I nodded in agreement. Companies don’t willingly offer information on benefits that will add to their insurance premiums. Especially looking at a case like Louisa’s, where she was getting major medical payments besides her disability check.

“But what about their union?” I asked. “Wouldn’t the shop steward have notified them?”

He shook his head. “It’s a single-shop union and it’s pretty much a mouthpiece for the company. Especially now—there’s so much unemployment in the neighborhood they don’t want to rock the boat.”

“Unlike the Steelworkers,” I interjected dryly.

He grinned for the first time, looking even younger than before. “Well, you can’t blame them. The Xerxes union, I mean. But anyway, the two guys had read someplace that Xerxine could cause these health problems, and since they were both up against it financially, they thought maybe they could at least collect workers’ comp for not being able to work. You know, job-related condition and all that.”

“I see. So you went to Humboldt and tried to work something out? Or you went directly to litigation?”

“I had to work fast—it wasn’t clear how long either of them would live. I went to the company first, but when they didn’t want to play ball I didn’t fool around—I filed a suit. Of course if we’d won after they died, their families would have been entitled to an indemnity payment. And that would make quite a difference to them financially. But you like your clients to be alive to see their victories.”

I nodded. It would have made a big difference, especially to Mrs. Pankowski with all her children. Illinois insurers pay a quarter of a million to families of workers who die on the job, so it was worth the effort.

“So what happened?”

“Well, I saw right away the company was going to stonewall, so we sued. Then we got an early docket. Even being stuck down on the South Side, I’ve got a few connections.” He smiled to himself, but declined to share the joke.

“Trouble was, both guys smoked, Pankowski was a heavy drinker, and they’d both lived all their lives in South Chicago. I guess if you grew up there, I don’t have to tell you what the air was like. So Humboldt socked us. They said on the one hand that there wasn’t any way to prove Xerxine had made these guys sick instead of their cigarettes or the general shit in the air. And they also pointed out that both of them had been working there before anyone knew how toxic the stuff was. So even if Xerxine did make them sick, it didn’t count—you know, they operated the plant based on current medical knowledge. So we lost handily. I talked to a really good appellate lawyer and he felt there just wasn’t anything to go on with. End of story.”

I thought about it for a minute. “Yeah, but if that’s all that happened, why is Xerxes jumping like a nervous rabbit when it hears those guys’ names?”