Bodily Harm: A Novel

by Dugoni, Robert

  At the top of the stairs Sloane stepped into an office and instinctively ducked. He estimated the rectangular tiles and fluorescent lighting to be about a foot lower than a standard eight-foot ceiling, though it felt just inches from the top of Sloane’s head and made the man who stood from his seat behind a laminated wood desk look even more peculiar. Perhaps five six and dressed in a light blue, short-sleeved polo shirt and black slacks that bunched at his shoes despite being hitched well above his waist, Dayron Moore was as round as a Kewpie doll.

  “Can I help you?” Moore looked and sounded surprised to see someone in his office. He spoke in a high-pitched voice from behind a bushy white mustache that extended over his upper lip.

  After confirming the man to be Dayron Moore, Sloane said, “I’d like to speak to you about a potential legal matter.”

  Rather than offer Sloane a chair, Moore asked, “You from around here?”

  “Seattle, actually.”

  Moore ran a hand through a shock of white hair, wisps of which stuck out over his ears. “What brings you down here, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Sloane, David Sloane.” Sloane motioned to a chair. “May I?”

  Moore’s eyes narrowed, but he wobbled back behind his desk, much of which was taken up by an antiquated computer screen that matched the office decor, which had not been upgraded since the 1960s. The desk, credenza, and walls were a cheap wood laminate, and Sloane sat in one of two matching lime green cloth chairs. Two diplomas hung framed on the wall behind Moore, but Sloane did not recognize either school.

  “I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time,” Sloane said. He detected a recently applied coating of very strong aftershave which, along with blotchy red cheeks and a bulbous nose traced by several broken blood vessels, indicated Moore had just drunk most of his lunch and likely did so often.

  “What can I do you for?” Moore asked.

  “I have a client in Seattle who has something in common with one of your former clients,” Sloane said, telling the truth.

  “You’re an attorney?” Moore sounded immediately deflated.

  “Your client was Mateo Gallegos.”

  Moore’s eyebrows inched closer and the suspicion returned to his voice. “What about him?”

  “My client’s son recently died after running a very high fever and suffering flulike symptoms. The family kept the boy home and tried to hydrate him, but by the time they got him to the hospital the kid had a massive infection and died.”

  Moore offered no condolences. “What’d the coroner say?”

  “There wasn’t an autopsy. The boy was older than five so the state didn’t mandate it.”

  “Was the body cremated?”

  “No.”

  Moore sat back, rubbing his mustache but offering nothing further.

  “I just spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Gallegos,” Sloane said, continuing to tell the truth. “I wanted to talk to you about Kendall Toys.”

  Moore flushed beet red. “They weren’t supposed to say anything about that. All of that is confidential.”

  Sloane had played a hunch and Moore’s response confirmed that the lawyer had settled the Gallegos case without ever even filing a lawsuit. Sloane had no idea why Kendall would settle a suit in which a boy had fallen on a rusty nail, but then he had been skeptical of the clerk’s understanding of the case. Recalling something else the clerk had told him, Sloane said, “I’d be willing to put up a retainer if that helps. I just want to see the family taken care of.”

  Moore calmed at the mention of money. “You don’t want to represent them?”

  “It’s not really my area of expertise. Besides, I don’t even know if they have a case; it sounds like you’ve already gone down this road.”

  “Did they get one of the toys?”

  The question caught Sloane momentarily off guard but he recovered to ask, “Metamorphis?”

  “That’s the one.” Moore perked up considerably, retrieved a business card from his desk drawer, and held it across the desk. “Have the family give me a call to set up an appointment. Ordinarily I work strictly contingency, but for this I’ll need a ten-thousand-dollar retainer.”

  Sloane whistled. “That much?”

  “This is a big case.”

  “You think?”

  Moore nodded. “Of course you know that I can’t breach the confidentiality of a settlement agreement.”

  “Of course.”

  “But if this is what I think it is, they’ll get back five times that amount, minimum.”

