Yes sir,” I say. “It was June. Do you know when the language of the policy was changed to include the exclusion of bone marrow transplants?”

“No. I do not. I’m not involved in the writing of the policies.”

“Who writes your policies? Who creates all this fine print?”

“It’s done in the legal department.”

“I see. Would it be safe to say that the policy was changed sometime after this lawsuit was filed?” “”

He analyzes me for a moment, then says, “No. It might have been changed before the suit was filed.”

“Was it changed after the claim was filed, in August of 1991?”

“I don’t know.”

His answer sounds suspicious. Either he’s not paving attention to his company, or he’s lying. It really makes no difference to me. I have what I want. I can argue to the jury that this new language is clear evidence that there was no intent to exclude bone marrow from the Blacks’ policy. They excluded everything else, and they exclude everything now, so they got nailed by their own language.

I have only one quick matter left for Keeley. “Do you have a copy of the agreement Jackie Lemancyzk signed on the day she was fired?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen this agreement?”

“No.”

“Did you authorize the payment often thousand dollars in cash to Jackie Lemancyzk?”

“No. She’s lying about that.”

“Lying?”

“That’s what I said.”

“What about Everett Lufkin? Did he lie to the jury about the claims manual?”

Keeley starts to say something, then catches himself. No answer will benefit him at this point. The jurors know full well that Lufkin lied to them, so he can’t tell the jurors they really didn’t hear what they really heard. And he certainly can’t admit that one of his vice presidents lied to the jury.

I didn’t plan this question, it just happened. “I asked you a question, Mr. Keeley. Did Everett Lufkin lie to this jury about the claims manual?”

“I don’t think I have to answer that question.”

“Answer the question,” Kipler says sternly.

There’s a painful pause as Keeley glares at me. The courtroom is silent. Every single juror is watching him and waiting. The truth is obvious to all, and so I decide to be the nice guy.

“Can’t answer it, can you, because you can’t admit a vice president of your company lied to this jury?”

“Objection.”

“Sustained.”

“No further questions.”

“No direct at this time, Your Honor,” Drummond says. Evidently, he wants the dust to settle before he brings

these guys back during the defense. Right now, Drum-mond wants time and distance between Jackie Lemancyzk and our jury.

KERMIT ALDY, the Vice President for Underwriting, is my next to last witness. At this point, I really don’t need his testimony, but I need to fill some time. It’s two-thirty on the second day of the trial, and I’ll easily finish this afternoon. I want the jury to go home thinking about two people, Jackie Lemancyzk and Donny Ray Black.

Aldy is scared and short with his words, afraid to say much more than is absolutely necessary. I don’t know if he slept with Jackie, but right now everybody from Great Benefit is a suspect. I sense the jury feels this way too.

We zip through enough background to suffice. Underwriting is so horribly boring I’m determined to provide only the barest of details for the jury. Aldy is also, boring and thus up to the task. I don’t want to lose the jury, so I go fast.

Then, it’s time for the fun stuff. I hand him the underwriting manual that was given to me during discovery. It’s in a green binder, and looks very much like the claims manual. Neither Aldy nor Drummond nor anyone else knows if I also have in my possession another copy of the underwriting manual, this one fully equipped with a Section U.

He looks at it as if he’s never seen it before, but identifies it when I ask him to. Everybody knows the next question.

“Is this a complete manual?”

He flips through it slowly, takes his time. He obviously has had the benefit of Lufkin’s experience yesterday. If he says it’s complete, and if I whip out the copy I borrowed from Cooper Jackson, then he’s dead. If he admits some-

thing’s missing, then he’ll pay a price. I’m betting that Drummond has opted for the latter.

“Well, let’s see. It looks complete, but, no, wait a minute. There’s a section missing in the back.”

“Might that be Section U?” I ask, incredulous.

“I think so, yes.”

I pretend to be amazed. “Why in the world would anyone want to remove Section U from this manual?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know who removed it?”

“No.”

“Of course not. Who selected this particular copy to be delivered to me?”

“I really don’t remember.”

“But it’s obvious Section U was removed before it was given to me?”

“It’s not here, if that’s what you’re after.”

“I’m after the truth, Mr. Aldy. Please help me. Was Section U removed before this manual was given to me?”

“Apparently so.”

“Does that mean yes?”

“Yes. The section was removed.”

“Would you agree that the underwriting manual is very important to the operations of your department?”

“Of course.”

“So you’re obviously very familiar with it?”

“Yes.”

“So it would be easy for you to summarize the basics of Section U for the jury, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s been a while since I looked at it.”

He still doesn’t know if I have a copy of Section U from the underwriting manual. “Why don’t you try? Just give the jury a brief rundown on what’s in Section U.”

He thinks for a moment, then explains that the section

deals with a system of checks and balances between claims and underwriting. Both departments are supposed to monitor certain claims. It requires a good deal of paperwork to ensure a claim is handled properly. He rambles, picks up a little confidence, and since I have yet to produce a copy of Section U, I think he starts to believe I don’t have one.

“So the purpose of Section U is to guarantee that each claim is handled in a proper manner.”

“Yes.”

I reach under the table, pull out the manual and walk to the witness stand. “Then let’s explain it to the jury,” I say, handing him the complete manual. He sinks a bit. Drummond tries to maintain a confident bearing, but it’s impossible.

The Section U in underwriting is just as dirty as the Section U in claims, and after an hour of embarrassing Aldy it’s time to stop. The scheme has been laid bare for the jury to fume over.

Druinmond has no questions. Kipler recesses us for fifteen minutes so Deck and I can set up the monitors.

Our final witness is Donny Ray Black. The bailiff dims the courtroom lights, and the jurors ease forward, anxious to see his face on the twenty-inch screen in front of them. We’ve edited his deposition down to thirty-one minutes, and every scratchy and weak word is absorbed by the jurors.

Instead of watching it for the hundredth time, I sit close to Dot and study the faces in the jury box. I see lots of sympathy. Dot wipes her cheeks with the backs of her hands. Toward the end, I have a lump in my throat.

The courtroom is very quiet for a full minute as the screens go blank and the bailiff goes for the lights. In the dimness, the soft but unmistakable sound of a crying mother emanates from our table.

We have inflicted all the damage I can think of. I have the case won. The challenge now is not to lose it.

The lights come on, and I announce solemnly, “Your Honor, the plaintiff rests.”

LONG AFTER the jury leaves, Dot and I sit in an empty courtroom and talk about the remarkable testimony we’ve heard over the past two days. It’s been clearly proven that she is right, they were wrong, but there’s little satisfaction in this. She will go to her grave tormented because she didn’t fight harder when it counted.

She tells me she doesn’t care what happens next. She’s had her day in court. She’d like to go home now, and never come back. I explain this is not possible. We’re only halfway through. Just a few more days.

Forty-six

I AM FASCINATED BY WHAT DRUMMOND will try with his defense. He risks further damage if he trots out others from the home office and tries to explain away their claim denial schemes. He knows that I’ll simply pull out the Section U’s and ask all sorts of nasty questions. For all I know, there might be more blatant lies and cover-ups buried somewhere. The only way to expose them will be in a wide-open cross-examination.

He has eighteen people listed as possible witnesses. I can’t imagine who he’ll call first. When I presented our case, I had the luxury of knowing what would happen next, the next witness, the next document. It’s very different now. I have to react, and quickly.

I make a late call to Max Leuberg in Wisconsin, and replay with great gusto the events of the’first two days. He offers some advice and a few opinions about what might happen next. He gets terribly excited and says he might catch a flight.

I walk the floors until three in the morning, talking to myself and trying to imagine what Drummond will try.

a a a a

I AM PLEASANTLY SURPRISED to see Cooper Jackson sitting in the courtroom when I arrive at eight-thirty. He introduces me to two more lawyers, both from Raleigh, North Carolina. They’ve flown in to watch my trial. How’s it going, they ask? I give them a cautious summary of what’s happened. One of the lawyers was here on Monday, watched the Section U drama. The three of them have about twenty cases so far, been advertising in newspapers and such, and the cases are popping up everywhere. They plan to file very soon.

Cooper hands me a newspaper and asks if I’ve seen it. It’s The Watt Street Journal, dated yesterday, and there’s a front-page story about Great Benefit. I tell them I haven’t read a newspaper in a week, don’t even know what day it is. They know the feeling.

I read the story quickly. It centers around the growing number of complaints about Great Benefit and its tendency to deny claims. Many states are now investigating. Lots of lawsuits are being filed. The last paragraph says that a certain little trial down in Memphis is being watched because it could produce the first substantial verdict against the company.

I show the story to Kipler in his office, and he’s unconcerned. He’ll simply ask the jurors if they’ve seen it. They were warned against reading newspapers. We both seriously doubt if the Journal is widely read by our panel.

THE DEFENSE first calls Andre” Weeks, a Deputy Commissioner of Insurance for the state of Tennessee. He’s a high-level bureaucrat in the Department of Insurance, a witness Drummond’s used before. His job is to place the government squarely on the side of the defense.

He’s a very attractive man of about forty with a nice suit, easy smile, honest face. Plus, at this moment he pos-

sesses a crucial asset: he doesn’t work for Great Benefit. Drummond asks him a lot of mundane questions about the regulatory duties of his office, tries to make it sound as though these boys are riding roughshod over the insurance industry, really cracking the whip. Since Great Benefit is still a company in good standing in this state, then it’s obvious they’re really behaving themselves. Otherwise, Andre here and his pack of watchdogs would be in hot pursuit.

Drummond needs time. He needs a small mountain of testimony dumped on our jurors so maybe they’ll forget some of the horrible things they’ve ‘already heard. He goes slow. He moves slow, talks slow, very much like an aging professor. And he’s very good. Given another set of facts, he would be deadly.

He hands Weeks the Black policy, and they spend half an hour explaining to the jury how each policy, every policy, has to be approved by the Department of Insurance. Heavy emphasis is placed on the word “approved.”

Since I’m not on my feet, I can spend more time looking around. I study the jurors, a few of whom maintain eye contact. They’re with me. I notice strangers in the courtroom, young men in suits I’ve never seen before. Cooper Jackson and his buddies are on the back row, near the door. There are less than fifteen spectators. Why would anyone want to watch a civil trial?

After an hour and a half of truly excruciating testimony about the intricacies of statewide insurance regulation, the jurors drift away. Drummond doesn’t care. He desperately wants to stretch the trial into next week. He finally tenders the witness just before eleven, effectively killing the morning. We recess for fifteen minutes, and it’s my turn to take a few shots in the dark.

Weeks says that there are now over six hundred insurance companies operating iri the state, that his office has a

staff of forty-one and that of this number only eighteen actually review policies. He reluctantly estimates that each of the six hundred companies has at least ten different types of policies in effect, so there’s a minimum of six thousand policies on file with the department. And he admits that the policies are constantly being modified and amended.

We do some more math, and I’m able to convey my message that it’s impossible for any bureaucratic unit to monitor the ocean of fine print created by the insurance industry. I hand him the Black policy. He claims to have read it, but admits he did so only in preparation for this trial. I ask him a question about the Weekly Accident Benefit-Non-Hospital Confinement. The policy suddenly seems heavier, and he turns pages quickly, hoping to find the section and fire off an answer. Doesn’t happen. He flips and shuffles, squints and frowns, finally says he’s got it. His answer is sort of correct, so I let it pass. Then I ask him about the proper method of changing beneficiaries under the policy, and I almost feel sorry for him. He studies the policy for a very long time as everybody waits. The jurors are amused. Kipler is smirking. Drum-mond is burning but can do nothing about it.

He gives us an answer, the correctness of which is not important. The point is made. I place the two green manuals on my table as if Weeks and I are about to trudge through them again. Everybody watches. Holding the claims manual, I ask him if he periodically reviews the internal claims handling processes of any of the companies he so zealously regulates. He wants to say yes, but evidently he’s heard about Section U. So he says no, and I, of course, am just plain shocked. I pop him with a few sarcastic questions, then let him off the hook. Damage is done and duly recorded.

I ask him if he’s aware that the Commissioner of Insur-

ance in Florida is investigating Great Benefit. He does not know this. How about South Carolina? No, again, this is news to him. What about North Carolina? Seems he might’ve heard something about that one, but hasn’t seen anything. Kentucky? Georgia? Nope, and for the record, he’s really not concerned with what the other states are doing. I thank him for this.

DRUMMOND’S NEXT WITNESS is another nonem-ployee of Great Benefit, but just barely. His name is Pay-ton Reisky, and his daunting title is Executive Director and President of the National Insurance Alliance. He has the look and manner of a very important person. We quickly learn his outfit is a political organization based in Washington, funded by insurance companies to be their voice on Capitol Hill. Just a bunch of lobbyists, no doubt with a gold-plated budget. They do lots of wonderful things, we’re told, all in an effort to promote fair insurance practices.

This little introduction goes on for a very long time. It starts at one-thirty in the afternoon, and by two we’re convinced the NIA is on the verge of saving humanity. What fabulous people!

Reisky has spent thirty years in the business, and his resume and pedigree are soon shared with us. Drum-mond wants him to be qualified as an expert in the field of insurance claims practice and procedure. I have no objection. I’ve studied his testimony from one other trial, and I think I can handle him.- It would take an exceptionally gifted expert to make Section U sound good.

With virtually no prompting, he leads us through a complete checklist of how such a claim should be handled. Drummond gravely nods his head, as’ if they’re really kicking some ass now. Guess what? Great Benefit stuck to the book on this one. Maybe a couple of minor

mistakes, but hey, it’s a big company with lots of claims. No major departure from what’s reasonable.

The gist of Reisky’s opinions is that Great Benefit had every right to deny this claim because of its magnitude. He explains very seriously to the jury how a policy that costs eighteen dollars a week cannot reasonably be expected to cover a transplant that costs two hundred thousand dollars. The purpose of a debit policy is to provide only the basics, not all the bells and whistles.

Drummond broaches the subject of the manuals and their missing sections. Unfortunate, Reisky believes, but not that important. Manuals come and go, in a state of perpetual modification, usually ignored by seasoned claims handlers because they know what they’re doing. But, since it’s become such an issue, let’s talk about it. He eagerly takes the claims manual and explains various sections to the jury. It’s all laid out here in black and white. Everything works wonderfully!

They move from the manuals to the numbers. Drummond asks if he’s had the chance to review the information regarding policies, claims and denials. Reisky nods seriously, then takes the printout from Drummond.

Great Benefit certainly had a high rate of denials in 1991, but there could be reasons for this. It’s not unheard of in the industry. And you can’t always trust the numbers. In fact, if you look at the past ten years, Great Benefit’s average denial rate is slightly under twelve percent, which is certainly within the industry average. Numbers follow more numbers, and we’re quickly confused, which is precisely what Drummond wants.

Reisky steps down from the witness stand, and begins pointing here and there on a multicolored chart. He talks to the jury like a skilled lecturer, and I wonder how often he does this. The numbers are well within the average.

Kipler mercifully gives us a break at three-thirty. I hud-

die in the hallway with Cooper Jackson and his friends. They’re all veteran trial lawyers and quick with advice. We agree that Drummond is stalling and hoping for the weekend.

I do not utter a single word during the afternoon session. Reisky testifies until late, finally finishing with a flurry of opinions about how fairly everything was handled. Judging from the faces of the jurors, they’re happy the man’s finished. I’m thankful for a few extra hours to prepare for his cross-examination.

