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  At the company the engineers were dumbfounded. They couldn't figure out how it had happened. They knew they weren't supposed to lay cement over that broad an expanse all at once. And yet, somehow, every one of the daily construction orders called for that. It was as though some mysterious hand, a hand that knew exactly how the construction business worked, had cooked up a recipe for disaster.

  The small company, already laden with debt, was going to be bankrupted by the lawsuit, not because they weren't covered by insurance. They were. But the next premiums would be so large that the firm would not be able to bid successfully on any future work.

  In Los Angeles, in the shining new towers of Century Park City, the tragedy of Joe Piscella and Jim Wiedman was the first order of business at the offices of Palmer, Rizzuto Nathan Palmer himself had called a meeting of the partners.

  Palmer, Rizzuto had started out in a small storefront in Palo Alto, chasing ambulances for cases. They still kept the secondhand desk from their first office as a memento, encased in glass in their ultraluxurious, wall-to-wall-carpeted, footballfield-size offices.

  Nathan Palmer often referred to the desk as "our reminder of where we came from." Palmer, a graduate of one of the more prestigious Eastern law schools, played humble very well. Arnold Schwartz, who had barely gotten through one of the lesser law schools in California, never dared play humble. Arnold would tell passing cocktail waitresses the gross income of Palmer, Rizzuto Arnold wouldn't drive to the drugstore in anything but his Rolls-Royce lest someone he would never see again might think he couldn't afford a Rolls.

  And Genaro Rizzuto would go into poetic raptures about the desk. They were so poor, he would say, that this secondhand desk was almost repossessed and a collection agency actually was carrying the desk out the door when Rizzuto was listening to a judge award their first multimillion-dollar judgment.

  The three partners never quite agreed on anything except the need for money. The millions they had made somehow didn't seem to make them free of money worries, but instead added to them.

  Nathan Palmer, of good blond patrician looks, tended to marry often, and his divorces were always expensive. Genaro Rizzuto referred to gambling as "harmless entertainment" and could actually prove other hobbies were more expensive. Being a good lawyer, he could prove anything, but he had an ability to lose several hundred thousand dollars in a night, making Palmer's marriages and subsequent alimony settlements seem cheap by comparison. But the biggest financial disaster among the three partners was Arnold Schwartz.

  At an early age Arnold had figured out an investment strategy of such complexity that a college math teacher suggested he make a career in physics instead of law.

  This mathematical organization of the variations of the stock market kept Schwartz in a state of near-bankruptcy, barely able to sustain his Rolls-Royce and Beverly Hills mansion, both heavily mortgaged by loans. Because of the intricacies of his investment strategies, he was one of the few people who had managed to lose money in the boom markets of the early eighties.

  Since Nathan Palmer, Genaro Rizzuto, and Arnold Schwartz had stopped using that plain scarred wooden desk back in Palo Alto, their personal money problems had increased to gigantic proportions. So when Palmer called a meeting of the partners, the other two came immediately. And they came yelling.

  Rizzuto had been interrupted in the middle of a three-day poker game and was down almost a half-million dollars. He was sure his luck was going to change, and he immediately accused Palmer of being responsible for his inability to be able to recover his current losses.

  Genaro Rizzuto was handsome, with a deep bronze California tan. He wore tight-fitting gray slacks, a sport shirt open to the navel, and enough gold chain around his neck to open a traveling jewelry store. He had one wife, to whom he gave anything she wanted except himself. They had honeymooned in Las Vegas and did not consummate the marriage until they returned to California. Sex was not high on Genaro Rizzuto's list of pleasures.

  "What's going on?" demanded Rizzuto.

  "Disaster," said Palmer. He wore a light summer suit with his Ivy League tie.

  "So? Everything's a disaster. It could have waited. I was down, and just coming back. But you and your disaster stopped me. I'm owed for this, Nathan."

