White Collar Girl (27 page)

Henry howled. “Oh, boy, is Judge Casey in hot water. He was just named in Operation K.” Henry laughed some more, louder this time. His face seemed distorted and exaggerated like a grotesque's. The more he laughed, the more my insides churned. “Looks like Judge Casey has
got some s'plainin' to do, Lucy
.”

“Shut up, Henry.” I pushed away from my desk, ran to the bathroom and threw up in the sink.

•   •   •

I
nk made it real. Ink made it echo, rippling through every corner of the city. I kept picturing that buttercup yellow phone mounted to the wall in Mrs. Casey's perfect kitchen ringing nonstop as the relatives, neighbors and friends picked up their morning papers and saw Judge Casey's name on the front page of the
Tribune
and the
Sun-Times,
the
Daily News
and the
Chicago American
.

What would Mrs. Casey say to her callers? How would she explain? How would Mr. Casey handle it? What did he say to his wife, to his children? To Grandma Casey? I didn't know how they were dealing with it because Jack wouldn't take my calls. But as removed as I was, I found myself still caught up in their nightmare.

The next evening I met Scott for a drink. Lately we'd been spending more time together. Mostly we got together to commiserate. I whined about my workload and how I couldn't find time for the stories I really wanted to tackle, like the horsemeat scandal. And now there was this whole business with Operation K and Jack's father. Scott had headaches of his own, too. He had difficult clients and a leaking roof and a cat with failing kidneys.

He'd called earlier in the afternoon to say he needed a drink.
He suggested Fitzpatrick's, a dive bar known for their burgers and gravy fries. Turned out we were both going to be in that part of town so it made sense to meet there. I'd never been there before. It was off the beaten path, next to a vacant field on one side and an alley on the other. The bar was dark inside, smelled of stale beer and was overcast with cigarette and cigar smoke. I was surprised when the guy working the door knew Scott by name and the bartender knew his drink.

“You're a regular here?” I asked, somewhat amused.

He shrugged. “What can I tell you? The drinks are cheap.”

“On a budget these days, are you?” I laughed. Scott was more the classy bar type, and this place served beer straight from the bottle and hard liquor in glasses that had a used, filmy look about them, not exactly dirty but not quite clean either. The jukebox was broken, so instead they had a portable radio on the bar. One of the guys on the stool at the end motioned to Scott with his drink and they exchanged nods.

“Who's that?” I asked.

“Just some lawyer I know.”

I glanced back at him. He looked like a prime suspect for Operation K. He had two days' worth of graying shadow on his face and wore a wrinkled suit jacket that looked like it was two sizes too small for him. His gut protruded, hanging over his waistline. Even from a distance I could see he had a mustard stain on his tie. After we sat down, the man looked over at us before he got up and squeezed his way into the phone booth in the back, barely able to get the door shut.

While we waited on our martinis, Scott told me about his day and how he'd had to defend his client, a fellow lawyer who'd been caught with a male prostitute in a parking lot. As he spoke, I noticed that the guy from the phone booth settled his tab, set his fedora on his head and waddled out of the bar. I didn't think
much of it and focused back on Scott's story. Our food came out, but I barely touched mine.

I asked Scott what he knew about Judge Casey.

“He seemed like one of the good guys, but then again, most of them do at first.”

“Jack won't even speak to me. He thinks I set his father up. He thinks I'm responsible for destroying his father. Like I personally put the FBI up to this.”

“Well, that's ridiculous. He was probably in shock when you told him. He's a smart guy. He'll realize you had nothing to do with it. Hell, you're not even reporting on this story.”

“That's what I told him. I wanted to be on this story, but Mr. Ellsworth wouldn't go for it.”

“Be grateful you're not on it. It's ugly and messy, and I have a feeling it's going to get messier.” He looked at my plate. “You should try to eat something.”

I picked up my burger, contemplated it and set it back down, reaching for my martini instead. I had no appetite. Especially for burgers. Ever since Peter's article ran, I'd been trying to avoid them.

It was getting late. There was just a handful of guys hovering around the bar and another table of men in the back. Scott and I stayed for that one drink too many.