  Sloane acted impressed. “No kidding?”

  “Let’s just say the defendant will be very motivated to make this go away.”

  “Kendall Toys?”

  Dayron raised a hand. “I can’t say. You understand.”

  Sloane nodded. “I wouldn’t want you to do anything unethical.”

  THE PUMP HOUSE

  GEORGETOWN, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  AS SHE POLISHED off the remnants of her second beer, Anne LeRoy checked her BlackBerry. She was about to call when she saw Peggy Seeley walk from the slatted sunlight into the bar’s dim atmosphere and waved her over.

  “Don’t ever do that to me again,” Seeley said even before she sat on the adjacent barstool. “I’ve been a nervous wreck all afternoon.” Seeley pulled LeRoy’s memory stick from beneath her blouse, slipping the strap over her head and slapping it on the counter. “I don’t want anything more to do with this.”

  “I’m sorry,” LeRoy said. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do.” When LeRoy saw Payne and the security guard marching toward her cubicle, she tossed the memory stick with the downloaded report on magnets to Seeley, who shoved it down her blouse.

  The bartender approached. “I’ll have a beer,” Seeley said, “whatever she’s drinking. She’s buying.”

  “Why am I buying? I’m unemployed.”

  “Too bad, that was by choice.”

  As the bartender tipped the tall cylindrical glass under the tap Seeley gave a nervous giggle. “I still can’t believe what you said to him.”

  After suffering the indignation of having her personal belongings searched, LeRoy had picked up her backpack to leave when Payne said, “And might I remind you—”

  LeRoy had interrupted him. “No, you can’t. I don’t work for you anymore.” Then she stared down the guard until he too backed away. It had been one of those rare moments in life when she had said exactly what she wanted. The retort had just rolled off her tongue. But it had been born more of desperation than bravado. She wanted Payne and the guard out of there before they got the idea to search Seeley as well.

  “He was stalking your cubicle most of the day,” Seeley said. “He had the IT people clear it out.”

  “They took the computer?”

  Seeley nodded as the bartender put her beer, with a healthy head of foam, beside the memory stick, which LeRoy slipped in her backpack.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Seeley asked.

  LeRoy had thought about all the reasons she went to work for the agency in the first place rather than taking a job in the private sector. “I don’t know. Probably nothing, but it’s the principle of the thing. This was a good investigation. Those magnets are dangerous. The public has a right to know that before someone gets seriously hurt, or dies.”

  Seeley did not respond, drinking her beer.

  “Do you think he would do it?” LeRoy asked, with a little less conviction.

  “Do what?” Seeley asked.

  “Go to the Justice Department. Prosecute me.”

  Seeley shrugged. “It sounded like he would.”

  LeRoy lifted the glass to her lips, lowered it. “They really took my computer?”

  THE LUNCH BUCKET

  MOSSYLOG, WASHINGTON

  SLOANE SHIELDED HIS face with a menu as Manny Gallegos walked into the diner, looked about with uncertainty, and sat in a booth close to the door. A waitress filled his coffee mug, but Gallegos shook his head when she offered him a menu. He tore open
four pink packages and stirred in the granules while looking out the restaurant windows at the parking lot like a Labrador in a car awaiting his master’s return.

  Sloane set down his menu, slid from his booth, and approached Gallegos from behind, waiting to allow another man entering the diner to pass and take the booth across the aisle.

  When Sloane slid into the booth, Gallegos sat up straight and glanced at the parking lot.

  “He’s not coming.”

  Gallegos’s eyes narrowed.

  In a brief telephone conversation Sloane had told Gallegos he was calling from Dayron Moore’s office, and that Dayron wanted to meet immediately to discuss the possibility that Gallegos had breached the settlement agreement with Kendall Toys. Gallegos had become defensive on the phone and Sloane regretted manipulating the man, but he hoped that if he could get him away from his wife, Gallegos might open up about what had happened to their son.

