“No. He’s here.”
There’s an incredibly long period of silence as everyone busies himself with nothing-work while the dust settles. My lawsuit has caused a bloodletting. I write carefully on my legal pad, listing the things I should do next.
“Where’s the file?” I ask.
T. Pierce reaches behind himself and picks up a stack of papers. He slides these across the table. They’re neatly copied and bound with thick rubber bands.
“Is it in chronological order?” I ask. Kipler’s order requires this.
“I think so,” T. Pierce says, looking at the four Great Benefit suits as if he could choke them.
The file is almost five inches thick. Without removing the rubber bands, I say, “Give me an hour. Then we’ll continue.”
“Sure,” T. Pierce says. “There’s a small conference room right there.” He rises and points to the wall behind me.
I follow him and Jack the Suit into an adjacent room, where they quickly leave me. I sit at the table and immediately begin plowing through the documents.
An hour later, I reenter the boardroom. They’re drinking coffee and suffering through small talk. “We need to call the judge,” I say, and T. Pierce snaps to attention. “In here,” I say, pointing to my little room.
With him on one phone and me on another, I dial Kipler’s office number. He answers on the second ring. We identify ourselves and say good morning. “Got some problems here, Your Honor,” I say, anxious to start the conversation with the right tone.
“What kinda problems?” he demands. T. Pierce is listening and staring blankly at the floor.
“Well, of the six witnesses specified in my notice, and in your order, three have suddenly disappeared. They’ve either resigned, been downsized or suffered some other equal fate, but they aren’t here. Happened very late last week.”
“Who?”
I’m sure he has the file in front of him, looking at the names.
“Jackie Lemancyzk, Tony Krick and Russell Krokit no longer work here. Pellrod, Lufkin, and Underhall, the designee, miraculously survived the carnage.”
“How about the file?”
“I have the claim file, and I’ve scanned it.”
“And?”
“There’s at least one missing document,” I say, watching T. Pierce carefully. He frowns hard at me, as if he can’t believe this.
“What is it?” Kipler asks.
“The Stupid Letter. It’s not in the file. I haven’t had time to check everything else.”
The attorneys for Great Benefit saw the Stupid Letter for the first time last week. The copy Dot handed to Drummond during her depo had the word COPY stamped three times across the top. I did this on purpose so if the letter turned up later we’d know where it came from. The original is locked safely away in my files. It would’ve been too risky for Drummond et al. to forward their marked copy of the letter to Great Benefit to belatedly add it to the claim file.
“Is this true, Pierce?” Kipler demands.
Pierce is genuinely at a loss. “I’m sorry, Your Honor, I don’t know. I’ve gone through the file, but, well, I guess so, you know. I haven’t checked everything.”
“Are you guys in the same room?” Kipler asks.
“Yes sir,” we answer in unison.
“Good. Pierce, leave the room. Rudy, stay on the phone.”
T. Pierce starts to say something, but thinks better of it. Confused, he hangs up his phone and leaves the room.
“Okay, Judge, it’s just me,” I say.
“What’s their mood?” he asks.
“Pretty tense.”
“I’m not surprised. This is what I’m gonna do. By killing off witnesses and hiding documents, they’ve given me the authority to order all depositions to be taken down here. It’s discretionary, and they’ve earned themselves the punishment. I think you should depose Underhall and no one else. Ask him everything under the sun, but try and pin him down on the terminations of the three missing witnesses. Throw everything at him. When you’re finished with him, come home. I’ll order a hearing for later this week and get to the bottom of this. Get the underwriting file too.”
I’m taking notes as fast as I can.
“Lemme talk to Pierce now,” he says, “and lay him out.”
Jack Underhall is a compact little man with a clipped mustache and clipped speech. He sheds light on the company itself. Great Benefit is owned by PinnConn, a privately held corporation whose owners are hard to pin down. I question him at length about the affiliations and connections of the three companies that call this place home, and it becomes hopelessly confused. We talk for an hour about the corporate structure, starting with the CEO on down. We talk about products, sales, markets, divisions, personnel, all interesting to a point but mostly useless. He produces two letters of resignation from the missing witnesses, and assures me their departures had absolutely nothing to do with this case.
I grill him for three hours, then quit. I had resigned myself to the reality of spending at least three days in Cleveland, enclosed in a room with the boys from Trent & Brent, wrangling with one hostile witness after another, and plowing through reams of documents at night.
But I leave this place just before two, never to return, loaded with fresh documents for Deck to scour, secure in the knowledge that now these assholes will be forced to come to my turf and give their depositions in my courtroom, with my judge nearby.
The bus ride back to Memphis seems much faster.
Thirty-five
Deck has a business card which describes him as a Paralawyer, an animal new to me. He roams the hallways outside City Court and hustles small-time criminals who are waiting for their first appearances before the various judges. He picks out a guy who looks scared and is holding a piece of paper, and he makes his move. Deck calls this the Buzzard Two-Step, a quick little solicitation perfected by many of the street lawyers who hang around City Court. He once invited me to go with him so I could learn the ropes. I declined.
Derrick Dogan was originally targeted as a victim of the Buzzard Two-Step, but the hustle fell apart when he asked Deck, “What the hell’s a paralawyer?” Deck, ever quick with a canned response, failed to satisfy this inquiry, and left in a hurry. But Dogan kept the card with Deck’s name on it. Later the same day, Dogan was broadsided by a teenager who was speeding. About twenty-four hours after he told Deck to get lost outside City Court, he dialed the number on the card from his semiprivate room at St. Peter’s. Deck took the call at the office, where I was sifting through an impenetrable web of insurance documents. Minutes later, we were racing down the street toward the hospital. Dogan wanted to talk to a real lawyer, not a paralawyer.
This is a semi-legitimate visit to the hospital, my first. We find Dogan alone with his broken leg, broken ribs, broken wrist and facial cuts and bruises. He’s young, around twenty, no wedding band. I take charge like a real lawyer, feed him the usual well-practiced lines about avoiding insurance companies and saying nothing to anybody. It’s just us against them, and my firm handles more car wrecks than anybody else in town. Deck smiles. He’s taught me well.
Dogan signs a contract and a medical release which will allow us to obtain his records. He’s in significant pain, so we don’t stay long. His name’s on the contract. We say good-bye and promise to see him tomorrow.
By noon, Deck has a copy of the accident report and has already talked to the teenager’s father. They’re insured by State Farm. The father, against his better judgment, offers Deck the opinion that he thinks the policy has a limit of twenty-five thousand dollars. He and the kid are really sorry about this. No problem, says Deck, quite thankful that the accident occurred.