Vaughn pauses, closes his eyes, and Erin completes the sentence. “The cop crashed headfirst into a tree. And Eddy wrapped his car around another tree. It’s the story that was reported in all the papers.”
Vaughn nods. “I didn’t know Eddy and the cop crashed their cars. They just disappeared in my rearview mirror. Still, I knew that I needed to go back and get ticketed with my cousin. Or arrested with him. That’s what I should have done.”
“But you didn’t.”
Vaughn exhales. “I kept right on driving until I reached home. I went to my room and closed the door. I was terrified. I figured the officer had arrested Eddy, and the cops would be pounding on my parents’ front door any minute—I was certain of it. I didn’t sleep a wink that night.
“The next morning, we all learned that Eddy and the officer were both taken to Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Eddy was under arrest, and the policeman wasn’t expected to live. My parents pressed me, but I feigned ignorance. I told them Eddy and I had parted ways following the ball game. That I had no idea where he went or what he’d done after that.
“The patrolman did die, but not before telling the investigating officers that Eddy had been drag racing, that a second car was involved. All the officer saw of the second car—my car—were its headlights, so—”
“He saw your headlights because you were the one in his lane?”
“Yes.”
“You were the one who really caused the crash.”
Vaughn lowers his head.
“And Eddy covered for you.”
“He told the police he didn’t know who was in the second car, that some guy had come up behind him and tried to pass him on the left.”
“But the cops knew he was lying. And they threw the book at him, didn’t they?”
“The only thing Eddy had in his favor was that his father was a hero cop. That counts for a lot in this city, and that saved Eddy some serious time. Even so, he served three years in state prison.”
Erin looks as though Vaughn has clubbed her with a haymaker. “You left him at the scene. Then you let him take the rap for a crash you’d caused.”
Vaughn closes his eyes. “All I’d have had to do was come forward. He’d have gotten off a lot easier.”
Erin stares at him, the air conditioner grumbling in the background. She tries to process what he’s told her, looking for some way to harmonize it with her view of him as a good guy. A guy who can be counted on to stick with you when the storm rolls in. But she can’t. “What a shitty thing to do.”
That night is the first since they’ve started seeing each other again that they don’t make love. Erin goes to bed as soon as the food is cleared away and pretends to be asleep when he joins her.
Vaughn leans on his elbow, studying Erin, watching the rise and fall of her breathing.
Is this what’s going to end it for us? It would be a form of justice if it did.
The next morning, Vaughn gets out of bed to make coffee. When he returns to the bedroom with Erin’s mug, he finds her up, dressed, and ready to leave.
They face each other, and he says, “Now you know. I have to stand with Eddy, no matter what happens.”
Erin stares at him. “Yes. You damned well do.” Then she brushes past him and leaves.
18
TUESDAY, JULY 15
The office swirls with activity. Vaughn has called his press conference for noon, and the local news channels are setting up in the large conference room. Reporters and cameramen from the local Fox affiliate and from all three network stations are there. They have no problem demanding that Angie bring them water, coffee, and soda. One reporter asks where the firm’s greenroom is and expresses her disappointment at learning there is none. “Day and Lockwood has a greenroom,” the journalist says. “They set out fruit and cheese and cakes.”
“I think there are leftover soft pretzels in the kitchen,” Angie replies. “Put ’em in the microwave.”
Walking past Angie on his way to Vaughn’s office, Tommy laughs at her retort, gives her the thumbs-up. When he gets to Vaughn’s office, the door is closed. He knocks, then goes in.
“Man of the hour,” Tommy says, sitting down in front of Vaughn’s desk.
Vaughn looks up from his notes, the stress obvious on his face. Tommy sees it’s not a good time for small talk and gets right to the point. “I found something out about Balzac. He knows Jack Bunting, that Amtrak guy who went after your cousin at the NTSB interview. They were good friends growing up.”
Vaughn’s jaw drops. “You’re kidding me.”
