Personal injuries (3 page)

CHAPTER 3

"HOW THIS STARTED," ROBBIE FEAVER SAID, "is not what you think. Morty and I didn't go to Brendan and say, Take care of us. We didn't have anything to take care of, not to start with. Mort and I had been bumping along on workmen's comp and slip-and-fall cases. Then about ten years ago, even before Brendan was appointed Presiding Judge over there, we got our first real chance to score. It was a bad-baby case. Doc with a forceps treated the kid's head like a walnut. And it's the usual warfare. I got a demand of 2.2 million, which brings in the umbrella insurer, so they're underwriting the defense. And they know I'm not Peter Neucriss. They're making us spend money like there's a tree in the backyard. I've got to get medical experts. Not one. Four. O.B. Anesthesia. Pedes. Neurology. And courtroom blowups. We've got $125,000 in expenses, way more than we can afford. We're into the bank for the money, Mort and me, with seconds on both our houses." I had heard the story several times now. This rendition was for Sennett's benefit, a proffer, an offthe-record session in which Stan had the chance to evaluate Robbie for himself. It was a week after I'd visited Stan in his office and we sat amid the plummy brocades of a room in the Dulcimer House hotel, booked in the name of Petros Corporation. Sennett had brought along a bland-seeming fellow named Jim, slightly moonfaced but pleasant, whom I marked as an FBI agent, even before Stan introduced him, because he wore a tie on Sunday afternoon. They leaned forward intently on their fancy medallion-backed armchairs as Robbie held forth beside me on the sofa.

"The judge we're assigned is Homer Guerfoyle. Now, Homer, I don't know if you remember Homer. He's long gone. But he was a plain, old-fashioned Kindle County alley cat, a ward-heeling son of a bootlegger, so crooked that when they buried him they had to screw him in the ground. But when he finally maneuvers his way onto the bench, all the sudden he thinks he's a peer of the realm. I'm not kidding. It always felt like he'd prefer 'Your Lordship' to `Your Honor.' His wife had died and he hooked up with some socialite a few years older than him. He grew a fussy little mustache and started going to the opera and walking down the street in the summer in a straw boater.

"Now, on the other side of my case is Carter Franch, a real white-shoe number, Groton and Yale, and Guerfoyle treats him like an icon. Exactly the man Homer would like to be. He just about sits up and begs whenever he hears Franch's malarkey.

"So one day Mort and I, we have breakfast with Brendan, and we start drying our eyes on his sleeve, about this trial coming up, what a great case it is and how we're gonna get manhandled and end up homeless. We're just young pups sharing our troubles with Morty's wise old uncle. `Well, I know Homer for years,' says Brendan. `He used to run precincts for us in the Boylan organization. Homer's all right. I'm sure he'll give you boys a fair trial.'

"Nice that
he
thinks so," said Robbie. Feaver looked up and we all offered the homage of humoring smiles to induce him to continue. "Our case goes in pretty good. No bumps. Right before we put on our final expert, who'll testify about what constitutes reasonable care in a forceps delivery, I call the doc, the defendant, as an adverse witness, just to establish a couple things about the procedure. Last thing, I ask the usual jackpot question, `Would you do it again?' `Not given the result,' he says. Fair enough. We finish up, and before the defense begins, both sides make the standard motions for a directed verdict, and, strike me dead, Guerfoyle grants mine. Robbie wins liability by TKO! The doc's to blame, Homer says, he admitted he didn't employ reasonable care when he said he wouldn't use the forceps again. Even I hadn't suggested anything like that. Franch just about pulls his heart out of his chest, but since the only issue now is damages, he has no choice but to settle. 1.4 mil. So it's nearly 500,000 for Morty and me.

"Two days later, I'm before Guerfoyle on a motion in another case, and he takes me back to his chambers for a second. `Say, that's a wonderful result, Mr. Feaver.' Yadda yadda yadda. And I've got no more brains than a tree stump. I don't get it. I really don't. I'm like, Thanks, Judge, thanks so much, I really appreciate it, we worked that file hard. `Well, I'll be seeing you, Mr. Feaver.'

"Next weekend, Brendan's guy, Kosic, gets Morty in the corner at some family shindig and it's like, `What'd you boys do to piss off Homer Guerfoyle? We have a lot of respect for Homer. I made sure he knows you're Brendan's nephew. It embarrasses us when you guys don't show respect.'

Monday, Mort and I are back in the office staring at each other.
No comprende
. `Piss off'?

