First Do No Harm (Benjamin Davis Book Series, Book 1) (17 page)

“I don’t think that’s an option. I could notify the clients, but I don’t want to get into a public dispute. The hospital and the other defendants would probably find out. It’s a very small town, and the defendants have spies everywhere.”

“What does Morty think?” Larry knew that Morty had always given the younger Davis good, solid advice.

“Morty warned me not to involve the clients in my dispute with Littleton.”

Davis told his father about the plaintiffs’ cases but never shared specifics. He spoke nonstop for an hour, and his father listened with little comment. Larry now understood his son’s passion and commitment to the cases.

“Son, this is the worst time. I just paid for your brother’s wedding. Business hasn’t been good, and I’d like to retire.”

“I know, Dad. I just need a loan. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”

“When will these cases turn into money?”

“I wish I knew. The first one is scheduled to go to trial next year. But if I win big, I suspect the defendants will appeal. An appeal would take at least eighteen months, probably more like two years.”

“How will you survive? How much will you have to put into the other cases? How will you keep your practice alive for the next three years?”

“Those are all good questions. For a start, I’m going to sit down with Liza, and we’ll have to decide how to cut expenses. There is a real possibility that she’ll have to go back into nursing. She could earn almost $50,000 a year working at Saint Thomas or one of the other hospitals.”

Larry interrupted, “That decision will change your lives and the lives of your children.”

“Both kids are in school, Dad. Liza’s folks will help after school if we need them.”

“Can Morty help?”

“He already has. He’s put in more than a thousand hours of his time for a one-dollar retainer. He’s agreed to abate my rent for a year and is paying Bella’s salary.”

The elder Davis shook his head. “You’re digging yourself quite a hole, Ben. But I just spent $50,000 on this wedding. It’s only fair that I loan you the same amount.”

“Dad, I can’t tell you how much that will help. I’ll pay my bills and use the rest to fund the lawsuits for the next few months. I promise I’ll pay you back.”

“I know you’re no quitter. Just keep pushing forward and work it hard. I have absolute confidence in you, son.”

“I won’t let you or my clients down, Dad. These people deserve to recover. They deserve justice.”

Larry gave his son a hug and kissed his cheek, making Davis feel better. Larry crossed the room to his desk, pulled out his checkbook, and wrote the check. Then he reached under his desk and pulled out a wrapped box. “Your brother wanted me to give you this for serving as his best man. He meant to give it to you last night, but I forgot to bring it. He called me this morning to remind me about it.”

Davis ripped open the box and removed a calfskin briefcase with his initials, BAD, embossed on it. With a feeling of relief, though it might have been only temporary, he put his father’s check in his handsome new briefcase.

Four days after his brother’s wedding, Davis opened his eyes and saw his bloody briefcase lying next to him on the carpet of his office. No matter what one used as a measuring stick, it had been a lousy morning. The encounter lasted only ten minutes, but when his attackers left, Davis had a broken nose, cut lips, and a dislocated shoulder, and he was pretty certain he had at least two fractured ribs. He was in a lot of pain.

His office was a wreck. The assailants had taken everything off Bella’s desk and had thrown it around the room. They had dumped eight file cabinet drawers all over the lobby. He was covered in paper. He could see glass from the broken lamp strewn about the floor. He lay still on the carpet and gritted his teeth against the pain, trying to decide what to do next.

He was convinced that it was no robbery. The goons weren’t looking for a document. Plainview wanted to send a message, a brutal one at that.

Davis tried to get up slowly. The pain, particularly from his shoulder, was unbearable. He worked his way to his knees and scooted the few feet to Bella’s desk. He grabbed the phone and dialed home.

Liza answered on the third ring; she had been asleep.

“Listen, sweetheart. Don’t interrupt. Just listen,” he said, his breath coming in short bursts and blood still running from his nose and lips.

“I need to get up anyway—”

“Stop! Let me talk. Take the kids and get out of the house
now
! Don’t dress. Just put on coats. Don’t stop to pick up anything. Go to your sister’s. I’ve been beaten up. I’m calling 911.”

