Personal injuries (2 page)

Some in the defense bar, like my friend Sandy Stern, could not abide Sennett's sanctimony or his ham-handed methods, such as his late-night intrusion on Feaver. But Stan was the first U.S. Attorney in my quarter of a century here who was fearlessly independent. He'd begun a longoverdue era of zero tolerance for the scams and dirty dealing that were forever viewed as a perk of local office, and he took on the mighty commercial interests, like Moreland Insurance, the largest private employer in Kindle County, whom Stan had nonetheless prosecuted for fraud. Sennett's agenda, in short, had been to let the light of the law into the crabbed corners of Kindle County, and, as his friend, I often found myself applauding behind the mask of horror I was required to wear as a defense lawyer.

Eventually, he turned to my new client.

"Odd fellow, I take it," Stan said with a calculating glimpse my way. We both knew that, even dressed up in Armani, Robbie Feaver was your basic Kindle County hustler, complete with South End accent and too much cologne. "No, he must be peculiar. Because what they did with that account over at River National was pretty strange. The partnership of Feaver & Dinnerstein hasn't reported an annual income of less than one mil for a decade. Four's been more the average. I hope you knew that, George, when you set your retainer." A sweet little smile zipped by, the proper revenge of a man who's lived his life within the confines of a government salary. "Odd to be chiseling forty K on taxes when you're showing numbers like that, isn't it?" I dipped a shoulder. The explanation would never make sense to anyone but them, yet over the years I had learned that it was only the poor whose desire for money was bounded by pure reason.

"And here's something stranger, George. They'll go months sometimes without a hit on this account, then boom, it's ten, fifteen thousand in cash inside a week. And in the meantime, George, they both bang their ATMs on a regular basis. So why this sudden appetite for currency?" Stan asked. "And where's it going?"

Offshore. Drugs. The usual. Not to mention more eternal vices not banned by the federal criminal code.

"Something on the side?" asked Stan, when I suggested that alternative. "And how. Your fellow needs an odometer on his zipper." He rolled his eyes, as if he no longer recalled that it was a weakness for one of the secretaries at the P.A.'s Office that had ended his first marriage. I mentioned the sick wife and Sennett chuckled archly. Robbie Feaver, he said, had been enshrined long before in the Hall of Fame down on Grand Avenue, the strip of high-end watering holes often referred to as the Street of Dreams.

"But Mort's a solid family man," he said. "And your guy sees more beds than a hotel maid. He's not paying any tootsie's rent. So that's not where the money's going. Wanna know my theory, George? I think it's the cash they're hiding. Not the income."

Sennett unbent a paper clip and twirled it between his fingers. Behind the huge desk, he was smug as a fat house cat. Here was the Essential Stan, the dark narrow boy always in a heat to reestablish himself as the smartest person he knew. He had been born Constantine Nicholas Sennatakis and was raised in back of the family restaurant. `You've been there,' he'd told me dryly when we met in law school. `Menu pages coated in plastic and one of the relatives chained to the cash register.' During his induction as U.S. Attorney, he had misted over recounting his parents'

struggles. But for the most part, all that ethnic opera, all that carrying on, was self-consciously left behind. Stan's public persona was as the sort of man who barely snapped his fingers when music played; in private, with friends and colleagues, he was apt to take on the droll pose of a grumpy initiate soiled by knowing it all. Yet to me, although it was shrewdly disguised, Stan remained full of teeming immigrant striving. His entire world was often at stake in a case, as if he had an inescapable obligation to rise and prosper at every opportunity. As a result, he suffered his losses far more intensely than he savored his many achievements. But he clearly knew he was winning now.

"Aren't you going to ask how I stumbled over these fellas and their private cash machine?" I would have, had I thought he'd answer. But apparently Stan was having too much fun today to indulge his usual secretiveness. "Our friends at Moreland Insurance," said Sennett. "They got our whiskers twitching."

I might have thought of that. Stan's fabled prosecution of Moreland for a series of fraudulent sales practices with which the company had gallivanted through the eighties concluded with the insurer sentenced to a staggering finemore than $30 million-and also to a period of probation during which they were obliged to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney in correcting any wrongdoing they knew of. I was not surprised to find that Moreland bad taken the opportunity to tattle not only on themselves but also on their natural enemies, plaintiffs' lawyers.

