Suzy's Case: A Novel Page 3

  “That’s what his formal response on your behalf says, accompanied by a disclaimer that it was against his legal advice.”

  “Well, I haven’t changed my position. I’m guilty as charged.”

  “Do you understand this admission violates the ethical standards of the Code of Professional Conduct requiring you to represent your client in a zealous manner?”

  “Define zealous.”

  “Don’t test me, counselor!” Judge Howell bellows.

  “Your Honor, if you’re suggesting zealous means to aid and abet in the perpetration of insurance fraud, then yes, I violated the oath to represent my client in a zealous manner.”

  “I didn’t say zealous meant that, counselor.”

  “Well, Your Honor, the only way I could have defeated the defendant’s motion to dismiss his case would’ve been to put in an affidavit by my client with a statement of fact I knew to be false. You’re aware of the facts of my client’s underlying case, Your Honor?”

  “I’m well aware of the particular circumstances of your client’s case, counselor.”

  “Great, then do the right thing here. With all due respect, Your Honor, I have two appointments I have to get to, so let’s decide my destiny, shall we?”

  “You understand your admission requires that I sanction you?” he states in question form.

  “Understood. Sanction away. I’d rather get sanctioned than take dirty money to pay for my wife’s tennis lessons, even if her new pro costs double and speaks with a sexy Argentinean accent.”

  “You are hereby sanctioned in the sum of twenty-five dollars and the complaint is otherwise dismissed,” Judge Howell declares.

  “Thanks, Your Honor. I appreciate that the punishment is fitting to my violation.”

  “You know this is the fourth complaint against you in the last two years by one of your clients.”

  “With more due respect to this honorable court, may I take the liberty in correcting you, Your Honor?”

  “Go on,” Judge Howell says in an unreceptive tone.

  “It’s the fourth complaint against me by one of my clients who became my client after I took over the injury practice of Henry Benson, the famous criminal lawyer. You know the venerable Mr. Benson, don’t you, Your Honor?”

  “Who doesn’t?” Judge Howell sighs. “I stand corrected, counselor. It’s the fourth complaint against you by one of Mr. Benson’s clients.”

  “Your Honor, I’m going to meet him after I leave here to pick up a new case.” I pause. “So there’s a remote possibility you may be seeing me again.”

  Judge Howell shakes his head disapprovingly. “I hope not, counselor, and I caution you to be careful when dealing with Mr. Benson’s clients. You know, I was a criminal judge for forty years before they retired me to this place and I’ve presided over a number of Mr. Benson’s criminals … I mean clients.”

  “Thanks for your concern,” I reply. “My understanding from Mr. Benson, regarding this new case, is that it involves a little girl, brain damaged as a result of what sounds like the injudicious monitoring of her sickle cell disease, not one of his criminal clients, which is why I say remote.”

  I turn to leave.

  “One moment, counselor.” It’s Judge Piccone, the one to the left of Judge Howell.

  Damn. What’s this guy got to say? He isn’t my assigned judge. The only reason he’s sitting in is so we won’t have to repeat the proceeding in the event the pacemakers of the other two fail before a decision can be made.

  I turn back around.

  “Counselor, you’d better hope I won’t be the one determining your punishment in the future,” Piccone declares. “Both you and Mr. Benson will then have a problem. He shouldn’t be taking cases that don’t have merit, but if he does it becomes your obligation to represent the client zealously, something you obviously have a problem with …”

  I agree. Nonetheless, a retort is invited by the nature of his sentence-ending pause. “So that’s the way it’s going to be, Your Honor? The trial court prevents me from quitting a phony case. A case that rightfully gets dismissed, at the risk of my losing my license, and this is how a member of the committee that rules on ethics thanks me?”

  “That’s right,” Judge Piccone replies. “I’m against cases without merit and against those involved.”

  “I’m against them, too. Isn’t that the reason why I’m here today?” I turn to my lawyer. “Let’s get out of here before I pop off at this pseudorighteous shit flake.”

  “Did you use a profanity toward me, counselor?”

