Before he was a week old, one of her brothers had tagged him with the nickname “Tiny,” and he’d been known by that name since. She thought of him fondly as “Tonto,” which seemed fitting. Like the Tonto in old Western movies, he was her tagalong, a loyal and faithful side-kick. He was thirty-five years old now, with a flat nose, deep-set eyes, and a smooth baby face. He wore his dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, exposing ears set low on his head. He wasn’t an easy child, but she’d devoted her life to him.
By the time he was in the special-education equivalent of sixth grade, he weighed 180 pounds and had a doctor’s standing order excusing him from PE. He was hyperactive and aggressive, given to temper tantrums and destructiveness when thwarted. He’d done poorly through grade school and junior high because he suffered a learning disorder that made reading difficult. More than one school counselor suggested he was mildly retarded, but Solana scoffed. If he had trouble concentrating in class, why blame him? It was the teacher’s fault for not doing her job better. It was true he had a speech problem, but she had no trouble understanding him. He’d been held back twice—in the fourth grade and again in the eighth—and finally dropped out in his sophomore year of high school the day he turned eighteen. His interests were limited, and this, coupled with his size, precluded his holding a regular job, or any kind of job at all. He was strong and useful, but he really wasn’t cut out for much in the way of work. She was his sole support and that suited them both.
She turned the page and checked the “Help Wanted.” She missed the ad at first glance, but something made her scan the entries again. There it was, near the top, a ten-line ad for a part-time private-duty nurse for an elderly female dementia patient who needed skilled care. “Dependable, reliable, own transportation,” the ad read. Not a word about honest. There was an address and phone number listed. She’d see what information she could solicit before she actually went out for an interview. She liked having the opportunity to evaluate the situation in advance so she could decide if it was worth her while.
She picked up the phone and dialed the number.
4
At 10:45 I had an appointment to discuss a case that was actually my prime concern. The week before, I’d had a call from an attorney named Lowell Effinger, who was representing the defendant in a personal-injury suit filed as the result of a two-car accident seven months earlier. The previous May, on the Thursday before the Memorial Day weekend, his client, Lisa Ray, driving her white 1973 Dodge Dart, had been making a left-hand turn out of one of the City College parking lots when she was struck by an oncoming van. Lisa Ray’s vehicle was badly damaged. Police and paramedics were called. Lisa suffered a bump to the head. The paramedics examined her and suggested a trip to the ER at St. Terry’s. Though shaken and upset, she declined medical assistance. Apparently, she couldn’t bear the idea of waiting hours, just to be sent home with a set of cautions and a prescription for a mild pain reliever. They told her what to watch for in terms of a possible concussion and advised her to see her own physician if needed.
The driver of the van, Millard Fredrickson, was rattled but essentially unhurt. His wife, Gladys, sustained the bulk of the injuries, and she insisted on being taken to St. Terry’s, where the findings of the ER physician indicated a concussion, severe contusions, and soft-tissue injuries to her neck and lower back. An MRI revealed torn ligaments in her right leg, and subsequent X-rays showed a cracked pelvis and two cracked ribs. She was treated and referred to an orthopedist for follow-up.
That same day, Lisa had notified her insurance agent, who passed on the information to the adjuster at California Fidelity Insurance, with whom (coincidentally) I’d once shared office space. On Friday, the day after the accident, the adjuster, Mary Bellflower, had contacted Lisa and taken her statement. According to the police report, Lisa was at fault since she was responsible for making the left turn safely. Mary went out to the accident site and took photographs. She also photographed the damage to both vehicles, then told Lisa to go ahead and get estimates for the repair work. She thought the car was beyond help, but she wanted the figures for her records.
