O'Shay sat back in his chair. A big man with deep-set, piercing blue eyes women loved and men found scary or trustworthy, depending upon their personalities, he was larger than life, inches over six feet and well over the recommended healthy weight for a man his size, although much of it was sheer muscle. “Tell me about your injury.”
And the litany began. Colby had worked there first the summer after high school. He had hammered flooring, Sheetrocked, dug dirt, painted exteriors, framed foundations, poured cement-he had done it all. He had built sprawling, spanking-new suburban houses for so long he had accumulated a million indignities, all of which he unloaded on O'Shay-along with resentment that ran so deep in him that his skin burned red as he talked.
“Since I was seventeen, I worked,” he said. “I started at the bottom. I did what you might call shit work, what nobody else wanted to do, and always slapped a smile on my face while I was at it.
“My wife and me live in a cottage built in 1923 and looking even older than that. That's what we can afford. Every day, I was putting in new sinks, flagstone pathways, fountains, all for other people.” He almost spat with outrage. “We don't even have a dishwasher.”
“We need to pinpoint when the pain began,” said O'Shay.
But Colby had been saving up for this moment, and he wasn't squandering it by going straight to the point. “Time went on, they put me in charge of a crew. Didn't pay much more, but it was better telling other guys what to do, drinking coffee, not coming home too sweaty to touch my kids. Then one day they go, ‘Sorry. The guys are complaining.' Well, yeah. I worked ' em hard. Nobody got away with nothing. Hell, I knew all the tricks to avoid working too hard. Bastards claimed I lacked people skills.” His laugh was ragged, angry. “They demoted me. I'm strong, always have been. But I'm forty-seven now and haven't done heavy labor for years. Those jobs are for younger guys and they know it. I think they forced me into that position thinking they could get rid of me once and for all. That I'd quit.”
Something in Colby's eyes disturbed O'Shay. He looked in them and saw ponds full of scum, rough debris, hidden dangers.
Wide shoulders stretched the dress shirt Colby wore. “So last summer, August, I think, I was loading furniture from a truck for a model home. Even here in the valley, it can get hot. I bet it was ninety in the shade. Imports from Thailand, I think. Mostly, these designers pick lightweight stuff for these homes, keep them looking light and airy for buyers by using a lot of bamboo and cane but there was this armoire, a mahogany piece as heavy as a piano. Me and another guy were angling it through a narrow doorway and I heard this cracking sound like something rotten gave. My back hurt like a son of a bitch right away.”
O'Shay had watched for signs of injury when the man entered his office. Colby had sat down easily, not lowering himself with the exquisite care of a man with a herniated disk or other nerve problem. His eyes looked clear and unbothered, not shadowed by pain, and nothing he did favored his back. “This man, your coworker, would he be willing to tell us about that day?”
“He's gone. Illegal, probably. Didn't speak much English. He split at Christmas for El Salvador or somewhere.”
“Ah.”
“I can't stand fully upright anymore,” Colby said, “because I hurt so bad. I can't lift anything heavy. I can't do my job anymore. I can't even make love to my wife, although I'm not sure I want you to tell the court about that.”
O'Shay made a note. “I want to know anything relevant,” he said. “What makes you remark on that?”
“Well, you know. Positions. I can't do all the acrobatics I used to.” He snickered and crossed his leg with a graceful hoisting of muscled thigh.
O'Shay nodded.
“I heard you've been in business forever. Heard you go to bat for the little guy,” Colby said.
“Twenty years in business. We have a lot of farmworker clients.” And, oh, those people really suffered.
“I guess they get hurt sometimes, too.”
“Sure,” O'Shay said, scribbling notes, noting down the dozen vague problems Colby now went on to describe as unbearable.
“You say you don't get along with other employees.”
“Buncha critics and complainers,” Colby said. “When I do something right, there's people lining up to take credit.” He had a mean line for a mouth.
“You've seen a doctor?”
“Several.” Colby slapped a bundle of medical records down on O'Shay's desk. “I got one will swear I oughtta be dead.”
