True Grift

by Jack Bunker

  “Don’t worry about Mack. You’re both going to be taken care of.” J.T. shut down his computer and started gathering keys, glasses, and cell phones from his desk. “Trust me.”

  J.T. hopped around his living room with Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy album pouring out of his Bose speakers. In spite of his recent investment in more affordable vintages, he opened a special Pouilly-Fumé and blew the dust out of a Baccarat glass, rather than the huge balloons he used with his reds. He let his wine settle in his mouth—every bit as nice as he’d remembered—while one of the disposable phones lit up on the kitchen counter.

  “So when were you going to tell me about Frankie Fresh and the ten grand?” said Al.

  “Whoa.” J.T. pointed the remote at the armoire hiding the stereo and turned down the volume on Warren Zevon. “What happened to hello?”

  “Okay, hello. What the fuck, J.T.?”

  “So it slipped my mind. Don’t worry, I’ve got great news.”

  “Slipped your mind? What kind of fucking scumbag lawyer excuse is that?”

  “Hey, last time I checked, when there was cash to be handed to Mack, to Wanda, to Buddy, to Chugh, Big Al was nowhere to be seen. You sure you want to take that dirt road, my friend?”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. J.T. imagined Al stewing, unable to come up with a retort.

  “All I’m saying is you should’ve told me,” Al said. “We’ve got a thirty-thousand-dollar balance with that warthog. And he’s expecting to get paid, don’t forget.”

  “Al? Listen to me. We are all good, baby. I just talked to Wanda.”

  “And? Did Mack slip in the lobby?”

  “Better. Much, much better.”

  “What, then?”

  “Penile fracture!”

  “What?”

  “Penile fucking fracture! On his honeymoon! At a five-star resort in Palm Desert, California!”

  “Jesus, is he okay?”

  “You mean aside from a broken dick?” God, is everybody in the world as thick as cake batter? “Needs a procedure at least. Maybe a big-time surgery.”

  “Wow.”

  “Good news is, now we don’t need to worry about Chugh. We’ll have the best doctors in Palm Springs lined up to vouch for the injury.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know. He was in a portable toilet that got hit when a tractor rolled down a hill.” J.T. sipped his wine. “Probably in there jerking off, the dumbass.”

  “Any witnesses? Anybody from the resort talk to him?”

  “I don’t think so. Maybe the golf pro.” J.T. lifted the bottle and studied the label. He might have to pick up some more of this. “I’m going out there tomorrow morning to get the lay of the land.”

  “So what are you thinking the claim’s worth now?”

  “I don’t know. A hell of a lot more than a measly hundred K. Jesus, throw in the loss of consortium claim…broken dick on their honeymoon? Forget about it. Monster. Absolute monster.”

  “You know my authority’s only two hundred thousand. I won’t be able to sign off on a bigger settlement than that. Not without going upstairs.”

  “Big fucking deal. You’re looking at a multimillion-dollar demand letter. The whole landscape’s changed.”

  “What do you mean? You’re double-crossing me?”

  “Listen to you, ‘double-cross.’ No, I’m not cutting you out, I’m just saying the landscape’s changed. For one thing, Mack’s going to have to get a bigger percentage. He has to. Fucking guy might be impotent the rest of his life.” J.T. swallowed some more wine. “On top of which I’m pretty sure his Coast Guard dream is fucked now.”

  “But what does that have to do with me?”

  “Okay, listen. Until five minutes ago, you were going to be happy with what, forty, fifty grand? I’m saying you’re covered, okay? This thing settles, you won’t need to risk the heat inside GSAC anymore and you can afford to quit, just like you wanted.”

  J.T. could hear Al breathing on the other end of the line. Impervious to good news, this guy. “If this thing gets anywhere near what I think it’ll get, I’ll work it out with Mack. You’ll get your fifty K plus a nice bonus.”

  Al sighed. “You really think so?”

  “Believe me, this is all good, man.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  When J.T. stopped by Eisenhower Medical Center at 8:30 a.m., Mack was still zonked out on what drugs J.T. couldn’t begin to imagine. Wanda got him on the list so he could talk to the doctors and get an early preview of the charts and prognosis.

