The Victims Game
Part Three - the Lawyer
By Scott J. Welles
scottjwelles@yahoo.com

DISCLAIMERS:  Hi. We've got some legal stuff to wade through before we can jump into things. Mostly the usual prerequisite jazz: ER and all related characters are the property of Warner Bros., ConstantC Productions, and Amblin Entertainment Television, a bunch of really swell, understanding guys who won't sue me if I mention that the aforementioned characters and institutions are being used without their permission, but only for entertainment purposes, and that no form of profit is being made on this work. For the benefit of the content-conscious amongst you, I'll assure you that there's nothing here that you couldn't see on the show, anyway. Except maybe some language, I'm not sure yet. Depends what kind of day I'm having as I write. Beyond that, I make no promises about what's in store. Could be silly, could be scary, could be sexy, could be sad. I'm not telling. Come on, live dangerously...

My name is Fox. Daniel Fox.

I'm sorry, I know it's a cliché, but when you find yourself at a high-society shindig, and you're standing around looking classy and stylish, with a martini in one hand and an immaculate tux on the rest of you, there are some things a man's just got to say.

It was about seven or so, the evening after I arrived in Chicago, and I was rubbing elbows with the city's rich crowd in the Carter family mansion, trying my best to look like an oil baron or a software tycoon or something other than an imported gumshoe. I had been in the homes of some of Hollywood's most powerful stars and dealmakers, but this place was quite different. Unlike LA's relatively new, twentieth-century palaces, the Carter mansion had the unmistakable feel of old money. The kind that goes back to the eighteenth century. At least.

The guest list would probably read like a 'Who's Who' of Illinois' upper-crust inner circle, but I wouldn't recognize any of their names. I tried to mingle and shmooze, but ended up exchanging no more than idle pleasantries. We didn't have a lot in common. Having never been rich, I couldn't really get into the mood of self-congratulatory hobnobbing. Richard Wintergreen, though he came from a working-class background, would be in his element here.

Looking around the room, I spotted a small handful of men, here and there, who were either hanging out on the fringes of the crowd, or milling idly through it, their eyes constantly roving and their lips never flapping. They weren't smiling or talking or holding drinks, and they all wore the same outfit: gray slacks and striped ties and blue blazers. The kind of uniform only ever worn by two sorts of people. Prep schoolboys and privately hired security guards. Given their ages and expressions, and considering the collective wealth assembled tonight, I bet myself a dollar that each one had a 9mm bulge in his blazer under his left arm, and an unobtrusive wire running out of his pocket and up to an ear-piece, Secret Service-style. They seemed to be invisible to all the other guests, which probably meant that they were considered to be just another form of servant. One step up from furniture on the evolutionary scale.

I got cornered by a poised and coifed woman who greeted me as if I were a familiar face at these posh affairs. Either she treated everyone that way by habit, or she was too drunk to realize I was a stranger. She said wasn't it a lovely party, and didn't the Carter Foundation do excellent work, and what a pity dear Millicent was unable to attend at the last moment, and wasn't it a shame about poor Chase, and so on. I smiled and nodded and said how about them Dodgers, huh? She showed signs of a cocaine habit and at least one facelift. We feigned interest in each other's topics for a bit, and then I took the first opportunity to get away from her, claiming that Lord Winsor had just arrived.

Spotting a familiar face, I latched onto him like a drowning man. I said, "I swear, if I have to keep smiling at these people much longer, my face is gonna crack."

"Try growing up in the middle of this," Carter replied with an easy smile. John Carter was a handsome young doctor who always struck me as easygoing and friendly in an almost puppylike way. At the time I first met him, I hadn't realized he was a member of the local high-society crowd. The Carter family was rich. Old money, Nelson Rockefeller, Thurston Howell the Third rich. So don't ask me what a sensitive kid with that kind of loot in the bloodline was doing working in the County General ER and renting living space in Kerry Weaver's basement. Go figure.

"Danny, this is the guy I was telling you about," Carter said, "Walter Montgomery, Daniel Fox."

I shook Montgomery's hand, and immediately had to resist the urge to wipe it off. He was one of those highly polished people who looks like he was born with a Law degree in his hand. He was an inch above my height, slim and tanned in a racquetball way, with clean-cut dark hair and a brush mustache, neatly trimmed. He said it was a pleasure to meet me, in a voice eerily like Carl Sagan's. I wondered if I could trick him into saying "billlllyuns" if I brought up the topic of the Carter family assets.