  "Your half-million dollars is penny-ante compared to this," said Palmer. He held a report on a death-by-negligence case in Darien, Connecticut, that Palmer, Rizzuto had just secured that morning, "We're all facing disaster. I don't know why we missed it before."

  "What's we? You missed it. I never missed it," said Rizzuto, going to a glass bar set against a mirrored wall and pouring white wine into a Waterford crystal glass. Schwartz had insisted they buy expensive crystal even for the washrooms, lest by accident a plastic glass get transferred into an office and someone think they couldn't afford the good stuff.

  "You don't even know what you missed?"

  "What did I allegedly miss?" asked Rizzuto.

  "That we're the biggest fools in the whole damned world," answered Palmer.

  "How?"

  "Wait for Schwartz," said Palmer.

  Schwartz was delayed because he would not leave his house without his Rolex. He arrived looking as ever the epitome of prosperity. A dark three-thousand-dollar Savile Row suit fit his thin frame perfectly. Sedate but elegant horn-rim glasses made him appear thoughtful, and the gold Rolex just happened to appear from a cuff every few seconds as he adjusted one thing or another around his body.

  "Don't tell me about disasters. I've just been on the phone with my broker."

  "It's worse than the stock market."

  "Nothing is worse than the market," said Schwartz.

  "How the hell do you lose when everyone else is making money?" asked Rizzuto. He offered to get Schwartz a drink. Schwartz declined with a motion of his hand, the Rolex hand. He put his eight-hundred dollar Bazitti loafers on the long polished rosewood table and leaned back. Palmer could see the designer imprint on the bottom of the shoes. He was glad there was no such thing as expensive designer underwear; otherwise he would be in danger of being mooned by his partner.

  Nathan Palmer did not like his partners. In fact, if he had met them in an elevator he would have gotten off at the wrong floor just to get away from them. But these were the men who had schemed with him to make Palmer, Rizzuto and he never had any thought of going off alone. He might despise them personally, but professionally he respected their legal cunning.

  "We have here the end of Palmer, Rizzuto In Darien, Connecticut, we have secured a death-by-negligence case against a construction firm."

  "It's insured, isn't it? We didn't go after something that wasn't insured," said Schwartz; who was an expert at freezing assets in danger of disappearing, a common occurrence when companies faced large judgments against them.

  "Oh, it's insured," said Palmer.

  "Then what's the problem?"

  "The problem is the victims of this heinous crime of negligence they were both smothered in concrete-were two common laborers, Joe somebody and Jim watchamacallit. "

  "So?" asked Schwartz.

  "That's a three-hundred-thousand-dollar cap on their lives," Schwartz said. "That was the auditorium-roof construction, wasn't it?"

  "Yes. Worked brilliantly," said Palmer.

  "Who else was injured? Any engineers? A doctor, hopefully?" asked Rizzuto.

  "Only the two laborers. Palmer, Rizzuto s share, gentlemen, should come to roughly three hundred thousand dollars."

  "What's that after expenses?" asked Schwartz.

  "A two-hundred-thousand-dollar loss. And Darien isn't all, there were the baby bottles. A perfect litigation against the company that produced the plastic wrong so it would shatter in the babies' mouths."

  "That was a natural for any jury," said Rizzuto, who loved the gamble of facing a jury and wished the firm hadn't become so big that they never sent him out to plead a case anymore. "Babies with bleeding mouths. Hysterical mothers. Rich corporations."


  "Except the life of a baby is never a seven-figure affair," said Schwartz. "And they suffered only minor disfiguring scars. We couldn't even get a lifelong-embarrassment factor into that case, what with plastic surgery and so forth."

  "Another loss," said Palmer.

  "What about the planes? Planes are always good," said Schwartz. "We've done well with our planes. It's our basic. And don't tell me we're dealing with babies or laborers in first-class cabins. Those are usually the first ones to go. We've had industrialists in those cabins. We've had good litigation."

