The Fall-Down Artist Read online

  “Showing your age, Al, really are,” Dorsey said. “Not movies nowadays, Grandpop. These are videos. No white screen to unroll. No film to crop every time it’s shown. Videotape: shove in the cassette you’re in business.”

  “Just show it, please?”

  “Yeah,” Bernie repeated. “Just show it, please?”

  Dorsey took a tape cassette, a copy of the one he had mailed that afternoon to Fidelity Casualty, from a desk drawer and slapped it into the VCR atop his twenty-inch television.

  “So what’s on the program tonight?” Bernie asked.

  “Something of a New Wave feature,” Dorsey said, returning to his seat. “It’s called Cement Man, a real tear-jerker. How many hankies you equipped with?”

  The TV screen went from black to gray, and then a row house much like Dorsey’s appeared. The camera angle was on a diagonal from the left and pointing down from about shoulder height. From the covered walkway between two houses came a man in his late forties, wearing a stained navy sweatshirt. In his left hand he held a four-foot wrecking bar, which he began to use against the cement sidewalk. He worked the curved business end into an existing crack and put his back into it. Cement chunks split off into the air. After going at it for a few more minutes, he dropped the bar, lowered himself into a crouch, and began gathering the debris.

  “This is it,” Dorsey said. “Here it comes now, the part you’re gonna love.”

  The videotape’s subject carried a load of debris through the walkway and returned for another. As he bent down, his face was to the camera; his expression turned to a scowl of suspicion.

  “Busted.” Al left his chair for another beer. “Looks like this guy caught on.”

  “Just watch,” Dorsey said calmly. No, he thought, DeMarco never caught on. Too busy working. P. I. Stockman, he’s the one who caught on. Somehow.

  Suspicion left the man’s face and he went blank. Cautiously, he turned to left profile and reached a hand back to the seat of his pants. Now his face showed disgust as he fanned at his ass.

  “Goddamn!” Bernie shouted. “The guy cut the cheese. Dorsey, you must’ve pissed yourself.”

  “Job like this, I take along a pair of plastic underwear.”

  “So what’s his story?” Al asked. As they spoke, the man on screen went back to work on the sidewalk.

  “Auto, personal injury. And, as you can see, a solid fake.” Dorsey took another Rolling Rock from the refrigerator. “He’s the one who got away. I thought Bernie might’ve filled you in on the way over.”

  “So this is the one,” Al said. “Bernie told me you had a bad break, but he thinks you’ll be all right.”

  “Really, Dorsey,” Bernie said. He finished his beer and gestured for Dorsey to toss him another. “You haven’t lost face around here. That young shit they assigned to the case should’ve settled and never taken on Stockman. Should’ve settled up and called it a victory.”

  “Settle. You lawyers like that, huh?” Al asked Bernie.

  “Looking at me here flat on my back, Al, you may find it hard to believe I’m a good lawyer. Want to know why?” Bernie did not wait for an answer. “Because I very rarely go to court. Settle ’em ahead of time, that’s the moneymaker. Hearings and trials, they’re too much like work. Take time, too, time I can put to better use elsewhere. Like bringing in new business for the firm. Or maybe sitting at my desk billing more time for more clients. Better believe I like to settle.”

  The tape continued for another ten minutes of manual labor, until both Bernie and Al decided they’d had enough. Dorsey rewound the tape and returned it to the desk drawer. Al remarked he had been asking around about Dorsey; he hadn’t seen him much lately. “My Rolling Rock seems to last a lot longer when you’re not around,” Al told him.

  “My time’s been filled with a little of this and that.” Dorsey grinned with satisfaction. “Chased down some witnesses for a civil suit. Even had a job for Bernie’s firm and did it pretty well. I was their hero.”

  “Unlike this DeMarco trial, which is no big deal,” Bernie said. “You certainly were our hero, but only for a day; then we got over it and settled down to business. But, regardless, it was a good piece of work, which led to a brilliant settlement.”

  “Yeah,” Dorsey said. “I did that. But mostly it’s been insurance jobs lately.”

  “Checkin’ out more deadbeats?” Al asked.

  “Pretty much,” Dorsey said. “Not with the camera, mostly just asking around about guys. Workers’ comp, a little auto. Last few weeks, the stuff has been pouring in. I’ve put some thought into buying a bigger mailbox.”

