“You can trust me,” Yuki said earnestly. “I understand what ‘off the record’ means.”
“It’s nothing like that,” Cindy said.
Loretta came by, greeted Yuki, and unloaded a tray of jerk chicken and spareribs dripping sauce. After a few halting starts and a few sips of her margarita, Cindy repeated to Yuki what she’d just told us about Maureen O’Mara’s pending case against Municipal Hospital.
“Actually, I know a lot about this,” Yuki said when Cindy was finished. “O’Mara’s been putting this case together for about a year.”
“Really? Come onnnn,” Cindy said. “How do you know?”
“I have a friend, an associate at Friedman, Bannion and O’Mara,” Yuki said. “She told me ’cause she’s thrown a ton of man-hours into this case. Tremendous amount of research involved. A lot of medical technicalities to plow through. It should be a hell of a trial,” Yuki continued. “O’Mara never loses. But this time, she’s shooting the moon.”
“Everyone loses sometimes,” Claire offered.
“I know, but Maureen O’Mara carefully picks cases she knows she can win,” Yuki said.
Maybe Yuki was missing the point, so I had to say it. “Yuki, doesn’t it worry you that your mom is at Municipal?”
“Nah. Just because Maureen O’Mara is taking on the case doesn’t mean the hospital is guilty. Lawyer’s credo: anyone can sue anyone for anything.
“Really, you guys,” Yuki said, her words going her usual rat-a-tat, sixty-five miles an hour. “I had my appendix taken out there a couple of years ago. Had an excellent doctor. And first-class care until I left the hospital.”
“So how is your mom?” Claire asked.
“She’s in fine form,” said Yuki. Then she laughed. “You know how I know? She tried to fix me up with her cardiologist. Bald guy in his forties with tiny hands and dog breath.”
We all laughed as Yuki’s animated reenactment lit up the table. She did her mom so well, I could see Keiko as if she were right there.
“I said, ‘Mom, he’s not for me.’ So she said, ‘Yuki-eh. Looks mean nothing. Dr. Pierce honest man. He good man. Looks for mag-azines.’ I said, ‘Mom, Daddy looked like Frank Sinatra. What are you talking about?’”
“So are you going out with him?” Cindy asked, sending us into new rounds of laughter.
Yuki shook her head. “You mean, if he asks me? You mean, if my mom grabs his cell phone and dials my number for him?”
We were having so much fun the band had to dial up the music a notch to be heard over our good time. Twenty minutes later, Yuki left the table before the coffee and chocolate mud pie, saying she wanted to see Keiko again before visiting hours were over.
Despite her rapid-fire talk, and our good-time chatter, there were worry lines between Yuki’s beautiful brown eyes when she told us all good night.
Chapter 16
MAUREEN O’MARA FELT HER PULSE beating in her temples. Was that possible? Well, that’s how pumped she was. She pulled open one of the massive steel-and-glass doors to the Civic Center Courthouse and entered the cool gray interior.
Goddamn.
Today was the day. She owned this place.
She handed her briefcase to the security guard, who put it on the X-ray machine and checked it as she cleared the metal detectors. He nodded good morning and returned her seven-hundred-dollar “lucky” Louis Vuitton case with a smile.
“Best a’ luck today, Miss O’Mara.”
“Thanks, Kevin.”
O’Mara showed the guard her crossed fingers; then she cut through the milling crowd in the lobby and headed toward the elevator bank.
She was thinking as she walked—about how her stuffy, know-it-all partners had told her that she was insane to take on the huge, well-defended hospital, to try to weave twenty individual claims into one gigantic malpractice case.
But she couldn’t have turned it down. This one was too good.
The first patients had found her—then she’d seen the pattern. The momentum had built rapidly, then snowballed, and soon she’d become the go-to lawyer for patients with serious grievances against Municipal.