The Rainmaker (7 page)

As he’s walking away, he stops and says, “Oh, listen. I’m an ex-cop, and I keep a scanner in my car. Had this weird call a few hours ago. Some guy named Rudy Baylor trashed a law office downtown. Description fits you. Same make and model on the car. Don’t suppose it fits.”

“And if it does?”

“None of my business, you know. But the cops are looking for you. Destruction of private property.”

“You mean, they’ll arrest me?”

“Yep. I’d find another place to sleep tonight.”

He ducks into his car, a BMW. I watch as he drives away.

BOOKER MEETS ME on the front porch of his neat duplex. He’s wearing a paisley bathrobe over his pajamas. No slippers, just bare feet. Booker may be only another impoverished law student counting the days until employment, but he’s serious about fashion. There’s not much hanging in his closet, but his wardrobe is carefully selected. “What the hell’s going on?” he asks tensely, his eyes still puffy. I called him from a pay phone at the Junior Food Mart around the corner.

“I’m sorry,” I say as we step into the den. I can see Charlene in the tiny kitchen, also in her paisley bathrobe, hair pulled back, eyes puffy, making coffee or something. I can hear a kid yelling somewhere in the back. It’s almost three in the morning, and I’ve wakened the whole bunch.

“Have a seat,” Booker says, taking my arm and gently shoving me onto the sofa. “You’ve been drinking.”

“I’m drunk, Booker.”

“Any particular reason?” He’s standing before me, much like an angry father.

“It’s a long story.”

“You mentioned the police.”

Charlene sets a cup of hot coffee on the table next to me. “You okay, Rudy?” she asks with the sweetest voice.

“Great,” I answer like a true smartass.

“Go check the kids,” Booker says to her, and she disappears.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. Booker sits on the edge of the coffee table, very close to me, and waits.

I ignore the coffee. My head is pounding. I unload my version of events since he and I left each other early yesterday afternoon. My tongue is thick and ponderous, so I take my time and try to concentrate on my narrative. Charlene eases into the nearest chair, and listens with great concern. “I’m sorry,” I whisper to her.

“It’s okay, Rudy. It’s okay.”

Charlene’s father is a minister, somewhere in rural Tennessee, and she has no patience for drunkenness or slovenly conduct. The few drinks Booker and I have shared together in law school have been on the sly.

“You drank two six-packs?” he asks with disbelief.

Charlene leaves to check on the child who’s begun squalling again from the back. I conclude with the process server, the lawsuit, the eviction. It’s just been a helluva day.

“I gotta find a job, Booker,” I say, gulping coffee.

“You got bigger problems right now. We take the bar in three months, then we face the screening committee. An arrest and conviction for this stunt could ruin you.”

I hadn’t thought about this. My head is splitting now, really pounding. “Could I have a sandwich?” I feel sick. I had a bag of pretzels with the second six-pack, but that’s been it since lunch with Bosco and Miss Birdie.

Charlene hears this in the kitchen. “How about some bacon and eggs?”

“Fine, Charlene. Thanks.”

Booker is deep in thought. “I’ll call Marvin Shankle in a few hours. He can call his brother, maybe pull some strings with the police. We have to prevent the arrest.”

“Sounds good to me.” Marvin Shankle is the most prominent black lawyer in Memphis, Booker’s future boss. “While you’re at it, ask him if he’s got any job openings.”

“Right. You want to go to work in a black civil rights firm.”

“Right now I’d take a job with a Korean divorce firm. No offense, Booker. I have to get a job. I’m looking at bankruptcy, man. There might be other creditors out there, just lurking in the bushes waiting to jump on me with papers. I can’t take it.” I slowly lie down on the sofa. Charlene’s frying bacon and the heavy aroma drifts through the tiny den.

“Where are the papers?” Booker asks.

“In the car.”

He leaves the room and returns in a minute. He sits in a chair nearby and studies the Texaco suit and the eviction notice. Charlene buzzes around the kitchen, brings me more coffee and aspirin. It’s three-thirty in the morning. The kids are finally quiet. I feel safe and warm, even loved.

My head is spinning slowly as I close my eyes and drift away.