  “Sounds funny,” Bernie said. “How come you’re getting so much? Stuff you’re talking about, surveillance and even just checking on a guy, that usually goes to the big outfits because of the price. And some of the local carriers have in-house guys. Somebody must like you, want to make you rich.”

  “Like me? Somebody out there loves me—the claims manager at Fidelity Casualty. You know him, Ray Corso? Well, things may change after this DeMarco deal, but up to now I’ve been getting tons of work from him. Back in early summer, around the first of July, Corso calls and asks if I can come to his office for a talk, which of course I do. Well, Corso starts right in about how the company wants to get tough and run a lot of cases to ground. Really sew up some bad ones. Get aggressive, he keeps on saying. I don’t think this guy could get aggressive in a whorehouse. But he comes right across with eight cases and says expense is no concern.”

  “Can’t be; it doesn’t work that way,” Bernie said. “Corso’s like all the rest, he’s got a money ceiling on his authority. Tell you what: you send in big bills, really milk this thing, there’s going to be invoices coming back in the mail with PISSED OFF stamped across ’em.”

  “Who’s the investigator here?” Dorsey asked. “I talked to Corso, and I’m telling you the money is there. Already finished some of the jobs, and the bills were paid in full. Big bills like you wouldn’t believe.”

  Bernie sipped his beer and shook his head. “Still doesn’t sound right, that much work going to just one guy. Don’t get pissed off and take it the wrong way, but you think your old man might have a little something to do with this?”

  Dorsey stopped his beer three inches from his mouth and cut his eyes at Bernie. “No, I’m not taking it wrong, I’m taking it right, and I am pissed off. The old man, his day is done. Shot his wad a long time back. He doesn’t have a thing to do with this.”

  “Okay, just guessing is all,” Bernie said. “So, anyways, where’s all this work at?”

  “Not much here in the city.” Dorsey sipped his beer, glad to be off the subject of his father. “Been hauling my ass all over western P.A. for months. Mill towns, mostly. Allenport, Monessen, Aliquippa, those sorts of places. Next week’s work is all in Westmoreland County; then I go to Johnstown. Working on an hourly rate so the mileage is money. Doing in-depth shit like the man asks for.”

  “Guy could get rich,” Al said, resting his beer on the curve of his stomach, “if he was smart enough to go to them places in a short-haul truck with a load of whatever. A guy could double his take, maybe triple it.”

  “Yeah, Al, sure,” Dorsey said. “I’ve done a lot of surveillance from the back of a big orange sixteen-foot U-Haul. Who would notice me?”

  3

  In western Pennsylvania, U.S. 22 is a road that requires concentration. There are three lanes; eastbound, westbound, and an alternating passing lane that can change midway through an S-bend or tight curve. The terrain is mountainous in part and always treacherous. But despite the danger, Dorsey drove his old Buick with only a fraction of his attention on the road. He kept drifting back to Bernie’s question: Could the old man be pulling strings?

  The old man, Dorsey thought, as he passed a truck just beyond the turnoff for Torrance State Hospital, the site of a number of involuntary commitment hearings he had attended, representing the District Attorney. The old man has a lot of pull, but not with insur
ance companies. He can still put in the fix for a guy to get a job with the county or city, but this is out of his league. He was always the working man’s candidate, the man for the common people: Old Irish, common as Paddy’s pig. The only way for him to get into the boardroom was to pour the coffee and serve lunch to the whitebreads. The old man can make a lot of things happen, but not in this ballpark, Dorsey assured himself. At Route 56, he pulled off 22 and headed south for Johnstown.

  With the luxury of unlimited expenses, Dorsey chose to make an overnight stay out of what should have been a two-day commuting job. The first day he spent interviewing Carl Radovic’s neighbors in the lower regions of Otterman Avenue. Slow and tedious work and, as Dorsey well knew, most likely futile. Though many investigations begin with a tip from a jilted lover or an angry neighbor who has seen the disabled guy next door fixing his roof when he left for the three-to-eleven shift, little or nothing comes from cold calls on the neighbors. But just such a canvassing was expected as an integral part of a disability investigation. Adjusting companies and investigators grew fat on such work every day, and Dorsey was willing to play along and get on the gravy train.

