To speak for the dead

28

The five of us sat on my tiny back porch swatting mosquitoes, drinking Granny Lassiter's home brew, and arguing how to use the gift imparted by Abe Socolow.

"Show a video of Sergio winning the Karate King title," said Cindy. Ever efficient, she already had fished around town and found the tape.

"Let him split your head open with a shoe-toe oochi-koochi," Granny said. "Show his mean streak."

"Drop it now while we're ahead on the point," Roger Salisbury argued. His face was drawn, and he looked like he hadn't been getting much sleep. Being a defendant in a first-degree murder trial can do that. "Socolow will be ready for anything more about the karate."

Charlie Riggs drained the dark, headless beer from a mug that was once a peanut butter jar. "Not a bad idea. That was all off the cuff today. No matter what, we can't prove Sergio struck the decedent."

I shook my head, both at Charlie and at Granny, who was offering me a refill. Too heavy with hops, like an English bitter. "You're forgetting something, Charlie. We don't have to prove anything. All we need is to create a reasonable doubt that Roger aced him."

Charlie nodded and helped Granny into the hammock where she had decided to spend the night. I didn't think there was room for two.

"But it must be a reasonable doubt," Charlie Riggs declared. "Not a possible doubt, a speculative, imaginary, or forced doubt."

I laughed. "Whoa, Charlie, when did you start memorizing jury instructions?"

"I been in trials before you got out of knickers."

"Used to wet his knickers till he was four," Granny called out from the hammock.

Roger Salisbury leapt to his feet from an aging lawn chair. "I didn't kill Philip Corrigan!" Silently, three heads turned toward him. His normally placid face was twisted with pain. "When you talk about strategy, you seem to be trying to hide something, to get off a guilty man. You all forget I didn't kill Philip! He's the one person I could never kill. He was my friend."

Salisbury sagged back into the chair and turned toward the sprawling hibiscus that threatened to overrun the porch.

Everyone quieted down for a while. I thought about Roger's little speech. Something vague and fuzzy bothered me, but I let it go. We weren't getting anywhere except mosquito-bitten and drunk.

I was nearly dozing when the phone hollered. Everybody I wanted to talk to was within spitting distance. By the sixth ring, I stirred just to stifle the noise. Usually at this time of night, it's a boiler room call, somebody selling frozen beef from Colorado or solar water heaters made in Taiwan. Usually it's not Abe Socolow.

Breakfast before court? Sure. Bay Club? Sure.

"What does he want?" Roger asked, a tremble in his voice.

"Don't know. Maybe just wants to do a Power Breakfast."

Granny Lassiter snorted. "Then why call you?"

The Bay Club sits on the thirty-fifth floor of a new office building overlooking Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The dining room is chrome and glass, white tile, and a blinding brightness. All the charm of an astronaut's space capsule. The club was designed by a young architect adept at stealing ideas about modern design and making them worse.

Socolow was late. I looked around. There was Fat Benny Richards, all three hundred pounds of him, wolfing French toast with county commissioner Bradley Shriver. Fat Benny wore a six-hundred-dollar silk suit but looked like a ton of shit in a gunny sack. His clients called Fat Benny a lobbyist, which was a more polite term than bagman. Politicians courted him because he collected campaign contributions the way a sewage plant draws flies.

Fat Benny had the beady red eyes of an overfed rat, and his eyes were his best feature. His breath could kill a manatee and his toupee threatened to slide into his Bloody Mary. I picked up pieces of the conversation between the commissioner and the fat man. Arguing for a builder client, Benny wanted a variance from the ordinance requiring a parking space for every four hundred square feet of office space. A customary request by rapacious builders since parking garages cost a bundle and the cash return is diddly-squat compared to office space.

Fewer parking spaces, larger buildings, less green space, billboards the size of cruise ships-zoning was a scandal. But why not? In a town where William Jennings Bryan once hawked vacant lots from a floating barge, the hustle was still king.

Abe Socolow slid silently into his chair, folding his body like a scythe. He looked haggard. Black circles under his eyes, sunken cheeks, skin the color of a newspaper left in the sun. A waiter in a white vest and gloves took our order. Gloves at seven-thirty in the morning.

"Just coffee," Socolow said. "Black."

Naturally.

I ordered a large orange juice, a basket of sweet rolls, and shredded wheat with whatever fruit didn't come in a can. Let Abe suffer, I was hungry.

"That was some happy horseshit yesterday about a karate chop busting the aorta," he began irritably.

"Glad you liked it."

"Liked the bit about MacKenzie not testing stiffs who died after surgery, too."