DECK AND I enjoy a long meal with Cooper Jackson and three other lawyers at an old Italian restaurant called Grisanti’s. Big John Grisanti, the colorful proprietor, puts us in a private dining room called the Press Box. He brings us a wonderful wine we didn’t order, and tells us precisely what we should eat.

The wine is soothing, and for the first time in many days I almost relax. Maybe I’ll sleep well tonight.

The check totals over four hundred dollars, and is quickly grabbed by Cooper Jackson. Thank goodness. The law firm of Rudy Baylor may be on the verge of serious money, but right now it’s still broke.

Forty-seven

SECONDS AFTER PAYTON REISKY TAKES the witness stand bright and early Thursday morning, I hand him a copy of the Stupid Letter and ask him to read it. Then I ask, “Now, Mr. Reisky, in your expert opinion, is this a fair and reasonable response from Great Benefit?”

He’s been forewarned. “Of course not. This is horrible.”

“It’s shocking, isn’t it?”

“It is. And I understand the author of this letter is no longer with the company.”

“Who told you this?” I ask, very suspicious.

“Well, I’m not sure. Someone at the company.”

“Did this unknown person also tell you the reason why Mr. Krokit is no longer with the company?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe it had something to do with the letter.”

“Maybe? Are you sure of yourself, or simply speculating?”

“I’m really not sure.”

“Thank you. Did this unknown person tell you that Mr. Krokit left the company two days before he was to give a deposition in this case?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“You don’t know why he left, do you?”

“No.”

“Good. I thought you were trying to imply to the jury that he left the company because he wrote this letter. You weren’t trying to do that, were you?”

“No.”

“Thank you.”

It was decided over the wine last night that it would be a mistake to beat Reisky over the head with the manuals. There are several reasons for this line of thinking. First, the evidence is already before the jury. Second, it was first presented in a very dramatic and effective manner, i.e., we caught Lufkin lying through his teeth. Third, Reisky is quick with words and will be hard to pin down. Fourth, he’s had time to prepare for the assault and will do a better job of holding his own. Fifth, he’ll seize the opportunity to further confuse the jury. And, most important, it will take time. It would be easy to spend all day haggling with Reisky over the manuals and the statistical data. I’d kill a day and get nowhere in the process.

“Who pays your salary, Mr. Reisky?”

“My employer. The National Insurance Alliance.”

“Who funds the NIA?”

“The insurance industry.”

“Does Great Benefit contribute to the NIA?”

“Yes.”

“And how much does it contribute?”

He looks at Drummond, who’s already on his feet. “Objection, Your Honor, this is irrelevant.”

“Overruled. I think it’s quite relevant.”

“How much, Mr. Reisky?” I repeat, helpfully.

He obviously doesn’t want to say, and looks squeamish. “Ten thousand dollars a year.”

“So they pay you more than they paid Donny Ray Black.”

“Objection!”

“Sustained.”

“Sorry, Your Honor. I’ll withdraw that comment.”

“Move to have it stricken from the record, Your Honor,” Drummond says angrily.

“So ordered.”

We take a breath as tempers subside. “Sorry, Mr. Reisky,” I say humbly with a truly repentant face.

“Does all of your money come from insurance companies?”

“We have no other funding.”

“How many insurance companies contribute to the NIA?”

“Two hundred and twenty.”

“And what was the total amount contributed last year?”

“Six million dollars.”

“And you use this money to lobby with?”

“We do some lobbying, yes.”

“Are you getting paid extra to testify in this trial?”

“No.”

“Why are you here?”

“Because I was contacted by Great Benefit. I was asked to come testify.”

Very slowly, I turn and point to Dot Black. “And, Mr. Reisky, can you look at Mrs. Black, look her squarely in the eyes, and tell her that her son’s claim was handled fairly and properly by Great Benefit?”

It takes him a second or two to focus on Dot’s face, but he has no choice. He nods, then finally says crisply, “Yes. It certainly was.”

I, of course, had planned this. I wanted it to be a dra-

matic way to quickly end Reisky’s testimony, but I certainly didn’t expect it to be humorous. Mrs. Beverdee Hardaway, a stocky black woman of fifty-one, who’s juror number three and sitting in the middle of the front row, actually laughs at Reisky’s absurd response. It’s an abrupt burst of laughter, obviously spontaneous because she cuts it off as rapidly as possible. Both hands’ fly up to her mouth. She grits her teeth and clenches her jaws and looks around wildly to see how much damage she’s done. Her body, though, keeps gyrating slightly.

Unfortunately for Mrs. Hardaway, and quite blessedly for us, the moment is contagious. Mr. Ranson Pelk who sits directly behind her gets tickled at something. So does Mrs. Ella Faye Salter who sits next to Mrs. Hardaway. Within seconds of the initial eruption, there is widespread laughing throughout the jury box. Some jurors glance at Mrs. Hardaway as if she’s still the source of the mischief. Others look directly at Reisky and shake their heads in amused bewilderment.

Reisky assumes the worst, as if he’s the reason they’re laughing. His head falls and he studies the floor. Drum-mond chooses simply to ignore it, though it must be awfully painful. Not a face can be seen from his group of bright young eagles. They’ve all got their noses stuck in files and books. Aldy and Underhall examine their socks.

Kipler wants to laugh himself. He tolerates the comedy for a bit, and as it begins to subside he raps his gavel, as if to officially record the fact that the jury actually laughed at the testimony of Payton Reisky.

It happens quickly. The ridiculbus answer, the burst of laughter, the cover-up, the chuckling and giggling and head-shaking skepticism, all last but a few seconds. I detect, though, a certain forced relief on the part of some of the jurors. They want to laugh, to express disbelief, and in doing so they can, if only for a second, tell Reisky and

Great Benefit exactly what they think about what they’re hearing.

Brief though it is, it’s an absolutely golden moment. I smile at them. They smile at me. They believe everything from my witnesses, nothing from Drummond’s.

“Nothing else, Your Honor,” I say with disgust, as if I’m tired of this lying scoundrel.

Drummond is obviously surprised. He thought I’d spend the rest of the day hammering Reisky with the manuals and the statistics. He shuffles paper, whispers to T. Price, then stands and says, “Our next witness is Richard Pellrod.”

Pellrod was the senior claims examiner over Jackie Lemancyzk. He was a terrible witness during deposition, a real chip on his shoulder, but his appearance now is no surprise. They must do something to cast mud on Jackie. Pellrod was her immediate boss.

He’s forty-six, of medium build with a beer gut, little hair, bad features, liver spots and nerdish eyeglasses. There’s nothing physically attractive about the poor guy, and he obviously doesn’t care. If he says Jackie Lemancyzk was nothing but a whore who tried to snare his body as well, I’ll bet the jury starts laughing again.

Pellrod has the irascible personality you’d expect from a person who’s worked in claims for twenty years. Just slightly friendlier than the average bill collector, he simply cannot convey any warmth or trust to the jury. He’s a low-level corporate rat who’s probably been working in the same cubicle for as long as he can remember.

And he’s the best they have! They can’t bring back Lufkin or Aldy or Keeley because they’ve already lost all credibility with the jury. Drummond has a half-dozen home office people left on his witness list, but I doubt if he calls all of them. What can they say? The manuals

don’t exist? Their company doesn’t lie and hide documents?

Drummond and Pellrod Q&A through a well-rehearsed script for half an hour, more breathless inner workings of the claims department, more heroic efforts by Great Benefit to treat its insureds fairly, more yawns from the jury.

Judge Kipler decides to insert himself into the boredom. He interrupts this little tag-team, says, “Counselor, could we move along?”

Drummond appears shocked and wounded. “But, Your Honor, I have the right to conduct a thorough examination of this witness.”

“Sure you do. But most of what he’s said so far is already before the jury. It’s repetitive.”

Drummond just can’t believe this. He’s incredulous, and he pretends, quite unsuccessfully, to act as if the judge is picking on him.

“I don’t recall your telling plaintiff’s counsel to hurry up.”

He shouldn’t have said this. He’s trying to prolong this flare-up, and he’s picking a fight with the wrong judge. “That’s because Mr. Baylor kept the jury awake, Mr. Drummond. Now move along.”

Mrs. Hardaway’s outburst and the snickering it created has obviously loosened up the jurors. They’re more animated now, ready to laugh again at the expense of the defense.

Drummond glares at Kipler as if hell discuss this later and straighten things out. Back to Pellrod, who sits like a toad, eyes half-open, head tilted to one side. Mistakes were made, Pellrod admits with a weak effort at remorse, but nothing major. And, believe it or not, most of the mistakes can be attributed to Jackie Lemancyzk, a troubled young woman.

Back to the Black claim for a while as Pellrod discusses

some of the less-damning documents. He never gets around to the denial letters, but instead spends a lot of time with paperwork that is irrelevant and unimportant.

“Mr. Drummond,” Kipler interrupts sternly, “I’ve asked you to move along. These documents are in evidence for the jury to examine. This testimony has already been covered with other witnesses. Now, move it.”

Drumrnond’s feelings are hurt by this. He’s being harangued and picked on by an unfair judge. He takes time to collect himself. His acting is not up to par.

They decide to fashion a new strategy with the claims manual. Pellrod says it’s just a book, nothing more or less. Personally, he hasn’t looked at the damned thing in years. They keep changing it so much that most of the veteran claims handlers just ignore it. Drummond shows him Section U, and, son of a gun, he’s never seen it before. Means nothing to him. Means nothing to the many handlers under his supervision. Personally, he doesn’t know a single claims handler who bothers with the manual.

So how are claims really handled? Pellrod tells us. Under Drumrnond’s prompting, he takes a hypothetical claim, walks it through the normal channels. Step by step, form by form, memo by memo. Pellrod’s voice remains in the same octave, and he bores the hell out of the jury. Lester Days, juror number eight, on the back row, nods off to sleep. There are yawns and heavy eyelids as they try vainly to stay awake.

It does not go unnoticed.

If Pellrod is crushed by his failure to dazzle die jury, he doesn’t show it. His voice doesn’t change, his manner remains the same. He finishes with some alarming revelations about Jackie Lemancyzk. She was known to have a drinking problem, and often came to work smelling of liquor. She missed more work than the other claims han-

dlers. She grew increasingly irresponsible, and her termination was inevitable. What about her sexual escapades?

Pellrod and Great Benefit have to be careful here because this topic will be discussed again on another day in another courtroom. Whatever is said here will be recorded and preserved for future use. So, instead of making her a whore who readily slept with anybody, Drum-mond wisely takes the higher ground.

“I really don’t know anything about that,” Pellrod says, and scores a minor point with the jury.

They kill some more clock, and make it almost until noon before Pellrod is handed to me. Kipler wants to break for lunch, but I assure him I won’t take long. He reluctantly agrees.

I start by handing Pellrod a copy of a denial letter he signed and sent to Dot Black. It was the fourth denial, and was based on the grounds that Donny Ray’s leukemia was a preexisting condition. I make him read it to the jury, and admit it’s his. I allow him to try and explain why he sent it, but, of course, there’s no way txrexplain. The letter was a private matter between Pellrod and Dot Black, never intended to be seen by anybody else, certainly not in this courtroom.

He talks about a form that was mistakenly filled in by Jackie, and about a misunderstanding with Mr. Krokit, and, well, hell, the whole thing was just a mistake. And he’s very sorry about it.

“It’s a little too late to be sorry, isn’t it?” I ask.

“I guess.”

“When you sent that letter, you didn’t know that there would be four more letters of denial, did you?”

“No.”

“So, this letter was intended to be the final letter of denial to Mrs. Black, correct?”

The letter contains the words “final denial.”

“I guess so.”

“What caused the death of Donny Ray Black?”

He shrugs. “Leukemia.”

“And what medical condition prompted the filing of his claim?”

“Leukemia.”

“In your letter there, what preexisting condition do you mention?”

“The flu.”

“And when did he have the flu?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I can gjst the file if you want to go through it with me.”

“No, that’s okay.” Anything to keep me out of the file. “I think he was fifteen or sixteen,” he says.

“So he had the flu when he was fifteen or sixteen, before the policy was issued, and this was not mentioned on the application.”

“That’s correct.”

“Now, Mr. Pellrod, in your vast experience in claims, have you ever seen a case in which a bout with the flu was somehow related to the onset of acute leukemia five years later?”

There’s only one answer, but he just can’t give it. “I don’t think so.”

“Does that mean no?”

“Yes it means no.”

“So the flu had nothing to do with the leukemia, did it?”

“No.”

“So you lied in your letter, didn’t you?”

Of course he lied in his letter, and he’ll lie now if he says he didn’t lie then. The jury will see it. He’s trapped, but Drummond’s had time to work with him.

“The letter was a mistake,” Pellrod says.

“A lie or a mistake?”

“A mistake.”

“A mistake that helped kill Donny Ray Black?”

“Objection!” Drummond roars from his seat.

Kipler thinks about this for a second. I expected an objection, and I expect it to be sustained. His Honor, however, feels otherwise. “Overruled. Answer the question.”

“I’d like to enter a continuing objection to this line of questioning,” Drummond says angrily.

“Noted. Please answer the question, Mr. Pellrod.”

“It was a mistake, that’s all I can say.”

“Not a lie?”

“No.”

“How about your testimony before this jury? Is it filled with lies or mistakes?”

“Neither.”

I turn and point to Dot Black, then look at the witness. “Mr. Pellrod, as the senior claims examiner, can you look Mrs. Black squarely in the eyes and tell her that her son’s claim was handled fairly by your office? Can you do this?”

He squints and twitches and frowns, and glances at Drummond for instructions. He clears his throat, tries to act offended, says, “I don’t believe I can be forced to do that.”

“Thank you. No further questions.”

I finish in less than five minutes, and the defense is scrambling. They figured we’d spend the day with Reisky, then consume tomorrow with Pellrod. But I’m not wasting time with these clowns. I want to get to the jury.

Kipler declares a two-hour lunch break. I pull Leo to one side, and hand him a list of six additional witnesses.

“What the hell is this?” he says.

“Six doctors, all local, all oncologists, all ready to come testify live if you put your quack on.” Walter Kord is incensed over Drummond’s strategy to portray bone mar-

row transplants as experimental. He’s twisted the arms of his partners and friends, and they’re ready to come testify.

“He’s not a quack.”

“You know he’s a quack. He’s a nut from New York or some foreign place. I’ve got six local boys here. Put him on. This could be fun.”

“These witnesses are not in the pretrial order. This is an unfair surprise.”

“They’re rebuttal witnesses. Go cry to the judge, okay.” I leave him standing by the bench, staring at my list.

AFTER LUNCH, but before Kipler calls us to order, I chat near my table with Dr. Walter Kord and two of his partners. Seated alone in the front row behind the defense table is Dr. Milton Jiffy, Drummond’s quack. As the lawyers prepare for the afternoon session, I call Drum-mond over and introduce him to Kord’s partners. It’s an awkward moment. Drummond is visibly unnerved by their presence here. The three of them take their places on the front row behind me. The five boys from Trent & Brent can’t help but stare.

The jury is brought in, and Drummond calls Jack Un-derhall to the stand. He’s sworn in, takes his seat, grins idiotically at the jury. They’ve been staring at him for three days now, and I don’t understand how or why Drummond thinks this guy will be believed.

