“I believed her, yeah. But, um—but—”
Ruben looked past him. At all the blood. “Katy didn’t believe her?”
Blood on the walls. Blood on the floor. A world of bright red blood.
“Yeah, she, um—she said no. She said we had come this far. We have come so far. We have to go through with it. But—what did you say her name was?”
“Theresa.”
Samir nodded, his eyes watering. Theresa.
“Yeah. Theresa was pretty insistent.”
Samir described the struggle for the gun, Theresa smashing into Katy, battering her with her fists, her arms, and Katy firing wildly into the walls of the cabin—a bullet hole there, see, and there—trying and failing to get a shot into this insane stranger. Samir screaming the whole time, trying to pry them apart, wedging his slender body between them, and meanwhile Dennis walking slowly back and forth between them, correcting course automatically whenever he almost came in contact with the melee. A madhouse, a nightmare.
And then Theresa—“I never knew that,” murmured Samir again, “I never knew her name”—she had the gun but Katy would not stop, could not stop, so she shot her. One shot, very close range. Blood on the walls and on the floor.
“Blood just everywhere,” Samir concluded. “Fucking everywhere.”
Ruben realized, as Samir approached the end of this woeful tale, that the sound of the rain had ceased on the roof, and looking outside he saw that it was snowing now. Not hard. Thick clots of snow, coming in against the window as they had at Theresa’s house in Indy. All part of the same world, the same water.
A sentence reached up to him from some ancient distance. From the Classical Poetry Confab he had briefly attended in middle school.
This is the poem of the air. Slowly in silent syllables recorded.
Was it Wordsworth? Longfellow? One of those guys.
This is the secret of despair. Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded.
He had never paid attention. All he remembered was Ms. Hutchins’s ruddy cheeks as she declaimed; all he remembered was blushing at the word bosom.
Now the words clutched and shuddered in his chest.
Now whispered and revealed to wood and field.
Theresa killed Katy and left Dennis here. Samir in place to guard him. To make sure that what they had wanted for a decade—for the vessel to be cracked open, for the world inside of Dennis to be released—would not happen. Must never happen.
And then she left. Back down the hill, clutching the gun. On her way to California, eyes sparking with madness, to spread her words of warning.
“Is she coming back?” Samir looked pleadingly at Ruben, who was getting up. It was over. He had what he needed here. Samir’s hands were in his hair, and his eyes were wild with need. “Is she coming back?”
“No,” said Ruben. Then he took the poor man into his arms and held him tight. “But I am.”
April 9, 2010
Shenk, he would tell you with all due modesty, did a pretty solid John Riggs.
Having installed Theresa Pileggi in the rolling office chair he was using as a witness box, having sworn her in on the ancient Yellow Pages that still banged around in his office, having agreed to pay her time and a half for this Saturday afternoon trial-prep session now extending into evening, Shenk dropped into character. He hunched his shoulders and puffed out his cheeks to fatten his face. He jammed his hands deep in his pockets and loped across the room. He gave a mild groan before each question, as if even condescending to examine a plaintiff’s expert caused him some gastric distress.
“Could you tell us one more time…” A pause. An exhale. “The name of this…condition?”
“Syndrome K.”
“‘Syndrome K.’” Shenk’s Riggs put skeptical quote marks around the phrase like a pair of handcuffs. Pileggi looked back at him unfazed from behind her thick drugstore eyeglasses.
“And, sorry, but what exactly does the K stand for?”
“It is not an initial K. It denotes that this syndrome is the eleventh named variant in a related but distinct family of syndromes, some as-yet entirely hypothetical.”
This diction was a smidge too technical, but Shenk let it ride. Bigger fish to fry. He made a glum, dissatisfied Riggs face as he considered Pileggi’s appearance. Her black hair was uncombed, pinned up on her forehead with two girlish barrettes. She wore no makeup. She had on some kind of terrible pale-yellow top and a blockish blue blazer. She looked like the captain of the high school debate team.
