Turow, Scott - Personal Injuries

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2024-12-05 0 0 1.58MB 258 页 5.9玖币
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Welcome, thou kind deceiver!
Thou best of thieves; who with an easy key
Dost open life, and unperceived by us,
Even steal us from ourselves.
JOHN DRYDEN, All for Love
THE BEGINNING
CHAPTER 1
HE KNEW IT WAS WRONG, AND THAT HE was going to get caught. He said he knew this day
was coming.
He knew they had been stupid, he told me-worse, greedy. He said he knew he should have
stopped. But somehow, each time he thought they'd quit, he'd ask himself how once more could
make it any worse. Now he knew he was in trouble.
I recognized the tune. Over twenty-some years, the folks sitting in that leather club chair in front
of my desk have found only a few old standards in the jukebox. I Didn't Do It. The Other One Did
It. Why Are They Picking on Me. His selection, I'm Sorry, made the easiest listening. But they all
wanted to hear the same song from me: Maybe I Can Get You Out of This. I said it usually,
although I knew it would often prove untrue. But it's a complicated business being somebody's only
hope.
This is a lawyer's story, the kind attorneys like to hear and tell. About a case. About a client. His
name was Robert Feaver. Everyone knew him as Robbie, although he was getting old for that kind
of thing, forty-three, he'd said, when I asked his age. The time was 1992, the second week in
September. The pundits had finally stopped predicting that Ross Perot was going to be the next
President of the United States, and the terms "dot" and "coin" had not yet been introduced to one
another. I recall the period precisely because the week before I had returned to Virginia to lay my
father to rest. His passing, which over the years I'd assumed I would take as being in the natural
order of things, had instead imbued all my waking moments with the remote quality of dreams, so
that even my hand, when I considered it, seemed disconnected from my body.
Robbie Feaver's troubles were more immediate. Last night, three Special Agents of the Internal
Revenue Service's Criminal Intelligence Division had visited him at home-one to talk and two to
listen. They were, as you would expect, rumpled men in inexpensive sport coats, grave but polite.
They had handed him a grand jury subpoena for all of his law partnership's financial records and
tried to ask Robbie questions about his income tax returns. Wisely, he had refused to reply.
He could suit himself, responded the one agent who spoke. But they wanted to tell him a couple
things. Good news and bad. Bad first.
They knew. They knew what Robbie and his law partner, Morton Dinnerstein, had been up to.
They knew that for several years the two had occasionally deposited a check they received when
they won or settled one of their personal injury cases in a secret account at River National Bank,
where the firm transacted no other business. They knew that out of the River National account
Dinnerstein and Robbie had paid the usual shares of what they'd earned-two thirds to the clients,
one ninth to the referring attorneys, odd amounts to experts or court reporters. Everyone had
received his due. Except the IRS. They knew that for years now, Feaver and his partner had been
writing checks to cash to draw down the balance of the account, never paying a dime in tax.
You guys are cold-cocked, the agent added. Robbie laughed now, very briefly, repeating the
words.
I didn't ask how Robbie and his partner could have ever believed a scheme so simpleminded
would work. I was long accustomed to the dumb ways people get themselves in trouble. Besides,
the fact was that their scam had operated smoothly for years. A checking account that paid no
interest was unlikely to come to the Service's attention. It was, frankly, noteworthy that it had, a
development that would inevitably be traced to freak coincidence, or, if things were spicier,
betrayal.
Feaver had heard out the agents in his living room. He was perched on a camelback sofa smartly
upholstered in bleached silk, trying to contain himself. To smile. Stay slick. He opened his mouth
to speak but was interrupted by the unexpected sensation of a single cold rill of his own sweat
tracking the length of his side until it was absorbed in the elastic waistband of his boxers.
And the good news? he asked on second effort.
They were getting to that, the agent said. The good news was that Robbie had an opportunity.
Maybe there was something he could do for himself. Something that a person with his family
situation ought to consider.
The agent then walked across the marble foyer and opened the front door. The United States
Attorney, Stan Sennett, was standing on Robbie's doorstep. Feaver recognized him from TV, a
short man, slender, kempt with a compulsive orderliness. A few gnats zagged madly under the light
above the careful part in Sennett's head. He greeted Feaver with his in-court expression, humorless
as a hatchet blade.
Robbie had never practiced a day of criminal law, but he knew what it meant that the United
States Attorney was standing in person on his front stoop late at night. It meant the biggest gun was
pointed straight at him. It meant they wanted to make him an example. It meant he'd never get
away.
In his terror, Robbie Feaver found a single useful thought.
