An Invisible Client (6 page)

I almost chuckled. He completely believed that. Instead, I stood up and looked at the jersey on the wall.

“I never got on the Jumbotron,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I really wanted to make silly faces.”

“Well, maybe when you get out of here with all your money, you can take your mama there and both be on the Jumbotron.”

He smiled. “You really think so?”

“I promise you, buddy, you’ll get there.”

His entire mood lifted and the smile on his face seemed contagious. “I’ll see ya, Joel.”

“Noah?” he said as I was walking out.

“Yeah?”

“If you wanted to come over tomorrow, we’re gonna have ice cream. My mama’s bringing me ice cream from Farr West. It’s the best ice cream. Will you come?”

I nodded. “Sure. I’ll come.”

11

The next day, around noon, I was researching cyanide and its effects on the human body when my phone buzzed. I told Jessica to take a message, whoever it was, but she said it was an attorney I knew named Jeppson. I always took Jepp’s calls.

“Noah, it’s Jepp. How are ya?”

“Good, man. What’re you up to?”

“Oh, just finishing up an arbitration. I just wanted to talk to you really quick about something. Bob Walcott called me.”

I stopped looking at the computer and leaned back in the chair. “What’d he want?”

“He said you’re considering something really stupid and asked if I wouldn’t talk some sense into you.”

Jepp was an old law school professor of mine, and he’d been one of the first people to refer clients to Byron, Val & Keller. His word was gold with me. I wondered how Bob would know something like that.

“He said that? Those exact words?”

“More or less.”

“Why would he care? His firm makes thirty times what we make. He has nothing to be scared of from me.”

“Well, he’s taking this one kinda personal. He says if you bring a suit and lose, he’s going to petition the Bar for sanctions. Maybe even a suspension for bringing a frivolous suit.”

“That asshole! I haven’t even filed the suit yet, and he’s threatening to suspend me?”

“He’s got a lotta connections up there, Noah. If he says an attorney should go before a disciplinary council, they’ll probably give it to him.”

Sometimes, probably just to seem busy, the Bar would look for ways to disbar people. They would conduct stings on attorneys and disbar them the first chance they got. That never happened to the big-name attorneys at the big firms. It was always the little man who got screwed: the working man.

“He’s hiding something. Something he’s scared I’m going to find.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he’s old. This is a new, up-and-coming company, and they want him on it personally. Maybe he just doesn’t feel like trying cases anymore.”

I took a deep breath. Ultimately, I had no control over what Bob did or didn’t do.

“Listen,” Jepp said, “I’m going to calm him down. Let him know it’s just business. I got connections at the Bar, too. I don’t think anything will come of it, but I thought I’d relay the message that this is a sensitive one for him.”

I couldn’t understand why. At $400 million in revenue, Pharma-K wasn’t even Walcott’s biggest client.

“Well, lemme know if you hear anything else.”

“I will. You take care of yourself, Noah.”

I stared at the walls for a good five minutes after that, trying to understand why Bob would care so much about this one case. In reality, Pharma-K could pay us off with what would be considered pennies in relation to their revenue and have us sign a nondisclosure agreement so we could never release details about the case or the settlement. This was about more than trying to avoid the bad press from a lawsuit. I was close to something Bob was frightened of.

Raimi poked his head in. “Meeting.”

I checked my watch. It was time for our weekly case meeting, where the attorneys gave updates on the major cases the firm was handling. At work meetings, there was a fine line between getting on the same page and just masturbating in a conference room for two hours. Our meetings seemed to cross into the latter territory more often than not.

I hiked over to the conference room, where I found pastries and silver water pitchers with glasses, not paper cups. I sat down at the head of the conference table and leaned back in my seat. Once everyone was seated, the Commandant shouted, “All right, quit your jawin’. Marty, you start.”

Marty went into the details of an airline case he was handling. A small plane had gone down over Venezuela while carrying two Americans, both our clients. We suspected there had been a malfunction with the engine, and Marty began discussing the conversation he’d had with our engineers, who would be called as experts in the case.

I zoned out until I spotted Olivia in the corner. She smiled at me, and I grinned. Then I rested my cheek on my palm and listened for the next hour as we went around the table and everyone talked about cases no one else cared about. That was the masturbation part.

Finally, it came to me.

“Noah,” Marty said, “what’s going on with the Pharma Killer case? We taking it?”

Another attorney, a senior associate with a haircut like an anchorman’s, said, “I heard we were handling that. That’s awesome.”

I stared at him, and he swallowed and looked away.

“Still looking into it. Waiting for a report from KGB.”

The anchorman said, “That guy kinda gives me the creeps.”

Marty responded, “He’s the best investigator I’ve ever seen. And he’s exclusively for partner use. I don’t want his time taken up by dog bites and rear-end accidents. He’s on our big stuff.” He looked at me. “Anything else, Noah?”