  “I’m sorry,” Sloane said, speaking Spanish. “But it’s important I speak to you.”

  “I can’t,” Gallegos responded, also in Spanish. “I can’t say anything about it.” He started from the booth.

  “I already know about Kendall,” Sloane said.

  Gallegos stopped and looked over his shoulder at Sloane. “Then why are you bothering me if you know about it?”

  It was a good question. “I only need you to confirm a few things. You don’t even have to talk. Just listen. If anything I say is wrong, you can get up and leave. If what I say is right, you stay and you still won’t have told me anything. Okay?”

  Gallegos remained seated at an angle, and Sloane was uncertain whether the man would stay or go. His chest expanded and deflated.

  “You can’t get in trouble for listening,” Sloane said.

  Gallegos hesitated, then turned back into the booth, his gaze fixed on his coffee mug.

  “I know that your son became ill and that you did your best to try to help him. I know that you took him to the hospital, but by that time it was too late; that he had lapsed into a coma and died.”

  Tears pooled in Gallegos’s eyes. “We should have taken him earlier,” he whispered.

  “You’re in the country illegally.”

  Another nod.

  “And you were afraid that you could be deported if someone at the hospital found out.”

  Gallegos fought back his tears. “We could have saved him; Mateo would still be alive.”

  “Do you work at the Kendall factory?” Sloane asked.

  Gallegos nodded.

  “How did you get a job if you’re illegal?”

  “I used my cousin’s name and Social Security number.”

  “Your name isn’t Manny Gallegos?”

  “Here I am Manny Gallegos. In Mexico I am Manny Gutierrez. When you come to my home, my wife, she thinks maybe you are from immigration. Mr. Moore, he says that if we don’t take the settlement, Kendall will find out I am not Manny Gallegos and we will be deported. He said he negotiated so that I can keep my job.”

  “Mr. Moore represents a lot of Hispanic workers in this area, doesn’t he?” Sloane asked.

  Gallegos said Moore did, as the waitress returned to refill their cups.

  “Do you want something to eat?” Sloane asked.

  Gallegos declined and the waitress departed. He reached for the ceramic container but it was empty. Sloane leaned across the aisle, talking to the man in the adjacent booth. “Excuse me? Could I get a couple packets of sweetener?”

  The man handed Sloane the entire container, which Sloane slid to Gallegos. “Can you tell me what happened to Mateo?”

  Gallegos opened three more packets. “It is as you say. He got the fever. We think it is the flu and give him medicine from the store. But Mateo, he did not get better. He continues to throw up and have the fever. He did not eat. One morning I go to wake him and he don’t wake up. His forehead . . .” Gallegos wept. “His forehead was so hot but his body was cold. We take him to the hospital, but the doctor, he said it was too late.”

  Again Sloane gave the man time to compose himself. “Was there an autopsy?”

  Gallegos nodded. “The police come to our house. The doctor called them. And they send a woman to look to see that we don’t have any other bad things.”

  Sloane shook his head. There had been no autopsy of Austin McFarland, and it was not lost on him that the hospital in Southern Washington had likely called the police because the Gallegos were low income and Hispanic and therefore, by stereotype, not as fit to parent, or more likely to have neglected or even abused their child, than the middle-class, Caucasian McFarlands. But that did not answer the question as to what the coroner found that compelled him to call the police, or why the police had then likely alerted Child Protective Services to inspect the Gallegos home.

  “Do you know what the autopsy showed?”

  “Not so much.”

  “Can you read English, Manny?”

  Gallegos shook his head. “A friend of ours, he tells us to hire Mr. Moore. He talked to the police and the doctors. He handled it all for us.”

  “What did Moore say the autopsy showed?”

  “He said something about magnets making Mateo sick, but also that Mateo, he fall on a nail and the rust poisoned him.”

  “Magnets?”

  A shrug.

  “Where did the magnets come from?”

  “Mr. Moore, he says he cannot prove it.”

  “Can’t prove what, Manny?”

