The Ambulance Chaser

by Richard Beasley

  Quite a lot in the end, and I was beginning to realise that I had at least learnt one thing from the whole painful, embarrassing process. Always ask questions. Always demand an answer. Every decent person does.

  ‘Where were you yesterday?’ Clare asked as soon as I arrived at work the next morning.

  ‘Adelaide,’ I said, leaning back in my chair. I was sitting in my kennel, a pile of files in front of me.

  ‘Adelaide?’

  ‘With Hardcastle, Jarrett and De Luca. Via the corporate space shuttle.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Interesting question,’ I said. ‘I think it’s because they think I’m a crook.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like most people do.’

  Clare had been resting her arms on my partition, but stood up straight now and looked at me sternly. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘They want me to do a bordereau. Mainly on in-house claims. I started with the Adelaide files yesterday. These are some of the Sydney ones here. The Perth and Brisbane ones are being put together for me, and I think I’m doing Melbourne next week. Then Asia and California.’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘Like I said, I think it’s because they think I’m a crook.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  I shrugged. I’d spent the night working on my conspiracy theories and mulling over Greg Stewart again. He’d handled Broun’s claim. Now they were both dead. Then I moved on to the Fadwells and the Dobsons. Freak wave, my arse.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ I said. ‘It’s about Greg Stewart.’

  ‘Can I stop you?’

  ‘I don’t want to sound ghoulish, but did you . . . did he usually work late? I mean, did you notice?’

  ‘Why are you asking this?’

  ‘Did you see him work late?’

  She sighed, then looked at me blankly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t. So what?’

  So I had let my imagination run wild. So had Greg Stewart. It got him a fatal golden handshake courtesy of the upper echelons of South Pacific management. Or maybe he was just unlucky, in the wrong place at the wrong time, a victim of a senseless street crime. And my promotion? Maybe I was just the recipient of some sympathy for someone down on their luck. An un-utilised talent finally recognised. Or just the kind of disbarred criminal that South Pacific was looking for to recruit as a member of its family. Another greedy, ambitious capitalist bastard on the make, ready to sign a Faustian bargain with a corporate killer, to be trusted with all its dark, dark secrets. I was buggered if I knew. But I didn’t like the sound of myself. Not one little bit.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘the name of that claims manager that handled the Dobsons’ claim. Was it Gary Parsons?’

  Clare stared blankly at me again. ‘I want you to tell me what you’re up to,’ she said. She was getting angry. It was easy to tell. She reddened up under her light blush of make-up, and a few freckles shot across her cheeks like dying stars.

  ‘I will, but not now,’ I replied. ‘I’m right?’

  She shook her head. ‘Yes,’ she said as she turned and started to walk off.

  I got up and followed her around to the office she had just moved into as a newly promoted Team Leader. ‘Do you know where he lives?’

  ‘No idea,’ she said, not looking up from the report she’d immediately started to read. ‘Ask around.’

  ‘I’d like to avoid that,’ I said.

  ‘Naturally,’ she sighed. ‘Speak to personnel. They’ll know.’

  They did.

  I wanted to see if Gary Parsons of Lindfield in Sydney’s leafy North Shore would talk to me about the Dobson file he’d handled. Did he have it all the time? Did it ever go to external lawyers? Did he know anything about the police investigation? Was the entire executive team here full of sadistic murdering bastards? Was he one of them? Would I be signing my death warrant by even speaking to him? I wanted to know fast. I decided I’d pay him a visit.

  I contemplated phoning him, but settled on a cold call at his house instead. I wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to say, for a start. I wanted to see him face to face, gauge his reaction to questions. If I rang him and asked if he minded me coming to see him, he might say no, point-blank. He might rat on me to the evil forces within South Pacific. He might do that if I turned up at his house, but I figured I’d be able to tell that if we had a one on one.

  Or a one on two. It was my volunteer night at the legal centre, and I had an idea about the safest way of approaching Gary Parsons.

  Toffee Fanuatapu and his nephew, Kava, were standing in the small reception foyer of the Randwick South Legal Centre when I arrived. He was leaning on a slab of long-necks that was sitting on the counter. Kava was carrying another slab under his arm, holding it like it was a pound of butter.

