Bryan Gruley - The Hanging Tree

“Did you hear me?” I said.

“I heard you.” He reached into his suit jacket and produced a slim leather case from which he plucked a business card. He handed it to me. “If someone is in need of legal advice in this matter, they really should call me.”

He started to leave. I stepped in front of him.

“Are you serious? You almost got me fired.”

Our eyes met. I was younger and stronger and angry enough to beat his face in with the soap dispenser. But his eyes told me I was no more important to him than the guy who’d be swabbing the toilets that night.

“So that’s what’s important here? Your job security?” he said. “Maybe you should go back to your newspaper and write a story. Meantime, I have to be back in court. Excuse me.”

“I haven’t checked my voice mail yet today,” Haskell said. “Have you?”

We were sitting at a round mahogany table in his office on the third floor of his home. Haskell had his hand on a multi-line phone in the middle of the table.

“Uh, no,” I said. “Why, did you call me?”

“Ha,” he said. “I meant, ‘Have you checked my voice mail?’ ”

It was a joke. I had lost my job at the Detroit Times two years before because I had learned some things about accessing a certain auto company’s voice-mail system that I would have been better off not learning. Haskell had had nothing to do with my demise but undoubtedly had heard about the details on the attorney grapevine in Detroit.

“Ah,” I said. “Got it.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know if that was still raw. Apparently so.”

Behind him one half of a credenza was crowded with pictures of Haskell with his wife and son, in ski attire atop a mountain, on a sailboat, in front of the White House. There was a picture of Haskell in a tuxedo and his wife in a ball gown with President Clinton and the first lady. The other half held pictures of the son in goaltender gear, holding the wide blade of his goalie stick aloft, hugging a teammate, posing in a blurry shot with a man in a Detroit Red Wings uniform.

Above the credenza, framed reproductions of front pages of the Detroit Times, the Detroit Free Press, and the American Lawyer lined the paneled wall. Headlines on each shouted the size of verdicts Haskell had won against auto companies: $28.1 million, $94.4 million, $42.8 million. I couldn’t help but think of the one case that was not on his trophy wall, the one I’d covered for the Times that had set me at odds with Haskell and gotten me in trouble with my bosses. Nor could I help wondering again how he could be coming up short with the money to build that new rink. What exactly was the problem?

“It’s fine,” I said. “I like it here.”

“You landed on your feet, man. And of course who wouldn’t like it here, huh?” He swept an arm toward the big bay window facing the lake. I looked. Mom’s house was a fuzzy yellow speck in the tree line on the opposite shore.

“I hear you’ve been staying with your mother,” Haskell said. “That’s a good son, in my book.”

“The rent’s free. The food’s good.”

“Oh, my, you must have heard.” He leaned into the table and shaped his face into one reflecting concern. “That girl.”

Gracie, I assumed.

“Yes. Not a girl, really.”

“Did you know her?”

“A little.”

“It’s terrible. Her poor mother.”

“Yeah. She worked at the rink, you know.”

“Did she?” he said.

“Drove the Zamboni. Sharpened skates.”

“Ah.” Haskell gazed out the window again, crossed his legs, ran his fingers along a crease in his corduroy slacks. “Suicide is so… so selfish, don’t you think?”

“It’s not a suicide,” I said.

“Really? Is that what the police are saying?”

“They aren’t saying yet.”

Haskell shook his head. “I had a client once-did I ever tell you this story? — this client had a son, an only child, four years old, who’d been gravely injured when he was thrown from a minivan. He actually died while we were at trial due to complications related to being a quadriplegic, which should have worked to-well, that’s beside the point.”

“Right.”

“The defense put my client, the mother, on the stand. About as brazen a move as I’ve seen in all my years of lawyering. They asked her a lot of questions about how the boy was situated, where she’d bought the car seat, how well she secured him, et cetera. They even asked about her husband supposedly leaving her. All of it patently irrelevant, trying to blame her for their own client’s egregious negligence. They got her crying, of course. I assured her they were out of order and I’d get her testimony thrown out by the judge. But…”

He let his voice trail off for dramatic effect.

“And she killed herself?” I said.

“Unbelievable.”

“She’d lost her son and her husband. And she must have felt guilty.”

“No,” he said, leveling his eyes on me as if I were a member of the jury. “She was just afraid to get on with her life.”

“What happened with the case?”

“The family had been through enough. We settled.”

“I guess you missed out on a pretty big payday there, huh?”

“A payday had nothing to do with it.”

I felt more comfortable now. I pulled out my notebook, set it on the table, and opened it to the first page. I took out a pen and wrote HASKELL and the date across the top of the page. I made sure to write it big enough that he could see it.

“Ah, well,” he said. “Time for the business part of the meeting. We should probably discuss some ground rules.”

“What? You asked me here, Mr. Haskell.”

“Call me Laird, please. Look, my understanding-”

“I’m the only one here, Laird.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not being clear. My attorney had a discussion with a helpful intermediary for your organization, and my understanding was that we were going to visit for a while and we could work out what you might want to write, if anything, in your little paper.”

“You talked to Kerasopoulos,” I said.

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

The e-mail I had read in Philo’s computer had come from Jim Kerasopoulos, my boss, Philo’s boss, Philo’s uncle, the president and chief executive of Media North Corporation, and Haskell’s intermediary. Kerasopoulos was a businessman who saw nothing wrong with sticking his nose into news coverage. I actually didn’t mind his gaining me access to Haskell. But he was not going to set the terms for how I made use of it.

“Well, Laird, I’m here, and I’m happy to listen to whatever you have to say, so long as it’s on the record. I also have a few questions I’d like to get answered for my little paper.”

Haskell grinned and slapped his palms on the table. “Because the public has a right to know. Is that it?”

“Something like that.”

“Is this your way of getting a little payback?”

“Payback for what? I’m just doing my job.”

“It’s my money, son. Don’t forget that. My money’s building that rink.”

“Not entirely. There’s sewer and water and roads and police and fire paid for by tax dollars. You’re also getting a nice little property tax break. And while your rink stands out there with the wind blowing through the steel, the town’s letting the old rink rot.”

“Fair enough,” Haskell said, raising his hands as if in surrender. “But I have something for you today and, frankly, I think it’s a pretty big story for this town. We can give it to you exclusively, if you can help us out a bit.”

“Help you out how?”

“Nothing special, nothing extraordinary. Just a little balance. The next time you’re going to quote a subcontractor bitch-excuse me, complain about allegedly not getting paid, I wish you’d check with me about what the sub’s actually accomplished to warrant being paid.”