Chapter Seventeen
A late spring rain washed over Boston for most of the afternoon, departing just in time to leave the sidewalks wet and glistening as Shane left for the night. The storm clouds had brought with them dark grey overcast and the only light was the fluorescent hue of the street lamps above.
Despite the moisture, the air was warm and Shane decided to walk home. It seemed as good a way as any to spend a Friday evening with no particular plans in sight.
On his way, Shane wandered by a corner pizzeria and got two slices of New York style pie and ate them at a window stool. He sat a few extra minutes to watch handfuls of college students filter past from nearby Emerson and Northeastern before taking up his bag and heading for home.
His mind wandered to the events of the week, and everything still left to do this weekend, as his hands found their way deep into his pockets. Gaze averted, he let himself recede deep into thought before being pulled back by a single vibrating pulse from his cell phone against the back of his hand. Without breaking stride he fished his original 2005 model phone out and flipped it open.
FOUR MISSED CALLS.
Effectively four more than he received the rest of the week combined.
Raising a glance just long enough to make sure he wasn’t in anybody’s way, Shane scrolled through his phone log to see the same phone number listed four times, all from the 307 area code. For a moment he tried to place who the number might belong to, another to determine if he even knew where the 307 area code was.
Nowhere in Ohio or Boston. Anything beyond that would be pure speculation.
Shane thumbed in the number for his voicemail account and held the phone to his ear, waiting as a digitized voice told him he had four unheard messages. In quick succession they played, the first two nothing more than hang-ups, the third a pair of heavy sighs before signing off.
On the fourth, he hit pay dirt.
“Hey, Shane. This is Tyler Bentley...from Ohio Tech...I don’t know if you remember me, but you taught a class I was in last year....”
Shane stopped walking and pressed the phone harder to his ear, his eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Listen, I’m real sorry to call like this but I was kind of hoping to talk to you about something. If you could, please give me a call back at 307-555-4836. It’s very important.
“Thanks a lot, hope you are well.”
The message ended and Shane pulled the phone away and stared at it in a bit of a shocked stupor. Just that morning he’d tried emailing Tyler, and to his knowledge it hadn’t even gone through. The fact that he was now getting a personal phone call from him was surprising to say the least.
A young couple excused themselves around him on the sidewalk, forcing Shane back into the present. He apologized to them and nodded, his feet finding their way home without any active participation from his mind. He waited until he was about to ascend the steps to his building before thumbing on the phone and listening to the message again.
Shane bypassed the elevator and trudged up the stairs to his fourth floor apartment, the message weighing on his mind. There was only one, maybe two, reasons in the world that Tyler would be calling him, neither of which seemed plausible.
Shane walked into his apartment and let his suit jacket slide off his shoulders, tossing it on a chair back. He filled the empty stainless steel bowl on the counter with Friskees for his cat Molly and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. Moving slowly he changed out of his suit and into a pair of gym shorts and a hooded sweatshirt, settling down onto his couch at half past ten.
He stared down at his phone for several more minutes before opening it, scrolling through the saved call list and hitting send. The call rang only once before it was snatched up, a brusque voice answering on the other end.
“Hello?”
“Um, yeah, this is Shane Laszlo calling for—“
“Hey Shane, it’s me. Thanks for calling me back.” Already the tone was lighter.
“No, of course. I’m sorry it took me a while, I got out of work late again with the month end approaching and everything.”
“Please don’t apologize. Again, I’m just glad you called me back.”
Shane leaned back on the couch and propped his feet on the coffee table in front of him. Already the apprehension of calling was fading away, even if the confusion wasn’t.
“It’s kind of ironic that you called. Just this morning I tried sending you an e-mail, but it bounced back to me. I read about what happened man, just wanted to say I was real sorry to hear about it.”
A few seconds of silence passed before Tyler answered, his voice low. “Thank you, I appreciate that.”
Shane made a face and cursed himself for saying anything. He should have known Tyler was going through a hard time right now without everyone mentioning it all the time.
“So, uh, what can I do for you Tyler?”
“It starts with that email bouncing back to you this morning, oddly enough. That was about the same time that I found out my email was shut down and my access denied, too.”
A banging sound rang out from the kitchen and Shane turned to see Molly up on the counter, already face deep in her food dish. He watched her for just a moment before turning his attention back to the phone.
“I called the IT department and asked if that was standard, and they told me it was for students the registrar’s office lists as having withdrawn.”
“Withdrawn? As in, permanent?”
“Apparently,” Tyler answered, agitation evident in his voice. “And let me tell you, it was news to me as well. I called the registrar’s office and asked what the deal was and they routed me to Coach Valentine. Took a whole bunch of hemming and hawing before he’d just level with me.”
“Nobody wants to be the bad guy.”
“Nope. Took almost an hour on the phone for someone to tell me the athletic department decided to rescind my scholarship the minute I couldn’t play anymore.”
Shane’s jaw dropped open and before he could think to stop himself, he heard his voice say, “You’ve got be shitting me.”