His purpose becomes plainly obvious. It’s all about Jackie Lemancyzk. She lied about the ten thousand dollars in cash. She lied about signing the agreement because there is no agreement. She lied about the claim denial scheme. She lied about having sex with her bosses. She even lied about the company denying her medical claims. UnderhalPs tone starts as mildly sympathetic but becomes harsh and vindictive. It’s impossible to say these horrible

things with a smile, but he seems particularly eager to trash her.

It’s a bold and risky maneuver. The fact that this corporate thug would accuse anybody of lying is glaringly ironic. They have decided that this trial is far more important than any subsequent action by Jackie. Drummond is apparently willing to risk total alienation of the jury on the prayer of causing enough doubt to muddy the waters. He’s probably thinking he has little to lose by this rather nasty attack on a young woman who’s not present and cannot defend herself.

Jackie’s job performance was lousy, Underhall tells us. She was drinking and having trouble getting along with her co-workers. Something had to be done. They offered a chance to resign so it wouldn’t screw up her record. Had nothing to do with the fact that she was about to give a deposition, nothing whatsoever to do with the Black claim.

His testimony is remarkably brief. They hope to get him on and off the stand without significant damage. There’s not much I can do but hope the jury despises him as much as I do. He’s a lawyer, not someone I want to spar with.

“Mr. Underhall, does your company keep personnel files on its employees?” I ask, very politely.

“We do.”

“Did you keep one on Jackie Lemancyzk?”

“We did.”

“Do you have it with you?”

“No sir.”

“Where is it?”

“At the office, I presume.”

“In Cleveland?”

“Yes. At the office.”

“So we can’t look at it?”

“I don’t have it, okay. And I wasn’t told to bring it.”

“Does it include performance evaluations and stuff like that?”

“It does.”

“If an employee received a reprimand or a demotion or a transfer, would these be in the personnel file?”

“Yes.”

“Does Jackie’s have any of these?”

“I believe so.”

“Does her file have a copy of her letter of resignation?”

“Yes.”

“But we’ll have to take your word about what’s in the file, correct?”

“I wasn’t told to bring it here, Mr. Baylor.”

I check my notes and clear my throat. “Mr. Underhall, do you have a copy of the agreement Jackie signed when you gave her the cash and she promised never to talk?”

“You must not hear very well.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“I just testified that there was no such agreement.”

“You mean it doesn’t exist?”

He shakes his head emphatically. “Never did. She’s lying.”

I act surprised, then slowly walk to my table, where papers are scattered everywhere. I find the one I want, scan it thoughtfully as everybody watches, then return to the podium with it. UnderhalPs back stiffens and he looks wildly at Drummond, who at the moment is staring at the paper I’m holding. They’re thinking about the Section U’s! Baylor’s done it again! He’s found the buried documents and caught us lying.

“But Jackie Lemancyzk was quite specific when she told the jury what she was forced to sign. Do you remember her testimony?” I dangle the paper off the front of the podium.

“Yes, I heard her testimony,” he says, his voice a bit higher, his words tighter.

“She said you handed her ten thousand dollars in cash and made her sign an agreement. Do you remember that?” I glance at the paper as if I’m reading from it. Jackie told me the dollar amount was actually listed in the first paragraph of the document.

“I heard her,” he says, looking at Drummond. Un-derhall knows I don’t have a copy of the agreement because he buried the original somewhere. But he can’t be certain.” Strange things happen. How in the world did I find the Section U’s?

He can’t admit there’s an agreement. And he can’t deny it either. If he denies, and if I suddenly produce a copy, then the damage cannot be estimated until the jury returns with its verdict. He fidgets, twists, wipes sweat from his forehead.

“And you don’t have a copy of the agreement to show to the jury?” I ask, waving the paper in my hand.

“I do not. There is none.”

“Are you certain?” I ask, rubbing my finger around the edges-of the paper, fondling it.

“I’m certain.”

I stare at him for a few seconds, thoroughly enjoying the sight of him suffering. The jurors haven’t thought about sleeping. They’re waiting for the ax to fall, for me to whip out the agreement and watch him croak.

But I can’t. I wad the meaningless piece of paper and dramatically toss it on the table. “No further questions,” I say. Underhall exhales mightily. A heart attack has been avoided. He leaps from the witness stand and leaves the courtroom.

Drummond asks for a five-minute recess. Kipler decides the jury needs more, and dismisses us for fifteen. n n n o

THE DEFENSE STRATEGY of dragging out testimony and hopefully confusing the jury is plainly not working. The jurors laughed at Reisky and slept through Pellrod. Underhall was a near fatal disaster because Drummond was terrified I had a copy of a document his client assured him did not exist.

Drummond’s had enough. He’ll take his chances with a strong closing argument, something he can control. He announces after recess that the defense rests.

The trial is almost over. Kipler schedules closing arguments for nine o’clock Friday morning. He promises the jurors they’ll have the case by eleven.

Forty-eight

LONG AFTER THE JURY’S GONE, AND LONG after Drummond and his crew hurriedly left for their offices and what will undoubtedly be another dicey session of what-went-wrong, we sit around the plaintiff’s table in the courtroom and talk about tomorrow. Cooper Jackson and the two lawyers from Raleigh, Hurley and Grunfeld, are careful not to dispense too much unsolicited advice, but I don’t mind listening to their opinions. Everyone knows it’s my first trial. They seem amazed at the job I’ve done. I’m tired, still quite nervous and very realistic about what’s happened. I was handed a beautiful set of facts, a rotten but rich defendant, an incredibly sympathetic trial judge and one lucky break after another at trial. I also have a handsome jury, but it’s yet to perform.

Litigation will only get worse for me, they say. They’re convinced the verdict will be in seven figures. Jackson had been trying cases for twelve years before he got his first one-million-dollar verdict.

They tell war stories designed to boost my confidence.

It’s a pleasant way to spend the afternoon. Deck and I will work all night, but right now I enjoy the comfort of kindred spirits who truly want me to nail Great Benefit.

Jackson is somewhat dismayed by news out of Florida. A lawyer down there jumped the gun and filed four lawsuits against Great Benefit this morning. They thought the guy was about to join their- class action, but evidently he got greedy. As of today, these three lawyers have nineteen claims against Great Benefit, and their plans are to file early next week.

They’re pulling for me. They want to buy us a nice dinner, but we have work to do. The last thing I need tonight is a heavy dinner with wine and drinks.

AND SO WE DINE at the office on deli sandwiches and soft drinks. I make Deck sit in a chair in my office, and I rehearse my closing argument to the jury. I’ve memorized so many versions of it that they’re all running together. I use a small chalkboard and write the crucial figures neatly on it. I appeal for fairness, yet ask for outrageous sums of money. Deck interrupts a lot, and we argue like school-children.

Neither of us has ever made a closing argument to a jury, but he’s seen more than I so of course he’s the expert. There are moments when I feel invincible, downright arrogant because I’ve made it this far in such wonderful shape. Deck can spot these airs and is quick to chop at the knees. He reminds me repeatedly that the case can still be won or lost tomorrow morning.

Most of the time, however, I’m simply scared. The fear is controllable, but it never leaves. It motivates me and inspires me to keep forging ahead, but I’ll be very happy once it’s gone.

We turn off the office lights around ten and go home. I drink one beer as a sleeping aid, and it works. Sometime

after eleven, I drift away, visions of success dancing in my head.

LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER, the phone rings. It’s an unfamiliar voice, a female, young and very anxious. “You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Kelly’s,” she says, almost in a whisper.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, waking quickly.

“Kelly’s in trouble. She needs your help.”

“What’s happened?”

“He beat her again. Came home drunk, the usual.”

“When?” I’m standing in the dark beside my bed, trying to find the lamp switch.

“Last night. She needs your help, Mr. Baylor.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s here with me. After the police left with Cliff, she went to an emergency clinic to see a doctor. Luckily, nothing’s broken. I picked her up, and she’s hiding here at my place.”

“How bad is she hurt?”

“It’s pretty ugly, but no broken bones. Cuts and bruises.”

I get her name and address, hang up the phone and dress hurriedly. It’s a large apartment complex in the suburbs, not too far from Kelly’s, and I drive around several one-way loops before I find the right building.

Robin, the friend, cracks the door with the chain in place, and I have to identify myself sufficiently before I’m admitted. She thanks me for coming. Robin is just a kid too, probably divorced and working for slightly more than minimum wage. I step into the den, a small room with rented furniture. Kelly is sitting on the sofa, an ice pack to her head.

I guess it’s the woman I know. Her left eye is completely swollen shut, the puffy skin already turning shades

of blue. There’s a bandage above the eye with a spot of blood on it. Both cheeks are swollen. Her bottom lip has been busted and protrudes grotesquely. She wears a long tee shirt, nothing else, and there are large bruises on both thighs and above the knees.

I bend over and kiss her on the forehead, then sit on a footstool across from her. There’s already a tear in the right eye. “Thanks for coming,” she mumbles, her words hindered by the wounded cheeks and the damaged lips. I pat her very gently on the knee. She rubs the back of my hand.

I could kill him.

Robin sits beside her, says, “She doesn’t need to talk, okay. Doctor said as little movement as possible. He used his fists this time, couldn’t find the baseball bat.”

“What happened?” I ask .Robin, but keep looking at Kelly.

“It was a credit card fight. The Christmas bills were due. He’s been drinking a lot. You know the rest.” She’s quick with the narrative, and I suspect Robin’s been around. She has no wedding ring. “They fight. He wins as usual, neighbors call the cops. He goes to jail, she goes to see the doctor. Would you like a Coke or something?”

“No, thanks.”

“I brought her here last night, and this morning I took her to an abuse crisis center downtown. She met with a counselor who told her what to do, gave her a bunch of brochures. They’re over there if you need them. Bottom line is she needs to file for divorce and run like hell,”

“Did they photograph you?” I ask, still rubbing her knee. She nods. Tears have made their way out of the swollen eye and run down both cheeks.

“Yeah, they took a bunch of pictures. There’s a lot you can’t see. Show him, Kelly. He’s your lawyer. He needs to see.”

With Robin’s assistance, she carefully gets to her feet, turns her back to me, and lifts the tee shirt above her waist. There’s nothing underneath, nothing but solid bruises on her rear and the backs of her legs. The shirt goes higher and reveals more braises on her back. The shirt comes down, and she carefully sits on the sofa.

“He beat her with a belt,” Robin explains. “Forced her across his knee and just beat the shit out of her.”

“Do you have a tissue?” I ask Robin as I gently wipe tears from Kelly’s cheeks.

“Sure.” She hands me a large box and I dab Kelly’s cheeks with great care.

“What are you gonna do, Kelly?” I ask.

“Are you kidding?” Robin says. “She has to file for divorce. If not, he’ll kill her.”

“Is this true? Are we going to file?”

Kelly nods, and says, “Yes. As soon as possible.”

“I’ll do it tomorrow.”

She squeezes my hand and closes her right eye.

“Which brings up the second problem,” Robin says. “She can’t stay here. Cliff got out of jail this morning, and he started calling her friends. I skipped work today, something I can’t do again, and he called me around noon. I told him I knew nothing. He called back an hour later and threatened me. Kelly, bless her heart, doesn’t have a lot of friends, and it won’t be long before he finds her. Plus, I have a roommate, and it just won’t work.”

“I can’t stay here,” Kelly says softly and awkwardly.

“So where do you go?” I ask.

Robin has been thinking about this. “Well, the counselor we talked to this morning told us about a shelter for abused women, sort of a secret place that’s not officially registered with the county and state. It’s some type of home here in the city, sort of a word-of-mouth place. The women are safe because their beloved men can’t find

them. Problem is, it costs a hundred bucks a day, and she can stay only for a week. I don’t earn a hundred dollars a day.”

“Is that where you want to go?” I ask Kelly. She nods painfully.

“Fine. I’ll take you tomorrow.”

Robin breathes a heavy sigh of relief. She disappears into the kitchen, where she finds a card with the shelter’s address.

“Let me see your teeth,” I say to Kelly.

She opens her mouth as wide as possible, just wide enough for me to see her front teeth. “Nothing’s broken?” I ask.

She shakes her head. I touch the bandage above her closed eye. “How many stitches?”

“Six.”

I lean even closer and squeeze her hands. “This is never going to happen again, understand?”

She nods and whispers, “Promise?”

“I promise.”

Robin returns to her place next to Kelly and hands me the card. She has some more advice. “Look, Mr. Baylor, you don’t know Cliff, but I do. He’s crazy and he’s mean and he’s wild when he’s drunk. Please be careful.”

“Don’t worry.”

“He might be outside right now watching this place.”

“I’m not worried.” I stand and kiss Kelly on the forehead again. “I’ll file the divorce in the morning, then I’ll come get you, okay. I’m in the middle of a big trial, but I’ll get it done.”

Robin walks me to the door, and we thank each other. It closes behind me, and I listen to the sounds of chains and locks and dead bolts.

It’s almost 1 A.M. The air is clear and very cold. No one’s lurking in the shadows.

Sleep would be a joke at this point, so I drive to the office. I park at the curb directly under my window, and race to the front door of the building. This is not a safe part of town after dark.

I lock the doors behind me, and go to my office. For all the terrible things it might be, a divorce is a fairly simple action to initiate, at least legally. I begin typing, a chore I struggle with, but the effort is made easier by the purpose at hand. In this case, I truly believe I’m helping to save a life.

DECK ARRIVES at seven and wakes me. Sometime after four I fell asleep in my chair. He tells me I look haggard and tired, and what happened to the good night’s rest?

I tell the story, and he reacts badly. “You spent the night working on a stinking divorce? Your closing argument is less than two hours away!”

“Relax, Deck, I’ll be fine.”

“What’s with the smirk?”

“We’re gonna kick ass, Deck. Great Benefit’s going down.”

“No, that’s not it. You’re finally gonna get the girl, that’s why you’re smiling.”

“Nonsense. Where’s my coffee?”

Deck twitches and jerks. He’s a nervous wreck. “I’ll get it,” he says, and leaves the office.

The divorce is on my desk, ready to be filed. I’ll get a process server to pin it on my buddy Cliff while he’s at work, otherwise he might be hard to find. The divorce also asks for immediate injunctive relief to keep him away from her.

Forty-nine

ONE GREAT ADVANTAGE IN BEING A rookie is that I’m expected to be scared and jittery. The jury knows I’m just a kid with no experience. So expectations are low. I’ve developed neither the skill nor the talent to deliver great summations.

It would be a mistake to attempt to be something I’m not. Maybe in my later years when my hair is grayer and my voice is oily and I have hundreds of courtroom brawls under my belt, maybe then I can stand before a jury and give a splendid performance. But not today. Today I’m just Rudy Baylor, a nervous kid asking his friends in the jury box to help.

I stand before them, quite tense and frightened, and try to relax. I know what I’ll say because I’ve said it a hundred times. But it’s important not to sound rehearsed. I begin by explaining that this is a very important day for my clients because it’s their only chance to receive justice from Great Benefit. There’s no tomorrow, no second chance in court, no other jury waiting to help them. I ask them to consider Dot and what she’s been through. I talk

a little about Donny Ray without being overly dramatic. I ask the jurors to imagine what it would be like to be slowly and painfully dying when you know you should be getting the treatment to which you’re entitled. My words are slow and measured, very sincere, and they find their mark. I’m talking in a relaxed tone, and looking directly into the faces of twelve people who are ready to roll.