  “No, Your Honor, I asked my lawyer if he was going to the White House clambake. He’s very political.” Piccone gives me a skeptical stare.

  I break the pause by giving him two finger snaps, Jerry Springer–style, and turn to go. The last I see, his gaze is still fixed on me.

  Piccone was known as a defendant-oriented judge when he sat on the bench, the kind of guy who would never know, unless it happened to him, the devastation and detriment that occurs to the injured and their families when insurance companies defend indefensible cases, thus withholding for years the money the plaintiffs deserve in a circumstance where life was permanently altered in an instant of reckless conduct.

  My lawyer and I recommence our exit journey. “Don’t be such a wiseass,” he warns.

  “How could anyone blame me for putting forth the truth of the matter?”

  “You know the truth carries little weight in legal proceedings.”

  “I know, but my life philosophy is ‘The truth will set you free.’ We’re walking, aren’t we?”

  We head down the stone steps of the Appellate Division. “Just stay out of trouble,” he cautions. “You’ve got an unbelievable practice going. Attorneys from all over the city still send you their injury cases despite your involvement with Benson.”

  “If I keep winning, they’ll keep sending. It’s all about results.” I point to the cart vendor. “You want some street meat? Some people think Papaya King on Eighty-Sixth and Third has the best dog in the city, but they got nothing on this guy. He grills, no dirty water, and they’re kosher.”

  He looks to the vendor, who just blew his nose in a paper napkin. “I’ll pass.”

  “Suit yourself. I feel compelled to eat a couple every time I leave that building as a tribute to continued licensure.” He grins. “Listen, I got to hop. I have to meet Henry to pick up that case I told Judge Howell about.” I salute my lawyer good-bye saying, “God bless America,” then pick up my commemorative dogs. I turn from the cart with my two grilled beauties, mustard and kraut, to flag a cab.

  What I see is too good. Even more tasty than what is in my hand. I can’t believe it. Adam Hellman is stepping out of a limo. I hate that asshole. He’s a showboat plaintiff’s attorney who gives our profession a bad name. I mean, who takes a limo to a disciplinary hearing? He’s a snake, too. He stole not one but two clients of mine by paying them off to switch attorneys. He’s leaning on the open door, gabbing into the limo. I bend down to see he’s talking with a young hottie all diamonded up. I can see the sparkles from here. A new girlfriend, no doubt, his having been divorced four times. I quickstep over. He doesn’t see my approach. I stop a foot behind him, holding my dogs to the side, out of harm’s way. I take a deep breath.

  “Adam!” I scream at the top of my lungs. He flies up into the air and almost falls upon landing between the elevation of curb and street. It feels good to startle the crap out of a guy like that. He gathers his balance and turns to me with a confused look on his face. A look that says, Why did you startle the crap out of me like that? So I accommodate. In my most excited of utterances.

  “You missed your hearing before the committee!” I yell out, causing alarm to infiltrate his nervous system. He turns white. He struggles to swallow the lump that just gathered in his throat. “They disbarred you!” I shout. “Summarily! For nonappearance!”

  “What! What!” he responds, in disbelief. “What did you just say, Wyler?�
� Called by my last name again. I hate that.

  “You heard me, man,” I state, taking a moment to bend down and flash the dogs at the hottie in the back so as to ask, Want one? Her brow rises with interest. Cool. She wants to bite my wiener. I stand to finish what I started. “You’ve been disbarred, man! Get in there!” I say, pointing to the courthouse. He takes off like a sprinter up the steps, falling three times and leaving a shoe behind before disappearing into the structure. I give a shrug, then casually slip into the backseat of the limo next to the hottie. I shut the door and lean forward.

  “James,” I say, talking to the limo driver, “I’m a friend of Adam’s. Could you run me downtown to the Village, please? I think he’ll be a while.” The driver puts the stretch into gear and pulls away from the curb. I turn to my left and undertake a quick profile. Blonde, light blue eyes, twentysomething, boobs out and about—she must be Eastern European. “Ivonka?” I ask.

