Catastrophic Read online

  “Most likely both,” Ramirez proffered.

  “Most likely,” Reed echoed. “Third, the timing of this issue. I’ve never heard of Tyler Bentley, but based on what is written here, he was a football star. Planning this thing so it hits the court in the summertime, when people are thinking about football but before it starts and becomes a distraction, is pretty smart. Will make it easier to gain a sympathetic jury.”

  “And a mountain load of media exposure,” Ramirez added.

  Reed nodded in agreement, his thumb moving on to his pinkie. “Fourth, the amount prayed for is blank. Tells me they either haven’t done their homework yet, or they’re swinging for the fences.”

  Ramirez raised a finger and pointed it across at Reed. “The writing seems solid, but not overdone. We’re either dealing with a teetotaler or someone straight out of law school.”

  “I got that impression too,” Reed said, nodding his head. “Which means he’ll be hung up on things like principal and doing the right thing.”

  Ramirez winced, the words sounding horrible in his ear. “Drives the price up in a hurry.”

  “Mhmm,” Reed said, nodding his head. Silence again fell over the room as he stared down at the complaint before shifting his gaze to Lauren. She hadn’t said a single word since handing it, retreating so far back into herself she was almost catatonic. Her slight frame seemed to be shrinking before them as she hugged herself tight, her eyes never rising to meet his.

  “Lauren, why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Go for a run or something, we’ll manage here just fine.”

  The words jerked Lauren’s face up to his, her eyes wide. After several long moments she nodded and stood, her legs trembling beneath her.

  “But first, please for the love of all things Holy do not leave that whiskey sitting there,” Reed said. “After it’s been poured, it needs to be drunk.”

  Lauren looked uneasy, staring from him to the glass. She took two steps forward and downed it, spun on her heel and left without a word.

  Reed and Ramirez both watched from where they sat, neither saying a thing until she was gone, the door closed behind her.

  Ramirez remained turned in his chair for several moments after she was gone, staring at the door. “What the hell was that all about?”

  “She needed a drink,” Reed said, “whether she realized it or not.”

  Shifting back in his chair, Ramirez gave a slight twist of his head. “That’s for damn sure, poor girl needs the whole bottle. I meant, have you ever seen her go from Dragon Lady to scared kitten that fast?”

  The question lingered with Reed for a moment, his brow furrowed in thought. “No, but I can’t say that I’d be much happier getting a call from that guy either.”

  “True, but again, with the transformation...”

  “My guess? Whatever he said pissed her off at first, the more she thought about it though, the more it scared her.”

  A puff of breath slid out over Ramirez’s teeth. “Damn, that is one sick bastard.”

  Reed didn’t bother agreeing with the obvious, opting to swivel in his chair to stare out the window instead. Below him the Passaic River flowed by, brown and dirty, a perpetual stench rising from the pollutant cocktail that fed into it every day. A mile upstream the Newark Bay expanded out towards the Atlantic, a handful of commercial trawlers visible in the midday sun.

  Despite what his stretched tight skin and thick head of salt-and-pepper hair would indicate, he was fast approaching his sixty-fifth year. His patience with his employer and his profession were both starting to wear thin, a fact made apparent every day when he found himself wishing he was on his yacht headed out to sea instead of sitting behind his desk, staring at another nasty court case.

  “So what are you really thinking?” Ramirez asked, his gaze shifting between Reed and the river below.

  The question drew a smirk from Reed. “I must be getting predictable.”

  “Not to anybody but me. Fifteen years of working with someone highlights peccadilloes in a way that few other interactions do.”

  Reed paused, considering the words. Maybe he was feeling reflective today, maybe his dalliances with hanging it up were starting to wear on him, but they seemed to find their mark and settle there.

  “Two things are bothering me. First, the fact that after serving as counsel of record for SynTronic for almost a decade now, never once did the question of whether or not they did it enter my mind. Over the years we’ve spent more than our share of time with the scourge of society, but these guys might top the list. At least when thugs or gangsters kill or maim to turn a profit, they hold it out for the world to see.

  “These guys do it, then pay you off to keep you silent so they can do it again to the next guy.”

  “So you don’t want to settle?”

  Reed kept his eyes focused outside. “Of course we’re going to try and settle. Like I said, there’s no doubt SynTronic is guilty. We know what they’re willing to pay to keep that out of the papers, we just have to hope it’s enough to make this one go away.”

  “You don’t sound certain.”

  Reed spun himself around and looked down at the complaint on his desk. He checked the name listed as the plaintiff and asked, “You ever heard of this kid, Tyler Bentley?”

  Ramirez shook his head from side to side, his jowls jiggling beneath a thin-trimmed beard. “Naw, but I’m not much of a sports guy.”

  “Me neither, not since the days of Broadway Joe and the boys. From what this complaint says though, the kid was good, NFL good.”

  “Meaning our usual dollar amount won’t be enough to make this one go away.”

  “Probably not,” Reed agreed.

  “Huh,” Ramirez replied, chewing at the inside of his cheek as he bobbed his head up and down, deep in thought. “Still, we’ve got to try.”

