The Ambulance Chaser Read online

  The second type were those timorous souls too frightened to work in a law firm, who needed the safe confines of an insurer to operate in. ‘They would last all of five minutes in private practice, Chris,’ he said. ‘Let’s call it six. They would last one unit,’ he said, twirling his glass and smiling once more. He had a point, but I knew a bit about the litigation departments of large law firms. We can’t all be suited to an environment of blood and cordite.

  ‘The third type?’

  ‘Blood-and-bone hacks,’ he said. ‘A dying breed thanks to tort reform, and the sooner the meteorite finally lands, the better.’

  ‘Where does Clare fit in?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gibbs said. ‘What category are you, Clare?’ She rolled her eyes. I got the feeling she’d heard all of this before. ‘I think she’s in the married-with-children category,’ Gibbs then said, answering his own question.

  ‘I take it that’s true, Clare?’

  ‘Nothing Peter ever says is true,’ she replied.

  ‘I thought not. Besides, there’s one group you forgot,’ I said.

  ‘Really. Who?’ asked Gibbs. ‘What species has infiltrated us under my guard?’

  ‘The disbarred bankrupts,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Gibbs said, ‘but you’re a group of one, I’m afraid. And God knows why they let you in. You haven’t been sleeping with Angelo, have you?’

  Angelo De Luca was the National Head of Claims. I shook my head, tired of Gibbs now and ready to move on.

  ‘You haven’t heard about the fourth type yet,’ Gibbs protested as I got up to leave. I looked at him blankly. ‘The three U’s,’ he said. ‘Unmarried, unloved, unfucked.’

  Gibbs was a prick. I could see that. He was certain to be in this same spot in a few weeks time, with the next new employee, his cat’s bum of a mouth snapping tightly about me this time, taking delight in my excruciating fall from grace. ‘Peter,’ I said getting up, ‘you have just described my entire existence in three words. Thank you.’

  Clare said she’d go with me, and we left Gibbs to the company of some friends he’d spotted across the bar. He raised his glass, bid us adieu, and fired off one final warning. ‘Don’t forget, Chris,’ he said. ‘In my team, Mediocrity and Rudeness are our patron saints.’

  As I left I had an acute feeling of déjà vu, and tried to think where I had heard that before.

  Oh yes, I remembered. From a couple of judges in a former life.

  ‘Do we really need to be mediocre and rude?’ I had talked Clare into another drink, away from Gibbs, at a bar down the road. All I had to look forward to when I got back to my flat was a pizza in front of an SBS documentary.

  ‘Well,’ she said, sitting down, ‘I try not to be either. Rudeness comes easily to Peter. You should have heard what he said to me about maternity leave last time I took it.’

  Clare looked about nineteen. ‘How old are your kids?’

  ‘Nine, six and sixteen months,’ she said. If my maths were correct she had conceived her first child somewhere between ten and eleven. My maths wasn’t great. Only two years ago I had tried to stretch a 430K pre-tax income into an expenditure year of 7.3 million.

  ‘Nine!’

  ‘I’m thirty-eight this year, Chris,’ she said, smiling, maybe guessing what I was thinking. Fair skin, a sprinkling of freckles, but not a crow’s foot in sight.

  ‘You’re doing Botox, right?’

  ‘By the gallon. I’m injected daily.’

  ‘I thought so. Part of your salary package?’

  ‘With collagen. In lieu of superannuation.’

  ‘Why wasn’t I offered this?’

  ‘I can speak to someone in accounts, if you like.’

  ‘I’m not really in a position to take on a remuneration package,’ I said. ‘The taxman wouldn’t like it. He and my trustee would get fifty per cent of my Botox shots, anyway. And, believe me, they don’t need them. These people don’t smile. Ever.’

  She stared at her drink, gave it a slow stir with her straw, went to say something, then stopped. ‘I think what happened to you was really unfair,’ she then said. I nodded. I fully agreed. You bet it was unfair. Now that I think about it. The vodkas I’d had were confirming this. All seven of them. They were shouting at me like Eminem. This happened most nights of the week. I was caught up at the arse end of a witch-hunt. Arthur Miller could write a play about it. And it was all over a measly seven million dollars or so.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t much fun, anyway,’ I said. ‘Still, you didn’t finish your story. What’s it like working at South Pacific? Outside of having to put up with Gibbo?’

