The King of Torts

The stories hit with a fury on Monday, and they were all the same. Paulette muted the television and Jonah hid the newspapers. Miss Glick and the rest of the firm circled the wagons and had “No comment” for everyone. She received an e-mail from a sailboat captain claiming to be Clay’s father. He was near the Yucatan Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico and could someone please update him on Clay’s condition? She did so—stable condition, broken bones, concussion. He thanked her and promised to check back the following day.

Ridley arrived Monday afternoon. Paulette and Jonah cleared out, happy to leave the hospital for a while. Evidently, Georgians did not understand proper hospital waiting rituals. Whereas Americans move in with their beloved sick and wounded, those from other cultures deem it more practical to stop by for an hour, then let the hospital take care of its patients. Ridley showed great affection for a few minutes and tried to interest Clay in the latest renovations to their villa. His head pounded worse and he called for a pill. She relaxed on the foldaway and tried to nap, exhausted, she said, from the flight home. Nonstop. On the Gulfstream. He fell asleep too, and when he awoke she was gone.

A detective stopped by for a follow-up. All suspicion pointed to some thugs from Reedsburg, but there was scant proof. Clay was unable to describe the man who threw the first punch. “I never saw it,” he said, rubbing his chin. To make Clay feel better, the cop had four large, color photos of the black Porsche, heavily spotted with white cement, and Clay needed another pill.

Flowers poured in. Adelfa Pumphrey, Glenda at OPD, Mr. and Mrs. Rex Crittle, Rodney, Patton French, Wes Saulsberry, a judge Clay knew from Superior Court. Jonah brought a laptop, and Clay had a lengthy chat with his father.

“The King of Shorts” newsletter published three editions on Monday, each filled with the latest newspaper stories and gossip about Clay’s beating. He saw none of it. Hidden away in his hospital room, he was sheltered by his friends.

Early Tuesday morning, Zack Battle stopped by on his way to the office and delivered some welcome news. The SEC was suspending its investigation of Clay. He had talked to Mel Snelling’s lawyer in Baltimore. Mel wasn’t budging, wasn’t caving in to FBI pressure. And without Mel, they could not put together the necessary evidence.

“I guess the Feds saw you in the papers and figured you’ve been punished enough,” Zack said.

“I’m in the paper?” Clay asked.

“A couple of stories.”

“Do I want to read them?”

“I advise you not to.”

The boredom of the hospital was hitting hard—the traction, the bedpans, the relentless visits by the nurses at all hours, the grave little chats with the doctors, the four walls, the dreadful food, the endless rebandaging of his injuries, the taking of blood for yet more tests, the sheer tedium of lying there, unable to move. The casts would be his for weeks, and he could not envision surviving life in the city with a wheelchair and crutches. At least two additional operations were pla

The aftershocks of the actual beating came to haunt him, and he remembered more of the sounds and physical sensations of being pummeled. He saw the face of the man who threw the first punch, but couldn’t be sure if it was real or just a dream. So he didn’t tell the detective. He heard screams from the darkness, but they too could easily be part of the nightmare. He remembered seeing a black stick the size of a baseball bat rising into the air. Mercifully, he had been knocked out and could not recall most of the blows.

The swelling began to subside; his head was clearing. He quit the pain pills so he could think and try to run the office by phone and e-mail. Things were quite hectic there, according to everyone he talked to. But he suspected otherwise.

Ridley was good for an hour late in the morning and another late in the afternoon. She stood by his bed and was very affectionate, especially when the nurses were around. Paulette detested her and was quick to disappear when she entered the room.

“She’s after your money,” she said to Clay.

“And I’m after her body,” Clay said.

“Well, right now she’s getting the better end of the deal.”

39

To read, he was forced to raise half of the bed, and since his legs were already pointed upward, he sort of folded himself into a V. A painful one. He could hold that position for no more than ten minutes before lowering the bed and relieving the pressure. With Jonah’s laptop resting on both casts, he was browsing through the newspaper articles from Arizona when Paulette answered the phone. “It’s Oscar,” she said.

They had talked briefly on Sunday night, but Clay had been drugged and incoherent. Now he was wide awake and ready for details. “Let’s hear it,” he said, lowering the bed and trying to stretch out. “Mooneyham rested Saturday morning. His case could not have been more perfect. The guy is brilliant, and he has the jury eating out of his hands. The Goffman boys were strutting when the trial started, now I think they’re ru

“Beautiful, beautiful,” Clay kept saying, the phone stuck to the gauze on the left side of his face, opposite the slashed ear.

“Here’s the good part. I found out where the Goffman folks are staying, so I switched hotels. I see them at breakfast. I see them in the bar late at night. They know who I am, so we’re like two rabid dogs circling each other. They have an in-house lawyer named Fleet who caught me in the hotel lobby yesterday after adjournment, about an hour after the slaughter of their expert. He said he wanted to have a drink. He had one, I had three. The reason he had only one is because he had to go back to the Goffman suite on the top floor where they spent the night pacing the floors, kicking around the possibilities of a settlement.”

“Say it again,” Clay said softly.

“You heard me. Goffman, at this very moment, is thinking about settling with Mooneyham. They are terrified. They’re convinced, like everybody else in the courtroom, that this jury is about to nuke their company. Any settlement will cost a fortune because the old stud doesn’t want to settle. Clay, he is eating their lunch! Roger is excellent, but he can’t carry Mooneyham’s briefcase.”

“Back to the settlement.”

“Back to the settlement. Fleet wanted to know how many of our cases are legitimate. I said, ‘All twenty-six thousand.’ He beats around the bush for a while, then asks if I think you would consider settling them for something in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand each. That’s two point six bil, Clay. Are you doing the math?”

“It’s done.”

“And the fees?”

“Done.” And with that the pain immediately vanished. The throbbing skull was still. The heavy casts were featherlike. The delicate bruises ceased to exist. Clay felt like crying.

“Anyway, it definitely was not an offer to settle, just the first feeler. A real tense one. You hear a lot of rumors around the courthouse, especially from the lawyers and stock analysts. According to the gossip, Goffman could afford a compensation pool of up to seven billion. If the company settled now, its stock price might hold steady because the Maxatil nightmare would be over. That’s one theory, but after the bloodletting yesterday, it makes a lot of sense. Fleet came to me because we have the biggest class. The courthouse gossip puts the number of potential claims at somewhere around sixty thousand, so we have about forty percent of the market. If we’re willing to settle for around a hundred grand each, then they can predict their costs.”