I want a lawyer, he said.
He was entitled, Sennett finally responded. But perhaps Robbie should listen to him first. As soon
as Sennett set a polished brogan across the threshold, Robbie repeated himself.
I can't promise the deal will be the same tomorrow, Sennett told him.
Lawyer, Feaver said again.
The agents took over then, offering advice. If he was going to an attorney, find a good one,
someone who'd been around. Talk to that lawyer-and no one else. Not Mom. Not the wife. And
certainly not his law partner, Dinnerstein. The U.S. Attorney passed one agent his card, and the
agent handed it to Feaver. Sennett would be waiting for Feaver's lawyer's call. About to step down
into the darkness, the prosecutor asked over his shoulder whether Bobbie had anyone in mind.
Interesting choice, Sennett told Feaver with a shallow smile when he heard my name.
"I'm not a rat," Robbie Feaver said now. "That's the play, right, George? They want me to dime
somebody out."
I asked if he had any idea who.
"Well, it better not be Mort. My partner? Never. There's nothing to say about Mort."
Feaver and Dinnerstein were lifelong friends, he told me, next-door neighbors as boys growing
up in the Jewish enclave of Warren Park, here in DuSable, roommates through college and law
school. But their secret account was joint, both men had made deposits and written the checks to
cash, and neither had reported the income. There was enough damaging paper that it seemed
unlikely the IRS was going to need anyone's assistance to install either one of them in the trophy
case.
I asked if there might be something else the government wanted Robbie to tell them about Mort,
or any other person, but Feaver hitched a shoulder limply, looking lost.
I did not know Robbie Feaver well. When he'd called this morning, he'd reminded me that we'd
met several times in the lobby of the LeSueur Building where we each had our law offices, and of
the committee work he'd done for the Kindle County Bar Association a couple of years ago during
my term as president. My memories of him were vague and not necessarily pleasant. Measured
according to the remaining reflexes of a proper Southern upbringing, he was the kind of fellow
who'd be described simply as 'too much.' Too good-looking in the sense that he was too well aware
of it. Too much stiff, dark hair that reflected too much fussing. He was tanned in every season and
spent too much money on his clothes-high-styled Italian suits and snazzy foulards accompanied by
too much jewelry. He spoke too loudly, and too eagerly to strangers in the elevator. In fact, in any
setting, he talked too much-one of those people who went one up on Descartes: I speak, therefore I
am. But I now saw one apparent virtue: he could have told you all of that. Diminished by fear, he
maintained an air of candor, at least about himself. As clients went, therefore, he seemed, on first
impression, better than average.
When I asked what the agent had meant about his family, he sagged a bit.
"Sick wife," he said, "sick mother." Waging a running war against the medical establishment,
Feaver, like many personal injury attorneys, had absorbed the lexicon of physicians. His mother
was in a nursing home. "CVA," he said, meaning a stroke. His wife, Lorraine, was worse. She had
been diagnosed nearly two years ago with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis-ALS, or more commonly
Lou Gehrig's disease-and was on a certain downward course toward total paralysis and, eventually,
death.
"She's got a year maybe before things get really hairy, no one knows for sure." He was stoical but
his black eyes did not rise from the carpet. "I mean, I can't leave her. Not practically. There's
nobody else to take care of her."
That was the agent's point. Feaver would talk or be in the penitentiary when his wife reached the
point of total helplessness or passed. The dark shroud of that prospect fell over us both.
In the resulting silence, I picked up Sennett's card, which Feaver had laid on my desk. Without it,
I might have questioned whether Robbie had identified the right man on his doorstep. The United
States Attorney, with ninety-two assistants and several hundred cases to supervise, would ordinarily
have no direct role in a straightforward tax case, even one against a successful personal injury
lawyer. Whatever Stan Sennett had come to Robbie's house to say last night must have been a
mouthful.
"What did it mean," Feaver asked, "when Sennett said that George Mason would be an interesting
choice? Does he hate your guts or think you're a pushover?"
It was complicated, I responded. I believed in some moods Stan would say I was a close friend.
"Well, that's good, then, isn't it?" Feaver asked.
When it came to Stan Sennett, I never knew the answer.
Sometimes friends, I told Feaver. Always rivals.
