BLIND TRIAL by Brian Deer (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📗

The first was from the opening, across five deep columns, heralding a major occasion.

FBI TAPES WILL STAR IN FORBES, LOUVIERE TRIAL

He looked at the lead again.

The trial of Circuit Judge Frank L. Forbes and downtown attorney Henry Louviere is due to open Monday after a seven-woman, five-man jury was selected Friday in federal court. Forbes and Louviere are accused of taking and giving bribes to fix hearings in Cook County Chancery Court.

There was a picture of his father like an Atlantic City pimp. The text was ingrained in Ben’s head. Henry was accused of paying the judge two thirty-five-hundred-dollar bribes for restraint orders in commercial disputes. But what neither man knew was that both petitioners and defendants were government agents running a sting.

LOUVIERE ON FORBES: “BEST JUDGE MONEY CAN BUY”

Assistant US Atty Sandra Rawlings, prosecuting the case with First Assistant US Atty Brendan FitzGerald, said the case against Forbes and Louviere would take jurors into “a seedy world of corruption where a judge dispensed decisions not by who persuaded him, but who paid him.”

At the time of the trial, Ben missed most of the coverage: thanks to another of his mother’s sneaky tricks. One evening that spring she’d vanished to the Ronsons and, out of nowhere, a vacation was scheduled. She said she was coming, but then mysteriously backed out, so Ben, Luke, and Mr. Ronson drove to Gettysburg, Washington, and Savannah without her.

But the trial dragged on into the week they returned and, on the Thursday, took a turn to stun Chicago. Not only did his father deny “wrongdoing in any shape,” but he’d worn his own wire when negotiating the bribes, and deposited matching sums in his own bank account, making the money trail fork two ways.

LAWYER “STINGS THE STINGERS”

At the judicial bribery case yesterday, controversial attorney Henry Louviere said he was attempting to uncover an extortion racket and was collecting proof when arrested. “I fumbled, but they [the FBI] fumbled worse,” he told defense attorney, Rhonda O’Reilly, on the 16th day.

The final news clipping completed the reversal. The jury found Henry not guilty. “It is in my heart to forgive them,” he told reporters outside the courthouse. “I thank the people of Illinois for justice.”

His son folded the pages, set the rubber bands, and carried the book to his car.

Fifty-seven

HE FIRST felt the rain like the spit from a shout as he unlocked his BMW. Spit became spots, as if a wet tree had shaken, as he climbed behind the wheel and fired the engine. Spots became drops as he set the wipers to low and backed the car away from the pool. Drops became splashes even before he left the complex and, as he waited at Monroe Drive—left turn-signal flashing—people ran with plastic bags on their heads.

After five hundred yards, he hit the brakes. This stretch of road had history. The cement sidewalks were so tight, and grass verges so narrow, that telephone poles practically grabbed you. He picked up speed again passing the Grady school stadium, then slowed for the intersection with Tenth.

Here was Midtown’s sleekest residential enclave, with every house different from its neighbors. Porches, columns, balustrades, shingle-styles, American foursquares, the odd Craftsman. Here were sandstone brick bungalows, neoclassic frontages, minor homages to Frank Lloyd Wright.

He hung a right onto Greenwood, left onto Vedado, then stamped on the brake.

What the fuck?

A pair of TV live trucks, with open doors, blocked the street: Channel 2 Action News and Fox 5. Something big was going down, with cars parked at all angles and yellow tape strung between trees.

His foot held the brake; rain hammered the roof; windshield wipers scooped.

What the fuck?

He slammed the gearshift, backed up, and shot forward, sending the rear wheels spinning on wet pavement. He drove a block south, signaled left into a curve, and was brought up short once again.

More yellow tape. More vehicles every whichway: a gray Geo Prizm, a blue Chevy Bolt, a black Nissan Micra GSX. For some reason, they’d been moved and re-parked in a hurry. Then he realized from where—and why.

A house on the right, up a steep sloping yard, was wrecked—torn apart—by fire.

The roof was gone, with nearly all the second floor. An inferno had engulfed the property. What remained around the porch was a desperate shell, the windows mere roasted holes. At one corner, a beam had snapped and half-collapsed among the debris: splintering and twisting charred clapboard. Surviving shards of glass were caked in soot, and above the blackened ruin, now drenched in water, the barbecued branches of overhanging oak trees clutched at the sky like claws.

He snatched a scrap of paper from a pocket in his pants, sprang from the car, and ran. In seconds, his hair was stuck to his face, his T-shirt glued to his shoulders. The stench of burnt cedar stung his possibly broken nose. He ducked police tape, dodged a wrecked car, and looked for street numbers.

It was hers.

What survived of the first floor—with the fire department’s compliments—looked like it was raised from the deep. Porch chairs were blown sideways, azaleas washed out, and a mudslide of soil had spilled down the yard to settle as silt on the sidewalk.

He spun on his heels. His sneakers slipped and slid. Then he saw the rubberneckers, gaping. They were sheltered on porches, peering, gossiping, with faces that begged, “Give us more.”

At a brick house opposite, a lunch party was gathered, waving drinks and napkins at the ruin. At another (green paintwork) they’d brought out folding chairs and ranked them like movie house seats.

He skidded to a halt in front of the brick house, where his arrival had triggered thin smiles. With his hair and clothes soaked and his face punch-stained, he was this afternoon’s most welcome addition. He vaulted across a lawn, sliding in the wet, to the porch most opposite the scene.

A mustachioed man—mid-forties; brown vest—held a phone to his face with both hands.

Ben called, “Hey, what’s happened here?”

“See