I cover the basics of the policy without much detail, and briefly discuss bone marrow transplants. I point out that the defense offered no proof contrary to Dr. Kord’s testimony. This medical procedure is far from experimental, and quite probably would’ve saved Donny Ray’s life.

My voice picks up a bit as I move to the fun stuff. I cover the hidden documents and the lies that were told by Great Benefit. This played out so dramatically in trial that it would be a mistake to belabor it. The beauty of a four-day trial is that the important testimony is still fresh. I use the testimony from Jackie Lemancyzk and the statistical data from Great Benefit, and put some figures on a chalkboard: the number of policies in 1991, the number of claims and, most important, the number of denials. I keep it quick and neat so a fifth-grader could grasp it and not forget it. The message is plain and irrefutable. The unknown powers in control of Great Benefit decided to implement a scheme to deny legitimate claims for a twelvemonth period. In Jackie’s words, it was an experiment to see how much cash could be generated in one year. It was a cold-blooded decision made out of nothing but greed, with absolutely no thought given to people like Donny Ray Black.

Speaking of cash, I take the financial statements and explain to the jury that I’ve been studying them for four months and still don’t understand them. The industry has its own funny accounting practices. But, using the com-

pany’s own figures, there’s plenty of cash around. On the chalkboard, I add the available cash, reserves and undistributed surpluses, and tally up the figure of four hundred and seventy-five million. The admitted net worth is four hundred and fifty million.

How do you punish a company this wealthy? I ask this question, and I see gleaming eyes staring back at me. They can’t wait!

I use an example that’s been around for many years. It’s a favorite of trial lawyers, and I’ve read a dozen versions of it. It works because it’s so simple. I tell the jury that I’m just a struggling young lawyer, scratching to pay my bills, not too far removed from law school. What if I work hard and am very frugal, save my money, and two years from now I have ten thousand dollars in the bank? I worked very hard for this money and I want to protect it. And what if I do something wrong, say, lose my temper and pop somebody in the nose, breaking it? I, of course, will be required to pay the actual damages incurred by my victim, but I will also need to be punished so I won’t do it again. I have only ten thousand dollars. How much will it take to get my attention? One percent will be a hundred dollars, and that may or may not hurt me. I wouldn’t want to fork over a hundred bucks, but it wouldn’t bother me too much. What about five percent? Would a fine of five hundred dollars be enough to punish me for breaking a man’s nose? Would I suffer enough when I wrote the check? Maybe, maybe not. What about ten percent? I’ll bet that if I was forced to pay a thousand dollars, then two things would happen. Number one, I’d truly be sorry. Number two, I’d change my ways.

How do you punish Great Benefit? The same way you’d punish me or the guy next door. You look at the bank statement, decide how much money is available, and you

levy a fine that will hurt, but not break. Same for a rich corporation. They’re no better than the rest of us.

I tell the jury the decision is best left to them. We’ve sued for ten million, but they’re not bound by that number. They can bring back whatever they want, and it’s not my place to suggest an amount.

I close with a smile of thanks, then I tell them that if they don’t stop Great Benefit, they could be next. A few nod and a few smile. Some look at the figures on the board.

I walk to my table. Deck is in the corner grinning from ear to ear. On the back row, Cooper Jackson gives me a thumbs-up. I sit next to Dot, and anxiously wait to see if the great Leo F. Drummond can snatch victory from defeat.

He begins with a drippy apology for his performance during jury selection, says he fears he got off on the wrong foot, and now wants to be trusted. The apologies continue as he talks about his client, one of the oldest and most respected insurance companies in America. But it made mistakes with this claim. Serious mistakes. Those dreadful denial letters were horribly insensitive and downright abusive. His client was dead wrong. But his client has over six thousand employees and it’s hard to monitor the movements of all these people, hard to check all the correspondence. No excuses, though, no denials. Mistakes were made.

He pursues this theme for a few minutes, and does a fine job of painting his client’s actions as merely accidental, certainly not deliberate. He tiptoes around the claim file, the manuals, the hidden documents, the exposed lies. The facts are a minefield for Drummond, and he wants to go in other directions.

He frankly admits that the claim should’ve been paid, all two hundred thousand dollars of it. This is a grave

admission, and the jurors absorb it. He’s trying to soften them up, and it’s effective. Now, for the damage control. He’s nothing but bewildered at my suggestion that the jury should consider awarding Dot Black a percentage of Great Benefit’s net worth. It’s shocking! What good would that do? He’s admitted his client was wrong. Those responsible for this injustice have been terminated. Great Benefit has cleaned up its act.

So what will a large verdict accomplish? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

Drummond carefully eases into an argument against unjust enrichment. He has to be careful not to offend Dot, because he will also offend the jury. He states some facts about the Blacks; where they live, for how long, the house, the neighborhood, etcetera. In doing so, he portrays them as a very average, middle-class family living simple but happy lives. He’s quite generous. Norman Rockwell couldn’t paint a better picture. I can almost see the shady streets and the friendly paperboy. His setup is perfect, and the jurors are listening. He’s describing either the way they live or the way they want to live.

Why would you, the jurors, want to take money from Great Benefit and give it to the Blacks? It would upset this pleasant picture. It would bring chaos to their lives. It would make them vastly different from their neighbors and friends. In short, it would wreck them. And is anyone entitled to the kind of money that I, Rudy Baylor, am suggesting? Of course not. It’s unjust and unfair to take money from a corporation simply because the money’s available.

He walks to the chalkboard and writes the figure of $746, and tells the jury this is the monthly income for the Blacks. Next to it he writes the sum of $200,000, and multiplies it by six percent to get the figure of $12,000. He then tells the jury what he really wants, and that’s to

double the Blacks’ monthly income. Wouldn’t we all like that? It’s easy. Award the Blacks the $200,000 that the transplant would’ve cost, and if they’ll invest the money in tax-free bonds at six percent, then they’ll have $1,000 a month in tax-free income. Great Benefit will even agree to do the investing for Dot and Buddy.

What a deal!

He’s done this enough to make it work. The argument is very compelling, and as I study the faces I see the jurors considering it. They study the board. It seems like such a nice compromise.

It is at this point that I hope and pray they remember Dot’s vow to give the money to the American Leukemia Society.

Drummond ends with an appeal for sanity and fairness. His voice deepens and his words get slower. He’s nothing but sincerity. Please do what is fair, he asks, and takes his seat.

Since I’m the plaintiff, I get the last word. I’ve saved ten minutes of my alloted half-hour for rebuttal, and as I walk to the jury I’m smiling. I tell them that I hope one day I’ll be able to do what Mr. Drummond has just done. I praise him as a skilled courtroom advocate, one of the best in the country. I’m such a nice kid.

I have just a couple of comments. First, Great Benefit now admits it was wrong and in effect offers two hundred thousand dollars as a peace offering. Why? Because right now they’re chewing their fingernails as they fervently pray that they get hit with nothing more than two hundred thousand. Second, did Mr. Drummond admit these mistakes and offer the money when he addressed the jury Monday morning? No, he did not. He knew everything then that he knows now, so why didn’t he tell you up front that his client was wrong? Why? Because they were hop-

ing then that you wouldn’t learn the truth. And now that you know the truth, they’ve become downright humble.

I close by actually provoking the jury. I say, “If the best you can do is two hundred thousand dollars, then just keep it. We don’t want it. It’s for an operation that will never take place. If you don’t believe that Great Benefit’s actions deserve to be punished, then keep the two hundred thousand and we’ll all go home.” I slowly look into the eyes of each juror as I step along the box. They will not let me down.

“Thank you,” I say, and take my seat next to my client. As Judge Kipler gives them their final instructions, an intoxicating feeling of relief comes over me. I relax as never before. There are no more witnesses or documents or motions or briefs, no more hearings or deadlines, no more worries about this juror or that. I breathe deeply and sink into my chair. I could sleep for days.

This calm lasts for about five minutes, until the jurors leave to begin their deliberations. It’s almost ten-thirty.

The waiting now begins.

DECK AND I walk to the second floor of the courthouse and file the Hiker divorce, then we go straight to Kipler’s office. The judge congratulates me on a fine performance, and I thank him for the hundredth time. I do, however, have something else on my mind, and I show him a copy of the divorce. I quickly tell him about Kelly Riker and the beatings and her crazy husband, and ask him if he’ll agree to emergency injunctive relief to prohibit Mr. Riker from getting near Mrs. Riker. Kipler hates divorces, but I have him captive. This is fairly routine in domestic abuse cases. He trusts me, and signs the order. No word on the jury. They’ve been out for fifteen minutes.

Butch meets us in the hallway and takes a copy of the divorce, the order just signed by Kipler and the summons.

He has agreed to serve Cliff Riker at work. I ask him again to try and do it without embarrassing the boy.

We wait in the courtroom for an hour, Drummond and his gang huddled on one side. Me, Deck, Cooper Jackson, Hurley and Grunfeld all grouped together on the other. I’m amused to observe the suits from Great Benefit keeping their distance from their lawyers, or maybe it’s the other way around. Underhall, Aldy and Lufkin sit on the back row, their faces glum. They’re waiting for a firing squad.

At noon, lunch is sent into the jury room, and Kipler sends us away until one-thirty. I couldn’t possibly keep food in my stomach, the way it’s flipping and whirling. I call Kelly on the car phone as I race across town to Robin’s apartment. Kelly is alone. She’s dressed in a pair of baggy sweats and borrowed sneakers. She has neither clothing nor toiletries with her. She walks gingerly, in great pain. I help her to my car, open the door, ease her inside, lift her legs and swing them around. She grits her teeth and doesn’t complain. The bruises on her face and neck are much darker in the sunlight.

As we leave the apartment complex, I catch her glancing around, as if she expects Cliff to jump from the shrubs. “We just filed this,” I say, handing her a copy of the divorce. She holds it to her face and reads it as we move through traffic.

“When does he get it?” she asks.

“Right about now.”

“He’ll go crazy.”

“He’s already crazy.”

“He’ll come after you.”

“I hope he does. But he won’t, because he’s a coward. Men who beat their wives are the lowest species of cowards. Don’t worry. I have a gun/’ a a a a

THE HOUSE IS OLD, unmarked and does not stand out from the others on the street. The front lawn is deep and wide and heavily shaded. The neighbors would have to strain to see any movement. I stop at the end of the drive and park behind two other cars. I leave Kelly in the car and knock on a side door. A voice over an intercom asks me to identify myself. Security is a priority here. The windows are all completely shaded. The backyard is lined with a wooden fence at least eight feet high.

The door opens halfway, and a hefty young woman looks at me. I’m in no mood for confrontation. I’ve been in trial for five days now, and I’m ready to snap. “Looking for Betty Norvelle,” I say.

“That’s me. Where’s Kelly?”

I nod to the car.

“Bring her in.”

I could easily carry her, but the backs of her legs are so tender it’s easier for her to walk. We inch along the sidewalk, and onto the porch. I feel as though I’m escorting a ninety-year-old grandmother. Betty smiles at her and shows us into a small room. It’s an office of some sort. We sit next to each other at a table with Betty on the other side. I talked to her early this morning, and she wants copies of the divorce papers. She reviews these quickly. Kelly and I hold hands.

“So you’re her lawyer,” Betty says, noticing the hand-holding.

“Yes. And a friend too.”

“When are you supposed to see the doctor again?”

“In a week,” Kelly says.

“So you have no ongoing medical needs?”

“No.” • “Medication?”

“Just some pain pills.”

The paperwork looks fine. I write a check for two hundred dollars-a deposit, plus the first day’s fee.

“We are not a licensed facility,” Betty explains. “This is a shelter for battered women whose lives are in danger. It’s owned by a private individual, an abused woman herself, and it’s one of several in this area. Nobody knows we’re here. Nobody knows what we do. We’d like to keep it that way. Do both of you agree to keep this confidential?”

“Sure.” We both nod, and Betty slides a form over for us to sign.

“This is not illegal, is it?” Kelly asks. It’s a fair question given the ominous surroundings.

“Not really. The worst they could do would be to shut us down. We’d simply move somewhere else. We’ve been here for four years, and nobody’s said a word. You realize that seven days is the maximum stay?”

We understand this.

“You need to start making plans for your next stop.”

I’d love for it to be my apartment, but we haven’t discussed this yet.

“How many women are here?” I ask,

“Today, five. Kelly, you’ll have your own room with a bath. Food’s okay, three meals a day. You can eat in your room or with the rest. We don’t offer medical or legal advice. We don’t counsel or have sessions. All we offer is love and protection. You’re very safe here. No one will find you. And we have a guard with a gun around here someplace.”

“Can he come visit?” Kelly asks, nodding at me.

“We allow one visitor at a time, and each visit has to be approved. Call ahead for clearance, and make sure you’re not followed. Sorry, though, we can’t allow you to spend the night.”

“That’s fine,” I say.

“Any more questions? If not, I need to show Kelly around. You’re welcome to visit tonight.”

I can take a hint. I say good-bye to Kelly, and promise to see her later tonight. She asks me to bring a pizza. It is, after all, Friday night.

As I drive away, I feel as though I’ve introduced her to the underground.

A REPORTER from a newspaper in Cleveland catches me in the hallway outside the courtroom, and wants to talk about Great Benefit. Did I know that the Ohio Attorney General is rumored to be investigating the company? I say nothing. He follows me into the courtroom. Deck is alone at the counsel table. The defense lawyers are telling jokes across the room. No sign of Kipler. Everyone’s waiting.

Butch served papers on Cliff Riker as he was leaving for a quick lunch. Riker offered some lip. Butch didn’t back down, declared himself ready to rumble and Riker left in a hurry. My name is on the summons, so from this point on I’ll be watching my back.

Others drift in as the time approaches two o’clock. Booker shows up and sits with us. Cooper Jackson, Hurley and Grunfeld return from a long lunch. They’ve had several drinks. The reporter sits on the back row. No one will talk to him.

There are lots of theories about jury deliberations. A quick verdict is supposed to favor the plaintiff in a case like this. The passing of time means the jury’s deadlocked. I listen to these unfounded speculations and I cannot sit still. I walk outside for a drink of water, then to the rest room, then to the snack bar. Walking is better than sitting in the courtroom. My stomach churns violently and my heart pounds like a piston.

Booker knows me better than anyone, and he joins

these walks. He’s nervous too. We poke along the marble hallways going nowhere, just killing time. And waiting. In times of great turmoil, it’s important to be with friends. I thank him for coming. He said he wouldn’t miss it for the world.

By three-thirty, I’m convinced I’ve lost. It should’ve been a slam-dunk decision, a simple matter of picking a percentage and calculating the result. Maybe I’ve been too confident. I recall one awful story after another about pathetically low verdicts in this county. I’m about to become a statistic, another example of why a lawyer in Memphis should take any decent offer to settle. Time passes with excruciating delay.

From somewhere far away, I hear my name being called. It’s Deck, outside the courtroom doors, waving desperately for me. “Oh my God,” I say.

“Just be cool,” Booker says, then both of us practically race to the courtroom. I take a deep breath, say a quick prayer and step inside. Drummond and the other four are in their seats. Dot sits alone at our table. Everyone else is in place. The jury is filing into the box as I walk through the gate in the railing and sit next to my client. The faces of the jurors reveal nothing. When they’re seated, His Honor asks, “Has the jury reached a verdict?”