  “No. My name is not Ivonka,” she responds, with a hard Russian accent. “It’s Ivonna.”

  “My bad, Ivonna. Are you Adam’s new girlfriend?”

  “Maybe,” she answers, holding her hand out in front of her, looking at the jewels on her flared fingers, then adjusts one of her very expensive rings.

  “Listen,” I say, with the rusty reflexes of a married man and the joy of having just stuck one to Adam, “if things don’t turn out too good back in there, I’m around town, honey. I don’t got a full head of hair like your boy, but skin is in, baby girl.” She looks at me like I’m some kind of idiot. I definitely make better opening statements in front of a jury where I’m given a fact pattern to work with.

  Five seconds later, after telling her my first name and then making an offering where something was lost in translation, I find myself stepping out of the limo, evicted. Before shutting the door I plead my case, as lawyers do.

  “I was talking about a hot dog, that wiener, and my name is Tug. I wasn’t asking you to—”

  “Shut door! Pig!”

  The Money, the Whole Money, and Nothing But the Money, So Help Me God

  I hop a cab. “Boca Coca Java Mundo Coffee Expressions, please, on Bleecker Street.” The cabbie gives me an inspecting look through his rearview. “Yeah, I know, buddy, I’m not hip enough to be hanging out there, but I got business to do and the guy I’m meeting is completing the second decade of his midlife crisis.” He ignores me, assuming he understood, starts the meter, and slowly pulls away from the curb, which I greatly appreciate, hating herky-jerky takeoffs.

  Boca Coca Java Mundo is a supercool downtown coffeehouse. It’s a social networking mecca and subculture to itself. The most beautiful and free-spirited young people in the city gather to peck on their laptops and socialize while sipping five-dollar coffees with eight-word descriptions. It’s the ultimate of trendy daytime environments, and I’m sure the old fellas will stick out more than I’d like. I’ll be arriving early so I’ll grab us a table in the corner.

  I enter Boca Coca, which I haven’t been to in fifteen years. I stopped coming to this Boca when I started going to the other, in Florida, where my in-laws live.

  On first glance, everything looks the same. The extralarge purple couches with orange and gold throw pillows are randomly scattered about just as I remember. The rich-looking, purple-stained, floor-to-ceiling wood shelving still runs the perimeter, stocked with hot-chocolate powders and coffee beans from around the world and hundreds of one-pound purple coffee bags containing their traditional blend.

  Everything is the same except for one thing—an oversized purple-and-orange lounge chair in the center of the place occupied by none other than Henry Benson.

  That chair was never there and it’s placed, or should I say displaced, in a highly visual location. It screams, Look at me, so I’m not surprised Henry has claimed it as his purple-and-orange throne, drawing the attention due a king.

  So much for the corner table.

  Henry Benson is a high-profile New York City criminal attorney who was forced to give up his injury practice by his professional insurance carrier because of a civil litigation “misadventure.” He committed malpractice in open court in front of his client. He still defends penal prosecutions, but now Henry refers his injured criminals seeking money damages to me.

  He chose me—a complete stranger—to take over his civil practice because his bigwig best friend, Dominic Keller, the self-proclaimed “king of all injury attorneys,” innocently told him he thought I was a phenom in the courtroom. The nonnegotiable deal was that I take all or none of Benson’s twenty-one injured criminals, based solely on his short verbal description of each case. And we split the fees fifty-fifty. Oh yeah, the other reason he chose me to handle his injured criminals was so he could tell his best friend, Dominic, to go fuck off, without actually telling him. It’s the case of Ego v. Ego.

  Forrest Gump would say a Henry Benson case is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. Each Benson case never really is what Benson’s verbal describes it to be or even what it appears to be after review of the file. Each comes with some built-in wrinkle and unapparent twist that offers the prior warning of a land mine you just stepped on.

  That said, the thing you do know about a box of chocolates is that each piece of candy comes with a chocolate-coated covering. And, the thing you know with Henry’s injured criminals—or HICs, as I’ve affectionately termed them—is that each HIC is a bona fide criminal who has been tried, convicted, and jailed for his felonious conduct.