“I wish I were. Three years and just like that, out I went.”
A few seconds passed as Shane tried to wrap his head around the news. No less than twenty questions sprang to mind, but he forced them aside. Instead, all he said was, “Damn, I’m sorry to hear that.”
Almost a full minute of silence passed, long enough to make Shane fidget. He was about to ask if Tyler was still there when he spoke again.
“Listen Shane, I know we don’t know each other all that well, and of everybody I knew at OUT, you don’t owe me a thing, but I could really use your help.”
Shane made no attempt to hide his surprise. “Well sure, I mean, I’d like to help in any way I can. Fact of it is though, I’m not a doctor or a therapist or anything like that. I don’t know if you remember, but I’m a lawyer. I’m not sure how much help I can be.”
“That’s just it, I don’t need somebody in the medical field right now. That damage has already been done. What I need now is a lawyer to help me get what’s coming to me.”
Shane blew out a puff of air and ran a hand back through his hair. “Tyler, I don’t mean be obtuse here, but I’m not sure what you mean.”
“They took my damn leg, Shane,” Tyler said, his tone non-negotiable. “I did everything they asked me to, and that still wasn’t enough.”
“Tyler, don’t take this the wrong way because I’m on your side here, but you can’t go after the athletic department to get your scholarship back. It wouldn’t be worth the time or money you have invested, even if you win.”
“I’m not worried about the scholarship right now. To be honest, I don’t know that I’d go back there even if they begged me to.”
Shane remained silent a moment, his mind racing. “If you’re thinking of going after the university for civil damages...” He let his voice trail off, trying to figure out how that would play out, almost certain it wouldn’t be good.
“I’m not thinking of going after the university for civil damages,” Tyler said, his tone even, resolute. “When I hurt my knee I was convinced by my doctors that it was beyond saving, that the only chance I ever had at walking, of playing, ever again was to try this joint implant of theirs. My doctors, the medical reps, everybody told me this new KnightRunner was my golden ticket. I’d be back on the field by this fall, be ready for the draft next spring.
“Not even four months later and I’m sitting here talking to you from a wheelchair.”
Shane could hear the bitterness in Tyler’s tone, almost see the expression that must be worn on the other side of the line.
“So you want to do what? Go after the company that made the device?”
“Yes,” Tyler answered without even a pause to consider his answer.
“Hmm,” Shane said, mulling the proposition. “Plusses and minuses there for sure. Public opinion would be on your side, and they’d have deep, deep pockets should you win. Of course, the flip side of that is they’ll be able to bring in teams of lawyers, experts, customer testimony.”
“But you’re telling me it can be done?”
“I’m doing nothing of the sort. I’m just giving you my very preliminary, very off-the-record impression. That’s all.”
Tyler sighed on the other end. “Look, Shane, I appreciate that, but I’m not calling you off-the-record. I’m calling to see if you’ll take my case.”
Shane leaned forward on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees. “Your case? Tyler, all I even know about this situation is a one-paragraph article I read in the paper and now a three-minute phone call with you. There’s no way I can tell if you have a case here.”
Tyler pushed ahead as if he hadn’t heard a word Shane said. “The only other lawyer I know is here in Worland, handles wills and bankruptcies. Great guy, older than dirt, pretty sure he doesn’t even know what Viagra is, let alone a KnightRunner.”
“That still doesn’t necessarily make me any better,” Shane said, his voicing rising. He almost continued, but stopped himself short and took a deep breath. When he began again, his voice was lower, more even.
“Look, Tyler, I appreciate the gesture and am even quite flattered, but I’m not what you’re looking for either. I’m an environmental lawyer fresh out of law school. I’m not even licensed in Ohio and I have no idea what their reciprocity rules are. There has to be hundreds of guys better qualified out there for this than me.”
Tyler paused just a moment before pushing on, undeterred. “Shane, I had all day to think about this. I called you for two reasons. One, I know you and trust you. You were always very fair to me and never treated me like a football star. I appreciated that.
“Two, I called you because you’re young and fresh out of law school. I can’t afford anybody else.”
Shane rubbed the temples on either side of his forehead in small circles. What Tyler was saying wasn’t wrong, but that didn’t mean it was what he wanted to hear either. “Yeah, I get what you’re saying.”
“I can’t pay you for the trial, but if we win, I promise to make it worth your while.”
Shane continued on his temples as Molly joined him on the couch, her pink tongue darting out to clean around her mouth. She ventured a dark grey paw out as if she might crawl up onto his lap, but thought better of it and retreated.
“Believe me when I tell you, the money isn’t what I’m worried about. It’s just, in addition to every reason I just told you, there are issues that make this a bad idea for me personally.
“I’m a junior man in a very coveted position at a firm here in Boston. It was not easy to get into and I doubt they’d be too keen on letting me leave for several months to try a civil case.”
This time Tyler took several moments to respond, and when he did his voice was soft and low. “Shane, I understand that, I do. And Lord knows nobody hates asking for help more than me, but I am asking for your help. This isn’t about greed, this is about protecting my mother. About giving her the life my leg won’t let me anymore.”