Ben Charnes, the young black college graduate, and foreman of the jury, says, “We have, Your Honor.”

“Is it written on paper according to my instructions?”

“Yes sir.”

“Please stand and read it.”

Charnes rises slowly. He’s holding a sheet of paper that’s visibly shaking. It is not shaking as violently as my hands. My breathing is quite labored. I’m so dizzy I feel faint. Dot, however, is remarkably calm. She’s already won her battle with Great Benefit. They admitted in open court that they were wrong. Nothing else matters to her.

I’m determined to keep a straight face and display no emotion, regardless of the verdict. I do this the way I’ve been trained. I scribble on a legal pad. A quick glance to my left reveals the same strategy being employed by all five defense lawyers.

Charnes clears his throat, and reads, “We, the jury, find for the plaintiff and award actual damages in the amount of two hundred thousand dollars.” There is a pause. All eyes are on the sheet of paper. So far, no surprises. He clears his throat again, says, “And, we, the jury, find for the plaintiff, and award punitive damages in the amount of fifty million dollars.”

There’s a gasp from behind me, and general stiffening around the defense table, but all else is quiet for a few seconds. The bomb lands, explodes and after a delay everyone does a quick search for mortal wounds. Finding none, it’s possible to breathe again.

I actually write these sums on my legal pad, though the chicken scratch is illegible. I refuse to smile, though I’m forced to bite a hole in my bottom lip to achieve this effect. There are lots of things I want to do. I’d love to bound onto the table and gyrate like an idiot football player in the end zone. I’d love to dash to the jury box and start kissing feet. I’d love to strut around the defense table with some obnoxious in-your-face taunting. I’d love to leap onto the bench and hug Tyrone Kipler.

But I maintain my composure, and simply whisper, “Congratulations,” to my client. She says nothing. I look at the bench and His Honor is inspecting the written verdict which the clerk has handed him. I look at the jury, and most of them are looking at me. It’s impossible at this point not to smile. I nod and silently say thanks.

I make a cross on my legal pad and under it write the name-Donny Ray Black. I close my eyes and recall my favorite image of him; I see him sitting in the folding chair

at the softball game, eating popcorn and smiling just because he was there. My throat thickens and my eyes water. He didn’t have to die.

“The verdict appears to be in order,” Kipler says. Very much in order, I’d say. He addresses the jury, thanks them for their civic service, tells them their meager checks will be mailed out next week, asks them not to talk about the case with anyone and says they are free to leave. Under the direction of the bailiff, they file from the courtroom for the last time. I’ll never see them again. Right now, I’d like to give them each a cool million.

Kipler too is struggling to keep a straight face. “We’ll argue post-trial motions in a week or so. My secretary will send you a notice. Anything further?”

I just shake my head. What more could I ask for?

Without standing, Leo says softly, “Nothing, Your Honor.” His team is suddenly busy stuffing papers in briefcases and files in boxes. They can’t wait to get out of here. It is, by far, the largest verdict in the history of Tennessee, and they’ll be forever tagged as the guys who got clobbered with it. If I wasn’t so tired and so stunned, I might walk over and offer to shake their hands. This would be the classy thing to do, but I just don’t feel like it. It’s much easier to sit here close to Dot and stare at Donny Ray’s name on my legal pad.

I’m not exactly rich. The appeal will take a year, maybe two. And the verdict is so enormous that it will face a vicious attack. So, I have my work cut out for me.

Right now, though, I’m sick of work. I want to get on a plane and find a beach.

Kipler raps his gavel, and this trial is officially over. I look at Dot and see the tears. I ask her how she feels. Deck is quickly upon us with congratulations. He’s pale but grinning, his four perfect front teeth shining. My attention is on Dot. She’s a hard woman who cries with

great reluctance, but she’s slowly losing it. I pat her arm, and hand her a tissue.

Booker squeezes the back of my neck, and says he’ll call me next week. Cooper Jackson, Hurley and Grunfeld stop by the table, beaming and full of praise. They need to catch a plane. We’ll talk Monday. The reporter approaches, but I wave him off. I half-ignore these people because I’m worried about my client. She’s collapsing now, the sobbing is getting louder.

I also ignore Drummond and his boys as they load themselves like pack mules and make a speedy exit. Not a word is spoken between us. I’d love to be a fly on the wall at Trent & Brent right now.

The court reporter and bailiff and clerk tidy up their mess and leave. The courtroom is empty except for me, Dot and Deck. I need to go speak to Kipler, to thank him for holding my hand and making it possible. I’ll do it later. Right now I’m holding Dot’s hand as she’s unloading a torrent. Deck sits beside us, saying nothing. I say nothing. My eyes are moist, my heart is aching. She cares nothing for the money. She just wants her boy back.

Someone, probably the bailiff, hits a switch in the narrow hallway near the jury room, and the lights go off. The courtroom is semidark. None of us moves. The crying subsides. She wipes her cheeks with the tissue and sometimes with her fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she says hoarsely. She wants to go now, so we decide to leave. I pat her arm as Deck gathers our junk and packs it in three briefcases.

We exit the unlit courtroom, and step into the marble hallway. It’s almost five, Friday afternoon, and there’s not much activity. There are no cameras, no reporters, no mob waiting for me to capture a few words and images from the lawyer of the moment.

In fact, no one notices us.

Fifty

THE LAST PLACE I WANT TO GO IS THE OF-fice. I’m too tired and too stunned to celebrate in a bar, and my only pal for the moment is Deck, a nondrinker. Two stiff drinks would put me in a coma anyway, so I’m not tempted. There should be a wild celebration party somewhere, but these things are hard to plan when dealing with juries.

Maybe tomorrow. I’m sure the trauma will be gone by tomorrow, and I’ll have a delayed reaction to the verdict. Reality will set in by then. I’ll celebrate tomorrow.

I say good-bye to Deck in front of the courthouse, tell him I’m dead, promise to get together later. We’re both, still in shock, and we need time to think, alone. I drive to Miss Birdie’s and go through my daily routine of checking every room in her house. It’s just another day. No big deal. I sit on her patio, stare at my little apartment, and for the first time start spending money. How long will it be before I buy or build my first fine home? What new car shall I buy? I try to dismiss these thoughts, but it is impossible. What do you do with sixteen and a half million

bucks? I cannot begin to comprehend. I know a dozen things can go wrong: the case could be reversed and sent back for a new trial; the case could be reversed and rendered, leaving me nothing; the punitive award could be cut dramatically by an appellate court, or it could be eliminated all together. I know these awful things can happen, but for the moment the money is mine.

I dream as the sun sets. The air is clear but very cold. Maybe tomorrow I can begin to realize the magnitude of what I’ve done. For now, I am warmed by the thought that a great deal of venom has been purged from my soul. For almost a year I’ve lived with a burning hatred of the mystical entity that is Great Benefit Life. I’ve carried a bitter poison for the people who work there, the people who set in motion a chain of events which took the life of an innocent victim. I hope Donny Ray’s resting in peace. Surely an angel will tell him what happened today.

They’ve been exposed and proven wrong. I don’t hate them anymore.

KELLY CUTS her thin slice of pizza with a fork and takes tiny bites. Her lips are still swollen and her cheeks and jaws are very sore. We’re sitting on her single bed, our backs against the wall, our legs stretched out, the pizza box shared between us. We’re watching a John Wayne western on an eighteen-inch Sony perched atop the dresser, not far across the small room.

She’s wearing the same gray sweats, no socks or shoes, and I can see a small scar on her right ankle where he broke it last summer. She’s washed her hair and put it in a ponytail. She’s painted her fingernails, a light red. She is trying to be happy and make conversation, but she’s in such physical pain it’s very difficult to have fun. There’s not much talk. I’ve never suffered through a thorough beating, and it’s difficult to imagine the aftershocks. The

aches and soreness are fairly easy to comprehend. The mental horror is not. I wonder at what point he decided to stop it, to call it off and admire his handiwork.

I try not to think about it. We certainly haven’t discussed it, and I have no plans to bring it up. No word from Cliff since he was served with papers.

She’s met one other lady here at this shelter, as it’s referred to, a middle-aged mother of three teenagers who was so scared and traumatized she had trouble finishing a simple sentence. She’s next door. The place is deathly quiet. Kelly left her room only once, to sit on the back porch and breathe fresh air. She’s tried reading but it’s difficult. Her left eye is still virtually closed, and her right one is at times blurred. The doctor said there was no permanent damage.

She’s cried a few times, and I keep promising her this will be the last beating. It’ll never happen again if I have to kill the bastard myself. And I mean this. If he got near her, I truly believe I could blow his brains out.

Arrest me. Indict me. Put me on trial. Give me twelve people in the jury box. I’m on a roll.

I don’t mention the verdict to her. Sitting here with her in this” dark little room, watching John Wayne ride his horse, seems like days and miles from Kipler’s courtroom.

And this is exactly where I want to be.

We finish the pizza and snuggle closer together. We’re holding hands like two kids. I have to be careful, though, because she’s literally bruised from her head to her knees.

The movie goes off and the ten o’clock news is on. I’m suddenly anxious to see if the Black case is mentioned. After the obligatory rapes and murders, and after the first commercial break, the anchorman announces, rather grandly, “History was made today in a Memphis courtroom. A jury in a civil case awarded a record fifty million dollars in punitive damages against the Great Benefit Life

Insurance Company of Cleveland, Ohio. Rodney Frate has the story.” I can’t help but smile. We immediately see Rodney Frate standing and shivering live outside the Shelby County Courthouse, which of course has been abandoned for several hours now. “Arnie, I spoke with Pauline MacGregor, the Circuit Clerk, about an hour ago, and she confirmed that around four this afternoon a jury in Division Eight, that’s Judge Tyrone Kipler, returned with a verdict of two hundred thousand dollars in actual damages, and fifty million in punitive. I also spoke with Judge Kipler, who declined to be interviewed on camera, and he said the case involved a bad-faith claim against Great Benefit. That’s all he would say, except that he believes the verdict is by far the largest ever awarded in Tennessee. I spoke with several trial lawyers in the city, and no one has ever heard of a verdict this large. Leo F. Drummond, attorney for the defendant, had no comment. Rudy Baylor, attorney for the plaintiff, was unavailable for comment. Back to you, Arnie.”

Arnie moves quickly to a truck wreck on Interstate 55.

“You won?” she asks. She’s not amazed, just unsure.

“I won.”

“Fifty million dollars?”

“Yep. But the money’s not in the bank yet.”

“Rudy!”

I shrug like it’s all in a day’s work. “I got lucky,” I say.

“But you just finished school.”

What can I say? “It’s not that difficult. We had a great jury, and the facts fell into place.”

“Yeah, right, like it happens every day.”

“I wish.”

She takes the remote and mutes the television. She wants to pursue this. “Your modesty is not working. It’s fake.”

“You’re right. Right now I’m the greatest lawyer in the world.”

“That’s better,” she says, trying to smile. I’m almost accustomed to her bruised and battered face. I don’t stare at the wounds the way I did in the car this afternoon. I can’t wait for a week to pass so she’ll be gorgeous again.

I swear I could kill him.

“How much of it do you get?” she asks.

“Get right to the point, don’t you?”

“I’m just curious,” she says in a voice that’s almost childish. In spirit we’re lovers now, and it’s cute to giggle and coo.

“One third, but it’s a very long way off.”

She twists toward me, and is suddenly racked with pain to the point of groaning. I help her lie on her stomach. She’s fighting back tears and her body is tense. She can’t sleep on her back because of the bruises.

I rub her hair and whisper in her ear until the intercom interrupts. It’s Betty Norvelle downstairs. My time is up.

Kelly squeezes my hand tightly as I kiss her bruised cheek and promise to return tomorrow. She begs me not to go.

THE ADVANTAGES in winning such a verdict in my first trial, are obvious. The only disadvantage I’ve been able to perceive during these past hours is that there’s no place to go but down. Every client from now on will expect the same magic. I’ll worry about that later.

I’m alone in the office late Saturday morning, waiting for a reporter and his photographer, when the phone rings. “This is Cliff Hiker,” a husky voice says, and I immediately punch the record button.

“What do you want?”

“Where’s my wife?”

“You’re lucky she’s not at the morgue.”

“I’m gonna stomp your ass, big shot.”

“Keep talking, old boy. The recorder’s on.”

He hangs up quickly, and I stare at the phone. It’s a different one, a cheap model the firm purchased at a Kmart. During the trial, we substituted it occasionally when we didn’t want Drummond listening.

I call Butch at home, and tell him about my brief chat with Mr. Riker. Butch wants a piece of the kid because of their confrontation yesterday when he served the divorce papers. Cliff called him all sorts of vile names, even insulted his mother. The presence of two of Cliff’s co-workers nearby in the parking lot prevented Butch from drawing blood. Butch told me last night that if there were any threats, he’d like to get involved. He has a sidekick called Rocky, a part-time bouncer, and together they make an imposing pair, Butch assured me. I make him promise he can only scare the kid, not hurt him. Butch tells me he plans to find Cliff alone somewhere, mention the phone call, tell him that they are my bodyguards, and one more threat will be dealt with harshly. I’d love to see this. I am determined not to live in fear.

This is Butch’s idea of a good time.

The reporter from the Memphis Press arrives at eleven. We talk while a photographer shoots a role of film. He wants to know all about the case and the trial, and I fill his ear. It’s public information now. I say nice things about Drummond, wonderful things about Kipler, glorious things about the jury.

It’ll be a big story in the Sunday paper, he promises.

I PIDDLE around the office, reading the mail and looking at the few phone messages that came in during this past week. It’s impossible to work, and I’m reminded of how few clients and cases I have. Half the time is spent

replaying the trial, the other half is spent dreaming of my future with Kelly. How could I be more fortunate?

I call Max Leuberg and give him the details. A blizzard closed O’Hare and he couldn’t get to Memphis in time for the trial. We talk for an hour.

OUR DATE Saturday night is very similar to the one we had on Friday, except the food and the movie are different. She loves Chinese food and I bring a sackful. We watch a comedy with few laughs while sitting in our same positions on the bed.

It’s anything but boring, however. She’s easing out of her private nightmare. The physical wounds are healing. The laughs are a bit easier, her movements a little quicker. There’s more touching, but not much. Not nearly enough.

She is desperate to get out of the sweatsuit. They wash it for her once a day, but she’s sick of it. She longs to be pretty again, and she wants her clothes. We talk of sneaking into her apartment and rescuing her things.

We still don’t talk about the future.

Fifty-one

MONDAY MORNING. NOW THAT I’M A man of wealth and leisure, I sleep until nine, dress casually in khakis, loafers, no tie, and arrive at the office at ten. My partner is busy packing away the Black documents and removing the folding tables which have cramped our front office for months. We’re both grinning and smiling at everything. Pressure’s off. We’re rested and it’s time to gloat. He runs down the street for coffee, and we sit at my desk and relive our finest hour.

Deck’s clipped the story from yesterday’s Memphis Press, just in case I need an extra copy. I say thanks, I might need it, though there are a dozen copies in rny apartment. I made the front page of Metro, with a long, well-written story about my triumph, as well as a rather large photo of me at my desk. I couldn’t take my eyes off myself all day yesterday. The paper went into three hundred thousand homes. Money can’t buy this exposure.