  Before Benson singled me out to take over his HICs, I was making a good clean living. My maxim was, No one case is worth losing your license, your career, your self-respect, and the respect of others.

  My own clients had relatively pure and straightforward injury cases with none of the potential for blowing up in my face, and none were convicted felons. I was gaining recognition in the legal community as an up-and-coming plaintiff’s lawyer, and attorneys from all over the city were sending me their medical malpractice and general negligence cases. My practice was moving forward steadily, but unfortunately, my expenses were growing and my efforts weren’t exactly yielding retirement dough.

  So, despite hating anything to do with moral turpitude—which includes persons of perpetual criminal disposition with injury claims—I accepted Henry’s deal for the money, the whole money, and nothing but the money, so help me God. On the first case alone, just weeks after receiving all the HIC files, I made a bundle with very little effort.

  Since taking over Henry’s injury clients I’ve identified four fake cases. That makes nearly 25 percent of the whole. For those, I moved to be relieved as counsel, basing my application on attorney-client irreconcilable differences, because it’s an ethical violation to come straight-out and tell the judge that your client’s a fraud. You go figure that ethics code out. The Rules, yeah, right.

  On two of these four cases, relief was granted by the judge. On the other two, permission was denied, and I had to continue representing two plaintiffs I knew to be attempting fraud. For one, I have an offer of settlement to the tune of seventy-five thousand dollars, which sum my client has rejected against my legal advice. He wants an even hundred. I restated to him in the clearest terms my legal wisdom: hogs get slaughtered. The other case had been dismissed as a result of my intentional malpractice, which had landed me in front of the Disciplinary Committee this morning. That brings us up-to-date …

  … well, except for the fact that three HICs have threatened me with bodily harm, and on a fourth occasion, I had to wrestle my letter opener out of the murderous hands of a convicted killer attempting to repeat his offense. In any event, these are the basic costs involved in being an HIC lawyer in the city that never sleeps.

  I take in Henry’s stately appearance before I approach. Just under six feet, in his early sixties, Henry Benson is slender and seemingly in good shape. He shaves what remains of his hair with a number 1 clipper giving him the look of military strength. He has a strong jaw, large
ears, and a warrior’s Roman nose disproportionate to his smallish head, but altogether he’s a very good-looking man. He’s wearing cowboy boots, as always, with his blue pinstripe suit—which doesn’t work for me since I know he’s from Brooklyn. The one thing you can’t take away from Henry is his presence. It’s strong, masculine, and authoritative, and everyone gets it.

  He signals me to come with a firm wave and, as I approach his table, he looks over and around me to anybody and everybody. He wants to see who’s noticing him, which, of course, is status quo for a narcissistic egomaniac. I dismiss the thought of bowing, deciding instead to greet him standing tall.

  “Hi, Henry. I just got out of court on one of your cases.”

  “How much did we make?”

  “We didn’t make. It was a Disciplinary Committee hearing. I lost. It cost me twenty-five on the sanction and four thousand in legal bills.”

  “Take half out of this.” He hands me one of the four file folders that are sitting on the floor. It’s different, newer looking than the other three.

  I sit down with the folder in the skimpy chair waiting for me. “Am I going to get a verbal now?”

  “I’ve trained you well. Before I begin, do you want a Mega Boca Coca Java Mundo decaf skim latte?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  “Very well then. What’s that on your lapel?”

  “Mustard and kraut backlash. I tried to slip some hottie the dog.”

  He lifts a confused brow, then begins. “The case I just handed you is Betty and Bert Beecher. It’s a medical malpractice case I just settled for six hundred thousand dollars. Since I can’t practice civil law anymore, I naturally resolved the matter in claim. No formal lawsuit was brought, but I did allow the insurance company to take Betty and Bert’s preaction statements under oath.”

  “Henry, I thought—”

  Henry, angry, stops me cold. “What did I tell you about interrupting?”