The Common Lawyer

by Mark Gimenez

  The Common Lawyer

  Mark Gimenez

  Mark Gimenez

  The Common Lawyer

  PROLOGUE

  St. Aloysius Children's Research Hospital

  Ithaca, New York

  2:55 A.M.

  He stared down at her; his expression was stern and unyielding. He disapproved, as she knew he would.

  "Don't look at me like that, Luigi. I'm not crazy."

  They stood alone in the vestibule just inside the front entrance where the warmth and disinfectant held their ground against the invading cold air and horde of germs. She brushed snow from her parka and removed her gloves then reached up and caressed his cold cheek. He was just a boy.

  "You're not being fair. Of all people, you should understand. God didn't mean for us to live forever."

  Over the last three months, they had developed a relationship of sorts. She had often come downstairs late at night and talked to him, Catholic to Catholic, about life and about death, and about life after death, all subjects he knew well. She would look into his eyes and wait for answers that never came. His eyes had always seemed able to see into her soul, but tonight they revealed only his sadness, as if he knew what she was about to do.

  "It's the only way."

  He did not respond-he never did-so she dropped her eyes like a repentant child from her father's glare. They fell onto the engraving at the base of the stone statue that told of his short life: Luigi Gonzaga had been born in 1568 in Italy, joined the Society of Jesus when he was seventeen, and studied to become a Jesuit; he had contracted the plague while working in a Catholic hospital in Rome. He had cared for the worst victims of the disease, those whom no one else would touch, and he had died at the age of twenty-three. The church awarded him sainthood because he had sacrificed his life to save others: St. Aloysius, the patron saint of children.

  "And I'm the Virgin Mary."

  Her eyes ran up the life-size figure of the boy saint for one final glance at his face-one final look into those haunting eyes. He could not understand. She turned away and continued into the hospital and past the reception desk and the elevators. She saw no one, and no one saw her. The hospital on the night shift was a lonely place; she had often paced the vacant corridors during those still hours, unable to sleep but unwilling to leave the child. The last few nights she had timed the exact route she was now taking: seven and a half minutes, in and out.

  Bright murals stretched down the corridors, and elaborate mobiles hung from the ceiling. Oversized stuffed cartoon characters sat in play areas waiting for the children. The patients' own colorful paintings adorned the walls like pieces of art in a museum. The nurses wore scrubs that were bright splashes of color. The colors, the art, the sunlit atrium, the healing gardens-the hospital tried desperately to present an upbeat mood, but the scent of death permeated the place. It was inescapable.

  But they would escape that night.

  Her rubber-soled shoes fell silent as she climbed the stairs to the third floor and turned left. Third Floor West. The research wing. Only a handful of nurses would be on duty during the night shift, and those who were took their meal break at 3:00 A.M. She slowed as she approached the nurses' station and listened for voices; she heard none, so she hurried past. She was about to turn a corner when the sound of footsteps came close; she ducked inside a storage closet. The footsteps passed, and she peeked out and saw the uniformed backside of Kelly Fitzgerald, the charge nurse. Kelly was an Irish girl, too, and at thirty only five years older; they had become fast friends and had often shared late-night coffee and cigarettes on the back stairs.

  She did not greet her friend that night.

  She stepped out of the closet, shut the door quietly behind her, and continued around the corner and down the corridor. She stopped at Room 312, pushed the door open, and stuck her head inside.

  The child was asleep.

  She backed out and walked down to Room 320. She entered the room and went over to the bed where a sixteen-year-old boy lay sleeping in the dim light. Jimmy had been paralyzed from the neck down in a street racing accident in California when he had lost control and wrapped his car around a telephone pole. He had undergone experimental spinal cord treatment. He was a guinea pig. Everyone on Three West was a guinea pig.

  Jimmy was her friend, too. They had talked often, and she had consoled him when he cried. He knew he would never walk again, never play ball again, never date again, never live a normal life again. One stupid teenage mistake and he was in a wheelchair for life. He said he wanted to die. She leaned over and kissed him on his forehead then unplugged his ventilator.