There are a few faxes. A couple from classmates with words of congratulations, and jokingly asking for loans. A

sweet one from Madeline Skinner at the law school. And two from Max Leuberg. The first is a copy of a short article in a Chicago newspaper about the verdict. The second is a copy of a story dated yesterday from a paper in Cleveland. It describes the Black trial at length, then relates the growing troubles at Great Benefit. At least seven states are now investigating the company, including Ohio. Policyholder suits are being filed around the country, and many more are expected. The Memphis verdict is expected to prompt a flood of litigation.

Ha, ha, ha. We delight in the misery we’ve instigated. We laugh at the image of M. Wilfred Keeley looking at the financial statements again and trying to find more cash. Surely it’s in there somewhere!

The florist arrives with a beautiful arrangement, a congratulatory gift from Booker Kane and the folks at Marvin Shankle’s firm.

I had expected the phone to be ringing like mad with clients looking for solid legal representation. It’s not happening yet. Deck said there were a couple of calls before ten, one of which was a wrong number. I’m not worried.

Kipler calls at eleven, and I switch to the clean phone just in case Drummond is still listening. He has an interesting story, one in which I might be involved. Before the trial started last Monday, while we were all gathered in his office, I told Drummond that we would settle for one point two million. Drummond scoffed at this, and we went to trial. Evidently, he failed to convey this offer to his client, who now claims it would have seriously considered paying just what I wanted. Whether or not the company would have settled at that point is unknown, but in retrospect, one point two million is much more digestible than fifty point two. At any rate, the company is now claiming it would have settled, and it’s claiming its lawyer,

566 JOHNGRISHAM

the great Leo F. Drummond, committed a grievous error when he failed or refused to pass along my offer.

Underhall, the in-house lawyer, has been on the phone all morning with Drummond and Kipler. The company is furious, and humiliated, and wounded and obviously looking for a scapegoat. Drummond at first denied it ever happened, but Kipler nipped that in the bud. This is where I come in. They might need an affidavit from me setting out the facts as I remember them. Gladly, I say. I’ll prepare one right now.

Great Benefit has already fired Drummond and Trent & Brent, and things could get much worse. Underhall has mentioned the filing of a malpractice claim against the firm. The implications are enormous. Like all firms, Trent & Brent carries malpractice insurance, but it has a limit. A fifty-million-dollar policy is unheard of. A fifty-million-dollar mistake by Leo F. Drummond would place a severe strain on the firm’s finances.

I can’t help but smile at this. After I hang up, I relay the conversation to Deck. The idea of Trent & Brent being sued by an insurance company is hilarious.

The next call is from Cooper Jackson. He and his pals filed suit this morning in federal court in Charlotte. They represent over twenty policyholders who got screwed by Great Benefit in 1991, the year of the scheme. When it’s convenient for me, he would like to visit my office and go through my file. Anytime, I say, anytime.

Deck and I do lunch at Moe’s, an old restaurant downtown near the courthouses where the lawyers and judges like to eat. I get a few looks, one handshake, a slap on the back from a classmate in law school. I should eat here more often.

THE MISSION IS ON for tonight, Monday, because the ground is dry and the temperature is around forty. The

last three games were canceled because of bad weather. What kind of nuts play softball in the winter? Kelly doesn’t answer. It’s obvious what kind of nut we’re dealing with. She’s certain they’ll play tonight because it’s so important to them. They’ve suffered through two weeks with no ball and no beer parties afterward and no heroics to brag about. Cliff wouldn’t dare miss the game.

It starts at seven, and just to be safe we drive by the softball field. PFX Freight is indeed on the field. I speed away. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I’m quite nervous. In fact, we’re both scared. We don’t say much. The closer we get to the apartment, the faster I drive. I have a .38 under my seat, and I plan to keep it close by.

Assuming he hasn’t changed the locks, Kelly thinks we can be in and out in less than ten minutes. She wants to grab most of her clothes and a few other items. Ten minutes is the max, I tell her, because there might be neighbors watching. And these neighbors might be inclined to call Cliff, and, well, who knows.

Her wounds were inflicted five nights ago, and most of the soreness is gone. She can walk without pain. She says she’s strong enough to grab clothing and move about quickly. It’ll take both of us.

The apartment complex is fifteen minutes from the softball field. It consists of a half-dozen three-story buildings scattered around a pool and two tennis courts. Sixty-eight units, the sign says. Thankfully, her former apartment is on the ground floor. I can’t park anywhere near her door, so I decide that we’ll first enter the apartment, quietly gather the things we want, then I’ll pull onto the grass, throw everything into the backseat, and we’ll fly away.

I park the car, and take a deep breath.

“Are you scared?” she asks.

“Yes.” I reach under the seat and get the gun.

“Relax, he’s at the ball field. He wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“If you say so. Let’s do it.”

We sneak through the darkness to her unit without seeing another person. Her key fits, the door is open, we’re inside. A light in the kitchen and one in the hallway are on and provide sufficient lighting. Clothing is strewn across two chairs in the den. Empty beer cans and corn chip bags litter the end tables and the floor under them. Cliff the bachelor has been quite a slob. She stops for a second, looks around in disgust, says, “I’m sorry.”

“Hurry, Kelly,” I say. I place the gun on a narrow snack bar separating the den from the kitchen. We go to the bedroom, where I turn on a small lamp. The bed hasn’t been made in days. More beer cans and a pizza box. A Playboy. She points to the drawers in a small cheap dresser. “That’s my stuff,” she says. We’re whispering.

I remove the pillowcases and begin stuffing them with lingerie, socks and pajamas. Kelly is pulling clothes from the closet. I take a load of dresses and blouses to the den and drape them across a chair, then go back to the bedroom. “You can’t take everything,” I say, looking at the packed closet. She says nothing, hands me another load, and I take it to the den. We work quickly, silently.

I feel like a thief. Every movement makes too much noise. My heart is pounding as I race back and forth to the den with each load.

“That’s enough,” I finally say. She carries a stuffed pillowcase and I carry several dresses on hangers, and I follow her to the den. “Let’s get out of here,” I say, nervous as hell.

There’s a slight noise at the door. Someone’s trying to get in. We freeze and look at each other. She takes a step toward the door, when it suddenly bursts open, striking

her and knocking her into the wall. Cliff Riker crashes into the room. “Kelly! I’m home!” he yells as he sees her falling over a chair. I am standing directly in front of him, less than ten feet away, and he’s moving quickly, a blur, all I can see is his yellow PFX Freight jersey, his red eyes and his weapon of choice. I freeze in absolute terror as he coils the aluminum softball bat and whirls it around mightily at my head. “You sonofabitch!” he screams as he unloads a massive swing. Frozen though I am, I’m able to duck just milliseconds before the bat blows by above me. I hear it whistle by. I feel its force. His home run stroke connects with a hapless little wooden column on the edge of the snack bar, shattering it into a million pieces and knocking over a pile of dirty dishes. Kelly screams. The swing was designed to crush my skull, and when it missed, his body kept whirling so that his back is to me. I charge like a madman, and knock him over the chair filled with hangers and clothes. Kelly screams again somewhere behind us. “Get the gun!” I yell.

He’s quick and strong and on his feet before I can regain my balance. “I’ll kill you!” he yells, swinging again, missing again as I barely dodge another hit. The second stroke gets nothing but air. “You sonofabitch!” he growls as he jerks the bat around.

He will not get a third chance, I decide quickly. Before he can cock the bat, I lunge at his face with a right hook. It lands on his jaw and stuns him just long enough for me to lack him in the crotch. My foot lands perfectly. I can hear and feel his testicles pop as he explodes in an agonized cry. He lowers the bat, I grab it and twist it away.

I swing hard and catch him directly across his left ear, and the noise is almost sickening. Bones crunch and break. He falls to all fours, his head dangling for a second, then he turns and looks at me. He raises his head and starts to get up. My second swing starts at the ceiling and

falls with all the force I can muster. I drive the bat down with all the hatred and fear imaginable, and it lands solidly across the top of his head.

I start to swing again, when Kelly grabs me. “Stop it, Rudy!”

I stop, glare at her, then look at Cliff. He’s flat on his stomach, shaking and moaning. We watch in horror as he grows still. An occasional twitch, then he tries to say something. A nauseating guttural sound comes out. He tries to move his head, which is bleeding like crazy.

“I’m going to kill the bastard, Kelly,” I say, breathing heavily, still scared, still in a rage.

“No.”

“Yes. He would’ve killed us.”

“Give me the bat,” she says.

“What?”

“Give me the bat, and leave.”

I’m amazed at how calm she is at this moment. She knows precisely what has to be done.

“What . . . ?” I try to ask, looking at her, looking at him.

She takes the bat from my hands. “I’ve been here before. Leave. Go hide. You were not here tonight. I’ll call you later.”

I can do nothing but stand still and look at the struggling, dying man on the floor.

“Please go, Rudy,” she says, gently pushing me toward the door. “I’ll call you later.”

“Okay, okay.” I step into the kitchen, pick up the .38 and walk back to the den. We look at each other, then our eyes fall to the floor. I step outside. I close the door quietly behind me, and look around for nosy neighbors. I see no one. I hesitate for a moment and hear nothing from inside the apartment.

I feel nauseated. I sneak away in the darkness, my skin suddenly covered with perspiration.

IT TAKES TEN MINUTES for the first police car to arrive. A second quickly follows. Then an ambulance. I sit low in the Volvo in a crowded parking lot, watching it all. The paramedics scramble into the apartment. Another police car. Red and blue lights illuminate the night and attract a large crowd. Minutes pass, and there’s no sign of Cliff. A paramedic appears in the doorway and takes his time retrieving something from the ambulance. He’s in no hurry.

Kelly’s in there alone and scared and answering a hundred questions about how it happened, and here I sit, suddenly Mr. Chickenshit, ducking low behind my steering wheel and hoping no one sees me. Why did I leave her in there? Should I go save her? My head spins wildly and my vision is blurred, and the frantic flashing of the red and blue lights blinds me.

He can’t be dead. Maimed maybe. But not dead.

I think I’ll go back in there.

The shock wears off and the fear hits hard. I want them to bring Cliff out on a stretcher and race away with him, take him to the hospital, patch him up. I -suddenly want him to live. I can deal with him as a living person, though a crazy one. Come on, Cliff. Come on, big boy. Get up and walk out of there.

Surely I haven’t killed a man.

The crowd gets larger, and a cop moves everybody back.

I lose track of time. A coroner’s van arrives, and this sends a wave of excited gossip through the gawkers. Cliff won’t be riding in the ambulance. Cliff will be taken to the morgue.

I crack the door, and vomit as quietly as possible on the

side of the car next to mine. No one hears me. Then I wipe my mouth, and ease into the crowd. “He’s finally killed her,” I hear someone say. Cops stream in and out of the apartment. I’m fifty feet away, lost in a sea of faces. The police string yellow tape around the entire end of the building. The flash of a camera inside streaks across the windows every few seconds.

We wait. I need to see her, but there’s nothing I can do. Another rumor races through the crowd, and this one is correct. He’s dead. And they think she killed him. I listen carefully to what’s being said because if anyone saw a stranger leave the apartment not long after the shouts and screams, then I want to know it. I move around slowly, listening ever so closely. I hear nothing. I back away for a few seconds, and vomit again behind some shrubs.

There’s a flurry of movement around the door, and a paramedic backs out pulling a stretcher. The body is in a silver bag. They roll it carefully down the sidewalk to the coroner’s van, then take it away. Minutes later, Kelly emerges with a cop on each side. She looks tiny, and scared. Thankfully, she’s not handcuffed. She managed to change clothes, and now wears jeans and a parka.

They place her in the backseat of a patrol car, and leave. I walk quickly to my car, and head for the police station.

I INFORM THE SERGEANT at the front counter that I am a lawyer, that my client has just been arrested, and that I insist on being with her while she’s being questioned. I say this forcefully enough, and he places a call to who knows where. Another sergeant comes after me, and I’m taken to the second floor, where Kelly sits alone in an interrogation room. A homicide detective named Smotherton is looking at her through a one-way window. I hand him one of my cards. He refuses to shake hands.

“You guys travel fast, don’t you?” he says with absolute contempt.

“She called me right after she called 911. What’d you find?”

We’re both looking at her. She’s at the end of a long table, wiping her eyes with tissue.

Smotherton grunts while he decides how much he should tell me. “Found her husband dead on the den floor, skull fracture, looks like with a baseball bat. She didn’t say much, told us they were getting a divorce, she sneaked home to get her clothes, he found her, they fought. He was pretty drunk, somehow she got the bat and now he’s at the morgue. You doing her divorce?”

“Yeah. I’ll get you a copy of it. Last week the judge ordered him to stay away from her. He’s beaten her for years.”

“We saw the bruises. I just wanna ask her a few questions, okay?”

“Sure.” We enter the room together. Kelly is surprised to see me, but manages to play it cool. We exchange a polite lawyer-client hug. Smotherton is joined by another plainclothes detective, Officer Hamlet, who has a tape recorder. I have no objections. After he turns it on, I take the initiative. “For the record, I’m Rudy Baylor, attorney for Kelly Riker. Today is Monday, February 15, 1993. We’re at Central Police Headquarters, downtown Memphis. I’m present because I received a call from my client at approximately seven forty-five tonight. She had just called 911, and said she thought her husband was dead.”

I nod at Smotherton as if he may proceed now, and he looks at me as if he’d like to choke me. Cops hate defense lawyers, and right now I couldn’t care less.

Smotherton starts with a bunch of questions about Kelly and Cliff-basic info like birth dates, marriage, employment, children and on and on. She answers patiently,

with a detached look in her eyes. The swelling is gone in her face, but her left eye is still black and blue. The bandage is still on her eyebrow. She’s scared half to death.

She describes the abuse in sufficient detail to make all three of us cringe. Smotherton sends Hamlet to pull the records of Cliffs three arrests for the beatings. She talks about assaults in which no records were kept, no paperwork was created. She talks about the softball bat and the time he broke her ankle with it. He also punched her a few times when he didn’t want to break bones.

She talks about the last beating, then the decision to leave and go hide, then to file divorce. She is infinitely believable because it’s all true. It’s the upcoming lies that have me worried.

“Why’d you go home tonight?” Smotherton asks.

“To get my clothes. I was certain he wouldn’t be there.”

“Where have you been staying for the past few days?”

“In a shelter for abused women.”

“What’s the name of it?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Is it here in Memphis?”

“It is.”

“How’d you get to your apartment tonight?”

My heart skips a beat at this question, but she’s already thought about it. “I drove my car,” she says.

“And what land of car is it?”

“Volkswagen Rabbit.”

“Where is it now?”

“In the parking lot outside my apartment.”

“Can we take a look at it?”

“Not until I do,” I say, suddenly remembering that I’m a lawyer here, not a co-conspirator.

Smotherton shakes his head. If looks could kill.

“How’d you get in the apartment?”

“I used my key.”

“What’d you do when you got inside?”

“Went to the bedroom and started packing clothes. I filled three or four pillowcases with my things, and hauled a bunch of stuff to the den.”

“How long were you there before Mr. Riker came home?”

“Ten minutes, maybe.”

“What happened then?”

I interrupt at this point. “She’s not gonna answer that until I’ve had a chance to talk to her and investigate this matter. This interrogation is now over.” I reach across and push the red Stop button on the recorder. Smotherton simmers for a minute as he reviews his notes. Hamlet returns with the printout, and they study it together. Kelly and I ignore each other. Our feet, though, touch under the table.