"You ask me to breakfast to compliment my trial skills. How kind."

"Whadaya doing, Jake, just throwing shit on the barn door, seeing what'll stick?"

"Your breakfast conversation is most appetizing."

I didn't know where he was heading. He drained the coffee, and the waiter materialized silently with more from a silver pot. At the next table Fat Benny was offering the commissioner preferred stock in a cable television franchise.

"Just thought you should know," Socolow said, "I been at the morgue all night with MacKenzie…"

"The way you look, you're lucky they let you out."

He ignored me. "We got two stiffs out of surgery yesterday. Both had succinylcholine IVs as part of the anesthesia, and guess what?"

I didn't have to guess. No traces of succinic acid or choline. I figured Socolow would bust his balls to recoup after MacKenzie's debacle. Just didn't think he could do it so fast. Now I pictured him dashing from hospital to hospital, praying for patients to die in the OR, maybe pulling the plug in the ICU.

"As a personal favor, in a spirit of fairness," he went on, "I'll tell you about my rebuttal witness, an internal medicine guy. Feingold, head of the department at Jackson. He says a karate chop can't bust the aorta. No way. Too much padding in the abdomen, what with the fat and the stomach and all those organs."

"Kind of you to share your strategy with me, Abe. But we both know you can get Irv Feingold to say anything. I been around the rosy with him in two malpractice cases. Now, you didn't bring me here to talk about how strong your case is. What's up?"

He squinted at me through tired eyes. I smeared a large glob of butter on a heated cinnamon roll. Nearby, Fat Benny was extolling the virtues of a garbage compacting plant located upstream of a drinking well field.

"Jake, you know I'm fair. Tough, sure. But fair."

"Uh-huh," I mumbled. No use insulting him. If he had an offer, I would listen. Then I could insult him.

"We may have overcharged Salisbury," he said softly.

"Go on," I said.

"You know how juries are. Anything can happen. Hell, they can come back with Murder One and recommend death. Puts Crane in a tough spot."

"To say nothing of my client."

"Or they could compromise and recommend life."

"Yeah, and they could come back with a big fat NG."

He shook his head. "I'm not going to argue with you, Jake. Here it is. He pleads now to Murder Two, we agree to ten years. He'll be out in thirty-nine months."

It didn't take long to think about it. "No deal. A felony conviction, he loses his ticket to practice. Besides, he's not guilty. I won't plead him to jaywalking."

Socolow's jaw muscles tightened. "Jake, you're between the dog and the fire hydrant. If it's Murder One, even if no-go on death, it's twenty-five years minimum mandatory, you know that."

I knew that. And I knew that Abe Socolow was right about juries. You can never tell. I would tell Roger about the plea offer and let him decide. But I knew his answer. Ididn't kill Philip Corrigan! It was still ringing in my ears.

"Sorry, Abe. Just dismiss the case and go away. If not, we'll take a verdict from the jury box."

"I'll see you in court," he hissed.

"In about thirty minutes," I said.

"The state calls Mr. Sergio Machado-Alvarez."

Now there was a surprise, Socolow trying to catch me off guard. Bringing the Karate King in now, figuring we hadn't had much time to work on the karate chop angle. Figuring right.

Socolow's direct examination was brief, first describing Sergio's job as the family's driver and boat captain. Brought Mrs. Corrigan to the hospital the night of October 14 to check on her husband. Clever. Blunt the jury's surprise when I show he was there shortly before the fatal aneurysm.

Sergio went through it matter-of-factly. Mr. Corrigan was fine when they saw him, sleeping peacefully. No, he never saw the doctor in the room, must have come by later. Such a shame, que lastima, the boss dead, a good man. Then he corroborated Melanie's testimony about being attacked by Roger after the malpractice trial. Pulling up on his chopper in front of the Corrigan home, he saw the defendant, tires screaming, tearing out of Gables Estates. The senora showed him the beginning of a bruise under the eye. She was wailing that the doc struck her.

"Objection, hearsay," I sang out. "Move to strike."

"Denied," the judge declared firmly, pleased he could handle that one solo. "Excited utterance exception to the hearsay rule."

Socolow went on. "Did you ever speak to the defendant about this assault?"

"Nunca. I wouldn't say nothing to him. I told the senora, I mess him up she want. She says, no. She too kind."

"Did the defendant ever say anything to you about Mr. Corrigan when he was still alive?"

"Si. He tell me Mr. Corrigan not pay enough attention to his wife, he lose her, one way or another."

"Your witness," Abe Socolow said.