Ricky Nelson's
Be-Bop Baby
came on the radio, and Scott set his glass on the bar and held out his hand. I giggled as I stood up, and right there in the middle of the bar we started to jitterbug. Scott knew what he was doing and made me look like a better dancer than I was. The liquor bottles on the bar blurred into a vivid prism of browns and greens and blues as Scott spun me on our makeshift dance floor. When he gave me that final twirl, I coiled back around and collapsed in his arms, my head resting on his shoulder. The two of us were laughing as the tempo changed
and the Platters came on next, singing
The Great Pretender.
We looked at each other as the slow rhythm took hold of us and our bodies swayed in time, our arms still wrapped around each other, his eyes never leaving mine. He leaned in and kissed me and I kissed him back. We went on kissing in the middle of the room until the Everly Brothers came on singing
Wake Up Little Susie
. Scott whispered into my lips, “Let's get out of here.”

It had started to snow and Scott stood at the curb, trying to hail a cab. I knew he was coming home with me that night—what would happen once we were back at my apartment I couldn't say, but I felt like a million el car rides and a million conversations had been leading us to this point. I smiled at Scott, vaguely aware of our surroundings, of a dog barking in the distance, of the group of men—maybe five or six of them—walking up the sidewalk. I was still in a dreamy haze, looking at Scott, thinking about being with him, when the group of men turned in our direction. They wore tattered coats, scuffed-up boots and dirty trousers. I took them for some regular working-class men and figured they were heading into Fitzpatrick's for a nightcap.

One of them pointed and called out, “There he is! Over there!”

The men came charging. My head whipped around to see who they were after. There was no one else on the street, and when I realized it was us they were coming for, my heart clenched into a fist. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. A man lurched at us and I jumped out of the way, but Scott was drunk, too slow to realize that they were heading toward him.

“You fuckin' rat!” The one guy grabbed Scott by the shoulders and drove his knee up into his gut. Scott doubled over, writhing in pain while another guy clobbered him over the back of the head. They struck him again and again.

“Stop it!” I cried. “Stop it!” I was terrified, and when I saw one of the men pull out a gun, I screamed and ran back inside the bar.

“Help! Help—they're going to kill him. Quick, call the police.” I was shaking, my pulse pounding. “Please, help! Please.”

I followed two men as they rushed outside. Once they saw the gun, they backed off, staying with me beneath the streetlamp in the alley, watching helplessly. I trembled, my hands clamped over my mouth, my knees turning to rubber. I'd lost sight of the one with the gun. Had he already fired it? I couldn't tell because the thugs were on top of Scott, kicking him, punching him, slamming his head into the ground. I winced when I saw that his face was covered in blood. He tried to get up, and that's when I heard the gun go
pop, pop, pop
. I screamed into my hands as they pounded him back down.

“You cocksuckin' rat,” said the one as he reached down and tore open Scott's shirt, revealing a thick band of silvery gray electrical tape running across his ribs. The thug tore it clean off the flesh. Scott screamed out, his skin left raw and bleeding.

I didn't get it at first. Scott had been wearing a wire?
A wire!
But then I began to piece it all together, and my heart nearly stopped.

“You fuckin' rat.” Another kick to the gut.

“Lying sack of shit.” A punch to the head.

I couldn't believe it. Scott was the one. He was the Operation K mole. The man yanked the wire clean and threw the tape recorder on the ground, stomping on it, cracking it into bits. The man with the gun aimed it at Scott's head just as we heard the whine of sirens in the background. The thugs threw their final punches and spit on him before taking off, disappearing in the dark as the police arrived.

I rushed over to Scott. He was bleeding badly. I couldn't tell if he'd been shot or not. Each time he opened his mouth, more blood gushed out.

“Don't try to speak,” I said. “Don't try to move. Help is
coming.” I gripped his bloody hand and held on tight until he lost consciousness.

I was in a panic, riding in the ambulance with him, asking over and over again if he was going to be okay. Both his eyes were swollen shut and his lip was split open. The ambulance workers were crouched over him, working on him the whole way. One of them kept mumbling about how much blood he'd lost.

As soon as we arrived at the hospital, a swarm of doctors and nurses circled around and rolled him on a gurney through a set of double doors. I tried to follow, but a nurse blocked me with her clipboard. “You'll have to stay out here,” she said, indicating the waiting room.

Here I was again, back in this waiting room at Henrotin Hospital. That same sense of helplessness returned from the day Eliot was brought in. It wasn't until I was alone in that waiting room that I allowed myself to think about my kiss with Scott. It was a kiss that was years in the making, a kiss that made sense of Jack and of the affair with my professor and every other failed relationship I'd had, because now I had my answer. It was Scott Trevor all along. He had to be okay. He had to live. I wasn't good at expressing my feelings, but I vowed to be bold and tell Scott exactly how I felt about him when he came out of surgery.

