Stop it! Go away!
My God, did I say that aloud? I wondered.
Glanced at Alicia. No. She was lost in whatever place she goes to at times like this.
But Red didn’t go away.
And it was over. Snap. Alicia seemed surprised a little at the speed. Not that she seemed to care. Sex feeds women many different courses, like tapas, where a man wants a single entrée to wolf down and wolf fast.
After, we dozed and I awoke thinking I was still empty somehow and thought about the Toy Room, taking her there.
Yes? I’d wondered. No?
Then I told her to leave.
Goodbye, goodbye.
Nothing more than those words.
And she left.
Now I find my phone, listen to a voice mail message from my brother. “Yo. Next Sunday. Anjelika or Film Forum? David Lynch or The Man Who Fell to Earth? Your call. Ha, no actually it’s my call. ’Cause it’s me who dialed you!”
Love to hear his voice. Like mine, yet not like mine.
I then wonder what to do with my wakefulness. There are plenty of plans I have to consider for tomorrow. But instead I fumble through the bedside table drawer. Find the diary and continue writing passages. I’m transcribing, actually, from the MP3 player. It’s always easier to talk, let the thoughts fly like bats at dusk, going where they will. Then write it down later.
These passages from the difficult days, the high school days. Who isn’t glad to have left those times behind? I write in pretty good script. The nuns. They weren’t bad, most of them. But when they insisted, you listened, you practiced, you pleased them.
Well. What a day. At school until four. Civics club project. Mrs. Hooper was happy about my work. Took the secret way home. Longer but better (know why? Obvious). Past the house that drapes out cobwebs at Halloween, past the pond that seems smaller every year, past Marjorie’s house, where I saw her that one time blouse open and she never knew.
Was hoping, praying I’d get home today okay and I think I will. But then there they are.
Sammy and Franklin. They’re walking away from Cindy Hanson’s house. Cindy could be a fashion model. So pretty. Sam and Frank, so handsome, are the sort could go out with her. I don’t even talk to her. I don’t exist to her, I’m not on this planet. Complexion clear but too skinny too gawky too awkward. That’s okay. That’s the way the world works.
Sam and Frank have never slugged me, pushed me down, rubbed my face in dirt or dog shit. But never been alone with them. Know they’ve looked at me some, well, of course, they have. Everybody in school has. If this was Duncan or Butler, I’d get whaled on, the crap totally beaten out of me, cause there aren’t any witnesses around. So I guess same is going to happen with them. They’re shorter than me, who isn’t? But stronger and I can’t fight, don’t know how. Flail, that’s what somebody said I was doing. I looked silly. Asked Dad to help. He didn’t. Put on a boxing show on TV and left me to watch it. Lotta good that did.
So now, getting beat up.
Because there aren’t any witnesses around.
No way I can turn. I just keep walking. Waiting for the fists. And they’re grinning. What the boys in school always do before the hitting.
But they don’t hit. Sam’s like hi, and asks if I live near here. A couple blocks away, I tell him. So they know now this is a really weird way for me to get home from school, but they don’t say anything.
He just says nice neighborhood here. Frank says he lives closer to the tracks which is noisy and it kind of sucks. Which I don’t say. Of course.
Then from Frank: Dude. Epic in class today.
I’m like I can’t say anything. What he means is Mrs. Rich’s class. Calc. She called on me because I was looking out the window, which she does when somebody’s looking out the window to embarrass them and without looking back I said g(1) = h(1) + 7 = -10.88222 + 7 = -3.88222.
Yeah, one of them says, Loved her face, Mrs. Bitch. You owned her, man.
Epic.
“See you ’round.” From Sam. And they just walk away.
I don’t get whaled on or spit on. Or told dick bod, skinny bean, all of that.
Nothing.
A good day. Today was a good day.
I pause the recorder and sip some water. Then ease down beside Alicia, still in bed. I used to think I would date a blind woman. Tried it out, but couldn’t find one. They don’t use personals. Maybe it’s too risky. Blind women wouldn’t care about too tall, too skinny, long face, long fingers, long feet. Skinny worm freak. Skinny bean boy. Slim Jim. So, a blind woman was my plan. But didn’t work out. I meet somebody occasionally. It works okay for what it is. Then it ends.
It always ends. It will end with Alicia too.
I think of the Toy Room.
Then I’m back to the diary, transcribing again, ten minutes, twenty.
The ups and downs of life, recorded forever. Just like my mementos on the shelves in the Toy Room: I remember the joy or sadness or anger surrounding each one.
