Poor Deck is one of the most unattractive men I’ve ever seen. His face bears the ravages of teenage acne. His chin is virtually nonexistent. When he talks his nose wrinkles and his upper lip rises to reveal four large upper teeth, all the same size.
The collar of his double-pocketed and stained white
shirt is frayed. The knot on his plain red knit tie is as big as my fist.
“Yes,” I say, trying not to look at the two huge eyes studying me from behind those glasses. “It’s an insurance case. Are you one of the associates here?”
The nose and lip crunch together. The teeth shine at me. “Sort of. Not really. You see, I’m not a lawyer, yet. Been to law school and all, but I haven’t passed the bar.”
Ah, a kindred spirit. “Oh, really,” I say. “When did you finish law school?”
“Five years ago. You see, I’m having a little trouble with the bar exam. I’ve sat for it six times.”
This is not something I want to hear. “Wow,” I mumble. I honestly didn’t know a person could take the bar that many times. “Sorry to hear it.”
“When do you take it?” he asks, glancing nervously around the room. He’s sitting on the edge of his chair as if he might need to bolt at any moment. The thumb and index finger of his right hand pull at the skin on the back of his left hand.
“July. Pretty rough, huh?”
“Yeah, pretty rough. I’d say. I haven’t taken it in a year. Don’t know if I’ll ever try again.”
“Where’d you go to law school?” I ask him this because he makes me very nervous. I’m not sure I want to talk about the Black case. How does he figure in? What’s his cut going to be?
“In California,” he says with the most violent facial twitch I’ve ever seen. Eyes open and close. Eyebrows dance. Lips flutter. “Night school. I was married at the time, working fifty hours a week. Didn’t have much time to study. Took five years to finish. Wife left me. Moved out here.” His words trail off as his sentences get shorter, and for a few seconds he leaves me hanging.
“Yeah, well, how long have you worked for Bruiser?”
“Almost three years. He treats me like the rest of the associates. I find the cases, work them up, give him his cut. Everybody’s happy. He usually asks me to review insurance cases when they come in. I worked for Pacific Mutual for eighteen years. Got sick of it. Went to law school.” The words fade again.
I watch and wait. “What happens if you have to go to court?”
He grins sheepishly like he’s such a joker. “Well, I’ve gone a few times myself, actually. Haven’t got caught yet. So many lawyers here, you know, it’s impossible to keep up with us. If we have a trial, I’ll get Bruiser to go. Maybe one of the other associates.”
“Bruiser said there were five lawyers in the firm.”
“Yeah. Me, Bruiser, Nicklass, Toxer and Ridge. I wouldn’t call it a firm, though. It’s every man for himself. You’ll learn. You find your own cases and clients, and you keep a third of the gross.”
I’m taken with his frankness, so I press. “Is it a good deal for the associates?”
“Depends on what you want,” he says, jerking around as if Bruiser might be listening. “There’s a lot of competition out there. Suits me fine because I can make forty thousand a year practicing law without a license. Don’t tell anyone, though.”
I wouldn’t dream of it.
“How do you fit in with me and my insurance case?” I ask.
“Oh that. Bruiser’ll pay me if there’s a settlement. I help him with his files, but I’m the only one he’ll trust. No one else here is allowed to touch his files. He’s fired lawyers before who tried to butt in. Me, I’m harmless. I have to stay here, at least until I pass the bar exam.”
“What are the other lawyers like?”
“Okay. They come and go. He doesn’t hire the top
graduates, you know. He gets young guys off the streets. They work for a year or two, develop some clients and contacts, then they open their own shop. Lawyers are always moving.” Tell me about it.
“Can I ask you something?” I say against my better judgment.
“Sure.”
I hand the accident report to him, and he skims it quickly. “Bruiser gave it to you, right?”
“Yeah, just a few minutes ago. What does he expect me to do?”
“Get the case. Find the guy who got run over, sign him up with the law firm of J. Lyman Stone, then put the case together.”
“How do I find him?”
“Well, looks like he’s in the hospital. That’s usually the best place to find them.”
“You go to the hospitals?”
“Sure. I go all the time. You see, Bruiser has some contacts at Main Precinct. Some very good contacts, guys he grew up with. They feed him these accident reports almost every morning. He’ll dole them out around the office, and he expects us to go get the cases. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist.”
