Riding the Corporate Ladder (Indigo)

Mr. Fogarty wore the frustrated look of a caged animal. He slammed the newspaper down hard on the desk and grunted loudly. He glared at his attorney, but Deena Newman didn’t flinch at all, even though she gave up at least one hundred and fifty pounds to this walrus. In fact, Deena was more concerned about her new desk than anything else.

All of the furniture in her office was sleek and fresh, still in mint condition. She had tables with gleaming black glass. A smooth lacquer sealed all of the cherry wood finishes. If this asshole put the first scratch on her desktop, Deena would curse him out thoroughly. But Mr. Fogarty was very close to panic, so she tolerated his foolishness.

And it wasn’t like there wasn’t a legitimate cause for alarm: The newspaper headline stared up at them menacingly, like the cold leer of death.

MAN SUES BEVERAGE COMPANY AFTER
INGESTING CONTAMINATED SODA

“Sit down,” Deena suggested.

Mr. Fogarty exhaled loudly before taking her advice. This afternoon he wore a gray seersucker suit with a white shirt and a tan tie. He had a large, round belly that shaded his feet and his seldom-pleased penis. But it wasn’t just his gut; Mr. Fogarty was an all around
big
guy. He sat across from her and roughly wiped his forehead with a hankie he kept handy for just such an occasion. He leaned forward and poked the paper with a pudgy index finger.

“Do you see this? Do you see?”

Deena watched his jowls billow, and then she nodded slowly.

Mr. Fogarty had a huge moustache and a bad comb-over. He was smart, but there’s no way a large corporation like Fizz Cola would have hired him as a
representative
—if not for the fact that he was married to the CEO’s equally corpulent daughter. Mr. Fogarty was well paid, but in Deena’s eyes he was a joke.

Do you see this? Do you see?

This guy was sitting in an office on the ninth floor of the third largest law firm in North America. Reagor, Crawford, and Epstein represented huge enterprises like Campbell, Del Monte, and Boeing. Did Mr. Fogarty think he was going to get anything less than the best just because a black woman was sitting across from him?

Of course
Deena had seen the headline already. She had two papers delivered to her home each morning, and the story was in both of them. The bad press may have had Fizz Cola executives squirming in their seats, but Deena leaned back in her leather chair and crossed her legs nonchalantly.

“Mr. Fogarty, this isn’t something you need to worry about,” she said.

Today Deena wore a brown pants suit with a red blouse and red pumps. Crimson always looked good next to her auburn-colored skin, but Miss Newman was good-looking regardless of her color scheme.

She was thirty-five years old, five feet, three inches tall, and 120 pounds. She didn’t have huge breasts or an
exceptional
ass, but Deena couldn’t walk down the street without catching eyes—of males and females. She had full lips and large eyes that were naturally hazel. Even with her shoulder-length hair pulled back in a ponytail at work, she was stunning, even captivating.

Deena had a brain, too, but most men never cared to know about that.

“Wha-why is this not something I should worry about?” Mr. Fogarty asked. The recent stress from his company’s legal troubles had his eyes puffy and bloodshot.

Deena could smell his breath across the desk, and it reminded her of stale coffee. His body odor was starting to fill her nostrils as well, but Deena would never let on how disgusted she was. Deceiving men is the easiest thing in the world to do. Half the time, all you have to do is smile.

So Deena smiled and hefted her briefcase from the floor. She carefully placed it on her desk and popped it open, talking as she worked.

“Your bottling plant is as clean as they come,” she assured him. “I don’t believe you shipped out any contaminated sodas.”

Mr. Fogarty nodded religiously. “We-we didn’t. There’s
no way
.”

“I don’t believe your sodas got contaminated at the warehouse, either,” Deena said.

He shook his head. “No. No, ma’am.”

“Travis Presley says he bought the soda at the Wal-Mart near the Altamesa and Crowley intersection,” Deena went on. “And I don’t believe the soda got contaminated there, either.”

Mr. Fogarty’s eyes narrowed, and Deena knew what he was thinking: Believing and
proving
are two different things.

She produced a manila folder and handed it over the desk. “These are toxicology reports from the can he took to the hospital.”

Mr. Fogarty took the papers, but Deena didn’t wait for him to decipher the complicated chemistry.

“Urine,” she said. “The contaminant in your soda was
urine
.”

Her big client looked up at her and knitted his eyebrows. “Pee?”

Deena chuckled. “All right,
pee
.”

He shook his head. “But…but how?”

“Well…” Deena produced another folder. “Mr. Presley is going to say an animal, most likely a rat, contaminated his soda before you sealed the can.”

“That’s not possible.”

“I know,” Deena said. “And the fact that not one other consumer has complained makes his story even more ridiculous.”

Mr. Fogarty grinned for the first time, happy to hear his lawyer so confident.

“But it’s not animal urine anyway,” Deena said. “According to the toxicology reports, it came from a
human
.”

“Puh-people pee?”

Deena nodded. She took a photograph from the folder and laid it out face up in front of her client. “I think it’s his, um,
pee
,” she said.

Mr. Fogarty leaned forward and scrutinized the picture without touching it, as if there might be urine on it also.

“Who…who is this?” he asked after a while.

The snapshot was candid, but it was good; close-up and not blurred. It featured a wheelchair bound man waiting to cross a busy downtown intersection. The man wore a blue baseball cap with long hair flowing from the sides and back, but you could still see his face clearly. He wore a look of desperation that was so poignant, you could feel it.

“That’s
William
Presley,” Deena said. “He’s the brother of our complainant.”

Deena produced another photo—this one had the two men together. It was taken outside of the apartment the Presley brothers shared on the north side of town. Neither of them wore caps, and their resemblance was unmistakable.

Mr. Fogarty had no idea what he was looking at.

“The complainant’s brother has been in a wheelchair since the twelfth grade,” Deena informed him. “He wears a colostomy bag and uses a catheter when he sleeps. I’m pretty sure the urine found in Travis’ soda can came from his brother’s catheter.”

Mr. Fogarty liked what he was hearing, but he was grossed out as well. He looked like he swallowed a mouthful of bad milk.

“He contaminated our soda
himself
?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Deena said. She brought more papers from her briefcase. “This is a lawsuit he filed in Louisiana back in ’93. And…here’s the article they wrote up in
The Daily Comet
.”

Mr. Fogarty smiled broadly as he read the old headline:

MAN SUES LOCAL FOOD CHAIN
OVER CONTAMINATED BEEF

“Guess what contaminant
they
found in his steak,” Deena prompted.

Mr. Fogarty couldn’t have been more pleased. “Urine?”

“I’m pretty sure that came from his brother’s catheter, too,” Deena confirmed.

Mr. Fogarty snatched up the Louisiana casework and looked it over quickly.

“So…so what happened with this one?”

“They got Mr. Presley to drop the suit, mainly because the defense attorney found out about these…”

Deena’s last file folder was the thickest. She pulled out one paper-clipped stack of court proceedings at a time and laid them on her desk. She watched Mr. Fogarty’s smile become more and more jolly as he read the coversheets:

Presley vs. The Men’s Warehouse

Presley vs. 7-11

Presley vs. Family Dollar

Presley vs. Bennigan’s

Presley vs. Tom Thumb

Presley vs. Albertsons

Presley vs. 7-11

Presley vs. Lafayette Bar & Grill