Today was a good day.
WEDNESDAY II
THE INTERN
CHAPTER 6
Mr. Rhyme, an honor.”
Not sure how to respond to that. A nod seemed appropriate. “Mr. Whitmore.”
No nudge to first names. Rhyme had learned, however, that his was Evers.
The attorney might have been transplanted from the 1950s. He wore a dark-blue suit, gabardine, a white shirt whose collar and cuffs were starched to plastic. The tie, equally stiff, was the shade of blue that couldn’t quite give up violet and was narrow as a ruler. A white rectangle peeked from the jacket’s breast pocket.
Whitmore’s face was long and pallid and so expressionless Rhyme thought for a moment that he had Bell’s Palsy or some paralysis of the cranial nerves. Just as that conclusion was reached, though, his brow furrowed ever so slightly as he took in the parlor and its CSI accoutrements.
Rhyme realized that the man seemed to be waiting for an invitation to sit. Rhyme told him to do so and, smoothing his trousers and unbuttoning his jacket, Whitmore picked a chair close by and lowered himself onto it. Perfectly upright. He removed his glasses, cleaned the round lenses with a dark-blue cloth and replaced both, on nose and in pocket respectively.
Upon meeting Rhyme, visitors generally reacted in one of two ways. The majority were stricken nearly dumb, blushing, to be in the company of a man 90 percent of whose body was immobile. Others would joke and banter about his condition. This was tedious, though preferable to the former.
Some—Rhyme’s partiality—upon meeting him would glance once or twice at his body, and move on, undoubtedly the same way they would assess potential in-laws: We’ll withhold judgment till we get to the substance. This is what Whitmore now did.
“Do you know Amelia?” Rhyme asked.
“No. I’ve never met Detective Sachs. We have a mutual friend, a classmate of ours from high school. Brooklyn. Fellow attorney. She called Richard initially and asked him to consider the case but he doesn’t do personal injury law. He gave her my number.”
The narrowness of his face accentuated its pensive expression, and Rhyme was surprised to hear that he and Sachs were roughly the same age. He’d have thought Whitmore a half-dozen years older.
“When she called me about taking on a possible case and told me that you were free to be an expert witness, I was surprised.”
Rhyme considered the time line implicit in his comment. Apparently Sachs had committed Rhyme to be a consultant before she’d confessed to him this was the reason she’d driven from the widow’s house in Brooklyn to the parlor here last night.
I came by to ask you something. I need a favor . . .
“But of course I’m pleased that you’re available. All wrongful death litigation involves thorny evidentiary matters. And I know that will be particularly true in this case. You have quite the reputation.” He looked around. “Is Detective Sachs here?”
“No, she’s downtown. Working a homicide case. But last night she told me about your client. Sandy, that’s her name?”
“The widow. Mrs. Frommer, yes. Sandy.”
“Her situation’s as bad as Amelia told me?”
“I don’t know what she told you.” A precise correction of Rhyme’s imprecision. He doubted Whitmore would be fun to share a beer with but he would be a good man to have as your counselor, especially when cross-examining the other side. “But I’ll confirm that Mrs. Frommer is facing some very difficult times. Her husband had no life insurance and he hadn’t worked full-time for some years. Mrs. Frommer works for a housecleaning service but only part-time. They’re in debt. Significant debt. They have some distant family but nobody is in a position to help much financially. One cousin can provide temporary shelter—in a garage. I’ve been practicing personal injury law for years and I can tell you that for many clients a recovery is a windfall; in Mrs. Frommer’s case, it’s a necessity.
“Now, Mr. Rhyme . . . Excuse me, you were a captain on the police force, right? Should I call you that?”
“No, Lincoln is fine.”
“Now, I would like to tell you what our situation is.”
There was a robotic element to him. Not irritating. Just plain odd. Maybe juries liked it.
Whitmore opened his old-fashioned briefcase—again, circa the 1950s —and withdrew some unlined white sheets. He uncapped a pen (not a fountain pen, Rhyme was mildly surprised to see) and in the smallest handwriting that was still possible for the unaided eye to read, he wrote what seemed to the date and the parties present, the subject of the meeting. Unlined paper, yes, but the ascenders and descenders of the characters were as even as if they butted into a ruler.
He looked at the sparse notes, seemed satisfied and lifted his gaze.
“I intend to file suit in New York trial court—the Supreme Court, as you know.”