“Which hospital?”
His saucerlike eyes roll and he shakes his head in disgust. “What’d they teach you in law school?”
“Not much, but they certainly didn’t teach us how to chase ambulances.”
“Then you’d better learn quick. If not, you’ll starve. Look, you see this home phone number here for the injured driver. You simply call the number, tell whoever answers that you’re with Memphis Fire Department Rescue Division, or something like that, and you need to
speak to the injured driver, whatever his name is. He can’t come to the phone because he’s in the hospital, right? Which hospital? You need it for your computer. They’ll tell you. Works every time. Use your imagination. People are gullible.”
I feel sick. “Then what?”
“Then you go to the hospital and talk to such and such. Hey, look, you’re just a rookie, okay. I’m sorry. Tell you what I’ll do. Let’s grab a sandwich, eat in the car and we’ll go to the hospital and sign this boy up.”
I really don’t want to. I’d really like to walk out of this place and never return. But at the moment I have nothing else to do. “Okay,” I say with great hesitation.
He jumps to his feet. “Meet me up front. I’ll call and find out which hospital.”
THE HOSPITAL is St. Peter’s Charity Hospital, a zoo of a place where most trauma patients are taken. It’s owned by the city and provides, among many other things, indigent care for countless patients.
Deck knows it well. We zip across town in his ragged minivan, the only asset he was awarded from the divorce, a divorce caused by years of alcohol abuse. He’s clean now, a proud member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he’s stopped smoking too. He does like to gamble, though, he admits gravely, and the new casinos sprouting up just across the state line in Mississippi have him worried.
The ex-wife and two kids are still in California.
I get all these details in less than ten minutes as I chew on a hot dog. Deck drives with one hand, eats with the other, and twitches, jerks, grimaces and talks across half of Memphis with a glob of chicken salad stuck to the corner of his mouth. I cannot bear to look.
We actually park in the lot reserved for doctors because Deck has a parking card that identifies him as a physician.
The guard seems to be familiar with him, and waves us through.
Deck leads me straight to the information desk in the main lobby, a lobby packed with people. Within seconds he has the room number of Dan Van Landel, our prospect. Deck is pigeon-toed and has a slight limp, but I have trouble keeping up with him as he hikes to the elevators. “Don’t act like a lawyer,” he whispers under his breath as we wait in a crowd of nurses.
How could anyone suspect Deck of being a lawyer? We ride in silence to the eighth floor, and exit with a flood of people. Deck, sadly, has done this many times.
Despite the odd shape of his large head, and his gimpy gait and all his other striking features, no one notices us. We shuffle along a crowded corridor until it intersects with another at a busy nurses’ station. Deck knows exactly how to find Room 886. We veer to the left, walk past nurses and technicians and a doctor studying a chart. Gurneys without sheets line one wall. The tiled floor is worn and needs scrubbing. Four doors down on the left, and we enter, without knocking, a semiprivate room. It’s semidark. The first bed is occupied by a man with the sheets pulled tightly to his chin. He’s watching a soap opera on a tiny TV that swings over his bed.
He glances at us with horror, as if we’ve come to take a kidney, and I hate myself for being here. We have no business violating the privacy of these people in such a ruthless manner.
Deck, on the other hand, does not miss a step. It’s hard to believe that this brazen impostor is the same little weasel who slinked into my office less than an hour ago. Then he was afraid of his shadow. Now he seems utterly fearless.
We take a few steps and walk to the gap in a foldaway partition. Deck hesitates slightly to see if anyone is with
Dan Van Landel. He is alone, and Deck pushes forward. “Good afternoon, Mr. Van Landel,” he says sincerely.
Van Landel is in his late twenties, though his age is difficult to estimate because there are bandages on his face. One eye is swollen almost completely shut, the other has a laceration under it. An arm is broken, a leg is in traction.
He is awake, so mercifully we don’t have to touch him or yell at him. I stand at the foot of the bed, near the entrance, hoping mightily that no nurse or doctor or family member shows up and catches us doing this.
Deck leans closer. “Can you hear me, Mr. Van Landel?” he asks with the compassion of a priest.
