All the Beautiful People We Once Knew

by Edward Carlson

  “Affirmative.”

  “Did you take incoming fire from the enemy?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “And what are you doing now for work?”

  “I can’t do much because of all the pain. But I occasionally pick up odd jobs.”

  “What kind of odd jobs?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” Lazlis interjected.

  I continued. Feeling in stride.

  “Mr. Thomas. Do you pick up odd jobs like construction, or landscaping? Odd jobs that require physical labor? Or do you pick up odd jobs like working in a store or an office?”

  “Just odd jobs.”

  “Yes, but what kind of odd jobs?”

  Thomas stared at me while resuming his tic, conveying a silent threat.

  “That’s enough, Mr. Harker,” the judge said. “You’re badgering him, and badgering this man is not something I’ll permit in my chambers. He was deployed overseas. Now he’s doing odd jobs to stay afloat.”

  “Your Honor, respectfully, I disagree with the use of the word ‘deployed.’ He was not ‘deployed.’ He was ‘employed.’ And there are a great number of individuals who carry firearms as part of their employment who are not soldiers. Just as there are private security guards who carry firearms who are not police officers.”

  “You have a point there,” the judge said. “Mr. Lazlis, anything to add?”

  “Your Honor, respectfully, these are the types of details I cautioned in my motion against paying too close attention to today, as the details surrounding Mr. Thomas’s multiple injuries are too voluminous to resolve at one hearing. We are simply here today to move the court to order WorldScore to pay Mr. Thomas two-thirds of his salary now and to authorize treatment of his injuries as we litigate the permanence of those injuries and the scope of loss of use of his extremities.”

  “Your Honor,” I interjected. “Just as the law arguably mandates WorldScore to perform certain functions with respect to payment and benefits, it also requires Mr. Thomas to comply with various administrative processes. There is a system, Your Honor, designed to prevent chaos and protect WorldScore from being forced to ladle out cash to every individual who alleges injuries from working overseas as a US military contractor. There are forms and there is procedure. There is reporting and there is substantiation. And from what I have seen Mr. Thomas, and Mr. Lazlis, have simply discarded this process while essentially threatening …” I caught myself from falling backward into the burning cauldron of magma at the center of the earth. “Pay up or something bad will happen. It’s blackmail.”

  “Sounds like blackmail to me,” the judge said. “Anything to add Mr. Lazlis?”

  Thomas stared at me. Burning with rage or impotence, hard to know which, gelding or bull. That tic had stopped, we’d put an end to that for now, his small platinum-blue eyes expressionless but observant as the gears in his head that prevented him from striking the nail to hang that which just had to be hung began to turn. I could hear them. Big Mike will strike at twelve. Lazlis spun his college ring. The soft bits of Thomas’s labor-thickened hands crimsoned, soon to start popping off fingers.

  “Your Honor, my client was Special Forces. He fought for this country and he fought for our freedom. And now WorldScore would rather see him starve, lose his home, and not treat his injuries than provide him the benefits to which he is entitled. So that WorldScore can pocket the premium they collected from FreedomQuest and keep it rolling in the money markets.”

  I could see where we were going. All of us now crammed together inside the whiskey barrel, Lazlis leading us over the falls, plunging into patriotism.

  “Nothing about Mr. Harker or Ms. Powers even remotely compares to what my client has sacrificed for this country. And I will not permit them to make him suffer anymore.”

  Splash.

  Thomas resumed his psyops tic. I felt hollow, quick, like a corked bat. Ready to whack them both. The judge’s magnified eyes tracked the volley.

  “Federal law shifts the burden from employee to employer in these cases,” Lazlis replied.

  “You haven’t proved a prima facie case,” I replied.

  “You’re forcing my client to carry all the burden.”

  “You haven’t proved a prima facie anything.”

  “I beseech Mr. Harker to rebut the presumption that my client’s injuries resulted from anything other than his employment in Afghanistan with FreedomQuest.”

  “Enough, Mr. Lazlis,” the judge said. “We get it.”

  “And for that FreedomQuest needs to establish an intervening cause. Which it can’t do.”

