I feel sick. “Then what?”
“Then you go to the hospital and talk to such and such. Hey, look, you’re just a rookie, okay. I’m sorry. Tell you what I’ll do. Let’s grab a sandwich, eat in the car and we’ll go to the hospital and sign this boy up.”
I really don’t want to. I’d really like to walk out of this place and never return. But at the moment I have nothing else to do. “Okay,” I say with great hesitation.
He jumps to his feet. “Meet me up front. I’ll call and find out which hospital.”
The hospital is St. Peter’s Charity Hospital, a zoo of a place where most trauma patients are taken. It’s owned by the city and provides, among many other things, indigent care for countless patients.
Deck knows it well. We zip across town in his ragged minivan, the only asset he was awarded from the divorce, a divorce caused by years of alcohol abuse. He’s clean now, a proud member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he’s stopped smoking too. He does like to gamble, though, he admits gravely, and the new casinos sprouting up just across the state line in Mississippi have him worried.
The ex-wife and two kids are still in California.
I get all these details in less than ten minutes as I chew on a hot dog. Deck drives with one hand, eats with the other, and twitches, jerks, grimaces and talks across half of Memphis with a glob of chicken salad stuck to the corner of his mouth. I cannot bear to look.
We actually park in the lot reserved for doctors because Deck has a parking card that identifies him as a physician.
The guard seems to be familiar with him, and waves us through.
Deck leads me straight to the information desk in the main lobby, a lobby packed with people. Within seconds he has the room number of Dan Van Landel, our prospect. Deck is pigeon-toed and has a slight limp, but I have trouble keeping up with him as he hikes to the elevators. “Don’t act like a lawyer,” he whispers under his breath as we wait in a crowd of nurses.
How could anyone suspect Deck of being a lawyer? We ride in silence to the eighth floor, and exit with a flood of people. Deck, sadly, has done this many times.
Despite the odd shape of his large head, and his gimpy gait and all his other striking features, no one notices us. We shuffle along a crowded corridor until it intersects with another at a busy nurses’ station. Deck knows exactly how to find Room 886. We veer to the left, walk past nurses and technicians and a doctor studying a chart. Gurneys without sheets line one wall. The tiled floor is worn and needs scrubbing. Four doors down on the left, and we enter, without knocking, a semiprivate room. It’s semidark. The first bed is occupied by a man with the sheets pulled tightly to his chin. He’s watching a soap opera on a tiny TV that swings over his bed.
He glances at us with horror, as if we’ve come to take a kidney, and I hate myself for being here. We have no business violating the privacy of these people in such a ruthless manner.
Deck, on the other hand, does not miss a step. It’s hard to believe that this brazen impostor is the same little weasel who slinked into my office less than an hour ago. Then he was afraid of his shadow. Now he seems utterly fearless.
We take a few steps and walk to the gap in a foldaway partition. Deck hesitates slightly to see if anyone is with Dan Van Landel. He is alone, and Deck pushes forward. “Good afternoon, Mr. Van Landel,” he says sincerely.
Van Landel is in his late twenties, though his age is difficult to estimate because there are bandages on his face. One eye is swollen almost completely shut, the other has a laceration under it. An arm is broken, a leg is in traction.
He is awake, so mercifully we don’t have to touch him or yell at him. I stand at the foot of the bed, near the entrance, hoping mightily that no nurse or doctor or family member shows up and catches us doing this.
Deck leans closer. “Can you hear me, Mr. Van Landel?” he asks with the compassion of a priest.
Van Landel is pretty well strapped to the bed, so he can’t move. I’m sure he would like to sit up or make some adjustment, but we’ve got him pinned down. I cannot imagine the shock he must be in. One moment he’s lying here gazing at the ceiling, probably still groggy and in pain, then in a split-second he’s looking into one of the oddest faces he’s ever seen.
He blinks his eyes rapidly, trying to focus. “Who are you?” he grunts through clenched teeth. Clenched because they’re wired.
This is not fair.
Deck smiles at these words and delivers the four shining teeth. “Deck Shifflet, law firm of Lyman Stone.” He says this with remarkable assurance, as if he’s supposed to be here. “You haven’t talked to any insurance company, have you?”
Just like that, Deck establishes the bad guys. It’s certainly not us. It’s the insurance boys. He takes a giant stride in gaining confidence. Us versus them.
“No,” Van Landel grunts.
“Good. Don’t talk to them. They’re just out to screw you,” Deck says, inching closer, already dispensing advice. “We’ve looked over the accident report. Clear case of running a red light. We’re gonna go out in about an hour,” he says, looking importantly at his watch, “and photograph the site, talk to witnesses, you know, the works. We have to do it quick before the insurance company investigators get to the witnesses. They’ve been known to bribe them for false testimony, you know, crap like that. We need to move fast, but we need your authorization. Do you have a lawyer?”
I hold my breath. If Van Landel says that his brother is a lawyer, then I’m out the door.
“No,” he says.
Deck moves in for the kill. “Well, like I said, we need to move fast. My firm handles more car wrecks than anybody in Memphis, and we get huge settlements. Insurance companies are afraid of us. And we don’t charge a dime. We take the usual one third of any recovery.” As he’s delivering the closer, he’s slowly pulling a contract from the center of a legal pad. It’s a quickie contract — one page, three paragraphs, just enough to hook him. Deck waves it in his face in such a way that Van Landel has to take it. He holds it with his good arm, tries to read it.
Bless his heart. He’s just gone through the worst night of his life, lucky to be alive, and now, bleary-eyed and punch-drunk, he’s supposed to peruse a legal document and make an intelligent decision.
“Can you wait for my wife?” he asks, almost pleading.
Are we about to get caught? I clutch the bed railing, and in doing so inadvertently hit a cable which jerks a pulley that yanks his leg up another inch. “Ahhh!” he groans.
“Sorry,” I say quickly, jerking my hands away. Deck looks at me if he could slaughter me, then regains control. “Where is your wife?” he asks.
“Ahhh!” the poor guy groans again.
“Sorry,” I repeat because I can’t help it. My nerves are shot.
Van Landel watches me fearfully. I keep both hands deep in my pockets.
“She’ll be back in a little while,” he says, pain evident with every syllable.
Deck has an answer for everything. “I’ll talk to her later, in my office. I need to get a ton of information from her.” Deck deftly slides his legal pad under the contract so the signing will be smoother, and he uncaps a pen.
Van Landel mumbles something, then takes the pen and scribbles his name. Deck slides the contract into the legal pad, and hands a business card to the new client. It identifies him as a paralegal for the firm of J. Lyman Stone.