  ‘It’s okay. Angelo is . . . different.’ She rolled her eyes and smiled.

  ‘He doesn’t seem the sharpest tool in the box,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a running joke,’ she explained. ‘If you try to talk to him about a claim . . . he just doesn’t have a clue about legal issues. It’s hilarious.’

  You expect the National Head of an insurance claims department to have some basic legal knowledge. It never hurts. Suggesting that the company’s medical reports on plaintiffs should be made pro forma indicated a certain lack of knowledge of our legal system. Or a very keen understanding. Anyway, like I said, the Ascent of Man in reverse.

  ‘What’s his background?’

  ‘No one seems to know for sure,’ Clare said, finishing her drink. ‘He’s an insurance mystery man. Someone told me he used to sell cars, would you believe?’

  ‘I was told real estate.’

  ‘From the look of him you’d think it was drugs.’

  ‘And women,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Maybe he sold cars, houses, drugs and women?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Clare said, laughing.

  ‘I wonder if his net sales over the years in each category come out the same in kilos?’

  ‘Shall we ask him?’

  ‘Let’s. First thing Monday.’

  I laughed and ordered another drink. I was clearly getting wittier and wittier by the moment. This happens all the time when I drink. I get irresistibly droll and stupendously amusing. I absolutely captivate myself. Meanwhile, Clare looked at her watch and said she had to go. Of late, this kind of thing coincided with me getting incredibly enchanting.

  ‘What about the others? What about the big fellow?’ I asked.

  ‘Hardcastle?’

  ‘The TV star himself.’

  Barry Hardcastle, CEO and founder of SPGI, had recently taken to doing TV commercials for the company with him in the starring role. ‘I don’t know much more about him than you, probably,’ she said. ‘Just what I’ve read. A bankruptcy before the big success of SPGI.’

  ‘I think it’s two bankruptcies,’ I said.

  ‘Your information is more up-to-date than mine.’

  ‘I’m the bankruptcy historian for the Bar Association.’

  Clare looked at her watch again as I drew out the tide on Stoli No 8. ‘I really have to fly, Chris,’ she said.

  ‘Let me finish this,’ I said quickly, probably sounding desperate. ‘You haven’t told me where you were before SP.’ She looked anxious to go, but stayed anyway.

  ‘A law firm. Martin and Co.’

  ‘How long were you there?’

  ‘Eight years. Four as a partner.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I got pregnant.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I got pregnant again.’

  I stared at my rapidly depleting glass and told myself to slow down. I didn’t use my serious voice, though. ‘Which meant?’

  ‘You go on maternity leave in our profession, Chris, it’s not a great career move. Everyone pays lip service to looking after you, but partnerships . . .’

  ‘Gotcha,’ I said.

  ‘So I got a job with South Pacific. Started on the same day as Greg, actually.’

  ‘Greg?’

  ‘Greg Stewart.’ She paused and looked at me. ‘You don’t know what I’m
talking about?’ I shook my head. ‘He was the claims officer you replaced.’

  ‘Is there some kind of problem with that?’ I said. ‘He go to a competitor?’

  She paused. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He was killed.’

  ‘Killed?’

  She nodded. I waited for more. ‘A terrible assault,’ she said. ‘He worked late, went home on the train, left Erskineville station, was mugged not far down the road. Some bastard stabbed him. All for a wallet and a mobile phone.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘March.’

  We sat there looking at each other for a few moments, saying nothing. ‘Shit,’ I then said. ‘That’s cheered me up.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I assumed you knew. It got quite a lot of press coverage.’

  I shrugged. ‘I only started reading the papers again recently. Now that I’m unlikely to find my own name somewhere.’ Replacing a dead guy was a first, and it gave me a chill. I decided to change the subject. ‘So . . . umm . . . getting back to where we were. About you. Work is better now? At South P?’

  ‘It’s less stressful,’ she said, checking her watch again. ‘I miss the extra money a bit – naturally. But money isn’t everything.’

