Legal Thriller: Michael Gresham: A Courtroom Drama (Michael Gresham Legal Thriller Series Book 1) (18 page)

"Michael Gresham," the Anglo voice says, "please tell us where you got this thumb drive."

"I don't remember," I say.

This time, I am kicked. Kicked in the side of the head with such force that I black out. When I regain consciousness, I realize someone is pressing a burning cigarette against my forearm. I scream, and the van squeals around a corner.

"What!" I shout and cry at the same time. "What is it you want?"

"We want to know where you got this thumb drive from. Did your brother give it to you?"

"My brother? I haven't seen—"

Again I am kicked. This time, I lose consciousness and am out for I don't know how long.

W
hen I finally come around
, I find myself sitting on something hard and cold—concrete, probably, and I hear voices around me. The hood is still over my head, and the voices resonating make me think we're in some kind of large room, maybe a warehouse. I am covered with something wet. I shiver and cry out when I smell gasoline. I have been doused with gasoline!

The Latino voice surfaces through my haze. "Señor Gresham, we are taking a moment before lighting you on fire. One chance remains to tell us where you got the thumb drive?"

I am beaten down, and I am terrified. No one can ever claim I would be a good candidate to stand up against threats of being burned alive when I'm covered in gasoline. I spill the beans. "My brother gave it to me."

"Aha! Smart man, Señor Gresham. Now tell me. Where does your brother keep our files?"

I shake my head violently. "That is something I don't know. I hadn't seen my brother for several days. Tonight in the jazz place was the first time. We never got a chance to talk. Please, tell the people at MexTel that I'll do everything I can to get their files returned. Please, tell them I've been trying to do that already."

"But your brother just won't listen to you, is that it, Michael?" It is the Anglo voice again. I realize I almost recognize the voice, but I'm unsure. For a moment, I think it's Special Agent Nathan Fordyce. But it can't be. It can't be MexTel and the FBI. Totally makes no sense.

Or does it? Is MexTel involved with the FBI in getting the Tijuana Ramons to testify against Judge Pennington and me? How would that even work?

"Agent Fordyce, is that you?"

I hear laughter—several voices around me are laughing. Then one says, "Wait! Don't toss the cigarette on him yet. This is too much fun!"

I'm beginning to have hope when suddenly someone sloshes another dose of gasoline over me. It hits my face and blinds me, and I am left sputtering and choking. The hood has become a toxic death mask tight against my face. I try to breathe without inhaling its fumes, and that is quite impossible.

Without another word, someone tosses a burning cigarette against me. My clothes instantly are ablaze, and the mask on my face shoots flames up my face and over my head. I am blacking out just as I hear the loud squall of a fire extinguisher—I can taste the foam—suddenly covering my body, face, and head.

The pain is excruciating. The last thing I remember is wetting myself.

Then I am out.

I
am trying to remember
.

My eyes open. It is all pain. Dressings cover my body everywhere I can see: chest to toes.

I look side to side. My arms are swathed in white strips too.

I move my mouth to speak. It feels like my lips are missing. I try to bring the fingers of my right hand to my mouth to explore the loss of sensation, but the arm won't bend as I tell it.

And the pain. I am on fire.

Eyes closed, I am gone again.

H
er name is Nancy Kelly
, and she's a student nurse. She is bringing flowers into my room and arranging them on the stand at the foot of my bed when my eyes open.

"How long?" I ask.

"You've been coming and going for about five days. Before that, they kept you in a coma for ten days."

I am astonished.

"You're telling me I've been out for over two weeks?"

"Yes, Mr. Gresham. You've been very sick."

"How did I get here?"

"Well," she says, "according to your chart someone pushed you out of a moving van under the ER port. You hit the ground pretty hard, so the doctors have done several brain scans while you've been unconscious."

"My God."

I can remember my name. I'm a lawyer, and I live in Evanston.

"My brother—any news about my brother Arnold?"

"I'm afraid I don't have any news about your brother. I'll ask out at the nurse's station."

"Good."

The pain is surreal. It starts inside, at the bone, and spreads outward as if my flesh has been cooked in a 350° oven. The worst part is, there's no escaping it. I can't turn it off. Over the next several days I study my pain and realize that the opiate painkiller doesn't relieve the pain so much as it just renders me unconscious. When I'm unconscious, I don't feel. So I'm grateful for the large dose they're administering.