Surgery . . .
I thought about Eliot and about Harley Jackson, the little boy in the el car derailment. They had come into this very hospital, had surgery and never came out. What if Scott died, too? My leg began bobbing up, down, up, down. A clammy sweat spread over my skin as the anxiety rose up inside me. The helplessness and bad memories overwhelmed me. I couldn't sit still any longer and began to pace like an expectant father, trying to stay ahead of the thoughts gaining on me. I was never one to dwell on my emotions. Many times I'd been accused of being cold and unfeeling, but the opposite was true. I was always on the
verge of feeling too much. That was the problem. So following my parents' example, I had shut down a part of myself when Eliot died. And now if I gave in to my emotions—to everything I was feeling right then—I would have drowned. So instead, I did what self-preservation had taught me to do. I simply didn't think about it. Avoidance had always been my best defense, and like I'd done so many times in my life, I switched off my mind. I began memorizing the names of the doctors being paged over the loudspeaker:
Dr. Wesley to ER. Dr. Wesley to ER. Dr. Spangler. Paging Dr. Spangler. Dr. Norris, Dr. Eugene, Dr. Montgomery . . .

And in between, the police came into the waiting room to question me. Once they started asking questions and I began retelling the events, I realized what I was sitting on.
My God!
This was the biggest scoop of my career. I, Jordan Walsh, knew who the Operation K mole was. The thugs who beat up Scott were no doubt hired by a group of crooked lawyers, cops and judges. They showed up tonight to expose him, possibly kill him and foil his plan. I couldn't prove it yet—I'd have to go back to Fitzpatrick's Bar and ask some questions, do some digging around—but I was certain that the guy at the bar with the mustard stain on his tie had been the one to tip them off. I recalled how he'd squeezed into that phone booth and probably called whoever was giving the orders. But the real news—the immediate news—was that the Operation K mole had been exposed. And I had a firsthand account of it all.

As soon as the cops were done with me, my reporter instincts kicked in. The phone booth was just three feet away. I walked over, fed a nickel through the slot and dialed the city room.

“Get me the city desk.”

•   •   •

B
y the time Scott came out of surgery I had already spoken to Mr. Ellsworth twice and dictated my eyewitness account to Higgs on the rewrite desk. As I made my way down the hospital corridor to see Scott, the story was on its way to the composing room.

I'd been up all night but was still wide-awake at four in the morning. I stepped inside Scott's room and saw him lying in that hospital bed and my heart sank down in my chest. His arms and torso were wrapped like a mummy's; his eyes were swollen, reduced to slits. When he saw me, he attempted a smile despite the zipper of stitches along his lip—the lips that had kissed mine just hours before.

I pulled up a chair and sat by his side, reaching for his hand. “The doctor said you're going to be okay. They expect you to make a full recovery.”

He nodded and faintly squeezed my fingers. We stayed like that, his hand in mine while a nurse came in to check on him. After she'd taken his temperature and his pulse and had given him a shot, the nurse left, and the first thing Scott said was, “Are you disappointed in me?”

“Disappointed in you? Whatever for?”

“You know, the whole informant thing.”

“Are you kidding me?” Just the fact that he'd said that made me love him all the more. “Why would I be disappointed in you? I'm so proud of you. Look at what you did. You did it. You went after the bad guys. Do you realize that because of you, they're finally cleaning up the court system? My God, Scott, I think you're one of the bravest men I've ever known. How could I possibly be disappointed in you?”

“I wanted to tell you. God, you have no idea how many times I almost did.”

“What I don't understand, though, is how you got involved in all this in the first place.”

“Such a long story.” He closed his eyes and struggled to swallow.

“Don't. Don't try to talk. You'll tell me later.”

“No.” He opened his eyes. “Let me. Let me tell you now.” He paused and swallowed hard again. “Remember a couple of years ago? When I was an assistant state's attorney? A prosecutor? Remember how I told you I wanted to quit my job because I kept prosecuting guilty men who were walking away with barely a hand slap?”

He closed his eyes and paused for a minute, as if harnessing his strength to get through the rest of it. “Then after I bitched about it to enough people, out of the blue I got contacted by someone at the Bureau. And he asked me to go undercover. At first I said ‘There's no way in hell.' I wasn't about to do it. But they stayed on me—I was getting dozens of phone calls from them and I'd find them turning up all over town, following me around. They'd show up in restaurants, on street corners—you name it. They were doing everything they could to try to talk me into it. Eventually they convinced me that I could do more to straighten out the
justice system by going undercover than continuing to prosecute guilty men who just got off. Finally I agreed. So I switched jobs and went to work as a defense attorney, remember?”