  “Enough, Jim,” the judge bellowed.

  Thomas stopped midtic. Outside, fingers ceased striking keyboards and someone closed a window. The claylike mask of concern that sealed Celeste’s face the moment she spotted me today alone in the courthouse without Fleeger had softened. She seemed almost pleased.

  “Your Honor, please excuse my zealous advocacy on behalf of my client but I have hundreds of these cases and this is the first time WorldScore has simply refused to pay anything at all while we litigated the scope of injuries. It’s very frustrating. Very frustrating. And I have good reason to suspect there may be some conspiracy to make an example of Mr. Thomas.”

  “Come on now, Jim,” Celeste said. “There’s no conspiracy. It’s all in your head.”

  “Excuse me, Celeste, are you an officer of the court? Are you? I didn’t think so. So then why are you talking?”

  I stepped in.

  “File the proper forms, follow correct administrative protocol, provide us with proof that your client can’t work—something other than Dr. Spectrum’s VA report—and we’ll contemplate making modest payments to Mr. Thomas while we litigate the permanence and scope of your client’s alleged injuries.”

  “Sounds reasonable to me, Mr. Harker,” the judge said. “Sound reasonable to you, Mr. Lazlis?”

  “I need a solid guarantee that Mr. Thomas will receive bimonthly compensation payments now to keep him and his family afloat while the litigation proceeds.”

  “What do you say?” the judge asked me.

  “Agreed. But in exchange we want to depose Mr. Thomas as soon as possible.”

  “Deal?” the judge asked Lazlis.

  “Deal,” Lazlis replied.

  The judge shot up from his chair, almost free to do something else.

  “You two are big boys. Work it out. Exchange your discovery now. Start producing documents. Mr. Harker, I’m sure you’ll want to see some medical records. Then you can depose Mr. Thomas. And then I want you to settle this case and get it off my goddamn docket. It’s a waste of fucking time. Make it go away. So both Mr. Thomas and I can get back to living. Sound good to you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Thomas replied.

  The judge winked at Thomas, kissed Celeste on the cheek, and departed with a flurry of black robes and irascible impatience, his dutiful clerk holding the door for him.

  “Please keep your word,” Lazlis said to both me and Celeste. He sounded earnest.

  “We always keep our word, Jim,” she said. We packed our bags and slung them over our shoulders. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

  I passed behind Thomas, half expecting to discover his spine protruding from the base of his skull. He leaned forward, as if submitting himself to his executioner. There it was, the source of his discomfort. The knob of a flaming red furuncle pinpricked with pus and irritated by the stiff denim collar of his bolero-cut Carhartt.

  Hand-rolled cigarette number one. I deserved it, the way most lawyers think they deserve a jolt of vice after appearing in court. Federal police officers in midnight-blue uniforms foot-patrolled the courthouse grounds, hips weighed down by tactical gear, and I inserted my face inside the hand cave to light the cigarette. The sky, the hardscaping, and the courthouse facade formed an arena of granite. Celeste descended the stairs behind me, moving like a spider atop black heels with red soles. After mating, the female eats the male.
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  “Not bad, counselor. I’m almost impressed. Not that there’s any excuse for Robert standing me up, but it wasn’t the catastrophe I feared it would be.”

  I nodded in feigned agreement, releasing twice the smoke I inhaled.

  “You know what the play is now, right?” she asked.

  “Pay him nothing?”

  “No, not pay him nothing.” I thought she would play slap me. “We just won’t authorize payment anytime soon. Or at least not until Lazlis starts producing documents responsive to our discovery demands. Make Lazlis start digging through Thomas’s military and personnel files and soon he’ll realize what he’s up against. He probably has this case on contingency, so the more we make him work now on culling, studying, redacting, and producing discovery, the more we incentivize him to settle later for a fraction of the initial claim. WorldScore indefinitely delaying settlement while Kilgore works up the file is, for now, the same thing almost as not paying Thomas anything. Lazlis gets agitated, Lazlis fatigues, Lazlis communicates to Thomas what Thomas comes to understand is attainable. Which will be quite less than he thinks he deserves. Maybe a bit for the ankle and the back. Eventually. But absolutely nothing for the PTSD. We have to let it marinate for a while in Thomas’s disappointment. Meanwhile, I’ll send you some of the surveillance footage Honda recently shot of Thomas at home. There’s no home run, but it’s a start. Some stuff in there we can work with. But congratulations, Mr. Harker. You did a lot better in there today than I thought you would.”

