The Litigators

CHAPTER 18


The minor charges against Trip were eventually dropped due to a lack of interest, though the court did require him to sign a statement promising to stay away from the firm of Finley & Figg and its lawyers. Trip vanished, but his ex-girlfriend did not.

DeeAnna arrived minutes before 5:00 p.m., her usual time. On this day, she was dressed like a cowgirl—skintight jeans, boots with pointed toes, a tight red blouse upon which she had neglected to fasten the top three buttons. “Is Wally in?” she cooed at Rochelle, who couldn’t stand her. The cloud of perfume caught up with her and settled into the room, causing AC to sniff, then growl and retreat even farther under the desk.

“He’s in,” Rochelle said dismissively.

“Thanks, dear,” DeeAnna said, trying to irritate Rochelle as much as possible. She strutted to Wally’s office and entered without knocking. A week earlier, Rochelle had instructed her to sit and wait like all the other clients. It was becoming apparent, though, that she had far more clout than the other clients, at least as far as Wally was concerned.

Once inside the office, DeeAnna walked into the arms of her lawyer, and after a long kiss with an embrace and the obligatory fondle Wally said, “You look great, baby.”

“All for you, baby,” she said.

Wally checked to make sure the door was locked, then returned to his swivel chair behind his desk. “I need to make two calls, then we’re outta here,” he said, drooling.

“Anything, baby,” she cooed, then she took a seat and pulled out a celebrity gossip magazine. She read nothing else and was as dumb as a rock, but Wally didn’t care. He refused to judge her. She’d had four husbands. He’d had four wives. Who was he to pass judgment? Right now, they were in the process of trying to kill each other in bed, and Wally had never been happier.

Outside, Rochelle was tidying up her desk, anxious to leave now that “that hooker” was in Mr. Figg’s office and who knew what they were doing in there. Oscar’s door opened, and he emerged, holding some paperwork. “Where’s Figg?” he asked, looking at Figg’s closed door.

“In there with a client,” Rochelle said. “Door’s bolted and locked.”

“Don’t tell me.”

“Yep. Third day in a row.”

“Are they still negotiating his fee?”

“Don’t know. He must’ve raised it.”

Though the fee was small—just a typical no-fault divorce case—Oscar was due a portion of it, but he wasn’t sure how to get his split when half was being paid on the sofa. He stared at Wally’s door for a moment, as if waiting for the sounds of passion, and, hearing none, turned to Rochelle and waved the papers. “Have you read this?”

“What is it?”

“It’s our agreement with Jerry Alisandros and Zell & Potter. Eight pages long, lots of fine print, already signed by my junior partner, obviously without being read in its entirety. Says here that we must contribute $25,000 to help front the litigation expenses. Figg never mentioned this to me.”

Rochelle shrugged. It was lawyer business, not hers.

But Oscar was hot. “Further, it says that we get a fee of 40 percent on each case, half of which goes to Zell & Potter. But in the fine print it says that a fee of 6 percent is paid to the Plaintiffs’ Litigation Committee, a little bonus to the big shots for their hard work, and the 6 percent comes off the top of the settlement and out of our portion. So, as I figure it, we lose 6 percent off the top, and that gives us 34 percent to split with Alisandros, who of course will get a chunk of the 6 percent. Does this make sense to you, Ms. Gibson?”

“No.”

“That makes two of us. We’re getting screwed right and left, and now we must put up $25,000 for litigation expenses.” Oscar’s cheeks were red, and he kept looking at Wally’s door, but Wally was safe inside.

David came down the steps and walked into the conversation. “Have you read this?” Oscar asked angrily, waving the contract.

“What is it?”

“Our contract with Zell & Potter.”

“I looked over it,” David said. “It’s pretty straightforward.”

“Oh, it is? Did you read the part about the $25,000 up-front money for expenses?”

“Yes, and I asked Wally about that. He said we’d probably just go to the bank, hit the firm’s line of credit, then pay it back when we settle.”

Oscar looked at Rochelle, who looked back at Oscar. Both were thinking, What line of credit?

Oscar started to speak, then abruptly wheeled around and returned to his office, slamming the door after himself. “What’s that all about?” David asked.

“We don’t have a line of credit,” Rochelle said. “Mr. Finley’s worried that the Krayoxx litigation will backfire and kill us financially. This wouldn’t be the first time one of Figg’s schemes blew up in our faces, but it could certainly be the biggest.”