“Yeah, and I was shocked when you told me. It just didn't seem like you, but now it all makes sense.”

“I could have done it as an assistant state's attorney, but I didn't want this to touch anyone I worked with—not directly anyway. So there I am, taking on the sleaziest cases out there—drunk drivers, prostitutes, drug dealers. I reported back that I'd heard about some lawyers dealing out fifty-dollar bills to this one judge. The FBI said they needed more concrete evidence. And by then some of these guys are thinking I'm their buddy because I'm palling around with them, trying to get them to tell me what they know. I spent way too much time in dive joints like that place we were at last night. I got smashed with these guys, started sitting in on their poker games just hoping and praying that one of them would say something that I could take back to the Bureau. It was so damn hard keeping all the lies straight. There were days I didn't even know who I was. The whole thing made me sick. Especially in the beginning. Remember when I lost all that weight? Dropped about twenty pounds because I couldn't keep anything down.”

“And I thought that was because you broke up with Connie.”

“Connie.” He winced. “I'm glad she walked away when she did. I didn't want to bring anyone into this mess. Especially not you. Why do you think I kept everything between us so casual, so platonic? And believe me, it wasn't easy. I just didn't want to get you involved.”

I ran my fingers over the back of his hand. So he'd been feeling the same way about me all this time.

“Even my parents didn't know what I was doing,” he said. “So
anyway, I reported everything back to the Bureau, and again they said they needed more hard evidence. Something that would give them an open-and-shut case.”

“So is that when you started wearing a wire?”

He attempted a nod. “They told me I had to get it all on tape. They wanted these crooks to incriminate themselves. They wanted to hear these guys saying they were taking bribes and manipulating cases. I said absolutely not. I'd be a dead man if I got caught. The thought of it terrified me. But I was already in so deep. And they kept saying that this was my chance to help put some of those lying, cheating bastards away. I got so in over my head. . . .”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, what he'd been through and had been forced to keep to himself. He was still talking as I instinctively reached inside my purse for my pad of paper and pen.

“What was the name of that first agent from the Bureau who contacted you?”

“What?” Scott's eyes strained to open, looking at me in confusion. I followed his gaze as it moved down to the notepad, and with all the energy he could muster, he shook his head. “Whoa, wait a minute, Jordan. This is all off the record. I'm not giving you a story here.”

“Why not? This is huge.”

“Because I haven't even spoken to the Bureau yet. The FBI needs to find the guys who jumped me. They have to see if they can identify me. We have to try to find a way to salvage the investigation. If you say anything now, you could jeopardize the entire operation.”

As soon as he said that, I went light-headed and dizzy. The presses were running at that very moment. The story was already out. And with Scott named in it and my byline on it. It had never
occurred to me to hold back, to exercise some restraint. I'd already told the police what happened—I had to do that. And my eagerness to break this news before the police leaked it to the press had clouded my judgment, completely eclipsed my sense of decency. I believed in what Scott was doing—I thought he was a hero—and yet I could have just destroyed all his work.

I turned away and stared at my reflection in a chrome water pitcher on the bedside stand. My nose and mouth, my eyes and ears were distorted. I looked like an ogre and felt like one, too.

“You have to keep all this to yourself. You can't tell anyone anything.”

I heard his words circling around my head. I still couldn't look at him. “Oh, Scott.” I swallowed hard. “It's already too late.”

“What? What's too late?”

“I—I figured the investigation was . . . I thought it would already . . .”

“Jordan, what's going on?”

I saw the alarm set in on his face.

“Jordan?” he pressed me, struggling to sit up.

“Oh, God.” I blurted it out. “I made a terrible mistake. I did something and I wasn't thinking and now it's too late.”

“
What's
too late? What did you do?”

“Please don't hate me.”

“Jordan.” His swollen eyes were filling with panic, as if he knew what I was about to say. “You didn't say anything to the cops, did you?”

“Scott, I had to. Those guys could have killed you. They're still out there—they could come after you again.”

“Oh, shit. Jesus, no.”

“And I already called this into the city room.”

“You
what
?” Scott leaned back into the pillow and closed his
eyes. “No, God. Jordan, tell me you didn't. How could you do that?”

“I'm sorry. I figured those guys already knew it was you and so . . .”

“And so, what? You figured it would be okay to let everyone else know? Please, dear God, Jordan, please say you didn't name me.”

I covered my mouth with my hand.