According to their usual arrangement, Rosa knocked after twenty minutes had elapsed, and without waiting for a reply, entered the room. “Emilio Lopez on line one,” she said urgently.
“Ah, thanks.” O'Shay turned to Colby. “I have to take this. Let's talk again tomorrow morning. I need a list of all the physicians you've consulted and all the treatments you've had. Rosa, get the usual permissions signed by Mr. Colby before he goes so we can access his records, okay?”
“That guy,” Rosa said after getting the forms signed and seeing the man out. She handed O'Shay a file that needed attention. “Another gray morning.”
She talked that way, poetically. What she meant was, Colby was a loser.
“Should I dump these papers now or is he one of the unstable ones who needs to be let down easy?”
“Keep the papers. We're taking the case.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Nudging a loose pile of folders on his desk into order, Rosa said, “You're kidding, right? That guy could bench-press four hundred pounds without breaking a sweat!”
O'Shay shrugged.
Rosa put a hand on her hip. “He couldn't even keep a limp going all the way out the door. He was practically dancing the cha-cha out there, and you know why? Because he's lined up the best worker's comp attorney in Salinas. And why are you considered the best? In all these years, you've never taken a client who was blatantly faking. Everybody knows that and respects you for it. So what's going on?”
O'Shay didn't answer.
“Is this to do with your retirement? Are you worrying about that? Does his case mean big money?”
“Not likely, although that would be my wish.”
His secretary stared at him, head at an angle, like a bird focusing on crumbs through a single sharp eye, hoping to see him better. “Then, don't do this,” she said. “You don't take guys like him, a sleazebag. A phony. A greedhead.”
“ Rosa,” he said, “open a new file.”
She flounced out, leaving her perfume and disgust behind in equal measure.
In spite of the optimistic sounds the lawyer had made, Jeff Colby had seen the doubt in O'Shay's eyes. The man didn't believe him. Fair enough, Colby thought. He didn't believe O'Shay as far as he could toss him. So, he worked on Plan B. He could not, would not, go back to that soul-sucking job. He knew a lawsuit was a long shot, so plan for the short shot.
***
O'Shay spoke with Colby's doctor, the one who agreed to swear about Colby's on-the-job injury. He knew the man's reputation locally. Rampantly pro-worker and antiestablishment, the doctor nevertheless had a smooth professional manner, an excellent education, a thriving practice, and knew the right noises to make. What better could O'Shay hope for? Colby's doctor asked straight out exactly what O'Shay needed said to win his case. O'Shay gave him the details he wanted parroted back, anticipating the report to come, which would be shamelessly hyperbolized.
The doctor had friends also willing to swear for a price.
Further sinking below the mud line, O'Shay asked his old law school roommate out for lunch and plied him with flavored martinis, picking his brain.
“How you win a case that's unwinnable,” Chuck said, sipping the cranberry-flavored concoction that was sure to send him heaving into the toilet bowl later, “is to invoke the everyman. Does your client qualify?”
“I guess. He has a wife and kids. He's worked all his life without getting fired even once.”
His buddy shook h
is head. “No, no, no. Question is, does he look the part? Can he play an injury or not? And is he worthy?”
“What?”
“He has to get up there on the stand in a starched white shirt, slightly frayed, like he's making such an effort to look good but it's so hard. He has to speak English well, so we know he's not an idiot or some illegal just trying to finagle money out of the system. He should have bags under his eyes. Ditto for the wife and kids, if you can get them in there with you. He needs to show pain, and he needs to make that judge believe he hurts. He needs to look like a strong man knocked flat by the nefarious actions of his employer. He needs to look reduced from a major player to a husk. But you know all this already. You say he's white?”
“Yeah. Born in Oakland.”
“Excellent. No offense to all those boys you usually represent, but nobody kicks in big bucks to the Mexicans.”
