“How was the funeral?” Deck asks, as he takes my arm and leads me to the table where Butch is waiting.
“Just a funeral,” I say, staring blankly at these two men.
“How’s the family?” Deck asks.
“Doing all right, I guess.” Butch quickly unscrews the cap from the phone receiver, and points inside.
“I guess the kid’s better off now, don’t you think?” Deck says as I look inside. Butch points closer, to a small, round, black device stuck to the inside cover. I can only stare at it.
“Don’t you think the kid’s better off?” Deck repeats himself loudly, and nudges me in the ribs.
“Sure, yeah, right. He certainly is better off. Really sad, though.”
We watch as Butch expertly puts the phone back together, then shrugs at me as if I know precisely what to do next.
“Let’s walk down and get some coffee,” Deck says. “Good idea,” I say, with a huge knot growing in my stomach.
On the sidewalk, I stop and look at them. “What the hell?”
“Let’s walk this way,” Deck says, pointing down the street. There’s an artsy coffee bar a block and a half away, and we walk to it without another word. We hide in a corner as if we’re being stalked by gunmen.
The story quickly unfolds. Deck and I have been worried about the feds since Bruiser and Prince disappeared. We expected them to at least stop by and ask some questions. We’ve talked about the feds many times, but, unknown to me, he’s also been spilling his guts to Butch here. I wouldn’t trust Butch with much.
Butch stopped by the office an hour ago, and Deck asked him to take a peek at our phones. Butch confesses that he’s no expert on bugging devices, but he’s been around. They’re easy to spot. Identical devices in all three
phones. They were about to search for more bugs, but decided to wait for me.
“More bugs?” I ask.
“Yeah, like little mikes hidden around the office to pick up everything the phones don’t catch,” Butch says. “It’s fairly easy. We just have to cover every inch of the place with a magnifying glass.”
Deck’s hands are literally shaking. I wonder if he’s spoken to Bruiser on our phones.
“What if we find more?” I ask. We haven’t taken the first sip of our coffee.
“Legally, you can remove them,” Butch explains. “Or, you can just be careful what you say. Sorta talk around them.”
“What if we take them out?”
“Then the feds know you’ve found them. They’ll get even more suspicious, probably increase other forms of surveillance. Best thing to do, in my opinion, is act as if nothing has happened.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
Deck wipes his brow and refuses to look at me. I’m very nervous about him. “Do you know Bruiser Stone?” I ask Butch.
“Of course. I’ve done some work for him.”
I’m certainly not surprised. “Good,” I say, then look at Deck. “Have you talked to Bruiser on our phones?”
“No,” he says. “I haven’t talked to Bruiser since the day he disappeared.”
In telling me this lie, he’s told me to shut up in front of Butch.
“I’d like to know if there are other bugs, you know,” I say to Butch. “It’d be nice to know how much they’re hearing out there.”
“We’ll have to comb the office.”
“Let’s go.”
“Fine with me. Start with the tables, desk and chairs. Look in garbage cans, books, clocks, staplers, everything. These bugs can be smaller than raisins.”
“Can they tell we’re looking?” Deck asks, scared to death.
“No. You two guys carry on the usual office chatter. I won’t say a word, and they won’t know I’m there. If you find something, use hand signals.”
We take the coffee back to our offices, a place that’s suddenly spooky and forbidding. Deck and I begin a banal conversation about Derrick Dogan’s case while we gently overturn tables and chairs. Anyone with a brain listening would know that we’re out of step and trying to cover something.
We crawl around on all fours. We dig through wastebaskets and pick through files. We examine heating vents and inspect baseboards. For the first time, I’m thankful we have so little furniture and furnishings.
We dig for four hours, and find nothing. Only our phones have been defiled. Deck and I buy Butch a spaghetti dinner at a bistro down the street.
AT MIDNIGHT, I’m lying in bed, the possibility of sleep long since forgotten. I’m reading the morning paper, and occasionally staring at my phone. Surely, I keep telling myself, surely they wouldn’t go to the trouble of bugging it. I’ve seen shadows and heard noises all afternoon and all evening. I’ve jumped at nonexistent sounds. My skin has crawled with goose bumps. I can’t eat. I’m being followed, I know, the question is, How close are they?
