An Engineered Injustice (Philadelphia Legal)

by Myers, Jr. , William L.

  Nunzio looks King up and down. “Yeah. He can leave now.”

  Day and King exchange uncomfortable glances. Then Day nods toward the door, and Corey leaves, but not before glaring at Erin.

  “So, let me tell you where we are with the litigation,” Day begins. He explains the number of cases the firm is handling, the number of attorneys working the cases, and what the firm is doing to investigate the crash. “Of course, we’re not satisfied to leave it to the NTSB. They’re just a government agency. Well intentioned, certainly. But undermanned. No, in litigation of this magnitude, I prefer to do my own investigation . . .”

  Day drones on, and Erin watches Nunzio study him, taking in the patrician haughtiness of Day’s voice, the disdainful look in his eyes whenever he’s speaking of someone other than himself.

  The mobster’s upper lip curls, revealing his canines as he turns to her.

  “So, Ms. Doyle,” says Nunzio, interrupting Day in midsentence. “What do you think? Do you believe the engineer really can’t remember what happened?”

  “Well—”

  “Erin isn’t part of the Amtrak litigation,” Day interrupts. “She’s not really up to speed on the matter.”

  Nunzio slowly turns his head in Day’s direction and fixes his stare on the attorney, whose face seems instantly to drain of blood. “Maybe she should be part of the litigation,” he says, before turning back to Erin. “Maybe she has some ideas about the crash. Who knows, maybe she has an inside track,” he adds, smiling at his pun.

  “Yes, well, there’s always room for one more person on the team,” Day says. “There’s no such thing as overstaffing a case of this importance.”

  Erin and Nunzio ignore Geoffrey Day, who’s oblivious to the subtext between them.

  “Well, of course I don’t know any more than what I see and hear in the news,” Erin says. “And I promise you, from everything I’m told, the engineer truly doesn’t recall the accident. I’m sure he wishes he could; it’s probably eating him up that he has no answers for what happened.”

  Nunzio nods his head ever so slightly. “I hope you’re right, Ms. Doyle. It would be a shame if it turned out that young man was holding back information. That he was lying.”

  Erin wishes she could look away from the mobster, but the gravity of his dark eyes grips her. The two of them stare at each other wordlessly for a long moment, until Day breaks the ice.

  “I get the sense that the two of you know each other,” Day says, trying to sound perky.

  “We have friends in common,” Nunzio says, still looking at Erin. Then, without more, he stands and says, “Well, this has been most interesting.” The crime lord takes Erin’s hand in both of his and smiles. “Ms. Doyle, it’s been a pleasure meeting you. Please tell our friends I was asking about them, and that I haven’t forgotten them. Not for a minute.”

  “Of course,” Erin answers, forcing a smile. “And I’m certain that you’re always on their minds as well.”

  The meeting concludes, and Geoffrey Day walks the city’s most notorious gangster to the elevators, where he thanks Nunzio effusively for considering the firm.

  A few moments later, Erin is in her office trying to catch her breath when Geoffrey walks in. “What was that all about? Between you and that . . . criminal.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Who are these friends you share?”

  Erin hesitates. “I . . . don’t think he’d want me to mention their names.”

  “I have to say that I’m feeling very uncomfortable right now. This firm has a sterling reputation. I cannot afford to have it sullied by association with known villains.”

  “You, uh . . . don’t want to be his lawyer?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with representing a person who’s despicable. Being his friend is different.”

  Erin stares at her boss, folds her arms across her chest.

  “You know what they say about birds of a feather.” And with that, Day turns away.

  In his own office, four blocks to the east, Vaughn dials his phone. Patrick Branch was the attorney who represented Dr. Matthew Anderson in the med-mal amputation case brought two decades earlier by Benjamin Balzac. Now in his seventies, Branch is retired. It took some work on Vaughn’s part to track him down.

  Branch answers the phone, and Vaughn introduces himself only as a Philadelphia lawyer. “I came across the Third Circuit’s decision in the McCrory case, and I’m hoping you can tell me a little about it. Do you remember the case?”

  “Remember it? I’ll never forget it.”