There was going to have to be some shopping, thought Shenk from within his Riggs cocoon, suppressing an alarming flutter of anxiety about how little credit was left to him across his various cards.
He was trying to remain calm. Steady as she goes, through the opening days of trial. He had put up his witnesses, one by one, and one by one Riggs had neutralized whatever small advantage they might have provided. So it had been with Wes’s pal Bernie in his ill-fitting suit, too short at the legs and arms, recalling the traumatizing moment of Wes’s injury. Same with the EMTs, who had kept him stable in the ambulance ride, and the triage nurses, who rushed him to the ER and summoned a neuro consult, precisely according to protocol.
With each witness, Shenk tried to paint the picture he wanted the jury to see: a child who should not have been operated on, a paramedic team that didn’t take a full history, a surgery undertaken in haste. He had even tried to introduce Dr. Catanzaro’s custody dispute to the record, as a way of backdooring in his history of lunchtime tippling, only to have Judge Cates call him into chambers and thunder at him for twenty minutes. He had hoped to make some progress by slicing away at the diagnostic certainty of Dr. Amandpour, the ER physician, sidling up to the crucial decision: “The boy was stable when he was brought in?…The scans showed a hematoma, yes, but not one growing at an alarming rate?…And in your experience, Dr. Amandpour, wouldn’t the prudent course be to implant an EVD, to monitor progress—”
“My experience was not relevant,” Amandpour had said, cutting this line off clean. “It was Dr. Catanzaro’s decision.”
After each of these witnesses he would glance at Gonzalez, his beloved former police officer in the second row of the jury box, and note her expression, which remained determinedly neutral.
But it didn’t matter. All the things he had presented thus far were red herrings; they were side doors, leading away from the only real question left. If Theresa Pileggi could make the jury understand that the operation had led directly to Wes’s condition—and that Catanzaro should have known better—they’d win. Otherwise, they would not.
Shenk & Partners after midnight was a quiet place, even with the window cracked to let in the cool night air. They got the occasional snatch of conversation from a late-night dog walker below, murmuring into a phone; they had the low, inconsistent hum of traffic from the I-10 a quarter mile north. The streetlight at Palms and Overland peeked in, flickery and yellow, and it made a quiet occasional crackle.
Shenk made another of Riggs’s distressed exhales before delivering the next question with a flat smack, like putting a slab of paper-wrapped fish down on a counter.
“And you are the inventor of this syndrome?”
“Respectfully, sir, one does not invent a syndrome.”
“Good,” murmured Shenk, from inside his mask of Riggs, “‘sir’ is good.”
“If you are asking how my colleagues and I identified the existence of the disease, it was the result of a latitudinal metastudy, synthesizing data from seven hundred and twelve studies of PVS patients.”
“Easy, Theresa,” said Shenk, snapping back into himself, shaking his head and grinning. “Don’t get too Spocky on me.”
She scowled. He wondered if it was because he had called her Theresa. She had a sip of the tea she drank endlessly from a steel thermos. “Spocky?”
“Yeah. Like Spock? Oh my God, are you too young for Star Trek?”
“I know who Spock is.”
“Good. Great. I
will have already gotten all the details out of you on direct, so by the time he gets to cross we don’t need ’em again. Don’t let him draw you out into a whole complicated back-and-forth. Short and simple. OK?” Then, instantly, Shenk was back into Riggs, the voice and the hunched affect, backing up the tape: “You identified this syndrome how?”
“By studying other studies. Looking for patterns. Narrowing it down. Thinking, as I believe the expression is, outside the box.”
“Good! Yes!” Shenk popped back out from the disguise, clapping his hands. “Just be careful with your face.”
“My face?”
Pileggi’s indignation, unfortunately, made the face problem even worse.
“Yes. I mean, not—there’s nothing wrong with your face. Your face is fine.”
Pileggi narrowed her eyes. “Is that a compliment?”
“You just don’t want to look like you think you’re smarter than him.”