Tommy shakes his head. “I thought I’d start at the beginning with Balzac. I found out he grew up in Upper Darby, so I went to his high school and started asking around. Someone pointed me to a guy named Joe Dell, who was a basketball coach and gym teacher when Balzac went to school. You should see this guy—he’s pushing seventy and runs marathons. Anyway, he agreed to meet me and gave me an earful about Balzac and two of his friends. He says they were bad news. The biggest of the three, Bunting, got kicked off two sports teams for beating people up. The other one, he said, was just creepy. The kind who didn’t talk much, but you could tell he was fucked up in the head. Dell said he was a runt.”
“What’d he say about Balzac?”
“He told a story about Balzac coming up to him in the parking lot after school. He thinks he gave Balzac a hard time about something that day, but he can’t remember what it was. So Balzac follows him into the parking lot and complains. They must’ve been standing next to Dell’s car, because Balzac makes some remark about it. Dell doesn’t think anything of it, but a couple of days later, the car blows up in his driveway.”
Tommy pauses, waits for Vaughn to say something, but Vaughn is speechless.
“Dell called the police, but there was nothing left of the car, so there was no way to trace who it was that tampered with it. I asked Dell if he confronted Balzac about it. He told me no way. Said he stayed away from him after that, he had a wife and two kids.”
Vaughn takes some time to process it all. Then he tells Tommy about the missing track foreman, Reggie Frye, and the NTSB’s current thinking that it must’ve been vandals who moved the TracVac into the path of Train 174. Tommy considers this, and Vaughn asks, “So, what’s your next step?”
“I’ve put some feelers out about Bunting through a guy I know at Amtrak. I’m also going to talk to that third kid from Balzac’s high school. Unlike Bunting and Balzac, he never made it out of Upper Darby. I’m hoping maybe there’s a little jealousy there I can exploit.”
Vaughn nods. “Let me know what you find out. Just be careful. Bunting or Balzac might still have ties to their old neighborhood.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to say who I really work for.”
“Just watch your back,” Vaughn says. But Tommy is already up and moving toward the door. He closes it behind him.
A few seconds after Tommy leaves, the door opens again. It’s Mick.
“You’re certain a press conference is a good idea?”
“I feel like I don’t have a choice. Balzac and Day’s smear campaign can’t go unanswered, Mick. I have to go on the offensive. For Eddy. For my whole family.”
“I get it,” Mick says. “Just be careful not to say anything in Eddy’s defense that can be shown to be false. If the NTSB digs up evidence that disproves something you say, your cousin will be worse off than if you’d kept quiet.”
Vaughn purses his lips, stares at his boss. He knows the stakes. But the time for rope-a-dope is over. It’s time to hit back.
Fifteen minutes later, Vaughn sits before the microphones and addresses the cackle of reporters. “First, I want to thank the members of the press for agreeing to be here and for listening to Mr. Coburn’s side of the story. My client, too, wants to thank you, and to thank everyone who might be watching now. But, first and foremost, he wants me to express his profound sadness, his grief, and his horror over the suffering caused by this terrible trag
edy. Engineering a train is an awesome responsibility—a responsibility that Mr. Coburn took very seriously. That such a terrible thing happened on his watch has left him heartbroken. He thinks about it night and day, and he knows that it will follow him for the rest of his life.”
Vaughn pauses. “Like many of the passengers, Mr. Coburn suffered serious and painful injuries. They included significant trauma to the head resulting in swelling of the brain. A ruptured spleen. A bruised liver. Broken bones in his face. Badly broken bones in his right leg.” Again, Vaughn pauses.