In almost every personal injury suit, the real defendant is an insurance company. You may sue the neighbor whose tree fell on your house, but it's his insurance company who'll pay the damages and hire the defense attorneys, and which often feels antagonized by the lawyer on the other side. I realized that, in all likelihood, it was one of the checks Moreland had issued over the years to Feaver & Dinnerstein that had been trailed to the partners' secret bank account. Unfortunately, though, Moreland's records had revealed more than that.

"Your guy's a tough opponent," Stan said. "Somehow, every time Moreland has a big case against these fellas, the company just can't win a ruling. By now they've learned to settle. Especially since any lawsuit where your guy is looking at a six-figure fee always ends up in front of one of a handful of judges. And guess what? We crawled through the records in the courthouse and it turns out the pattern holds for other companies. Whenever Feaver & Dinnerstein has a big payday coming, it's the same deal: bad rulings, big settlements. And the same four distinguished jurists on their cases, George-even though there are nineteen judges sitting in the Common Law Claims Division, all of whom are supposed to be assigned to matters at random." Sennett issued a stiff look. "Know now where I'm thinking the cash is going, George?" I knew. Rumors of funny business had lingered like some untraceable foundation odor in the Kindle County courthouses since I'd arrived here for law school. But no one had ever proved it. The judges who took were said to be carefully insulated. There were bagmen and code words. And the lawyers who paid told no tales. It was, by report, a small faction, a secret society whose alliances were fierce and ancient, going back decades to high schools, churches, to the Prosecuting Attorney's Office in its bad old days, to union halls, or, even, mob connects. And always the bonds were fired in the overheated politics of the Party.

These grumpy suspicions were often repeated by the losers in Kindle County's courtrooms. But in my more innocent moments, I liked to discount them, believing that cronyism, not cash, explained the obvious favoritism I, like every other lawyer, had witnessed on occasion over the years. For my client's sake, I was skeptical now.

"I'll tell you what clinches it for me," Stan replied. "Morton Dinnerstein's uncle is Brendan Tuohey." Sennett took a beat to let the portent of the name gather. "Brendan's older sister is Mort Dinnerstein's mother. She raised Brendan after their mom kicked the bucket. Devoted to her, he is. And to her son. Looks to me like Tuohey's given nephew Morty a real helping hand." As Stan expected, he'd caught me by surprise. When I'd arrived in Kindle County in the late 1960s, a Tuohey marrying a Dinnerstein was still thought of as miscegenation. More to the point, Brendan Tuohey now was the Presiding Judge of the Common Law Claims Division, where all personal injury cases were heard. A former cop and ex-deputy Prosecuting Attorney, Brendan was celebrated for his intricate political connections, his general Celtic amity, and his occasional bareknuckles meanness. In most quarters, among reporters, for example, he was renowned as able and tough but fair. Tuohey's name was the one most often mentioned when people speculated about who would eventually replace old Judge Mumphrey and wield the vast powers of the Chief of the entire Kindle County Superior Court. I'd had my ears scratched by Brendan during my year as Bar President. But both Stan and I could recall Tuohey's tenure long ago in the Felony Division, when there were persistent rumors that he was often visited in chambers by Toots Nuccio, a reputed fixer. I asked, mildly, if Stan thought it was fair to condemn Robbie Feaver because of his partner's relatives, but by now Sennett had lost patience with my temporizing.

"Just do your job, George. And I'll do mine. Talk to your guy. There's something there. We can both see that. If he gets religion, we'll cut him a break. If he sees no evil and speaks no evil, he's going to the penitentiary for evasion. For as long as I can send him. And with these kinds of dollars, we're talking several years. He's got his chance now. If he doesn't take it, don't come groveling in six months, strumming your lyre about the poor wife and her miserable condition." Stan set his chin against his chest and eyed me gravely, having become the Stan Sennett few people liked, or could even deal with. Behind him, out the window, a boom swung on an immense construction crane a block away, carrying a beam and some daredevil ironworker riding on it. In this town, they were all American Indians, who, reputedly, knew no fear. I envied them that. Somehow my father's death had sharpened my lifelong concern about my lack of daring. In the meantime, Stan took my silence for crusty disdain. It was one of the occasional rewards of our friendship that he was vulnerable to my opinion of him, perhaps because he knew so much of it was favorable.