CHAPTER 2
IN THE FASHION OF MOST HIGH-RANKING bureaucrats, the United States Attorney's
personal office was vast. The shag carpeting was tattered at places into little raveled strands, and
the drapes of greenish raw silk had covered the wall of windows on the north since sometime in the
fifties. But the space could be measured by the acre. There was a bathroom, with a shower, and a
hideaway study. In the corners of the principal space, a sturdy government-issue conference table
stood on one side, while across the room various endangered species, seized by Fish and Wildlife
inspectors from a rogue taxidermist, were displayed in a long row of mahogany cases. A bald eagle
and a spotted snake adjoined something that looked like a marmoset. Behind a desk the size of a
tomb, Stan Sennett, one of those dark, driven little men who turn up so often in the law, rose to
greet me.
"Hey there, Georgie," he said. I attributed this rare mood of impressive good cheer to Stan's
eagerness to talk about Feaver.
"Blue stuff," I told his secretary when she offered coffee. We loitered a minute over personal
details. Stan showed off the photos of his only child, Asha, a three-year-old girl, dark and gorgeous,
whom Stan and his second wife, Nora Flinn, had adopted after years of futile fertility treatments
and in vitro. I recounted the leisurely progress of my two sons through their higher educations, and
bragged for a second about my wife, Patrice, an architect who had just won an international design
competition to build a spectacular art museum in Bangkok. Stan, who'd been stationed in Thailand
in 1966, told me a few funny stories about the country.
In his most relaxed moments, Stan Sennett could be a delight, a stylish wit, an amusing collector
of arcane facts, and a canny observer of the fur-licking and hissing in local political circles. The
rest of the time, you had to deal with a more complicated package-a thousand-megahertz mind, and
a potful of seething emotions liable to scald anybody nearby before Stan managed to slam down the
lid.
He had graduated first in our class at Easton Law School. At the bar, it is possible to travel
forever in the slipstream of law school success; but Stan had bypassed the riches or policy
pinnacles in Washington that usually reward his kind of legal intellect. He was a prosecutor. After
clerking for Chief Justice Burger, he had returned to Kindle County to join the Prosecuting
Attorney's Office, rising on indisputable merit until he became Raymond Horgan's Chief Deputy. In
the early eighties, when his first marriage dissolved, he joined the U.S. Justice Department. He
went first to San Diego, then D.C., and had just returned to California when President Bush named
him U.S. Attorney here. He had established relations with local law enforcement agencies and no
political ambitions. He therefore had figured to make it through his four-year term, which would
end next year, uncompromised by the cabals and rivalries that had broken out after the death of our
legendary Mayor and County Executive, Augustine Bolcarro.
Like most persons, I was wary of Stan's lethal side, but we had always been companions in the
law. As students, we shared our learning: he informed me of the deeper implications of the cases
we studied; I was, so far as I know, the first person to tell him that a gentleman did not tuck his
necktie into his trousers. In practice, we had been ongoing opponents since he became a deputy
P.A. while I was in my first legal job with the State Defenders. At all times, we were tied together
by a mutual admiration that bordered on envy. My casual, highborn manner, a false front in my
eyes and thus always something of a burden, represented an ideal, I think, to Sennett, for whom
sincerity and charm were mutually exclusive. I was impressed, first, by Stan's abilities, but even
more by his committed sense of high purpose.
Some in the defense bar, like my friend Sandy Stern, could not abide Sennett's sanctimony or his
ham-handed methods, such as his late-night intrusion on Feaver. But Stan was the first U.S.
Attorney in my quarter of a century here who was fearlessly independent. He'd begun a long-
overdue era of zero tolerance for the scams and dirty dealing that were forever viewed as a perk of
local office, and he took on the mighty commercial interests, like Moreland Insurance, the largest
private employer in Kindle County, whom Stan had nonetheless prosecuted for fraud. Sennett's
agenda, in short, had been to let the light of the law into the crabbed corners of Kindle County, and,
as his friend, I often found myself applauding behind the mask of horror I was required to wear as a
defense lawyer.
Eventually, he turned to my new client.
"Odd fellow, I take it," Stan said with a calculating glimpse my way. We both knew that, even
dressed up in Armani, Robbie Feaver was your basic Kindle County hustler, complete with South
End accent and too much cologne. "No, he must be peculiar. Because what they did with that
account over at River National was pretty strange. The partnership of Feaver & Dinnerstein hasn't
reported an annual income of less than one mil for a decade. Four's been more the average. I hope
you knew that, George, when you set your retainer." A sweet little smile zipped by, the proper
revenge of a man who's lived his life within the confines of a government salary. "Odd to be
chiseling forty K on taxes when you're showing numbers like that, isn't it?"
I dipped a shoulder. The explanation would never make sense to anyone but them, yet over the
years I had learned that it was only the poor whose desire for money was bounded by pure reason.
