Dan Simmons - Darwin's Blade

“Our fraudulent-claims list?” asked Trudy.

“Yeah.”

“Besides Esposito, there’s Roget Velliers, Bobby James Tucker, Nicholas van Dervan, Abraham Willis—” began Trudy.

“Uh-uh,” interrupted Lawrence. “Willis is dead.”

Dar raised an eyebrow. “Since when? I testified in a case against his plaintiff just a month ago.”

“Since last Thursday,” said Lawrence. “The good counselor died in a single-car wreck up near Carmel.”

“Well, live by the sword…” said Syd.

“Esposito’s handling the family’s lawsuit,” said Lawrence.

Trudy grunted softly. “Professional courtesy.”

Syd got up from the table and stretched. “Well, we’ll cross-check Dar’s files with these and try to see which of these ambulance chasers is most involved.”

Trudy looked at the two of them. “Are you headed back to San Diego?”

Dar only shook his head.

Syd said, “We’re hiding out from the press up at Dar’s cabin for the weekend.”

Lawrence did not exactly waggle his eyebrows, but the look he gave Dar might as well have been a leer and a wink. “Been a long time since you had anyone up there, isn’t it, Darwin? Besides us, I mean.”

“I’ve never had anyone up there besides you,” said Dar, with a warning look. “It seems that I’m in protective custody.”

There was a silence. Then Trudy said brightly, “Oh…before you go…Investigator Olson…”

“Syd,” said Syd.

“Syd,” continued Trudy. “Could you give us your professional opinion on a piece of surveillance tape?”

“Sure,” said Syd.

“Aww, Trudy, no,” said Lawrence. His face reddened behind his mustache. “Jeez…”

“We need an opinion,” said Trudy.

“Aww, no,” said Lawrence. He took his glasses off and wiped them with a handkerchief while his face grew redder and redder.

“It’s just over an hour of tape,” Trudy said to Syd, “but we’ll fast-forward it. Dar, you’ve testified in a lot of these cases. I’d like your opinion as well.”

Dar and Syd followed Trudy into the real living room where the 60-inch TV and the reclining La-z-Boys were.

The half-inch VHS tape opened with a steady shot of a woman, early middle age, dressed in Lycra tights, gym shorts, and tennis shoes, walking out of a middle-class tract home and getting into a battered old Honda Accord. The camera zoomed in on the subject’s face, but the woman was wearing dark glasses and a scarf over her hair, so it was difficult to get a clear image of her. The video was in color with a digital readout in the lower right corner of the screen giving the date, hour, minutes, and seconds.

“Shot from your surveillance van?” Syd asked Lawrence.

“Mmm,” said Lawrence, who had not joined the group on the La-z-Boy couch but was standing back toward the dining room, as if ready to flee.

Trudy cleared her throat. “The woman’s name is Pamela Dibbs. She has three lawsuits pending—two of them relating to clients of ours, Jack-in-the-Box and WonderMart.”

“Disability claims?” said Syd.

“Yes,” said Trudy as the video showed the Accord driving away. There was a jump cut to the same Accord pulling into a parking space outside a large building. Lawrence had obviously known her destination and beaten her there in his Astrovan surveillance vehicle. The camera zoomed as Ms. Pamela Dibbs walked hurriedly toward the building.

“Three slip-and-falls,” said Trudy. “She’s claiming massive lower-back trauma that has left her housebound…essentially an invalid. She has affidavits from two doctors supporting this…Both the doctors work with Lawyer Esposito.”

Syd nodded.

Suddenly the camera view shifted: no longer color, the rough black-and-white image wobbled as someone carried the camera down a corridor. The picture was relatively clear, but distorted—as if shot through an anamorphic lens.

The camera view panned right and all at once there was a reflection in a wall of mirrors: Lawrence—all 250 pounds of him—in a ragged sweatshirt, gym shorts, bare legs, knobby knees, and tattered sneakers. He was wearing a fanny pack, had a kerchief tied around his brow Rambo-style, and was sporting a pair of oversized, heavy-framed sunglasses. The reflection seemed startled and then Lawrence looked himself up and down in the mirror for a long moment before moving into the main exercise room.

“Shit,” said Lawrence softly from behind the couch.

“Where’s the camera?” asked Syd. “In the glasses?”

“Part of the glasses’ frame,” said Trudy. “Tiny little lens, hardly bigger than a rhinestone. The fiber-optic cable runs down to the recorder in his fanny pack.”

“Where’s the wire…” Syd began, and then said, “Oh.” Lawrence’s reflection was turning away from gazing at himself and now she could see the “sunglass cords” which hung down behind Lawrence’s neck, disappearing under the collar of the sweatshirt.

They watched in real time as Lawrence joined the exercise group, standing one mat directly behind Ms. Dibbs. There was no sound, but one could imagine the music blaring its beat as the group began its warm-up exercises. Ms. Dibbs squatted, thrust, kicked, did jumping jacks, and ran in place quite nicely for a totally disabled person. She had taken her own sunglasses and scarf off and her face was quite clear in the mirror that faced the exercise group. The group leader was a woman in spandex tights, and the thong running between the muscled hills of her buttocks was also very visible in the mirror. Also visible—amidst all the women in black Lycra—was Lawrence hopping, squatting, huffing, and swinging his arms, always a beat or two behind Ms. Dibbs and the rest of the squadron. He was still wearing his sunglasses, of course.

“Are you asking my advice on this for legal reasons?” said Syd.

“Yes,” said Trudy, holding the VCR remote in her right hand as if ready to pull it away if Lawrence lunged for it.

“Well, you’ve obviously got the goods on her,” said Syd, “but you can’t use it if this is a private recreation facility. It would be as illegal as videotaping her on a trampoline in her own backyard.”

Trudy nodded. “It’s a city exercise facility. Public property.”

“And you cleared it with the manager there?”

“Yep.”

“And the class is open to anyone in the community?”

Trudy looked up at the video where Ms. Dibbs and the entire group of buffed-up young women had dropped into a quick squat, arms straight ahead of them. In the mirror, Lawrence tried to follow suit, almost lost his balance, pinwheeled his arms, and gained the squat just as the rest of the group hopped up and began more leg kicks. The video was in black and white, but Lawrence’s face in the mirror was darkening, sweat stains beginning to appear through the thick sweatshirt cotton.

“I don’t see any problem then,” said Syd. “You can show this to the court and jury as long as it isn’t edited.”

“ That’s the problem,” Trudy said, and began fast-forwarding through the tape.

Lawrence made a growling noise behind them.

After the set of exercises was over, Lawrence’s point-of-view camera slogged slowly into the mirror-lined hallway and swooped down on a drinking fountain. The camera picked up his reflection as he wiped his mouth, removed the glasses for a second, showing his feet, and then set the camera lens back in place as he mopped his cheeks and forehead with the kerchief. He was pouring sweat.

“He should have left then,” said Trudy in a monotone.

Lawrence growled, “It wouldn’t have been polite. And I paid for the entire session. And I wanted to show Ms. Dibbs working out for the full hour.”

“Well,” said Trudy, “you did.” She increased the fast-forward to high speed. The workout became a frenzied thrashing of Lycra-clad arms and legs, buttocks thrusting, thighs rippling—and several beats behind all this near-erotic sweaty female motion, the reflected image of the overweight, mustached man in sunglasses earnestly trying to keep up, breathing through his mouth now, his face so dark that the camera was showing the constant reddening without the benefit of color. Still in fast motion—three more breaks, three more trips to the drinking fountain. Then the fourth and final break before the end of the tape. The digital readout showed that the class had been exercising for forty-eight minutes.