Donny Ray is fading fast, she says, hasn’t been out of bed for the past two days.
“We went to court yesterday for the first time,” I explain.
“Already?”
“It wasn’t a trial or anything like that. Just a preliminary motion. The insurance company is trying to get the case dismissed, and we’re having a big fight over it.” I try to keep it simple, but I’m not sure it registers. She looks through the dirty windows, into the backyard but certainly not at the Fairlane. Dot doesn’t seem to care.
This is oddly comforting. If Judge Hale does what I think he’s about to, and if we’re unable to refile in another court, then this case is over. Maybe the entire family has given up. Maybe they won’t scream at me when we get bounced.
I decided when I was driving over that I wouldn’t mention Judge Hale and his threats. It would only complicate our discussion. There will be plenty of time to discuss this later, when we have nothing else to talk about.
“The insurance company has made an offer to settle.”
“What kind of offer?”
“Some money.”
“How much?”
“Seventy-five thousand dollars. They figure that’s how much they’ll pay their lawyers to defend the case, so they’re offering it now to settle everything.”
There’s a noticeable reddening in her face, a tightening of her jaws. “Sumbitches think they can buy us off now, right?”
“Yes, that’s what they think.”
“Donny Ray don’t need money. He needed a bone mare transplant last year. Now it’s too late.”
“I agree.”
She picks up her pack of cigarettes from the table, and
lights one. Her eyes are red and wet. I was wrong. This mother has not given up. She wants blood. “Just exactly what’re we supposed to do with seventy-five thousand dollars? Donny Ray’ll be dead, and it’ll just be me and him.” She points with her forehead in the direction of the Fairlane.
“Them sumbitches,” she says.
“I agree.”
“I guess you said we’ll take it, didn’t you?”
“Of course not. I can’t settle the case without your approval. We have until tomorrow morning to make a decision.” The issue of the dismissal rears up again. We’ll have the right to appeal any adverse ruling by Judge Hale. It could take a year or so, but we’ll have a fighting chance. Again, this is not something I want to discuss now.
We sit in silence for a long time, both of us perfectly content to think and wait. I try to arrange my thoughts. God only knows what’s rattling around in her brain. Poor woman.
She stubs out her cigarette in an ashtray, and says, “We’d better talk to Donny Ray.”
I follow her through the dark den and into a short hallway. Donny Ray’s door is closed, and there’s a NO SMOKING sign on it. She taps lightly and we enter. The room is neat and tidy, with an antiseptic smell to it. A fan blows from the corner. The screened window is open. A television is elevated at the foot of his bed, and next to it, close to his pillow, is a small table covered with bottles of fluids and pills.
Donny Ray lies stiff as a board with a sheet tucked tightly under his frail body. He smiles broadly when he sees me, and pats a spot next to him. This is where I sit. Dot assumes a position on the other side.
He tries to keep smiling as he struggles to convince me he’s feeling fine, everything’s better today. Just a little
tired, that’s all. His voice is low and strained, his words at times barely audible. He listens carefully as I recount yesterday’s hearing and explain the offer to settle. Dot holds his right hand.
“Will they go higher?” he asks. It’s a question Deck and I debated over lunch yesterday. Great Benefit has made the remarkable leap from zero to seventy-five thousand. We both suspect they may go as high as a hundred thousand, but I wouldn’t dare be so optimistic in front of my clients.
“I doubt it,” I say. “But we can try. All they can do is say no.”
“How much will you get?” he asks. I explain the contract, how my third comes off the top.
He looks at his mother and says, “That’s fifty thousand for you and Dad.”
“What’re we gonna do with fifty thousand dollars?” she asks him.
“Pay off the house. Buy a new car. Stick some away for old age.”
“I don’t want their damned money.”
Donny Ray closes his eyes and takes a quick nap. I stare at the bottles of medication. When he wakes up, he touches my arm, tries to squeeze it and says, “Do you want to settle, Rudy? Some of the money is yours.”
“No. I don’t want to settle,” I say with conviction. I look at him, then at her. They are listening intently. “They wouldn’t offer this money if they weren’t worried. I want to expose these people.”