“You said he was an idiot. You said he was a block of wood.”
“Oh, he is. Believe me. Block of wood is a generous comparison, with this guy.”
Theresa smiled. Just barely, but she did.
“But your job here is to be smart, without letting on that you know you’re smart. You need to be likable up there.”
“Likable?” Pileggi crossed her arms, leaned back in the office chair so it let out a slight squeak. “Would you say that to a man, Mr. Shenk?”
“Actually, I might. I really might. But, listen—we don’t have time to solve the great issues of the day. Let’s just focus on winning this case, OK? Do you need anything?”
“No.”
“More tea?”
“No.”
“A bathroom break?”
“Let’s keep working.”
“Spoken,” he said lightly, “like someone getting paid by the hour.”
She smiled tightly, and Shenk slipped back into character, hands back in his pockets, weight shifted forward, jowls puffed out, ready to rock.
But he had spoiled his own good humor, joking about the billable hours of his expert witness. He had been trying very hard not to think about it tonight, about his catastrophic financial situation. After the polite but firm no from Stella at Mayorski, he had tried other litigation financing companies and gotten the same result. Nobody thought he had a case, so nobody would stake him. By now Shenk had scraped his savings clean, turned out his pockets, written a note to Darla apologizing for the late back pay, joking pathetically that if she wanted to sue him he knew a good lawyer. He was making do with his own ad hoc courtroom exhibits, but that hadn’t stopped Earmark Litigation Services from dunning him relentlessly over the ones they’d already produced.
And then there was the house. The house, and the car.
And then—Shenk’s chest got tight when he thought about it, which is why he tried not to think about it—and then there was Ruben’s school. Two days ago the financial official from Morningstar had at last caught Shenk on the phone, regretfully given him a firm deadline, three weeks hence, to provide for this semester’s tuition, and last semester’s, still outstanding.
Which is why, late last night, he’d called Joey Boston, his financial adviser, whose office was in New Jersey, even though his name was Joey Boston.
Jay’s wife, Marilyn, God rest her soul, had come into his life along with a pot of money. Her father, born in a Belarusian shtetl, had made his American fortune in the diamond business—a small fortune, to be sure, no kind of Rothschild fortune—and that diamond money had sat sacrosanct since Marilyn brought it into the marriage. Shenk always having wanted to be the one to provide what they needed. When she would mention the money, when she would suggest they tap into it for, say, furniture or adoption fees, Shenk would wag a finger at her. “What money? That money does not exist!”
It was only when Marilyn had insisted, over Shenk’s mild, vaguely principled objections, on sending Ruben to private school for K–12 that Shenk had been forced to remember the existence of the money and begun to chip away at it on a quarterly basis. But still he had trained himself not to think of it. Certainly not for the operation of the business that he had sworn would support him and his family—certainly not for anything so petty as trial costs. The money belonged to Marilyn, and in the tragic aftermath of her death, it was the boy’s. For the future. For Ruben’s future, for the remaining years of private school, for college, for law school.
So imagine how Jay had felt, coming home after trial yesterday to find darkness at Shenk & Partners. The lights had been shut off by the city.
So he sat there in the darkness and called Joey Boston.
“Hey, man, listen” is what Joey Boston had said, annoyingly cheerful considering the enormity of the moment. “It’s your money.”
Shenk thinking, well, it is and it isn’t, and then reminding himself that he’d put it all back. As soon as the verdict came in, there would be a returning tide of hospital money, of hospital-insurance-company money. It was coming right back in.
“Now,” said Shenk as Riggs, peering at Theresa, forcing himself to focus. “According to your testimony yesterday”—referring to testimony that had not yet actually occurred but which Shenk as Shenk would carefully solicit when the time came, probably mid–next week—“if there is such thing as this Syndrome K—”
“There is.”
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t interrupt him.”
“Ever?”