  A heavy sigh slid from Reed. “And we will, but I’m just saying, I have a feeling they’re going to tell us to go to hell.”

  “Suits at corporate won’t be happy.”

  “Nothing we can do about that.”

  Ramirez raised his eyebrows in agreement, conceding the point. “Might even set him loose to try and help them see things our way.”

  A wizened hand reached out and tapped the top of the pages stacked in the middle of the desk. “I think the fact that these are here now, ahead of the official court-served copy, means that’s already happened.”

  A small nod was the only response. Both sat in silence for several long seconds before Ramirez raised his eyes, focusing on Reed. “So we’re going to trial.”

  The left corner of Reed’s mouth played up into a smile as he stood, returning to the bar and grabbing up the decanter. “And we know what that means.”

  A mischievous grin spread across Ramirez’s fleshy features. “We sit here and kill this bottle...”

  “We call a cab to take us down to Fernandes for a steak...” Reed continued, filling each of their tumblers with four fingers of whiskey.

  “And come back here tomorrow, ready to tear these guys a new asshole,” Ramirez said, lifting his drink.

  Across from him, Reed set the decanter down and did the same. It was a ritual they’d been practicing for over ten years now. When a case came in, they’d stuff themselves full of alcohol and red meat, a proverbial last meal before a two month dredge through the judicial process.

  Once the night was over, they wouldn’t touch either again until the final verdict was rendered.

  “One last time,” Reed said, looking at his glass, studying the amber liquid inside it.

  “Ride off into the sunset?” Ramirez asked, a questioning look on his face.

  Reed’s response was a smile as they clinked glasses, draining them in one elongated swallow. When they were done, both dropped them back to the desktop, Reed already moving to refill.

  “What was the other thing?” Ramirez asked, his hand still on the glass, his gaze fixed down at it as the smooth Scottish rye filled it again.
/>   “Hmm?”

  “A few minutes ago, you said there were two things you didn’t mention when Lauren was here. What was the other one?”

  Reed’s movements slowed as he put the crystal stopper back in the decanter and lowered it to the desk. He picked up his glass once more and looked at it, the previous drink tasting a bit sour in his throat.

  “Did you happen to notice who the counsel of record was for the plaintiff?”

  “Yeah, Shane Laszlo,” Ramirez said. “Never heard of him.”

  “Not him,” Reed said. “The other one.”

  Ramirez narrowed his eyes for a moment, trying to recall the name on the forms, before giving up and reaching for the complaint. He spun it around and pulled it over in front of himself, his gaze scanning the title page until it found what Reed was alluding to.

  Reed watched as his face registered alarm, followed by confusion.

  “Wait, what? How is that even possible?”

  “I don’t know,” Reed said, “but there it is.”

  Ramirez pushed himself to full height, ignoring the glass in front of him. “That has to be a scare tactic, right? Some boogeyman stuff to force our hand?”

  Reed shrugged, already raising his glass. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Heath was sitting on the front steps of the library as Shane approached, elbows propped up on his knees, staring down at his cell-phone. His focus was filled by the device in his hand, his face contorted as he stabbed at the screen like a gorilla trying to work a remote control.

  “New phone?” Shane asked as a way of greeting, not bothering to ascend the stairs.

  Heath’s head shot up at the sound of Shane’s voice, a small smile in place. “Birthday gift from the parents. I kept telling them my old flip phone was fine, but they wouldn’t hear of it.”

  Shane pulled a flip phone from his pocket and wagged it at him. “I feel you. Sometimes it’s nice not to be so damn accessible all the time.”

  “I miss it already,” Heath said, pushing himself to a standing position. He looked Shane up and down once before motioning to the faded jeans, scuffed boots, and t-shirt he was wearing. “I know I’m new to the whole process, but I didn’t think a tie was necessary for this kind of meeting.”

  A laugh snapped out of Shane, accompanied by a wave of his hand. He’d left his suit coat in the car and rolled up his sleeves, but for the rest of the day he was stuck in slacks and a tie. “It’s not. I had to be over at the Supreme Court to file some paperwork this morning. Trust me, tomorrow I’ll look just like you do.”

  Heath fell in beside Shane and together they walked across campus, the midday sun bathing them in warmth as they crossed the quad and headed for the engineering department. The conversation remained light the entire way, each feeling the other out as they went. Using the case as a common starting point, they talked about college football and the upcoming season before drifting over to the NFL. Halfway to their destination they were derailed by a gaggle of co-eds out for a morning run, finishing the journey with a spirited debate about blondes versus brunettes.

  There was no clear winner.

  Shane let Heath take the lead as they entered the engineering building, one of the newer additions that hadn’t existed when he enrolled eight years before. Unlike most of the buildings on campus its façade didn’t make use of a single brick, opting instead for just enough steel to keep the glass house upright. Inside the foyer was open and airy, tons of natural light filtering in.

  “Not bad, huh?” Heath asked as they walked across the white tile floors, casting a sideways glance to Shane.

  “Not at all,” Shane agreed. “I guess if you’re going to build a new engineering building, it had better live up to the title.”