Five

L
IKE A SNAKE CREEPING THROUGH THE undergrowth, I sneak into the law school well past noon and hours after both of my scheduled classes have broken up. Sports Law and Selected Readings from the Napoleonic Code, what a joke. I hide in my little pit in the remote corner of the library’s basement floor.

Booker woke me on the sofa with the hopeful news that he’d talked to Marvin Shankle and the wheels were turning downtown. A certain captain or such was being called, and Mr. Shankle was optimistic the matter could be worked out. Mr. Shankle’s brother is a judge in one of the criminal divisions, and if the charges couldn’t get dismissed then other strings would be pulled. But there is still no word on whether the cops are looking for me. Booker would make some more calls and keep me posted.

Booker already has an office in the Shankle firm. He’s clerked there for two years, working part-time and learning more than any five of the rest of us. He calls a secretary between classes, works diligently with his appointment
book, tells me about this client and that one. He’ll make a great lawyer.

It’s impossible to organize thoughts with a hangover. I scribble notes to myself on a legal pad, important things, like, now that I’ve made it into this building without being spotted, what next? I’ll wait a couple of hours here while the law school empties. It’s Friday afternoon, the slowest time of the week. Then I’ll ease down to the Placement Office and corner the director and spill my guts. If I’m lucky, there might be some obscure government agency which has been spurned by every other graduate and is still offering twenty thousand a year for a bright legal mind. Or maybe a small company has suddenly found the need for another in-house lawyer. At this point, there aren’t many maybes left.

There’s a legend in Memphis by the name of Jonathan Lake, a graduate of this law school who also could not find employment with the big firms downtown. Happened about twenty years ago. Lake was jilted by the established firms, so he rented some space, hung out a shingle, declared himself ready to sue. He starved for a few months, then crashed his motorcycle one night and woke up with a broken leg at St. Peter’s, the charity hospital. Not long afterward, the bed next to him was occupied by a guy who’d also crashed a motorcycle. This guy was all broken up and badly burned. His girlfriend was burned even worse, and died a couple of days later. Lake and this guy got to be friends. Lake signed up both cases. As things evolved, the driver of the Jaguar that ran the stop sign and hit the motorcycle upon which Lake’s new clients were riding just happened to be the senior partner for the third-largest law firm downtown. And he was the same guy who’d interviewed Lake six months earlier. And he was drunk when he ran the stop sign.

Lake sued with a vengeance. The drunk senior partner
had tons of insurance, which the company immediately began throwing at Lake. Everybody wanted a quick settlement. Six months after passing the bar exam, Jonathan Lake settled the cases for two point six million. Cash, no long-term payouts. Just up-front cash.

Legend holds that the biker told Lake while they were both laid up in the hospital that since Lake was so young and just out of school he could have half of whatever he recovered. Lake remembered this. The biker kept his word. Lake walked away with one point three, according to legend.

Me, I’d be off to the Caribbean with my one point three, sailing my own ketch and sipping rum punch.

Not Lake. He built an office, filled it with secretaries and paralegals and runners and investigators, and got serious about the business of litigation. He put in eighteen-hour days and was not afraid to sue anybody for any wrong. He studied hard, trained himself and quickly became the hottest trial lawyer in Tennessee.

Twenty years later, Jonathan Lake still works eighteen hours a day, owns a firm with eleven associates, no partners, tries more big cases than any lawyer around and makes, according to the legend, somewhere in the neighborhood of three million dollars a year.

And he likes to splash it around. Three million bucks a year is hard to hide in Memphis, so Jonathan Lake is always hot news. And his legend grows. Each year an unknown number of students enter this law school because of Jonathan Lake. They have the dream. And a few graduates leave this place without jobs because they want nothing more than a cubbyhole downtown with their name on the door. They want to starve and scratch, just like Lake.

I suspect they ride motorcycles too. Maybe that’s where I’m headed. Maybe there’s hope. Me and Lake.

I CATCH MAX LEUBERG at a bad time. He’s on the phone, talking with his hands and cursing like a drunken sailor. Something about a lawsuit in St. Paul in which he’s supposed to testify. I pretend to scribble notes, look at the floor, try not to listen as he stomps around behind his desk, tugging at the phone line.

