Scott Turow - Personal injuries

"Two days later, I'm before Guerfoyle on a motion in another case, and he takes me back to his chambers for a second. `Say, that's a wonderful result, Mr. Feaver.' Yadda yadda yadda. And I've got no more brains than a tree stump. I don't get it. I really don't. I'm like, Thanks, Judge, thanks so much, I really appreciate it, we worked that file hard. `Well, I'll be seeing you, Mr. Feaver.'

"Next weekend, Brendan's guy, Kosic, gets Morty in the corner at some family shindig and it's like, `What'd you boys do to piss off Homer Guerfoyle? We have a lot of respect for Homer. I made sure he knows you're Brendan's nephew. It embarrasses us when you guys don't show respect.' Monday, Mort and I are back in the office staring at each other. No comprende. `Piss off'? `Respect'?

"Guess what happens next? I come in with the dismissal order on the settlement and Guerfoyle won't sign. He says he's been pondering the case. On his own again. He's been thinking maybe he should have let the jury decide whether the doc had admitted liability. Even Franch is astonished, because at trial the judge was acting like he was deaf when Franch had argued exactly the same point. So we set the case over for more briefing. And as I'm leaving, the bailiff, a pretty good sod by the name of Ray Zahn, is just shaking his head at me.

"So like two goofs from East Bumblefuck, Mort and I put all the pieces together. Gee, Mort, do you think he wants money? Yeah, Rob, I think he wants some money. Somebody had to finance Homer's new lifestyle, right?

"We sit on that for about a day. Finally, Morty comes back to me and says, No. That's it: No. No way. Nohow. He didn't sleep. He hurled three times. He broke out in a rash. Prison would be a relief compared to this.

"That's Morty. Nerves of spaghetti. The guy fainted dead away the first time he went to court. Which puts the load on Robbie. But you tell me, what was I supposed to do? And don't quote the sayings of Confucius. Tell me real-world. Was I supposed to walk away from a fee of four hundred ninety-some thousand dollars and just go home and start packing? Was I supposed to tell this family, that's got this gorked-out kid, Sorry for these false hopes, that million bucks we said you got, we must have been on LSD? How many hours do you think it would be before they got themselves a lawyer whose word they could trust? You think I should have called the FBI, right then? What the hell's that mean for Morty's uncle? And what about us? In this town, nobody likes a beefer.

"So, Morty or not, there's only one answer. And it's like tipping in Europe. How much is enough? And where do you get it? It's comical, really. Where's that college course in bribery when you really need it? So I go to the bank and cash a check for nine thousand, because over ten thousand they report it to the feds. And I put it in an envelope with our new brief and I take it over to the bailiff, Ray. And man, my mouth's so dry I couldn't lick a stamp. What the hell do I say if I've read this wrong? 'Oops, that was my bank deposit'? I've put so much tape on this envelope he'll have to open it with a hand grenade, and I say, `Please be sure Judge Guerfoyle gets this, tell him I'm sorry for the miscommunication.'

"I go to a status call in another courtroom, and as I'm coming out the bailiff, Ray Zahn, is waiting for me in the corridor, and there's one damn serious look in his eye. He strolls me a hundred feet and, honest to God, you can hear my socks squish. Finally, he throws his arm over my shoulder and whispers, `Next time, don't forget somethin for me.' And then he hands me an order Homer's signed, accepting the settlement and dismissing the case." A decade later, Feaver tossed about his elaborate hairdo, which overflowed his collar in indigo waves, the relief still live in his memory.

"So that was it. I spun Morty a yarn about how Guerfoyle had seemed to realize that we'd turn him over on appeal and had backed off. Then I went and bowed down before Brendan's honor guard, his two sidekicks, Rollo Kosic and Sig Milacki. As I'm leaving, Sig says, `You ever got a special case like this, gimme a call.' So I just kind of kept on from there." He shrugged at the inevitability of the bad-acting that followed and looked around again to see how he'd been received. I suggested he go down for coffee. Sennett was rolling his eyes before Robbie got out the door.

"That's a fairy tale about Mort," he said.

I nearly batted my lashes in my efforts to feign surprise, but naturally I'd given my client a good shaking in private. Nonetheless Feaver swore that for a decade Dinnerstein had remained unknowing, which was just the way that Brendan Tuohey, as a doting uncle, liked it. Through the partnership, Mort received half the windfall derived from the corruption Tuohey engineered, but bore none of the risk. Robbie alone delivered the payoffs to the judges.

Feaver claimed Mort was even misled about the nature of the secret bank account at River National. There are people in many occupations-nurses, funeral parlor directors, cops-who often are in a position to recommend an attorney to someone who's had a serious injury. Ethical rules forbid the attorney from sharing the legal fees he or she then earns with non-lawyers, but the nurse or the cop who'd handed out Robbie's card might well ask anyway, and Robbie was not the first personal injury practitioner to decide it was better to pay than have anybody forget his phone number. That was where Robbie told Mort the cash they were generating from the River National account was going (as indeed some portion of it was). Bar Admissions and Discipline, the agency that licenses attorneys, might go after Mort for aiding in these shenanigans if they ever learned about them, but Robbie's explanation protected Dinnerstein against criminal prosecution, at least in our state. Even the tax violations did not meet prosecution guidelines, since Robbie had, in his version, led Mort to believe that the income they weren't reporting was fully offset by these unsavory business expenses. It was all too convenient for Stan.

"He's covering his partner, George, and it's dumb. No matter what kind of deal we cut, when I get the evidence he's lying about this, your guy catches the express for the cooler."

I knew Morton Dinnerstein about as well as I knew Feaver, which is to say not very well at all, only from idle meetings around the LeSueur Building. According to my limited understanding he was the scholar in the duo, the one to turn out appellate briefs and motions and manage the files, while Robbie played show dog in court. It was the kind of arrangement that succeeded in many offices. I was nowhere as certain as Stan that Feaver was risking the penitentiary for his pal. Mort was a somewhat otherworldly creature, with a kinky mass of thinning blondish hair that sprang up in small unruly patches like crabgrass. He suffered from a noticeable limp, and his soft manner was characterized by a mild stammer and persistent blinking that introduced itself in his lengthy pauses as he was searching for words. Mort's guilelessness, and the lifelong symbiosis between the two men, made it seem possible that Feaver was telling the truth. I argued the point with Sennett at length, to little effect.

The other shortcoming in Robbie's account from Sennett's perspective was that Feaver had never dealt directly with Brendan Tuohey. Robbie recognized that the silent arrangements brokered for him with several judges occurred under the gravitational force of Tuohey's influence. The story-no better than a rumor to Feaver-was that Brendan got `rent,' a rake-off on what the judges received from Robbie and a few other attorneys. The money was passed to the two retainers who acted as a sterile barrier between Brendan and anything corrupt: Rollo Kosic, whom Tuohey had installed as his Chief Bailiff, and Sig Milacki, a cop who'd once been Brendan's partner on the street. To get to Brendan, Sennett would need them, or some other witness Feaver might ensnare.