Before they hung up, Liza told him that she received a phone call thirty minutes earlier from an unidentified caller. “He asked to speak with you, but I told him that you were already at the office. The call lasted no more than ten seconds.”

Davis told Liza that he loved her, and in as commanding a voice as he could muster under the circumstances, he ordered her to leave. Her sister Barbara lived only five minutes away.

After he hung up, Davis called Littleton. Littleton was in bed when he received the call, but Davis’s sobering story got him on his feet quickly.

“Do you think they’re going to come after me next?”

Davis could hear the fear in Littleton’s voice as he squeaked out the question.

“Listen, Bradley, just call 911, and I’ll do the same.”

Davis pushed the line on the phone and then dialed 911. Despite his severe pain, he described in detail what happened and gave his office address. He specifically told the dispatcher that he wanted to go to Saint Thomas Hospital.

After the phone call, Davis lay down, pain searing through his body. His shoulder was the most pressing injury. He knew that it would need to be yanked back into the socket, and he both dreaded and hoped for it to
be done so that he could have some relief.

ust then, Bella opened the door and walked in. She took one look at her boss’s face and began to scream hysterically. The horrific scream pierced the silence that had fallen over the office.

The paramedics arrived to hear that terrifying sound. They quickly determined that the wailing woman was not injured and turned their attention to Davis. Davis began to cry; he didn’t care what the paramedics thought.

They put him on a gurney and took him down the elevator to the lobby. Bella went with him. She didn’t take the time to leave a note for Sammie or Morty. One look at the office, and they would know that neither she nor Davis was there. She would call them from the hospital.

The ride from downtown Nashville to Saint Thomas took less than ten minutes, but the blaring sirens and the throbbing of his shoulder made the trip seem endless. When they arrived at the emergency room, Liza and her father, John Caldwell, were waiting. John, a heart surgeon, quickly determined that Davis’s left shoulder was dislocated. John paged his nephew, Dr. Robert Caldwell, an orthopedic surgeon, to the ER. John ordered an X-ray, which revealed cracked ribs but no internal bleeding.

Unfortunately, Davis’s left shoulder went unattended. He had been at the hospital for more than forty minutes, and the shoulder had not been realigned. He hadn’t received a painkiller either.

Trying to ignore the pain from the cuts on his lips, Davis managed to plead with his father-in-law: “John, why hasn’t something been done about my shoulder? It
hurts like hell. Please do something.”

“I want it done right. Robert should be here any minute. Just hold on a few minutes longer, Ben. I would prefer that it be done by family.”

Davis was furious.
Dozens of doctors and nurses in the ER could fix my shoulder, but John, in some twisted sense of loyalty, wants it done by family
. He turned to John and Liza. “You’re both family. One of you set my fucking shoulder. I beg you.”

Reluctantly, his father-in-law pulled his shoulder back into place. The severe pain went away almost immediately and was replaced by a dull throb. Dr. Robert Caldwell arrived about two minutes after the shoulder was set.

Davis remained in the hospital overnight for observation. His ribs were taped, his swollen lips had a couple of stitches, and his shoulder was immobilized. He had a plastic surgery consult for the gash on his left cheek but decided it wouldn’t leave much of a scar. After all, he wasn’t some twenty-year-old model; a small scar on his face just added a little character.

That night, Liza the nurse arranged for the kids to stay with her parents so she could spend the night with her hospitalized husband.

“Are you awake, you stubborn son of a bitch?”

Davis was enjoying the morphine. It seemed to make his troubles go away. “Why do you put up with me?” he asked.

“Right now, that’s a pretty good question. Maybe it’s because you’re durable.”

“I’m so sorry. I know this has gotten out of hand, but there’s nothing I can do.” His speech sounded a bit odd because of the stitches in his lips.

“That’s bullshit, Ben. You can quit. It won’t be easy, but you back down and file a motion to withdraw from all of these fucking Plainview cases.”