He hangs up. “You got ’em by the neck, okay,” he says rapidly to me as he reaches for something amid the wreckage of his desk.

“Who?”

“Great Benefit. I read the entire file last night. Typical debit insurance scam.” He lifts an expandable file from a corner and falls into his chair with it. “Do you know what debit insurance is?”

I think I do, but I’m afraid he’ll want specifics. “Not really.”

“Blacks call it ‘streetsurance.’ Cheap little policies sold door to door to low-income people. The agents who sell the policies come around every week or so and collect the premiums, and they make a debit in the payment books kept by the insureds. They prey on the uneducated, and when claims are made on the policies the companies routinely turn them down. Sorry, no coverage for this reason or that. They’re extremely creative when conjuring up reasons to deny.”

“Don’t they get sued?”

“Not very often. Studies have shown that only about one in thirty bad-faith denials ends up in court. The companies know this, of course, it’s something they factor in. Keep in mind, they go after the lower classes, people afraid of lawyers and the legal system.”

“What happens when they get sued?” I ask. He waves his hand at a bug or fly and two sheets of something lift from his desk and drift to the floor.

He cracks his knuckles violently. “Generally, not much.

There have been some large punitive awards around the country. I’ve been involved with two or three myself. But juries are reluctant to make millionaires out of simple sorts who buy cheap insurance. Think about it. Here’s a plaintiff with, say, five thousand dollars in legitimate medical bills, clearly covered by the policy. But the insurance company says no. And the company is worth, say, two hundred million. At trial, the plaintiff’s lawyer asks the jury for the five thousand, and also a few million to punish the corporate wrongdoer. It rarely works. They’ll give the five, throw in ten thousand punitive, and the company wins again.”

“But Donny Ray Black is dying. And he’s dying because he can’t get the bone marrow transplant he’s entitled to under the policy. Am I right?”

Leuberg gives me a wicked smile. “You are indeed. Assuming his parents have told you everything. Always a shaky assumption.”

“But if everything’s right there?” I ask, pointing to the file.

He shrugs and nods and smiles again. “Then it’s a good case. Not a great one, but a good one.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Simple, Rudy. This is Tennessee. Land of the five-figure verdicts. Nobody gets punitive damages here. The juries are extremely conservative. Per capita income is pretty low, so the jurors have great difficulty making rich people out of their neighbors. Memphis is an especially tough place to get a decent verdict.”

I’ll bet Jonathan Lake could get a verdict. And maybe he’d give me a small slice if I brought him the case. In spite of the hangover, the wheels are turning upstairs.

“So what do I do?” I ask.

“Sue the bastards.”

“I’m not exactly licensed.”

“Not you. Send these folks to some hotshot trial lawyer downtown. Make a few phone calls on their behalf, talk to the lawyer. Write a two-page report for Smoot and you’ll be done with it.” He jumps to his feet as the phone rings, and shoves the file across the desk to me. “There’s a list in here of three dozen bad-faith cases you should read, just in case you’re interested.”

“Thanks,” I say.

He waves me off. As I leave his office, Max Leuberg is yelling into his phone.

LAW SCHOOL has taught me to hate research. I’ve lived in this place for three years now, and at least half of these painful hours have been spent digging through old worn books searching for ancient cases to support primitive legal theories no sane lawyer has thought about in decades. They love to send you on treasure hunts around here. The professors, almost all of whom are teaching because they can’t function in the real world, think it’s good training for us to track down obscure cases to put in meaningless briefs so that we can get good grades which will enable us to enter the legal profession as well-educated young lawyers.

This was especially true for the first two years of law school. Now it’s not so bad. And maybe the training has a method to its madness. I’ve heard thousands of stories about the big firms and their practice of enslaving green recruits to the library for two years to write briefs and trial memos.

All clocks stop when one does legal research with a hangover. The headache worsens. The hands continue to shake. Booker finds me late Friday in my little pit with a dozen open books scattered on my desk. Leuberg’s list of must-read cases. “How do you feel?” he asks.

Booker has on a coat and tie, and he’s no doubt been at
the office, taking calls and using the Dictaphone like a real lawyer. “I’m okay.”