Personal injuries kc-5

by Scott Turow

  "Anyway, when Rollo recovers, he's like some character in an old novel or the Book of Ruth, My life is yours, whither thou goest. I don't know exactly what he pledged, but he's had his nose in Brendan's hind end ever since. Brendan becomes a cop, Rollo becomes a cop. Brendan becomes a deputy P.A., Rollo gets assigned to the P A.'s investigation unit. Brendan becomes a judge, and pretty soon, Rollo's the bailiff in Brendan's courtroom."

  Given the living arrangements, Robbie said, there was occasional sniggering. But his bet was what you saw was what you got-two crusty old bachelors, farting and walking around in their underwear. For one thing, Robbie said, Brendan'd had a thing on the side, his secretary Constanza, for more than twenty years now. Constanza was married, which suited Brendan just fine. He had once told Robbie he would no more care to live with a woman than with a parrot. 'Love the plumage,' he said, `but too much jabber. Easier this way.' Indeed, in one of his acidic, if antic, moods, Robbie told us Tuohey had delivered a fairly entertaining monologue about why liquor was a more dependable companion than a woman. Kosic, who said almost nothing to anyone, seemed to share these attitudes. He, too, had a girlfriend, a widow, his second cousin, whom, conveniently, he could never marry.

  In Robbie's opinion, the motive for Kosic's and Tuohey's living arrangements was not sex but money. Brendan had extended Kosic's duties as bagman far beyond the usual role of a simple intermediary. The `rent,' as Robbie called it, which certain Common Law Claims judges paid to remain in their courtrooms, was delivered to Kosic and never went farther. For more than a decade, Robbie had never seen Brendan reach into his pocket, even for a quarter for a newspaper. Kosic handled everything-he paid all household expenses, the light bill, the phone company, with money orders purchased at random currency exchanges and banks. Brendan had no credit cards and rarely used his checking account. Meals, vacations, clothing, his debts from his card games at Rob Roy, his country club, even the little bit on the side he had always given Constanza, were always handed over by Rollo. `Forgot my wallet' was the excuse with those who did not know him well; others did not bother to ask. Occasionally, apropos of nothing, Brendan would mention his mother's Depression-learned lessons about the evils of credit and the virtues of hard cash. Bobbie had never heard anything similar from Sheilah, Mort's mother. It was just Brendan's play, always a step or two ahead of his imagined enemies.

  This debriefing about Kosic followed Robbie's payoff to Walter by several days. It was occasioned by Wunsch's warning that Robbie couldn't expect a 'miracle-of-the-month club' regarding the three new contrived cases that had landed on Malatesta's docket. From the start, Sennett and McManis had known that there was a finite number of complaints they could file in a short period. Tuohey's cohort would feel put upon and suspicious if there were too many `specials'; Mort could become curious about the extraordinary volume of referrals coming upstairs from me; and the judges might grow wary if Robbie and McManis kept showing up as matched opponents, like Tracy and Hepburn. On the other hand, Stan was under continuing pressure from D.C. to keep the Project moving forward. By now he'd taken a small coterie of Assistant U.S. Attorneys into his confidence, never seen by us and rarely mentioned, but whose presence was indicated by the volumes of paperwork forthcoming in connection with each of the new complaints Stan had produced every ten days or so.

  But the judicial assignments on the new cases continued to fall out inconveniently. Besides Malatesta, two cases had gone to Gillian Sullivan, who was temporarily unapproachable. At the moment, Judge Sullivan was under intense media scrutiny that resulted from some ridiculous inebriate remarks she'd made to a Hispanic attorney who'd arrived late in her courtroom. Only one case had gone to Sherm Crowthers, who was proceeding with it at his usual phlegmatic pace. And none had been assigned to Barnett Skolnick, the only judge who accepted money from Bobbie directly and the one whom Sennett was dying to bag as a way to quiet the doubters in D.C. When Sennett had suggested trying to transfer a case or two from Malatesta to Skolnick, Robbie had scoffed.