`Respect'?

"Guess what happens next? I come in with the dismissal order on the settlement and Guerfoyle won't sign. He says he's been pondering the case. On his own again. He's been thinking maybe he should have let the jury decide whether the doc had admitted liability. Even Franch is astonished, because at trial the judge was acting like he was deaf when Franch had argued exactly the same point. So we set the case over for more briefing. And as I'm leaving, the bailiff, a pretty good sod by the name of Ray Zahn, is just shaking his head at me.

"So like two goofs from East Bumblefuck, Mort and I put all the pieces together. Gee, Mort, do you think he wants money? Yeah, Rob, I think he wants some money. Somebody had to finance Homer's new lifestyle, right?

"We sit on that for about a day. Finally, Morty comes back to me and says, No. That's it: No. No way. Nohow. He didn't sleep. He hurled three times. He broke out in a rash. Prison would be a relief compared to this.

"That's Morty. Nerves of spaghetti. The guy fainted dead away the first time he went to court. Which puts the load on Robbie. But you tell me, what was I supposed to do? And don't quote the sayings of Confucius. Tell me real-world. Was I supposed to walk away from a fee of four hundred ninety-some thousand dollars and just go home and start packing? Was I supposed to tell this family, that's got this gorked-out kid, Sorry for these false hopes, that million bucks we said you got, we must have been on LSD? How many hours do you think it would be before they got themselves a lawyer whose word they could trust? You think I should have called the FBI, right then? What the hell's that mean for Morty's uncle? And what about us? In this town, nobody likes a beefer.

"So, Morty or not, there's only one answer. And it's like tipping in Europe. How much is enough?

And where do you get it? It's comical, really. Where's that college course in bribery when you really need it? So I go to the bank and cash a check for nine thousand, because over ten thousand they report it to the feds. And I put it in an envelope with our new brief and I take it over to the bailiff, Ray. And man, my mouth's so dry I couldn't lick a stamp. What the hell do I say if I've read this wrong? 'Oops, that was my bank deposit'? I've put so much tape on this envelope he'll have to open it with a hand grenade, and I say, `Please be sure Judge Guerfoyle gets this, tell him I'm sorry for the miscommunication.'

"I go to a status call in another courtroom, and as I'm coming out the bailiff, Ray Zahn, is waiting for me in the corridor, and there's one damn serious look in his eye. He strolls me a hundred feet and, honest to God, you can hear my socks squish. Finally, he throws his arm over my shoulder and whispers, `Next time, don't forget somethin for me.' And then he hands me an order Homer's signed, accepting the settlement and dismissing the case." A decade later, Feaver tossed about his elaborate hairdo, which overflowed his collar in indigo waves, the relief still live in his memory.

"So that was it. I spun Morty a yarn about how Guerfoyle had seemed to realize that we'd turn him over on appeal and had backed off. Then I went and bowed down before Brendan's honor guard, his two sidekicks, Rollo Kosic and Sig Milacki. As I'm leaving, Sig says, `You ever got a special case like this, gimme a call.' So I just kind of kept on from there." He shrugged at the inevitability of the bad-acting that followed and looked around again to see how he'd been received. I suggested he go down for coffee. Sennett was rolling his eyes before Robbie got out the door.

"That's a fairy tale about Mort," he said.

I nearly batted my lashes in my efforts to feign surprise, but naturally I'd given my client a good shaking in private. Nonetheless Feaver swore that for a decade Dinnerstein had remained unknowing, which was just the way that Brendan Tuohey, as a doting uncle, liked it. Through the partnership, Mort received half the windfall derived from the corruption Tuohey engineered, but bore none of the risk. Robbie alone delivered the payoffs to the judges. Feaver claimed Mort was even misled about the nature of the secret bank account at River National. There are people in many occupations-nurses, funeral parlor directors, cops-who often are in a position to recommend an attorney to someone who's had a serious injury. Ethical rules forbid the attorney from sharing the legal fees he or she then earns with non-lawyers, but the nurse or the cop who'd handed out Robbie's card might well ask anyway, and Robbie was not the first personal injury practitioner to decide it was better to pay than have anybody forget his phone number. That was where Robbie told Mort the cash they were generating from the River National account was going (as indeed some portion of it was). Bar Admissions and Discipline, the agency that licenses attorneys, might go after Mort for aiding in these shenanigans if they ever learned about them, but Robbie's explanation protected Dinnerstein against criminal prosecution, at least in our state. Even the tax violations did not meet prosecution guidelines, since Robbie had, in his version, led Mort to believe that the income they weren't reporting was fully offset by these unsavory business expenses. It was all too convenient for Stan.

