by Paul Levine
Chapter 9
* * *
The Brain Trust
GRANNY LASSITER WAS CHOPPING FLORIDA LOBSTER WITH A SAWTOOTH diver’s knife and tossing the white morsels into a frying pan with slices of onion and green pepper. The cooking oil sizzled and popped, and her small kitchen was redolent with piquant aromas. I was barefoot because it’s against the law, or ought to be, to wear shoes south of Key Largo. The rest of me was covered by denim cutoffs and a faded Penn State T-shirt. My job was to whack a coconut in two with a machete and grate the meat. Charlie Riggs’s job was to sip Granny’s home brew and kibitz.
Granny wasn’t my grandmother, but there was some relationship, maybe a great-aunt on my father’s side. Everyone in the Keys called her Granny Lassiter, and most of the natives drank her moonshine. She raised me after my father was killed and my mother ran off. Granny was a small, wiry woman with high cheekbones and a pugnacious chin, and her black hair was streaked with white. Today she wore canvas shorts with button pockets and a tank top from a Key West oyster bar that advised its patrons to “Eat ’em raw.” Under the tank top, it was just Granny. No bra and, sure as heck, no silken camisole. She lived just outside Islamorada in a four-room wooden house with a front porch and a rocking chair and a kitchen window that caught the breezes from the Gulf of Mexico.
Granny poured some sherry into the frying pan with the lobster, then took a swig from the bottle. I shredded the coconut into the sizzling mixture. Charlie was into one of his soliloquies, rambling on about determining time of death based on the amount of maggot growth in the corpse. It was one of his favorite mealtime topics.
When the lobster was golden brown, Granny added tomato paste, curry powder, and turmeric, then put the whole shebang into a casserole that she slid into the oven. Then she ordered me to cook some wild rice, so she could sit down with Charlie at the kitchen table to have a drink and rest her dogs, which is what Granny called her feet. I followed her instructions, boiling the rice, all the time inhaling the pungent fragrance of the spices and the cooking lobster.
“Speared those suckers myself,” Granny said, gesturing toward the oven or maybe toward the Gulf. “Don’t have time to trap ’em.”
“Marine Patrol could confiscate your boat,” I told her. “Lobster poaching’s a crime.”
“So’s larceny,” she said, “but that don’t stop you shysters.”
“Panulirus argus,” Charlie mumbled. “The spiny lobster is actually a crawfish.” He took a sip of home brew from a jelly jar. “Now, where was I?…”
“Something about maggots,” Granny suggested, though I don’t know why she encourages him.
“Right. These days, a good coroner has to know the lifestyles of flies and lice,” Charlie said. “Jake, have I ever told you about the case I handled a few years back in Lacoochee?”
“Not recently,” I allowed.
“A body was found in a swamp in July, some drug runner. No one knew how long the body had been there. There was a suspect who had an alibi for the previous week, but that was it. If the body had been there longer, he couldn’t account for his whereabouts.”
“So?” Granny prompted him.
“The body was infested with fly maggots. Based on the time the flies took for feeding, laying eggs, and the development of the maggots, it was clear the body was more than a week old. That blew the alibi.”
“Keep it up, I’m going to blow lunch,” I said.
Granny dismissed me with a wave of her nut-brown arm. “Boy’s a tad squeamish. Never wanted to eat catfish if I cooked ’em with the head still on.”
“Granny!”
“Then, I remember the time we were snorkeling off Matecumbe Key, and a moray eel bit clean through his fins. The boy wouldn’t go back in the water for a week.”
“Granny, please. No old stories. Let’s talk about anything but me.”
That only provoked her. “You married yet, boy?” She’d taken off her sandals, and her feet were propped in Charlie Riggs’s lap.
“You know I’m not.”