I shook my head, and they moved on to the next attorney.

The meeting lasted two and a half hours, and I didn’t feel like we accomplished much. I rose and was about to leave when the Commandant said, “You have a call with Nyer the Denier in fifteen minutes.”

“Shit. Now? I was gonna go to the gym.”

“Three-hundred-thousand-dollar case. Get to it and get that money, Mister. Now.”

Sometimes, I wondered why the Commandant’s name wasn’t on the wall. I headed to my office and waited for the call. Roger Nyer was one of the worst insurance adjusters to deal with. He was known as Nyer the Denier because his policy was to outright reject any claim and then negotiate only when he saw the attorneys were serious about pursuing it. This case was a simple car accident where the driver at fault had been drunk, and my client was disabled to the point that she couldn’t work. It should’ve been settled months ago, but instead, Nyer had dragged it out for a year.

Jessica poked her head in. “Noah, Ms. Whiting is on the phone. She said something about waiting for you before they have the ice cream?”

“Oh, right. That. Tell them I can’t make it.”

“Will do.”

I put my feet on the desk and waited for Nyer to call. He never called on time. He had to establish control as quickly as possible, and making a person wait was one of the easiest ways to do that. So I opened Twitter and began flipping through some of the accounts I followed: Ferrari, a few success accounts, and a couple of personal injury ones. It bored me, so I stared out my windows and thought about Tia.

I had known she would move on at some point, but I hadn’t expected marriage, even though that was a perfectly logical step for her to take. It’d been three years since the divorce, and she had a right to find happiness.

I wasn’t so much bothered that she was having sex with another man—I’d slept with many women since the divorce. Love was something else. Love was the little things. Holding her when her grandmother died and she cried in my arms. Making dinner together. Lying on the grass at the park and watching the clouds. Love was giving our cat a bath that he hated. Sex and dating didn’t bother me. What bothered me was that she would do the little things with him now. The little things that, somehow, we had stopped doing. And by the time we realized our relationship was broken, it was too late.

My phone buzzed, and Jessica said Nyer was on the line, twenty-five minutes late.

I answered. “Hey, Roger. How are ya?”

“Fine. I’m calling about—”

“Before you get into it, let’s just agree not to jerk each other off, Roger. We’re both professionals who have done this too many times to count. I’m going to start high, and you’re going to start low. We’re gonna haggle for an hour and probably not reach any agreement. Let’s save that—I’m not in the mood today. You tell me the highest amount you’re willing to offer, and I’ll tell you the lowest we’re willing to take. Let’s see if they overlap at all.”

Silence on the other end.

“Roger?”

“I’m here. Who would go first?”

He was smart, this Roger. “I don’t know. You have no reason to trust me, and I have no reason to trust you. What if we both say it at the same time?”

“That’s childish.”

“It would save us both an hour, Roger, and probably an arbitration. Let’s just try it.”

“Fine. We’ll try.”

“Okay, on the count of three, we both give the figure. At the same time, okay? On three.”

“Fine.”

“One . . . two . . . three—blah.”

“Two fifty. Shit! You fucker!”

I laughed. “Two fifty it is, Roger. Draft it up.”

“You’re a damn—”

“I know, I know. Draft it up and send it over with the check. Have a good one.”

I hung up. He would never trust me again, of course, but it wasn’t as though we’d had a good relationship before.

I rose to get a few other things done around the office, my mood lifted, and my ex effectively fell out of my mind with the thought that I had just made eighty-three thousand dollars.

12

That afternoon, I handled a preliminary hearing on a criminal case: a stockbroker accused of market manipulation, which he’d confessed to on video. It was a hopeless case that we would eventually have to deal on, but for now, I wanted to put on a show for the client. Marty was supposed to cover it for me since I was still technically out of the office for the Bethany Chicken trial, but I wanted to be in court again and told him I’d do it myself.

After that was a mediation that went nowhere, then I reviewed some demand letters to insurance companies that my paralegals had drafted. The letters were just summaries of the injuries our clients suffered and the amounts we were asking for. After the demands were received, we would talk to the adjusters, and almost all the cases would end there.

By nightfall, I was actually exhausted from work. That didn’t happen often. As I was preparing to leave, I heard women arguing in the hall. Then Rebecca Whiting stormed into my office. She wore jeans and a T-shirt and looked like she’d been crying.

Jessica, trailing behind her, said, “You can’t just go in there.”

“How could you do that?” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You told him you would come by the hospital and have ice cream with him.”

“I got busy. Did they not tell you?”