  ‘Chris, mate,’ Toffee said. ‘That letter was a beaudy.’

  I shook his hand, warily because I still had bruises from Hardcastle, but Toffee had one of those gentle yet firm grips some men spend a lifetime trying to perfect. At least, it was gentle for a man who looked like he could crack open a coconut between his thumb and forefinger. ‘The beer’s for me?’ I said, looking at the slabs.

  ‘Slab from each. Least we could done,’ he said.

  ‘Been to the immigration agents like I told you to?’

  Toffee gyrated his head around slowly, somewhere in between a nod and a shake. ‘Sort of,’ he said. Which I knew was Samoan for no, not as such. ‘Got time to crack one open?’ he said.

  Toffee could knock off a slab of long-necks as an aperitif, and ordinarily I’d join him for as long as I could stay conscious, but there were people to see. ‘Sorry, Toff,’ I said. ‘There’s a lot of clients tonight and we’re one short, apparently. Another time.’

  ‘You sure?’ he said, fishing a beer out of the case and almost pleading with me.

  I was drooling, but said no. ‘I would, mate, but there’s a debt matter, a couple of unfair dismissals, and an AVO against some form of animal if past history is anything to go on.’

  ‘Sounds like you busy,’ he said slipping the bottle back reluctantly.

  ‘Not to mention the four murders I’m investigating,’ I said.

  Toffee just shrugged. ‘Okay, mate. Later then, eh? Rain check,’ he said, slapping me on the back. He shook my hand, as did Kava, who said, ‘Matai umu diva multi tufuga upulu agua.’ Which I’m certain means you are the greatest lawyer in the common law world. Neither of them blinked an eyelid about the four murders. Things obviously get pretty hairy after dark sometimes on the Samoan island of Fanuatapu.

  Laurie Egan turned out to be the only client I saw that night. He had, once again, asked specifically for me. Lawrence Egan was a few years older than me, about forty now, and had sought assistance from the RSLC for over a quarter of a century. Folklore had it that he was the centre’s first ever client. If he was, he hadn’t really set the right tone.

  Laurie couldn’t stop exposing himself. After each court appearance he told me he would try, but the pressure would build, and then eventually he’d be out in public, fighting that feeling, losing the battle gradually, and then the next minute find himself stark naked in the back of a police van.

  In his late teens he did a bit of harmless flashing outside his old high school. Look at me, see how far I’ve come, look what you taught me, that sort of thing. Regrettably, as an adult he fell into the habit of riding his bike around Sydney’s south-east suburbs with his hands off the handlebars and his erect penis pointing towards the heavens. Lance Armstrong he wasn’t, but the presentence reports all seemed to indicate he was harmless enough, and his sins resolved into fines and bonds.

  I adopted Laurie, or he me, when he decided to graduate to outdoor masturbation. To be honest, when I was at law school Laurie wasn’t exactly my idea of a client, but I remained a loyal counsel as three further incidents followed, the last one in the grounds of a church.

  It was all seemingly done on impulse. Laurie and hi
s various psychologists swore that there was no premeditation. It was like picking his nose. That’s how I described it to an absolutely startled magistrate when I was ‘called’ to the Bar and represented Laurie in court for the first time. I can still remember my analysis of the incident. You know you shouldn’t do it, you know it’s disgusting, but every so often you find yourself with your finger up there. Without even thinking. ‘That’s what it’s like for Mr Egan,’ I had submitted.

  The magistrate opened her mouth, but no words came out at first. Then she said, ‘Most people seem to get through life, Mr Blake, without masturbating in public.’

  ‘That’s true, your worship,’ I said. ‘But not without picking their nose.’ It was my first week at the Bar.

  The magistrate immediately took a few months off Laurie’s good behaviour bond in light of incompetent counsel. Nearly three years had passed since I last saw Laurie. He had a steady job. He was married, and a new father. I thought he had put his nose-picking days behind him.

  ‘You going well?’