“Good. I never married, and I never regretted it. Not that I ain’t been asked. If I recollect correctly, five fellows proposed, a couple of ’em sober at the time. But who needs a man, and who needs rug rats? You were enough to handle, and you were what, eight or nine, when you started bunking with me.” She turned to Charlie, who was munching his appetizer, some of Granny’s deep-fried hush puppies. “Lord, that boy could eat. Pork barbecue, yellowtail snapper, six-egg omelets, you name it. And raise a ruckus, whoooee. He used to hit the walls. Hit ’em with his shoulders, shake the whole house. I figured he was just going through puberty, but he kept it up so long, I made him go out for the football team.”
“These days, he usually hits the walls with his head,” Charlie said, between crackly bites.
“C’mon, I asked for help, not abuse. You two are my brain trust.”
Granny cackled at me. “Then you’re in trouble, boy. Charlie’s half-potted on white lightning, and I never did understand your business. Just talky-talk.”
“Really, Granny, I need help. I’ve got the weekend to figure out what to do, and then it’s back to court Monday.”
Charlie poured himself a refill. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. “I don’t see the problem, Jake. You’re ethically bound to use Gondolier’s testimony. You’re not in a position to judge his veracity.” Ver-ashity.
“Charlie, admit it. Whatever Tupton found, it wasn’t a plan for a golf course. It’s something far worse. His reaction was way over the top.”
“You’re assuming Tupton’s reaction was rational, even though he’d been drinking heavily.” Charlie paused long enough to burp. “And you have no proof that Gondolier is lying.”
“But I know he is.”
“How? Do you have documentary evidence? Contradictory witnesses? Have you caught him in inconsistencies?”
“No, dammit, I just know. I do this for a living, remember. It’s my job to know.”
Outside the kitchen window, the Gulf breeze sent shivers through the bell-shaped flowers of a violet jacaranda tree.
“It’s your job to give your client the best representation you can.” Charlie cleared his throat. It sounded like a train leaving the station. “It’s not your job to cloud your judgment with conflicts of interest.”
“The boy in Dutch again?” Granny asked. “I’d bet my new spinning rod it’s a woman. He’s been fooled by more than one.”
Charlie patted his lips dry with a dish towel Granny used for a napkin. “As Virgil asked, ‘Quis fallere possit amantem. Who can deceive a lover?”
“Easy,” I answered. “The lover’s lover.”
“Ah, the cynic in you speaks.”
“The voice of experience,” I said.
“Just so you haven’t taken up with that cheerleader again,” Granny said, sipping at her drink. “Son, that girl was nothing but trouble.”
I had been promoted from “boy.”
“She was a dancer, Granny.”
“And she married that fellow who builds those crappy condos on stilts from Hialeah to Marathon. I read the society pages, just to remind myself how much I hate evening gowns, tuxes, and the people who wear ’em.”
“She’s got nothing to do with this,” I said defensively.
They both looked at me as if I’d spent too long in the midday sun.
“Don’t you believe me?” I asked.
Charlie was massaging Granny’s feet under the table, and Granny wasn’t complaining. He looked at me with a headmaster’s stare. “What do you believe, Jake? Why is this case different for you from just another insurance-company defense?”
“Do you know you have an irritating habit of answering a question with a question?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Charlie replied.
I was trying to wash down Granny’s mango cheesecake with a cup of coffee the color of crankcase oil that had gone more than its allotted miles. “If only I knew what Tupton really found in Ni
cky Florio’s den…”
“Why don’t you ask Gina?” Charlie asked.
We were sitting on Granny’s front porch. A red-winged blackbird was making chucking sounds as it circled the jacaranda trees. I was in the old wicker rocking chair, my brain trust in the love seat. Granny was snoring peacefully, her head on Charlie’s shoulder. Charlie poured himself a second cup of coffee. If that didn’t clear the fog, nothing would.
“Ask her what? To go through her husband’s desk? To tell me if her husband’s planning anything illegal, unethical, or particularly nasty?”
“She is your paramour, is she not?”
“I hate to tell you this, Charlie, but people don’t use words like ‘paramour’ anymore.”
“Para-mour any-more,” he mused putting a little tune to it.