Shane stared out the window at the city lights dancing off the water of the Charles River. Every impulse in his body told him to apologize and hang up the phone, but something in Tyler’s words wouldn’t let him.
“Who’s this medical company you’re thinking about going after anyway?”
There was paper shuffling on the other end of the line and Tyler said, “Guy’s name was Sarconi, works for a company named SynTronic.”
Shane’s eyes hardened as he stared at a single orange light visible on the opposite bank of the river. His breath caught in his chest as he locked in on it, the temperature in the room rising several degrees. “SynTronic?”
“Yeah, you ever heard of them?”
Shane nodded his head. “You could say that.”
Chapter Eighteen
All told, Tyler and Shane spent two hours on the phone Friday night. Shane was back in the office by seven the next morning, using company resources to perform research that had nothing to do with the environment. He stopped just after four in the afternoon and returned home with a ream of printouts in hand, a list of questions as long as his arm in his briefcase.
That afternoon they talked for four more hours, this time being joined on the call by Margie. One by one Shane went through his list of questions, scrupulously taking down every note he could, and recording the conversation to be sure he didn’t miss anything. More than once a question led him down a path he’d never even considered, the time disappearing before his eyes.
After a Sunday spent the same exact way, two things were brutally clear to Shane. He was in way over his head, and there was no way he could hope to do Tyler justice and remain in his current state of employment with Banks, Webster & Cohen.
Monday morning, Shane arrived at the office even earlier than usual. He spent a couple of hours taking a stab at some of the paperwork Hartman had left for him, but after the events of the weekend he just wasn’t interested in it. His mind couldn’t turn off the case at hand, his thoughts drifting back to dwell on some unanswered question, to reconsider an as-yet-untouched angle.
By noon, he shoved the paperwork to the side and opened a blank email box. For someone that had spent the previous six months being as invisible as possible, sending such an email was one of the very last things on earth Shane wanted to do. He’d been trying to send it since Saturday morning, when he first realized this was a conversation that had to happen, and fast, but he couldn’t bring himself to type it. Same thing all day on Sunday.
Now here it was midday on Monday, precious time dripping away, and he was still trying to find the words.
Shane slid his eyes closed and took a deep breath, pushing aside the din of office noise around him. He thought back to the previous few days, to the unwavering conviction in Tyler, to the quiet desperation in Margie, and swallowed the lump in his throat.
He typed the email and hit send without once even raising his eyelids.
Mr. Hartman,
I need to speak with you this afternoon in private. It’s important.
Shane
The rest of the afternoon was spent alternating glances between the clock and his email account, hoping for a response that never came. As the afternoon withered away and other associates began to head for the door, Shane had the feeling he was being blown off.
At a quarter after six Hartman surprised him by showing up, already shrugging on his jacket and carrying a briefcase in hand. His face worse a mask of indifference, everything about him letting Shane know that he didn’t appreciate being summoned.
“Hey, you needed to see me?”
Shane felt his stomach tighten, the visit coming as a surprise. Already he’d resigned himself to at least one more day waiting to talk to him, his guard down. Still, he wasn’t about to let an opportunity pass. “Yeah, you have a few minutes?”
Hartman made a show of checking his watch and sighing. “I have to have the kids at little lea
gue practice in an hour, but I can spare a couple. What’s up?”
Shane glanced around the two-six to see a large handful of associates still around, a few even casting sideways glance their way. “Can we step down into the conference room for a moment?”
Hartman checked his watch again, gave a look that bordered on a glare to Shane, and sighed again. “Alright, but the clock’s running, make it quick.”
Shane was already on his feet and past him, opting against the elevator and leading them down a flight of stairs to the twenty-fifth floor. He paused outside the conference room door and let Hartman enter before closing the door behind them.
Hartman slapped his briefcase down on the table and fell into a seat, watching Shane as he stood pacing just inside the door. “Look, Shane, I don’t know what this is all about, but I really should be going.”
Shane nodded and decided to come right out with it. “I’ve been asked to handle a civil matter back in Ohio. It has the potential to be an enormous case with far reaching implications.”
Hartman’s eyebrows rose a bit and he smirked. “Regarding what, might I ask?”
“Medical malpractice.”
Another smirk. “You do realize you work for an environmental firm in Massachusetts? And that there are plenty of lawyers in Ohio that are much better suited for that kind of thing, right?”
“I realize both of those things, but this is different. I know this guy, and it’s a pretty outrageous set of circumstances.”
Hartman cocked his head to the side and studied Shane for a moment, condescension evident in his gaze. “Please tell me this isn’t actually what you wanted to speak to me about, that you’re not seriously considering this?”
“Well...“
“Because if you are, you’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”
The statement evaporated any sort of a response from Shane’s mind, instead filling it with white-hot anger. He closed his mouth and leveled a stare on Hartman, his dark eyes flashing.
Thriller Box Set One: The Subway-The Debt-Catastrophic Page 70