Smotherton writes something on a sheet of paper and hands it to me. “This will be treated as a homicide, but it’ll go to Domestic Abuse in the prosecutor’s office. Lady’s name there is Morgan Wilson. She’ll handle things from here.”

“But you’re booking her?”

“I have no choice. I can’t just let her go.”

“On what charges?”

“Manslaughter.”

“You can release her to my custody.”

“No I can’t,” he answers angrily. “What kinda lawyer are you?”

“Then release her on recognizance.”

“Won’t work,” he says, with a frustrated smile at Hamlet. “We got a dead body here. Bond has to be set by a judge. You talk him into ROR, then she walks. I’m just a humble detective.”

“I’m going to jail?” Kelly says.

“We have no choice, ma’am,” Smotherton says, sud-

denly much nicer. “If your lawyer here is worth his salt, he’ll get you out sometime tomorrow. That is, if you can post bond. But I can’t just release you because I want to.”

I reach across and take her hand. “It’s okay, Kelly. I’ll get you out tomorrow, as soon as possible.” She nods quickly, grits her teeth, tries to be strong.

“Can you put her in a private cell?” I ask Smotherton.

“Look, asshole, I don’t run the jail, okay? You gotta better way to do things, then go talk to the jailers. They love to hear from lawyers.”

Don’t provoke me, buddy. I’ve already cracked one skull tonight. We glare hatefully at each other. “Thanks,” I say.

“Don’t mention it.” He and Hamlet kick their chairs back and stomp toward the door. “You got five minutes,” he says over his shoulder. They slam the door.

“Don’t make any moves, okay,” I say under my breath. “They’re watching through that window. And this place is probably bugged, so be careful what you say.”

She doesn’t say anything.

I continue in my role as the lawyer. “I’m sorry this happened,” I say stiffly.

“What does manslaughter mean?”

“Means a lot of things, but basically it’s murder without the element of intent.”

“How much time could I get?”

“You have to be convicted first, and that’s not going to happen.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. Are you scared?”

She carefully wipes her eyes, and thinks for a long time. “He has a large family, and they’re all just like him. All heavy-drinking, violent men. I’m scared to death of them.”

I can’t think of anything to say to this. I’m scared of them too.

“They can’t make me go to the funeral, can they?”

“No.”

“Good.”

They come for her a few minutes later, and this time they use handcuffs. I watch them lead her down the hall. They stop at an elevator, and Kelly strains around one of the cops to see me. I wave slowly, then she’s gone.

Fifty-two

WHEN YOU COMMIT A MURDER YOU make twenty-five mistakes. If you can think of ten of them, then you’re a genius. At least that’s what I heard in a movie once. It wasn’t actually a murder but more of an act of self-defense. The mistakes, though, are beginning to add up.

I pace around my desk at the office, which is covered with neat rows of yellow legal paper. I’ve diagrammed the apartment, the body, the clothes, the gun, the bat, the beer cans, everything that I can remember. I’ve sketched the position of my car, her car and his truck in the parking lot. I’ve written pages recalling every step and every event of the evening. My best guess is that I was in the apartment for less than fifteen minutes but on paper it looks like a thin novel. How many screams or yells that were capable of being heard from the outside? No more than four, I think. How many neighbors saw a strange man leave just after the screams? Who knows.

That, I think, was mistake number one. I shouldn’t have left so soon. I should have waited for ten minutes or

so to see if the neighbors heard anything. Then I should have eased into the darkness.

Or maybe I should have called the cops and told the truth. Kelly and I had every right to be in the apartment. It’s obvious he was lying in ambush somewhere nearby at a time when he should have been elsewhere. I was well within my rights to fight back, to disarm him and to hit him with his own weapon. Given his violent nature and history, no jury in the world would convict me. Plus, the only other witness would be squarely on my side.

So why didn’t I stay? She was pushing me out of the door for one thing, and it just seemed like the best course of action. Who can think rationally when, in the span of fifteen seconds, you go from being brutally attacked to being a killer?

Mistake number two was the lie about her car. I drove through the parking lot after I left the police station, and found her Volkswagen Rabbit and his four-wheel-drive pickup. This lie will work if no one tells the cops that her car hasn’t been moved in days.

But what if Cliff and a friend somehow disabled her car while she was at the shelter, and this friend comes forth in a few hours and talks to the cops? My imagination runs wild.

The worst mistake that’s hit me in the past four hours is the lie about the phone call Kelly allegedly made to me after she dialed 911. This was my excuse for being at the police station so quick. It’s an incredibly stupid lie because there is no record of the call. If the cops check the phone records, I’m in serious trouble.

Other mistakes pop up as the night wears on. Fortunately, most are the result of a scared mind, most go away after careful analysis and sufficient scribbling on the legal pad.

I allow Deck to sleep until five before I wake him. An

hour later he’s at the office with coffee. I give him my version of the story, and his initial response is beautiful. “No jury in the world will convict her,” he says, without a doubt.

“The trial is one thing,” I say. “Getting her out of jail is another.”

We formulate a plan. I need records-arrest reports, court files, medical records and a copy of their first divorce filing. Deck can’t wait to gather the dirt. At seven, Deck goes out for more coffee and a newspaper.

The story is on page three of Metro, a brief three paragraphs with no photo of the deceased. It happened too late last night to be much of a story. WIFE ARRESTED IN HUSBAND’S DEATH is the headline, but Memphis has three of these a month. If I wasn’t searching for it I wouldn’t see it.

I call Butch and raise him from the dead. He’s a late-nighter, single after three divorces, and likes to close down bars. I tell him that his pal Cliff Riker has met an untimely death, and this seems to perk him up. He’s at the office shortly after eight, and I explain that I want him to scour the area around the apartment and see if anybody saw or heard anything. See if the cops are on the scene doing the same thing. Butch cuts me off. He’s the investigator. He knows what to do.

I call Booker at the office and explain that a divorce client of mine killed her husband last night, but she’s .really a sweet girl and I want her out of jail. I need his help. Marvin Shankle’s brother is a criminal court judge, and I want him to either release her on recognizance or set a ridiculously low bond.

“You’ve gone from a fifty-million-dollar verdict to a sleazy divorce case?” Booker asks jokingly.

I manage a laugh. If he only knew.

Marvin Shankle is out of town, but Booker promises to

start making calls. I leave the office at eight-thirty and speed toward downtown. Throughout the night, I’ve tried to avoid the thought of Kelly in a jail cell.

I ENTER the Shelby County Justice Complex and go straight for the office of Lonnie Shankle. I’m greeted with the news that Judge Shankle, like his brother, is out of town, and won’t return until late afternoon. I make a few phone calls and try to locate Kelly’s paperwork. She was just one of dozens arrested last night, and I’m sure her file is still at the police station.

I meet Deck at nine-thirty in the lobby. He has the arrest records. I send him to the police station to locate her file.

The Shelby County District Attorney’s office is on the third floor of the complex. It has over seventy prosecutors in five divisions. Domestic Abuse has only two, Morgan Wilson and another woman. Fortunately, Morgan Wilson is in her office, it’s just a matter of getting back there. I flirt with the receptionist for thirty minutes, and to my surprise, it works.

Morgan Wilson is a stunning woman of about forty. She has a firm handshake and a smile that says, “I’m busy as hell. Get on with it.” Her office is impossibly stacked with files, but very neat and organized. I get tired just looking at all this work to be done. We take our seats, then, it hits her.

“The fifty-million-dollar guy?” she says, with a much different smile now.

“That’s me.” I shrug. It was just another day’s work.

“Congratulations.” She’s visibly impressed. Ah, the price of fame. I suspect she’s doing what every other lawyer is doing-calculating one third of fifty million.

She earns forty thousand a year max, so she wants to talk about my good fortune. I give a brief review of the

trial and what it was like when I heard the verdict. I wrap it up quickly, then tell her why I’m here.

She’s a thorough listener, and takes lots of notes. I hand her copies of the current divorce file, the old one and the records of Cliffs three arrests for beating his wife. I promise to have Kelly’s medical records by the end of the day. I describe the injuries left by a few of the worst beatings.

Virtually all of these files around me involve men who’ve beaten their wives, children or girlfriends, so it’s easy to predict whose side Morgan is on. “That poor kid,” she says, and she ain’t talking about Cliff.

“How big is she?” she asks.

“Five-five or so. A hundred-ten pounds dripping wet.”

“How’d she beat him to death?” Her tone is almost in awe, not the least bit accusatory.

“She was scared. He was drunk. Somehow she got her hands on the bat.”

“Good for her,” she says, and goose bumps cover my thighs. This is the prosecutor!

“I’d love to get her out of jail,” I say.

“I need to get the file and review it. I’ll call the bail clerk and tell him we have no objection to a low bond. Where’s she living?”

“She’s in a shelter, one of those underground homes with no names.”

“I know them well. They’re really quite useful.”

“She’s safe there, but the poor kid’s in jail right now, and she’s still black and blue from the last beating,”

Morgan waves at the files surrounding us. “That’s my life.”

We agree to meet at nine tomorrow morning.

DECK, BUTCH AND I meet at the office for a sandwich and to plot our next moves. Butch knocked on every door

of every apartment near the Hikers’, and found only one person who might’ve heard something crash. She lives directly above, and I doubt if she could see me exit the apartment. I suspect what she heard was the column disintegrate when the Babe swung and missed with strike one. The cops have not talked to her. Butch was at the complex for three hours and saw no signs of police activity. The apartment is locked and sealed, and seems to be drawing a crowd. At one point, two large young men who appeared to be related to Cliff were joined by a truckload of boys from work, and the group stood beyond the police tape, staring at the apartment door, cursing and vowing revenge. It was a rough-looking bunch, Butch assures me.

He’s also lined up a bail bondsman, a friend of his who’ll do us a favor and write the bond for only five percent as opposed to the customary ten. This will save me some money.

Deck’s spent most of the morning at the police station getting arrest records and tracking Kelly’s paperwork. He and Smotherton are getting along well, primarily because Deck is professing an extreme dislike for lawyers. He’s just an investigator now, far from being a paralawyer. Interestingly, Smotherton reported that by mid-morning, they were receiving death threats against Kelly.

I decide to go to the jail to check on her. Deck will find an available judge to set her bond. Butch will be ready with his bondsman. As we’re leaving the office, the phone rings. Deck grabs it and gives it to me.

It’s Peter Corsa, Jackie Lemancyzk’s lawyer in Cleveland. I last talked to him after her testimony, a conversation in which I thanked him profusely. He told me at that time that he was just days away from filing suit himself.

Corsa congratulates me on the verdict, says it was big news in the Sunday paper up there. My fame is spreading. He then tells me that some weird stuff is happening at

Great Benefit. The FBI, working in conjunction with the Ohio Attorney General and the state Department of Insurance, raided the corporate offices this morning and started removing records. With the exception of the computer analysts in accounting, all the employees were sent home and told not to come back for two days. According to a recent newspaper story, PinnConn, the parent company, has defaulted on some bonds and has been laying off loads of employees.

There’s not much I can say. I killed a man eighteen hours ago, and it’s hard to concentrate on unrelated matters. We chat. I thank him. He promises to keep me posted.

IT TAKES AN HOUR and a half to find Kelly somewhere back in the maze and bring her into the visitor’s room. We sit on opposite sides of a glass square and talk through telephones. She tells me I look tired. I tell her she looks great. She’s in a cell by herself, and safe, but it’s noisy and she can’t sleep. She really wants to get out. I tell her I’m doing all I can. I tell her about my visit with Morgan Wilson. I explain how bail works. I do not mention the death threats.

We have so much to talk about, but not here.

After we say good-bye, and as I’m leaving the visitor’s room, a uniformed jailer calls my name. She asks if I’m the lawyer for Kelly Riker, then she hands me a printout. “It’s our phone records. We’ve had four calls about that girl in the past two hours.”

I can’t read the damned printout. “What kind of calls?”

“Death threats. From some crazy people.”

JUDGE LONNIE SHANKLE arrives at his office at three-thirty, and Deck and I are waiting. He has a hundred things to do, but Booker has called and schmoozed

with the judge’s secretary, so the wheels are greased. I give the judge a flurry of paperwork, a five-minute history of the case and finish with the plea for a low bail because I, the lawyer, will be required to post it. Shankle sets the bond at ten thousand dollars. We thank him and leave.

Thirty minutes later we’re all at the jail. I know for a fact that Butch has a gun in a shoulder harness, and I suspect that the bondsman, a guy named Rick, is also armed. We’re ready for anything.

I write Rick a check for five hundred dollars for the bond, and I sign all the paperwork. If the charges against her are not dismissed, and if she fails to appear for any court dates, then Rick has the choice of either forking over the remaining ninety-five hundred dollars, or finding her and physically hauling her back to jail. I’ve convinced him the charges will be dropped.

It takes forever to process her, but we eventually see her walking toward us, no handcuffs, nothing but a smile. We quickly escort her to my car. I’ve asked Butch and Deck to follow us for a few blocks just to be safe.

I tell Kelly about the death threats. We suspect it’s his crazy family and redneck friends from work. We talk little as we hurriedly leave downtown and head for the shelter. I don’t want to discuss last night, and she’s not ready for it either.

AT 5 P.M. TUESDAY, lawyers for Great Benefit file for protection under the bankruptcy code in federal court in Cleveland. Peter Corsa calls the office while I’m hiding Kelly, and Deck takes the news. When I return a few minutes later, Deck looks like death.

We sit in my office with our feet on the desk for a long time without a word. Total silence. No voices. No phones. N(o traffic sounds below. We’d been postponing our discussion about how much of the fee Deck would get, so

he’s not sure how much he’s lost. But we both know that we’ve gone from being paper millionaires to near insolvents. Our giddy dreams of yesterday seem silly now.

There’s a flicker of hope. Just last week Great Benefit’s balance sheet looked stout enough to convince a jury it had fifty million bucks to spare. M. Wilfred Keeley estimated the company had a hundred million in cash. Surely there’s some truth in this. I remember the warnings of Max Leuberg. Never trust an insurance company’s own figures because they make their own accounting rules.

But surely somewhere down the road there’ll be a spare million or so for us.

I don’t really believe this. Neither does Deck.

Corsa left his home number, and I finally muster the strength to call him. He apologizes for the bad news, says the legal and financial communities up there are buzzing. It’s too early to know the truth, but it looks as though PinnConn took some heavy hits trading foreign currencies. It then started syphoning off the huge cash reserves of its subsidiaries, including Great Benefit. Things got worse, and the money was simply skimmed by PinnConn and sent to Europe. The bulk of PinnConn’s stock is controlled by a group of American pirates operating in Singapore. It sounds like the whole world is conspiring against me.

It’s quickly evolving into a huge mess, may take months to unravel it, but the local U.S. Attorney was on TV this afternoon promising indictments. A lot of good it’ll do us.

Corsa will call me in the morning.

I relay all this to Deck, and we both know it’s hopeless. The money’s been skimmed by crooks too sophisticated to get caught. Thousands of policyholders who had legitimate claims and have already been screwed once will now get it again. Deck and I will get screwed. Same for Dot and Buddy. Donny Ray got the ultimate screwing. Drum-

mond will get screwed when he submits his hefty bills for legal services. I mention this to Deck, but it’s hard to laugh.

The employees and agents of Great Benefit will get screwed. People like Jackie Lemancyzk.will take a hit.