“I can’t do that. It wouldn’t be the right thing.”

Liza resigned herself to the reality of the situation. She knew not to push him. She’d love him, support him, and bury him if need be.

Sammie and Bella were just sitting around the office worrying about Davis. They had seen him at the hospital and could do nothing, so Morty sent them back to the office to worry there and answer calls.

The next day, Davis went home; he had his own private nurse. Sammie and Bella fielded the inquiries from the curious and concerned well-wishers. The story was all over the news and was the talk of the town. The Nashville Bar was like its own telegraph system, with lawyers calling lawyers and judges, judges telling court officers, the courtroom officer whispering to clerks, and clerks passing it on to more lawyers. It didn’t take long to become common knowledge: it was a good story about a lawyer getting the shit kicked out of him, even though Davis was a respected member of the Bar.

In her office, Sammie was listening to the news on her clock radio when the announcer reported excitedly: “According to police band radio, the assailants of prominent attorney Benjamin Davis have been spotted in downtown Nashville and are under surveillance by police. These men are believed to be armed and dangerous, and police have evacuated two blocks of downtown Broadway as a precaution.”

Sammie grabbed her sneakers from her desk drawer and put them on, jumped from her chair, and without offering an explanation to Bella, bolted out the door. She didn’t want the older woman to try to talk her out of watching the arrest firsthand.

It was a short jog from the office down Fifth Avenue to Broadway. She hurried past the red brick Ryman Auditorium, a country music shrine, on her left. It was bedlam on Broadway. TV crews were set up in the street, behind the police barricades at Seventh on Broadway, and then around the corner of Fifth on Broadway.

All of the stores and bars, between Fourth and Seventh, on both sides of Broadway, had been evacuated by the police. The merchants would complain fiercely, but public safety was paramount. The Metro police were in charge of crowd control. There were eighteen officers, six plainclothes detectives, and a police captain assigned to the stakeout.

In the middle of the two barricades was Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. It had been located on Broadway, close to Fifth, since the 1930s. It was and still is a Nashville landmark, with its distinctive purple signage. In the thirties and forties it was a honky-tonk famous for bluegrass music. In the fifties, the music venue distinctly changed and moved forward to country music and what came to be known as the Nashville sound. In the sixties, country and country rock, also known as rockabilly, became the lounge’s meat and potatoes. At that time, it was the hangout for songwriters such as Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson. These unknown songsters, while heavily drinking at a table, would write a song and jump up on
stage and sing. Sammie heard the stories, and Morty knew them all. He represented those songwriters. He helped them publish their songs and form their own publishing companies, and he represented them when they got busted for drugs, public intoxication, or barroom brawls.

Sammie, from Morty, knew that this stakeout was a direct result of his phone calls to news outlets. From one of the doctor’s offices at the hospital, Morty had called the editor in chief of the
Nashville Banner
. The prominent editor and Morty had worked together in the civil rights movement. The Davis beating story was front page and included the artist’s rendering of the two assailants.

Morty also called all three local television stations and spoke directly with their news directors. At five o’clock, on all three major networks, the lead story was the Davis beating. Quite frankly, the attack of a lawyer didn’t warrant that much sympathy. To the average citizen, the beating of a lawyer wasn’t news; it was cause for celebration.

Sammie couldn’t take her eyes off the front door of Tootsie’s. Its bright purple sign was vibrant, and there was a strange reflection from the midday sun. Even though it was late September, it was quite warm. The armpits of all of the officers were stained dark blue from perspiration and nerves. She could feel the tension in the air.

She looked at the crowd behind the barricades. Most were staring at the bar’s front door, just like her, in anticipation of conflict and possible violence. They couldn’t help themselves.

Suddenly, two men emerged from the doorway and walked onto the street. Sammie recognized them as
Laurel and Hardy from the artist’s rendering and from their 1930s movie
Babes in Toyland
. The pair moved about six feet forward, away from the front door of the bar.

Someone shouted, “You’re under arrest! Hands behind your heads! No sudden moves or you’re dead men!”