Barry X. reads it carefully, with more concentration than I’ve seen from anyone yet. He reads it a second time
as I admire his aged-brick walls and dream of an office like this.
“Not bad,” he says when he’s finished. There’s a gleam in his eye, and I think he’s more excited than he lets on. “Lemme guess. You want a job, and a piece of the action.”
“Nope. Just the job. The case is yours. I’d like to work on it, and I’ll need to handle the client. But the fee is yours.”
“Part of the fee. Mr. Lake gets most of it,” he says with a grin.
Whatever. I honestly don’t care how they split the money. I only want a job. The thought of working for Jonathan Lake in this opulent setting makes me dizzy.
I’ve decided to keep Miss Birdie for myself. As a client, she’s not that attractive because she spends nothing on lawyers. She’ll probably live to be a hundred and twenty, so there’s no benefit in using her as a trump card. I’m sure there are highly skilled lawyers who could show her all sorts of ways to pay them, but this would not appeal to the Lake firm. These guys litigate. They’re not interested in drafting wills and probating estates.
I stand again. I’ve taken enough of Barry’s time. “Look,” I say as sincerely as possible, “I know you’re busy. I’m completely legitimate. You can check me out at the law school. Call Madeline Skinner if you want.”
“Mad Madeline. She’s still there?”
“Yes, and right now she’s my best friend. She’ll vouch for me.”
“Sure. I’ll get back with you as soon as possible.” Sure you will.
I get lost twice trying to find the front door. No one’s watching me, so I take my time, admiring the large offices scattered around the building. At one point, I stop at the edge of the library and gaze up at three levels of walkways and narrow promenades. No two offices are even remotely
similar. Conference rooms are stuck here and there. Secretaries and clerks and flunkies move quietly about on the heartpine floors.
I’d work here for a lot less than twenty-one thousand a year.
I PARK QUIETLY behind the long Cadillac, and ease from my car without a sound. I’m in no mood to repot mums. I step softly around the house and am greeted by a tall stack of huge white plastic bags. Dozens of them. Pine bark mulch, by the ton. Each bag weighs one hundred pounds. I now recall something Miss Birdie said a few days ago about remulching all the flower beds, but I had no idea.
I dart for the steps leading to my apartment, and as I bound for the top I hear her calling, “Rudy. Rudy dear, let’s have some coffee.” She’s standing by the monument of pine bark, grinning broadly at me with her gray and yellow teeth. She is truly happy I’m home. It’s almost dark and she likes to sip coffee on the patio as the sun disappears.
“Of course,” I say, folding my jacket over the rail and ripping off my tie.
“How are you, dear?” she sings upward. She started this “Dear” business about a week ago. It’s dear this and dear that.
“Just fine. Tired. My back is bothering me.” I’ve been hinting about a bad back for several days, and so far she hasn’t taken the bait.
I take my familiar chair while she mixes her dreadful brew in the kitchen. It’s late afternoon, the shadows are falling across the back lawn. I count the bags of mulch. Eight across, four deep, eight high. That’s 256 bags. At 100 pounds each, that’s a total of 25,600 pounds. Of mulch. To be spread. By me.
We sip our coffee, very small sips for me, and she wants to know everything I’ve done today. I lie and tell her I’ve been talking to some lawyers about some lawsuits, then I studied for the bar exam. Same thing tomorrow. Busy, busy, you know, with lawyer stuff. Certainly no time to lift and carry a ton of mulch.
Both of us are sort of facing the white bags, but neither wants to look at them. I avoid eye contact.
“When do you start working as a lawyer?” she asks.
“Not sure,” I say, then explain for the tenth time how I will study hard for the next few weeks, just bury myself in the books at law school, and hope I pass the bar exam. Can’t practice till I pass the exam.
“How nice,” she says, drifting away for a moment. “We really need to get started with that mulch,” she adds, nodding and rolling her eyes wildly at it.
I can’t think of anything to say for a moment, then, “Sure is a lot.”
“Oh, it won’t be bad. I’ll help.”
That means she’ll point with her spade and maintain an endless line of chatter.
“Yeah, well, maybe tomorrow. It’s late and I’ve had a rough day.”