Misery loves company, but for some reason I feel as if I’ve lost more than most of these other folks. The fact that others will suffer is of small comfort.

I think of Donny Ray again. I see him sitting under the tree trying gamely to be strong during his deposition. He paid the ultimate price for Great Benefit’s thievery.

I’ve spent most of the past six months working on this case, and now that time has been wasted. The firm has averaged about a thousand bucks a month in net profits since we started, but we were driven by the dream of paydirt on the Black case. There aren’t enough fees in our files to survive another two months, and I’m not about to hustle people. Deck has one decent car wreck that won’t settle until the client is released from his doctor’s care, probably six months from now. At best, it’s a twenty-thousand-dollar settlement.

The phone rings. Deck answers it, listens, then quickly hangs up. “Some guy says he’s gonna kill you,” he says matter-of-factly.

“That’s not the worst phone call of the day.”

“I wouldn’t mind getting shot right now,” he says.

THE SIGHT OF KELLY lifts my spirits. We eat Chinese again in her room, with the door locked, with my gun on a chair under my coat.

There are so many emotions hanging around our necks and competing for attention that conversation is not easy. I tell her about Great Benefit, and she’s disappointed only because I’m so discouraged. The money means nothing to her.

At times we laugh, at times we almost cry. She’s worried about tomorrow and the next day and what the police might do or find. She’s terrified of the Riker clan. These people start hunting when they’re five years old. Guns are a way of life for them. She’s frightened at the prospect of going back to jail, though I promise it won’t happen. If the cops and the prosecutors pursue with a vengeance, I will step forward and tell the truth.

I mention last night, and she can’t handle it. She starts crying and we don’t speak for a long time.

I unlock the door, and step quietly through the dark hall, through the rambling house until I find Betty Norvelle watching television alone in the den. She knows the barest details of what happened last night. I explain that Kelly is too fragile at this moment to be left alone. I need to stay with her, and I’ll sleep on the floor if necessary. The shelter has a strict prohibition against men sleeping over, but in this case she makes an exception.

We lie together on the narrow bed, on top of the sheets and blankets, and hold each other closely. I had no sleep last night, a brief nap this afternoon, and I feel as though I haven’t slept ten hours in the past week. I can’t squeeze her because I’m afraid I’ll hurt her. I drift away.

Fifty-three

GREAT BENEFIT’S DEMISE MIGHT BE BIG news in Cleveland, but Memphis is hardly concerned. There’s no word of it in Wednesday’s paper. There is a brief story about Cliff Riker. The autopsy revealed he died of multiple blows to the head with a blunt instrument. His widow has been arrested and released. His family wants justice. His funeral is tomorrow in the small town which he and Kelly fled.

As Deck and I scour the paper, a fax arrives from Peter Corsa’s office. It’s a copy of a long front-page story in the Cleveland paper, and it’s filled with the latest developments in the PinnConn scandal. At least two grand juries are swinging into action. Lawsuits are being filed by the truckload against the company and its subsidiaries, most specifically Great Benefit, whose bankruptcy filing merits a sizable story of its own. Lawyers are scrambling everywhere.

M. Wilfred Keeley was detained yesterday afternoon at JFK as he was waiting to board a flight to Heathrow. His wife was with him and they claimed to be sneaking away

for a quick holiday. They could not, however, produce the name of a hotel anywhere in Europe at which they were expected.

It appears as though the companies have been looted in the past two months. The cash initially went to cover bad investments, then it was preserved and wired to havens around the world. At any rate, it’s gone.

The first phone call of the day comes from Leo Drum-mond. He tells me about Great Benefit as if I know nothing. We chat briefly, and it’s hard to tell who’s the more depressed. Neither of us will get paid for the war we’ve just waged. He does not mention his dispute with his former client over my offer to settle, and at this point it’s moot. His former client is in no condition to maintain a malpractice action. It has effectively avoided the Black verdict, so it can’t claim it suffered because of Drum-mond’s bad legal work. Trent & Brent has dodged a major bullet.

The second call is from Roger Rice, Miss Birdie’s new lawyer. He congratulates me on the verdict. If he only knew. He says he’s been thinking about me since he saw my face in the Sunday paper. Miss Birdie’s trying to change her will again, and they’re sick of her in Florida. Delbert and Randolph finally succeeded in obtaining her signature on a homemade document which they took to the lawyers in Atlanta and demanded the full disclosure of their dear mother’s assets. The lawyers stonewalled. The brothers besieged Atlanta for two days. One of the lawyers called Roger Rice, and the truth came out. Delbert and Randolph asked this lawyer point-blank if their mother had twenty million dollars. The lawyer couldn’t help but laugh, and this upset the boys. They eventually concluded that Miss Birdie was playing games, and they drove back to Florida.

Late Monday night, Miss Birdie called Roger Rice, at

home, and informed him she was headed to Memphis. She said she’d been trying to call me, but I seemed very busy. Mr. Rice told her about the trial and the fifty-mil-lion-dollar verdict, and this seemed to excite her. “How nice,” she said. “Not bad for a yard boy.” She seemed terribly excited by the fact that I am now rich.

Anyway, Rice wants to forewarn me that she might arrive any day now. I thank him.

MORGAN WILSON has thoroughly reviewed the Riker file, and is not inclined to prosecute. However, her boss, Al Vance, is undecided. I follow her into his office.

Vance was elected district attorney many years ago, and gets himself reelected with ease. He’s about fifty, and at one time had serious aspirations of a higher political life. The opportunity,never arose, and he’s been content to stay in this office. He possesses a quality that is quite rare among prosecutors-he doesn’t like cameras.

He congratulates me on the verdict. I’m gracious and don’t want to talk about it, for reasons best kept to myself at this moment. I suspect that in less than twenty-four hours the news about Great Benefit will be reported in Memphis, and the awe in which I’m now held will instantly disappear.

“These people are nuts,” he says, tossing the file on his desk. “They’ve been calling here like crazy, twice this morning. My secretary has talked to Riker’s father and one of his brothers.”

“What do they want?” I ask.

“Death for your client. Forgo the trial, and just strap her in the electric chair now, today. Is she out of jail?”

“Yes.”

“Is she hiding?”

“Yes.”

“Good. They’re so damned stupid they make threats

against her. They don’t know it’s against the law to do this. These are really sick people.”

The three of us are unanimous in our opinion that the Rikers are quite ignorant and very dangerous.

“Morgan doesn’t want to prosecute,” Vance continues. Morgan nods her head.

“It’s very simple, Mr. Vance,” I say. “You can take it to the grand jury, and you might get lucky and get an indictment. But if you take it to trial, you’ll lose. I’ll wave that damned aluminum bat in front of the jury, and I’ll bring in a dozen experts on domestic abuse. I’ll make her a symbol, and you guys will look terrible trying to convict her. You won’t get one vote out of twelve from the jury.”

I continue. “I don’t care what his family does. But if they bully you into prosecuting this case, you’ll be sorry. They’ll hate you even more when the jury slam-dunks it and we walk.”

“He’s right, Al,” Morgan says. “There’s no way to get a conviction.”

Al was ready to throw in the towel before we walked in here, but he needed to hear it from both of us. He agrees to dismiss all charges. Morgan promises to fax me a letter to this effect by late morning.

I thank them and leave quickly. The moods are shifting rapidly. I’m alone in the elevator, and I can’t help but grin at myself in the polished brass above the numbered buttons. All charges will be dismissed! Forever!

I practically run through the parking lot to my car.

THE BULLET was fired from the street, pierced the window in the front office, left a neat hole no more than half an inch wide, left another hole in the Sheetrock, and ended its journey deep in the wall. Deck happened to be in the front office when he heard the shot. The bullet missed him by no more than ten feet, but this was close

enough. He did not run to the window immediately. He dove under the table, and waited for a few minutes.

Then he locked the door, and waited for someone to check on him. No one did. It happened around ten-thirty, while I was meeting with Al Vance. Apparently, no one saw the gunman. If the shot was heard by anyone else, we’ll never know it. The sounds of random bullets are not uncommon in this part of town.

The first call Deck made was to Butch, who was asleep. Twenty minutes later, Butch was in the office, heavily armed and working to calm Deck.

They’re examining the hole in the window when I arrive, and Deck tells me what happened. I’m sure Deck shakes and twitches when he’s sound asleep, and he’s really trembling now. He tells us he’s fine, but his voice is squeaky. Butch says he’ll wait just below the window and catch them if they come back. In his car he has two shotguns and an AK-47 assault rifle. God help the Rikers if they plan another drive-by shooting.

I can’t get Booker on the phone. He’s out of town taking depositions with Marvin Shankle, so I write him a brief letter in which I promise to call later.

DECK AND I decide on a private lunch, away from admiring throngs, out of the range of stray bullets. We buy deli sandwiches and eat in Miss Birdie’s kitchen. Butch is parked in the drive behind my Volvo. If he doesn’t get to shoot the AK-47 today, he’ll be devastated.

The weekly cleaning service was in yesterday, so the house is fresh and temporarily without the smell of mildew. It’s ready for Miss Birdie.

The deal we cut is painless and simple. Deck gets the files he wants, and I get two thousand dollars, to be paid within ninety days. He’ll associate other lawyers if he has to. He’ll also farm out any of my active files he doesn’t want. The Ruffins’ collection cases will be sent back to Booker. He won’t like it, but he’ll get over it.

Sorting through the files is easy. It’s sad how few cases and clients we’ve generated in six months.

The firm has thirty-four hundred dollars in the bank, and a few outstanding bills.

We agree on the details as we eat, and the business aspect of the separation is easy. The personal untangling is not. Deck has no future. He cannot pass the bar. exam, and there’s no place for him to go. He’ll spend a few weeks cleaning up my files, but he can’t operate without a Bruiser or a Rudy to front for him. We both know this, but it’s left unsaid.

He confides in me that he’s broke. “Gambling?” I ask.

“Yeah. It’s the casinos. I can’t stay away from them.” He’s relaxed now, almost sedate. He takes a large bite from a dill-pickle and crunches loudly.

When we started our firm last summer, we had just been handed an equal split in the Van Landel settlement. We had fifty-five hundred dollars each, and we both put up two thousand. I was forced to dip into my savings a few times, but I have twenty-eight hundred in the bank, money I’ve saved by living frugally and burying it when I could. Deck doesn’t spend it either. He just blows it at the blackjack tables.

“I talked to Bruiser last night,” he says, and I’m not surprised.

“Where is he?”

“Bahamas.”

“Is Prince with him?”

‘Tep.”

This is good news, and I’m relieved to hear it. I’m sure Deck has known it for some time.

“So they made it,” I say, looking out the window, trying

to imagine those two with straw hats and sunglasses. They both lived in such darkness here.

“Yeah. I don’t know how. Some things you don’t ask.” Deck has a blank look on his face. He’s deep in thought. “The money’s still here, you know.”

“How much?”

“Four million, cash. It’s what they skimmed from the -clubs.”

“Four million?”

“Yep. In one spot. Locked in the basement of a warehouse. Right here in Memphis.”

“And how much are they offering you?”

“Ten percent. If I can get it to Miami, Bruiser says he can do the rest.”

“Don’t do it, Deck.”

“It’s safe.”

“You’ll get caught and sent to jail.”

“I doubt it. The feds aren’t watching anymore. They don’t have a clue about the money. Everybody assumes Bruiser took enough with him and he doesn’t need anymore.”

“Does he need it?”

“I don’t know. But he sure as hell wants it.”

“Don’t do it, Deck.”

“It’s a piece of cake. The money will fit in a small U-Haul truck. Bruiser says it’ll take two hours max to load it. Drive the U-Haul to Miami, and wait for instructions. It’ll take two days, and it’ll make me rich.”

His voice has a faraway tone to it. There’s no doubt in my mind that Deck will try this. He and Bruiser have been planning it. I’ve said enough. He’s not listening.

We leave Miss Birdie’s house and walk to my apartment. Deck helps me haul a few clothes to my car. I load the trunk and half the backseat. I’m not going back to the office, so we say our good-byes by the garage.

“I don’t blame you for leaving,” he says.

“Be careful, Deck.”

We embrace for an awkward second or two, and I almost choke up.

“You made history, Rudy, do you know that?”

“We did it together.”

“Yeah, and what do we have to show for it?”

“We can always brag.”

We shake hands, and Deck’s eyes are wet. I watch him shuffle and jerk down the drive, and get in the car with Butch. They drive away.

I write a long letter to Miss Birdie, and promise to call later. I leave it on the kitchen table because I’m sure she’ll be home soon. I check the house once again, and say good-bye to my apartment.

I drive to a branch bank and close my savings account. A stack of twenty-eight one-hundred-dollar bills has a nice feel to it. I hide it under the floor mat.

IT’S NEARLY DARK when I knock on the Blacks’ front door. Dot opens it, and almost smiles when she sees it’s me.

The house is dark and quiet, still very much in mourning. I doubt if it will ever change. Buddy’s in bed with the flu.

Over instant coffee, I gently break the news that Great Benefit has gone belly-up, that she’s been shafted once more. Barring a miracle far off in the distance,,we won’t get a dime. I’m not surprised at her reaction.

There appear to be several complex reasons for Great Benefit’s death, but right now it’s important for Dot to think she pulled the trigger. Her eyes gleam and her entire face is happy as it sinks in. She put them out of business. One little, determined woman in Memphis, Tennessee, bankrupted them sumbitches.

She’ll go to Donny Ray’s grave tomorrow and tell him about it.

KELLY IS WAITING anxiously in the den with Betty Norvelle. She clutches a small leather bag I bought her yesterday. In it are a few toiletries and a few items of clothing donated by the shelter. It holds everything she owns.

We sign the paperwork, and thank Betty. We hold hands as we walk quickly to the car. We take a deep breath once inside, then we drive away.

The gun’s under the seat, but I’ve stopped worrying.

“Dear, which direction?” I ask when we get on the interstate loop that circles the city. We laugh at this, because it is so absolutely wonderful. It doesn’t matter where we go!

“I’d like to see mountains,” she says.

“Me too. East or West?”

“Big mountains.”

“Then West it is.”

“I want to see snow.”

“I think we can find some.”

She cuddles closer and rests her head on my shoulder. I rub her legs.

We cross the river and enter Arkansas. The Memphis skyline fades behind us. It’s amazing how little we’ve planned for this. We didn’t know until this morning that she’d be able to leave the county. But the charges were dropped, and I have a letter from the district attorney himself. Her bond was canceled at three this afternoon.

We’ll settle in a place where no one can find us. I’m not afraid of being followed, but I just want to be left alone. I don’t want to hear about Deck and Bruiser. I don’t want to hear about the fallout at Great Benefit. I don’t want Miss Birdie calling me for legal advice. I don’t want to

worry about Cliff’s death and everything related to it. Kelly and I will talk about it one of these days, but not anytime soon.

We’ll pick a small college town because she wants to go to school. She’s only twenty. I’m still a kid myself. We’re unloading some serious baggage here, and it’s time to have fun. I’d love to teach history in high school. That shouldn’t be hard to do. After all, I have seven years of college.

I will not, under any circumstances, have anything whatsoever to do with the law. I will allow my license to expire. I will not register to vote so they can’t nail me for jury duty. I will never voluntarily set foot in another courtroom.

We smile and giggle as the land” flattens and the traffic lightens. Memphis is twenty miles behind us. I vow never to return.