  She exited the room and ran back down the corridor to Room 312. She stepped inside and closed the door just before the entire night-shift staff, led by Nurse Kelly, rounded the corner pulling a crash cart. The alarm had sounded back at the nurses' station. They were racing to save Jimmy, as she knew they would. She wasn't there to kill Jimmy.

  She was there to save this child.

  She pulled a knit cap over the five-year-old girl's head and stuffed her curly red hair inside. It was cold out. She tucked the St. Aloysius pendant and chain she had bought in the gift shop that first day inside the child's pajamas then wrapped her in the hospital blanket and scooped her up. Her adrenaline was pumping hard; the child weighed nothing in her arms. She went to the door and peeked out. No one was in sight. She walked out of the room and hurried down the corridor past the vacant nurses' station.

  She descended the two flights of stairs to the ground floor. Only the reception desk stood between them and the front door. She paused at the corner and again listened; she heard no one. Bert, the grandfather moonlighting as the night-shift security guard, would be grabbing a soda and gabbing with the nurses in the break room. She took a deep breath and darted around the corner, past the desk, and over to St. Aloysius. But she did not stop and look into his eyes this time; she could not bear to see his disappointment. She only said, "Goodbye, Luigi," then carried the child out the front doors and through the thick snow to the Jeep 4x4 in the parking lot. She opened the back door and laid her on the seat. The child stirred.

  "Mommy?"

  She stroked the child's face.

  "Shhh. Everything's going to be okay now, honey. No more tests."

  The child smiled in her sleep.

  She secured her daughter with a seat belt, then climbed into the driver's seat. She started the engine, shifted into gear, and drove off into the dark night.

  They were free.

  THREE YEARS LATER

  ONE

  Andy Prescott told his mother he went to church every Sunday morning. He lied. He never went to church on any morning. And that Sunday morning he was sure as hell not in church, at least not the Baptist or Catholic version of church. He was in the Austin version of church: the out of doors. Austinites worship nature.

  "You're insane, Andy!"

  True. But then, a certain degree of insanity was part of the job description for a hammerhead. Point of fact, you had to be freaking nuts to ride a mountain bike at these speeds over a single-track hacked out of the wilderness and teetering on the edge of a steep ravine with nothing but a foam-padded plastic crash helmet standing between you and organ donor status. Nobody in his right mind would do such a thing.

  But Andy loved to go fast.

  He glanced back at Tres. Arthur Thorndike III-a family name, the poor bastard, so upon his arrival in Austin ten years before he had quickly acquired the nickname Tres, as in uno, dos, tres — lagged Andy by a dozen bike lengths and only that much because Andy was taking it easy on him… and because Tres never tempted fate. Tres Thorndike had (a) a trust fund, (b) a gorgeous girlfriend, and (c) a Beemer with personalized license plates that read TRES; conseque
ntly, he didn't want to die at twenty-nine. Andy had (d) none of the above, so death before thirty was of no concern.

  They were biking the back trails in the Barton Creek Greenbelt, a wilderness preserve on the western outskirts of Austin. The trails tracked Barton Creek from where the crystal-clear spring water bubbled out of the Edwards Aquifer at the base of the Balcones Escarpment east for eight miles through Sculpture Falls, Twin Falls, Three Falls, Airman's Cave, and Campbell's Hole. But while the creek coursed along a gentle path deep down in the canyons, the back trails climbed precarious ledges high on the limestone face of the escarpment and cut through dense woods along treacherous paths that featured blind curves and sudden drops and dangerous obstacles and countless other opportunities to kill yourself.

  "Andy, you're gonna kill yourself!"

  Possibly. But at least he'd die knowing he had already made it to heaven.

  Austin, Texas, was known for its natural beauty, and compared to Dallas or Houston, it was the Garden of Eden; but twenty-five years of unrestrained development had devoured almost all that was nature in the city. All but the greenbelt. The eight hundred acres offered an escape from the crowds and concrete, the noise and exhaust of a million automobiles, and the stifling August heat. Here there were grass and trees, water and waterfalls, clean air and a cool breeze. Only the sounds of the wind whistling through the trees and the water rippling over rocks below broke the silence.

  In the greenbelt, the city seemed distant.

