agent, I was on straight commission at Time To Travel, and there wasn't one of those big corporate accounts wanted to do business with any young black man. And I finally said to him, 'Uncle Erno, I can't make it, man, I tried and tried, but this just isn't gonna work out.'"

Collins glanced up to see how he was being received. Molto took advantage of the interval to stand to check that their tape recorder on Aires's desk was running. Jackson, naturally, did the same thing.

"Erno could see I was headed for backsliding and he was pretty much desperate. At one point, he had some idea that he'd shift airline business to me. One crazy notion after another. And that's how the ticket stuff started. First off, he pretended like these were just tickets that had gotten lost somehow. How stupid was that? I figured the go-down on that real soon."

Larry cleared his throat. "Mind if I ask a few things?" He did not really sound friendly. Caught in the spell of his story, it was an instant before Collins looked up.

"Starczek," said Collins then.

Larry's first question was simple. Where did the tickets come from?

"Back then," said Collins, "tickets were just startin to come out of a computer. The printers never worked"jammed, wrote on the wrong lines. Half the time, agents still issued tickets by hand and then ran them through that validating machine with their die. If you made a mistake writing up a ticket, you voided it and put the number on an error report. These tickets Erno gave me, they were blank validated hand tickets, listed on the error report so n.o.body was lookin for them."

"The airlines keep telling me," said Larry, "that sooner or later somebody flying on those tickets would get caught."

"Probably so," said Collins. "But wasn't anyone that ever flew on those tickets. I turned those tickets in to cover the cost of other tickets."

Muriel glanced to Larry to see if she'd missed something, but he, too, appeared confused.

"Suppose I had a customer," said Collins, "who paid in cash for a trip to New York. I'd take a ticket that Erno got me, and write it up as a New York ticket for an earlier date. Validation made it look like it had been issued by hand at the TN ticket counter. Then I'd turn Erno's ticket in to cover the cost of my customer's ticket"as if it was an even exchange. I'd put my customer's cash in my pocket, instead of turning it over to Time To Travel.

Rather than a-little-bitty piece of a commission, I got the whole price of the ticket. And my share of commission, too. Airline accounting matched the flight coupon against a validated ticket and never looked any further."

"Smart," said Muriel.

"Wasn't me," Collins told her. "Erno was the one who figured it out. He'd seen every ticket scam. Guess he finally got one in his head that would work. Probably took it as a kind of challenge. That's how Erno was."

"Right," said Larry. "That's what I'm wondering about"Erno. Why didn't he just do what a semi-normal person would do and give you money?"

Collins tipped his head back and forth as he weighed out an answer.

"Erno, you know, he was one strange kitty cat."

"No s.h.i.t," said Larry. Collins's narrow mouth turned down. He didn't care for either the language or the idea of somebody else dissing Erno's memory. Muriel delivered a look. It was probably the first eye contact she'd had with Larry since he walked in. Given the tenor of their parting last week, she might have expected defiance, but he responded with a mild nod.

"First off, Erno was cheap," said his nephew. "That's the truth. Once he had hold of a dollar, he didn't care too much to let it go. And, you know, he could get grouchy about how the airline should have treated him better on one thing or another. And heck, man, that outlaw life, it can be real excitin, ask somebody who knows. Erno always pined over all he missed out on when he got tossed from the Academy. But you know, when I hold those babies of mine, I'm always tellin them, 'There's nothin I wouldn't do for you.' And I've thought on it, and I think that's pretty much what Erno was saying to me: You try to make something of yourself, there's nothing I won't do to help."

Collins bent forward to see if Starczek was satisfied. Larry made an equivocal face: Go figure with crooks. Collins went back to his story.