She thinks about this for a second. “I was hoping we could start this afternoon,” she says. “I’ll help.”
“Well, I haven’t had dinner,” I say.
“I’ll make you a sandwich,” she offers quickly. A sandwich to Miss Birdie is a transparent slice of processed turkey between two thin slices of no-fat white bread. Not a drop of mustard or mayo. No thought of lettuce or cheese. It would take four to knock off the slightest of hunger pains.
She stands and heads for the kitchen as the phone rings. I have yet to receive a separate line into my apartment, though she’s been promising one for two weeks.
Right now I have an extension, which means there is no privacy on the phone. She has asked me to restrict my calls because she needs complete access to it. It seldom rings.
“It’s for you, Rudy,” she calls from the kitchen. “Some lawyer.”
It’s Barry X. He says he’s talked it over with Jonathan Lake, and it’s okay if we pursue another conversation. He asks if I can come to his office now, at this moment, he says he works all night. And he wants me to bring the file. He wants to see the entire file on my bad-faith case.
As we talk, I watch Miss Birdie prepare with great care a turkey sandwich. Just as she slices it in two, I hang up.
“Gotta run, Miss Birdie,” I say breathlessly. “Something’s come up. Gotta meet with this lawyer about a big case.”
“But what about—”
“Sorry. I’ll get to it tomorrow.” I leave her standing there, a half a sandwich in each hand, face sagging as if she just can’t believe I won’t dine with her.
BARRY MEETS ME at the front door, which is locked, though there are still many people at work inside. I follow him to his office, my step a little quicker than it’s been in days. I can’t help but admire the rugs and bookshelves and artwork and think to myself that I’m about to be a part of this. Me, a member of the Lake firm, the biggest trial lawyers around.
He offers me an egg roll, the remnants of his dinner. Says he eats three meals a day at his desk. I remember that he’s divorced, and now understand why. I’m not hungry. He clicks on his Dictaphone and places the microphone on the edge of the desk nearest me. “We’ll record this. I’ll get my secretary to type it tomorrow. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” I say. Anything.
“I’ll hire you as a paralegal for twelve months. Your salary will be twenty-one thousand a year, payable in twelve equal installments on the fifteenth of each month. You won’t be eligible for health insurance or other fringes until you’ve been here for a year. At the end of twelve months, we’ll evaluate our relationship, and at that time explore the possibility of hiring you as a lawyer, not a paralegal.”
“Sure. Fine.”
“You’ll have an office, and we’re in the process of hiring a secretary who’ll assist you. Minimum of sixty hours a week, starting at eight in the morning and going until whenever. No lawyer in this firm works less than sixty hours a week.”
“No problem.” I’ll work ninety. It’ll keep me away from Miss Birdie and her pine bark mulch.
He checks his notes carefully. “And we will become counsel of record for the, uh, what’s the name of your case?”
“Black.
Black versus Great Benefit.”
“Okay. We’ll represent the Blacks against Great Benefit Life Insurance Company. You’ll work on the file, but be entitled to none of the fees, if any.”
“That’s right.”
“Can you think of anything else?” he says, speaking toward the microphone. “When do I start?”
“Now. I’d like to go over the case tonight, if you have the time.”
“Sure.”
“Anything else?”
I swallow hard. “I filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. It’s a long story.”
“Aren’t they all? Seven or thirteen?”
“Straight seven.”
“Then it won’t affect your paycheck. Also, you study for the bar on your own time, okay?”
“Fine.”
He turns off the Dictaphone, and again offers me an egg roll. I decline. I follow him down a spiral staircase to a small library.
“It’s easy to get lost here,” he says.
“It’s incredible,” I say, marveling at the maze of rooms and passageways.
We sit at a table and begin to spread the Black file before us. He’s impressed with my organization. He asks for certain documents. They’re all at my fingertips. He wants dates and names. I have them memorized. I make copies of everything—one copy for his file, one for mine.
I have everything but a signed contract for legal services with the Blacks. He seems surprised by this, and I explain how I came to represent them.
We’ll need to get a contract, he says more than once.
I LEAVE after ten o’clock. I catch myself smiling in the rearview mirror as I drive across town. I’ll call Booker first thing in the morning with the good news. Then I’ll take some flowers to Madeline Skinner and say thanks.