“Besides, what makes you think Gina would help me?”
“Since we know Gina is not loyal to her husband in matters of the heart, perhaps the same would be true in business affairs. I am assuming, of course, that you have already violated your attorney-client relationship against my advice.”
“Forget it, Charlie. It wouldn’t work, anyway. It’s over with Gina.”
“Why, because of Gondolier? You couldn’t handle her dancing in two discos at once. Is that lingo more with it?”
I ignored his jab. “I’d like to tell you I dropped Gina, but the fact is, she lowered the boom on me. She wants to work on her marriage.”
He shrugged and downed the rest of his sludge. “Odd way to work on the marriage, don’t you think, with her husband’s partner?”
“I really don’t care.”
Charlie raised a bushy eyebrow at me. Granny stirred in her sleep and grunted.
“Really, Charlie. I’m more interested in what Florio and Gondolier are up to.”
“Or is that simply the pretext for maintaining connection with Gina? Is your suspicion of her husband and his partner rational, or is it a subconscious attempt to facilitate your obsession with the woman?”
“Obsession’s a little strong, Charlie.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Do thoughts of Gina intrude on your consciousness despite your attempts not to think of her?”
“Maybe.”
“Jake, I’m trying to help you.”
“Okay, okay, I think about her a lot. You happy now?”
“Are your thoughts repetitive and distracting? Do they interfere with your work?”
“I guess so.”
“Have you been especially ruminative, your thinking un-spontaneous? Do these thoughts seem to come from somewhere other than yourself?”
“Now that you mention it, yeah.”
“Classic obsessional neurosis,” Charlie declared. “As a child, your personality development probably was hindered because of alienation due to losses suffered very young, but that, dear lad, is another story.” Charlie cleared his throat, perhaps signaling that our forty-five minutes was up. I was expecting him to hand me a bill, but instead he changed the subject. “And what do you think Peter Tupton found?”
“I don’t know, but whatever it was, it killed him.”
“As usual, you assume without knowing sufficient facts. You leap to conclusions.”
“Wrong, Charlie. I don’t assume anything, not even a seven percent mortgage. I listen. And what I hear is that Nicky Florio is a totally amoral, dangerous man who would do anything to achieve his goals. You know what he said to me?”
Charlie looked the question at me.
“‘The gods make their own rules.’ Is that arrogant or what?”
“Ovid.”
“Come again.”
“Publius Ovidius Naso, or as we call him, Ovid. The line comes from Metamorphoses. ‘Sunt superis sua iura.’”Charlie scratched at his beard and smiled to himself, doubtless remembering another pithy Latin verse. “Does Mr. Florio consider himself a god?”
“He thinks he’s untouchable.”
“Money and power do that to a man,” Charlie said.
I stood up and did a couple of spinal twists, picking up a splinter in my foot from a wooden plank. I couldn’t stop thinking about dead Peter Tupton and rich Nicky Florio. And because I generally say what I’m thinking, except in court, where I usually say the opposite, I asked Charlie, “What’s Florio up tor What the hell is it that could be even worse than the damn town in the middle of the Everglades?”
“Figure it out.”
“How?”
“Thank big, Jake.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think like a god,” Charlie Riggs said.
Chapter 10
* * *
Lord of the Sky
EVERY JURY TRIAL HAS A PACE OF ITS OWN. Some crawl along with countless interruptions and delays. Judges who like to start late and quit early prolong cases. So do blabbermouth lawyers and tardy witnesses. Repetitive testimony and excessive use of exhibits—lawyers overtrying the case—can stretch out the proceedings.
Then there are the trials with the quick heartbeat. A skillful plaintiff’s lawyer, and H.T. Patterson was certainly that, makes the courtroom crackle. The lawyer starts strong in opening statement, witnesses provide details in the middle, and the lawyer ends with a bang in closing argument.
Pacing.
Timing.
Ka-boom!