“Because of the head injuries—and the doctors tell us this is very common—Mr. Coburn cannot recall the actual accident. The last thing he remembers before the crash is taking the train into the curve. The next things he recalls is waking up inside the crumpled locomotive, being carried out, being transported in the ambulance. He shared this with the NTSB investigators, when he voluntarily agreed to be interviewed by them. An interview at which he answered all the questions put to him in good faith. An interview he wanted to continue even after a high-ranking Amtrak official started attacking him. An interview that I, as his lawyer, had no choice but to end. Since that time, at Mr. Coburn’s insistence, I’ve continued to make myself available to the NTSB and have spoken with Mr. Wexler, the head of the go-team. Mr. Coburn’s focus at this point, in addition to trying to recover from his injuries, is on helping the NTSB any way he can to find out what caused the train to crash.”
Vaughn lifts his water bottle, takes a drink, and continues. “What we know as of now is this: Mr. Coburn had no drugs, no alcohol, no prescription medications in his blood. So he was not operating the train while under the influence.
“He was well rested, having made sure, as he always does, to get sufficient sleep. He has no medical conditions that would make him unfit to operate a train. And, importantly, Eddy Coburn has a sterling safety record with Amtrak.” Here, Vaughn pauses to direct the cameras to a Lucite trophy in the shape of a tall pyramid. “This is an Amtrak President’s Safety and Service Award for Safety Awareness, and it was bestowed on Mr. Coburn just last year. The fact is that Ed Coburn was a safe engineer, and was known to be a safe engineer by his peers and superiors at Amtrak.”
Vaughn looks away from the trophy, back to the cameras. “Now, it’s been speculated that Mr. Coburn had to have been distracted at the time of the crash. Some have suggested he was on the phone talking, or texting. But the fact is that the NTSB found his cell phone in the wreckage of the locomotive. It was zipped in his knapsack. And when the NTSB examined the phone, they found that it was powered off, and that no calls or texts had been placed to it or from it after the train departed from 30th Street Station. This is very important. There was another crash a few years back, of a Metrolink train in California. The engineer, who was killed, failed to stop at a red signal because he was texting on his cell. That didn’t happen here.”
Vaughn pauses, takes a sip of Smartwater. “Now, you’ve heard some things about mistakes that Mr. Coburn made many years ago, when he was a teenager. And it’s true that he was involved in a tragedy that cost a police officer his life. Mr. Coburn offers no excuses for that terrible day. It was foolish, even for a teenager, to drive as he was driving. No question about it. And Mr. Coburn didn’t fight any of the charges brought against him. He accepted his punishment, served time in prison. And for a period afterward, he struggled. But then Mr. Coburn turned his life around. He met Kate, the love of his life—an elementary-school teacher who works with special-needs children—and married her. They’re expecting their first child in the coming days.
“Ed Coburn’s family is proud of him. His father, Frank, is a hero Philadelphia police officer wounded in the line of duty. He now runs a boxing gym, where he offers special instruction to underprivileged kids. Ed’s mother, Claire, is a retired trauma nurse who worked at Temple University Hospital, saving the lives of badly injured people. Ed’s two sisters, Peg and Jean, are both working mothers, juggling careers while raising families of their own. They all stand by Ed.
“As do I. My name is Vaughn Coburn. I’m Ed’s cousin. And like every other member of our family, I believe in Ed. And I stand by him. And, again, I want to thank everyone watching right now for keeping an open mind. For not rushing to judgment, as some members of my own profession, I’m sad to say, are baiting you to do. Thank you.”
With that, Vaughn stands.
“What? No questions?” Vaughn hears the voice call after him but keeps on walking out of the conference room.
Behind him, the disappointed reporters give the “Cut” signals to their cameramen, and they, too, file out.
“So, what did you think?” Vaughn asks as he walks into Mick’s office and sits down. Behind him, the big wall-screen TV is still on.
Mick uses the remote to turn off the television. “You did a good job,” he answers from behind his desk. “I did get the impression that the press were expecting something more. Like, maybe a new revelation about what caused the accident.”
Vaughn nods, opens his arms.
“I’ve played the press myself,” Mick says. “In our line of business, you have to, sometimes. But there’s a price to pay, if they catch on.”
