Legally Wasted (10 page)

“It gives us more customers.”

“You know what Ron? Don’t talk to me until we
get to this guy’s room.”

Ron smiled but said nothing. They proceeded
through the entrance. Cool antiseptic air kissed his skin. Larkin
kept his head down and stayed several yards behind his guide. For a
moment, he was glad he had left his tie at the office. As he made
his way past a group of nursing assistants wielding metal carts, he
passed a very pregnant woman on a stretcher. He instantly thought
of Madeline with her big manila envelope.

“Christ,” he whispered as he attempted to
wait for the elevator nonchalantly next to Ron. After a moment of
thought, he slid about a foot to the left to give himself more
cover. “This is a threshold,” he whispered. “A moral one. A
professional one. I should be on the couch.”

Ron laughed once they entered the
elevator.

“What?” Larkin shouted. The word echoed
against the aluminum plated elevator and stung their ears.

“You know, Larkin,” said Ron, “there might be
more lawyers here than doctors. You can take it easy.”

“I’ve reached my threshold,” said Larkin. “So
it wasn’t an auto accident.” The elevator doors opened to reveal a
much quieter hallway.

“It’s good,” said Ron as he took a quick left
turn.

“It’s good. Hooray for me.”

They entered room 320 and as soon as he saw
the patient to his right, the couch was a distant memory. “Wow,” he
said as he hustled to a man half-wrapped in plaster with a
four-lane highway of tubes entering and exiting his veins at
different junctions in his battered body. “Can you hear me, Mr.,”
Larkin glanced at the man’s identification bracelet, “Chambers?”
The man’s eyes remained shut.

“Larkin,” Ron called from across the
room.

“Mr. Chambers, can you hear me at all?”

“Mr. Monroe!” cried an all-too familiar
voice. Larkin turned. Terry Woolwine sat up in his hospital bed and
flashed Larkin a half-toothed grin as he waved his gauze-covered
left hand.

“Oh my God,” said Larkin. He looked angrily
at Ron. “This? This is why you called me? Because goddamn Terry
Woolwine hurt his hand?” He kicked a biohazard waste basket near
Mr. Chambers’ bed. It rocked and wobbled but did not topple. Larkin
had spent half of his career representing Terry and other members
of the immense Woolwine clan through assaults, batteries, domestic
disputes, vagrancy, vandalism, pandering, check bouncing, two fake
bomb threats, prostitution, solicitation, drunk moped driving and
half a dozen other charges. Though they might be troublesome
mountain folk, the Woolwines stuck together. This solidarity
extended toward the typical Woolwine mindset on bills: they never
paid.

“I got a claim, Mr. Monroe,” said Terry from
under his ever present CAT hat. He spat his words, but with his
missing teeth the words still rolled together, like the sound of
field mouse running over the frets on an out-of-tune banjo.

“He’s got a claim,” repeated Ron.

“I can’t believe this horseshit,” said
Larkin. “I can’t believe this day. Ron, this whole,” he waved his
arms back and forth, “thing we have together is supposed to help me
out. Good cases, Ron, money cases. Slip and falls, cases with skid
marks, exploding propane tanks. I don’t want Terry Woolwine after
he got in his twenty-eighth fight with his girlfriend.”

“But there were skid marks,” yelled Terry.
Drops of blood dotted his sleeveless shirt.

“A car hit you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who was driving?”

“Crystal.”

“You’re girlfriend.”

“We got engaged, Mr. Monroe. She’s my fiancé
right now.”

“So what do you want me to do?” asked Larkin
as he leaned against Mr. Chambers’ plastered legs, “You want me to
sue your wife?”

“She’s going to be my proper wife, Mr.
Monroe, but, no sir. I don’t want you to sue her. She don’t have no
money.”

Larkin threw his hands in the air. “Jesus
Christ, Ron! This is what you call me for?” He slapped the hard
cast encasing Mr. Chambers’ right leg. Mr. Chambers didn’t budge.
“This is what it’s supposed to be about, casts and tubes and people
who can’t open their damn eyes. People on the verge of the great
beyond.” He pointed to the cast again. “Who the hell is this guy
anyway?” Larkin thumped the cast again. “Did you pick him up and
run out of business cards? Where the heck was the call for this
guy?”

“I don’t know him, Larkin.”