  Heath nodded his head in agreement as they hopped into the elevator, taking it up to the fifth floor. Together they stepped out in a wide hallway, the ground and walls varying shades of white. A handful of people that Shane guessed to be graduate students by their advanced ages drifted down the hall towards them in ones and twos, no doubt the flow of a class just released.

  “Looks like we’re right on time,” Heath said, stepping aside from a doorway as two men with beards passed by. He leaned in and took a quick glance around before knocking on the doorframe with the back of his knuckles.

  A man in his late forties stood at the front of the room as Heath and Shane walked in, loading various objects into a cloth shoulder bag. He was dressed in jeans, hiking boots, and a plaid shirt tucked in tight, a trimmed beard on his face making up for the hair that was fast receding from his head.

  “Come in,” he answered without looking up.

  “Professor Lomax,” Heath said, leading Shane towards the front of the room.

  The words drew Lomax’s gaze up from his bag, a smile spreading across his face. He stepped out from behind the table and walked towards them, hand outstretched. “Heath Wilson, good to see you.”

  “Good to see you as well,” Heath replied. “Thank you for responding to the email. This is Shane Laszlo, the attorney I mentioned earlier.”

  “Yes,” Lomax said, releasing Heath’s grip and extending his hand to Shane. “Heath tells me you’re working on a case and had some questions about prosthetics.”

  “That’s right,” Shane said, returning the handshake. “Thank you so much for meeting with us.”

  “No problem,” Lomax said, moving back behind his desk and putting the last of a stack of papers into his bag. “I don’t know how much help I can be to you, but I’ll tell you what I know.”

  “Anything at all would be appreciated,” Shane said.

  “Alright,” Lomax said, “Just know that I’m a scientist, not a doctor, so anything I tell you is coming from that side, and that side changes pretty fast. Some of what I say might be a touch outdated already.”

  “Forewarned is forearmed. Like I said, we appreciate anything you can give us. Is there somewhere we should go to talk?”

  Lomax extended a hand towards the row of desks stretched out in front of him. “You’re welcome to come back to my office with me, but to be honest we’d have more space in here. I have a design review coming up and the place is stacked high with blueprints and models at the moment.”

  Shane looked over at Heath and shrugged. “I’m good, let’s do it.”

  Heath nodded in agreement, both of them pulling up a chair as Lomax perched himself atop the table, feet swinging free beneath him.

  “Do you mind if I record this?” Shane asked. “I’m new to this side of things, want to be sure I don’t miss any of it.”

  “Go right ahead,” Lomax said.

  Shane pulled out a legal pad, turned his recorder on, and asked, “Alright, what we’re most interested in here today are knee replacements. What can you tell us about those?”

  A long, heavy breath slid out from beneath Lomax’s beard as he leaned back and shook his head. “Nasty, nasty business right there. Pray you never have to have one.”

  “Why’s that?” Shane asked.

  “Because of the nature of the joint,” Lomax said. “Take for example a shoulder or a hip, simple ball and socket joints. Everything is made out of titanium alloy, there’s never any friction, no corrosion, just a nice smooth surface to let everything rotate on.

  “Not the case with a knee. You’ve got three bones feeding into a joint that acts like a hinge, the whole thing held together by a knee cap and a bunch of tendons and ligaments. You can use stainless steel for the cap, but the rest of it has to be from plastics. It’s an inexact science to say the least.”

  “And when you say plastics...” Shane prompted without looking from his pad as he scribbled notes.

  “Polyethylene,” Lomax replied. “High end stuff for sure, but still a far cry from steel.”

  “What do you mean?” Heath asked, speaking up for the first time since introductions.

  “Again, steel is more durable. Check that, a lot more durable. The average k
nee replacement lasts about twenty years before the components start to break down and the whole thing has to be done again. That would never be an issue with steel.”

  “So then why don’t companies just make them using steel?” Shane asked.

  “Simple physiology. Yeah, steel is a lot more durable, but it also lacks the necessary give that a hinge joint requires. Think about every time you extend your knee, if there was no cushion in there, nothing but two solid pieces of metal slamming together, it would snap all the bones in your leg. They just wouldn’t be able to take the pressure.”

  From the corner of his eye Shane could see Heath extend his leg beside him, wincing at the thought. The right corner of his mouth played up into a smile as he continued writing, his mind formulating the next question.

  “Walk me through the design process. How does a replacement go from theoretical to experimental to operational?”

  “You chose the right word for it,” Lomax said, pointing a finger at him, “process, because that’s just what it is. You have it wrong though in thinking it’s linear, from Point A to Point B to Point C. It’s a cycle, A to B to C and back to A again.”

  Shane traced out the pattern at the bottom of his page and flipped to the next one as Lomax continued.

  “Step one is the research. At this point, most companies have their products in enough people that they can study how they work in actual transplant patients. How their bodies respond to the implants, what kind of range of motion they have, what their recovery time was, everything.

  “From there they look at the previous model and determine what they can work with. Is there a way to make the prosthetic fit better? Is there a material out now that a body might receive easier? Has a more durable polymer been developed?

  “They take all that information and move it into Step Two, which is where I was. Once a year or so a whole bunch of eggheads would come and present all their new findings to us. They’d tell us what they’d like to see done, then set us loose to figure it out.”