And how close do they intend to get?
With the exception of the classifieds, I read every word in the paper. Sara Plankmore Wilcox gave birth to a seven-pound girl yesterday. Good for her. I don’t hate her anymore. Since Donny Ray died, I’ve found myself being
easier on everybody. Except, of course, Drummond and his loathsome client.
PFX Freight is undefeated in WinterBall.
I wonder if he makes her go to all the games.
I check the record of vital statistics every day. I pay particular attention to the divorce filings, though I’m not optimistic. I also look at the arrests to see if Cliff Riker has been picked up for beating his wife again.
Thirty-seven
T
HE DOCUMENTS COVER FOUR RENTED folding tables wedged side by side in the front room of our offices. They’re separated in neat stacks, in chronological order, all marked, numbered, indexed and even computerized.
And memorized. I’ve studied these pieces of paper so often that I now know everything on every sheet. The documents given to me by Dot total 221 pages. The policy, for instance, will be considered as only one document at trial, but it has 30 pages. The documents produced so far by Great Benefit total 748 pages, some of them duplicates of the Blacks’.
Deck too has spent countless hours with the paperwork. He’s written a detailed analysis of the claim file. Most of the computer work fell on him. He’ll assist me during the depositions. It’s his job to keep the documents straight and quickly find the ones we need.
He’s not exactly thrilled with this type of work, but he’s anxious to keep me happy. He’s convinced we’ve caught Great Benefit holding the smoking gun, but he’s also convinced
the case is not worth the effort I’m putting into it. Deck, I’m afraid, has grave concerns about my trial abilities. He knows that any twelve we pick for the jury will view fifty thousand bucks as a fortune.
I sip a beer in the office late Sunday night, and walk through the tables again and again. Something is missing here. Deck is certain that Jackie Lemancyzk, the claims handler, would not have had the authority to deny the claim outright. She did her job, then shipped the file to underwriting. There’s some interplay between claims and underwriting, interoffice memos back and forth, and this is where the paper trail breaks down.
There was a scheme to deny Donny Ray’s claim, and probably thousands of others like it. We have to unravel it.
AFTER MUCH DELIBERATION and discussion with the members of my firm, I have decided to depose M. Wilfred Keeley, CEO, first. I figure I’ll start with the biggest ego and work my way down. He’s fifty-six years old, a real hale-and-hearty type with a warm smile, even for me. He actually thanks me for allowing him to go first. He desperately needs to get back to the home office.
I poke around the fringes for the first hour. I’m on my side of the table in a pair of jeans, a flannel shirt, loafers and white socks. Thought it’d be a nice contrast to the severe shades of black so pervasive on the other side. Deck said I was being disrespectful.
Two hours into the depo, Keeley hands me a financial statement, and we talk about money for a while. Deck scours the financials and slides me one question after another. Drummond and three of his boys pass a few notes but seem completely bored. Kipler is next door presiding over a Motion Day.
Keeley knows of several other lawsuits against Great Benefit now pending across the country. We talk about
these for a while; names, courts, other lawyers, similar facts. He’s not been forced to give a deposition in any of them. I can’t wait to talk to the other lawyers who’ve sued Great Benefit. We can compare documents and trial strategies.
The glamorous part of running an insurance company is definitely not the mundane business of selling policies and handling claims. It’s taking the premiums and investing. Keeley knows much more about the investment side, says he got his start there and worked his way up. He knows little about claims.
Since I’m not paying for these depositions, I’m in no hurry. I ask a thousand useless questions, just digging and shooting in the dark. Drummond looks bored and at times frustrated, but he wrote the book on how to conduct all-day depos, and his meter is ticking too. He’d like to object occasionally, but he knows I’ll simply run next door and tattle to Judge Kipler, who’ll rule in my favor and admonish him.
The afternoon brings another thousand questions, and when we adjourn at five-thirty I’m physically exhausted. Keeley’s smile disappeared just after lunch, but he was determined to answer for as long as I could ask. He again thanks me for allowing him to finish first, and thanks me for releasing him from further questions. He’s headed back to Cleveland.