"John has spoken very highly of you, indeed, Mr. Fox," Montgomery was saying.

I shrugged, modestly. "Well, you know how impressionable these big-city trauma doctors are, today." He chuckled, politely, and I decided to get right to business and forestall any further false cheer. "I understand you're in need of a private investigator?"

"That's correct. I'm gratified that you were available on such short notice."

"Yeah, regarding that," I said, "I was curious as to why you chose to go with an out-of-towner instead of someone based in the Chicago area?"

"A fair point," he conceded, clearly having anticipated the question, "and the answer is a little complex. John, I wonder if you wouldn't mind excusing us? I think that the matter is best kept in confidence."

Carter looked a little surprised, but took it in stride and excused himself graciously. I could tell he was disappointed that his curiosity wasn't going to be satisfied just yet.

When we were more or less alone, Montgomery stood a little too close for my choosing - I could smell his cologne, some doubly-expensive variation on Aqua Velva - and said to me, "To be truthful, Mr. Fox, I am actually representing someone else in this matter, who does not wish his or her business known in local circles. For that reason, although you would officially be hired by me, and receive moneys from me, you would in reality be employed by my employer. I'm certain you understand; discretion is, after all, the watchword of your profession, is it not?"

I nodded. "Yeah, that's why they call us private investigators, as opposed to the public variety." I admit I was acting out a little, being overly flip with him, which was often a good way to blow a client interview. Lawyers like him and places like this tend to bring out that side of me. Richard says it's overcompensation for my own imagined shortcomings, but I mean, honestly: 'watchword of my profession'? Yowie kazowie.

"Just so," he said, either ignoring the sarcasm or failing to register it. "My client - and, possibly, yours - is in attendance tonight. I believe that, now that you're here, I can arrange a private meeting between the two of you in a few minutes. If you'll excuse me?" Montgomery had already departed by the time I realized he had never really answered my original question. That's lawyers for you.

While I was waiting for him to return, I traded my martini in for a club soda, figuring it's best to greet prospective clients while you're still sober. I sipped it and scanned the room idly. Aside from John Carter, chatting disinterestedly with a fat man across the room, I would have been surprised to recognize anyone.

And then, sure enough, I was surprised. Unpleasantly so. Aww, no...

One of the blazered security men had spotted me, and was heading my way, looking pissed. Then again, I had never seen him look otherwise. He always looked the way I imagined Don Rickles would look if he worked out at the gym habitually.

"Fox, you West Coast lowlife," he rasped at me in a low voice, "What the hell are you doing here?"

I dredged up the Dennis Leary smile and pasted it onto my face. "Hello to you too, Lieutenant Wasserstein," I said. "As it happens, I've won the lottery, and I'm thinking of buying a mansion just like this one. Know any for sale?"

He glowered at me and didn't say anything.

I met Steve Wasserstein when he was a Robbery/Homicide detective on the Chicago Police Department, working the Kerry Weaver kidnapping. I kind of showed him up in that matter, and he came close to pressing some trumped-up charges against me, just out of spite. Various parties talked him out of it, but there was never any love lost between us. He figured me for a showboat and a loose cannon, and I made him as a hairbag and an empty suit. I think we were both partly right.

My eye went to the logo on the breast of his blazer. "Atlas Securities? Are you working undercover, or have you had a career change inflicted upon you?"

The scowl deepened. "I wasn't canned, if that's what you're implying! I had my twenty-five years in, and I chose to retire, smartass."

"Oh, so you're working for a private security outfit, now, huh?"

"Not working for it, running it," Wasserstein asserted, shrugging to straighten the shoulders of his blazer. "It's honest work, for respectable clients. How often can you and your limey partner say the same?"

Richard Wintergreen, if he were here, would have too much class to react to the ethnic slur, so I resisted the impulse. Wasserstein was just trying to get my goat, after all. He probably wanted me to make a scene, so he could have his men drag me out back and beat the living daylights out of me.

"Is everything all right, Mr. Wasserstein?" said Montgomery, approaching us. His tone implied that everything had damn well better be all right.

Wasserstein nodded and said, "Yessir, Mr. Montgomery, everything's fine." Not liking it much.

"Steve and I are old acquaintances," I told Montgomery, knuckling Wasserstein's shoulder in brotherly fashion. "Just catching up on old times, is all."

"Ah, I see. Well, I hope you won't mind if I tear Mr. Fox away, but there's someone who'd very much like to meet him." Montgomery put a casual this-way-if-you-please hand on my arm.

