Rough Trade

“It’s not like we don’t already have enough trouble on our hands.”
    “I’m sorry. What’s he been charged with?”
    “So far nothing. They took him to the Eighteenth District, but he hasn’t been booked. One of the cops recognized him and called me. Luckily he’s a fan.”
    “I suppose you promised him fifty-yard-line seats the next time you play the Bears....”
    “Are you kidding? I’d let him bang the entire cheer-leading squad if I thought it meant keeping this out of the papers.”
     

CHAPTER 4
     
     
    The last time I’d made a trip to the Eighteenth District it had almost turned me off not only to football but the entire human race, too, when I realized that people like Darius Fredericks were a part of it. Fredericks had been the Monarchs’ first-round draft pick that season, a talented wide receiver who’d gotten himself into some kind of trouble in college—trouble that had been hushed up as he led his team to a national championship. As a pro he also did not disappoint. His first year as a Monarch he made a record-tying one hundred twenty-six receptions and nearly killed a nineteen-year-old call girl in his hotel room after an away game against the Bears.
    It had been snowing that night, too.
    I’d driven to the Eighteenth District police station in a blizzard and arrived to find Fredericks cocky, unrepentant, and signing autographs for cops and fellow prisoners alike. He’d treated my arrival as he might a plumber coming to unplug his sink—inevitable and unremarkable. As I explained the arrangements I had made for a criminal attorney to represent him, he’d looked bored. We had been talking for several minutes before I realized that the speckles on his expensive silk shirt were not polka dots, but blood. When I left the Eighteenth that night, for the first time in my career I had felt ashamed of being a lawyer.
    The surprising thing isn’t that he did it. Big men beat the faces of women into hamburger every day. The surprising thing is that he ended up doing time for it. It helped that it was an election year, and that he drew a political and feminist judge. And to their credit, both the Rendells and the league refused to pull any strings to help him get off.
    Suddenly I felt like the only person awake and working on the face of the planet. Whoever said misery likes company knew what they were talking about. I picked up my car phone and punched in Claudia’s pager number. She called back just as I was passing Soldier Field. I explained my errand and she agreed to meet me at the corner of Fairbanks and Superior. She was already outside and waiting when I got there, a tiny figure in a down parka standing in the light of the emergency room entrance sign, rolling on the balls of her feet to stay awake.
    “Don’t you think it would be more efficient if they just kept these guys in jail between games?” inquired my roommate as she slid into the passenger seat. She threw back her hood to reveal a face that was deceptively young looking, as pale and unlined as a child’s.
    “Rough night?” I asked.
    “Not too bad. Carrelli is in New York delivering a lecture, so it was torturer’s night out.”
    Carrelli was the head of Claudia’s training program, and from what little she had told me about him he made the power-hungry partners at my office look like a bunch of nuns. He was a sadistic egomaniac who believed that the trauma of the surgical training program should in no way be limited to what had been suffered by the patients.
    “Sundays are usually pretty quiet anyway,” continued my roommate, “though we did have a little bit of excitement this afternoon—a crush injury from a car accident on lower Wacker Drive. A twenty-six-year-old kid spent three hours with his arm pinned under a flipped pickup truck. I got to go out and help with the field amputation. What did you do today?”
    “Made the world a better place for topless dancers and dirty old men.”
    “I can’t believe you’re still working on that strip club deal.”
    “Still.Always. Forever. I’ll be trading faxes and wrangling with the SEC when I’m in the nursing home.”
    “So what did tonight’s football felon do?”
    “He’s not a felon, at least not yet. Hopefully he’s not going to end up being charged with anything.”
    “Are you going to answer my question and tell me what this guy did, or are you going to give me a lecture on the finer points of the law?”
    “He got into a fight with a