  He drove to El Fuente Dorado with the windows down, the volume from the stereo maxed, and singing with Andrea Bocelli at the top of his lungs, grinning at the heads turning as he flew past retirees walking their dogs on the sidewalks.

  He wanted to see the fourteenth hole where the tractor had hit Mack. Unfortunately, given the looming litigation, he couldn’t just walk up and interview witnesses from the pro shop. He had a monster on his hands, and he wasn’t about to fuck it up with an ethics beef.

  That didn’t mean he couldn’t scope out the course, though. He pulled the Mercedes up to the pro shop and left his clubs at the bag drop. He went out as a solo, so excited on the first tee that he yanked his opening drive almost to the same spot Mack had.

  He’d forgotten how much he used to love playing these desert courses. The big brown mountains surging up in the distance. Not smack on the fairway like at Mira Chiste. Hell, when this thing settled, he might look into joining a club out here himself.

  He took his time, enjoying the round, his pulse quickening the closer he got to fourteen, where he could get out and do a little investigating. There was no one on the course, so he wouldn’t be holding anyone up.

  When he reached the fourteenth tee, he got out and went down the hill to where he saw the jagged fragments of what used to be the hunter green portable toilet. The moisture had burned off in the desert dryness, but the stench remained. He half expected to see a chalk outline where Mack had been writhing on the ground, grasping his johnson and wailing in pain.

  The tractor had been moved, but not that far—just across the fifteenth fairway. J.T. climbed back in his cart and played out fourteen. When he got to the fifteenth tee, he deliberately stroked a four-iron short and left to where the tractor was. There were grounds crews at work, but the tractor sat idle near the grassless desert rough. J.T. got out and examined the tractor’s wheels. The bits of green fiberglass were small, but they were there.

  He peered up at the slope from where the tractor had initially rested before barreling downhill. He shielded his eyes from the sun and stared at the hill. He looked back at the blue-green Rorschach pattern on the edge of the fourteenth fairway directly opposite where he stood.

  He picked up his ball and climbed back in the cart. He started whistling the tune he’d been singing in the car and drove back to the clubhouse without stopping. He’d give himself pars on the remaining four holes.

  He finally had a winner.

  THIRTY

  Hector Aza got a call from Sid Stewart, associate general counsel at GSAC, about a demand letter received several weeks before from John T. Edwards.

  “I know of him,” said Hector. “Never had a case against him.”

  Hector had seen J.T. at the occasional bar association golf tournament. Tipping cart girls twenty bucks for a screwdriver; bragging about playing seven courses in a single week in Scotland; yammering about how the greens break at Spyglass.

  “Guy’s been on our radar for years,” Stewart explained. “Made shitloads in asbestos, fen-phen, and every quicksilver class action fad you ever heard of. He’s pretty much on the skids now. Partners kicked him out of their big-time class action practice. Rumor was they had enough ethical dirt on him to cock-block all his scorched-earth threats. Second wife left him after that.”

  According to Stewart, Edwards also had a string of dramatic financial reversals unrelated to his legal career. “His practice h
as gone to shit, but he still keeps up the façade. Half a floor in the Inland Empire Tower. Hot young receptionist. Big Mercedes.”

  Stewart yawned near the phone. “He’s a paper tiger. From anyone but J.T. Edwards, this demand letter almost has a whiff of legitimacy, but because it’s him, I just can’t get over a nagging feeling there’s a bullshit claim behind it.”

  “Slip and fall?” asked Hector.

  “Guy gets into a freak accident on the Tesoro course at Fuente Dorado. A tractor rolls down a slope and runs over him while he’s taking a leak in a portable toilet.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Broke his dick.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah—penile fracture. And get this: on his honeymoon.”

  “You think the medical’s legit?”

  “Got pictures from Eisenhower Medical in Rancho Mirage. I’ll have the file sent to you. Don’t look at the pictures if you haven’t eaten breakfast.”

  “That bad?”

  “Hollywood couldn’t come up with special effects like that.”

  Hector turned around in his chair and reached into the mini refrigerator he kept under the scratched table serving as a credenza. He pulled out a Diet Coke, pointed it away from his desk, and opened the can. “So what’s the angle?”