  "The problem with a plane," said Palmer, annoyed that Schwartz was missing the obvious, "is that you get one plane at most from any provable negligence. When you're dealing with aircraft and airlines, whenever a flaw is discovered, it's changed. Engines are always being redesigned. So are tails and wings, and anything that might remotely cause an accident."

  Nathan Palmer rose in trembling indignation. "The terrible fact is that if you prove a flaw in one kind of airplane, that's the safest kind to fly next because they always fix it. We've never gotten more than one suit from any plane disaster. Not one."

  "The cars were good," said Schwartz.

  "Cars are another thing. But how many manufacturers would now consider mounting the gas tank in the rear bumper?" asked Palmer.

  "The gas tank in the bumper was the best. Went up like bombs. We had hundreds of bombs on American highways and the best part of it was some idiot at the auto company had figured out it was cheaper to pay a judgment than to take the gas tank out of the bumper," said Rizzuto.

  "We did do well on the gas tanks in the bumpers," sighed Schwartz.

  "We made them change that policy," said Rizzuto.

  "Fifteen years ago," said Schwartz. "What have we had since? Break-even airplanes, construction-company losses, and baby bottles that were at best a nuisance value to the company."

  "If we could do surgeons, those big-income guys who do the fancy operations, then we would have something," said Schwartz.

  "What would we get? Three surgeons at most? And what would we have to pay for it? The problem, gentlemen, is that paying for these accidents is breaking us."

  "Makes you want to go back to honest law," said Schwartz.

  "No such thing," said Rizzuto. "You remember what they taught us at law school? There are two things in law. Winning and losing."

  "Yes, but what about the ethics they taught?" asked Schwartz. He had a problem he shared with the others. They hated to lose arguments even if winning got them nowhere. Perhaps that was why they had all entered law, Schwartz had often thought. It was competitive. There were winners and there were losers and when one applied his mind day in and day out to the angles of winning, other considerations tended to dissolve.

  Like ethics. All three felt they had all the legal ethics they needed. They had studied enough to pass the California bar, and after that there was no need to follow their oaths. If they got into any trouble with an ethics committee, they could always bring it to court and probably win.

  Besides, the way they operated, no one ever found out what they did. That was the genius of their method or, as Palmer had once said, the method of their genius.

  "Our problem is we have been using our genius the wrong way," said Palmer.

  "He's never gotten us into a bit of trouble," said Schwartz.

  "That's because he knows how everything works," said Rizzuto.

  "I have called you here today to tell you that if we continue to use our genius in the manner we have been, we will all be bankrupt within a year."

  "God help us," said Schwartz.

  "My bookie is going to carve my liver," said Rizzuto.

  "I've got seven ex-wives, and I'm getting married again," said Palmer.

  "Really? Congratulations. What's she like?" asked Rizzuto. He liked Palmer's taste in wives. He had made love to half of them, give or take. Which meant he'd come out even on his bets with himself. The gambling on which ones would and which wouldn't had been the best part.

  "Like the other seven, of course," said Palmer.

  "Nice," said Rizzuto, who thought it proper to wait until after the wedding before asking when Palmer would be taking another business trip.

  "All of which is neither here nor there," said Palmer. "None of us is going to be able to support our human failings unless we change our ways."

  "What failings?" asked Rizzuto. "I had a half-million dollars' worth of action going, and it was going to turn. It had to turn. You called me away. You cost me a half-million cool ones."

  "I hardly consider a stock market that reacts in peculiar fashion a failing of my mathematical formulas."

  "Yes," said Palmer, the most realistic of the three. "And I have at last found my own true love in number eight."

  "Okay. You win. What are we going to do?" asked Rizzuto.

  "You must have a plan of some sort," Schwartz said. "You never do anything you don't know the outcome of, unless it's marriage. Of course, you do know the outcome of that, don't you?"

  "Don't be nasty, Arnold," said Palmer. He walked to the window, paused as the California sunlight bathed his fine features, turned to his partners as though addressing a jury, and then showed the other two, who basically found him a pain in the ass, why he was a worthy partner.

