The Player

by Brad Parks

  He nodded.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Do I gotta give him that?” the young man asked Tee.

  I had told Tee enough about how my business worked that he knew how to answer. “That’s how they roll. But you ain’t got nothing to hide and you ain’t done nothing wrong, so it ain’t no big thing. You can trust him.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, like he was convincing himself of this fact.

  “So what’s your name?” I said again.

  “DaQuan Richardson,” he said. I made him spell “DaQuan” for me—hey, you never know—and got some of his basic information. He was twenty-three. He had lived in Newark all his life. He had gone to West Side High School. He’d done a semester of community college but it hadn’t stuck. Now he was bouncing from job to job. He was going to try to get hired by United—the airline was one of Newark’s largest employers—but that was on hold, on account of his leg.

  “Yeah, about that … what happened to it?” I asked.

  “I was just ballin’ with some of my boys and it snapped,” he said. “I wasn’t even doing nothing. Just dribbling the ball and crack. Hurt something bad.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “About two months ago. I had a hard cast for the first six weeks. Now it’s in this thing,” he said, gesturing toward the splint. “It ain’t much better, but at least when it itches I can scratch it.”

  “And you were working for McAlister when it happened?”

  “Yeah.” And then he offered an unprintable word about McAlister Properties, suggesting that its bosses had a rather unnatural affinity for their mothers.

  “So you’re not a big fan,” I confirmed.

  “When I broke my leg, they just fired me. No disability. No severance. Nothing. They said I didn’t qualify for nothing. It was just ‘see ya later.’ At first, I was pissed. But then I was like, ‘Thank goodness.’”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because, man, I kept getting sick the whole time I was working there.”

  “What kind of sick?”

  “Oh, you know. It was like the flu or something. You’d feel it coming on and then it would just hit you. It got so you knew when it was going to happen. I worked there three months and I probably got sick ten times. Since I quit, I been fine. It’s the same with a bunch of other dudes, too. We all been getting sick. Some of them complained and they got fired. Some just quit. Some of them kept their mouth shut. They still working there, still getting sick. I heard one dude had to go on dialysis.”

  Just like Jackie Orr’s grandmother. “What about broken bones?” I asked. “Anyone else break a bone?”

  “Yeah, a couple other dudes, actually. One of them broke his collarbone on-site.”

  “Ouch,” Tee said.

  “Yeah,” DaQuan said. “But that’s okay, the lawyer said we gonna get us some money for that.”

  “Lawyer?” I said. “What lawyer?

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, I left Tee’s place armed with the name of Will Imperiale, Esquire, and some vague details about the lawsuit he was planning against McAlister Properties.

  The name, I already knew. Anyone in New Jersey who had ever glanced in a telephone book, watched daytime television, or received junk mail knew the name Will Imperiale. Probably anyone who had slipped and fallen in the local grocery store knew of him, too. He was the heavily advertised king of the local personal injury lawyers.

  And, according to DaQuan, he had somehow gotten word about sick construction workers and had been quietly signing them up—there were several dozen—with assurances of a quick and sizable settlement. Thousands of dollars for anyone who had been ill even once, he had said. Thousands more if someone had lost his job for any length of time. Hundreds of thousands for a broken bone. For anyone who had more serious complications? It could be even more. Plus, all their medical bills would be handled.

  They were bold promises, and I was unconvinced how much he could back them up. Because, sure, in a grocery store slip-and-fall, things were relatively straightforward: there was no question how the plaintiff had gotten hurt, nor was there any doubt that the defendant had likely caused it. The lawyers would go into a conference room and come out an hour later with an agreement that a broken leg was worth, say, $200,000 in pain and suffering, $60,000 in medical bills, and $30,000 in lost wages. Not bad for an hour’s work.

  I couldn’t imagine things were as easy in a case like this. The defendant’s lawyers would know that proving the construction site was making people sick was no easy task, from a legal standpoint. Who’s to say they hadn’t just picked up some bug that they kept passing to one another?