“Oh, they told me.” She folded her arms. “Mr. Byron, I know how much you’re helping us, and I’m very appreciative—more than I could ever tell you. But no one makes a promise to my son and then breaks it. His father used to do that to him all the time, and I would have to be the one to deal with the heartbreak. Joel can’t take it now. He doesn’t have the strength.”

“Rebecca, no offense, but he barely knows me. Why would he care if I came by for ice cream?”

She sighed. “You’ve never had children, have you?” She turned and stormed out of the office, leaving me staring at Jessica.

I was halfway home when I pulled to a stop sign and didn’t start moving again. To the east was the hospital, and to the north was my home. I stared up at the lights of the hospital until a horn blared behind me and snapped me out of my thoughts. I started north, then I swerved and went east.

I’d visited a lot of hospitals in my day. In fact, when the law firm first opened, I often hired law clerks to hang out in the cafeterias or walk the halls and listen to conversations. At any hint that someone had been in an accident, our man or woman would strike up a conversation with them. Eventually, the conversation would turn to lawyers, and our name would come up. My clerk would also just happen to slip one of my cards to the injured.

That tactic was strictly prohibited by the Utah State Bar because of some ancient rule that in-person solicitation should be banned because lawyers had some sort of Jedi mind trick that could fool vulnerable people into signing up with us. Third parties working for us were also banned from participating. It was bullshit. The insurance companies had people at hospitals within twenty-four hours to settle big injury suits, knowing full well that the injured people couldn’t have talked to a personal injury lawyer by that time. I had a feeling money from the defense side had helped institute that ridiculous rule. I had a moral obligation not to follow it.

For the first year Byron, Val & Keller was in business, we didn’t have money for law clerks, so I was the one at the hospitals. I’d been to every damn hospital in the state and ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner at each. I would sit in the cafeteria and listen to the crying. A lot of crying happened in the cafeterias late at night. People would come down with their husbands or wives for a snack, and the pain would just hit them. Sometimes, I could see the change in their faces—the moment when they realized that might be one of the last times they saw the most important person in their life. I heard people’s most intimate conversations. When someone thought a loved one wasn’t going to make it, they laid all the cards on the table.

I parked and got out. The emergency room was nearly empty as I went down the hall to the adjacent building. The ICU had its own wing, where floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the city. The lights were beginning to blink on as darkness overtook the city. While I waited for the elevator, I stared out at the buildings. Once, when I was unemployed and sleeping on a cot in a room I shared with three other guys, I’d stared out at the city from a place not unlike this hallway. I’d sworn I would be rich. I smiled, just thinking about it. A kid with nothing—no money, no connections, and no education—had sworn he would be one of the elites. The balls it took to make a promise like that to myself . . .

When I stepped off the elevator, the floor was empty. The nurse behind the desk said that visiting hours were over, and I said I was Joel’s lawyer.

“Family only.”

“He
is
family,” Rebecca said, coming up behind me. “This is my cousin. And he’s Joel’s lawyer.”

The nurse looked from Rebecca to me. “Cousins, huh?”

I signed in, and Rebecca and I walked toward Joel’s room. Rebecca didn’t say anything, but her face seemed to glow. I still didn’t understand why my visit would mean anything to either of them.

She opened the door for me. Joel was playing on a phone. He put it down and grinned when he saw me. He looked puffier than he had the day before.

“Hey,” I said. “You got any of that ice cream left?”

“It melted, but we can go down to the cafeteria and get some.”

“Joel,” his mother said, “they don’t like you moving around too much.”

He grunted and forced himself up on the bed. “I’m fine. I wanna get outta the room, too.”

Rebecca and I helped him up. Joel had one arm around my elbow and the other around his mom’s elbow. We started toward a wheelchair pushed up against the wall, but Joel said, “No, I wanna walk.”

Rebecca nodded to me, and I got the door as we headed out.

People stared at Joel, and I wondered if he noticed. The cafeteria wasn’t far, but it was high up—on the top floor of the building. It sat on the crest of the mountain the hospital had been built on and offered a nearly 360-degree view of the valley. Joel and I sat by the windows while his mom went to get ice cream.

“She’s scared,” Joel said. “She doesn’t have anyone else. Her family isn’t in Utah.”

“Where are they?”

“Arkansas. That’s where I was born. We moved out here for my daddy’s job, but then he got sent over there.”

I didn’t have to ask where “over there” was.

“You miss him a lot, huh?”

“All the time. We was best pals.” He swallowed, and I could hear wheezing in his breath. “I remember when those soldiers came to the door. My mama didn’t even have to talk to them. She opened the door and started crying. The soldiers held her, and they cried, too. I knew my daddy was dead then.” He breathed for a few moments, and I could see the struggle, the difficulty of just doing something everyone else took for granted. “Where’s your daddy?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. When I left home, I never called him.”