  “The physician, Dr. Anderson, seems to have self-destructed on the stand. Did you know he was going to do that?”

  “No. It took me by complete surprise. The whole way through the discovery period, he seemed perfectly reasonable and committed to defending himself. He insisted to me that it wasn’t his fault he amputated the healthy leg; that his nurse had marked the wrong appendage. And he seemed truly upset for the girl, who ended up a double amputee. But then, when he got on the stand . . . Well, you read in the appellate decision what happened.”

  “Did you know why he said all those things? He had to know his testimony would inflame the jury.”

  “Did I know then? No.”

  Vaughn considers Branch’s wording. “How about now?”

  There is a long pause on the other end of the line. “Do you know anything about Dr. Anderson?” the lawyer asks.

  “No. I never heard the name before I read the decision.”

  Another long pause. “Find out who he’s married to.”

  And with that, the line goes dead.

  Who he’s married to?

  Vaughn turns to his computer screen and googles the doctor. A list of links appears: hospitals.jefferson.edu, LinkedIn, a site called vitals.com, and others. There is also a collection of images of the surgeon showing him in a suit, wearing a lab coat, dressed in surgical scrubs, plus a YouTube video in which Anderson speaks at a medical conference. Toward the bottom of the first page is a category called “Related searches for Matthew Anderson,” which includes a list of other links. One of them, amazingly, is entitled, “Matthew Anderson Wife.”

  Vaughn clicks on the “Wife” link. And there it is: Dr. Anderson standing next to his wife, Elizabeth Balzac Anderson.

  “Holy shit.” Vaughn says the words out loud. A few more clicks of his mouse confirm what he suspects—that Elizabeth is Benjamin Balzac’s sister. Anderson, it turns out, married her about a year after the trial in the McCrory case. The implication strikes Vaughn like a mallet.

  Turning back toward his phone, Vaughn calls Alexander Hogarth and tells him what he’s learned. “Please tell me that what I’m thinking happened here didn’t happen. That I’m missing something.”

  A-Hog snorts. “Missing something? I’d say you found it.”

  “But that would be terrible.”

  No answer.

  “Would a surgeon actually deride a patient at trial like Anderson did just to help his future brother-in-law win a big verdict?”

  “Son, if that’s all you think happened there, then you are missing something.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Think about it. If you can’t figure it out in two minutes, call me back.”

  Vaughn hears the phone click and replaces the receiver on the cradle. He sits back in his chair. It takes only a few seconds before Vaughn grasps what A-Hog was hinting at: The surgeon and Balzac didn’t just set up Dr. Anderson’s trial testimony. They set up the whole case.

  “No. That can’t be.” Vaughn picks up the phone and calls Hogarth back. “That can’t be right,” he says as soon as A-Hog picks up the phone. “A doctor flushing his whole career down the drain just to help his future brother-in-law? That can’t be what happened.”

  Vaughn hears Hogarth laugh on the other end of the line.

  “You don’t know anything about medical malpractice, do you? What happened is that Anderson’s insurance carrier paid the verdict. Th
e good doctor himself walked the plank . . . right to another hospital. Where he is now head of orthopedic surgery.”

  Vaughn hangs up again and closes his eyes. Balzac is a monster who surrounds himself with other monsters. And Hogarth says Day is just as bad.

  This, Vaughn realizes, is who he and Eddy are facing. This is the enemy.

  Now that he sees the opposition for what it is, Vaughn knows what the next question is and how to make use of it. And on that score, he knows one thing for sure. You have to fight fire with fire. Tomorrow, he will call the press conference he’s been thinking about. He’ll do his best to let the world see the real Eddy Coburn. The good guy, not the villain painted by Day and Balzac.

  17

  MONDAY, JULY 14, CONTINUED

  It’s 7:30 when Erin arrives at Vaughn’s apartment with the takeout Chinese they agreed to have for dinner.

  “Did you buy the wine?” she asks when he opens the door.

  “A cheap bottle of sauvignon blanc,” he says. “Just like you asked for.”