  Money isn’t everything. Boy, was Clare McDonald talking to the right bankrupt when she said that. We would get on fine. And even though she had to leave then, for a minute or two I didn’t feel quite so lonely.

  And so there I was, three weeks later, back behind a desk, strictly nine to five. It felt odd. Maybe it was the open-plan office. I would never get used to that. Maybe it was acting for defendants. That was another shock to the system. Still, I needed the money. I had some creditors I felt morally obliged to try to repay. And disbarred lawyers aren’t flooded with job offers, so I guess I had to be grateful they even gave me one. Some lawyers I had worked with supplied a reference, explained I wasn’t a war criminal or a terrorist. I still didn’t think I’d get the job, but they seemed almost eager to have me. At my second interview Angelo De Luca sold the place to me. He’d seen me in the papers. The bankruptcy, the disbarment, the charges. Shit happens. Welcome aboard, anyway. It was as if I was just what they were after. He even told me I might be able to build a whole new career at South Pacific. Mr Hardcastle, the CEO, was very keen on giving people second chances in life.

  De Luca was no Rhodes scholar, but he was a salesman, and at that second interview he planted in my mind the vision of the big boss and me sitting back in his CEO-sized office one day soon. There we both are, kicking up our feet, sipping single malts, looking at another wondrous set of claims figures for the financial year, another healthy South Pacific balance sheet, one more glorious set of profit and loss statements. How we would laugh when he gave me my bonus cheque with all its zeros. Then there’d be the jokes about our days as bankrupts. The debts we hadn’t paid. What a couple of wags. My, how we’d built careers on second chances and take threes.

  Five

  I couldn’t believe it. Another one. What was it with these fur balls and me at the moment?

  ‘Can I just make sure I understand you,’ I said to Mr Picozzi. ‘You want us to get you an Apprehended Violence Order –’

  ‘Si. Yes.’

  ‘Against a cat?’

  Mr Picozzi looked me squarely in the eye. ‘Sir, correct,’ he said firmly. ‘And the evidence. I have got here.’

  Law firms run businesses, from the very large with CEOs and chefs and dozens of eager young clerks, to one-person bands. The reason for their existence is the same throughout the capitalist world. The profit motive. Most people who have run a legal business for a while develop an aptitude for smelling cases where the aggravation is going to be higher than the reward. Put more simply, lawyers have acquired an acute sense for knowing when they mightn’t get paid. People with problems in this category end up at legal aid, or a community legal centre. People like Mr Picozzi, who turned up at the Randwick South Legal Centre on my Thursday night.

  My demise as a member of the Bar should have meant the end of my pro bono services to the RSLC, but I think Hannah – the solicitor in charge of my volunteer nights for years – saw that I needed Thursday nights more than they needed me. She said she would sign off on my advices in case there was ever an insurance problem, and she would square me staying on with the boss.

  I did need Thursday nights. Twelve years as a lawyer had left its mark. Appearing in court, advising people, having them rely on my judgment – my self-esteem had become tied up in all that. Besides, the world needs human rights lawyers more than ever these days, disbarred or not. On Thursday nights I was briefly, once again, a professional. That counted for something, even if my professional opinion was sought about what remedies Mr Picozzi might have against a cat that had, allegedly, eaten at least two of his budgerigars.

  ‘Evidence?’

  ‘Si. Yes, sir. Evidence. I have photograph.’

  ‘Of your budgie?’

  ‘No, sir. Of cat.’

  Ah, I thought. Clever. A photo of the alleged offender. Mr Picozzi handed me the mug shot. A long-haired breed – a stocky Himalayan, perhaps – cream with red shadings. Attention all units. I looked back at Mr Picozzi.

  ‘Cat. See, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ I looked carefully at the photo. A touch of urban feral about it as well, but I didn’t think I could tell Mr Picozzi it looked guilty enough to secure an AVO.

  ‘You see, sir,’ Mr Picozzi urged, pointing at the photo. ‘You see the evidence. Proof!’

