Black River (9 page)

Thursday, October 19

9:29 a.m.

H
is name was Crispin, Edward J. Or at least that’s what the name tag said.
HARBORVIEW MEDICAL CENTER
,
PATIENT SERVICES REPRESENTATIVE
. “I’m telling you, Mr.—”

“Corso.”

“We quite literally don’t have a room for her.”

“Find one.”

“You don’t understand,” he huffed. “We’ve already pushed her surgery back to Saturday morning in hopes that a room would free up.” He shrugged. “As we speak, I still don’t have a single post-op room available. Not one.” He got to his feet and put a chubby hand on Corso’s shoulder. “Providence can operate this afternoon. They’ve got plenty of space. She’ll be quite happy with the service there.”

Corso’s eyes were cast to the side, staring down at the dimpled knuckles gripping his shoulder. Edward J. Crispin got the message and retrieved his hand. Thus chastened, he pulled his collection of chins down onto his chest and went all official.

“The space issue notwithstanding, Mr. Corso, and as much as it pains me to be forced to deal with such pedestrian issues as finances at a time like this”—he reached down and thumbed open a bright green folder; his overworked cardiovascular system had painted a bright red spot on each of his cheeks—“as of this morning, not including today”—he peeked down at his desk—“the charges for services total seventy-one thousand three hundred sixty-five dollars and thirty-three cents.” He flicked the folder shut. “Plus tax.”

Corso dropped a Visa card onto the folder. “Pay the bill,” he said. “Start a tab for further charges.”

Crispin made a rude noise with his lips. “If you do the math, sir, you’ll find that liability possibilities could run”—he pursed his lips—“halfway to seven figures.” He gave the figure a moment to sink in. “With all due respect, Mr. Corso, credit limits don’t go that high.”

“Why don’t you run the card and see,” Corso suggested.

Edward J. compressed his lips and jabbed a finger at the phone. “Alice, come in here for a moment, please.” Almost immediately, the white louvered door behind him opened. She was maybe twenty. A mouth breather, wearing a white blouse under a blue denim jumper. Her black wiry hair was held at bay by a pair of tortoiseshell hair clips. “Yes, Mr. Crispin.”

He passed her the folder and the credit card and then leaned over and whispered in her ear. He waited until the door clicked closed before turning his attention back to Corso.

“You don’t have to do this, you know. It’s not like we’re going to put her out in the street. Anyone and everyone who comes to us gets the very best we have to offer, regardless of their ability to pay, but we do try, in cases such as this, to spread the liability around a bit, if you catch my drift. Providence is a fully accredited hospital. It’s—”

“I want her to stay here.”

He was about to start back on his spiel when his phone buzzed. He picked up the receiver and listened. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” he said, before disappearing through the door. Corso could hear the hiss of whispers but couldn’t pick up the words.

Another minute and Crispin reappeared. He leaned over and set the card and an invoice in front of Corso. With a flourish, he pulled a pen from his coat pocket. “If you’d just sign at the X, Mr. Corso.”

Corso signed his name. “You’ll keep her where she is until you have a room for her.”

Crispin did something midway between a shrug and a nod. “We’ll put something together,” he said tentatively. He busied himself with tearing off the perforated strips and handing Corso a copy of the bill. “We’ll make it work,” he said.

“That’s the spirit,” Corso said, as he left the room.

Corso took the stairs. He jogged one flight up to ground level, then wormed his way through the lobby congestion and out the main exit onto Ninth Avenue. A gray sky swirled overhead as he stretched his long legs out, crossing Ninth diagonally, swiveling through the traffic until he eased up onto the opposite sidewalk and began moving steadily north.

Three blocks up, at Madison, he turned left down the steep hill. The breeze from the sound carried smells of salt and seaweed. Half a block down, the Madison Renaissance Hotel slid into view, its colorful flags stiff in the breeze. Another block and the federal courthouse slipped out from behind the Sorrento Hotel, its bleak plebeian facade black against the roiling gray sky.

The media horde had fallen into its feeding rhythm. This morning, Warren Klein held court at the back door. A knot of reporters jockeyed for position along the police barriers, as Corso crossed the freeway and approached the melee from the rear.