“Well get to know him, goddamn it.”

“Mr. Monroe?” asked Terry.

“What?”

“It’s a divorce,” said Terry. “I figured
after she done hit me, it would be a fairly simple case. You know,
vehicular battery and all.”

Larkin closed his eyes and balled his fists.
He needed a drink, a gun, anything that could do damage to himself
or others. With his eyes shut tight, he spoke through gritted
teeth. “You can’t afford to buy a goddamn band-aid to put on your
hand. I’m paying for that bandage right now, because you don’t have
insurance. I should sue you, Terry, as a taxpayer.”

Terry laughed. “It’s all good, Mr. Monroe,
I’m receiving disability now and everything and - -”

“You’re not married. How in the hell can you
get a divorce?” Anger seeped like sweat down his forehead.

“Common law wife,” said Terry.

“And you,” said Larkin as he jabbed a finger
toward Ron. “You send him to me?”

Ron raised his hands, palms upwards. “Now,
Larkin. Just take it easy. You’re not hearing him out. If his wife
hit him with the car it shouldn’t be that hard. He’s got money.
He’s collecting disability. And don’t be so hard on yourself. That
judge just hated the both of us.”

“That’s right, Mr. Monroe. I can pay you.
Well, I mean I gotta get some money that some other people owe me,
but I can pay you. I can pay you like two hundred next Friday and
another two hundred dollars the Friday after that.”

Larkin turned toward the door.

“You always stuck with it,” said Ron. “Even
when it got bad, you stuck with me.”

Larkin leaned his forehead against the cold
aluminum plating on the door. His head slipped a bit on the
surface.

“Sweaty mess,” he whispered. He opened his
eyes and watched his breath fog over the nicked metal. He knew then
exactly where all of his rage had originated. Terry was not to
blame, it was himself. He knew the moment that he spotted Terry
that no matter what came out of the hayseed’s mouth, he would take
the case. He tilted his head back but he could not make out his
reflection in the scratched metal surface. “I hate myself.”

“What’s that?” asked Terry.

“Just call me tomorrow afternoon, Terry,”
said Larkin as he pushed the door open with great force and
immediately knocked a nurse onto the hard off-white tiles.

“Christ!” he yelled as he extended both hands
to help the nurse back to her feet. Though she had been knocked off
her feet, Larkin was comforted that she seemed to have tumbled well
and did not appear to need any medical attention herself.

She waved his hands away and glared. “There
are windows on the doors for a reason. What are you doing on this
floor?” She reached for a nearby stretcher and lifted herself off
of the ground.

“I . . . was visiting.” Larkin kept his hand
extended as if evidence of his good intentions would prevent
further inquiry. Sweat fell from his face to the floor. His hand
remained extended for too long.

“You weren’t visiting,” said the nurse. She
reached her full height of just a tad over five feet and stepped
closer to Larkin. “Who are you? Are you one of them lawyers?”

Larkin ran. He rounded a corner and glanced
from side to side, searching for an elevator. He heard shouts from
behind him and cursed.

“Stop running!” a woman screamed. It was good
advice.

Larkin nearly crashed into a pair of
wheelchairs left unattended in the hallway. The chairs slowed him a
bit, but he took a sharp right down another corridor and made it
safely inside another elevator as the doors began closing. Grabbing
his knee with his left hand to gasp, he slapped the lower row of
buttons with his right.

He looked up to see a man in a dark blue
uniform with a badge hustling toward the elevator. Their eyes met
and Larkin knew that both he and the cop had seen each other
before. They did not know each other by name, but they had each
seen the other in court a number of times.

“Stop!” shouted the cop. The doors shut.

Whether it was the gin or his historic hatred
of all things cardiovascular, Larkin was quite out of breath. A
wave of nausea passed over him and it nearly brought him to the
elevator floor. As the doors opened, he staggered forward. A brick
wall in front of him seemed inviting and he pressed his full weight
against it. He coughed for a moment and fought the familiar urge to
vomit.

He had missed the ground floor. His hand must
have hit a button for a lower level. In-between his gasps he
realized that if the police or security were looking for him - -
and they most likely were, a sweating, sprinting, nurse-assaulting
man in a suit was big news in Big Lick - - the basement might be
just the place to lay low for a moment. With his eyes shut he heard
a loud click, a mechanical whirr, and then a blast of chilled air
swirled around him. Goose bumps raised. Invigorated, he opened his
eyes to see a janitor pulling a large plastic cart piled high with
cleaning supplies out of an immense metal door marked with
bio-hazard signs. The morgue.

