Flesh and bones

17

I didn't tell Chrissy Bernhardt where we were going. I didn't want her to have time to call Dr. Schein, or her brother, or anyone else who might have told her what to do.

Like take a pill raising her blood pressure.

I figured she wouldn't know the other tricks the cons are so good at. Biting the tongue. Sticking a nail in the shoe.

So I wasn't playing straight with her. Because I was afraid she wasn't playing straight with me.

A lawyer needs to know the truth.

No, strike that. I can't speak for my brethren. I need to know the truth.

Maybe it's a failing. Maybe I'd be better off not knowing. Maybe I should just take whatever gift horse Schein was riding. But I couldn't. I don't know why, I just couldn't.

With the top down, I aimed the Olds 442 west on the MacArthur Causeway, caught the connector north onto I-95, then swung west again on the Miami Dolphin Expressway. Though I didn't pour the asphalt, I always took a bit of pride in the highway, especially when passing the Orange Bowl, the faded lady on our left.

"Where are we going?" Chrissy asked.

"To see an old friend."

I got off at Le Jeune Road, just east of the airport, and headed north to Okeechobee Road, turning left along the old Miami Canal. West of the canal was Miami Springs. East was Hialeah, once a haven for Georgia crackers and now overwhelmingly Hispanic. I hung a right on Palm Avenue, drove a few blocks into a neighborhood of single-story stucco homes, many with statues of the Virgin Mary planted along with the hibiscus, and pulled up in front of pink house with an orange barrel-tile roof.

"Here?" Chrissy asked.

"Here."

"Your friend has a odd sense of color combinations."

"The house belongs to an ex-cop," I said, as if that explained it.

Tony Cuevas was a lifelong bachelor. He had bought the house when he retired from the Sheriff's Department, and if you asked him the color, he probably wouldn't have a clue.

On the way to the front door, Chrissy stopped and looked at me. "So why are we here?"

She was wearing spandex shorts and a halter top, and when I grabbed her shoulders, her skin was warm from the sun. I pulled her close to me and looked into those green, luminous eyes. "It's important that I treat you like a client, and not like…"

"A lover, a woman… a person," she helped out.

"Yeah, sort of. If we hadn't gotten involved, this would be easy."

"What, Jake? What would be easy?" Exasperated now.

"In preparing for trial, in planning strategy, lawyers sometimes ask their clients to…"

I couldn't say it.

The door opened before we could knock. Tony Cuevas stood there, a little paunchier than when he'd worked Internal Affairs. He still wore the short-sleeved shirt and tie. "Hello, Jake," he said. "You look like shit."

"Thank you, Tony."

He smiled pleasantly at Chrissy. "Hello, Miss Bernhardt. Let me tell you what you need to know about your polygraph exam."

Chrissy sat in a hard wooden chair, her eyes blazing at me. A blood pressure cuff was wrapped around her right arm, pneumograph tubes circling her chest and abdomen. Electrodes were attached to two fingers of her left hand. She sat on an inflatable rubber bladder and leaned back in the chair against another one.

"Just relax," I said.

"Go to hell!" Chrissy responded, and Tony's eyebrows shot up as he watched five pens on the chart scrawl a steep mountain.

"Actually, it is important that we stabilize your blood pressure," Tony said.

"Get him out of here," she commanded.

Him was me.

I wanted to say something. Something about how I needed to know the truth and how my feelings for her wouldn't change even if she was a cold-blooded murderer. But the words didn't come. Retreating in silence, feeling cowardly and deceptive, I walked into the screened Florida room, where a paddle fan clunked out of plumb over my head.

We are not all smart in all things. Left brain, right brain. A writer of sonnets may not be able to adjust a carburetor. A physicist may be incapable of constructing a simple sentence with subject and verb. I am moderately proficient in a number of fields. I can sense the location of the lurking bonefish. I can lead a hostile, perjurious witness into a humiliating mass of contradictions. I can predict run or pass from whether the offensive tackle leans forward or backward in his three-point stance.

But with a woman, my wiring shorts out. My senses respond to the physical and the chemical, the scent and sheen of her. Evil could not possibly reside in the form of this angel, could it? Sure, I'm politically incorrect. I'm retro, a caveman.

I admit it.

I confess.

Nolo contendere. Guilty as charged. I am, Your Honor, the lowest of the species, still wet from the swamp, tracks of webbed feet fossilized in the mud. I am a Man.

Through the open door, I could hear Tony's soothing voice. "Let's just chat a while."

He asked several innocuous questions about Chrissy's background and schooling, the names of her pets, whether she enjoyed skiing or surfing. At the same time, he fiddled with the cardioamplifier and the galvanic skin monitor. Chrissy doubtless thought the test hadn't even begun, but it had.

The neutral questions set the parameters for the lower range of blood pressure, respiration, and perspiration. They also set the stage for the control question, an attempt to elicit a lie.

"Have you ever smoked marijuana?" Tony Cuevas asked.

"Sure."

"Have you ever used cocaine?"

"That, too."

Tony paused, and I knew he was still searching for the little lie that could help uncover the big one.

"Did you ever have sex with more than one person at a time?"

"I worked in Paris," Chrissy said. "Surely you've heard of menage a trois."

"Is that a yes? Did you ever have sex with more than one person at a time?"

"Does a schizophrenic boyfriend count?"

"Miss Bernhardt." Firmly now.

"All right, yes! I had sex with two people, and it wasn't twice the fun. I was playing with nose candy at the time, a couple of bumps a night. It was Paris, and I was nineteen."

"Have you ever had sex with a woman?"

"I've tried a lot of things."

Calmly, never changing his inflection, "Is that a yes?"

"Yes! I've had sex with a woman. That's related to your last question. In fact, it's redundant."

Whatever her responses to the big questions, it was hard as hell to get Chrissy to lie about the little ones.

"Have you ever had sex in return for money?"

"Modeling's a form of prostitution."

"Ms. Bernhardt, please answer the question."

"One time on a test shoot, an Italian photographer stripped naked. We were in his hotel room. As he shot me, he jerked off. He was very famous. You would know his name. Well, maybe you wouldn't, but believe me, he was big-time, and all the girls knew he liked to get off during a shoot, but he'd never touch you."

"Ms. Bernhardt, have you ever had sex in return for money?"

"No, but I've been offered. A lot!"

"Please confine your answers to yes or no."

"Sure."

"Have you ever used heroin?"

A pause. "I thought we were done with the drug questions."

"Have you ever used heroin?"

After a moment, "No."

A longer pause from Tony, and I knew he had his control question. He was letting the physiological reactions die before getting to the heart of it. I was thinking about her lie. She had told me she had been a "chipper" in Paris, occasionally smoking a potent combination of heroin and cocaine, but she'd given it up without becoming addicted. Still, the stigma prevented her from admitting it to a total stranger. The sexual improprieties, I guessed, were mere peccadilloes compared to smoking smack.

Tony started up again. "Did your father have sexual relations with you when you were a minor?"

A soft "Yes."

I knew Tony was watching the squiggles. If the reaction to the little lie about not using heroin was greater than the reaction to the question about her father, she was telling the truth. If the reaction to the relevant question was greater, her concern about it meant she was probably lying.

"Did you kill your father?"

"Yes." An obvious answer to a neutral question.

"Did you kill him because he had sex with you as a child?"

"Yes."

"Did you tell Jake Lassiter the truth about everything?"

"Does anybody tell the truth about everything?" she said, and I heard the sound of the tape tearing off skin, then tubes crashing against the terrazzo floor as Chrissy stood and ran for the door.