Finally, I can touch my lips. What's left of them. They are encrusted with salves and scabs, and I am told that's because I inhaled the flames. Which is also why my voice is guttural and holds no volume even when I try to shout. The cilia in my lungs—partially burned away from the inhalation, will regenerate, the respiratory therapist tells me. Eyelashes and eyebrows will grow back. Probably I'll always be deaf in my left ear where my ear drum literally exploded and burned away when I jerked away from the flame flash and that side of my head caught the most of it.

A week into conscious recovery, Nurse Nancy provides a mirror. It is a small one, designed so the burn patient can only see portions of the face at a time.

I am horrified. With no hair on my face and bright red flesh sticking through where once there was skin, I look like the main character in a horror film. For one crushing moment, I realize no jury will ever again look at me like they used to. Now it will be with a large measure of revulsion and pity—both of which I cannot countenance. One thing I've never been able to endure is someone's pity for me. About anything.

They have told me about Arnie and Maddie and Esmeralda. Their SUV was northbound on Lake Shore Drive when a large white cube truck ran up behind it and slammed into it at a high rate of speed. Their SUV was thrown down a steep embankment and Maddie, who was behind the wheel, was thrown free just as the SUV rolled, her door flew open, and she was killed instantly when her forward momentum of 70 MPH was stopped by a large maple tree. Arnie is still in ICU with a fractured spine and multiple spiral fractures of his right arm and right leg. There is a question whether he will ever walk again. Esmeralda—where is Esmeralda? I'm wondering. She hasn't been around, and she was the one who came through without a scratch. The detectives have told me she was found hanging upside down in the backseat of the SUV, and it's probably because she was belted and asleep that the impact affected her very little. She hasn't lost the baby, and she's somewhere in the city, but no one knows exactly where. She was treated at the ER, the baby's well-being confirmed, and released. She was seen by the charge nurse waiting outside the ER at a bus stop.

I am so sad about Maddie that I can't stop crying. Feelings bubble up, and I no longer have a filter capable of restraining them. They just come bursting out, and I am crying one minute and laughing at my face in the mirror the next. It is not a good time, and I am very lonely.

Sue Ellen comes by with Eddie in tow.

"I'm taking the hormone injections," she announces. Eddie smiles stupidly.

"Oh, yes," I tell her and give them both a wave of my hand. "Sit."

"Got you this," Eddie says. He holds out a baseball. It is signed by people whose names I cannot read because my eyes will not yet focus. "It's the Cubs' pitching staff."

"That's very thoughtful," I say. I haven't watched a baseball game since I was in my twenties, but I'm not about to tell Eddie that. This is truly a gift of love, and I can feel how much it means to him to give this to me. "I will treasure this. Have it put under glass—you know."

"I've seen ‘em like that," he says. "Good thinking."

Sue Ellen brushes him away.

"I heard about your indictment," she says. "Mrs. Lingscheit told me."

"That's private. She shouldn't have told you that."

"Actually, the detectives told me first, and then she confirmed. The detectives were around twice to see me. They wanted to know if I thought the incineration had anything to do with your criminal charges. I told them hell if I know."

"Unconnected, I think.” But then I remember hearing what sounded like Agent Fordyce's voice inside the warehouse, and I'm not positive there isn't some connection. I will find out.

M
rs. Lingscheit swings
by and isn't there five minutes before she's pulling out a list of cases and asking me for instructions. I do the best I can. She says she called the judges herself and everyone continued everything for eight weeks. That's how long my doctors told her I would be unavailable. The State Bar is providing temporary counsel on some things that have fuses burning and couldn't wait, but that only includes four of my seventy-some cases.

From her purse, she pulls out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. "Jimmy John's Italian sub," she tells me. She lays it on the small table beside my head and looks around the room.

"How have you been?" I ask her.

Tears come into her eyes. "Worried! Petrified for you, Michael!"

"Well, just continue paying yourself out of the general fund and we'll get by. I'm not finished yet."

"You will be coming back?"

"Oh, yes. I don't break this easily."

I am feeling better now. Every now and again there's even a moment when I feel some anger at whoever did this to me. Those moments are few and far between, however.

Valentine Quinones stops by one Friday night on her way home from work. Her chauffeured Mercedes is waiting in the visitors' lot, she breathlessly shares, so she can't stay but a minute.

"How are you, Michael?"

By now many of many dressings have been shed like a snake shedding its skin. I am coming back.

"Much better. I should be out of here sometime next week."

"How about an initial appearance the next week. Will you be up to it?"