Four months later, the Fredricksons filed suit. I’d seen a copy of the complaint, which contained sufficient whereases and wherefores to scare the pants off your average citizen. Plaintiff was said to be “injured in her health, strength, and activity, sustaining serious and permanent physical injury to her body, shock and emotional injuries to her person, which have caused and will continue to cause Plaintiff great emotional distress and mental and physical pain and suffering, subsequently resulting in loss of consortium…(and so on and so forth). Plaintiff is seeking damages including but not limited to, past and future medical expenses, lost wages, and any and all incidental expenses and compensatory damages as permitted by law.”
Plaintiff’s attorney, Hetty Buckwald, seemed to think a million dollars, with that comforting trail of zeros, would be sufficient to soothe and assuage her client’s many agonies. I’d seen Hetty a couple of times in court when I was there on other matters, and I generally came away hoping I’d never have occasion to come up against her. She was short and chunky, a woman in her late fifties with an aggressive manner and no sense of humor. I couldn’t imagine what had left her with such a chip on her shoulder. She treated opposing attorneys like scum and the poor defendant like someone who ate babies for sport.
Ordinarily, CFI would have assigned one of its attorneys to defend such a suit, but Lisa Ray was convinced she’d do better with a lawyer of her own. She was adamant about not settling and she’d asked Lowell Effinger to represent her, sensing perhaps that CFI might roll over and play dead. Police report to the contrary, Lisa Ray swore she wasn’t at fault. She claimed Millard Fredrickson was speeding and that Gladys wasn’t wearing her seat belt, which was, in itself, a violation of California traffic law.
The file I’d picked up from Lowell Effinger contained copies of numerous documents: Defendant’s Request for Production of Documents, Supplemental Request for Production of Documents, medical records from the hospital emergency room, and reports from the various medical personnel who’d treated Gladys Fredrickson. There were also copies of the depositions taken from Gladys Fredrickson; her husband, Millard; and the defendant, Lisa Ray. I did a quick study of the police report and leafed through the transcripts of Interrogatories. I took my time over the photographs and the sketch of the site, which showed the relative positions of the two vehicles, before and after the collision. At issue, from my perspective, was a witness to the accident, whose comments at the time suggested he supported Lisa Ray’s account of the event. I told Effinger I’d look into it and then turned around and set up the midmorning meeting with Mary Bellflower.
Before I walked through the California Fidelity Insurance offices, I donned my mental and emotional blinders. I’d worked here once upon a time and my relationship with the company had not ended well. The arrangement was one whereby I was given office space in exchange for investigating arson and wrongful-death claims. Mary Bellflower was a recent hire in those days, a newly married twenty-four-year-old with a fresh, pretty face and a sharp mind. Now she had four years’ experience under her belt and she was a pleasure to deal with. I checked her desktop as I sat down, looking for framed photos of her husband, Peter, and any small tykes she might have given birth to in the interim. None were in evidence and I wondered what kind of luck she’d had with her baby plans. I thought it best not to inquire so I got on with the business at hand.
“So what’s the deal here?” I’d asked. “Is Gladys Fredrickson for real?”
“It looks that way. Aside from the obvious—cracked ribs, cracked pelvis, and torn ligaments—you’re talking about soft-tissue injuries, which are difficult to prove.”
“All this from a fender-bender?”
“I’m afraid so. Low-impact collisions can be more serious than you’d think. The right front fender of the Fredricksons’ van struck the left side of Lisa Ray’s car with sufficient force that it
spun both vehicles in a postcollision rotation. There was a second impact when Lisa’s right rear fender came in contact with the van’s left rear fender.”
“I get the general idea.”
“Right. These physicians are all doctors we’ve dealt with before, and there’s no hint of fraudulent diagnoses or padded bills. If the police hadn’t cited Lisa, we’d be a lot more inclined to dig in our heels. I’m not saying we won’t fight, but she’s clearly in the wrong. I sent the claim on up the line so ICPI could take a look. If the plaintiff is claim-happy, her name should show up in their database. On a minor note—and we don’t think it pertains to this situation—Millard Fredrickson was handicapped in an automobile accident some years ago. Talk about someone plagued by misfortune.”