It may be a lowly job, but there’s no place to go but up. Give me a year, and I’ll be making more money than Sara Plankmore and S. Todd and N. Elizabeth and F. Franklin and a hundred other assholes I’ve been hiding from for the past month. Just give me some time.
I stop by Yogi’s and have a drink with Prince. I tell him the wonderful news, and he gives me a drunken bear hug. Says he hates to see me go. I tell him I’d like to hang around for a month or so, maybe work weekends until the bar exam is over. Anything is fine with Prince.
I sit alone in a booth in the rear, sipping a cool one and
surveying the sparse crowd. I’m not ashamed anymore. For the first time in weeks I am not burdened with humiliation. I’m ready for action now, ready to get on with this career. I dream of facing Loyd Beck in a courtroom one day.
Twelve
A
S I’VE WADED THROUGH THE CASES and materials given to me by Max Leuberg, I have continually been astonished at the lengths to which wealthy insurance companies have gone to screw little people. No dollar is too trivial to connive for. No scheme is too challenging to activate. I’ve also been amazed at how few policyholders actually file suit. Most never consult a lawyer. They are shown layers of language in the appendices and addenda and convinced that they only thought they were insured. One study estimates that less than five percent of bad-faith denials are ever seen by a lawyer. The people who buy these policies are not educated. They are often as fearful of the lawyers as they are of the insurance companies. The idea of walking into a courtroom and testifying before a judge and jury is enough to silence them.
Barry Lancaster and I spend the better part of two days plowing through the Black file. He’s handled several bad-faith cases over the years, with varying degrees of success. He says repeatedly that juries are so damned conservative
in Memphis that it’s hard to get a just verdict. I’ve heard this for three years. For a Southern city, Memphis is a tough union town. Union towns usually produce good verdicts for plaintiffs. But for some unknown reason, it rarely happens here. Jonathan Lake has had a handful of million-dollar verdicts, but now prefers to try cases in other states.
I have yet to meet Mr. Lake. He’s in a big trial somewhere, and unconcerned about meeting his newest employee.
My temporary office is in a small library on a ledge overlooking the second floor. There are three round tables, eight stacks of books, all relating to medical malpractice. During my first full day on the job, Barry showed me a nice room just down the hall from him and explained this would be mine in a couple of weeks. Needs some paint and there’s something wrong with the electrical wiring. What do you expect from a warehouse? he has asked me more than once.
I haven’t actually met anyone else in the firm, and I’m sure this is because I’m a lowly paralegal, not a lawyer. I’m nothing new or special. Paralegals come and go.
These are very busy people, and there’s not much camaraderie. Barry says little about the other lawyers in the building, and I get the distinct impression that each little trial unit is pretty much on its own. I also get the feeling that handling lawsuits under the supervision of Jonathan Lake is edgy business.
Barry arrives at the office before eight each morning, and I’m determined to meet him at the front door until I get a key to this place. Evidently, Mr. Lake is very particular about who has access to the building. It’s a long story about his phones getting bugged years ago while engaged in a vicious lawsuit with an insurance company. Barry told
me the story when I first broached the subject of a key. Might take weeks, he said. And a polygraph.
He parked me on the ledge, gave me my instructions and left for his office. During the first two days, he checked on me every two hours or so. I copied everything in the Black file. Without his knowledge, I also ran a complete copy of the file for my records. I took this copy home at the end of the second day, tucking it away nicely in my sleek new attaché case, a gift from Prince.
Using Barry’s guidelines, I drafted a rather severe letter to Great Benefit, in which I laid out all the relevant facts and pertinent misdeeds on its behalf. When his secretary finished typing it, it ran for four pages. He performed radical surgery on it, and sent me back to my corner. He’s very intense and takes great pride in his ability to concentrate.
During a break on my third day, I finally mustered the courage to ask his secretary about the paperwork relevant to my employment. She was busy, but said she’d look into it.
At the end of the third day, Barry and I left his office just after nine. We had completed the letter to Great Benefit, a three-page masterpiece to be sent by certified mail, return receipt. He never talks about life outside the office. I suggested we go have a beer and a sandwich, but he quickly stiff-armed me.