"Yes, in fact, have you heard any more?"

"Yes, but we don't need to go into all that now. You just rest and get well and then we'll talk."

"Okay."

I
have
two sets of physical therapists, one for morning, one for the afternoon. They circle around me endlessly, like hawks pushing their young out of lofty nests to make them fly. Except with me, it's only turning on my butt and getting my feet flat on the floor that they're trying to get me to do. Then it's standing with a walker. Not walking, just standing. I look down at my hands gripping the walker's arms, and I see my angry red knuckles and hands and I am alarmed. Do I look like steamed crab all over? So far, only the small mirror has been allowed. But one day, they hold me by the PT belt and walk me down to the PT room and I at last get a look at myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror of physical therapy.

Alarming is an understatement.

At first, I cry—unfiltered and full-tilt crying. I am crimson from head to toe. Across portions of my chest and upper arms are plastered dressings that still haven't fallen away. Blood still appears to be making them adhere to whatever lies beneath. It is alarming and much more. It is like seeing your favorite thing in the world damaged beyond recovery.

"Is this-is this—"

"Is this permanent?" says the physical therapist, a young man of about thirty. "No, it isn't permanent. The color will fade with time. The skin will slowly build and shed, build and shed, and one day you will look almost normal again.

Almost normal.

He holds my belt as I climb a set of three stairsteps and then descend the other side, also three stairsteps. It is excruciating to do this, as I must bend at the waist and behind my knees and the skin and tendons there cry out in pain. But we do it again and again and again.

At last, they return me to my room and my dressings are changed and lotions and salves applied. They are familiar smells, the creams, and ointments they use now. I feel like I once did when my grandmother would come near, and I could smell her ointments for arthritis. A friendly, warm smell.

Yes, the odors of burn rehab are now my friends.

S
everal days
later Arnie comes to see me. At first, I don't recognize him. He is now on forearm crutches and looks like an old, wrinkled man. The hospital stay and the accident and aftermath have not been good to him. We talk, and he tells me he's "laying low," as he puts it.

"What is your plan?" I ask him. "Are you back at work? Do you even dare show your face in public? What's happening?"

"Marcel came to see me. He found me this efficiency apartment and put it in a name nobody could trace. Esmeralda and I are hanging out there until our next move becomes clear."

"What about the MexTel file? Do you still have that?"

"I have access to it."

"What does that mean, access to it?"

"The file in digital form is on a server. But don't worry. MexTel will never find it."

"How so?"

"It's on their own server on their own computers in Mexico City."

"How do you know about this?"

Arnie smiles. "Because I put it there."

"You put their missing file on their own server?"

"Yep. It's password protected, and its filename is a dummy. They would never look there; it looks like a system file."

"How did you know to do this?"

"Michael, I've been a propeller head since the first PC was sold by IBM. Remember back when I was learning DOS and everyone thought I'd gone off the deep end? Well, it was a short jump from there to winding up working as lead counsel for MexTel in all its litigation cases. Last I heard, I had more access to their server farm and AWS storage than anyone in the entire company. It was necessary to give me universal access because I needed division files constantly and my having access cut through the company red tape. Aguilar and Perez both signed off on it."

"So now you've just hidden some of their files on their own servers."

"Exactly."

"Who else knows about this?"

"Just you. Is this your cell phone?" he says and picks up my new iPhone, courtesy of Mrs. Lingscheit since my own disappeared.

"It is. There's nothing on there, though. No contacts."

"Well, I'm putting in a new contact. The name is Michael Gresham."

"Me?"

"Yes. I'm putting in the web address where the MexTel secret files are hidden by me. And I'm putting in a simple command line you can enter when you go to that place."

"And this command. What does it do?"

"It off-loads the data to another service and then mails a copy of the smoking gun file to every subscriber in Mexico and Latin America."

"That must be twenty million people? More?"

Arnie smiles and hands me my phone.

"Imagine that," he says. "Sounds like everyone."

"And if they get the file—"

"If everyone gets the file it's all over for MexTel. The lawsuit will blossom and grow into the hundreds of thousands—maybe millions—of people making claims for toxic injuries."

"Well, Arnie, you always were thorough."

"Michael, if they get me, you enter the order. I want the files sent universally."

"Okay."

"Will you do that for me?"

"I will."

"Promise?"

"Of course."

"Good. I want to reach out of my grave and flip them off. A final fuck you."

"This should do it, Arnie."