  But it wasn't. The city was near, pressing in on all sides. The greenbelt now sat squeezed between residential developments and shopping malls and bounded and bisected by busy freeways. And developers wanted it, too. They wanted it all. The greenbelt was the Alamo of Austin, the final stand for nature; and the tree-huggers, hippies, hikers, bikers, swimmers, and runners would fight to the death to save it.

  "In case you don't know it, Andy, suicide's against the law!"

  Andy stood five-ten and weighed one-fifty-five; he hadn't been big enough for football or good enough for the skilled sports. But the first time he had saddled up on a mountain bike and careened down a hill completely out of control, he knew he had found his calling, a sport he was actually good at. Andy Prescott could stay on a bike. And he wasn't afraid to fall off.

  Andy was that new breed of athlete: an extreme athlete. The kind of individual crazy enough to snowboard down a mountain poised for an avalanche or surf the big waves of a hurricane making landfall or ride a bike down a treacherous trail at breakneck speed-all for the adrenaline rush. And that was the payoff for adrenaline junkies, young men and women taking sports to the limits where there were no rules. Where there's just you and what's inside you.

  Inside Andy at that moment was an intense accumulation of lactic acid in his thighs and quadriceps; his pistons were burning like butane torches. They had just come off a full-power granny-gear grunt up a two-hundred-foot vertical on the Hill of Life and were now running Mach 2 back down the hill, flying off low limestone ledges and skidding over crushed rock and swerving east onto the steepest back trail at full throttle, although Andy could hear Tres' brakes squealing like wild pigs and no doubt he was in full panic skid, digging his heels deep into the dirt as he tried to slow his descent. Tres piloted a top-of-the-line full-suspension Cannondale Prophet, but he was a bit of an Aunt Bee. Andy was anything but; he was bombing the descent on a secondhand Schwinn hardtail. No brakes. Pure gonzo.

  "Yee-hah!"

  His pre-ride rocket fuel-two cans of Red Bull-had given him one heck of a caffeine high. He was buzzed and in the zone, shredding the trail and carving the corners like a downhill skier in the Olympics; the knobby Kevlar tires bit into Mother Earth like a pit bull's teeth into soft human flesh. He veered around blackened trunks of burned-out oak trees then flew through a tunnel of thick brush and pruned a few low-hanging limbs, all just a blur in his peripheral vision. He hit a monster bump and caught air for ten feet; he bounced hard on reentry but maintained his position in the cockpit. One slip and he would tumble down the ravine to a certain death-the thought of which triggered the rush. Adrenaline surged through his being like a narcotic, supercharging his mind and body.

  Andy Prescott had never felt more alive.

  He was wearing cargo shorts, Converse sneakers, and a T-shirt he had sweated through in the heat and humidity of late August in Texas. His only accessories were a pair of cheap sunglasses, the CamelBak strapped to his back that packed his personal effects and one hundred ounces of Endurox R4-the sports drink of choice for extreme athletes-and the crash helmet. Andy Prescott was crazy but not stupid.

  "Slow down, Andy!"

  They always came out early on Sunday morning because they didn't have anchors holding them at home-although Tres was living on borrowed time; his girlfriend was already plotting marriage and offspring-and because weekend walkers, hikers, joggers, and your less adventuresome bikers wisely stayed on the family-friendly double-track down by the creek a hundred feet below them. Which meant they could hammer the back trails without fear of pedestrian injury.

  "Andy, you're gonna biff!"

  Andy Prescott… wipeout? Not a chance: he was stoked. He glanced back at Tres.

  "No way, dude!"

  "Andy-look out!"

  He turned back, and his heart almost stopped.

  Uh-oh.

  Just ahead, three white-haired women stood huddled together right in the middle of the trail.

  For Christ's sake, not a tea party on a back trail!

  Andy was going too fast to stop in time and there wasn't enough room on the narrow trail to go around them: to his left was the sheer rock wall of the escarpment; to his right the abyss of the ravine. If he plowed into the senior citizens at that speed, he'd kill them for sure. But if he veered off the trail, he'd fly down the ravine and kill himself.