I stood up and moved close to the witness stand. I kept my back to the jury and gave Sergio my best mean-and-nasty look. If we were playing poker, he saw my mean-and-nasty and raised it to cruel-and-vicious. Good. Let the jury see a hard guy up close. Too bad he was wearing a suit, covering up those slabs of muscle and malice. His shirt collar was buttoned too tight, and he kept craning his neck toward the ceiling and pulling at the collar as if to let out the steam.

"Mr. Machado, have you ever been convicted of a crime?"

He shrugged his rhinoceros torso. "No big deal."

"May we assume that's a yes?"

"Si, sure. A crime, if you want to call it that."

"What do you call possession of illegal drugs?"

He snorted a little laugh. "Steroids, man. Solamente steroids. Possession without a prescription. Everybody I know does steroids."

"I'm sure they do. But you were convicted, were you not?"

"Yeah, sure. But I got no joo-dification."

"How's that?"

"My first offense. They didn't joo-dify me."

"The court withheld adjudication?"

"Si, what I say, I got probation. I got the half-a-david with me."

He had lost me. He drew a crumpled legal-size paper from his back pocket, and sure enough, there was an affidavit from the clerk of the criminal court attesting that one Sergio Machado-Alvarez had been placed on probation, adjudication withheld.

Socolow was reading it over my shoulder. "Objection! This is not proper impeachment. That's not a conviction under Section ninety point six-ten. Move to strike."

The son-of-a-gun knew his statute numbers. And he was right. You can attack the credibility of a witness by showing a prior criminal conviction, but without an adjudication of guilt, it doesn't count.

I treaded water. "Your Honor, this is not, strictly speaking, impeachment of credibility. Mr. Machado's familiarity with the implements of steroid abuse has a direct bearing on the guilt or innocence of Dr. Salisbury."

"Tie it up quickly, Mr. Lassiter," Judge Crane ordered, turning his profile to the television camera.

I moved even closer to the witness stand. "You freely acknowledge being a user of anabolic steroids, do you not?"

"Sure, makes me big."

"And smart, too," I cracked, trying to rile him.

Abe Socolow was having none of it. "Your Honor, please admonish Mr. Lassiter not to be argumentative."

"All right, both of you. Let's get on with it."

I walked to the rear of the jury box. Let them focus on Sergio, forget about me. "How long have you used steroids?"

"No se. Five, six years."

"So, at the time Mr. Corrigan died, you were a regular user." "Sure, I guess."

"You're familiar with the studies linking aggressive, irrational behavior with steroid abuse?"

"Says who?"

"An expert witness, but we'll save that for another day. Mr. Machado-Alvarez, how do you administer the steroids?"

"Huh?"

He didn't know where I was going. Abe Socolow would have prepared him for cross-examination about his karate skills. That would come. But first…

"How do you take the steroids? Pills, liquids? Do they come in little doggy biscuits?"

"You inject them, man."

He took his right hand and made a little plunging motion with his thumb. He did it twice, and somewhere deep inside me, a man was hitting a gong with a sledgehammer, trying to force some rundown brain cells to match distant thoughts with nearby ones. It would have to wait.

"So you use a hypodermic needle?"

"Sure."

I walked to the clerk's table and picked up State's Exhibit Six.

"Like this one?" I asked, holding that little devil three feet in front of the jury box.

He didn't answer. He was slow but not that slow.

"Like this one?" I repeated.

"I didn't kill no old man," he said. "He's the one did that. He's the needle man." Pointing now toward Roger Salisbury. But the jury was looking at Sergio Machado-Alvarez.

Good.

Very good.

So good I was ready to stop for a while. So was the judge. He knew the evening paper had an eleven-thirty a.m. deadline. Gentlemen, this may be a propitious time to recess for lunch. Fine with me. Let the jurors chew over Sergio Machado-Alvarez with their roast beef sandwiches.

I returned to court early. Lugging a trial bag filled with ceramic tiles. A clerk from the law firm pushed a dolly loaded with concrete blocks. I built four stacks of blocks, leaving them far enough apart to place twenty tiles on top, the edge of each block holding a corner of the bottom tile. The top of the pile was about waist high.

Abe Socolow walked in, took one look, and began barking orders that stampeded a herd of law clerks toward the library. Socolow raced for Judge Crane's chambers, a vein throbbing in his neck. I moseyed along behind him.

It was either indigestion or our presence, but the judge looked pained. In a corner of the room, by the bookcases, Jennifer Logan scratched through the cases searching for precedent on in-court demonstrations. Meanwhile Judge Crane belched and listened to Socolow's bleating.

"Show biz," Socolow said. "Histrionics for TV. Irrelevant blather designed to distract from the issues of the guilt of the accused."