  “That maybe the magnets they come from the toy that Kendall gives to Ricky.”

  “Is Ricky Mateo’s brother?”

  “Yes.”

  Sloane pulled out a sketch from Kyle Horgan’s file. “Was it this toy?”

  Gallegos nodded. “But Mr. Moore, he says he cannot prove it.”

  “Did Mateo play with the toy?”

  “No, only Ricky.”

  “What else did Mr. Moore say?”

  “Just that maybe Mateo dies from an infection when he falls on the nail.”

  “Why would Kendall pay you money if Mr. Moore couldn’t prove the magnets came from the toy?”

  Again Gallegos shrugged. “He just says that Kendall does not want the bad news.”

  “You mean bad publicity?”

  “He says Kendall’s lawyers want to go to the court but he convinces them that they will not like the bad publicity. He tells us to take the money because Kendall is very big and has very much money to go to the court. He says that I could lose my job and be deported.”

  “Did you sign an agreement to get the money?”

  “Mr. Moore says we have to sign, so we sign.”

  “How much did Kendall pay you?”

  Gallegos didn’t respond.

  “Okay. If the number I say is right, take a sip of coffee.”

  Sloane remembered Moore’s statement that the family could recover five times a $10,000 retainer. “Was it fifty thousand dollars?”

  Gallegos took a sip of coffee.

  “How much did Mr. Moore keep?”

  “Thirty thousand.”

  Sloane seethed. Moore’s fee should have been one third, at most, and given that the man had not even filed a lawsuit, he would have had virtually no costs to be reimbursed. He had one more series of questions for Gallegos.

  “How did you get one of the toys?”

  “Kendall gives it to me to take home because I work hard and they pay us fifty dollars for Ricky to play with and say what he likes and does not like.”

  “Do you still have the toy?”

  “No. We must return it after the meeting.”

  “What meeting?”

  “They have a meeting to watch Ricky play with the toy and ask him questions.”

  “Were there other children who played with the toy?”

  “Two boys and a girl, I think Ricky say.”

  A focus group, Sloane thought. “What did your son think of it?”

  For the first time since Sloane sat down, Gallegos smiled. “He love
d it. He loved it more than his other toys. But some of the pieces, they crack, so they say they are doing more work and the real ones will be better.”

  Sloane could only hope that Gallegos was right, but at the moment he could only think of his conversation with Dee Stroud. If Kendall was about to launch a new “It” toy for the holiday season there would soon be millions on store shelves.

  “More children could die,” Kyle Horgan had warned.

  NEARING THE END of the workday, Sloane returned to the billiard parlor, about to climb the narrow staircase when he saw Dayron Moore in the corner of the room near a green felt pool table. Moore chose a pool cue from a rack on the wall and chalked the blue end, about to break, when Sloane approached the opposite end of the table. Moore straightened. “You still here?”

  “I just had a late cup of coffee with Manuel Gallegos.”

  Moore gave Sloane a sideways glance. “What for?”

  Sloane opened his briefcase and pulled out the document he had hand-drafted and Manny Gallegos had signed in the diner. He handed it to Moore and watched the man’s face turn the color of a traffic light as he read it. The document directed Moore to provide Sloane with Gallegos’s entire legal file, though Sloane knew Moore’s file would be slim. What he wanted was the release of all of Mateo’s medical records in Moore’s possession, including the autopsy report.

  “He can’t do that,” Moore said.

  “He already has. My office will be faxing you a signed Substitution of Attorneys tomorrow morning.”

  “The case is over.”

  “The case never got started.”

  “They signed a binding settlement agreement.”

  “You coerced them into signing a settlement agreement under threat Manny would lose his job and they’d be deported if they didn’t. You also lied about the autopsy report.”

  “I did nothing of the sort. I just told them the facts.”

  “You can tell that to the bar association if the Gallegoses have to file a complaint.”

  “Now wait a minute, Mr. Sloane. I don’t know what he told you, but I can assure you—”