The Fall-Down Artist (2 page)

“The discovery period,” Stockman had said, turning to the defense attorney. “During which, I had assumed, I was provided with all the material and information the defense would present.”

“Mr. Dorsey is a surprise witness, as I said.” The defense attorney's words still spilled out too quickly. “More important, his services were retained by my firm. As a result, his work is confidential and protected from discovery as attorney's work product.”

“Your employee?” Stockman asked. “Not that of your client, Fidelity Casualty? You are sure of this?”

“Mr. Dorsey is definitely in my firm's services.”

Showing surprising agility, Stockman twirled, more than turned, moved to the plaintiff's table, and picked up the file folder he had been reading. He took it to the bench, still open, and presented it to the judge. While doing so he informed the judge that the folder contained a photocopy of Fidelity Casualty's claim file on Benito DeMarco, something he was sure the defense would be willing to stipulate to. Pointing with his finger, Stockman directed the judge's attention to a handwritten entry dated September 4 of that same year.

“The entry,” Stockman said, “is signed by Raymond
Corso, who is—and again I am sure the defense will stipulate to this—the local claims manager for Fidelity Casualty. The September fourth records show that Mr. Corso received a call from Mr. Dorsey requesting permission to continue. It does not say what it is he wishes to continue, but as Mr. Dorsey is a private investigator by profession it is only logical that Mr. Dorsey was referring to the investigation of my client. It is also logical to assume that since he was contacting Mr. Corso he was under Mr. Corso's supervision. As a result, Mr. Dorsey was working for Fidelity Casualty and not a law firm. As such, his investigation was discoverable and his present testimony is inadmissible.”

Dorsey immediately remembered the call and had felt himself reeling backward in his chair. One call, he had thought, one fucking call! Made to Corso because you were in a hurry and this tenderfoot of an attorney couldn't be reached. One simple clarification for a fee invoice, that's all you needed. How did Stockman find it? What brought his attention to that entry? What difference did it make? Stockman always knew.

The judge ruled swiftly and Dorsey was dismissed. Walking past the defense attorney and out of the room, Dorsey worked out Stockman's scheme. Somehow Stockman had known Dorsey would be testifying about his investigation, and that's why he got rid of the jury. Stockman could object to Dorsey's testimony and the judge could throw it out afterward, but the testimony itself could never be erased from the jurors' minds. Even if the testimony was thrown out before it was given, the jury would have known an investigation had been conducted, and nobody bothers to testify about an investigation that had no results. So Stockman chooses to skip the jury and deal with the judge, who will consider only points of law. A judge who is just a little bit pissed off at the defense for springing a bogus surprise witness on him.

Wiping the memories away as best he could, Dorsey returned to the desk, took the last page from the typewriter
carriage, and signed his name. Attaching the invoice, he slipped the report and the videotape into a manila envelope. The letterhead at the upper left corner of the envelope read
DORSEY INFORMATION SERVICES, CARROLL DORSEY, MANAGER
. Well, he thought, licking the envelope's adhesive strip, at least Junior—the attorney—had someone to blame for how things turned out.

After Showering,
Dorsey went through two towels drying his six-foot-four-inch frame. He put on a pair of fatigue pants speckled with paint, the waistband of which matched his age, thirty-eight. After struggling into a gray sweatshirt with matching paint speckles, he shoved his feet into a pair of worn jogging shoes and sat at the edge of his bed, listening for the front doorbell. From his bedroom window, through the growing darkness of the October evening, Dorsey could see the back of another row house across the alley from his own backyard. Beyond that was the Monogahela River, reflecting the soft glow of the mercury lamps strung along the Tenth Street bridge. Sitting there, Dorsey again ran through his court appearance, memories he had hoped to rinse away in the shower. Maybe, he thought, a shower of beer would do the trick. Jack “Personal Injury” Stockman. P. I. Stockman. The guy is hot shit.

The low electric buzz of the doorbell pulled Dorsey away from the courtroom and downstairs to the front door. Through the door's glass, partially blocked by a cardboard sign jammed into its left corner, he saw two men standing on the stoop. One was short and heavy, in his mid-sixties, carrying two brown grocery sacks. The second one was much younger and of medium height, wearing a necktie and a trench coat. Dorsey opened the door. The second man in, the younger of the two, stopped in the doorway and
tapped a finger on the cardboard sign. Printed in green on white, it read
CARROLL DORSEY
,
INFORMATIONAL SERVICES TO THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY AND THE LEGAL COMMUNITY
.

“Forget yesterday,” the younger man said. “You'll have a day all your own. Goes around and comes around. Al and I still like you.”

“Thank you, Bernie,” Dorsey said, a grin betraying his formal response. “And fuck you, I guess.”

Dorsey followed his visitors into the hall. To the right were double sliding doors, and the older man worked a hand free and stabbed at a handle with his knuckles, sending one of the doors flying back on its overhead track. Dorsey reached ahead and flicked on the overhead light, and the three men entered his office. The man with the grocery bags went directly to the desk and dumped the bags on the blotter.

“Well,” Dorsey said, “I see you both made it. More important, I see that the cargo made the trip safely too.”

“It traveled well.” Al Rosek took off his lined zipper jacket, draped it across the back of the armchair next to the desk, and dropped into the seat, shifting his weight from one buttock to the other until he was settled.

Dorsey sat behind the desk. “But Al, the desk is no place for this stuff. It should've gone there.” He indicated a small office refrigerator behind the desk at the side of the bookcase.

“Bullshit. Me, I'm like the Teamsters. We haul the stuff, take it anywhere you want it to go, but we don't unload. Sorry, Dorsey, the shop steward says no crossin' of craft lines. It's a serious violation.”