  “Looks to be about sixty degrees.”

  Hector cleared his throat. “I meant the claim angle.”

  “I can’t see if there is one. Edwards may just be due to get lucky, I don’t know. I do know that these assholes are looking to settle this thing for big dollars, no questions asked.”

  “How big?”

  “Demand’s for nine mil. These guys are talking about offering eight seventy-five right now.”

  “Nothing’s been filed yet?”

  “I bet Edwards hasn’t gone to trial in at least five years. Maybe longer. Certainly nothing bigger than a DUI defense.”

  “That’s a lot of money for someone not to try a case.”

  “Look, if the guy’s really hurt, and if the policyholder really was negligent, sure, I’d rather settle the case than lose at trial. But c’mon. No discovery? No medical eval? No witness interviews?”

  “So you want to make him file first.”

  “At a minimum. He doesn’t want to try this thing, he just wants to turn a quick buck. I don’t think he’s got the money to try it, frankly. I can live with a settlement. I just don’t want to be hustled.”

  Hector wrote up the engagement letter and budgeted for discovery, motions, and trial. If Stewart was right and the case was going to settle anyway, Hector knew he might be able to keep the price tag down with a little digging and discovery. First, however, Edwards would have to file.

  Al Boyle’s nerves felt like they’d been raked over a cheese grater. The deadline for the Weed transfer was looming. He’d heard nothing more about the internal investigation into the database breach. That was unsettling enough. Making matters worse, the vig to Frankie Fresh that had once seemed so insignificant was now running $300 a week. The only silver lining was that Frankie didn’t know about the new legitimate claim. He was still under the impression it was a $100,000 scam. If they could hurry up and settle for even a fraction of what the case was worth, the vigorish would be nothing more than a minor annoyance.

  His imagination fueled by relentless coffee drinking, Al surfed the web, looking at comps for his house. He thought about the husks of abandoned would-be four-bedroom homes standing desiccated in the hot dust blowing in from the desert. He was fucked. How could his house still be worth $97,000 less than his mortgage note?

  J.T. Edwards was pissed. It was just like those GSAC cocksuckers to string him along. It was all the more infuriating in that he had a legitimate claim. Horrific injury. Unimpeachable medicals. Unquestionable negligence.

  Probably.

  J.T. knew if his case had one fly in the ointment, it was causation. Having used some of Frankie Fresh’s cash to buy chemicals for the Jacuzzi that had long sat inert on his deck, J.T. sat in the tub with a bottle of wine, trying to think like GSAC’s in-house lawyers. They had to be hung up on the causation. There was no way to fake a broken dick. As for the medical opinion, a guy who’d been Lew Wasserman’s urologist was no Sonu Chugh.

  J.T. had been so excited about Mack’s real injury, he’d soft-pedaled any self-doubts about how it happened. The tractor really did roll down the hill. The toilet really did shatter. He’d seen for himself the tractor with pieces of green fiberglass in the wheels. Wanda confirmed the assistant pro and the clubhouse kid saw Mack covered in shit and cloacal solvents.

  Buddy. He needed to get to Buddy and get a thorough debriefing. What if there had been a minor earthquake that started the tractor rolling? It was possible. J.T. made a mental note to check on the website of the U.S. Geological Survey when he got out of the tub. Probably just some Mexican forgot to put the tractor in gear.

  Yeah, the simplest explanation was usually the right one.

  Mack moped in Wanda’s apartment. He’d avoided the de-gloving procedure but had needed surgery to regain the use of his penis. The catheter had been nearly as bad as the accident itself. Wanda had gone back to work at the club, but Mack was still housebound and still afraid he’d never get another boner.

  He couldn’t believe his string of luck. He was all but sure to be unfit for the Coast Guard now. He didn’t want to call the recruiter to ask. He’d defer any more bad news until he was better able to digest it. Sure, he’d probably get the truck now—a new one—and even the flying lessons, but then what? Wanda seemed to think their case was worth a hell of a lot more than what J.T. had promised when it was just a slip and fall in the lobby. Mack hoped so. She also warned him about giving J.T. too much of the claim now.