"He's covering his partner, George, and it's dumb. No matter what kind of deal we cut, when I get the evidence he's lying about this, your guy catches the express for the cooler." I knew Morton Dinnerstein about as well as I knew Feaver, which is to say not very well at all, only from idle meetings around the LeSueur Building. According to my limited understanding he was the scholar in the duo, the one to turn out appellate briefs and motions and manage the files, while Robbie played show dog in court. It was the kind of arrangement that succeeded in many offices. I was nowhere as certain as Stan that Feaver was risking the penitentiary for his pal. Mort was a somewhat otherworldly creature, with a kinky mass of thinning blondish hair that sprang up in small unruly patches like crabgrass. He suffered from a noticeable limp, and his soft manner was characterized by a mild stammer and persistent blinking that introduced itself in his lengthy pauses as he was searching for words. Mort's guilelessness, and the lifelong symbiosis between the two men, made it seem possible that Feaver was telling the truth. I argued the point with Sennett at length, to little effect.

The other shortcoming in Robbie's account from Sennett's perspective was that Feaver had never dealt directly with Brendan Tuohey. Robbie recognized that the silent arrangements brokered for him with several judges occurred under the gravitational force of Tuohey's influence. The story-no better than a rumor to Feaver-was that Brendan got `rent,' a rake-off on what the judges received from Robbie and a few other attorneys. The money was passed to the two retainers who acted as a sterile barrier between Brendan and anything corrupt: Rollo Kosic, whom Tuohey had installed as his Chief Bailiff, and Sig Milacki, a cop who'd once been Brendan's partner on the street. To get to Brendan, Sennett would need them, or some other witness Feaver might ensnare.

"Believe me, Stan," Feaver told him when he returned, "no matter how much you think you hate Brendan, you can get in line behind me. I've known Brendan my whole life and I've got my share of stories. I love Morty, but you think I like the way Brendan's made me the water boy on this thing?

Except for the fact that he's got people who'd cut my tongue out and use it for a necktie, I'd love to give him to you. Only I can't. Brendan's twitchy as a cat and twice as careful. Catching him? Good luck."

Sennett appeared to relish the challenge. His eyes lit briefly with the remarkable energy that he inevitably deployed against any serious opponent. Then he beckoned Robbie to go on providing the details he could. Over the years Robbie had made `drops' to many judges and he retained vivid recall of each occasion and of the envelopes of cash quietly passed in men's rooms and cafeterias and taverns to assorted bagmen and, much more rarely, to the judges themselves. Despite Stan's suspicion that Feaver was protecting Mort, or his disappointment that Robbie could not take him straight to Tuohey, it was easy to see that he was excited, even as he attempted to maintain his familiar veneer of tense restraint.

"Is there any reason you couldn't keep making drops?" Sennett asked Feaver near the end of the session. "If we leave you out there in practice, everything looking the same as it always has, would you be willing to wear a wire against all these folks and record the payoffs?" That was the question we'd known was coming. It was the big chip Feaver could put on the table to keep himself out of the pen. But hearing the proposition aloud, Robbie grabbed his long chin and his black eyes took on an inward look. I could sense him recycling the strong emotions of the last few evenings, which we'd spent together, when he'd vented about Sennett and his terror tactics, and anguished over the cruel dilemmas confronting him. And then, as I'd learned was his nature, he let go of all that. Instead, he hiked himself forward on the sofa to face the United States Attorney and the Supervising Special Agent dispatched from D.C. He did not bother with rancor. He simply told them the hard truth, much as they'd forced it on him.

"What other choice do I have?"

CHAPTER 4

EVERY SUCCESSFUL NEGOTIATION IS Susceptible to Tolstoy's observation about unhappy families: they end up in the same place, but each one gets there its own way. For his part, Feaver set simple goals in bargaining with the government. Unlike most lawyers I'd represented, he seemed resigned about the loss of his law license. It was inevitable anyway for someone who admitted bribing judges, and by now practice had made him rich. Instead, he hoped to maintain his bundle in the face of the forfeitures and fines the government could exact. More important, he wanted no part of the penitentiary, not so much for his own sake, he said, but so he could attend to his wife during her inevitable decline.