Suzy's Case: A Novel (38 page)

June looks at the Weasel. “Sorry about that, Ms. McGillicuddy. Please don’t take it personally. Suzy sometimes reacts that way to strangers.” Just as the Weasel is about to respond Suzy looks off her light toy and up at the Weasel, giving one last perfectly timed “not sch-weet.” “Sorry again,” June offers.

“You two move around to the other side of the table and we’ll stay here,” I say. “That way I don’t have to struggle with moving Suzy. Besides, she’s kind of calm and I don’t want to interfere with her moment of peace.” They move around and struggle with pulling their wheelless chairs out because of the carpet friction. Naturally, June and I are patient.

They move in front of their chairs, sit down, then struggle with pulling them forward. Once they reach the table, I look at June and we sit down together. I’d estimate we’re a foot and a half above them. The Weasel gets it.

“Hey,” she says, looking over at the floor beyond. Aren’t those the wheels to these chairs in the corner there?”

“Nope. Those aren’t them.”

She gives me a disbelieving look. Game on.

“June, give them what they came here to see, please.” June reaches into her big leather bag and produces the wire and patch. She slaps
them down on the table with authority, the noise catching Suzy’s attention. She drops her light toy and starts yelling out an uncontrolled frenzy of “not sch-weets” again and again. June quickly picks the spinning light globe up and puts it directly in front of her eyes while Suzy looks past it, trying to see the patch and wire. It’s almost like she knows. After a few moments, the light ball gains the upper hand. Suzy quiets again.

The expert engineer, who to this minute has remained mute, is a small, unassuming guy in his late fifties. McGillicuddy introduces him as Oleg Krauss.

“Would you like me to give you some guidance here?” I ask him. “Do you want me to point out to you what my expert found on his inspection?”

“No need,” he replies. “I’m done.”

“You’re done?” I ask incredulously.

“Yes, I’m done.” He looks over at the Weasel. “We can go.”

“That wasn’t very thorough,” I tell him. “You hardly looked at it.”

“Please don’t speak to my expert about the case,” admonishes his companion. “It’s improper and you know that.”

“Sorry, you’re right,” I admit as I gaze down on them. I’ve seen this kind of inspection before. It’s not an inspection at all, but rather a formality so as to have a basis to come to court and tell the jury nothing wrong or unusual with regard to the wire or patch has been found. His testimony will be “I saw it and it was normal.” This sucks, but SOP when dealing with an unscrupulous defense attorney.

“Ms. McGillicuddy, before you leave, I have something for you. Since you’ve only been in this room two minutes, I’ll have to go get it. I planned on springing it on you at the five-minute mark but we obviously never got there. Hold on a second.”

I hobble out and hobble back, just as quickly as it took me to make the round-trip to Lily’s desk, fifteen feet away. Not very quickly, in other words.

“It’s not five minutes,” Lily tells me when I picked the papers up from the edge of her desk.

“I’m well aware,” I reply.

Back in the conference room, I lean across the table and hand the documents over to the Weasel, who reluctantly accepts them. “These are my opposition papers to your motion to dismiss; a cross-motion to add a claim that your engineering department failed to put a ten-cent adapter on a heart-monitoring machine known to be dangerous—which, I might add, would’ve prevented Suzy’s electrocution by your inexperienced jerk chicken chef nurse—and a nonparty witness response.” I pause and with perfect timing Suzy yells, “Sch-weet!” to punctuate the exchange.

“It’s self-explanatory,” I continue. “You may want to read it now, before you go and communicate its contents to your expert over here. It may prompt him to reinspect the wire and patch.”

Defense counsel is not fazed. She ignores my advice and looks at her expert. “Okay, we’re done. Let’s go.”

“Travel safely,” I say, opening the door for them. Ms. McGillicuddy has to fight gravity to get out of her chair but she manages on the second try.

“Prepare for battle,” I warn as she walks by.

She makes it halfway down the hall, then stops and turns as if something’s just registered. “Did you say these papers contain an exchange of nonparty witness?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Is this a new witness or someone known to both sides?”

“I know her and I have reliable information you know her, too.”

“Her? Who is she?”

“Dr. Laura Smith.”

“Isn’t that the one who’s all over the news this morning? Who killed her husband last night?”