Mary went on to say she thought Gladys would end up accepting a hundred thousand dollars, not including her medical expenses, a bargain from the company’s perspective as they could sidestep the threat of a jury trial with its attendant risks.
I said, “A million bucks reduced to a hundred grand? That’s a hefty discount.”
“We see it all the time. The attorney tacks on a big price tag so the settlement will look like a good deal to us.”
“Why settle at all? Maybe if you stand your ground the woman will back off. How do you know she’s not exaggerating?”
“Possible, but not likely. She’s sixty-three years old and overweight, which is a contributing factor. With the office visits, physical therapy, chiropractic appointments, and all the medications she’s on, she’s not able to work. The doctor’s suggesting the disability may be permanent, which is going to add yet another headache.”
“What kind of work does she do? I didn’t see it mentioned.”
“It’s in there somewhere. She does billing for an assortment of small businesses.”
“Doesn’t sound lucrative. How much does she make?”
“Twenty-five thousand a year, according to her. Her tax returns are privileged, but her attorney says she can produce invoices and receipts to back up her claim.”
“And Lisa Ray says what?”
“She saw the van approach, but she felt she had ample time to make the turn, especially since Millard Fredrickson had activated his right-turn signal and slowed. Lisa started into the turn and the next thing she knew the van was bearing down on her. He estimated his speed at less than ten miles an hour, but that’s nothing to sniff at when a thirty-two-hundred-pound vehicle is banging into you. Lisa saw what was coming but couldn’t get out of the way. Millard swears it was the other way around. He says he slammed on his brakes, but Lisa had pulled out so abruptly there was no way to avoid plowing into her.”
“What about the witness? Have you talked to him?”
“Well, no. That’s just it. He’s never turned up, and Lisa has precious little in the way of information. ‘Old guy with white hair in a brown leather bomber jacket’ is as much as she recalls.”
“The cop at the scene didn’t take his name and address?”
“Nope, nor did anyone else. He’d disappeared by the time the police arrived. We posted notices in the area and we ran ads in the ‘Personals’ section of the classifieds. So far no response.”
“I’ll meet with Lisa myself and then get back to you. Maybe she’ll remember something I can use to track this guy down.”
“Let’s hope. A jury trial’s a nightmare. We end up in court and I can just about guarantee Gladys will show up in a wheelchair, wearing a collar and a nasty-looking leg brace. All she has to do is drool on herself and that’s a million bucks right there.”
“I hear you,” I said. I went back to the office, where I caught up with paperwork.
There are two items I suppose I should mention at this point:
(1) Instead of my 1974 VW sedan, I’m now driving a 1970 Ford Mustang, manual transmission, which is what I prefer. It’s a two-door coupe, with a front spoiler, wide-track tires, and the biggest hood scoop ever placed on a production Mustang. When you own a Boss 429, you learn to talk this way. My beloved pale blue Bug had been shoved nose-first into a deep hole on the last case I worked. I should have bulldozed the dirt in on top and buried it right there, but the insurance company insisted that I have it hauled out so they could tell me it was totaled: no big surprise when the hood was jammed up against the shattered windshield, which was resting on or about the backseat.
I’d spotted the Mustang at a used-car lot and bought it the same day, picturing the perfect vehicle for surveillance work. What was I thinking? Even with the gaudy Grabber Blue exterior, I’d assumed the aging vehicle would fade into the landscape. Silly me. For the first two months, every third guy I met would stop me on the street to have a chat about the hemi-head V-8 engine originally developed for use in NASCAR racing. By the time I realized how conspicuous the car was, I was in love with it myself and I couldn’t bear to trade it in.
(2) Later, when you watch my troubles begin to mount, you’ll wonder why I didn’t turn to Cheney Phillips, my erstwhile boyfriend, who works for the Santa Teresa Police Department—“erstwhile” meaning “former,” but I’ll get to that in a bit. I did call him eventually, but by then I was already in the soup.