  Mr Picozzi was excited about the photo, and I turned and looked at the law student who was sitting in on the interview with me to see if he understood what Mr Picozzi was on about. He shrugged. Then again, this particular student, who had taken the initial instructions from Mr Picozzi on his own – as is the RSLC system – had written ‘Possible Murder Case’ on the client advice sheet. Some students take a very formal approach when describing a client’s problem on the advice sheet, so I probably should have guessed that ‘Possible Murder Case’ wasn’t necessarily going to involve the client facing mandatory life.

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Mr Picozzi,’ I finally said. He looked startled, like he was talking to a complete idiot. Had I missed all the clues?

  ‘Look, sir. The killing. You see budgie. In cat mouth.’

  I studied the photo again. Perhaps the cat did have something in its mouth. Its head was shaded, though, and its mouth pointed down, and I was buggered if I could see a budgie in it. ‘You see anything?’ I said to the student. He shook his head.

  ‘Mr Picozzi, you say your budgie is in the cat’s mouth in this photo?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes!’ He clapped his hands together as if the case was proved. ‘Si! See. My budgie. He dead in cat mouth.’

  I gave a pained smile and shook my head. This just wasn’t going to get a conviction as Exhibit 1 at the cat’s trial if this was all Mr Picozzi had. Naturally, it wasn’t. The next photograph clearly depicted a budgie. An attractive buttercup lemon, it was lying prone on the ground. It appeared remarkably intact for a bird that had suffered at the claws of a savage member of the felis species, but I had to admit it was either deceased or capable of a highly convincing dead bird impersonation. In one corner of the frame was the rear end of the prime suspect, appearing to walk away from his victim in a somewhat disinterested fashion. The cold-blooded bastard. The only thing missing from the photo was a chalk outline around our budgie, but I figured that would be Exhibit 3.

  ‘See!’ Mr Picozzi nearly shouted. ‘Budgie dead. Kill him.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, I see that, Mr Picozzi. It looks that way.’

  ‘Look?’ he said. ‘Is that way, sir!’

  I nodded again.

  Mr Picozzi hunched up his shoulders then raised both hands in exasperation and despair. ‘Why he kill? Why he kill budgie but not eat. For fun?’

  It did appear to have all the hallmarks of a thrill kill. I decided not to suggest this, but I wasn’t sure what I could
say. At this point, though, the student decided he could be helpful. ‘It isn’t so surprising that the cat didn’t eat your bird,’ he said to Mr Picozzi matter-of-factly. ‘They’re carnivores, of course – they can’t really digest plant material efficiently – but they’ve been domesticated for so long, since before the Egyptians, that they’re used to being fed by us. They may kill birds or mice, but rarely eat them. They, in fact, do do it for fun.’

  Mr Picozzi looked at us like we had just defecated on his mother’s grave.

  ‘You finished?’ I said to the student. He nodded sagely, Future Partner, Mergers and Acquisitions, Very Big Firm, written all over him.

  I returned to the grieving, and now even more excited, client. ‘Mr Picozzi, I think your pictures are good evidence of what occurred. Very, very good. But I just don’t think an Apprehended Violence Order is the way to go. My experience has been that generally magistrates will only grant them against people, not cats.’

  Mr Picozzi’s olive leather face registered utter disbelief, but he was not about to give up. ‘What about damage?’

  ‘Damages?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said firmly. ‘This budgie, my budgie, I breed. Very rare breed. Dark-eyed-clear. Dark eyes – all yellow plume, no blemish. Expensive, sir.’ I nodded. ‘Plus, sir, I pay for cage, water fountain, seed tray, budgie seed – top quality. Plus more. Sawdust for cage. Who pay me this now?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you may be able to sue the owner of the cat for your losses, but unless it’s a lot of money . . . Perhaps we could draft a letter for you to give to the owner demanding some compensation.’ This seemed a perfect way of dealing with the problem.

  Mr Picozzi looked excited again. ‘Who owner, sir? You know? I no know owner. Never seen cat before, or since.’

  I shrugged. The student decided to be helpful again. ‘Domestic cats are unlikely to stray far from their home. I’d suggest –’ I told the kid to shut up. I could see him turning Mr Picozzi into a vigilante.