Van Landel is pretty well strapped to the bed, so he can’t move. I’m sure he would like to sit up or make some adjustment, but we’ve got him pinned down. I cannot imagine the shock he must be in. One moment he’s lying here gazing at the ceiling, probably still groggy and in pain, then in a split-second he’s looking into one of the oddest faces he’s ever seen.
He blinks his eyes rapidly, trying to focus. “Who are you?” he grunts through clenched teeth. Clenched because they’re wired.
This is not fair.
Deck smiles at these words and delivers the four shining teeth. “Deck Shifflet, law firm of Lyman Stone.” He says this with remarkable assurance, as if he’s
supposed
to be here. “You haven’t talked to any insurance company, have you?”
Just like that, Deck establishes the bad guys. It’s certainly not us. It’s the insurance boys. He takes a giant stride in gaining confidence. Us versus them.
“No,” Van Landel grunts.
“Good. Don’t talk to them. They’re just out to screw you,” Deck says, inching closer, already dispensing advice.
“We’ve looked over the accident report. Clear case of running a red light. We’re gonna go out in about an hour,” he says, looking importantly at his watch, “and photograph the site, talk to witnesses, you know, the works. We have to do it quick before the insurance company investigators get to the witnesses. They’ve been known to bribe them for false testimony, you know, crap like that. We need to move fast, but we need your authorization. Do you have a lawyer?”
I hold my breath. If Van Landel says that his brother is a lawyer, then I’m out the door.
“No,” he says.
Deck moves in for the kill. “Well, like I said, we need to move fast. My firm handles more car wrecks than anybody in Memphis, and we get huge settlements. Insurance companies are afraid of us. And we don’t charge a dime. We take the usual one third of any recovery.” As he’s delivering the closer, he’s slowly pulling a contract from the center of a legal pad. It’s a quickie contract—one page, three paragraphs, just enough to hook him. Deck waves it in his face in such a way that Van Landel has to take it. He holds it with his good arm, tries to read it.
Bless his heart. He’s just gone through the worst night of his life, lucky to be alive, and now, bleary-eyed and punch-drunk, he’s supposed to peruse a legal document and make an intelligent decision.
“Can you wait for my wife?” he asks, almost pleading.
Are we about to get caught? I clutch the bed railing, and in doing so inadvertently hit a cable which jerks a pulley that yanks his leg up another inch. “Ahhh!” he groans.
“Sorry,” I say quickly, jerking my hands away. Deck looks at me if he could slaughter me, then regains control. “Where is your wife?” he asks.
“Ahhh!” the poor guy groans again.
“Sorry,” I repeat because I can’t help it. My nerves are shot.
Van Landel watches me fearfully. I keep both hands deep in my pockets.
“She’ll be back in a little while,” he says, pain evident with every syllable.
Deck has an answer for everything. “I’ll talk to her later, in my office. I need to get a ton of information from her.” Deck deftly slides his legal pad under the contract so the signing will be smoother, and he uncaps a pen.
Van Landel mumbles something, then takes the pen and scribbles his name. Deck slides the contract into the legal pad, and hands a business card to the new client. It identifies him as a paralegal for the firm of J. Lyman Stone.
“Now, a couple of things,” Deck says. His tone is so authoritative. “Don’t talk to anyone except your doctor. There will be insurance people bugging you, in fact, they’ll probably be here today trying to get you to sign forms and things. They might even offer you a settlement. Do not, under any circumstances, say a word to these people. Do not, under any circumstances, sign anything until I first review it. You have my number. Call me twenty-four hours a day. On the back is the number for Rudy Baylor here, and you can call him anytime. We’ll handle the case together. Any questions?”
“Good,” Deck says before he can grunt or groan. “Rudy here will be back in the morning with some paperwork. Have your wife call us this afternoon. It’s very important that we talk to her.” He pats Van Landel on his good leg. It’s time for us to go, before he changes his mind. “We’re gonna get you a bunch of money,” Deck assures him.
We say our good-byes as we backtrack and make a quick exit. Once in the hallway, Deck proudly says, “And that’s how it’s done, Rudy. Piece of cake.”
We dodge a woman in a wheelchair and we stop for a patient being taken away on a gurney. The hall is crawling with people. “What if the guy had a lawyer?” I ask, beginning to breathe normally again.
“There’s nothing to lose, Rudy. That’s what you must remember. We came here with nothing. If he ran us out of his room, for whatever reason, what have we lost?”