As Klein stepped up to the microphones, the clouds suddenly split, bathing the back of the courthouse in soft fall sunshine. Renee Rogers and Raymond Butler stood leaning against the building, squinting into the glare.

Corso could hear questions being shouted as he showed his ID to the nearest cop and ducked under the barrier. Klein’s face was scrunched into a knot, and he was shading his eyes with his hand.

“Provided we’re not faced with any undue delays—and I must say that, thus far in the trial, Judge Howell is moving the proceeding along with great dispatch—I’d hazard a guess that we’ll have the case in the hands of the jury by the middle of next week.”

Corso slid along the wall until he was rubbing shoulders with Renee Rogers.

“Warren’s gonna look like a mole on TV,” Rogers whispered.

“Not real media savvy, is he?” Corso said.

“He’s hired a media consultant,” Butler said. “To help polish his image, he says.”

Corso couldn’t hear the question, but whatever it was it got Klein started on his daily spiel about how it was an open-and-shut case. He was going to set up a foundation of extortion and negligence. He was going to prove Nicholas Balagula’s connection to a maze of companies responsible for the construction of Fairmont Hospital, and, most important, he would tie Nicholas Balagula directly to the plan to fake core sample results and other test data.

Renee Rogers leaned over and whispered in Corso’s ear, “You may be getting some company in the courtroom.” Corso raised an eyebrow. “Both Seattle newspapers are suing for the right to be present at the trial. The Second Circuit Court is going to take it up this afternoon.”

“And?”

“And recent decisions have been coming down on the side of the media.”

“Klein doesn’t seem worried.”

“Warren thinks the sunshine was arranged,” Butler said.

They shared a quiet laugh. Corso closed his eyes and languished, the warmth of the sun melting on his cheeks.

“You find out anything about what happened to your friend?” Rogers asked. When he opened his eyes, she was studying his face as if it were a road map.

“Nothing that makes any sense,” Corso replied. “I made some calls. The guy in the truck was a janitor for a local school district. Lived in a ratty little apartment down in the south end. The guy was so amorphous nobody even reported him missing.”

“Really?”

“And that’s not the good part.”

“Oh?”

“Before somebody went to all the trouble of burying him and the truck, they shot him nine times.” Corso looked over at Rogers and their eyes met. “With three different guns. Five of the shots postmortem.”

Rogers whistled softly. “Curiouser and curiouser.”

“Lotta anger there,” Butler offered. “It’s usually a family member who gets that pissed off.”

“I’ve got a line on an ex-wife,” Corso said. “I’m going to follow up on it this afternoon.”

Klein was separating himself from the crowd. “I hope to God this thing is as cut and dried as Klein thinks it is,” Corso said.

Rogers and Butler made faces at each other. “Next couple days will tell the tale,” Butler said. “We’ve got our expert witnesses. Elkins has got his own expert witnesses.” He shrugged. “A lot’s going to depend on what shakes out in there. Balagula’s done a great job of insulating himself from his business enterprises.” He waggled a hand. “It’s touch and go.” He looked over at Renee Rogers as if seeking agreement.

She picked her briefcase up from the sidewalk. “Much as it pains me to say it, Raymond, if I had to bet I’d bet Warren is probably going to luck out.”

Corso broke out in a grin.

“What’s so funny?” Rogers demanded.

“I was thinking how somebody once said that we have to believe in luck, or else there’s no way to explain the success of people we don’t like,” he said.

She laughed and followed Ray Butler up the short length of sidewalk toward Warren Klein and the thick pair of brass doors. Corso stood and watched them file inside. Above the buzz of the crowd, a voice called his name and then another. Absentmindedly, he turned
toward the crowd and found himself staring into the lens of a TV camera. He only said one word. One was all it took to stay off the evening news.

Thursday, October 19

1:51 p.m.

“D
r. Goldman, would you please provide the court with a brief description of your present
academic position?”

Dr. Hiram Goldman was perfect: just this side of sixty, aging but not elderly, with a big shock of white hair combed back from a billboard forehead. He coughed into his hand and said, “I currently hold the position of executive director of the National Information
Service for Earthquake Engineering.”