  You’d have to be able to find the chemical culprit, prove it was in the ground/air/water, prove it was capable of causing the maladies in question, and furthermore prove there wasn’t some other toxin—from some other nearby source—at work. It would involve complicated science, painstaking documentation, a raft of expensive experts, and a whole lot of moving parts that might or might not come through for you.

  Plus, you needed the rare jury that would be smart enough to understand all the science involved but still compassionate enough—or angry enough—to sock the responsible party with a large judgment. Then you needed to hope the dollar amount didn’t get knocked too far down on appeal.

  Oh, and the whole thing could take ten years.

  I couldn’t imagine Will Imperiale was mentioning any of that to his new clients. Right now, the game was just to get the maximum number of people to entrust their legal fate to him. The more clients he signed up, the more his reward grew—because he’d get a third of whatever he could ultimately collect for them.

  With multiple defendants, the math got big in a hurry. Say he could sign up forty people and get them an average of $200,000 after medical bills, pain and suffering, and lost compensation were factored in. That was a tidy $8 million, of which he’d get a nice little $2.6 million slice. So it behooved him to talk big now, even if his chances of being able to deliver later were anything but assured.

  If nothing else, it was, in the short term, a good follow for the next day’s paper: the dead man’s company was allegedly making construction workers sick and was about to be sued for it by a prominent and successful personal injury lawyer. At the very least, it was something to momentarily requite Harold Brodie’s amour for the story.

  I called Pigeon, told her about the lawsuit, and instructed her to stop bothering Vaughn’s former neighbors—which she was more than happy to do. It didn’t sound like she’d had luck finding any who were as chatty as the old lady from earlier in the day. Her new assignment, I informed her, was to start calling some of the other construction workers; Tee had given me a few names and numbers as a parting gift. I, meanwhile, was going to make an unannounced visit to the offices of Imperiale & Trautwig.

  It would have made for better copy if those offices had been located in some seedy strip mall. And they may once have been. But business had obviously been good enough for Imperiale & Trautwig that they were in One Newark Center, alongside a variety of upstanding law firms, masquerading as one of them. Perhaps I shouldn’t totally denigrate the practice of personal injury law. Certainly there were times when the negligence of others caused real harm to certain individuals, and they had every right to be compensated for their suffering. I just wished the whole racket weren’t quite so opportunistic.

  Imperiale & Trautwig took up half of the twelfth floor, and I told the receptionist just inside the main doors that I was there to see Mr. Imperiale and, no, I didn’t have an appointment. This immediately became of less concern when I announced I was a reporter with the Eagle-Examiner, and two minutes later I was sitting inside Will Imperiale’s office, across from the great man himself.

  * * *

  Will Imperiale was perhaps fifty, with dark hair whose color came from a bottle. The most prominent feature on him was his nose, which was large and hooked. All through our brief introductio
ns, I couldn’t help but stare at it. It was an impressive nose.

  “So I met a new client of yours today,” I said when it was time to stop with the preambles.

  “And who is that?”

  “DaQuan Richardson,” I said.

  With that, the nose had a smile appear underneath it. He was doing his best not to look like a man who had just hit the lottery. He rearranged some things on his desk and tried to make his eyes seem like they were full of concern—not just dollar signs.

  “Ah, yes, Mr. Richardson,” he said. “How was his leg looking?”

  “Just fine,” I assured him. “He said it’s a lot more comfortable now that the cast is off.”

  “He still has a long road ahead of him,” Imperiale said. “He’s going to be out of work for some time yet. He’s a laborer, you know. Can’t labor with a broken leg. Medically, there’s going to be more doctor’s visits, rehab, a long recovery—and that’s assuming it’s healed properly.”

  Will Imperiale was obviously hoping it hadn’t. If doctors had to break it again and reset it, that would be worth, what, another hundred grand?