David glanced around and took a step closer. “Can I ask you something, in confidence?”

“I don’t know,” she said, taking a cautious step back.

“These guys have been at this game for a long time. Thirty plus years for Oscar, twenty plus for Wally. Do they have some money stashed away somewhere? You don’t see any around the office, so I figured they must have some buried.”

Rochelle glanced around too, then said, “I don’t know where the money goes when it leaves here. I doubt if Oscar has a dime because his wife spends everything. She thinks she’s a cut or two above and wants to play that game. Wally, who knows? I suspect he’s as broke as I am. But they do own the building free and clear.”

David couldn’t help but look at the cracks in the ceiling plaster. Let it go, he told himself.

“Just curious,” David said.

There was a shriek of female laughter from deep inside Mr. Figg’s office.

“I’m leaving,” David said, grabbing his overcoat.

“Me too,” Rochelle said.

Everyone was gone when Wally and DeeAnna emerged. They quickly turned off the lights, locked the front door, and got in her car. Wally was delighted to have not only a new squeeze but also one who was willing to drive. He had six weeks left on his suspension, and with Krayoxx so hot he needed to be mobile. DeeAnna had jumped at the chance to earn referral fees—$500 cash for a death case and $200 for a non-death—but what really thrilled her was listening to Wally’s predictions of taking down Varrick Labs in a massive settlement that would bring in huge fees for him (and perhaps something for her as well, though this wasn’t exactly out in the open yet). More often than not, their pillow talk drifted away to the world of Krayoxx and all it could mean. Her third husband had taken her to Maui, and she loved the beach. Wally had already promised a vacation in paradise.

At that stage of their involvement, Wally would have promised her anything.

“Where to, dear?” she said, racing away from the office. She was a dangerous driver in a little Mazda convertible, and Wally knew his chances would be slim in a collision. “Just take it easy,” he said, ratcheting down the seat belt. “Let’s go north, toward Evanston.”

“Are we hearing from these people?” she asked.

“Oh yes. Lots of phone calls.” And Wally wasn’t lying—his cell phone rang constantly with inquiries from people who had picked up his little “Beware of Krayoxx!” brochure. He had printed ten thousand and was littering Chicago with them. He tacked them on bulletin boards in Weight Watchers meeting rooms, VFW posts, bingo parlors, hospital waiting rooms, and the restrooms of fast-food restaurants—anywhere the shrewd mind of Wally Figg thought there might be people battling high cholesterol.

“So how many cases do we have?” she asked.

Wally did not miss the “we” part of her question. He wasn’t about to tell her the truth. “Eight death cases, several hundred non-death, but they have to be tested first. I’m not sure every non-death case is really a case. Gotta find some damage to the heart before we take on the case.”

“How do you do that?” They were flying along the Stevenson, dodging traffic, most of which she didn’t appear to notice. Wally was ducking with each near miss. “Take it easy, DeeAnna, we’re not in a hurry,” he said.

“You’re always bitching about my driving,” she said as she gave him a long, sad look.

“Just watch the road. And slow down.”

She eased off the gas and pouted for a few minutes. “As we were saying, how do you know if these people have been damaged?”

“We’ll hire a doctor to screen them. Krayoxx weakens the heart valves, and there are some tests that can tell us if a client has been harmed by the drug.”

“How much are the tests?” she asked. Wally was noticing a growing curiosity into the economics of their Krayoxx litigation, and it was slightly irksome.

“About a thousand bucks a pop,” he said, though he had no idea. Jerry Alisandros had assured him that Zell & Potter had already retained the services of several doctors who were screening potential clients. These doctors would be made available to Finley & Figg in the near future, and once the testing began, their pool of non-death clients would expand greatly. Alisandros was on a jet every day zipping across the country, meeting with lawyers like Wally, piecing together big lawsuits here and there, hiring experts, plotting trial strategies, and, most important, hammering away at Varrick and its lawyers. Wally felt honored to be a player in such a high-stakes game.

“That’s a lot of money,” DeeAnna said.

“Why are you so concerned about the money?” Wally snapped, glancing down at her unbuttoned cowgirl shirt.

“I’m sorry, Wally. You know I’m the nosy type. This is all so exciting and stuff, and, well, it’ll be so awesome when Varrick starts writing those big checks.”

“That could be a long way off. Let’s just concentrate on rounding up the clients.”