"Did I offend you?" he asked.

No more than usual, I assured him.

He rumpled his lips and stood. I thought he was going to show me out. Stan was famous for that, for abruptly announcing a meeting was over. But instead he perched on his long mahogany desk's front comer. I remembered yet again that I had always wanted to ask how he got to four-thirty in the afternoon with his white shirt unwrinkled. But the moment, as usual, wasn't right.

"Listen," he said. "I want to tell you a story. Do you mind? This is a real chest-thumper, so get ready. Did you ever hear the one about when I knew I was going to be a prosecutor?" I didn't believe I had.

"Well, I don't tell it often. But I'm going to tell it now. It has to do with my father's brother, Petros, Peter the kids called him. Uncle Peter was the black sheep. He ran a newspaper stand instead of a restaurant." That was meant to be a joke, and Stan briefly permitted himself a less constricted smile. "You want to talk about hard work-I listen to young lawyers around here pull allnighters and complain about hard work-that, my friend, that was hard work. Up at 4 a.m. Standing in this little corner shack in the worst kind of weather. Bitter cold. Rain, sleet. Always there. Handing out papers and collecting nickels. He did that twenty years. Finally, near the age of forty, Petros was ready to make his move. Guys he knew had a gas station down here on Duhaney and Plum. Right in Center City. Place was a gold mine. And they were getting out. And Petros bought it. He took every nickel he had, all that he'd saved from twenty years of humping. And then of course it turned out there were a few things Uncle Peter didn't know. Like the fact that the corner, the whole damn block actually, was scheduled for condemnation under the new Center City Plan, which was announced only two or three days after Uncle Peter closed. I mean, it was a flat-out nogood, dirty Kindle County fraud. And every drachma the guy had was gone.

"I was only a kid, but hell, I'd read my civics book. I said to him, Uncle Petros, why don't you go to court, sue? And he looked at me and he laughed. He said, À poor man like me? I can't afford to buy a judge.' Not Ì can't afford a lawyer.' Although he couldn't. But he realized that anybody who knew in advance what the Center City Plan provided couldn't be beaten in the Kindle County Superior Courthouse.

"And I decided then I was going to be a prosecutor. Not just an attorney. A prosecutor. I knew suddenly it was the most important thing I could do, to make sure that the Petroses of the universe stopped getting screwed. I'd catch the corrupt judges and the lawyers who paid them, and all the other bad guys who made the world so lousy and unfair. That's what I told myself when I was thirteen years old."

Sennett paused to regather himself, absently fingering the braiding carved beneath the lip of the desk. This was Stan at his best and he knew he was impressive.

"Now, this crap has gone on too long in this county. Too many good people have looked the other way, hoping to persuade themselves it's not true. But it is. Or telling themselves that it's better than the bad old days. Which is no kind of excuse." Somewhere in there, as he had bent closer for emphasis, my heart had squirmed. But it was ardor that energized him, not any kind of rebuke.

"And so I've been watching. And waiting. And now I've got my chance. Augie Bolcarro is dead and this stuff is going to die with him. Hear this carefully, because I'll get that son of a bitch Tuohey and his whole nasty cohort, or flame out trying. I'm not going to send a couple of low-level schmoes to the joint and let Tuohey become head of the court in a year and do it all again, on a bigger scale, which is how it's always gone around here.

"And I know how people talk about me. And I know what they think. But it's not for the greater glory of Stan Sennett. You know the saying? Ìf you shoot at the king, you better kill the king'?" A paraphrase, I told him, of Machiavelli. Stan tossed that around a second, not certain he liked the comparison.

"Well, if I shoot at Tuohey and miss-
if
I miss, George-I'll have to leave town when I step down from this job. I know that. No law firm in its right mind will go near me. Because neither I nor they will be able to set foot in state court.

"But I'm going to do it anyway. Because I'm not going to have this go on unchallenged. Not on my watch. You will forgive me, George. You will please forgive me. But it's what I owe my Uncle Petros and all the other people of this county and this district. George," he said, "it's what's goddamned right."