  “All things I’m sure you’ll be pointing out to the defendant’s lawyers,” I said. “Speaking of which, who are the defendants?”

  He once again was attempting to tamp down his smile. “May I ask your interest in the case?”

  “Yeah, sure. You may have heard Vaughn McAlister is no longer with us.”

  “Yes, I read it in the paper today.”

  “And I wrote it in the paper today. The thing is, we also have a paper tomorrow. So I need to write something for that. The fact that Mr. McAlister’s company is being sued—and may have been making construction workers sick—smells like news to me.”

  That there were also residents in a nearby neighborhood getting sick made it even more newsworthy. But I wasn’t going to tell him about that yet. Nor was I ready to put it in the newspaper.

  “Well, it’s premature to…” Imperiale started, then stopped himself.

  He chuckled lightly. There were obviously things bouncing around in his head, and I could tell he was having a debate with himself about how much to tell the newspaper reporter. Lawyers, personal injury lawyers especially, often have this problem. Because, on the one hand, he didn’t want anything printed that might damage his case or tip off the other side as to his strategy. It was not unusual for trials to have newspaper clippings among their exhibits as the result of lawyers or clients who had said too much. On the other hand, the threat of bad publicity could be a powerful weapon for the plaintiff in any legal proceeding. Civil suits were often settled just to keep things out of the newspaper. And in a case this complex, a quick settlement benefited the plaintiff’s lawyer more than anyone.

  I let Imperiale have a little debate with himself. Finally, he said, “Can we talk off the record?”

  “As long as I can get something on the record by the time I leave here. I’m not here strictly for the charming conversation, you understand.”

  “Sure, I understand,” he said. “Okay, off the record: the complaint hasn’t been filed yet. So, technically, there is no lawsuit. Yet.”

  “When were you planning on filing?”

  “Soon. We were still gathering plaintiffs. You can always add more by amending the complaint after you file, of course. But I always like to feel like I’ve beaten the bushes pretty thoroughly before I file. I was probably going to give it another week or two. But the development with Vaughn McAlister and your interest could … change the timeline, I guess.”

  “Right, of course,” I said. I understood what he was talking about: Will Imperiale didn’t want to risk losing his case. If I brought attention to the fact that people were getting sick and there was no law firm of record, every ambulance chaser who had ever passed the New Jersey bar might start scouring Newark, looking for clients. But if Imperiale & Trautwig had already planted its flag in that legal ground and it was known it had already signed up a few dozen clients—perhaps all the clients there were to be had—it would become much less attractive to the competition.

  “We’ve been writing the complaint as we went, so it’s pretty much ready to go, but…” He stopped himself. The smile went blinding for a second, then he reined it in. “What would it be worth to you to be the first to get your hands on the complaint?” he asked.

  Without hesitation, I shot back, “We’re not a tabloid. We don’t pay for stories.”

  “No, no, I’m not talking about that,” he said. “No money.”

  “Then what?”

  “I could get the thing filed by five this afternoon. No one else in the media would be able to see it until it was processed, which wouldn’t happen until Thursday morning at the earliest. But I could e-mail you a copy when I filed. It would be a guaranteed scoop for you.”

  “And in exchange?”

  “Whatever you wrote would need to say ‘Imperiale and Trautwig’ at least four times,” he said smoothly.

  Now it was my turn to smile. I got it. He didn’t want money. He wanted something more valuable: free advertising. He knew a front-page story that mentioned his law firm prominently was gold. It would scare off other firms and also possibly flush out additional plaintiffs.

  From a strictly by-the-book standpoint, we didn’t cut deals like this with sources. And perhaps if Pigeon had been around, I would have told the guy to screw off, simply to set a good example for her. But the sausage-making enterprise that was putting together a daily newspaper could sometimes get a little messy. And while I wouldn’t go bragging about this at the next Society of Professional Journalists cocktail party, I was going to mention his law firm in what I wrote anyway. So there seemed little harm in engaging in a minor gentleman’s agreement that didn’t involve cash considerations or anything else that would be a serious ethical foul.