  "Sure, Stan, I'll just give Rollo Kosic a bang on the phone and tell him the FBI prefers Judge Skolnick." Besides, Robbie pointed out, Kosic was clearly favoring Malatesta at the moment, probably because his docket had been consumed by a lengthy environmental tort case that had limited the business he could do on the side. But now McManis had recognized that an opportunity was presented by Walter's warning that for a while Malatesta wouldn't risk more favorable rulings for Feaver.

  "That's your excuse to talk to Kosic," McManis said. "Because you need results on one of these cases right now."

  Naturally, Stan was excited by the prospect of breaching Tuohey's inner circle so soon. But Robbie continued to insist it was impossible.

  "I don't do Rollo. I mean, I talk to him. He'd bounce into my usual pop stand now and then, so sometimes I'd buy him a beverage. But Rollo's the kind of guy, you hear from him when he wants. I never call him. And no matter what, I don't talk dirty to the guy. I couldn't sell it. 'Always act in your own person,"' Robbie concluded, another quote from Stanislavsky.

  "Sure you can, Robbie," said McManis soothingly. Jim had removed his glasses. He did this whenever he became intent, so much so I'd become convinced that the glasses were windowpanes, merely part of a disguise. Now he extolled Robbie's abilities as an actor and a salesman, and told him there'd be no problem setting up a meeting to appear accidental. "We have this little thing we do called surveillance," said McManis. He pointed outside, meant to indicate Joe Amari. "We'll tail Kosic for a while. When he shows up at your spot, you'll get a call."

  Jim had never pushed Feaver before. He was a model of reason and caution, but he'd clearly noticed what I had in Robbie's quick-eyed resistance, something I hadn't observed in the months I'd been his lawyer. This wasn't a down mood, or even pre-game butterflies. Robbie Feaver was flat-out scared.

  One afternoon in late February, as Robbie and Evon were prepping a client, Heidi Brunswick, for her dep, Bonita put a call through to Robbie. He was sitting in the tall leather chair behind his desk, and as he listened he did not move. Evon assumed Lorraine had taken another bad turn. Instead, he ended by saying, "You're the greatest," and buzzed Bonita to get Mort, who was defending a deposition in the Palace. "Let's go," he told Evon. Suzy, the other paralegal, was summoned to finish with Heidi, and Robbie, with apologies to the client, ran to the door.

  "New one," he told Evon in the elevator. By now she recognized the look. After nearly eight weeks in his office, she'd seen Feaver through major depositions, even one day of a trial that settled after jury selection. Yet nothing excited either Robbie or Mort like the prospect of signing up a new client. They reached a state of high alert, as if they'd smelled gunpowder on the air. The fact that Robbie's days in practice were limited and that he could expect to share in the fee on these cases, even from a jail cell, did nothing to lessen his enthusiasm. But for Robbie, charming and landing a new client was a thrill in its own right, a supreme moment of performance in which success meant he'd persuaded at least one person he was a better lawyer than anyone else in the tri-cities.

  The present matter was what Robbie referred to as a "good case," meaning there were prospects for a huge recovery. The would-be client was a thirty-six-year-old mother of three. Yesterday her doctor had sent her home from his office telling her that her chest pains were bronchitis. The paramedics had just brought her in to Sisters of Mercy's emergency room, unconscious and fibrillating in the aftermath of a major coronary infarct. Evon understood enough of the grim alchemy of this practice, in which misfortune was turned into gold, to realize that the damages could escalate dramatically if she died, leaving three motherless children. Feaver pushed the Mercedes toward eighty on the highway. He had been tipped on the case by the administrator of the E.R.

  "We were real good friends for a while," Robbie explained.

  He clearly knew his way around the hospital, slamming the pressure plate on the walls that swept open the doors to the E.R. with a hydraulic whoosh. His open
topcoat floated behind him like a cape as he hustled to the administrator's office.