"We've laid the predicate," I told the judge. "Dr. Riggs testified that a karate blow could have caused death. This witness is a karate expert. He was in the victim's hospital room shortly before the aneurysm. Let's see how hard the Karate King can hit."

"If the witness refuses to hit these things, I can't make him," the judge said wearily. "Even if he's willing to do it, I'm inclined to keep it out. Ruling deferred for now. Let's see where the testimony goes, but Mr. Lassiter, I admonish you, no circus tricks."

Abe Socolow huddled in the corridor with his witness, instructing him, no doubt, to downplay his karate skills and to stay away from the stack of tiles. Jennifer Logan neatly refilled her research in color-coded folders. The bailiff brought the jury in, and I started earning my retainer.

I asked Sergio about his training and his trophies, his black belt and his favorite dojang.

"First place in Florida sports karate, we don't hurt nobody," he said, obviously adhering to Socolow's advice. "Second in Atlanta, regional competition. Training for fifteen years."

I had him tell the jury about his weightlifting, Chinese boxing, judo, and aikido.

"You're a pretty physical guy?" I asked.

"I'm okay."

Ever so humble.

"Pretty good at karate?"

"If you say so."

Evasive.

"See this stack of tiles, think you can break them all with one blow?"

"Who knows?"

"Well, on this videotape from the Florida championships, you break a stack of boards like they were toothpicks, should we take a look?"

Socolow leapt up, objecting again.

Judge Crane, more dolorous than usual, peered down at 332 us, unhappy we needed his intervention. He looked toward the press gallery, but no one told him how to rule, so he took a stab at it himself. "Mr. Socolow, this is a capital case, and I will not unduly limit the defense. But Mr. Lassiter, get to the point. Objection overruled."

I raised my voice. "The fact is, you're not good enough to break twenty tiles with one blow, are you?"

"Huh?" Sergio looked puzzled. It did not seem to be an expression entirely foreign to him.

"Maybe Shigeru Funakoshi could do it," I suggested. "Didn't he beat you in Atlanta?"

"Home cooking. Two Japs and a Korean for judges."

"But you really couldn't break all twenty of these, could you?"

"You kidding? With my hand, my foot, or my head. Kid's stuff."

Adieu, humility. Socolow was grimacing, sitting on the edge of his chair, itching to pop up.

I said, "Let's see you do it. Mess them up. Isn't that what you said you could do to Dr. Salisbury, mess him up?"

Socolow was up again. "Your Honor. He's badgering the witness. As Your Honor said, an unwilling witness cannot be forced to take part in a demonstration. Miss Logan has handed me several cases on courtroom demonstrations that I wish to present on this issue. If the court please, in Mills v. State…"

Socolow approached the bench but I stayed close to the witness stand. The judge was going to set me down. I took a risk. It might get me another broken nose, maybe straighten out the one I had. It might get me some harsh words from the judge, nothing novel there. Or it might get me an acquittal.

I leaned over and murmured in Sergio's ear, "Stick around, Shorty. I'm gonna play a videotape of you and your friends. No wonder that bitch needs three guys. You not only have the brains of a flea, you've got the pinga of one, too."

Socolow was still at it, quoting the Florida Supreme Court. He couldn't hear the guttural growl that stirred in Sergio's throat. The Karate King rocked in the chair, his hands gripping the rail, his knuckles bleaching out. But he didn't get up. I leaned even closer, my mouth inches from his ear. Improvisation.

"Big pecs," I whispered, "pero pinga chiquita, no pinga grande."

It's important to be bilingual in Miami.

Sergio's cruel little eyes opened as wide as his brain would let them. Incredulous that I would mock him, enraged that I could do it from a vantage point half a foot higher than he'd be in elevator heels. But I needed more, something that would cut deep into the tender meat of his machismo, something to inflame a guy who spends hours posing his bicep curls in front of a gym mirror.

"What surprises me," I breathed into his ear, "is that you're a switch hitter. A fruit. Roger tells me he could never bend over with you behind him."

He erupted. A primeval roar. Socolow turned, eyes wide, frozen. Sergio stood in the box and tore oif his coat, throwing it to the floor. Short sleeves underneath, arms exploding against the fabric. He bounded out of the box toward me. I backpedaled like a cornerback on third and long. I wanted the stack of tiles between the two of us.

He looked at me. He looked at the tiles. He would have it all.

"Shuto!" He brought the sword handstrike down on the tiles. A thunderbolt, a thousand broken pieces, dust rising from the floor, an echo bouncing off the walls. A six on the Richter scale.