A lawyer has a duty to give his client the best possible advice without regard for his own financial circumstances. There is no doubt in my mind that I could beguile the Blacks into settling. With little effort, I could convince them that Judge Hale is about to jerk the rug from under us, that the money is now on the table but will soon be
gone forever. I could paint a doomsday picture, and these people have been stepped on so much they’d readily believe it.
It would be easy. And I would walk away with twenty-five thousand dollars, a fee I have trouble comprehending at the moment. But I’ve overcome the temptation. I wrestled with it early this morning in the hammock, and I’ve made peace with myself.
It wouldn’t take much to drive me from the legal profession at this point. I’ll take the next step and quit before I sell out my clients.
I leave the Blacks in Donny Ray’s room, hoping mightily that I don’t return tomorrow with the news that our case has been dismissed.
THERE ARE AT LEAST four hospitals within walking distance of St. Peter’s. There’s also a med school, dental school and countless doctors’ offices. The medical community in Memphis has gravitated together in a six-block area between Union and Madison. On Madison itself is an eight-story building, directly across from St. Peter’s, known as the Peabody Medical Arts Building. It has an enclosed walking tunnel above Madison so the doctors can run from their offices to the hospital and back again. It houses nothing but doctors, one of whom is Dr. Eric Craggdale, an orthopedic surgeon. His office is on the third floor.
I made a series of anonymous calls to his office yesterday, and found out what I needed. I wait in the huge lobby of St. Peter’s, one level above the street, and watch the parking lot around the Peabody Medical Arts Building. At twenty minutes before eleven, I watch an old Volkswagen Rabbit ease off Madison and park in the crowded lot. Kelly gets out.
She’s alone, as I expected. I called her husband’s place
of employment an hour ago, asked to speak to him and hung up when he came to the phone. I can barely see the top of her head as she struggles to rise from the car. She’s on crutches, hobbling between rows of cars, headed into the building.
I take the escalator one floor up, then cross Madison in the glass tube walkway above it. I’m nervous, but in no hurry.
The waiting room is crowded. She’s sitting with her back to the wall, flipping pages in a magazine, her broken ankle now in a walking cast. The chair to her right is empty, and I’m in it before she realizes it’s me.
Her face first registers shock, then instantly breaks into a welcoming smile. She glances nervously about. No one is looking.
“Just read your magazine,” I whisper as I open a
National Geographic
. She raises a copy of
Vogue
almost to eye level, and asks, “What are you doing here?”
“My back’s bothering me.”
She shakes her head and looks around. The lady next to her would like to stare but her neck is in a brace. Neither of us knows a soul in this room, so why should we worry? “So who’s your doctor?” she asks.
“Craggdale,” I answer.
“Very funny.” Kelly Riker was beautiful when she was in the hospital wearing a simple hospital gown, a bruise on her cheek and no makeup. Now it’s impossible for me to take my eyes off her face. She’s wearing a white cotton button-down, fight starch, the type a coed would borrow from her boyfriend, and rolled-up khaki shorts. Her dark hair falls well below her shoulders.
“Is he good?” I ask.
“He’s just a doctor.”
“You’ve seen him before?”
“Don’t start, Rudy. I’m not discussing it. I think you should leave.” Her voice is quiet but firm.
“Well, you know, I’ve thought about that. In fact, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about you and what I should do.” I pause as a man rolls by in a wheelchair.
“And?” she says.
“And I still don’t know.”
“I think you should leave.”
“You don’t really mean that.”
“Yes I do.”
“No you don’t. You want me to hang around, keep in touch, call every now and then, so the next time he breaks some bones you’ll have someone who’ll give a damn about you. That’s what you want.”
“There won’t be a next time.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s different now. He’s trying to stop drinking. He’s promised not to hit me again.”
“And you believe him?”
“Yes, I do.”
“He’s promised before.”
“Why don’t you leave? And don’t call, okay? It just makes matters worse.”
“Why? Why does it make matters worse?”
She falters for a second, lowers the magazine to her lap and looks at me. “Because I think about you less as the days go by.”