Chuck read O'Shay's face, and shook his head. “O'Shay, O'Shay. Forget the liberal politics. Get real.” He ordered another drink, this time vodka with orange juice, and nibbled on stale nuts. “Bottom line, you got a good thing going with this guy. I looked it up before I came today. His company takes care of their own. He's a movie star compared to your usual clientele, and he's got the backing of a major studio. Line up your experts. Practice with him until he's got the role nailed.”
“You never asked me about his injury.”
His pal, flirting with a girl at the end of the bar, waved at the bartender. “Isn't that kinda like asking a murderer if he done it? That's not the way of our people, O'Shay.”
O'Shay paid for the drinks.
When he inclined toward optimism, which wasn't often, Jeff Colby indulged in fantasies about the family farm he would buy, maybe in the Caribbean, proving once and for all he was no loser. He would coddle his wife with cheap servants, get his kids into a school where they didn't know what gangbanging was, where they would learn to sail after school. Twirling the wheel of his Chevy Nova at a stoplight on Main, right before making a left, he indulged in a fantasy where he came to work and announced his swift exit. All the assholes he hated would be envious. He would prove he was somebody and not just the pathetic, powerless nobody they had made him into.
Back at the rental house on Blanco, he kissed Sandra, then took out his gun, loaded it, and went into the backyard, where the light was fading. He propped cans on the fence, glad as always that their small yard rose up steeply and was bordered by farmland, and shot, and shot, and shot, misses plunking into the dirt behind his targets.
He did well, annihilating dozens of beer cans. Back in the house, he emptied a few more, trying to blot out the image of his boss, Keith Landers, the smirk on his face when he told Jeff the news, and how Jeff had felt that night, having to tell Sandra. The look on her face.
He downed another one.
Landers generally got to work early, starting at the office behind the model home, flirting with the receptionist, hanging there as long as he could. The office was well-situated for visitors, close to the parking lot, and had plenty of windows.
The next week, O'Shay consulted with a retired judge, someone who had looked favorably upon many of his cases, someone fair. O'Shay laid out Jeff Colby's situation.
The judge, holding court at Dudley 's on Main Street, nodded to a steady stream of hellos. His plate held three fried eggs, a pile of bacon, two pancakes, overdone, cheesy potatoes, plus toast. He called his order “heart attack heaven” and, stabbing a fork into an oozing egg, explained that his mother and father, both of them, lived well into their nineties and he planned to do the same. Slim, still walking five miles daily even though he was well into his eighties, he had O'Shay convinced that the usual rules did not apply to him.
“Okay, the way it happened was, this guy was faking an injury,” the judge said, shaking out salt and pepper, eyeballing the shakers when they didn't seem to be applying themselves liberally enough. “The usual back thing. An invisible problem only God really could judge. I suspected he was a fake. I believed his attorney knew it. However, they found this amazing doctor, really, more a magician. This guy could make gold out of dog hair, I'm telling you.” He bit into a strip of bacon, sighing with pleasure. “Aw, I hate doing business when I eat. If I didn't remember your mother, O'Shay…”
“Thanks for seeing me.”
“So, anyhow, a judge's duty is to weigh the evidence as presented. We're not really allowed leeway on that, you know? Instincts be damned. I have to say, like most people, I ignored that edict and did my own thing, but in this case, I had no choice.”
“Why?”
“Overwhelming physical evidence, boy, and a doctor who could make you cry like a baby. Plus another doctor, less sterling, but confident, groomed. X-rays. Hospital admissions. Even the insurance guy couldn't get past the avalanche of evidence. You have to know, most cases are not so well-developed. Lawyers have lives, right? No time to track down several experts when one might do.”
“Track down a dozen, check,” O'Shay said, spooning brown sugar onto his oatmeal. He noted the name of the magical doctor and his friend.
The judge slathered strawberry jelly onto his side order of sourdough toast. “Not just any experts and evidence, O'Shay. Unassailable experts, with knowledge that will blow their Italian loafers off.”
Back at the office, Rosa gave O'Shay the cold shoulder. After ten years, she felt he ought to listen to her. She knew him better than he knew himself, she believed, and she always let him know when she thought he was wrong about something, in her own way.