  "I am thinking of a city. A city with doctors, lawyers, a mayor. A city with homes, with families. With mothers bringing up children, fathers supporting families. I am thinking of homes, entire family units. Industries. Their lives cut short by some deliberate negligence by a multinational corporation whose assets we can seize."

  "I like it," said Schwartz. "A city has bankers and industrialists in it too."

  "A city has hope. A city is a world unto itself. A city represents us all, everything that is most civilized about any culture. All our artists and great ideas come from our cities," said Rizzuto.

  "Snuffed out cruelly," said Palmer.

  "By a multinational whose assets we can freeze," said Schwartz.

  They all nodded to the old scratched wood desk in the glass case.

  "Well," said Palmer quite pleased with himself. "It looks as though we won't have to break out that one for a while, will we?"

  "A city will be expensive for the genius," said Schwartz.

  "Everything is expensive for the genius," said Palmer. "That's why we're in so much overhead trouble. "

  "But a city is going to be worth it," said Rizzuto, knowing he himself would now get back into action. With an entire city injured and in pain, he could create an image of the end of the world, which meant of course the end of a juror's world. The rewards would be enormous.

  Thus it was decided in the elegant Century Park City offices in Los Angeles that a call be put in to the genius.

  The price tag was a whopping five million dollars. When Palmer, Rizzuto agreed to deliver it immediately, there was one question.

  "Do you have any particular city in mind?"

  "No. Any one you think is right."

  "I don't do things that aren't right," said the voice. The phone call from the partners' office was picked up by an automatic program on CURE computers. While ordinarily sounds would be translated into written words, examined, and compared to a data base of flash signals to warn Smith of special dangers needing his attention, this phone call from Palmer, Rizzuto did not register as being received at any registered location. Someone had bypassed the general electronic circuitry of the phone company, something CURE's computers continued to insist was not happening even while it was being done. Nor did the computers pick up the word "Gupta" coming back to Palmer, Rizzuto There was some indication of trouble because one of the secretaries dutifully reported the preparation of a disaster team. This was not only filed in the law firm's computers but also secretly was forwarded to the CURE data bank, which could not place its importance immediately.

  In the city of Gupta, India, dawn came as it had for aeons over the sacred mountains of Kalil, the sun representing one of the million H
indu gods, shining blood-red through the haze of morning.

  From the first days of man-made fires, Gupta had always been hazy. The dung used for fuel burned in acrid smoky clouds, hardly lifted by passing breezes, for Gupta was at the bottom of a bowl-shaped valley ringed by mountains. He who controlled the mountains controlled Gupta. Warrior princes had ruled here. Mogul invaders had ruled here. The British had ruled here, and now the remnants of all their seeds calling themselves Indians ruled here, Muslim and Hindu and Sikh and Christian.

  No one noticed the great death come upon them because it walked surely like one who knew how Gupta worked. It came first to the wife of a government official. It came with the hiss of jealousy.

  How much more important she would be if her husband was recognized as a true Indian in the central government. But alas, in Gupta the colonialists still ruled.

  She did not know where the voice came from. She knew it was somewhere and that if it were some intruder in her courtyard her husband would have him beaten.

  "There are no colonialists here. India is free."

  "Then what is that International Carborundum factory doing here?"

  "The people love it. It gives work. It gives high positions. It employs engineers and laborers. It makes us industrialized. "

  "It makes your husband, I am sorry to say, less respected in Delhi."

  "You are a liar. You will be beaten. You will have your tongue cut in a thousand places."

  The voice seemed to be coming from the walls. It was an American voice. International Carborundum was American. Were they playing some trick? She turned so quickly she almost got tangled in her peach-colored sari. Was a god talking to her? Did she fail to make the proper sacrifices? Was her home made unclean by some act during a wrong time of her menstrual cycle? There were so many things this voice could be, but the last thing it could be was what it said it was.