It’s certainly nice to know she’s been thinking about me. I reach into my pocket and retrieve a business card, one with my old address on it, the address that’s now chained and seized by various agencies of the U.S. Government. I write my phone number on the back, and hand it to her. “It’s a deal. I won’t call you again. If you need me, that’s my home number. If he hurts you, I want to know about it.”
She takes the card. I quickly kiss her on the cheek, then leave the waiting room.
ON THE SIXTH FLOOR of the same building is a large oncology group. Dr. Walter Kord is Donny Ray’s treating physician, which means at this point he’s providing a few pills and other drugs, and waiting for him to die. Kord prescribed the original chemo treatment, and performed the tests that determined that Ron Black was a perfect match for his twin’s bone marrow transplant. He will be a crucial witness at trial, assuming the case gets that far.
I leave a three-page letter with his receptionist. I’d like to talk to him at his convenience, and preferably without getting billed for it. As a general rule, doctors hate lawyers, and any time spent chatting with us is at great expense. But Kord and I are on the same side, and I have nothing to lose by trying to open a dialogue.
IT IS WITH GREAT TREPIDATION that I putter along this street in this rough section of the city, oblivious to traffic and trying vainly to read faded and peeling numbers above doors. The neighborhood looks as if it were once abandoned, with good reason, but is now in the process of reclaiming itself. The buildings are all two and three stories running half a block deep with brick and glass fronts. Most were built together, a few have narrow alleys between them. Many are still boarded up, a couple were burned out years ago. I pass two restaurants, one with tables on the sidewalk under a canopy but no customers, a cleaner’s, a flower shop.
The Buried Treasures antique shop is on a corner, a clean-enough-looking building with the bricks painted dark gray and red awnings over the windows. It has two levels, and as my gaze rises to the second, I suspect I’ve found my new home.
Because I can find no other door, I enter the antique shop. In the tiny foyer, I see a stairwell with a dim light at the top.
Deck is waiting, smiling proudly. “Whatta you think?” he gushes before I have a chance to look at anything. “Four rooms, about a thousand feet, plus rest room. Not bad,” he says, tapping me on the shoulder. Then he bounces forward, spinning around, arms open wide. “Thought this would be the reception area, maybe we’ll use it for a secretary when we hire one. Just needs a coat of paint. All floors are hardwood,” he says, stomping his foot, as if I couldn’t see the floors. “Ceilings are twelve feet. Walls are plasterboard and easy to paint.” He motions for me to follow. We step through an open door and into a short hallway. “One room on each side. This one here is the largest, so I thought you’d need it.”
I step into my new office, and am pleasantly surprised. It’s about fifteen by fifteen with a window overlooking the street. It’s empty and clean, nice flooring.
“And over here is the third room. Thought we’d use it as a conference room. I’ll work outta here, but I won’t make a mess.” He’s trying hard to please, and I almost feel sorry for him. Just relax, Deck, I like the offices. Good job.
“Down there is the john. We’ll need to clean and paint it, maybe get a plumber in.” He backtracks to the front room. “Whatta you think?”
“It’ll work, Deck. Who owns it?”
“The junk dealer downstairs. Old man and his wife. By the way, they have some stuff we might want: tables, chairs, lamps, even some old file cabinets. It’s cheap, not bad-looking, sort of goes with our decorative scheme here, plus they’ll allow us to pay by the month. They’re kinda happy to have someone else in the building. I think they’ve been robbed a coupla times.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Yeah. We gotta be careful here.” He hands me a sheet of color samples from Sherwin-Williams. “I think we’d better stick with some shade of white. Less work to apply and easier on the budget. The phone company’s coming tomorrow. Electricity is already on. Take a look at this.” Next to the window is a card table with some papers scattered about and a small black-and-white TV in the center of it.
Deck has already been to the printer. He hands me various layouts of our new firm stationery, each with my name emblazoned in bold letters across the top, and his name in the corner as a paralegal. “Got these from a print shop down the street. Very reasonable. Takes about two days to fill the order. I’d say five hundred sheets and envelopes. See anything you like?”
“I’ll study them tonight.”
“When do you wanna paint?”
“Well, I guess we—”
“I figure we could knock it out in one hard day, that is if we get by with only one coat, you know. I’ll get the paint and supplies this afternoon, and try to get started. Can you help tomorrow?”