  ‘A lot’s happened in the last few years, Laurie. How ’bout you?’ I was sitting behind the desk in the interview room in front of Laurie and his long-suffering wife, Deborah, who’d insisted on listening in. ‘It’s been a while since I saw you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Work good?’ Laurie always beat about the bush when he had to fess up to beating about the bush. He’d misbehaved again, that was clear.

  ‘Not exactly.’

  Laurie sat there looking anxious. Deborah sat there looking thunderous. She was twice Laurie’s size, although to be fair, Laurie was a wee bit small. Not quite hobbit-like, but closer to one than most. Although not many hobbits I know masturbate in public.

  ‘Okay, Laurie,’ I said, ‘what have you done this time?’

  ‘It’s a bit of a long story,’ he said.

  I grimaced. ‘Tell me, anyway.’

  Laurie had gone out with workmates, with whom he became exceedingly drunk celebrating someone’s retirement. He ended up at a nightclub for over 35s, where he had homed in on the best set of breasts he could lay eyes on, and with impeccable suaveness introduced himself to their owner by grabbing them firmly. Now, with his string of indecent exposure charges, Laurie had an indecent assault to add to his record of honour.

  ‘This is serious, Laurie,’ I said once he’d finished. ‘Adding someone else to the equation. A touched victim is very different to a flashed victim.’ Laurie looked down, overwhelmed with shame. ‘With your track record it’s pretty easy to make a submission about what sort of road you’re on,’ I continued. ‘What’s the next step, a judge is probably going to be thinking.’ Probably the priesthood, the senate, or a career in Rugby League is what I’d be thinking, but it didn’t take me long to learn from the nose-picking analogy that the less I said about what I really thought, the better.

  ‘He never touches me,’ Deb Egan said angrily. I looked over at her. A face that I’d seen run from young to old without even slowing down for middle age. A stupid git of a husband. ‘We never have sex,’ she added.

  Laurie and I shifted in our chairs like eight year olds needing a worm tablet. Christ almighty. Deb Egan had married a man who seemed to forget it existed within the four square walls of the matrimonial bedroom, then couldn’t keep it in his pants once let loose on the streets.

  ‘What about Monday?’ Laurie eventually said.

  ‘Nothing much will happen on Monday,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to go off to that shrink again. You’ll need someone who’s going to make it clear that you’re not on a dangerous path. A presentence report will be ordered.’

  ‘You’ll be there for me on Monday, though, won’t you?’

  I shook my head. ‘Can’t, I’m afraid. I’m not allowed to anymore.’

  The Egans looked shell-shocked. It was nice to be wanted. ‘But no one else knows me proper,’ Laurie cried. Except for three dozen high school students and the congregation of St Jude’s Baptist Church at Sans Souci.

  ‘Why?’ Mrs Egan asked.

  Talk about long stories. ‘The details don’t matter much, Deb,’ I said. ‘Let’s just say I did the legal equivalent of exposing myself in public.’

  Laurie looked distraught. ‘I don’t know why I’ve been so stupid,’ he said softly, ‘I really don’t.’

  I stood up. ‘You’ve come to the right ex-lawyer again then,’ I said as I ushered them through the door.

  When we reached reception, Deb Egan grabbed me by the forearm and moved us away from Laurie. ‘He can’t go to jail, Chris,’ she pleaded. She no longer looked angry, just fragile. ‘We’ve got an eighteen-month-old at home, and the two other kids. I can’t pay the rent or cope all on my own. If he goes in and loses his job . . .’

  Then she started to cry, right out at reception, in front of all the other bemused clients. I took hold of her, and she unleashed a torrent on my shoulder. The student helping me got some water, and another volunteer lawyer found the Kleenex. After a minute or so she managed a few deep breaths, got her sobbing under control, and moved back from my shoulder, brushing gently at the wet stain she’d left.

  ‘It’ll be okay,’ I said. ‘It won’t come to prison. Not if Laurie does what we tell him. He can’t do this again, though. Nothing like it.’

  Deb Egan blew her nose and managed to blow away with it the look of frail hopelessness that had nearly split her before. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, looking over at her little man in the corner, ‘he won’t.’ I could see by the way Deb Egan marched him out of the building that Laurie would finally get the ultimatum he needed that the courts in this country had long since ceased to be able to give. Reform, or die. Somewhere inside me is an optimist. My money is always on reform.