  The woman was striking, African-American and something else, Polynesian perhaps. There was a trace of some high-cheeked ancestral beauty. She was in her mid-thirties and carefully put together, wearing a large designer scarf that covered her shoulders and was knotted mid-chest. Bobbie kissed her on the cheek. She placed an arm around him in greeting and directed him at once down the corridor into the waiting area for the emergency room.

  The space was crowded, most of the people in the four rows of plastic chairs evincing the beleaguered blown-apart look of anxiety so intense it had grown numbing. A bloated young woman, with a ratted hairdo in some disarray, cradled one child, a newborn, while two more, both boys, near three, climbed around the seats, raising a commotion. She spoke to them harshly and occasionally flicked out a hand to deliver a swat that each child was already skilled in avoiding. She finally caught one of them and his howls filled the small area.

  In spite of the cold, an African-American teen was dressed on top in nothing but a white T-shirt, on which blood had already dried brown. He held one arm with the other. A crude bandage of gauze and tape was visible near his shoulder. An older woman, his mother, Evon guessed, sat beside him, humped up in a bulky brown winter coat, tossing her head in chagrin every now and then. The boy, Evon took it, had been stabbed.

  In the very last row were the people Robbie and the administrator, Taylor, were looking for, the family of the woman who was somewhere behind the curtains a hundred feet away, struggling for her life. A lumpy-looking younger man with the pallor of a potato and thinning hair appeared to be the husband. He had his hands folded piously and looked completely bewildered. Beside him was an elderly couple, a porky, hard-faced man with black hair and a pack of cigarettes bulging in his shirt pocket, and his wife, whose jaw was already trembling from the strain of prolonged weeping. She cried again as soon as she saw Robbie with Taylor. She could not wait to tell her story. Still in his coat, Robbie slid into the chair beside her and immediately took her hand.

  "Robbie Fever," he said. Evon was sure he'd pronounced it that way: Fever. From a gold case in his suit pocket, he offered his card.

  By herself, several seats down, sat the oldest child, who, perhaps, had insisted on coming along. Neatly dressed, she was about nine, with dishwater curls. She'd sunk down in her chair, looking into her lap. She alone seemed to have fully taken on the gravity of the situation, recognizing the emotional abyss over which the entire family now teetered.

  After a while, Robbie took out his yellow pad and began to write. He followed each of the family members intently as they related the story. About ten minutes later, Mort arrived, with his slow-paced, shuffling limp, and took up the seat between the daughter and her father. He spoke first to the child. He was quiet and made no effort to humor her, but hovered, awaiting her responses. When at last he received a decisive nod, he reached into his briefcase and removed a book of crossword puzzles and a pencil, Mort turned next to the father.

  The two lawyers were like that, literally enveloping the family from both sides, when a doctor called out, "Rickmaier, who's with Cynthia Rickmaier?" He was in operating scrubs, including the green head cover, and he was followed, somewhat timidly, by two female residents, one also dressed for surgery, the other in a long white coat with a stethoscope at her throat. The surgeon, eager to get this over with, apparently took Robbie and Mort for family members. He motioned them all to an adjoining room and began speaking as soon as he had closed the door. He did not get very far before the old woman let out a primal shriek. Grief drove her to a comer of the room, where she looked up to a crucifix above her and cried out expressions that did not quite cross the threshold to words. Her husband cast a puzzled look her way and shook his head. The doctor had continued speaking and Robbie scratched a few things on the yellow pad beside him until one of the residents seemed to take note, causing him to lay the pen aside. At that point, he followed the dead woman's mother to the corner and put his arm around her.

  Mort, in the meantime, had steered the little girl to her father, who, even standing, still clasped his hands. He had said almost nothing, but tears coursed beneath his glasses, as his daughter leaned against him. Mort, on the other side, took her hand. He was quietly weeping himself. More startling to Evon, Robbie, when he returned to the other family members, was weeping, too, real tears leaving trails of light on both cheeks. She never cried. That was another lesson from the playing field. No tears, no matter how bad the blow.

