Morrison two days later received a letter from Sidney Ferris, P.C." A Legal Corporation, doing business at 16 Amherst St. in Hampton Falls, expressing his belief that the officer had grounds for a medical malpractice suit which could be brought on a contingent' fee basis at absolutely no cost or expense to him unless the suit was successful, in which case the fee would be one-third of the damages collected.
Morrison had retained Ferris as his lawyer, authorizing him to file suit against Holyoke Hospital and the attending physician on duty in the emergency room town-meeting night, claiming actual damages for lost career earnings of $625,000 and an additional $600,000 for mental anguish, pain and suffering.
Ferris also handled Morrison's case before the Board of Workmen's Compensation, which awarded a tax-exempt permanent disability pension equal to fifty percent of his patrolman's pay. Ferris on behalf of Morrison had filed an appeal, saying that, as a matter of law, since Morrison had been injured in the line of duty, he was entitled either to a pension equal to one hundred percent of his pay, or else a fifty-percent pension calculated on the basis of the wages that he would have earned, given his likely prospects of rapid promotion to higher ranks during the additional thirty-three years he had expected to serve on the force.
Purely for amusement one night in the bar at Grey Hills, Merrion one night while having drinks with Hilliard had used drink-napkins to estimate the probable total cost of Iris Blanchard's tantrum, not only to the taxpayers of the town of Canterbury but also to the hospital and the doctor and their insurance carriers as well. Hilliard worked the figures faster in his head than Merrion could write them down on the napkins.
"With interest compounded at six percent, by the time they get the malpractice case tried, and figuring Morrison lives another fifty years, which at twenty-eight he should, collecting his pension all that time, I figure a little over seven million bucks. Seven million, seventy-thousand, you throw in the cost of Sally's two Blazers, the most expensive trucks built since the world began. And a good thing for all involved old Iris wasn't bred for the work, like a pit bull or something, take a man's arm off at the elbow; have to deed the cop the town if she had been."
When Merrion got to his car, alert for sounds of stealthy scuffling in the dark as he always was such nights, even though he was at the police station, lest some disgruntled defendant after being released had waited in the shadows to conk him when he came out and swipe his wallet and his car. Hearing nothing, he unlocked the Caddy quickly, tossing the portfolio in the back seat, sliding in and closing up all in one swift motion, re-locking the doors as he turned on the engine, the earphone keypad glowing green and chirping readiness on the center console.
At the next corner he had made up his mind and said loudly and roundly:
"Call… Danny." As he took the turn the voice-activated dialer started hooping digits to reach Hilliard at his condo at the Wisdom House in Hampton Pond (to call Hilliard at his office Merrion would have said: "Call… Hilliard'; in his Mercedes "Call… Daniel').
Moving north on Truman Boulevard under the blacker shadows cast by the oaks along the edges, he listened to the phone ring eleven times before Hilliard answered thickly through the phlegm of sleep: This'd better be important." Then he coughed.
"It is," Merrion said. "Put some coffee on for yourself and pour me a serious drink. No traffic, this hour. I'll be there in ten or twelve minutes."
"Minutes?" Hilliard said, 'what minutes. Whaddaya talkin'. You muss be drunk or you're nuts. You got any idea what time…"
"Yeah, one-forty-one," Merrion said, glancing at the digital clock on the dash. "I'm coming from the Canterbury cop house and I'm not drunk although I must be about the only one who's still awake in town and isn't. Very drunk out tonight. Every time I thought we must be finished, they'd bring in another indi gene tanked to the gills, singin' and talkin', all kinds of ragtime. Disgusting how they carry on."
During the late Seventies, Sal Paradisio had returned from a convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Montreal smitten by the lingo in a lecture given by an Indiana University criminologist from Bloomington. He had started referring to locally resident groups as 'the indigenous population' and to individual residents as indi genes The usage had become a Canterbury PD inside joke. Richie Hammond and Merrion when Richie for some reason wasn't hogging the bail fees as usual had gotten used to being summoned by solemn cops on busy weekends to 'come down and handle a whole herd' ah misbehavin' indi genes Two decades later Merrion still heard older officers say 'the fuckin' indi genes getting' outta hand again."
"I was asleep," Hilliard said.
"Figured you would be," Merrion said. "Most people are at this hour."