“Never. Be easy. Let it ride.” And then, as Riggs once again: “If there is such a thing as this Syndrome K, then, if I understand your testimony correctly, there is no way Dr. Catanzaro could have known that Wesley Keener had it. Because the—I’m sorry, what was it again?”
“The prion.”
“Ah yes, the ‘prion’—face, Theresa, careful of your face—the ‘prion.’” Shenk, as Riggs, said the word prion like someone else might have said unicorn or Bigfoot. “The prion is invisible, and does no damage, until it suddenly does. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“So is it correct to say there is no way Dr. Catanzaro could have anticipated this potential complication of surgery?”
“Well,” said Pileggi. “Actually.”
“Ugh.”
“What?”
“Let’s not say actually. Let’s never say actually. And your tone.” Shenk was waving his hands above his head, like a brakeman signaling a train. “You gotta watch your tone. Especially going into this part, about how he should have known. We’re rounding third here, this is the big moment. I don’t want the jury to think you’re being…”
“Being what?”
“Being…” Shenk sighed. “Haughty.”
Admittedly, this was an impossible task he was giving her. To present herself as the authority on the boy’s ailment—without being arrogant, without being obnoxious.
“Fine,” she said, and Shenk said “Fine” and then immediately dropped back into Riggs. “Just so we’re clear, Ms. Pileggi—”
“Excuse me?” said Pileggi, indignant.
“Whoa!” said Shenk. “Take it easy, sister.”
Pileggi said “Is that him, or you? Telling me to take it easy?”
It was he: it was Shenk, peering out from inside dull Riggs’s eyes. “It is very likely he will get casual with your title, every once in a while, just to be a prick. It’s needling. Don’t be affronted. Don’t react. Gently correct him.”
Pileggi was shaking her head, lips pursed tightly.
“You can’t get upset,” Shenk told her. “Not in there.”
“I’m not upset. I’m impatient. Do you want to work on the testimony or not?”
“Theresa, all of this stuff: this is working on the testimony.”
Shenk himself was getting upset. He was sorry this was hard for Dr. Pileggi, but she had lobbied for this job and she needed to do what he told her. He was paying her to do what he told her.
“Shall we get back into it?”
“Fine.” She exhaled, sharply.
“Don’t do that, either.”
“Don’t what?”
“Breathe.”
“Don’t breathe?”
There was a stern moment of quiet, and then, as if by mutual acknowledgment that they had come to the end of some sort of comedy routine, both of them laughed.
“OK,” said Jay. “Now I need to pee.”
When he returned from the bathroom, Theresa Pileggi had disappeared from the office.
He found her on the steel catwalk outside Shenk & Partners, looking out at the parking lot, smoking a cigarette.
“No!” he said.
“No, what?”
“You smoke?” cried Shenk, genuinely aghast.
“I do,” she said. “Sometimes. When I am—” She looked at him carefully. “When I am feeling bombarded.”
“I cannot believe you smoke.” Shenk felt betrayed, somehow. “Maybe you’re not as smart as you think you are.”
Pileggi rolled her eyes. “I’ve done the math, Mr. Shenk, and my odds of getting cancer, factoring in my demographic category, my genetic history, and the fact that at most I go through a pack every six weeks, are relatively low.”
“Oh. Excuse me. Pardon me, folks. The young lady is protected by a force field made of science.”
He smiled wryly, shaking his head, and joined her at the rail. It was the middle of the night, and there were only the two cars in the lot down there: his tan Subaru and Pileggi’s pokey little Nissan. She was staying at a hotel for the duration of the trial, the Courtyard by Marriott on Twentieth Street, in Santa Monica. On his dime, of course. Down the street, parallel parked, was a silver sedan, a Corolla. The engine was on, and someone was sitting in shadow in the driver’s seat. The only other sign of life in the universe.
Jay watched Pileggi smoke for a second, remembering an old silver Corolla he used to drive, maybe twenty years ago, as a law school bachelor. It was like he had come from his own past, parked on Palms to peer in on himself, see how he was doing.
The Quiet Boy Page 29