THINGS PICK UP A BIT on Tuesday, partly because I’m getting tired of wasting time, partly because the witnesses either know little or can’t remember much. I start with Everett Lufkin, Vice President of Claims, a man who’ll not utter a single syllable unless it’s in response to a direct question. I make him look at some documents, and halfway through the morning he finally admits it’s company policy to do what is known as “post-claim underwriting,”
an odious but not illegal practice. When a claim is filed by an insured, the initial handler orders all medical records for the preceding five years. In our case, Great Benefit obtained records from the Black family physician who had treated Donny Ray for a nasty flu five years earlier. Dot did not list the flu on the application. The flu had nothing to do with the leukemia, but Great Benefit based one of its early denials on the fact that the flu was a preexisting condition.
I’m tempted to hammer a nail through his heart at this point, and it would be easy. It’s also unwise. Lufkin will testify at trial, and it’s best to save the brutal cross-examination until then. Some lawyers like to try their cases in deposition, but with my vast experience I know to save the good stuff for the jury. Actually, I read it in a book somewhere. Plus, it’s the strategy used by Jonathan Lake.
Kermit Aldy, Vice President of Underwriting, is as glum and noncommittal as Lufkin. Underwriting is the process of accepting and reviewing the application from the agent, and ultimately making the decision of whether or not to issue the policy. It’s a lot of paper shuffling with small rewards, and Aldy seems the perfect guy to oversee it. I finish him off in under two hours, and without inflicting any wounds.
Bradford Barnes is the Vice President of Administration, and it takes almost an hour to pin down exactly what he does. It’s early Wednesday. I’m sick of these people. I’m nauseated at the sight of the same boys from Trent & Brent sitting six feet away across the table wearing the same damned dark suits and the exact scowling smirks they’ve had for months now. I even despise the court reporter. Barnes knows nothing about anything. I jab, he ducks, not a glove is laid on him. He will not testify at trial because he’s clueless.
Wednesday afternoon I call the last witness, Richard
Pellrod, the senior claims examiner who wrote at least two letters of denial to the Blacks. He’s been sitting in the hallway since Monday morning, so he hates my guts. He barks at me a few times during the early questions, and this reinvigorates me. I show him his letters of denial, and things get testy. It’s his position, and the position still maintained by Great Benefit, that bone marrow transplants are simply too experimental to be taken seriously as a method of treatment. But he denied once on the grounds that Donny Ray had failed to disclose a preexisting condition. He blames this on someone else, just an oversight. He’s a lying bastard, and I decide to make him suffer. I slide a stack of documents in front of me, and we go through them one by one. I make him explain them, and take responsibility for each. He was, after all, in charge of supervising Jackie Lemancyzk, who, of course,
is
no longer with us. He says he thinks she moved back to her hometown somewhere in southern Indiana. Periodically, I ask pointed questions about her departure, and this really irritates Pellrod. More documents. More blame shifted to others. I’m relentless. I can ask anything anytime I want, and he never knows what’s coming. After four hours of a nonstop barrage, he asks for a break.
WE FINISH PELLROD at seven-thirty Wednesday night, and the corporate depos are over. Three days, seventeen hours, probably a thousand pages of testimony. The depos, like the documents, will have to be read a dozen times.
As his boys stuff their briefcases, Leo F. Drummond pulls me to one side. “Nice job, Rudy,” he says in a low voice, as if he’s really impressed with my performance but would rather keep his evaluation quiet.
“Thanks.”
He breathes deeply. We’re both exhausted, and tired of looking at each other.
“So who do we have left?” he asks.
“I’m through,” I say, and I really cannot think of anyone else I want to depose.
“What about Dr. Kord?”
“He’ll testify at trial.”
This is a surprise. He studies me carefully, no doubt wondering how I can afford to have the doc do it live for the jury.
“What’s he gonna say?”
“Ron Black was a perfect match for his twin. Bone marrow is routine treatment. The boy could’ve been saved. Your client killed him.”
He takes this well, and it’s obvious it’s not a surprise.
“We’ll probably depose him,” he says.
“Five hundred an hour.”
“Yeah, I know. Look, Rudy, could we have a drink? There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”