Patterson was doing his usual job. Crisp and focused, not letting the jurors get bored. In arguments with counsel, he could be a windbag, but he knew how to handle a jury. Lawyers who keep up with the times realize that jurors’ attention spans are shaped by television. On L.A. Law, the crew at McKenzie, Brackman wraps up three trials and two love affairs every sixty minutes, including commercials. So keep your questions short and your arguments cogent. If you don’t, the jurors will doze off and wonder why Judge Wapner doesn’t move things along.
I was in a daze when we started up again Monday. I half listened as Patterson ran through his case, calling the paramedics and an assistant medical examiner in the morning and an expert on alcohol-related deaths in the afternoon. There wasn’t much cross-examining to do. So I sat, chewing a pencil, staring at the sign above the judge’s bench: WE WHO LABOR HERE SEEK ONLY THE TRUTH. If that were true, and not even a first-year law student believes it, most of our labor goes for naught.
The next hour, I sat, half listening to the witnesses, half thinking about Nicky Florio and Rick Gondolier. At lunchtime, I let myself fret about the brown manila envelope marked “Personal and Confidential” that reached the office in Saturday’s mail while I was lazing with Charlie and Granny in Islamorada. Judge Herman Gold used all of eleven pages to find that one Jacob Lassiter, Esq., had illegally tape-recorded a client, and in so doing, had engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice. Further, by threatening his client with exposure to the state attorney, and subsequently doing so, the same miscreant mouthpiece breached the attorney-client privilege in acts “akin to extortion.” That’s what the old buzzard wrote.
Cindy, my trusty secretary, brought the order to the courthouse Monday morning. I read it the first time while a female paramedic who’s also a champion bodybuilder was recounting the efforts to revive Peter Tupton.
I read it again.
Akin to extortion.
Funny, as I recall it, I was trying to prevent a murder by putting my own life in jeopardy, and the law considered my action “akin to extortion.”
Granny Lassiter was right. I was in the wrong profession. I should have done something useful like sell Weed Whackers door-to-door.
“It’s only a ninety-day suspension, plus a public reprimand,” Cindy whispered, striving for encouragement. On the witness stand, the paramedic was saying something about Tupton’s skin being colder than a well-digger’s ass, and Judge Boulton scowled. Cindy leaned close to my ear. “And you can still appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, so don’t get all bent out of shape.”
I sent her back to the office, where she could use the time-honored (and occasionally true) dodge of telling cli
ents that I was in trial and would return their calls upon my victorious return.
The assistant medical examiner, a lanky Harvard-educated pathologist with half-glasses perched on his nose, took the stand and told us what we already knew. Peter Tupton died of ventricular fibrillation brought about by hypothermia, an abnormal lowering of the body temperature. Next came an air force physician who studied the effects of cold on volunteers in Greenland. He testified that alcohol consumption contributed to the hypothermia. Throughout the day, Nicky Florio sat next to me, looking bored, occasionally opening his appointment book and making notes to himself.
Just after the mid-afternoon recess, we had a visitor. I felt a tap on my shoulder as yet another physician was testifying, attesting to Peter Tupton’s robust health prior to being chilled out. I swiveled around in my chair.
The long, sallow face of Abe Socolow was smiling down at me.
Smiling? Abe Socolow?
Then he gave me a teammate’s friendly slug on the back, moved a step toward Nicky Florio, and mumbled something in his ear. Facing the jury box, Socolow smiled, clasped Florio as if they were blood brothers, nodded to the judge, and left.
H.T. Patterson watched the choreography, a pained expression on his face. The jurors saw it, every last one of them, their heads swinging away from the witness and toward us. ‘They must have recognized Socolow from television. He was always announcing indictments, crowing over guilty verdicts, whining about acquittals. Nowhere he was, dispensing his blessings to a defendant in a civil case. Even I was impressed with Nicky Florio’s clout.
Two hours later, half the jurors were yawning, so Judge Boulton sent them home with the usual admonitions not to discuss the case with their friends and families. The grateful conscripts responded with the usual pleasant lies.