I gave Wasserstein the William Shatner smile and said, "Later, Steve. Gotta go do some honest work for a respectable client."

He nodded and said nothing as we walked away. He looked as if he were trying to swallow his own face.

Montgomery led me out through a set of oak-paneled doors, down a hallway, and into a darkened room, which I took to be a study or library or some such. The room was only dimly lit, by a couple of candles and a cozy fire in a fireplace. As my eyes adjusted, I was able to make out a couple more of the guys in Atlas Security blazers. One was black, with a nose that had seen its share of breaks, the other white, with buzz-cut blond hair. Both men looked like they'd be more at home on a football gridiron than a ritzy joint like this. They nodded respectfully at Montgomery, gave me an indifferent visual once-over, and remained where they were. Sentries at their posts.

I was about to ask what's with the lights, but my eye fell on a painted portrait above the mantle piece. It showed a prim and proper figure in full English riding gear, astride a thoroughbred. Would you believe it, the figure was an even younger version of Dr. John Carter, MD! Oh, man, I'd have to rib the poor guy about it, next chance I got.

"Mr. Fox?"

Now, don't ask me why, but for some reason, I had been assuming that the mystery client would be a woman, and I wasn't disappointed. She was a handsome, gracious-looking woman whom I guessed to be in her mid-fifties. She had apple cheeks, merry eyes, and a warm smile, all framed by silvering hair. She wore a formal gown that was, at once, elegant and maternal.

"Good evening, Mr. Fox, and thank you for coming," she said in a pleasant voice, extending a hand that was soft, yet strong. "Millicent Carter, your hostess."

Okay, that was the reason. Richard Wintergreen had mentioned her name to me, once, invoking it to help bail me out of a jam. Apparently, he had once done some work for her, and she owed him. This might help explain why they asked for me, personally.

"I apologize for the lighting," she said, "but I've just had a vision correction involving laser surgery, and I'm afraid I'm a bit photosensitive at the moment."

"Not a problem," I said, "Pleased to meet you, Ms. Carter."

"Millicent, please," she said, a dimpled smile lighting up her heart-shaped face, "I know it's a terribly old-fashioned name, but my family has always been rather traditional."

Must be Burroughs fans, too, I thought, judging by John Carter's sobriquet. "I was under the impression you couldn't make it to your own party, tonight. At least, that's what someone in the other room said."

Walter Montgomery stepped into the conversation, saying, "We chose to create that impression, for various reasons of personal secrecy, Mr. Fox. Mrs. Carter has some interests which are best served by the guests believing she is out of town at this time."

I wondered why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but I didn't really want to listen to it being explained. Power and wealth seem to inspire melodrama, eccentricity, and excessive paranoia, in my opinion. I said, "Well, Millicent - I'm Daniel, by the way - while I appreciate the invitation to your lovely party, I'm sure that's not why you went to the expense of flying me out here. So, what can I do for you?"

Millicent accepted the shift to business with aplomb, offering me a seat in a high-backed armchair, which faced towards the fire. She took one for herself, hers facing away from it, so she was sitting in shadow. Montgomery perched on the end of a nearby couch, and the two security guys remained standing where they were.

"The Carter Foundation has involved itself in a large number of charitable projects, Daniel," she began, and I was resigning myself to one of those well-rehearsed, oft-recited speeches, when she said, "I'd like you to investigate one of them. Specifically, a medical clinic formerly run out of County General Hospital's emergency room."

My eyebrows went up sharply. Surprise and double surprise. First, that she gets right to the point so quickly, and then that County is involved again. Some days, all roads really do lead to Rome.

Millicent looked at Montgomery, who took up the thread. He briefly described the short history of the clinic for my benefit. Apparently, it had been conceived and organized by an ER nurse named Carol Hathaway, with the intention of providing basic health care for anyone who had no insurance, or was unable to afford hospitalization or private medicine, or simply had no other recourse. It was paid for with Foundation funds, and run quite successfully, until it was suddenly shut down by the hospital administration under mysterious circumstances.

I had actually met Hathaway a couple of times in passing, but I hadn't gotten the chance to know her personally at all. I remembered her as a serious-faced beauty of Greek or Russian descent, who was recovering from a breakup with one of County's former physicians. Based on the brief impression I had of her, it didn't surprise me to hear that she'd run a charity clinic.