  The women saw him-he tried to wave them off the trail-but they stood frozen in place, like deer caught in headlights, terrified at the bike and rider hurtling at them at high speed. One screamed. She looked like his mother.

  Andy said, "Aw, shit," cut the handlebars hard to the right just a split second before impact, and rode straight off the trail-and the Earth. He caught big air. He was now flying through the blue sky and enjoying an incredible panoramic view from high above the greenbelt, suddenly free of all worldly constraints, and he experienced an awesome nirvanic sensation… until gravity clicked in.

  He dropped fast.

  He looked down and saw the Earth rushing toward him. He pushed down on the pedals and pulled up on the bars as if doing a wheelie so the bike's rear tire would hit the ground first; he had a momentary vision of actually riding the bike down the ravine. But that vision proved fleeting when the back tire caught a gnarly stump immediately upon reentry, which yanked the front tire down abruptly, which threw him forward over the handlebars, which sent him endo; he executed several flawless albeit involuntary three-sixties before crashing through tree limbs and landing on his CamelBak. But the ride wasn't over. He bounced hard, and his momentum took him tumbling like a rag doll down the ravine and through thick juniper bushes and across the lower trail. He heard Tres' voice from above-"Andy!" — just before he hit the water of Sculpture Falls.

  The next thing he knew, Tres was pulling him out of the water and slapping him across the face.

  "Andy! Andy, are you okay?"

  He then heard a different voice. A smaller voice.

  "Is he dead?"

  Damn. He hoped he wasn't dead.

  Andy opened his eyes onto a dark, blurry world. He saw two figures standing there. A big Tres and a little Tres. No, Tres and a kid… holding a rope?

  "Is he dead?" the kid said again.

  Andy had gone into the falls right where kids played Tarzan on a rope hanging from a tree. Tres frowned at the kid then put his cell phone to his ear. Andy heard Tres' distant voice.

  "Hello? Hello? Damn. Can't ever get a signal down here in the canyons."

  Tres resumed slapping Andy acro
ss the face.

  "Andy! Andy!"

  Andy tried to fend off Tres' blows before he suffered irreparable brain damage, but his arms were spaghetti.

  "Dude, quit hitting me!"

  "I'll run up and call nine-one-one."

  "I don't need an ambulance, man. I need a beer."

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah, I'm sure I need a beer."

  "No. That you're okay?"

  "Yeah, except I can't see. Tres-everything's dark!"

  "Dude, you still got your sunglasses on."

  "Oh."

  Andy removed the glasses. Tres studied him from close range for a long moment then broke into a big grin.

  "Man, that was a spectacular stack! The most awesome face plant I've ever witnessed!"

  Andy extended a closed hand to Tres; they tapped knuckles. A fist-punch.

  "Glad you enjoyed it. Did get the adrenaline pumping, I'll give it that."

  The kid turned away and yelled to someone, "He ain't dead!" Then he swung out on the rope and somersaulted into the water. Tres chucked Andy on the shoulder.

  "The Samson theory held true-at least this time."

  Andy tried to shake his head clear, but it just made him dizzy.

  "How's the bike?"

  "The bike? Who gives a shit about your bike? Look at yourself."

  Andy looked at himself. He wasn't one of those weekend warriors who wore protective armor like the pros, so his body had absorbed the full brunt of the fall. Blood striped his arms and legs where tree branches had whipped him on reentry, and his knees and elbows sported strawberry-red road rash, which meant he would have to endure a week of painful bacon. His clothes were soaking wet and ripped to shreds, which wasn't much of a financial hit since he had acquired his entire wardrobe at the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Shop-well, except his underwear. He drew the line at used underwear.

  No jagged bones jutted through his skin, and all limbs seemed in working order, although any movement of his right shoulder or left knee produced extreme pain-hence the term, "extreme sports." His brain bucket had stayed in place and he wasn't bleeding from his ears, so he had apparently suffered no closed-head injuries. But he was bleeding. He spit blood and wiped blood from his face, but it couldn't be that bad because Tres was still looking at him. Tres had gone to law school instead of med school as his parents had wanted because he couldn't stand the sight of blood.