  It’s the first time she’s been at Vaughn’s place on Spruce Street. Vaughn opens the door and leads her up the stairs to the second floor. She enters the apartment and pauses to take it in. Bare wood floors, no drapes, an Ikea wall unit, a mismatched coffee table, and a cheaply framed print of two boxers, one standing over the other. The only things Vaughn seems to have spent any money on are the oversize distressed leather couch and the 55-inch flat-screen TV.

  “I love what you’ve done with the place,” Erin says. “Or maybe not done is what I should say. Are you deliberately going minimalist?”

  Vaughn struggles to find something clever to say. Before he can come up with anything, Erin asks, “Have criminal-defense firms stopped paying associates in actual money?”

  “All right, now you’re pissing me off.” Vaughn takes the white cardboard boxes from Erin’s hand and sets them on the coffee table, next to a pair of plates he’s laid out. He walks to the refrigerator and pulls out the wine, screws off the top, and pours into a pair of glasses.

  “Seriously,” Erin says once they’ve started eating, “are you that hard up for cash that you have to live this way?”

  “I’m saving up. Plus, I still have some student loans to pay off. And I don’t mind this place at all. I’m almost never here, for one thing. For another . . . Let’s switch the subject. How was your day?”

  Erin chews a mouthful of lo mein noodles, then answers. “Interesting, to say the least. Your capo stopped by.”

  Vaughn stares, suddenly serious. “Tell me.”

  “He came in to interview Geoffrey about maybe hiring our firm to represent his son’s estate. That was the cover story, anyway. I think he was really there to feel me out—about us. And Eddy.”

  “This is not making me happy,” Vaughn says. He doesn’t want Nunzio anywhere near Erin.

  “Relax. I handled it quite well, if I do say so myself.”

  “This isn’t a joke, Erin. Jimmy Nutzo is a killer. And he wants revenge for his son’s death. He’ll go after anyone he thinks is to blame. And I doubt he’ll take pains to prevent collateral damage.”

  Erin sits back on the couch, suddenly serious herself. “I get it, Vaughn. Believe me. It scared me shitless to be in the same room with him. But I made it clear that I don’t have any inside information on Eddy. And I think I also convinced him that your cousin is telling the truth about not remembering the crash. You should be thanking me instead of lecturing me.”

  Vaughn exhales, closes his eyes, then opens them. “I’m not trying to lecture you. I’m just . . . It worries me to think that you might wind up in Nunzio’s crosshairs.”

  Erin considers this, then says, “Well, in any event, he won’t be coming back to Day and Lockwood. I watched how Nunzio looked at Geoffrey during our meeting, and it gave me a hunch. I waited a few hours, then called my friend Laurie Mitzner. She works at Benjamin Balzac’s firm. She confirmed what I suspected: Nunzio went right to Balzac’s office after he was done with Geoffrey and hired him. Laurie is part of Balzac’s Amtrak crash team, and she sat in on the meeting. She said Balzac and Nunzio laughed about Geoffrey. Nunzio said his father taught him never to trust a man who smells better than his wife. Balzac had some choice words of his own.”

  “Figures that Nunzio would go with a roughneck like Balzac.”

  Erin furrows her brow as she piles some more lo mein onto her plate. “I’m a little worried for Laurie,” she says. “She didn’t sound right on the phone. I asked her what was up, but she brushed me off.”

  “You think she was shaken up by Jimmy Nutzo?”

  “No. I got the sense that there’s something else going on—with Balzac himself.”

  Vaughn thinks about this. “That wouldn’t surprise me, based on some things I found out about him today.”

  Vaughn shares what he learned about Balzac from the defense attorney in the medical-malpractice case, and from Arthur Hogarth. Erin stares, mouth agape, as Vaughn confides his belief that Balzac and his future brother-in-law conspired to deform a young girl and get rich off it. He finishes and lets it all sink in.

  “I don’t even know what to say to that. It’s so insane.”

  “It is insane, if it’s true.” Vaughn pauses, then asks, “Have you ever heard anything like that said about Geoffrey Day?”

  Erin doesn’t hesitate. “Never. And I wouldn’t believe it if I did hear it. Geoffrey’s driven by money, no doubt about it. But I can’t see him actually physically injuring someone for a verdict, no matter how big. And didn’t you tell me that A-Hog said Balzac’s amputation case was his big break? That he’d been a small-timer before that? Geoffrey’s always been rolling in dough, from the time he left Hogarth.”