  “Okay, but four times is a little much. It’ll start to read like a billboard for Imperiale and Trautwig,” I said. “Three times.”

  “Three times, plus you mention our Web site.”

  “No Web site. It’ll make me feel like your whore, plus I guarantee you the copydesk would cut it out, and I have no control over that.”

  He eyed me. “Okay, three times,” he said, reaching across the desk to shake my hand. “I’ll send you the complaint by five. You can quote from it whatever you want.”

  “Deal,” I said. “By the way, I assume the complaint will say what is making people sick?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Isn’t that something you kind of need to know?”

  “Not really,” he assured me. “Not yet, anyway. We can keep it vague for the time being. Eventually we’ll get into chemical testing. For now, we just need plaintiffs with problems.”

  “Well, you certainly seem to have that.”

  “We do,” he said.

  As I excused myself from his office, his parting shot was: “Remember. Imperiale and Trautwig. Four times.”

  “Three times,” I reminded him.

  “Oh, right,” he said. “Three.”

  Had to give him credit for trying.

  * * *

  I returned to the office, exacted a Coke Zero from the break room vending machine—Coke Zero being as necessary to my writing process as air—and hunkered down. My plan was to craft the shell of a story, then fill in the details when Will Imperiale sent me the complaint. I had barely settled into my chair when Tommy Hernandez ambled my way. Well, maybe it was more of a sashay than an amble. Tommy even walked gay.

  “So I’m going to tell you some things about Vaughn McAlister, but first I have a question for you: What do your shoes have in common with Hurricane Katrina?”

  I looked down at my feet, still unsure what he found so offensive about how they were shod, then decided to play along. “I don’t know, Tommy, what do my shoes have in common with Hurricane Katrina?”

  “They both qualify as federal disaster areas.”

  “Okay, seriously, what is the problem with these shoes? T
here’s nothing—”

  “Laces,” he interrupted.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Laces are what’s wrong with your shoes. Unless you’re trying out for the lead role in Death of a Salesman and you need to look like you’re from the fifties, there is no need to have laces in your dress shoes. Laces are for sneakers, hiking boots, and certain avant-garde peasant blouses. I mean, those things on your feet almost look like wingtips.”

  “What’s wrong with wingtips?”

  “Are you a hipster wearing them ironically or are you playing the part of the one percent in an Occupy Wall Street protest demonstration? Then fine. Otherwise: everything. Everything is what’s wrong with wingtips.”

  “I just … I don’t understand.”

  “I know you don’t,” he said gravely. “Believe me, I know.”

  He bowed his head, moment-of-silence style, as if mourning the death of fashion.

  “Anyhow,” I said, “if you’ll excuse me, I have a story to write.”

  “Oh, yeah! I knew I came over here for a reason,” he said, delighted with himself for remembering. “I learned some very interesting things about the dead guy formerly known as Vaughn McAlister.”

  “Oh?”

  Tommy sat down at the desk across from me, which was empty, and crossed his legs. “Well, remember I told you about that city hall source that likened him to Harry Grant?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I got the guy talking a little more and it sounds like Vaughn McAlister was in trouble money-wise.”

  “How so?”

  “Apparently, McAlister Properties hasn’t actually paid the city for the land that McAlister Arms sits on. The city already deeded it over to him, but he’d yet to give them a dime.”

  “Oh, that’s neat.”

  “Yeah, but there’s more,” Tommy said. “From what this guy says, the city sold Vaughn the land for $1.4 million, but it promised McAlister Properties $1.1 million to help clean it up.”

  “So he basically paid three hundred grand for a big chunk of prime real estate. But it goes in the books as $1.4 million so no one howls that the city is giving him too cozy a deal.”