“Good God, that feels good,” Larkin whispered
as he stood and straightened himself. The janitor looked up. Larkin
nodded as he fished in his pocket for his cell phone. Quickly
placing it to his ear, he acted like he was actively engaged in a
very important conversation.

“Yes, Steve,” he said in a voice a bit deeper
than normal. “I’m on the bottom floor now as we arranged. Yes. I’ll
just wait here for the medical examiner.” He watched the janitor
close the morgue door and push three digits, 5, 5, 1, into a
numeric keypad next to the door. The keypad beeped and the whirring
sound repeated as the electronic deadbolt slid into place.

As the janitor passed by and pressed the
button for the elevator, Larkin gave a military-style salute while
continuing to act like he had to negotiate a multi-million dollar
corporate merger with an unnamed medical examiner in the morgue in
about five or six minutes. As soon as the elevator doors shut and
the janitor was gone, he headed to the door and punched in the
code. The inner mechanisms released the lock and the door opened a
few inches. He grabbed the handle and yanked. Cold air engulfed
him.

“Good lord,” he said as his breath floated
away like a specter among the dozen dead bodies lining the metal
shelves. All of the bodies, including four or five scattered
haphazardly on stretchers in the middle of the room, were covered
in sheets. An overhead bulb did not enhance the tone of the room.
Though the sheets did a bit to dehumanize the corpses, the sight of
so many exposed toes with attached tags was a bit horrid. Larkin’s
stomach trembled as he noticed a large drain in the floor. But the
cold air felt so damn good.

He closed the door most of the way behind
him, but did not shut it completely. Adrenaline coursed through his
limbs as he moved slowly among the bodies. He stepped forward but
his shoe slipped on the freshly waxed tile. His arms jutted
sideways to catch his balance. The fingers of his right hand
gripped the cold aluminum railing of a stretcher, but not before
grazing the sheet-covered body upon it.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said. He caught himself and
stood upright. “Rebecca Overstreet,” he read on the nearby toe tag,
“F.” Judging from the rather sizeable breasts beneath the sheet, he
surmised that “F” meant “female” and also that Ms. Overstreet would
likely be missed. Stepping carefully, he walked to the corner of
the room and sat upon an unoccupied shelf that was affixed to the
wall at or near normal bench height. He immediately felt the
chilled concrete through his thin wool slacks. He quickly buttoned
his coat.

“Well this is nice,” he said, meaning every
word. The air and the silence relaxed him. He watched his breath
for a minute, and considered the notion that he was the only one
breathing in the room. As his eyes adjusted to the level of light,
he gazed upon the assortment of toes. Some had toenails that seemed
old and brittle, while others appeared as if they had more wiggling
left to do before God, cancer, or fate had decided that enough was
enough.

A big toe that seemed a bit smaller than most
of the others peeked out from beneath a sheet only a few feet away
on a stretcher. Peach-colored nail polish looked to have been
applied not too long before death. Larkin leaned forward and
squinted at the tag.

“Alex Jordan,” he read, “M.” He recognized
the law clerk’s name. He stood and slowly approached. His foot
slipped a bit on the tile, but the peach-painted toe had him in a
tractor beam. He did not stumble. He stood directly over the body
and made out the outline of the young woman’s body beneath the
sheet. She was a slight thing and almost as flat-chested as a
twelve year-old boy.

With his right hand, he carefully flipped the
toe tag over so the light fully shone upon the letters. “M,” he
whispered. He looked back to the breasts. She had not been
well-endowed in life, but there were definitely breasts. A few
strands of red hair dangled over the edge of the stretcher.

The “M” had to have been a mistake, thought
Larkin, after all, Alex was indeed a man’s name. The picture of the
person that the news footage had displayed earlier in the evening
could never have been confused for a man. She was beautiful,
attractive even, and utterly feminine.

Larkin looked at the area of the sheet where
Jordan’s pelvis would have been located. The fabric was thick and
telegraphed no clues. He sighed loudly as he knew that he would
give in to curiosity’s demands.