Flesh and bones

29

Killing two Bernhardts with one stone," Charlie Riggs muttered.

"That's my theory," I said.

"You're not biting off more than you can chew, are you, Jake?" he asked, as he gnawed at a slice of garlic bread dripping with butter. "Getting even with both Harry and Christina in one fell swoop?"

"One swell foop!" Kip exclaimed. He was wearing a Deion Sanders jersey just to irritate me. "That's what Peter Sellers says in one of the Pink Panther movies."

"Frankly, I never understood the expression, either way," I admitted.

Doc Riggs sipped at his red wine. " 'Swopen' is a Middle English word dating from the sixteenth century. It means 'to sweep.' Therefore-"

"Charlie, we're in the middle of trial, so…"

"Actually," he said, patting his mustache with a napkin, "we're in the middle of lunch."

I couldn't argue with that. We were at Piccolo Paradiso, just across the river on Miami Avenue, and I had ninety minutes to finish my rigatoni alia vodka and get back to court.

"But if you want me to dispense with the etymology discussion," Charlie offered, "I shall do so."

"Thank you," I said, motioning to the attentive waiter for a second beer. I never drink during trial, but technically, as Charlie pointed out, luncheon recess is not during trial. As a lawyer, I am capable of making fine distinctions.

I had left Chrissy in the care and custody of my secretary, Cindy, and Milagros Santiago. It had been Kip's idea, bless his cinematic little heart. If Schein had programmed Chrissy, the memories should be in her head somewhere, he said. Just bring them back like flashbacks in a movie. I had given the assignment to Dr. Santiago.

Later, I would work with Chrissy to prepare her testimony. Notice I didn't say "rehearse," even though my personal glossary prefers the more accurate, if less genteel, terminology. Clients are customers, referral fees are kickbacks, experts are whores, and bondsmen are bloodsuckers. Client development is ambulance chasing. Pro bono work means getting stiffed for a fee. A retainer means "pay me now for work I may or may not do later." Lawyers' hourly bills are exercises in creative writing, in which our clients pay not only for our time but also for expensive lunches and dinners and the time we spend deciding what to order. Our "research time" often gets us paid to learn what we should have known or to relearn what we have forgotten.

If I sound a tad cynical, let me cop a plea. Guilty with an explanation. With all the garbage and all the games, there are still moments of pure adrenaline-driven exhilaration in what I do. The moment the jury walks in the door is one. I've left a piece of myself in every courtroom I have inhabited, with every client I have represented. Which might prompt me to ask, if I were the introspective type, just what do I have left?

"While I wouldn't want to celebrate prematurely," Charlie said, taking a bite of the bruschetta, "I must say your examination of the slippery Dr. Schein is going swimmingly."

"Swimmingly," I repeated, just because I liked the feel of the word on my tongue.

"Still, you have a distance to go," Charlie said.

"I'm going to crack Schein like a coconut under a machete," I said.

"Broly," Kip said. "Like Jose Ferrer did to Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny." He rolled some imaginary ball bearings in his hand. "The mess boys stole the strawberries."

"I'll keep Schein on the rest of the day. Then, after Dr. Santiago testifies, I'm going to bring him back."

"Bifurcating his testimony," Charlie said, musing over the possibilities, "which means you expect to elicit something on the first round that will pin him into a corner on the second."

"Just the truth, Charlie."

" Magna est veritas. Great is truth. But there's something I don't get. Did Harry Bernhardt rape his daughter or not?"

"I don't know. I wasn't there."

"Jake!"

"I think I can raise a reasonable doubt that he did."

"But why? You'll create incredible dissonance in the jurors' minds. They expect you to prove that he raped her. They may even want to acquit if you prove it. For God's sake, if she's going to testify she was raped when she was eleven years old, why cast doubt on it?"

"She's less culpable if she wasn't abused," I said.

"I'm just a retired coroner, so I must have missed this newfangled development in the law that says you're better off killing someone if you didn't have a good reason to."

"Think about it, Charlie. She had no motive to kill her father. None. She was a pawn in Schein's hands. It's the only way to get around the secret tape. Even if she was abused, the jury will convict her for the cold-blooded plan of revenge all these years later. But if she wasn't raped, if Schein planted false memories and controlled her, then taped what he wanted and didn't tape what he didn't want, he's the only one with the motivation to kill. Chrissy's as much of a victim as her father. Morally, she'd be absolved."

"But not legally," Charlie said, a bit weakly.

"Not to a judge, not to a law professor," I said. "But jurors are people. They follow a moral compass, not a statute book."

"Uh-huh," Charlie said, sounding unconvinced. "Isn't it possible the jurors will believe that Schein hated Harry Bernhardt but still wouldn't resort to murder? After all, the motivation for the killing was fifteen years old. Why did it take him so long to seek revenge for Emily's death? And why didn't he ever confront Harry, man to man?"

"Right," Kip chimed in, twisting his angel-hair pasta around his fork. "Like Mandy Patinkin in The Princess Bride, when he catches up with the bad guy and says, 'My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.' "

"Because Schein's a coward," I said, "who might never have done anything if Guy Bernhardt hadn't egged him on."

"Many theories," Charlie said, attacking a piece of chicken piccata. "Little proof."

"I got a little proof this morning before court."

"Socolow give you what you wanted?"

"Yeah. I didn't specify what I was looking for, just asked for the entire contents of Harry's desk, and there it was."

"So Socolow doesn't really know what you want?"

"Doesn't have a clue."

The old buzzard sliced his chicken, then said, "You're quite caught up in this trial."

"It's what I do, Charlie."

"But are you prepared to lose?"

"What does that mean?"

"Emotionally, are you prepared to go on with your life when… if you lose?"

He had that father-to-son look of worry I get only from Charlie. "Okay," I said. "I'm living and breathing this one. It's the most important thing in the world to me."

Charlie sighed and neatly lined up his knife and fork on his plate. "Jake, did you know that at this very minute, the Swift-Tuttle comet, a chunk of rock six miles in diameter, is hurtling through space on a collision course with the earth? On its present course, traveling at sixteen miles per second, it will crash into our insignificant little planet on August 14, 2126."

"Most of Uncle Jake's clients will still be in prison," Kip said.

"What's the point, Charlie?" I asked.

"It's a doomsday rock!" he thundered. "The explosion will be a billion times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. It will create a cloud of dust that will encircle the earth for decades, cutting off all sunlight, killing all crops, destroying the global climate, causing worldwide famine and perhaps the extinction of the human race."

"Holy Star Wars!" Kip said.

I polished off the beer. "I get it, but I don't buy it. You're telling me that in the scope of things, what happens in our day-to-day lives doesn't matter. As individuals, we are nothing, and as a species-"

"We're doomed," Charlie said with finality.

"Then why do anything?" I asked. "Why not just hang out at the beach and windsurf and fish and chase women?"

"I like the fishing part," Kip said, his mouth painted with marinara sauce.

"As I recall, you tried that," Charlie said, "and found it unfulfilling. There has to be a balance. You have to find fulfilling work, what Mortimer Adler called play, or what Joseph Campbell called finding your bliss. At the same time, you cannot wager your entire worth, your self-esteem, on something so fleeting as the whims of a judge or jury, not when everything we call civilization can be extinguished in-"

"One swell foop," Kip said.