  Robbie, in time, began talking to the family about arrangements, offering assistance with a funeral home. He motioned to Evon and gave her a phone number. As she left, she saw him reach into his briefcase for the contract. She knew the form by heart now. "We hereby exclusively retain the firm of Feaver amp; Dinnerstein to represent us…" He passed it and the Mont Blanc pen down to the husband, now sitting limply in a chair. His arm was around his daughter and his eyes were fixed on the large clock. His mother-in-law was demanding he sign. They were going to get the shits who did this to Cynthia. She couldn't leave this place, she said, without knowing the process had begun.

  When Evon returned, Robbie was on his feet. His eyes were dry now. His coat was buttoned, the muffler was in place, and his briefcase was under his arm. No doubt the contract was in there. Robbie kissed the mother-in-law goodbye and said another private word to her. Before he left, he reminded the two men, even the little girl, to talk to no one else about the matter, especially not anybody from the insurance company. Refer all calls to them. Mort remained beside the little girl.

  "Make a note," Robbie said to Evon, as soon as they were in the Mercedes. "Call Ozman County and fund out when the coroner's inquest is. We need to be there. There's a lot riding on when the coroner fixes the time of the major infarct. If he says it was three days ago, then the doctor's going to claim all the damage was done and even if he'd made the correct diagnosis yesterday, it wouldn't have saved her." Robbie gave Evon the name of a pathologist he wanted to attend the inquest with them, an expert witness who could come to an opposite conclusion from the county coroner's, if need be.

  Feaver was pensive as he drove, allaying Evon's worst fear that he might even celebrate. They were on the highway now and the Mercedes was a placid environment. Sisters of Mercy was far out, beyond the suburban sprawl. Here the frozen corn shocks of the autumn lay fallen, elbowing through the snows that filled the vast fields beside the road.

  "Can I ask something?" Evon said eventually. At her center, a storm of odd feelings was agitating. "When I met you, you said your name was pronounced Favor. Like `Do me a favor.' But just now you said `Fever.' You say it like that most of the time."

  "Fever. Favor. I answer to both. When I was going to be a star, I thought Fever was better. Hotter, right? I go back and forth. Maybe I was trying to be a hit with you that first day." He shrugged, with his usual whimsical appreciation for his own deviations. Most of the people around him said `Fever,' in fact. "And besides," he said, "there's the public relations thing."

  She didn't understand.

  "The name was Faber. In the old country. It's one of those Ellis Island stories. The immigration officer couldn't understand the accent and my grandfather tried to correct him, so F, e, a, v, e, r ended up on his papers. But, you know, some people who think this way, they'll look at me, they'll think Favor. Faber. Jew. So I'm Fever. With the Rickmaiers. Part of the play."

  She took her time with that. Robbie smiled briefly, pleased as always to gall her.

  "And what about the crying? Is that part of the play, too?"

  "I guess. That's sort of our trademark. Mort and me. You know, out on the street, we compete, every guy, every gal in this business, we all think we're the greatest trial lawyer who ever held a legal pad, we all want the work, it's greed and ego. Like with these people. This is a good case, okay? Real good. Word' 11 get around fast. Probably a dozen guys'll have some kind of in, the aunt or the neighborhood
cop or their minister, and all of them will come beat on the Rickmaiers' door to say they know lawyers better than Feaver amp; Dinnerstein. I'm gonna have to stick closer to these people than the label on their shirts for at least three weeks just to deal with that. But anyway, when these other lawyers put the knock on us, they'll ask, Did they cry for you? You know, like that's our trick. Did they sit up and fetch?"

  "But is it?"

  "What?"

  "A trick. Can you just do that?"

  He asked her to hold the wheel and pressed his hand to his nose. He might have been meditating. When he finally faced her, beads of quicksilver brimmed in both eyes. He blinked, sending the tears down each cheek, but his grim expression gave way at once to a sly smile.

  "I'm good," he told her as he resumed the wheel. She watched him, easing back into the gray leather, his cheeks still moist from his dramatics, while he luxuriated in the shock he inevitably inspired. He found her contempt so reliable, she realized. And with that, some premonition broke through the inner commotion. Was she being played?