The Common Lawyer

THIRTEEN

The next morning, Andy Prescott arrived at his office to find a young man with a Marine haircut, military tattoos, and a package in his lap sitting on Ramon's stoop next to Floyd T., who was hefting his left leg like a log. War stories. The man looked up at Andy.

"Mr. McCloskey said to leave this package in the tattoo parlor if you weren't here, but the place isn't open yet."

"Ramon works late so he sleeps late."

"I told him," Floyd T. said.

Andy handed Floyd T. his breakfast then signed for the package and went upstairs. He sat down and removed a binder detailing the life of Sue Todd. Tabs divided the dossier into personal history, work history, and criminal history.

She had no criminal history. Her work history was short. Her personal history was sad. Sue Todd was thirty-six years old, unmarried, and unemployed. She lived in a rent house in Pasadena, a working-class suburb of Houston. She drove a twelve-year-old Honda and had a twelve-year-old son named Ricky.

Andy checked the time: 9:15. He put the camera with the zoom lens he had bought the day before inside his backpack then called a cab.

Andy flew Southwest to Hobby Airport on the south side of Houston; it was only a forty-five-minute flight. Southwest's Austin-to-Houston flights departed every other hour, as convenient as taking the bus and almost as glamorous.

He arrived in Houston at eleven-thirty and rented a Cadillac CTS with a navigation system-which was useless without Curtis there to operate it. So he navigated by the Houston area map he found in the glove compartment. It wasn't hard. The City of Pasadena lies just a few miles due east of the airport across Interstate 45; its northern boundary butts up against the Houston Ship Channel, which serves the Port of Houston.

The Port of Houston is the second busiest port in the U.S., no minor feat given that Houston is situated fifty-two miles from the nearest navigable deep-water body, Galveston Bay. But after the Great Storm of 1900, a category four hurricane that leveled Galveston, killed six thousand residents, and destroyed the thriving Port of Galveston, Houston's civic boosters saw a golden opportunity. They went to Washington and convinced the Feds that the country needed a more secure inland port, at say, Houston. So they dredged Buffalo Bayou from just east of downtown Houston all the way to Galveston Bay to create the Houston Ship Channel.

During World War Two, oil refineries and petrochemical plants set up shop along the banks of the channel to provide fuel and supplies to fight the war. Pollution was of no concern; there was a war to win. Sixty years later, pollution was still of no concern. Today, the ship channel has the single largest concentration of refineries and petrochemical plants in North America, the water is contaminated with dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls, and the air is so thick with pollutants you don't breathe it as much as swallow it.

Andy entered the City of Pasadena.

Blue-collar workers had followed the refineries and plants for the jobs; neighborhoods had grown up along the banks of the ship channel. Cities like Deer Park and Galena Park and Pasadena flourished. But today, only poor people live along the ship channel and breathe the contaminated air. The middle class had moved away. And the upper class had always lived on the other side of Houston.

Andy arrived at Sue Todd's home just after noon.

She still lived at her last-known address on Russell's list; the phone was listed under the name of a boyfriend who had split. Her small home sat in the shadows of the smokestacks that towered overhead just beyond the neighborhood and spewed steam and smoke into the blue sky. The old Honda was parked in the front driveway, so Andy stopped down the street where he had a clear view. Maybe Russell would buy Sue Todd a new car and a nicer house in a better part of town.

Andy left the Caddy idling and the air conditioner on high. He had settled in and begun reading the dossier when a woman wearing jeans and a T-shirt walked out of the house. Andy snapped a few close-up photos with the zoom lens before she got into the Honda. He followed her to a school where she pulled into the carpool lane. A boy soon walked out of the school and got into the car. He was wearing a knit cap. Andy trailed them to a medical clinic. They parked and got out. The boy had removed the cap. He was bald.

Andy had a bad feeling about this.

He took a few more photos then followed them inside and onto an elevator. The woman gave him a grim smile. He followed them off the elevator and down a corridor. They entered an office with a sign that read ONCOLOGIST.

Ricky Todd had cancer.

Damn. When he had taken this job, Andy had figured he'd jet around the country in first-class cabins, stay in five-star hotels, and eat fancy food. He'd live large on his rich client's expense account. For a lawyer, it didn't get any better than that. He'd meet Russell Reeves' old girlfriends and give them money to pay off debts or buy a new house or maybe take a dream vacation. Pay college tuition. Braces for the kids. A wedding.

He never figured on a sick kid.

Andy stood in the hallway. He hated doctors' offices. Bad smells, bad thoughts, bad endings. But he bucked himself up and entered the oncologist's office. The reception area was vacant except for the woman and the boy. Andy sat down across from them. She stared at him; her grim smile was now a look of confusion. He started to explain, but a glass window in one wall slid open and a voice called out, "Sue Todd." She stood, walked over, and talked to the window. Andy could hear the conversation.

The voice: "Still no health insurance?"

"No."

"Credit card?"

"Try this one."

Sue Todd handed a credit card through the open window. A minute later, a hand returned the card.

"Do you have another one?"

"Not one they'll approve charges on."

"Ms. Todd, we need payment."

The hand again emerged through the open window and pointed at a sign posted there: IF INSURANCE COVERAGE IS NOT VERIFIED, PAYMENT IN FULL IS REQUIRED AT THE TIME SERVICES ARE RENDERED.