Do this, do that, he told her, and in return for his calm orders, she made his normally smooth life rough. The work she usually did on his files suddenly fell to him. Clients popped in unannounced all day until he reprimanded her sharply. She crossed her arms, grimly satisfied to have rattled him. He worked long into the night to get caught up.
The next morning, O'Shay arrived at the office slightly late. Rosa looked coolly upon his bleary eyes and awful mood. “Mrs. Olson called,” she said. Mrs. Olson was his most challenging client besides Colby, and that was saying a lot. He handled hundreds a year. This woman made him crazy. Usually Rosa shielded him from clients like her. Not today.
“She has a new chiropractor you need to talk to. I told her you'd call right away, and get back to her, too. She's hysterical, could really use some hand-holding. Oh, and her husband called after. Yelling about something. I took a message.” She handed him a pink slip of paper. “Really mad. I told him you'd call and explain everything.”
He wanted to do something to stop the onslaught, kind of like his daughter had when she was a teenager and found something awesomely offensive, “No!” she would cry, fingers forming a cross, as if fending off vampires. Instead, he said, “Fine. Close the door behind you.”
He did what had to be done. He befriended the prickly new chiropractor, talked down Mrs. Olson, empathized with Mr. Olson, whose wife made sure he shared every single pain she felt, and rolled through another six files.
Sandra Colby called. “I wanted to thank you for taking Jeff's case,” she said.
“You're welcome.”
“Because-he's not himself lately, you know? I don't think you're seeing him at his best. He's got such heart. He's an amazing, involved father, and really a sensitive husband. He cares too much is the problem. He puts on such a macho face, but that's because after all these years they've beat him down. I hardly recognize him sometimes.” By the time she got off the phone with him she was crying.
“You make me tired,” Rosa said, frowning, at lunchtime.
“I make me tired, too.”
“What's going on, O'Shay?” she asked, her frustration evident in the way she persisted with him.
“I'm really hungry.” He asked if she would arrange for a sandwich from the deli for him. She slammed the door on her way out.
Late in the afternoon, he tackled Jerome Castile, the insurance attorney representing Colby's company. “He's injured, with a ninety percent d
isability rating according to three doctors,” O'Shay said into the phone.
“Come on, his injuries are almost all in his head, and you know we don't have to pay out psych cases anymore. Our doc says a maximum of twenty percent disability rating. Ten thousand.”
“Trust me on this, Jerome. Lifetime medical, plus a ninety percent award.”
Castile laughed. “You know, I expected better from you. There's nothing special about this case. Ten and a year's medical.”
O'Shay gathered the X-rays, the hospital admissions papers, the medical records. He called a private detective. Finally, he called Colby.
“How's it hanging?” Colby asked.
“I need you to see a few people.” O'Shay had made appointments Colby needed to keep, and went over the injuries Colby needed to be very clear about.
“Got it, man,” Colby said. “I show up, shirt tucked in, fucked up like you wouldn't believe.”
“Right,” O'Shay said.
At home, Diana came after him. “You've always come on as such an idealist,” she said. “I felt kind of mean-spirited next to you, wanting things. A little angry you never made the kind of money I thought you should, being an attorney.”
He tried to hug her but she pulled away. “See, I consoled myself that I'd married a good guy. Now I hear you've taken on this client, and I hear he's been trying to wrestle money out of his employer for years. He's a fraud.”
“You heard? Where?”
“My sister.”
His wife's sister was also a local attorney. So the news had spread. He sighed. “He's a special case, honey.”
“Yeah, he's special. He's putting all your years of hard work in the dumper.” She gave up after a while, though, and O'Shay, so tired, read the newspaper in front of a cold fireplace. He crept off to bed after she had fallen asleep.
The next morning he ate bacon, eggs, and toast and got to the office before his wife got up and Rosa came in. He spoke with a few people, then called Colby. “I've got the experts,” he said, “but you know, these doctors aren't willing to wreck their standing in the community for your sake. They will say the right things, but they have to convince a judge who understands every nuance, do you understand me?”
Sinister Shorts Page 8