The forum, the lowest in the state, despite the lofty name, handled criminal cases as well as civil suits; Rhyme had testified there a thousand times as an expert witness for the prosecution.
“The complaints will be for wrongful death on the part of the widow, Mrs. Frommer. And their child.”
“A teenage boy, right?”
“No. Twelve.”
“Ah, yes.”
“And for pain and suffering on behalf of Mr. Frommer’s estate. My understanding is that he survived for perhaps ten minutes in extreme agony. That recovery will, as I say, go into his estate and enure to the benefit of whoever is mentioned in his testamentary documents or according to determination of the probate court if he had no will. In addition, I will be filing suit on behalf of Mr. Frommer’s parents, whose support, to the extent he was able, he was contributing to. That will also be a wrongful death action.”
This was perhaps the least flamboyant, if not the most boring, attorney Rhyme had ever met.
“The ad damnum in my complaint—the demand for damages—is, frankly speaking, outrageously high. Thirty million for the wrongful death, twenty million for pain and suffering. We could never recover that. But I picked those sums merely to get the defendants’ attention and to create a little publicity for the case. I don’t intend to go to trial.”
“No?”
“No. Our situation is a little unusual. Because of the absence of insurance and any other financial support for Mrs. Frommer and her son, they need a settlement quickly. A trial could take a year or more. They’d be destitute by then. They’ll need money for shelter, the youngster’s education, to buy health insurance, for necessaries. After we present a solid case against the defendants, and I indicate a willingness to reduce the demand considerably, I believe they’ll write some checks that are minuscule to them but sizable to Mrs. Frommer, and roughly in the amount that sees sufficient justice done.”
He’d be at home in a Dickens novel, Rhyme decided. “Seems like a reasonable strategy. Now, can we talk about the evidence?”
“A moment, please.” Evers Whitmore was going to steam forward true to the course he’d set, no matter what. “First, I would like to explain to you the intricacies of the relevant law. Are you familiar with tort law?”
It was obvious that whether he said yes, no or maybe was irrelevant. Attorney Whitmore was going to make him familiar.
“Not really, no.”
“I’ll give you an overview. Tort law deals with harm caused by the defendant to the plaintiff, other than a breach of contract. The word comes from—”
“Latin for ‘twisted’? Tortus.” Rhyme had an affection for the classics.
“Indeed.” Whitmore was neither impressed at Rhyme’s knowledge nor disappointed that he’d missed an opportunity to expound. “Car accidents, libel and slander, hunting accidents, lamps catching fire, toxic spills, plane crashes, assault—threatening to hit a person—and battery—actually hitting them. Those are often conflated. Even intentional murder, which can be both criminal and civil.”
O. J. Simpson, thought Rhyme.
Whitmore said, “So a tortious action for wrongful death and personal injury. The first step is to find our defendant—who exactly is responsible for Mr. Frommer’s death? Our best hope is that it’s the escalator and not some outside party. Under tort law anyone injured by a product—anything, an appliance, car, drug, escalator—has a much easier time proving the case. In nineteen sixty-three a justice on the California Supreme Court created a cause of action called strict products liability—to shift the burden of loss from an injured consumer to the manufacturer even when it wasn’t negligent. In strict liability all you need to show is that the product was defective and injured the plaintiff.”
“What constitutes a defect?” Rhyme asked, finding himself reluctantly intrigued by the lecture.
“A key question, Mr. Rhyme. A defect can be that it was badly designed, that it had a weakness or flaw in the manufacturing or that there was a failure to adequately warn the consumer of dangers. Have you seen a baby stroller lately?”
Why would I? Rhyme’s lips formed a faint smile.
Whitmore seemed immune to irony and continued, “You’d appreciate the sticker: Remove infant before folding stroller closed. I’m not making that up. Of course, yes, it’s called strict liability but not absolute. There does have to be a defect. Someone who uses a chain saw to attack a victim, for instance, is an intervening cause. The plaintiff can’t sue the saw manufacturer for an assault like that.
“Now, to our case: The first question is, Whom do we sue? Was there a design or manufacturing flaw in the Midwest Conveyance escalator itself? Or was it in good working order and the mall management company, a cleaning crew or a separate maintenance company was negligent in repairing or maintaining it? Did a worker not latch it closed last time it was opened? Did someone manually open the panel while Mr. Frommer was on it? Did the general contractor who built the mall render the unit dangerous? The subcontractor who installed the escalator? What about component parts manufacturers? What about the mall cleaning staff? Were they working for an independent contractor or employees of the mall? This is where you come in.”