"And here's something stranger, George. They'll go months sometimes without a hit on this
account, then boom, it's ten, fifteen thousand in cash inside a week. And in the meantime, George,
they both bang their ATMs on a regular basis. So why this sudden appetite for currency?" Stan
asked. "And where's it going?"
Offshore. Drugs. The usual. Not to mention more eternal vices not banned by the federal criminal
code.
"Something on the side?" asked Stan, when I suggested that alternative. "And how. Your fellow
needs an odometer on his zipper." He rolled his eyes, as if he no longer recalled that it was a
weakness for one of the secretaries at the P.A.'s Office that had ended his first marriage. I
mentioned the sick wife and Sennett chuckled archly. Robbie Feaver, he said, had been enshrined
long before in the Hall of Fame down on Grand Avenue, the strip of high-end watering holes often
referred to as the Street of Dreams.
"But Mort's a solid family man," he said. "And your guy sees more beds than a hotel maid. He's
not paying any tootsie's rent. So that's not where the money's going. Wanna know my theory,
George? I think it's the cash they're hiding. Not the income."
Sennett unbent a paper clip and twirled it between his fingers. Behind the huge desk, he was
smug as a fat house cat. Here was the Essential Stan, the dark narrow boy always in a heat to
reestablish himself as the smartest person he knew. He had been born Constantine Nicholas
Sennatakis and was raised in back of the family restaurant. `You've been there,' he'd told me dryly
when we met in law school. `Menu pages coated in plastic and one of the relatives chained to the
cash register.' During his induction as U.S. Attorney, he had misted over recounting his parents'
struggles. But for the most part, all that ethnic opera, all that carrying on, was self-consciously left
behind. Stan's public persona was as the sort of man who barely snapped his fingers when music
played; in private, with friends and colleagues, he was apt to take on the droll pose of a grumpy
initiate soiled by knowing it all. Yet to me, although it was shrewdly disguised, Stan remained full
of teeming immigrant striving. His entire world was often at stake in a case, as if he had an
inescapable obligation to rise and prosper at every opportunity. As a result, he suffered his losses
far more intensely than he savored his many achievements. But he clearly knew he was winning
now.
"Aren't you going to ask how I stumbled over these fellas and their private cash machine?" I
would have, had I thought he'd answer. But apparently Stan was having too much fun today to
indulge his usual secretiveness. "Our friends at Moreland Insurance," said Sennett. "They got our
whiskers twitching."
I might have thought of that. Stan's fabled prosecution of Moreland for a series of fraudulent sales
practices with which the company had gallivanted through the eighties concluded with the insurer
sentenced to a staggering finemore than $30 million-and also to a period of probation during which
they were obliged to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney in correcting any wrongdoing they knew of.
I was not surprised to find that Moreland bad taken the opportunity to tattle not only on themselves
but also on their natural enemies, plaintiffs' lawyers.
In almost every personal injury suit, the real defendant is an insurance company. You may sue the
neighbor whose tree fell on your house, but it's his insurance company who'll pay the damages and
hire the defense attorneys, and which often feels antagonized by the lawyer on the other side. I
realized that, in all likelihood, it was one of the checks Moreland had issued over the years to
Feaver & Dinnerstein that had been trailed to the partners' secret bank account. Unfortunately,
though, Moreland's records had revealed more than that.
"Your guy's a tough opponent," Stan said. "Somehow, every time Moreland has a big case against
these fellas, the company just can't win a ruling. By now they've learned to settle. Especially since
any lawsuit where your guy is looking at a six-figure fee always ends up in front of one of a
handful of judges. And guess what? We crawled through the records in the courthouse and it turns
out the pattern holds for other companies. Whenever Feaver & Dinnerstein has a big payday
coming, it's the same deal: bad rulings, big settlements. And the same four distinguished jurists on
their cases, George-even though there are nineteen judges sitting in the Common Law Claims
Division, all of whom are supposed to be assigned to matters at random." Sennett issued a stiff
look. "Know now where I'm thinking the cash is going, George?"
I knew. Rumors of funny business had lingered like some untraceable foundation odor in the
Kindle County courthouses since I'd arrived here for law school. But no one had ever proved it. The
judges who took were said to be carefully insulated. There were bagmen and code words.
And the lawyers who paid told no tales. It was, by report, a small faction, a secret society whose
alliances were fierce and ancient, going back decades to high schools, churches, to the Prosecuting
Attorney's Office in its bad old days, to union halls, or, even, mob connects. And always the bonds
were fired in the overheated politics of the Party.