“What, that they’ll screw me?”
Mick smiles. “They’ll do that anyway, if they think it will help them sell a story. But now, they’ll be looking to screw you.”
“Better me than Eddy.”
Mick shakes his head no. “It’s not that simple. You can’t forget that your personal credibility can be the difference between victory or defeat for your client. In taking their measure of the client, jurors will look at you as much as they do him. Some judges, too. And the first question the public asks whenever the defendant’s attorney makes his appearance is whether the lawyer is just a high-price mouthpiece brought in to find loopholes, or is a champion for the oppressed.”
Vaughn stares but says nothing.
“The point is that the press can play a big part in shaping that image, either way.”
Vaughn takes a deep breath, bites his lower lip. He wants to ask, What was I supposed to do—let those two P.I. attorneys continue to paint Eddy as the bad guy without hitting back? And how was I supposed to get the press to show up without promising them something big?
Instead, he takes another deep breath, counts to ten. “I hear you.” He stands, looks at Mick, starts counting again, and leaves.
Across town, in a big brick building on Delancey Street, Benjamin Balzac sits at the end of his twenty-five-foot conference table, watching Vaughn’s press conference. The table sits beneath a massive, rustic chandelier that Balzac bought from the owner of a Montana cattle ranch. The rancher hadn’t wanted to sell, but Balzac offered a price too high to turn down. The table itself Balzac found in a Scottish castle. The owner, who claimed it was once owned by William II, seemed a little too eager to sell, so Balzac offered a miserly price and waited six months for the cash-strapped laird to cave.
Sitting around the table are eight of Balzac’s associates, all members of his Amtrak-crash team. Five are men. Three are women, two of whom Balzac has slept with, one of whom—Laurie Mitzner—he intends to. The associates are holding their breaths, waiting to see how Balzac reacts to the press conference so they’ll know how to react themselves.
On the television, Vaughn signals the press conference is over. The scene switches to the anchor desk, where an attractive female newscaster with dazzling white teeth and dead blue eyes does her best to juggle the emotions she believes her audience might be experiencing. “You’ve just seen Vaughn Coburn, the lawyer, and cousin, of engineer Edward Coburn. As you heard, the engineer, like many of the passengers, was badly injured, and the tragedy has affected the engineer’s whole family.” Here, the anchor pauses to realign herself. “Of course, none of that matters to the badly injured passengers or to the families of those who lost their lives. For them, what matters is that the engineer deliberately hid his history of alcohol abuse, violence, and
a fatal driving record when he applied to Amtrak, and that the railroad failed to properly vet him before hiring him to drive its trains. And, of course, the biggest question still remains: Why didn’t the engineer see the TracVac ahead and stop his train . . .”
The anchor continues, but Balzac turns off the TV.
Balzac looks around the table. “Damage assessment?”
“Too obvious,” a male associate jumps in.
“Too little, too late,” says another associate.
Balzac considers their input, then, “Laurie, what’s your view? Did the lawyer make you like his cousin? Make you forgive him, or want to forgive him?”
Laurie stares at Balzac as he looks directly into her eyes. Oh God, he knows. Her heart races, but she does her best to keep her voice flat, measured. “He made some good points, albeit nothing new. The lack of drugs in the blood, the fact that the engineer volunteered to be questioned by the NTSB. I thought the safety-award thing was strong.”
Balzac nods. “And, of course, the cell phone. It was turned off and locked away.”
The associates glance at one another, and Laurie knows they’re hoping someone will come up with an answer to the phone thing. That must be what Balzac is expecting.
“Any ideas?” Balzac asks, his voice rising. “Or are you all just going to sit there and wait for good news to drop into our laps? Laurie? Do you have any thoughts?”
Laurie can feel her face drain of blood. He knows for sure. That’s why he’s torturing me. “I . . .” She draws a blank.
An Engineered Injustice Page 13