“He’s your daddy, though.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes I wish we could choose our daddies.”

“What’d he do that made you not like him?”

I looked away, a sudden flash of memories I hadn’t thought about in a long time filling my mind. I had never discussed my father with anyone but Tia. “He drank a lot. And my mom left us when I was a kid. She fell in love with someone else. I never heard from her again. My dad always said I looked like her. I think he took out his anger at her on me.”

Joel was listening intently, though I didn’t know if a child of twelve could understand what I’d just told him.

Rebecca had been standing with a group of other people, a set of parents and some kids about Joel’s age. She came and sat down. “Brandi and Brandon are here, Joel. Would you like to talk to them?”

He nodded. His mother helped him up and led him over to another table. The two kids sitting there said hi to him. They wore hospital gowns as well. Rebecca came back and pushed a cup of ice cream in front of me as she sat down. I took a spoonful in my mouth and watched Joel. For the first time since I’d met him, he laughed.

“Brandi and Brandon are both here at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. Imagine that? Both your children getting cancer at the same time? They’ve been here two months, and they come by and visit with Joel. He goes up there sometimes, too.”

“Kids his age need friends.” I looked at her. “I spoke to his doctor.”

“And?”

“And they don’t think he can qualify for the transplant list.”

“If I had money, I bet he’d qualify. Money to donate to the hospital. The person whose name is on this building wouldn’t be denied an organ.”

I didn’t say anything. We sat in silence, watching as Joel and the other two kids shared games and photos on their phones. The siblings took one photo of Joel making a ridiculous face, then several more with all three of them together.

I pushed the ice cream away from me. I didn’t have much of an appetite right now.

“We should get back,” Rebecca said. “He can’t expend this much energy. It’s not good for him.”

We went over and helped Joel to his feet. I watched Brandi and Brandon. They were twins, which I hadn’t noticed before for some reason, and both looked as healthy as I thought a preteen could look. I saw no hint of what was tearing them apart on the inside.

We led Joel back to his room, and he took out his phone to show me the photo of the face he’d pulled. I smiled. He posted it to his Instagram, and as we helped him back into bed, I heard footsteps in the hallway. Two men appeared at the open door. They looked surprised to see me.

I recognized one of them—a man named Cole Harding, an attorney with Walcott.

I stepped between them and Joel. “You gotta be shitting me,” I said.

“No letter of representation’s been sent. You’re not officially his attorney yet,” Cole said. “We can interview him if we want.”

“Interview?”

“Noah, he is not your client yet. Our firm is perfectly within our rights to interview someone who may—”

“Get the hell outta this room. And if you come back, I’ll file a TRO to make sure you can’t even come into this hospital again. I don’t think any judge is going to be too happy that you tried to take advantage of a child who’s already represented.”

The two men looked at each other, then went away.

“What was that about?” Rebecca asked.

“That was about being careful. Which we’ll have to do from now on. They wanted to try to catch Joel in a position where he might say something that would hurt any future lawsuit.”

“Like what?”

“Like something that might indicate he was sick before he took their medication or that he has a genetic predisposition—something like that.”

“But he doesn’t. He got sick after he took the medicine.”

“Rebecca, the law has nothing to do with what actually happened. It’s about what a jury hears. That’s all. They want to make you guys look bad.” I glanced toward the door. “They won’t be back, though. I’ll make sure.” I turned to Joel. He looked exhausted just from the effort of going up to the cafeteria for a few minutes. “I’ll keep in touch, Joel. My investigator, a man named Anto, is going to come interview you soon. Don’t talk to anyone else unless you have my say-so, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks for coming here.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll see ya soon.”

I nodded to Rebecca and headed out of the room. When I was out in the hall, I called Jessica’s cell phone. Not many legal secretaries made eighty thousand a year, but I wanted access at all hours in exchange for that money. Still, I never abused the privilege and had used it only a few times.

“Hi,” she said. “What’s up?”

I could hear the pen click in her hand. “Joel Whiting. I’m taking the case. Send a letter to Walcott, informing them I’m Joel’s lawyer, and tell them to keep the hell away from him. Send letters to Pharma-K’s insurance and the Attorney General’s office, too.”

“AG? What for?”

“Walcott’s got connections everywhere, and Pharma-K brought hundreds of jobs to this state. The government isn’t gonna like that we’re filing suit. I’ll bet you lunch the AG’s office gets involved and stands next to Walcott during a press conference. Send them a letter now, telling them to keep away from Joel, too.”

“Anything else?”

“Get a rep agreement to Rebecca Whiting.” I paused. “And, um, get our videographer ready. We need to record Joel’s statement in case he’s not . . . around for the trial.”

“Okay. And Noah? You’re doing the right thing for that family.”

“Yeah, well, not if I get my butt kicked.”