“And your offices are located where?” Klein asked.

“At the University of California at Berkeley.”

“And how far is that from the site of the Fairmont Hospital?”

“Approximately thirty miles.”

Elkins was on his feet, wearing his bored face. “Your Honor, the defense will stipulate as to the witness’s expertise in the area of seismology and earthquake engineering.”

Judge Howell gave a cursory bang of the gavel. “So stipulated,” he said.

Warren Klein shuffled through his notes for a moment before continuing. “Dr. Goldman, for the sake of the jury could you give us a brief”—he looked over his shoulder at the jury box—“layman’s description of the San Andreas Fault system.”

“Certainly,” he said. “What is commonly referred to as the San Andreas Fault is quite simply an eight-hundred-mile crack in the earth’s crust.”

“Eight hundred miles?”

“It runs northwesterly from the Gulf of California all the way to Cape Mendocino, just north of San Francisco.”

“Would it be safe to say, Dr. Goldman—”

Before he could finish the question, Bruce Elkins was on his feet again. “The defense will also stipulate as to the existence of—”

Klein raised his voice. “If Your Honor please, I would like to be permitted to present my case in the manner I see fit.”

Now Elkins looked like his feelings were hurt. “I was merely trying to comply with the bench’s repeated admonitions regarding undue delays,” he said. “Mr. Klein is reinventing the wheel here.”

“I don’t require his forbearance, Your Honor,” Klein complained.

Fulton Howell glared at the lawyers as if they were a pair of unruly schoolboys before waving them up toward the bench. “Approach,” was all he said.

Renee Rogers leaned toward Ray Butler, her forehead pleated.

“Since when does Elkins stipulate anything?” she asked.

“Been bothering me all day,” Butler said. “I’ve never seen him this agreeable before.”

Renee Rogers turned the other way. On the far side of the courtroom, Nicholas Balagula sat, staring absently off into space, like a snake sunning itself on a rock.

Klein built a case the way a castaway builds a fire: urgently, but with great care, adding one tiny twig at a time and letting it burn until ready for something bigger, then adding another.

Elkins had, on five separate occasions, offered to stipulate for the record the very avenue of inquiry upon which Klein was at that moment driving. On each occasion, the judge had admonished him for undue delay, reminded him to stop referring to Klein’s case as “Earthquake 101,” and invited him to sit down.

Klein had been pecking at Dr. Goldman for nearly three hours when he hurried over to the prosecution table and retrieved a document. Renee Rogers got to her feet and took him by the elbow. She leaned over and spoke directly into his ear. “You need to pick up the pace, Warren. They’re going to sleep in there,” she said, tilting her head toward the jury box. Klein looked over at Butler, who nodded his solemn agreement. Klein heaved a sigh, dropped the document on the desk, and he turned back toward his witness.

“Dr. Goldman…how many earthquakes occur in California every year?”

“Certainly thousands. An exact number would be extremely difficult to compute.”

“How so?”

“A great many of the shocks are sufficiently small as to escape notice.”

“What’s the smallest earthquake noticed by humans?”

“Something like a two on the Richter scale.”

“For the sake of our jury, Dr. Goldman, could you give us a layman’s explanation of the Richter scale?”

“The Richter scale measures the magnitude of an earthquake. The jury needs to know”—he indicated the jury box—“that the Richter scale is logarithmic.”

“Which means?”

“A recording of seven, for instance, signifies a disturbance ten times greater than a disturbance of six.” Goldman began talking directly to the darkened black panel. “What you on the jury must also understand is the amount of energy released in a seven is
thirty
times greater than that released by a six.” Klein opened his mouth to ask another question, but the doctor, unsure as to whether he’d made his point, kept talking. “If you push those figures up one more notch, you get a better idea of how the scale operates. A recording of eight, would be”—he drew in the air with his finger—“thirty times thirty, or
nine hundred times
more powerful than our original reading of six.”

Klein gave the jury a minute to do the math, before asking, “So, if anything under a two on the Richter scale is at the lower end of the spectrum, what is the upper end of the spectrum like?”