He barely paused. Two more steps and we were face-to-face. Blood streamed from his right hand, impaled by a ceramic sliver. I backed up until I was at the bar. He kept coming. Too fast. If he was ever to get good at hand-to-hand combat, he'd have to learn to control his emotions.

It would be better for Roger Salisbury if I let Sergio hit me. Just as Granny had said, let him show his mean streak. And I will do a lot for a client. I will stay up three nights in a row preparing witnesses or writing a brief. I will cajole and flatter judges with two-digit IQs. I will even cry in closing argument to win sympathy from the jury. But I will not let my head be split like a cataloupe by a tattooed, muscle-bound, hopped-up steroid freak.

He telegraphed a roundhouse kick, and as I ducked to the right, a whirling foot breezed by my ear, a rush of air like a train through the station. He tried hitting me in the chest with a flurry of fast punches with the left fist. Later, Charlie Riggs would tell me this was the Dan-zuki. I deflected some of them but caught a good one in the ribs. I would feel it for a week. He liked going for the body and used a lunge punch to get one into my gut. I felt it and dropped my guard. Somebody in the gallery screamed.

He tried to come high with a looping roundhouse right. Mawashi-zuki, Charlie would explain. He had plenty of hip behind it, but I had figured he'd go for the head. I leaned to my right and the punch glanced off my ear, burning it, but not connecting.

Then I ducked inside and brought my forearm up under his chin, hard. There was a lot of shoulder in it and a good explosion from the legs. The forearm caught some neck and some jaw and lifted him off the floor. It would have been good for fifteen yards, unnecessary roughness, clotheslining a guy. The shot straightened Sergio up, made him gasp for breath that wouldn't come. Then I brought the left hook around, aiming for the chin. It took a while to get there, my timing was rusty, but that was okay. He wasn't going anywhere. The punch landed and tossed him backward onto the clerk's table, which crumbled into splinters, trial exhibits flying. State-issued furniture.

The judge was banging his gavel. I hadn't heard it during the ruckus. But there he was, banging away. And in his other hand was the . 357 Magnum from under the bench. Then dead quiet. The judge looked at the gavel and then at the gun. Sheepishly. Then his eyes darted from Channel 10's video camera to the Herald's still camera, whirring and clicking away. Preserving the sight for eternity, or at least until the next election.

Straining to appear judicial, he turned toward the jury box. "The jurors shall disregard the last… uh… colloquy between the witness and defense counsel."

Might as well ask the residents of Pompeii to ignore the volcano.

Then, eyeballing me, Judge Randolph Crane did a slow burn. "The Court, sua sponte, grants a mistrial. The jury is excused. Mr. Socolow, I assume the state wishes to retry this defendant. If so, a new trial date will be set upon subsequent motion and notice of hearing. Mr. Lassiter…"

He paused. He thought. His perpetual glumness was replaced with anger. It seemed real, not just a pose for the editorial boards.

"Mr. Lassiter, I have never seen such a display in a courtroom. I don't know what you did to provoke that witness, but I do know you committed battery upon his person."

Again he paused, and the courtroom waited. He was running out of steam. He shot a surreptitious glance at the press. No help. He banged his gavel three times. When no one moved, he banged it again, then looked at me sternly and in his deepest tones announced, "You have fomented anarchy in a court of law." A good quote, and from the front row, Helen Buchman nodded approvingly, her gray bouffant bobbing. Encouraged, the judge worked some righteous indignation into his voice. "In sum, Mr. Lassiter, you have flaunted… that is flouted

… and in other words, you have affronted and offended the authority of this court. You are hereby ordered and adjudged in contempt of court. Report tomorrow morning at nine for sentencing. I suggest you bring counsel. And your toothbrush."

The judge bolted through the rear door into his chambers and away from the madness. A corrections officer helped Sergio to his feet. Reporters swarmed over me. From the corridor, the cameramen and grips stormed in, knocking spectators aside. A mini-cam examined my right ear. A microphone poked at my eye. I'd be the lead story at six o'clock. Good story, too. Defendant goes free, at least for a while; his lawyer heads for the stockade.

My ribs ached and my left hand was beginning to swell.

Roger Salisbury hadn't moved. He sat at the defense table, probably trying to figure out if I was a great lawyer or just a guy with an adequate left hook.

Abe Socolow looked at me and said, "You went too far this time, Jake, old buddy."

"In a pig's ass!" Granny Lassiter had hurdled the bar separating the lions from the Christians, exposing gray wool socks beneath her sundress. She hugged me and narrowed her eyes at Abe Socolow. "My Jacob can whup any man in the house, and a couple weeks of county victuals never did no harm."