"While this clinic seemed, on the surface, to be a noble cause," Montgomery was saying, "its abrupt closure has raised a number of concerns. There have been a few allegations of fraud and malpractice, though none from substantiated sources."

I leaned back in the chair and considered where this was heading.

"The Foundation is understandably concerned that its funds not be misused in any form. To that end, we would like you to accomplish two things. Firstly, we would like you to locate a number of the clinic's patients, whatever number you consider a fair and representative selection, and confirm that they received an adequate standard of care to justify the clinic's funding. Second, and perhaps more importantly, we would like you to determine whether the clinic's end was due to actual mismanagement, malice, or simply circumstances beyond Carol Hathaway's control."

"Based on your findings," Millicent added, "we can determine whether any similar clinics are a worthwhile choice for future donations, or whether it's the sort of project which would waste our money."

"A couple of questions, if I may," I said, "One: why not just audit the clinic's records if you're concerned about where the money went?"

Montgomery said, "Records can be falsified, Mr. Fox. We did, in fact, make above-board inquiries before choosing to employ your services, but our impression is that we received a rather whitewashed accounting."

"You figure the hospital's covering their asses?"

"Ah, yes. Just so." The only guy I ever met who said that, and now he's said it twice. "We find that in such cases, a discreet survey of the patients will more accurately reveal the quality of the clinic's efforts."

"Fair enough," I said, "However, that brings up Question Two: are you both aware that I have a bit of history with the staff at County's ER? It's going to be difficult to investigate them discreetly, since I'm known among them."

They looked a little uncomfortable for the first time. "We are aware of the role you played in the rescue of Dr. Weaver," Montgomery ventured, "and, in fact, it was those events which led us to believe that you are the ideal investigator for this task. We have hopes that your former dealings with the emergency department will make them more forthcoming with information which they might otherwise be reluctant to-"

"Sorry to interrupt you, Walter, but let's not kid ourselves. Any goodwill I may have with the ER employees isn't going to make the administration any more likely to disclose their confidential files."

"Perhaps not in the case of the upper management, but we were hoping that your relationships with those same employees might enable you to find other channels of communication, other means of, ah..."

"Digging up the dirt?" I broke in, tired of Montgomery's deliberate vagueness. Besides, I didn't like what he was implying.

"I wouldn't phrase it in quite that manner..."

"Well, maybe you should. A legitimate investigation is one thing, but you're asking me to take advantage of these people's trust on the basis of what you, yourself, call a few vague and unsubstantiated rumors. I've gotta say, that doesn't sit too well with me, folks."

"Daniel," Millicent said, taking control of the conversation in two casual syllables, "The last thing any of us want to do is to suggest that you compromise your principles. I understand that you risked your life and your license to rescue Kerry Weaver earlier this year, and that you did so of your own accord, rather than because you were hired to do so. That tells me that you are a man of integrity. That's the reason I asked specifically for you."

Oh sure, butter me up, I thought. I hate when prospective clients try that. Mostly because it usually works. Flattery will get you everywhere.

"Now, once you have discovered the truth, we will abide by your final judgment in the matter. We won't ask you to divulge any patient histories without the consent of the patients themselves."

"I have a consent form for you here," Montgomery began, but she ran over him as if he hadn't spoken.

"As for the clinic's closing, all I ask is that you look for reasons relating to mismanagement or financial misuse. If you find none, say that. Otherwise...simply say that. I'm not interested in pressing any charges or seeking recompense. I don't need any names or details relating to the closing, just the answer to a simple, yes-or-no question: was Carol Hathaway's clinic a good investment? Was it honest?"

I didn't say anything, but I knew that my mind was already made up. The objective part of me, the part that Richard Wintergreen always encouraged me to listen to more, said I had no business touching this one with a ten-foot pole. Too much potential for personal bias or conflict of interest. But the rest of me knew that I was going to do it, anyway.

I didn't like the thought of anything shady going on in the ER, but if I didn't look into it, they'd hire someone else who would. If everything was on the up-and-up, I wanted to be the one to prove it. If not...well, I wanted to be the one who decided what to do about it. I've got an ego like a runaway train, sometimes.

"That's all we're asking you for, Daniel," Millicent said. She was leaning forward in her chair, and her profile was outlined by the firelight. It made her look younger than I first thought. Maybe that's why she sat there. "Will you look into this for us?"

I nodded.



"I don't know how to thank you guys!"
--- Fozzie Bear, 'The Muppet Movie'
"I don't know WHY to thank you guys..."
--- Kermit the Frog, Ibid