“That’d be the one.”

“Well, I don’t know her, so you’ve been misinformed. What does she have to do with this case anyway?”

“Something.”

The Weasel gives me a look, one that says she thinks I’m bluffing. “Did you talk to her?”

“I did.”

“What did she say?”

“Stuff.”

She looks annoyed. “What kind of stuff?”

“Stuff about the patch and wire. The kind of stuff that’s going to help the good guys. Stuff she’s willing to come to court for and stuff she was willing to kill her husband over. This is no longer a medical malpractice case. This is a cover-up turned murder, with my client the innocent little girl victim of hospital neglect caught in the middle. You know what I’m talking about, and it’s all going to come out. This shit’s going down, and so are the players. I’d give some thought to amending your response to my Discovery and Inspection, but it’s probably too late for that now anyway, and you know what I mean.”

“I can only say you’re delusional,” she replies, “and you better watch what you say about me or you’ll end up being slapped with a lawsuit. Libel, slander, defamation of character, and whatever else applies. I would suggest that maybe the head trauma you sustained in your car accident is interfering with your ability to think rationally and exercise good judgment. Maybe you should go home and get some rest. I’m sorry your client has to witness you in this condition, but in your defense, irrational behavior and compromised thought are not uncommon in such cases as yours.”

The Weasel’s pause fills the hallway with silence. It’s the kind of pause one revels in after having made a winning argument that’s difficult to refute. All eyes are on me, waiting for a return of synapse fire. Unfortunately, my neurons are shooting axonal blanks. This woman has me doubting myself—and why shouldn’t she? I made all that up, kind of. Still, my philosophy on coincidences is that there are no such things. If a connection can be drawn between two seemingly unrelated events, then they are somehow related. I have to maintain my position if for no other reason than to save face in front of June, who’s waiting for my snappy rebuttal as interestedly as my opponent is.

“Dr. Smith has agreed to cooperate,” I announce. “I’m going to the Brooklyn House of Detention, the holding facility, to take her statement. Once she’s committed what she knows to writing under oath, the punitive damages I’ll be asking for will bankrupt the hospital. You
run along and continue with your sham defense of a sickle cell crisis. What Dr. Smith will soon corroborate is all there in my opposition papers and cross-motion. After my visit with her, I’ll be filing those documents with the court. Once it’s a matter of public record, we’ll be at the moment of no return.”

Now McGillicuddy’s staring at me like I’m crazy. June, however, seems to be giving points.

“All I want to do here is get my client fairly compensated. I haven’t been retained to expose the hospital for criminal negligence or anything else unrelated to improving my client’s quality of life. It’s up to you to get this case resolved before the lives of more people are altered forever, including your own. You know the way out. Now run along.”

June and I watch defense counsel and expert make their exit from the conference room. When they’re out of hearing range, June demands, “What’s going on here? You’re not going nutty on me like she said, are you?” She looks anxious.

“No way. Relax.” I change the subject. “How did you get here?”

“Trace. Why?”

“Is he downstairs somewhere?”

“He’s a phone call away. He had some business in the area to take care of for the Fidge.”

“Make the call. We’re going to the Brooklyn House of Detention to speak with Dr. Laura. I’ll fill you in on everything that’s happened on the ride there.”

A few minutes later, Trace pulls up to the curb. June insists on carrying Suzy out of her wheelchair and into the car. She buckles her into the backseat as Trace puts the chair in the trunk. June gets in the back next to Suzy and I sit next to Trace. As expected, he peels away from the curb leaving the smell of burned rubber behind. The scent brings
to mind what Suzy’s room must’ve smelled like at the moment of her flesh-charring electrocution.

I update June on the events of the last twenty-four hours. She listens intently, rolling her eyes at the sheer implausibility of it all. She laughs when I tell her how I fell for Smith’s look-over-there trick. More practically, Trace instructs me how to jimmy my way out should I be kidnapped and stuffed in a trunk again.

As we arrive June is still trying to get a handle on the whole thing. “I don’t understand why you told that woman—”

I interrupt. “The Weasel.”

“Yeah, the Weasel. Why is Dr. Laura our witness if she’s been an accomplice to drugging and kidnapping you? God knows where you’d be now without that mystery rescuer. That part, by the way, I don’t get at all.”