“That's how it's got to be, okay. Unions, backbone of the country.” Dorsey swiveled toward the bags and tore at them greedily, pulling out five six-packs of beer and a large bag of Pennsylvania Dutch pretzels. “And the shipment, I believe, is correct.”

“Got it straight, always do,” Al said. “Thirty-one years—owned and worked the bar for thirty-one years now,
and never botched an order. Two Irons, two Rolling Rocks for you, and a sixer of Michelob for this guy.” With a tilt of his head, Al indicated Bernie.

“This guy?” Dorsey repeated, his voice heavy with concern, his outstretched hands pleading. “This guy, as you have the balls to call him, is Bernie. Bernie the attorney. Wisest of adjudicators, rival and close second to Solomon. This guy, Al, is the famous Bernard S. Perlac, attorney-at-something-or-other. Hell, Bern, what is that stuff you're an attorney at?”

“Lemme see,” Bernie said, supine on the chaise. He wore a white oxford shirt buttoned to the throat, and his red silk necktie flowed gracefully across his breastbone to the top of his navy chalk-striped pants. “It was a school. I seem to remember attending a school of some sort. Lemme see, what did they call it? Thought you could help on this one, Dorsey. As I recall, you went there for a while. But I think I went there a little longer, after you blew out.”

“I'd be wrong to help you; it'd be cheatin'.”

“Never mind, I've got it!” Bernie sprang into a seated position. “Law. They called the fucking thing a law school. And so I sit here, at least until I lie back down, a law school graduate, an A-one lawyer. Bernard S. Perlac—yes, Dorsey, it's true—attorney-at-law. Get to you a little?”

“I get misty-eyed all over again,” Dorsey said, cramming beer cans into the midget refrigerator.

“Comic geniuses.” Al cracked open an Iron City. “Ever get some real jobs, put in some regular hours, there wouldn't be any time for clowning. Especially you, Dorsey, lucky enough to have a young thing like Gretchen to spend your time with. Girl like her, with a wreck like you? I can't figure it.”

“Young girls find me exotic,” Dorsey said, settling back into his seat, a Rolling Rock in his hand.

“The movie,” Al said. “C'mon, Dorsey, we came to see this movie of yours. The new one.”

“Showing your age, Al, really are,” Dorsey said. “Not movies nowadays, Grandpop. These are videos. No white
screen to unroll. No film to crop every time it's shown. Videotape: shove in the cassette you're in business.”

“Just show it, please?”

“Yeah,” Bernie repeated. “Just show it, please?”

Dorsey took a tape cassette, a copy of the one he had mailed that afternoon to Fidelity Casualty, from a desk drawer and slapped it into the VCR atop his twenty-inch television.

“So what's on the program tonight?” Bernie asked.

“Something of a New Wave feature,” Dorsey said, returning to his seat. “It's called
Cement Man
, a real tear-jerker. How many hankies you equipped with?”

The TV screen went from black to gray, and then a row house much like Dorsey's appeared. The camera angle was on a diagonal from the left and pointing down from about shoulder height. From the covered walkway between two houses came a man in his late forties, wearing a stained navy sweatshirt. In his left hand he held a four-foot wrecking bar, which he began to use against the cement sidewalk. He worked the curved business end into an existing crack and put his back into it. Cement chunks split off into the air. After going at it for a few more minutes, he dropped the bar, lowered himself into a crouch, and began gathering the debris.

“This is it,” Dorsey said. “Here it comes now, the part you're gonna love.”

The videotape's subject carried a load of debris through the walkway and returned for another. As he bent down, his face was to the camera; his expression turned to a scowl of suspicion.

“Busted.” Al left his chair for another beer. “Looks like this guy caught on.”

“Just watch,” Dorsey said calmly. No, he thought, DeMarco never caught on. Too busy working. P. I. Stockman, he's the one who caught on. Somehow.

Suspicion left the man's face and he went blank. Cautiously, he turned to left profile and reached a hand back
to the seat of his pants. Now his face showed disgust as he fanned at his ass.

“Goddamn!” Bernie shouted. “The guy cut the cheese. Dorsey, you must've pissed yourself.”

“Job like this, I take along a pair of plastic underwear.”

“So what's his story?” Al asked. As they spoke, the man on screen went back to work on the sidewalk.

“Auto, personal injury. And, as you can see, a solid fake.” Dorsey took another Rolling Rock from the refrigerator. “He's the one who got away. I thought Bernie might've filled you in on the way over.”

“So this is the one,” Al said. “Bernie told me you had a bad break, but he thinks you'll be all right.”

“Really, Dorsey,” Bernie said. He finished his beer and gestured for Dorsey to toss him another. “You haven't lost face around here. That young shit they assigned to the case should've settled and never taken on Stockman. Should've settled up and called it a victory.”

“Settle. You lawyers like that, huh?” Al asked Bernie.

“Looking at me here flat on my back, Al, you may find it hard to believe I'm a good lawyer. Want to know why?” Bernie did not wait for an answer. “Because I very rarely go to court. Settle 'em ahead of time, that's the moneymaker. Hearings and trials, they're too much like work. Take time, too, time I can put to better use elsewhere. Like bringing in new business for the firm. Or maybe sitting at my desk billing more time for more clients. Better believe I like to settle.”

The tape continued for another ten minutes of manual labor, until both Bernie and Al decided they'd had enough. Dorsey rewound the tape and returned it to the desk drawer. Al remarked he had been asking around about Dorsey; he hadn't seen him much lately. “My Rolling Rock seems to last a lot longer when you're not around,” Al told him.