  Otterman Avenue, unlike most of Johnstown, was on flat bottom ground in the basin that formed the business district. Dorsey thought of the area as the floor of a natural cistern, surrounded by hills, that filled itself with muddy brown water every forty years or so. The part of Otterman Avenue that Dorsey worked, far east of the shops and hospitals, was blue-collar residential. At 362 Otterman, Dorsey spoke briefly to an elderly woman who didn’t know Carl Radovic; she was just the mother-in-law in for a visit. At 364, only a fourteen-year-old girl was home. Dorsey backed off quickly when she flashed him a twenty-year-old smile and invitation. At 370, directly across from Radovic’s house, he met three unemployed brothers, all in their early twenties.

  “Yeah, sure, fuckin’ Carlie,” said the oldest brother, who had nominated himself spokesman. Like the others, he was dressed in a faded T-shirt and raggedy Levi’s; his hair was long and unkempt. The living room in which they sat held one easy chair and sofa. The air had a musty smell that told Dorsey the boys weren’t helping Mother with the housework.

  “Carl Radovic,” Dorsey said. “Around five-five but wide through the shoulders, they tell me. Lives across the street?”

  “Tryin’ to tell ya we know him,” the oldest said from his spot on the sofa. “Fuckin’ guy’s been around forever. Used to have his mother over there with him. She died couple years ago. Forget how many.”

  “No family? Married?”

  “Him? That ugly bastard?” The oldest brother lit a cigarette and kicked out a cloud of smoke for punctuation. “He spends all his time nursin’ beers down the corner, the Hotel Bar. So you’re an insurance guy, huh? Checkin’ on his back, on how he got hurt? Ain’t supposed to be worth a shit. Used to be a hard-working sumbitch, but ain’t worth a shit now. What’s he gettin’, work comp?”

  “They don’t tell me the numbers or what they’re paying out for,” Dorsey lied. Radovic had a hefty weekly check coming in. “So what’s the guy doing with all his time? Can’t spend it all in a bar. Who does the house repairs? Who keeps up the property?”

  “Repairs?” the oldest brother said. “Gimme a break. Nothin’ new on the outside and the drapes are drawn shut. Maybe he makes chicken movies.” The two younger brothers, sitting at the far end of the sofa, elbowed each other and laughed.

  Dorsey ignored the suggestion. “How about his comings and goings? Does he go out and come back about the same time every day?”

  “Just to the Hotel Bar. We don’t keep tabs on him.” The oldest brother looked over at his siblings, waiting for his laugh. He got it.

  “No sign of him working? How about when he goes out in the morning, does he carry a lunch pail? How about his car, is he driving something new?”

  “He ain’t drivin’ ’cause he ain’t got a car. Far as lunch is concerned, he don’t leave the house till afternoon.”

  Finishing his interview with the brothers, Dorsey tried a few more homes on Otterman with even weaker results. He checked out the Hotel Bar, which he found with the help of a crossing guard, but only the bartender was in and he was busy loading the coolers and in a bad mood because of it.

  Dorsey returned to his motel, the Sheraton on Bedford, and broke for lunch. With a Diet Coke from the machine in the hall, he tore into three chunks of a ham loaf that Gretchen had taught him to prepare. The ham loaf had been packed in a small Igloo cooler. Dorsey replaced the food with ice from the lobby machine, then topped the ice with six cans of Rolling Rock to chill for the end of the day’s work. This completed, he slipped on a tie, flicked some lint from the lapel of his herringbone jacket, and set off to interview Dr. Tang, Carl Radovic’s treating physician.

  Sitting in an uncomfortable chair in Dr. Tang’s empty waiting room, Dorsey pondered the fact that backwoods America is knee-deep in foreign-born doctors. Every small-town hospital seems staffed almost exclusively with them. Grinning, he recalled a neurologist he had interviewed in Greene County, an Asian whose receptionist had sat in on the conversation to assist the doctor over the rougher spots of the English language. The doctor was straightforward and honest, as Dorsey remembered, but somebody else was writing the great reports he signed.

  “Things look kind of slow,” Dorsey said to Dr. Tang’s receptionist, the room’s only other occupant, who sat behind a counter with a sliding glass partition. She was young, but Dorsey knew that even at her age she could have the keeper-of-the-gate syndrome suffered by so many medical receptionists. The higher calling to protect the doctor from answering questions. Nobody sees the wizard.