Scott collapsed against his pillows, like he was sinking into himself. “I get that you had to talk to the police. I get that. But, Jesus—the city desk? Jesus Christ. I can't believe you ran with this without even asking me about it first. Not everything is fodder for your paper, you know! Whatever happened to friendship? To loyalty? I didn't think I had to preface
everything
going on in my life with a ‘please don't print this in the goddamn newspaper.'”

“I'm sorry, Scott. I was just—”

“Just what? Doing your job? Everything I've been through, everything I've done for the past eighteen months could be for nothing.” He reached up and pushed the call button. “And goddammit, don't look like you're going to cry. We both know you're not a crier, so don't you dare try to make me feel sorry for you right now.”

I wasn't crying. I wasn't thinking of crying. I was thinking of how to fix this. “I'll—I'll make it right. Somehow I'll—I'll make them retract the story.”

“It's too late. The damage has been done.”

“Please don't hate me. I didn't—”

“Stop it. Just stop. I can't deal with your guilt right now, too.”

“But, Scott . . .”

“Please.” He closed his eyes, wincing in pain. “Do me a favor: just get out of here. Just leave.”

The nurse came in. “You need something in here?”

“Could you get her out of here? Just get her out of here and don't let her back in.”

•   •   •

T
hat part did make me cry. It was still dark outside when I left the hospital, and the tears blurred my vision, stringing the streetlights together as I passed by. It wasn't even seven o'clock yet and the city was only half awake. More snow had fallen overnight. The el rumbled by overhead, the taxicabs and buses peppered the streets. Newspaper boys stood on street corners, surrounded by stacks of bundles bound together with string, selling their papers. I couldn't bring myself to buy the morning edition of the
Tribune
. I wasn't ready to face the damage yet.

I walked through the early-dawn streets, hoping to clear my head, but it was no good. I couldn't stay ahead of what I'd done, my mind replaying the scene inside Scott's hospital room. And yet I had to tell the police what I'd seen. I'd been a witness to a crime. I had to report it, and Scott knew that. But I shouldn't have called it in to the paper. That's where I went wrong. Scott's cover was probably blown anyway, but thanks to me, it was certain. I dragged my sleeve across my eyes and nose, making way for more tears.

Normally I wasn't one to talk about my problems, but I needed someone to tell me I wasn't a horrid, self-serving person. Ironically, Scott would have been the perfect person to speak to, but there was no Scott anymore. There was no Jack anymore or Judge Casey, either. M didn't deal with her own problems, so I couldn't imagine she'd be much help with this. There was only one place left to turn.

As soon as I stepped inside, I smelled coffee brewing and heard the ticking of the radiators. It was only then that I realized how cold I was, my fingers and toes numb from the walk. My
father was still asleep, but my mother was up and surprised to see me.

She was at the sink when she saw me standing in the doorway. As soon as she caught the look on my face, she cast aside the dish towel, came over and cupped my face.

“What's the matter? Why are you upset? Look at what you've done.” Her chin gestured toward the newspaper. She'd already seen the morning paper. The
Tribune
was resting on the kitchen table with my story on the front page, faceup. The photo editor had included Scott Trevor's picture—a shot taken back when he worked for the state's attorney.

Yeah, look what I've done.

My mother searched my face. “What is it, honey? Why aren't you pleased?”

“I went too far.” I dropped into a chair. “This time I went too far. I was only thinking about myself. About my byline.” I tried to keep my voice steady as I relayed what had happened with Scott at the hospital. “I should have never called that story in to the city desk.”

“Why not?” My mother looked genuinely confused. “You had to do it. That's your job. The police knew what happened. The story would have gotten out anyway.”

“But not with my name on it.”

My mother reached for my hand. “You're a reporter and a reporter's job is to report the news.”

“But isn't there a point where you stop being a reporter and you start being a human being? At the end of the day, isn't there
anyone
you're supposed to protect?” I asked.

“If your father and your grandfather were sitting here with us right now, I know what they'd say.” My mother tilted her head and smiled. “You protect your family. Your family and the people you love like family. Everyone else is fair game.”

This made me feel even worse because I did love Scott. I had always loved him. He was the one I truly wanted. It had taken me all this time to realize that, and now it was too late.

“And don't be so hard on yourself,” my mother said. “You didn't ruin the whole investigation. Trust me on that. Your friend gave the FBI enough to go on. He's just upset because his cover was blown. But from what you've said here”—she indicated the paper—“they were already onto him anyway. That's why he was attacked in the first place. You had nothing to do with that.”

A lot of what my mother said was true. Much of the FBI's sting operation had already begun to unravel, and that was not because of me.