  It was one thing when the claim was a scam, she said, but now he was really hurt. Hell, they could hire any personal injury lawyer in California and walk away with a fortune. Mack gave it some thought. He was sick of being called a dumbass by J.T. Edwards. He had lost his desire to be one of J.T.’s associates. Still, as long as there was going to be a lawsuit, it did seem kind of shitty to walk away and leave J.T. hanging after he’d been the one to approach Mack in the first place. Yeah, he’d stick with J.T., but there’d have to be a new understanding about how Mack was going to be talked to.

  Al was daydreaming in front of a computer screen when his district manager, Marino Vargas, stepped up to Al’s cubicle. Vargas picked up a foam stress ball on Al’s desk, worthless swag from an adjuster’s convention in San Diego.

  Vargas leaned against the fabric-covered wall of Al’s cubicle and squeezed the ball absently. “Just got a call from Sid Stewart in legal. They don’t want to settle yet on that broken dick claim at Fuente Dorado.”

  “You serious?”

  “Yeah. Stewart’s not sold. He doesn’t think this guy Edwards has the stones to try the case.”

  “No shit?” Al leaned back in his chair. He picked up a pencil and chewed on it. “But the guy’s got a broken cock. How do you fake that?”

  “I don’t know. Fucking lawyers, right?”

  “Jesus, if this thing goes to trial, we could get waxed.”

  “Hey, you know what? Serves ’em right. Fuck it. It’ll be SAICO’s problem by that point anyway.”

  Al chewed on the pencil again. “So the merger’s definitely going through?”

  “I’m pretty sure. You realize, once they announce it formally, you’re going to have to shit or get off the pot on the Weed thing, right?”

  “I know, I know.” Al rubbed his ribcage. The little scabs had long since flaked off, but sometimes he felt a phantom rash. He wanted to change the subject.

  “So who’d they hire on that Fuente Dorado claim?”

  “Hector Aza. You ever work with him?”

  “Never heard of him. One of your homeys?”

  “You kidding? Guy’s probably more Anglo than you.” Vargas bounced the ball on Al’s desk. “I think his father was born in Spain but moved here when
he was a kid.”

  Vargas bouncing the ball annoyed the shit out of Al, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Anyway,” continued Vargas, “you know the drill. Just send him the file and whatever else he needs.” He tossed the ball to Al. Al caught it and stuffed it behind his monitor to make sure some other mook didn’t come by and start bouncing it on his desk.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “And think about the Weed thing. Seriously, okay? If you don’t want it, I got plenty of people who do.”

  Vargas thumped the cubicle wall a couple of times and walked away. Al slumped in his chair. No settlement. Not for a while, at least. J.T. was too fucking greedy. He’d priced his demand out of settlement range, which was almost impossible with a legit claim like this. Al hadn’t realized the degree to which J.T. was a known quantity at GSAC. He should’ve been tipped off when J.T. was complaining about how the company dragged its feet settling cases. If the guys in legal were scared of J.T., they’d be plenty happy to settle and in a hurry. Their stance meant only one thing: they weren’t worried about J.T.

  But Al Boyle was worried. He’d hitched his wagon to this turd in the hope of scoring a quick and dirty forty grand. Now he was under the thumb of a shylock with a sixty-five-inch waist. Worse yet, J.T. didn’t seem to be in any hurry to settle. Frankie’s vig was mounting, and J.T. kept saying how a multimillion-dollar verdict would make it seem like nothing.

  J.T. was living in fantasy land. Al wondered if he was on drugs. Frankie had sniffed out their scam when it was a simple slip and fall. Did J.T. really believe that Frankie wouldn’t put two and two together when Mack started driving around Riverside in a new Corvette? If only Al could get J.T. to buy him out of his end now.

  J.T. had given GSAC until Friday to call him back with a settlement offer or he would go ahead and file. Friday came and went and J.T. filed his case against Fuente Dorado in superior court on Monday. Although Fuente Dorado was the nominal defendant, GSAC was driving the bus on the claim. J.T. knew that even though the case was still unlikely to go to trial, once he filed, any settlement would be drawn out. On the other hand, the longer he waited to file, the more confident GSAC would become. More emboldened, they’d be less inclined to part with the significant dollars the claim was worth.