“It was her husband who started to play rough and so she went and killed him. I have a hunch about her, though. Plus we’re making a big play with no downside. As for my rescuer, I can’t explain anything about him other than that maybe he’s some kind of vigilante like Charles Bronson.” He was a pretty small guy, too, I suddenly recall.

We enter the building and are pointed in the right direction. We arrive at the area we need to be when we spot the person we need to speak to. She’s on the other side of a security wall, sitting behind a bulletproof teller’s window.

I walk up to the tiny window that’s framing her large body. Her badge reads:
SERGEANT ROOSEVELT
, and she reminds me of a big black girl I grew up with whom everybody was scared of. “Excuse me, Sergeant,” I say through the little vents in the security window, giving her a friendly smile.

“How can I help you?” Sergeant Roosevelt inquires.

“I’d like to see Dr. Laura Smith, please. She’s probably waiting arraignment.”

“That she is. Only her lawyer and family members can visit. You either?”

“Well, I’m a lawyer.”

Sergeant Roosevelt raises an eyebrow at me. “You
her
lawyer?” she
asks sternly. “Because you don’t look like her lawyer that was here earlier.” The jovial tone of our previous exchange is now a thing of the past.

I’m about to conjure up a response when, to my surprise, June appears from behind me. “Sergeant, can we speak privately? It’s about my little girl.” June steps to the side, pointing out poor Suzy, who’s staring into space.

Roosevelt looks past us at Suzy, and the hardness in her face vanishes. She purses her lips. “Affirmative,” she responds in a very official way. “When you hear a buzz, pull open that metal door to your right. I’ll meet you in there.”

June turns to me. “Watch Suzy.”

As she reaches the metal door fifteen feet away, there’s a loud buzz and a click. She pulls open the door, then disappears behind it. I wink at Suzy. “Let’s hope your mom keeps that resourceful streak of hers going.”

Suzy doesn’t reply. But I believe she hears me.

Ten minutes later, there’s another loud buzz, then a click, and the metal door swings outward. June and Sergeant Roosevelt appear from behind it, continuing their conversation in the hall as the door shuts tight behind them. The tone of their exchange is friendly. Superfriendly, in fact. June opens up her big leather bag and takes out an old-style Filofax. Finding a piece of paper, she writes down what I assume to be her phone number and gives it to the sergeant. They start walking toward us, then stop a few steps later, continuing their absorbing conversation. The sergeant then puts her arms around June and they hug. “Now, don’t you forget to call me, Rosie!” I hear June tell her as they let go of each other.

Rosie smiles. “Speak to you soon, girlfriend,” she says, “and give my best to the Fidge. Don’t you worry, that doctor in there will help you out. She’s got nothing else to lose.”

Rosie now looks at me, and her tone quickly changes back. “I’m going to buzz you in. Once inside, you’ll be escorted to where Dr. Smith is being held so you can speak to her.”

After being metal-detected by a machine and a hand wand, I then
am frisked by a pretty corrections officer, whom I ask to be gentle due to my ball sutures. After placing all my worldly possessions in a safe, the aforesaid pretty officer locks it, giving me the key along with a written itemization.

The next thing I know, I find myself sitting in a tiny, barren room with two cheap metal chairs facing each other. They’re the same kind of chairs the City of New York Department of Law has in the Tort Division reception area. Bright white light emanates from the fluorescent overhead lighting, triggered by motion detection when I entered the room. I take a deep breath. I feel like crap. I’m nauseous, tired, and have a pounding headache. Did I mention severe ankle pain?

After I have waited five minutes, the door opens and the pretty corrections officer who lightly patted my testicles escorts Dr. Laura into the room. As bad as I may feel and look at this moment, the doctor is obviously much worse off. Way, way worse.

The officer walks the doctor over to the chair opposing me and helps her sit down. “I’ll be stationed right outside the door,” she explains to me. “You must be a pretty important person to have gotten yourself back here, but please be quick.”

“As far as I know, I’m only important to my dogs and children, but thanks anyway.” I watch as she leaves. When I hear the latch click, I turn to Dr. Laura, who’s just sitting there quietly with her head down. “Hi, Doctor. I’d ask you how things are, but I think the question is inappropriate right about now.”