At the Finley home, Oscar and his wife, Paula, were watching a M*A*S*H rerun on cable when they were suddenly confronted with the shrill voice and anxious face of a lawyer named Bosch, who was no stranger to cable commercials in the Chicago market. For years, Bosch had been pleading for car wrecks and tractor-trailer accident victims and cases involving asbestos and other products, and now, evidently, Bosch had become an expert on Krayoxx. He thundered on about the dangers of the drug and said vile things about Varrick Labs, and throughout the entire thirty seconds his phone number was pulsating across the bottom of the screen.

Oscar watched with great curiosity but said nothing.

Paula said, “Have you ever thought about advertising on television, Oscar? Seems like your firm needs to do something to get more business.”

This was not a new conversation. For thirty years, Paula had dispensed unsolicited advice on how to run the law office, a place that would never generate enough in revenue to satisfy her.

“It’s very expensive,” Oscar said. “Figg wants to pursue it. I’m skeptical.”

“Well, you certainly couldn’t put Figg on television, could you? That would scare away every potential client for a hundred miles. I don’t know, the ads just seem so unprofessional.”

Typical of Paula. TV advertising might bring in some business, and at the same time it was unprofessional. Was she for it or against it? Neither, or both? Oscar didn’t know, and he’d stopped caring years earlier.

“Doesn’t Figg have some Krayoxx cases?” she asked.

“A few, yes,” Oscar grunted. She did not know that Oscar, as well as David, had signed the lawsuit and was responsible for its prosecution. She did not know that the firm was on the line for litigation expenses. Paula’s only concern was the paltry monthly draw brought home by Oscar.

“Well, I discussed it with my doctor, and he says the drug is fine. It keeps my cholesterol under two hundred. I am not getting off the drug.”

“Then you should not,” he said. If Krayoxx did in fact kill people, he wanted her to keep taking the full daily dosage.

“But there are lawsuits everywhere, Oscar. I’m still not convinced. Are you?”

She’s loyal to the drug, but she’s worried about the drug.

“Figg is convinced the drug causes damages,” Oscar said. “A lot of big law firms agree, and they’re going after Varrick. The general feeling is that the company will settle before going to trial. Too much at risk.”

“So, if there’s a settlement, what happens to Figg’s cases?”

“They’re all death cases, so far. Eight of them. If they settle, then we’ll collect some nice fees.”

“How nice?”

“It’s impossible to say.” Oscar was already making plans. If and when the settlement talk became serious, he would move out, file for divorce, then try to keep her away from his Krayoxx money.

“But I doubt they’ll settle,” he said.

“Why not? Bosch here says there might be a big settlement.”

“Bosch is an idiot, and he proves it every day. These big pharmaceuticals usually go to trial a few times to test the waters. If they get hammered by juries, then they start settling. If they win, they keep trying the cases until the plaintiffs’ lawyers give up. This could take years.”

Don’t get your hopes up, dear.

David and Helen Zinc had been almost as amorous as Wally and DeeAnna. With David working shorter hours and their newfound energy, it had taken less than a week to become pregnant. Now that David was home at a decent hour every night, they made up for lost time. They had just finished a session and were lying in bed watching late-night TV when Bosch appeared on their screen.

When he was gone, Helen said, “Looks like a frenzy.”

“Oh yes. Wally’s out there somewhere right now, littering the streets with brochures. It would be easier to advertise on television, but we can’t afford it.”

“Thank God for that. I really don’t want to see you on-screen fighting it out with the likes of Benny Bosch.”

“I think I’d be a natural as a TV lawyer. ‘Have you been injured?’ ‘We fight for you.’ ‘Insurance companies fear us.’ Whatta you think?”

“I think your friends at Rogan Rothberg would howl with laughter.”

“I have no friends there. Only bad memories.”

“You’ve been gone, what, a month?”

“Six weeks and two days, and I have not, for one moment, wanted to go back.”

“And how much have you earned with your new firm?”

“Six hundred and twenty dollars, and counting.”

“Well, we do have an expansion under way. Have you thought about future earnings, things like that? You walked away from $300,000 a year, fine. But we can’t live on $600 a month.”

“Do you doubt me?”

“No, but a little reassurance would be nice.”

“Okay. I promise you I’ll make enough money to keep us happy and healthy. All three of us. Or four, or five, or whatever.”

“And how do you plan to do this?”

“TV. I’ll go on the air to find Krayoxx victims,” David said, laughing. “Me and Bosch. Whatta you think?”

“I think you’re crazy.”

They were both laughing, then groping.