In my junior year of high school, I realized I did not especially like baseball as a sport. At that point, I was the starting center fielder on the Nearing team, although I was sure to lose the spot to a terrific freshman, Josey Higgins, who unlike me had no trouble hitting breaking pitches and was even faster in the field. He went on to a full ride at Wisconsin State, where he was All Mid-Ten. What came to me almost in a single moment as I was trained on a fly arcing its way to me was that I had watched baseball on TV and trotted onto the field every summer since I was six years old only so I could talk about it with my father. I was not especially resentful, just unwilling to continue doing that once I understood. When I quit, I heard little complaint from the coach, who was plainly relieved not to have to deliver the inevitable speech about the good of the team. Everyone-including my dad-always thought I dropped out rather than warm the bench, and I have been just as happy to leave it that way.
When we have been standing there some time, he asks what I am going to be doing next week when my clerkship is over. I've decided to go back to subbing while I work on my law review article, on which I've recently made some progress. He nods as if to say it's a reasonable plan.
"So overall?" he asks as he's ducking left and right around the smoke.
"I'm really happy, Dad."
When I turn, he's stopped to look at me intently with a largely unfathomable expression, while he allows the billows to surround him. I realize it's been a long time since I answered either of my parents that way. Over the years, I far more often have fended off their questions about my state of being by describing myself simply as 'okay.'
To evade my dad's attention now, I take a long draft of my beer and look into the small yard where I played as a child. It once looked as big as the prairie. Now the little continuous space has been broken by the new rhodie, three feet high if that, with its glossy leaves and the fresh earth surrounding it my father turned today. Things change, and sometimes for the better. I am proud Anna is here with me, pleased with myself for realizing how good she'd be for me and pursuing her and making her love me, and I'm happy I have brought her together with these other people I love. It's one of those moments I hope I will always remember: That day I was so happy.
CHAPTER 22
Tommy, November 4, 2008
Over the years, the PA's office, like any other institution, had developed its own odd protocol. The boss stayed put. The prosecuting attorney walked into his office in the morning with his briefcase under his arm and never left, except for lunch and court. It was nominally a sign of respect. Everyone who needed to speak to him came to the mountain. But the practice actually protected the freewheeling demeanor within the PA's office. Guys could stand in the hallways sixty feet apart and talk over a case while they tossed a softball. People could say "fuck" as loud as they wanted to. Deputies could badmouth judges, and cops could spout. Within his inner sanctum, the PA conducted himself with a dignity the everyday life of his office would never really reflect.
As a result, Tommy often felt as if he were in jail. He had to intercom or phone everybody. For more than thirty years, he had cruised the hallways, popping in and out of offices to gossip about cases and the kids at home. And right now, he was sick of waiting. First thing this morning Brand had gone to a meeting at the crime lab, where they were going to brief him on the DNA results on the two-decade-old sperm fraction from the first Sabich trial. Tommy had left his office six times by now to see if Brand was back.
In the moment, the fact that these results would force Tommy's hand one way or the other, leave him caught between bad news and worse, seemed to matter less. Nor did he really care about the notion Brand was suddenly promoting, that after they convicted Rusty Sabich, Tommy could run for PA next year. The truth was that if that happened and a judgeship opened up, Tommy would probably toss the mantle to Brand. But anytime Brand speculated that way out loud, Tommy hushed him. Politics would never be his passion. What Tommy Molto really cared about was the same thing he had cared about for decades as a prosecutor. Justice. About whether something was right or whether it was wrong.
So if twenty years ago they'd gone on an innocent guy, he'd be the first to tell Rusty he was sorry. And if it was the other way, if it was Rusty who did Carolyn, then-then what? But he knew instantly. It would be like his marriage. It would be like finding Dominga and falling in love with her. And having Tomaso. The one lingering blot on his career would be lifted. But most important, Tommy himself would know. The guilt that still nagged at him from that time, for having stupidly talked out of school to Nico, would be dissolved. He would have been right, in his own eyes more than anyone else's. He would be fifty-nine years old. And thoroughly reborn. Only God could remake a life so completely. Tommy knew that. He took an instant to offer prayerful thanks in advance.
Then he heard Brand bang into his office next door and Tommy stepped in immediately. Jim still had his briefcase in his hand and his overcoat half off and was surprised to see Tommy on his threshold. Master in the servant's quarters. He stared a minute. Then he smiled. He said what Tommy had always known someone would say eventually.
Brand said, "It's him."
PART TWO
III.
CHAPTER 23
Nat, June 22, 2009
State your name, please, and spell your last name for the record." From his seat at the walnut defense table, Sandy Stern clears his throat. It is a reflex these days both before and after he speaks, a phlegmy little rattle that never sounds quite normal.
"Rozat K. Sabich. S, A, B, I, C, H."
"Are you known by any other name?"
"Rusty."
On the witness stand, my father in his pressed blue suit maintains perfect posture and an unruffled demeanor. In his place, I would be a mess, but in the last few months my dad has taken on the distant air of a mystic. For the most part, he seems to have stopped believing in cause and effect. Things happen. Period.
"And may we call you Rusty?" Stern asks, lifting the back of his hand gallantly, as if he might be imposing. After my father agrees, Stern asks him to tell the jury how he is employed.
"I was elected to the state supreme court last November, but I have not yet taken the oath of office."
"And why, sir, is that?"
"Because I was indicted on these charges, and felt it was fairer to all concerned to await the outcome of this trial. In the interval, I remain the chief judge of the State Court of Appeals for the Third Appellate District here in Kindle County, although I have taken administrative leave."
Stern brings out that both the supreme and appellate courts are what lawyers call courts of review, meaning basically that they hear appeals.
"And tell us, please, what it means to be a judge on a court of review."
My dad details the duties. Across the courtroom, Tommy Molto stands to object as my dad begins to explain that the appeal in a criminal case ordinarily does not give the judges any right to overrule a jury's factual decision.
Judge Basil Yee visibly weighs the issue, wagging his gray head from one side to the other. From downstate Ware, Judge Yee was specially assigned by the state supreme court to preside over this case after all the judges in the Kindle County Superior Court, whose decisions my father has routinely reviewed for well more than a decade, recused themselves together. He is a Taiwanese immigrant who came to Ware, a town of no more than ten thousand, at age eleven, when his parents took over the local Chinese restaurant. Judge Yee writes flawless English but still speaks it as a second tongue, with a strong accent that includes high Asian pitches, and at times he ignores some of the connective tissue of language-articles, prepositions, state-of-being verbs. His regular court reporter did not accompany him upstate and the annoying way Jenny Tilden is constantly interrupting to tell the judge to spell what he has just said has made him a man of even fewer words