"Please, I'll get it to you, somehow. He needs the chemo."

"I'll check with the business manager."

The glass window slid shut. Sue Todd leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. She shook her head and said, as if she didn't know whether to laugh or cry, "The business manager decides whether he gets chemo."

Andy glanced at Ricky. Their eyes met for a brief moment then the boy looked down and stared at his hands. The glass window slid open again. The voice: "He said this time only, Ms. Todd. You must make arrangements to pay your bill in full prior to his next treatment."

"Thank you."

The window slid shut. A side door opened, and a nurse appeared.

"Ricky."

"I'll be right back, honey," Sue Todd said.

The boy stood and walked through the door as if he'd walked through it many times before. The nurse shut the door behind them. Sue slumped into a chair and breathed out as if it were her last breath.

"I try not to cry in front of him."

She cried.

"They give him chemo, but it won't stay in remission… the lymphoma. He had experimental stem cell treatment a few years back, in a clinical trial, but it didn't work. Nothing works."

"How long?"

"Four years."

"No health insurance?"

She shook her head. "I lost my job a year ago. No one will hire me now because his cancer will increase their health insurance rates."

She wiped her face.

"Where's his father?"

"Gone. I picked the wrong man."

"How are you handling things?"

"Credit cards. I owe a hundred thousand now. They send me nasty letters." She gestured at the glass window. "I don't know how I'll pay the doctor."

She ran her sleeve across her face.

"I'm spilling my guts to a complete stranger. That's what it does to you, cancer. It kills you every way possible. Your finances, your pride, your life. It beats you into the dirt."

"What are his chances, your boy?"

"Not good. It's because of all those refineries and chemical plants."

"His cancer?"

She nodded. "Kids in the neighborhood, they cough all the time, get nosebleeds. You live by the ship channel, your kids got a fifty percent better chance of getting cancer, because of the toxic chemicals those plants put out-carcinogens. Twenty times higher level than anywhere else in the country. It was in the paper. The stuff is killing kids, but the government won't stop it."

"Why don't you leave?"

"If we leave here, we live in the car."

Sue Todd appeared twenty years older than her age. Life had beaten her down, stolen her middle age, robbed her of her best years. She must have gone straight from a young woman to an old woman. She wasn't one of those thirty-something "women seeking men" in Lovers Lane; she was just hoping to survive the day.

And save her son.

Three hours later, Andy was sitting in his office across the card table from a billionaire whose son was also dying of leukemia. Cancer was an equal-opportunity killer.

Andy had flown back to Austin and taken a cab to SoCo and the digital camera to a photo shop. The photographs he had taken of Sue Todd and her son were now spread across the card table.

"You recognize her?" Andy said.

Russell Reeves was examining the photos. He shook his head.

"She looks so much older. The boy has cancer?"

Andy nodded. "I trailed them to a cancer clinic, talked to Sue. She doesn't have insurance, so she maxed out her credit cards, owes a hundred grand. The clinic didn't want to give the boy his chemo treatment because she couldn't pay. She begged."

Russell rubbed his temples as if he had a headache.

"I'll wire five hundred thousand to your trust account. Take her a cashier's check." He paused. "No, I'll wire a million. And I'll make a call. Send her over to the children's cancer ward at M.D. Anderson. They'll be expecting her. Her son will have the best care available. For free."

"Have you been there?"

"Yes, Andy, I've been there. And so has my son."

Russell got up and walked out without another word. Andy could swear he had tears in his eyes.

The next morning, Andy flew back to Houston. He didn't drink a beer or flirt with the flight attendant. Instead, he thought of Sue and Ricky Todd and the cashier's check he had in his pocket.

Would the money save the boy's life?

He drove straight to Sue Todd's house. The Honda was in the driveway. He was thinking exactly what he would say to her when the front door opened and she appeared. She walked to the mailbox at the curb and pulled out a stack of thick envelopes. Credit card statements, no doubt. She sat on a bench on the front porch and opened the envelopes; with each one she seemed to become smaller. After the final envelope, she put her face in her hands. Andy got out of the car and walked up to her.

"Sue."

She wiped her face.

"We met yesterday, at the clinic. May I sit?"

She nodded. Andy sat next to her.

"I'm Andy Prescott. I'm a lawyer."

"I can't pay."

"I'm not here to collect your debts, Sue. I'm here to pay them off."

He pulled the envelope out of his pocket and removed the cashier's check for $1 million payable to Sue Todd. His hand was trembling when he handed it to her. She wiped her face again and stared at the check.

"What's this?"

"A cashier's check."

"A million dollars? What's it for?"

"For you. And Ricky."

"Why?"

"To make amends."

"For what?"

"The past."

"Who's it from?"

"I can't reveal that, Sue. But my client has made arrangements for Ricky to be treated at M.D. Anderson."

Andy handed her his business card with a doctor's name and number written on the back.

"They're expecting you. His care will be free."

"Can he go today?"

"Yes. But deposit the check first."

She turned the check over, as if to make sure it was real.

"This isn't a joke?"

"No, Sue, it's not a joke."

Tears rolled down her face, but she smiled and suddenly looked younger. He stood, and she stood.

"Thank you, Andy. And thank your client."

"And Sue… move away from here."

She hugged him and buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed until his shirt was wet. When Andy walked away, he was crying, too.