Michael Palmer - Flashback

"Very witty, Judge, " Zachary said. "Well, just watch the out. To quote the words of General Custer at the Little Big Horn, We have not yet begun to fight."

He led off the tenth hole with a decent drive, but his father's shot, sliced badly, flew far to the right and disappeared into a bank of tall rough. While they were scuffling through the heavy grass looking for the ball, the Judge waved the foursome behind them to play through. "If we don't find it by the time those four have putted out, I'll drop one."

"Fair enough."

Zack wondered briefly about the amicable concession, which was out of character for the man. "Zachary, tell me something, " the Judge went on, still searching through the rough. "Have you encountered any problems with Ultramed since you started working at the hospital?"

"Problems?"

"Hey, you know what I'll bet? I'll bet my shot went a little farther right than we thought. Let's try looking over that way."

"Judge?"

"Yes?"

"What sort of problems are you talking about?"

Clayton Iverson hesitated for a time, apparently uncertain whether or not to continue the conversation. "Guy Beaulieu came to see me a few days before he died, " he said finally. "Oh?"

"It was the second time he had been by in just two or three weeks.", He was very angry and upset.", He certainly was, " the Judge said, now leaning on his club and making no attempt to look for his ball. "He was also quite determined to prove that Ultramed and Frank had railroaded him out of practice as a means of setting up their own man, this Mainwaring, in his place. He claimed to have evidence that such underhanded dealings are typical of the company."

"I know what he claimed. What I don't know is why on earth he kept coming to you when you made it clear to him how strongly you supported Frank and the excellent job he's done at the hospital."

They watched in silence as each of the passing foursome hit his approach shot. Three of the balls landed neatly on the green, and the fourth, hit by a grizzled old man whom Zack placed somewhere in his mid-eighties, landed in a sand trap. As he invariably did when around very old people, Zack found himself praying that the man's coronary and cerebral circulations were, at least at that moment, functioning as nature intended. "The answer to your question, Zachary, " the Judge said after the old man had hit, "is that Guy was convinced that Frank or no Frank, I would not want to see him go under for acts he never committed.

Remember, he and I went back a hell of a long way. I can't count the number of committees and projects we worked on together over the past thirty years, struggling to pull Sterling up from the dying little mill town it once was. As often as not we were on opposite sides of the fence on an issue, but that never mattered. We both fought like hell, but we fought within the rules."

"I understand."

"So, I guess he believed that based on the way we handled our differences, and on my record as a judge, I would champion any cause I felt was just."

"And was he right?"

The Judge took a new ball from his bag and dropped it backward, over his shoulder. "Of course he was right, " he said. "You should know that as well as anyone."

"Sorry."

"Beaulieu's dead, but the issues he was fighting against, if, in fact, they are issues at all, remain very much unresolved-at least until the deadline to repurchase the hospital passes. After that we are all, quite literally, at Ultramed's mercy."

The buy back. Zack suddenly understood why Frank had been excluded from the afternoon. Silently, he cautioned himself against expressing any opinions until the Judge's position had become quite a bit clearer.

Where Clayton Iverson and his scion were concerned, interactions and reactions had seldom, if ever, been simple and straightforward. While Zack's schoolboy years, especially after his accident, had passed by quietly and, by comparison, virtually unnoticed, the relationship between the Judge and Frank had been a turbulent, volatile affair. The man had soaked in his older son's accomplishments like an insaturable sponge, and inevitably, when Frank's heroics were slow in coming, or worse, when he did anything outside of the persona the Judge had created for him, there was friction. Thinking back, Zack wondered if either of the two ever truly appreciated the dynamics of those clashes. If being Judge Clayton Iverson's second son had engendered certain problems for him, being his first had proven something of a curse for Frank. He recalled the day when Frank, then a freshman or sophomore in high school, had received an A on a history paper. The teacher, in her comments, had noted that the writing style and content of the report were far beyond anything he had ever done before. Suspicious of the sudden improvement, the Judge had confronted Frank in what he liked to call an eyeball-to-eyeball showdown. It was a technique that had seldom failed to uncover a lie from either of his sons, and on that occasion Frank was beaten decisively. After an hour of confrontation, he shuffled to his room and produced the senior's paper from which he had plagiarized. The look in his eyes at that moment, a frightening olio of fear, hatred, humiliation, and anger, was one Zack would never forget.

The result of that showdown had been a zero on the report from the teacher and a four-game suspension from basketball by the Judge, although he subsequently rescinded his punistiment after the coach pleaded that the team would suffer more from it than Frank. That confrontation, and its aftermath, said much of both father and son. The Judge, feeling he had made his point regarding dishonesty in any form, never again brought up the incident. For his part, Frank was, in fact, discouraged from further academic shortcuts, but only temporarily.

Instead of responding to their father's leniency with change, he reacted with defiance. And one boastful day, not long after, he disclosed to his younger brother that he had dedicated himself to learning how to win in an eyeball-to-eyeball showdown. At first, he literally practiced before a mirror. Next came a series of what he called "test fibs." With time, even in the most critical situations he was able impassively to meet the man's piercing gaze and to hold it. In the years that immediately followed, his conflicts with the Judge fell off markedly, due in part to Frank's mastery of his new craft, and in larger measure to his athletic accomplishments. Then, with Frank's repeated failures prior to Ultramed-Davis, their relationship again became strained. Now, after four years of relative concord, a clash between the two men-possibly a monumental one-seemed to be in the making. And as always in the past, at the very heart of the matter were the Judge's expectations. Frank's performance had to be the very best, his conduct above reproach. The foursome ahead of them finished putting and left the green. The Judge addressed his ball, but after several seconds he checked back down the fairway to ensure that no one was approaching, and stepped away.

"Zachary, you look troubled, " he said. "What is it?"

"I'm not troubled. It's just that "What?"

Zack shook his head. "It's nothing, Judge. Go ahead and hit."

"You're worried that I'm taking sides against Frank. Is that it? "

"He is your son."

"And you think that because of that, I should turn my back on the possibility that he might be involved in something unethical, or even dishonest."

"I didn't say that."

"What, then?"

Zack stopped himself at the last moment from sharing details of Guy Beaulieu's legacy, of his encounter with Maureen Banas, and of his mounting distrust of Ultramed. There were still simply too many uncertainties to open those cans of worms before he had had the chance to discuss them with Frank. "Judge, " he said, carefully choosing his words, "Guy Beaulieu was trying his damnedest to bring down Ultramed. If Frank fell with it, that was no concern of his.