  “Is that a compliment?” I asked.

  “Yes, it’s a compliment. And I almost never give compliments so you should be very pleased with yourself.”

  She shivered and adjusted her scarf.

  “Can I ask you a question about Robert?”

  I told her yes she could ask me a question about Robert.

  “Is he divorced yet?”

  “Separated.”

  “So he’s not not here today because of some female drama, right?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Good.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need him to be unfettered.”

  “Trust me. He’s unfettered.”

  “I don’t believe you. And trust me, Stephen, I can tell when a man places a bit too much emphasis on attaining the brass ring he thinks he’ll find between an attractive young woman’s legs. He was practically a horny teenager on that phone of his last night.”

  I refrained from repeating the transparent lie that he was sick and she handed me her luxurious handbag adorned with leather swirls and tassels as she inserted her hands into black leather gloves that stretched beyond her wrists, covering her tiny, expensive quatrefoil. Man-child Christ of Byzantium with his gilded halo gazed up at me from the marked pages of the leather-bound book she carried in the bottom of her bag.

  “Last night he told me you’re his best friend.”

  I feigned disbelief.

  “He did. He said you were like a brother to him.”

  I felt embarrassed. Couldn’t hide it. She looked at my feet.

  “Bold footwear Mr. Harker. I didn’t peg you for such a fashionista.”

  I hated that word. Refrained from telling her so. Between her Birkin bag and my Hogans we probably appeared to Thomas like domestic enemies. To be punished by summary execution.

  “You don’t like speaking with me, do you Stephen?”

  “I have a deep-seated fear of professionally competent English women.”

  She laughed.

  “You don’t find me irresistibly charming?” She displayed herself with her black leather hands. Now more comfortable with me, almost candid, and I, in turn, reciprocated. I eased up. Felt the pleasure of doing so.

  “Look, Stephen. I really need Robert dialed in here on this case. I’m not saying you didn’t do a good job in there. You did. But I need Robert to step up his game.”

  I reminded my ego that my existence on this planet did not depend on successfully litigating federal workers’ compensation claims against former military contractors on behalf of WorldScore.

  “There are cases that no one above me in the food chain cares about. Which is almost all of them. But then there is the occasional case that becomes very important to some very important people, individuals who usually don’t bother to care much about the day-to-day doings of the lilliputian handling the litigations.”

  “Until they do.”

  “Correct. And now they do. And now I’ve been tasked with fighting this one. And in doing so I’ve gone way out on a limb to recommend Robert take the lead. But now it’s my judgment on the line as well. In addition to his.”

  I told her I understood.

  “Do you really, Stephen? Because I have a hard time believing you can understand what I’m about to tell you because I haven’t really discussed it with anyone outside of WorldScore.”

  “They’re worried about opening the floodgates.”

  “Yes, they’re worried about opening the proverbial floodgates. They’re always worried about opening the proverbial floodgates. But the thing with insurance is there is always going to be some loss anyway. Claims will arise that eventually you have to pay, despite how distasteful it may be to do so. But the debate now is: How does WorldScore allocate that risk. Risk being loss. And you guys need to understand that there is a system-wide refactoring in the works. We are refactoring here, Stephen. We are thinking outside the box. And we want to own this space. We want to insure with the same élan as, say, Google. Or Microsoft.”

  I restrained myself from mocking her use of the words élan and insurance in the same sentence.