These grumpy suspicions were often repeated by the losers in Kindle County's courtrooms. But in
my more innocent moments, I liked to discount them, believing that cronyism, not cash, explained
the obvious favoritism I, like every other lawyer, had witnessed on occasion over the years. For my
client's sake, I was skeptical now.
"I'll tell you what clinches it for me," Stan replied. "Morton Dinnerstein's uncle is Brendan
Tuohey." Sennett took a beat to let the portent of the name gather. "Brendan's older sister is Mort
Dinnerstein's mother. She raised Brendan after their mom kicked the bucket. Devoted to her, he is.
And to her son. Looks to me like Tuohey's given nephew Morty a real helping hand."
As Stan expected, he'd caught me by surprise. When I'd arrived in Kindle County in the late
1960s, a Tuohey marrying a Dinnerstein was still thought of as miscegenation. More to the point,
Brendan Tuohey now was the Presiding Judge of the Common Law Claims Division, where all
personal injury cases were heard. A former cop and ex-deputy Prosecuting Attorney, Brendan was
celebrated for his intricate political connections, his general Celtic amity, and his occasional bare-
knuckles meanness. In most quarters, among reporters, for example, he was renowned as able and
tough but fair. Tuohey's name was the one most often mentioned when people speculated about
who would eventually replace old Judge Mumphrey and wield the vast powers of the Chief of the
entire Kindle County Superior Court. I'd had my ears scratched by Brendan during my year as Bar
President. But both Stan and I could recall Tuohey's tenure long ago in the Felony Division, when
there were persistent rumors that he was often visited in chambers by Toots Nuccio, a reputed fixer.
I asked, mildly, if Stan thought it was fair to condemn Robbie Feaver because of his partner's
relatives, but by now Sennett had lost patience with my temporizing.
"Just do your job, George. And I'll do mine. Talk to your guy. There's something there. We can
both see that. If he gets religion, we'll cut him a break. If he sees no evil and speaks no evil, he's
going to the penitentiary for evasion. For as long as I can send him. And with these kinds of dollars,
we're talking several years. He's got his chance now. If he doesn't take it, don't come groveling in
six months, strumming your lyre about the poor wife and her miserable condition."
Stan set his chin against his chest and eyed me gravely, having become the Stan Sennett few
people liked, or could even deal with. Behind him, out the window, a boom swung on an immense
construction crane a block away, carrying a beam and some daredevil ironworker riding on it. In
this town, they were all American Indians, who, reputedly, knew no fear. I envied them that.
Somehow my father's death had sharpened my lifelong concern about my lack of daring.
In the meantime, Stan took my silence for crusty disdain. It was one of the occasional rewards of
our friendship that he was vulnerable to my opinion of him, perhaps because he knew so much of it
was favorable.
"Did I offend you?" he asked.
No more than usual, I assured him.
He rumpled his lips and stood. I thought he was going to show me out. Stan was famous for that,
for abruptly announcing a meeting was over. But instead he perched on his long mahogany desk's
front comer. I remembered yet again that I had always wanted to ask how he got to four-thirty in
the afternoon with his white shirt unwrinkled. But the moment, as usual, wasn't right.
"Listen," he said. "I want to tell you a story. Do you mind? This is a real chest-thumper, so get
ready. Did you ever hear the one about when I knew I was going to be a prosecutor?"
I didn't believe I had.
"Well, I don't tell it often. But I'm going to tell it now. It has to do with my father's brother,
Petros, Peter the kids called him. Uncle Peter was the black sheep. He ran a newspaper stand
instead of a restaurant." That was meant to be a joke, and Stan briefly permitted himself a less
constricted smile. "You want to talk about hard work-I listen to young lawyers around here pull all-
nighters and complain about hard work-that, my friend, that was hard work. Up at 4 a.m. Standing
in this little corner shack in the worst kind of weather. Bitter cold. Rain, sleet. Always there.
Handing out papers and collecting nickels. He did that twenty years. Finally, near the age of forty,
Petros was ready to make his move. Guys he knew had a gas station down here on Duhaney and
Plum. Right in Center City. Place was a gold mine. And they were getting out. And Petros bought
摘要：

Welcome,thoukinddeceiver!Thoubestofthieves;whowithaneasykeyDostopenlife,andunperceivedbyus,Evenstealusfromourselves.JOHNDRYDEN,AllforLoveTHEBEGINNINGCHAPTER1HEKNEWITWASWRONG,ANDTHATHEwasgoingtogetcaught.Hesaidheknewthisdaywascoming.Heknewtheyhadbeenstupid,hetoldme-worse,greedy.Hesaidheknewheshouldha...

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