  I had a quick look over the law student’s record of the advice given during our interview with Laurie. The kid must take great lecture notes. They were brilliantly succinct.

  History

  penis in public

  erect on bike

  serial masturbation

  ejaculated at church once

  pissed – hands on tits

  no sex at home

  Monday – Chris can’t do – exposed himself in public too

  I looked up at the student. ‘Perfect,’ I said, and signed it.

  I sat on my own at the big communal table in the middle of the RSLC while the others interviewed the remaining clients. The warm inner glow of usefulness washed through me. I pondered that. Helping a serial exposer, public masturbator, and now breast-grabber made me feel good again. Jesus Christ. The things that give us a sense of self-worth. Maybe Laurie Egan was working his way up through the wretched ranks of deviancy to some horrendous crime. More likely he was just a pathetic little git who had now reached the high point of his life of crime with a drunken boob squeeze at an adult disco. I don’t have the skills or the training to make that call, and it’s not ours to judge at the RSLC.

  On my volunteer nights I sat opposite people who wanted to sue the world simply because they didn’t understand how it worked and believed it had somehow conspired against them. I sat opposite petty crims and drunk drivers. I sat opposite bashed wives, dads who wanted to take their kids, and mums who wanted to keep them. There have been the underpaid and the underprivileged. The plain stupid and the preyed upon. People who simply wanted to make a will, and others who wanted parking fines revoked.

  I have treated these people with kindness, courtesy and reassurance. And, if I’m honest, I have treated some with barely concealed contempt. I have been a Good Samaritan, and a patronising bastard. Lawyers can be high and mighty, or down and dirty. You can be a sanctimonious wanker or a wise-arse cynic. The obligations are still the same. To talk rationally to someone who tells you he wants to sue the prime minister or premier over the condition of his Housing Commission kitchen. To the exploited, the injured and the discriminated against. To someone who wants an AVO against a cat. To someone who has committed some staggering act of idiocy, or who simply can’t
pay a debt. And to stupid gits who can’t keep their zipper sealed when they’re out, or their hands to themselves.

  The system means lawyers have to look after people like Laurie Egan. Welcome to the partially free society with an almost independent judicial system that is Australia. You want something else, move to Pyongyang. Or Camp X-Ray. Laurie Egan pulls his penis out in public. He’s like most governments, ours included. A bit antisocial.

  I’m a bit antisocial too. A lot of ambulance chasers are. Some are even worse. There are ambulance chasers who grossly over-charge, or receive outrageous contingency fees. There are ambulance chasers who ignore their client’s fraud and those who actively encourage it. There are ambulance chasers who use friendly doctors who are even less convincing liars than the malingering plaintiffs they examine. There are those who file suits with little regard for the law and even less regard for the direction they might be taking it. There is all of this. But there’s more also.

  When people took fenfluramine and phentermine to lose weight, and lost their hearts, lungs and brains as well, the ambulance chasers were there. I call them tort lawyers, but I was never the kind of counsel to argue over semantics. So I’ll just say that when infertility and pelvic inflammatory disease visited women who used the Dalkon Shield, the ambulance chasers were there again. If someone’s failing heart was electrified by a pacemaker liable to explode at any moment, they knew who to turn to – their friendly neighbourhood AC.

  Ambulance chasers were there when the Ford Pinto burst into flames, and at Bhopal after methyl isocyanate had poisoned the air, and at Prince William Sound when Exxon coated 1200 miles of Alaska’s coast with oil. When a child falls from the bars of a jungle gym and lands on foam instead of cement, think ambulance chaser. Every ‘Caution – Wet Floor’ and ‘Danger – Don’t Dive’ sign in the world was painted by one of us.

  I could go on, I could talk tobacco, I could talk any number of poisons, any number of dangers, any number of injuries, any number of people left dead or maimed. The politicians hate us. So does big business. American CEO billionaires call us ‘rats’. Only praise from God would be a better endorsement of our worth. The world could live happily without some ambulance chasers. The others are antisocial. To all the right people.