5
I have my office in a little two-room bungalow with a bath and kitchenette, located on a narrow side street in downtown Santa Teresa. It’s in walking distance of the courthouse, but more importantly it’s cheap. My unit is the middle one of three, set in a squat row like the cottages of the Three Little Pigs. The property is perpetually for sale, which means I could be evicted if a buyer comes along.
After Cheney and I broke up, I won’t say I was depressed, but I really didn’t feel like exerting myself. I hadn’t run for weeks. Perhaps “run” is too kind a word, as running is properly defined as six miles an hour. What I do is a slow jog, which is better than a brisk walk, but not by much.
I’m thirty-seven years old and many women I know were whining about weight gain as a side effect of aging, a phenomenon I was hoping to avoid. I had to concede that my eating habits were not what they should have been. I devour a lot of fast food, specifically McDonald’s Quarter Pounders with Cheese, while simultaneously consuming fewer than nine servings of fresh fruits and vegetables daily (actually, fewer than one, unless you want to count the french fries). In the wake of Cheney’s departure, I’d been driving up to the take-out window more often than was good for me. The time had now come to shake off the blues and take myself in hand. I vowed, as I did almost every morning, to start jogging again first thing the next day.
Between phone calls and clerical work, I made it to the noon hour. For lunch, I had a carton of nonfat cottage cheese with a dollop of salsa so fierce it brought tears to my eyes. From the time I removed the lid until I tossed the empty container in the trash, the meal took less than two minutes—twice as long as it took me to consume a QP with Cheese.
At 1:00 I got in my Mustang and drove over to the law firm of Kingman and Ives. Lonnie Kingman is my attorney, who’d also rented me office space after I’d been relieved of the position with California Fidelity Insurance that I’d enjoyed for seven years. I won’t go into the humiliating details of my being fired. Once I was out on the street, Lonnie offered me the use of an empty conference room, providing a temporary haven in which I could lick my wounds and regroup. Thirty-eight months later, I opened an office on my own.
Lonnie was hiring me to serve an Ex Parte Order of Protection on a Perdido man named Vinnie Mohr, whose wife had accused him of stalking, threats, and physical violence. Lonnie thought his hostility might be defused if I delivered the restraining order instead of a uniformed deputy from the county sheriff’s office.
“How dangerous is this guy?”
“Not that bad unless he’s drinking. Then anything can set him off. Do what you can, but if you don’t like the feel of it, we’ll try something else. In an odd way he’s chivalrous…or at any rate, partial to cute girls.”
“I’m neither cute nor girlish, but I appr
eciate the thought.”
I checked the paperwork, making sure I had the correct address. In the car again, I consulted my Thomas Guide to Santa Teresa and San Luis Obispo Counties Streets , flipping from page to page until I’d pinpointed my destination. I took surface streets to the closest freeway on-ramp and headed south on the 101. There was very little traffic and the drive to Perdido took nineteen minutes instead of the usual twenty-six. There’s no nice reason I can think of to be dragged into court, but by law a defendant in a criminal or civil suit must be given proper notice. I delivered summonses, subpoenas, garnishments, and assorted court orders, preferably by hand, though there were other ways to get the job done—by touch and by refusal being two.
The address I was looking for was on Calcutta Street in midtown Perdido. The house was a sullen-looking green stucco with a sheet of plywood nailed across the picture window in front. In addition to breaking the window, someone (no doubt Vinnie) had kicked a big knee-high hole in the hollow-core front door and then ripped it off its hinges. A series of strategically placed two-by-fours had since been nailed across the frame, rendering the door impossible to use. I knocked and then bent down and peered through the hole, which allowed me to see a man approaching from the other side. He wore jeans and had thin knees. When he leaned toward the hole on his side of the door, all I could see of his face was his stubble-covered cleft chin, his mouth, and a row of crooked bottom teeth. “Yeah?”