  Vaughn nods his head, thinks for a minute. “Tell me about Relazac.”

  “That mess. It was a huge multidistrict litigation. Geoffrey had the inside track that the drug caused birth defects. He had the whole firm working on it. We filed cases all over the country. But it all fell apart when the first couple of cases went to trial. Our science turned out to be junk, and the cases were dismissed. We eventually had to scratch the entire litigation.”

  “Hogarth said Geoffrey was about to flounder when a white knight rescued him, financially.”

  Erin nods. “He was trying to keep it all a secret—how much trouble he was in. But word got around the firm. Lawyers were sending out résumés. Staff, too. Then, all of a sudden, everything was somehow fixed. Geoffrey called a big meeting and told everyone there was nothing to worry about. To prove his point, he hooked his laptop to the big screen in the conference room and linked in to the firm’s operating account. It had millions in it. Millions and millions. You could hear everyone exhale. And that was the end of it. We all went back to our offices, and the firm continued functioning like nothing ever happened. Everyone tried to guess which bank had bailed Geoffrey out, but we never found out.”

  Vaughn mulls what Erin has told him. “A-Hog seemed to think that Day still needs money.”

  “If so, it’s news to me. But even if he does need money, what does that have to do with your cousin?”

  “I don’t know yet. But somehow, I get the sense it’s all tied together. I feel it in my gut. It’s like one giant web. Day’s money problems. The crash. The missing track foreman Frye. Bunting going after Eddy at the go-team interview. Day and Balzac joining up. The probable fact that they’re pressuring the DA to bring Eddy up on charges. I can’t close my eyes without feeling like I’m going to burst!”

  Vaughn tosses his chopsticks onto his plate and sits back.

  “I know this is hitting close to home for you.”

  “It’s not close to home. It is home, for me.”

  Erin studies Vaughn closely, weighing whether to say what she’s thinking. “Is it . . . possible . . . ,” she begins, slowly, “that maybe you’re too close to this?”

  “Too close to be representing Eddy, because I can’t be objective? That’s what my cousin Jean
thinks. But here’s the bottom line: so long as Ed wants me to represent him, I’m going to. I owe him.”

  “You owe him? Why? Because he’s your cousin?”

  Vaughn doesn’t answer. He purses his lips and looks away.

  “What am I missing here?”

  Vaughn turns to Erin, stares for a long minute. Then he takes a deep breath.

  “Eddy and I were real close growing up. We’re the same age, thirty-four, and were born two weeks apart. Eddy’s father opened a boxing gym when we were teenagers, after he left the police force, and Eddy and I started taking lessons. We loved it. We both got very good. Not good enough to fight professionally, but neither of us wanted that anyway. We were going to college, going to get good jobs. Neither of us was sure what we wanted to do for a living, but we were both confident we’d figure it out.

  “The summer after high school graduation, everything turned to shit for Eddy. We both had summer jobs, and we agreed to meet up after work one night at the Vet for a Phillies game. The game went way into extra innings, and it was late when we left the stadium—and even later when we left the lot after some postgame tailgating.”

  Vaughn closes his eyes. He can remember it like it was last night. It was an unusually cool evening for late July, the temperature in the mid-seventies. The sky was brilliant with stars. A perfect night for driving with the windows down. Eddy drove a red 1988 Ford Mustang. The car’s fourteen-year-old body was dented, scraped, and patched, but the engine was pristine, thanks to Eddy’s mechanical skills. Vaughn drove a black 1985 Chevy Camaro. It looked even worse than Eddy’s car but ran just as well, thanks again to Eddy.

  “I don’t remember how long we drove around that night, but we covered a lot of ground. We went down I-95, then back up to 276, to the Schuylkill, to 476 past Allentown, then back down to 76. We took turns passing each other, and we sped the whole time, for sure. Any minute, I expected to see the colored lights flashing behind me, but I didn’t care; it felt so great to open up the cars. Eddy must’ve felt the same way. But we never did get pulled over.