  “It’s a slow town,” she said, shuffling some papers to the side, seemingly glad for the diversion. “Nobody works anymore, so nobody’s got health insurance, like Blue Cross or Blue Shield. Most can’t afford a visit to the family doc for a cold, let alone fork out an orthopedist’s fee. Even the work comp patients are gettin’ scarce. Fewer jobs for people to get hurt on. Yeah, slow it is.”

  “One guy got hurt at work. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Guy named Carl Radovic. He’s a comp case.”

  “Oh, him,” the receptionist said. “Just pulled his chart this morning. You’re next, by the way, soon as Dr. Tang finishes rounds at Conemaugh.”

  “Any chance of getting a peek at that chart?” Dorsey used his most ingratiating smile, chancing it. C’mon, he thought, let’s have a look. There’s a resident at Mercy Hospital who’s showing me the way around a patient’s folder.

  “Sorry, it’s already in the doctor’s office, locked in a drawer.”

  “You familiar with Radovic?”

  “A little. He’s in every two weeks,” the receptionist said. “And the way things are, I’ve got plenty of time to shoot the breeze, find out what people are all about. Like a good detective. You’re a detective, right? What do you think?”

  “Work on it,” Dorsey said. “The field is bursting with opportunity.”

  “One thing I know for sure,” the receptionist said, apparently pleased with her insider’s knowledge. “He’s a lucky son of a bum.”

  “How’s that, lucky?”

  “Really lucky, in a way,” the girl said. “You don’t mind gettin’ a little bit hurt. Carl, now, he don’t look bad, really.”

  “Let’s get back to lucky.”

  The receptionist looked surprised at Dorsey’s apparent failure to understand. “Guy twisted his back, right? Picked up something or other at the mill. Get this. The accident takes place two days before a layoff! Carl would’ve been gone, laid off. He stays healthy, he’d have gone on unemployment. Temporary benefits, even if some people think it’s never gonna run out. But he’s on comp, permanent. Stuff runs for life, unless you guys come up with a way to get him off.”

  Dorsey slipped into a well-practiced disinterest. “Radovic tell you this?”

  “Some,” the receptionist
said. “He ain’t got much, but he likes to brag like the rest. Most of it I got from a girlfriend; she’s in personnel at the mill. Used to be, anyways. She’s laid off now, too. From Carlisle Steel.”

  Before they could continue, the intercom buzzed, indicating that Dr. Tang had arrived in his office through a private entrance. Dorsey was shooed in by the receptionist, who reluctantly gave up her audience.

  An Asian gentleman, wearing an ill-fitting suit that would have disguised his profession in a larger city, rose from behind his desk and introduced himself as Dr. Tang. His hair was cropped short and his eyes were hidden behind thick lenses.

  “Mista Dorsey,” Dr. Tang said blandly, nodding to a chair in front of the desk. “You here to discuss Mista Ravic?”

  “Radovic.” Dorsey took his seat. “Carl Radovic. You’re his treating physician, correct? You’re treating him for a back ailment?”

  “Yes, over the last few months. I see him on referral from Dr. Hurst, the plant doctor at Carlisle.” As he spoke, Dr. Tang opened a manila folder and reviewed its contents. “The man has a problem.”

  “What’s the diagnosis, doctor?” Dorsey took a sheet of paper from a manila folder of his own and handed it to the doctor. It was Radovic’s signed release for medical information, photocopied from Fidelity Casualty’s claim file.

  “To me, looks like a disc,” Dr. Tang said, eyes on the paper Dorsey had handed to him. “Herniated at L5-S1. Lots of pain; patient says he have pain running down his leg. Disc is out, striking a nerve. Possibly sciatic.”

  “Herniated disc,” Dorsey mumbled, again looking through the folder on his lap, faking a search. “What do the tests say? CT scan, myelogram?”

  “I examine him,” the doctor said. His eyes abruptly left the paper and settled on Dorsey. “All the signs, he have all the signs. Straight leg is positive. Tender over the sciatic notch. Can’t bend, and range of motion is narrow.”

  “Doctor,” Dorsey said, “I’m not here to start an argument, but isn’t it standard for some type of pictures, other than X rays, to be taken? What you just mentioned are clinical observations. Any test results in his chart?”