  “Refactoring triggers a whole bunch of things at the same time. Creativity. Innovation. Disruption. But this is the type of case that throws off all our plans and corporate strategies in which WorldScore has invested millions. Because the problem with insuring people is that you’re insuring people. It’s not just about these private soldiers returning home claiming injuries we can’t disprove. It’s also about costs. And let’s just say there are gathering forces who strongly believe we should axiomatically pay these claims on most advantageous terms to the company. Let Thomas submit his claims online and then promptly send him his payment, but on the condition he waives his rights to litigate and accepts less than what he’s owed. And thus the company would save on both ends. By paying Thomas less.”

  “And by not paying lawyers.”

  “Precisely. Automation is coming, Stephen, even for the lawyers. Algorithms designed by code writers in the basement who lack the same appetites for scotch and soda as you and Robert.”

  “And you would rather fight?”

  “Yes I would rather fight. Which is why you are here and Robert is supposed to be here as well. Because I’ve sided with fighting for what is right so as not to reward bad behavior as opposed to mitigating what is wrong in exchange for a profit. Jesus, not everything can be automated on this planet. Which means I’ve sided with the humans over the botnets, or whatever the fuck they’re called, being designed to do your job.”

  Behind Celeste, at the base of the federal prison across from the courthouse, a mother and daughter, virile women, Redstaters, stood clutching strings of helium-inflated Mylar balloons rotating Happy Birthday. Four stories above the street a figure appeared in the thick plastic slit of an opaque, chicken-wired prison window. The mother and daughter released the balloons and the balloons floated upward, twisting silver and ribbon, lighter than air and reflective, away, now toward, now closer, now before the figure in the window, the shadow of a head watching them float upward and beyond, toward the courthouse, now across the prison roof, still bolted with cables to prevent another brazen escape attempt via helicopter.

  “Stephen?” Celeste asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You just disappeared for a second. What did I just say?”

  “Let’s pinch Thomas a bit. To see if he pops
.”

  “I don’t know why but this one so rubs me the wrong way.”

  “And you don’t like that?”

  “I don’t like being rubbed the wrong way at all.”

  The daughter collapsed to the hard, cold ground and the mother struggled to pick her up. Celeste dialed her town car.

  “Oh dear,” Celeste said, watching the women try to regain their composure, phone held to her ear. “The heart is such a delicate muscle.”

  “How so?”

  “Because it’s capable of being shattered by other people’s poor decisions.”

  A black Lincoln town car braked behind her. She kissed my cheek and the driver opened the car door and closed it behind her and I walked south toward the office. My pocket buzzed with the impatience of a breaking story. Multicolored Snowfall in Siberia after Downed Satellite Ignites Drought-Stricken Boreal Forest. Twelve words unlikely to have ever before been assembled in a sentence, let alone a Reuters headline digitally pushed to an iPhone.

  Way up ahead, across the expanse of the granite arena, Thomas and Lazlis walked toward lower Broadway, Lazlis lugging a beaten burgundy litigation bag and Thomas relying on a four-pointed cane, an orthopedic brace fastened around his lumbar sacrum. As if one misstep could cause his entire musculoskeletal system to crumble. A beetle on its back. Behind them crept Honda, between shrubbery and streetlights, hidden by statue, geometry, poles, clicking his long telephoto lens, symmetrical patches of gray-white hair, checking the shot on the screen, switching in lenses from the pockets of his tactical vest, getting his man. Thomas turned and stared in Honda’s direction, all intuition and reflex, and pointed at Honda for Lazlis to see, who pivoted his client again toward Broadway by the forearm. Lazlis didn’t want to hear it. As they continued walking Thomas strapped a respiratory mask to his face and over the top of his large white and brown head, small white filters, pupalike, now pulsing with his every inhalation of the city’s hostile air. A cold light rain commenced, tessellating the sidewalks and releasing the scent of spent petroleum imbedded in the macadam.

  8

  WHEEZING A BIT LIKE old klezmer on vinyl, I entered the office building, told myself I needed to stop smoking, take up jogging, good for replenishing cells and reversing permanent lung damage. Pharmaceutical sales reps in matching purple golf shirts—Team Paxil—shouted at one another as they exited the elevator bank, one of them now making a suck dick motion to the former NYPD security guard with busted knees who told them to keep it down.