Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones

by Levine, Paul

  "It's the only way to win," I said.

  I finished my preparations for the morning session just after the eleven o'clock news. Now I was lying on my sofa, eyes closed, half sleeping, half thinking, when Chrissy nudged me. She wanted to go out. A vestige of the mow-dell days, parties that start at midnight and end with steak and eggs for breakfast at the News Café.

  "I'm too tired," I told her. "I missed my disco nap 'cause I was tied up in court."

  "Tell me about it," she said. "Look, if you don't mind, I gotta go anyway. It's an opening, Jake, and they're gonna pay me two thousand dollars."

  "You know our rules. No booze, no drugs, no parties 'til the trial's over."

  After which there might not be any festivities for a very long time, my lawyerly self might have added.

  "Jake, I need the money."

  Weirdly, Chrissy had become a local celebrity. While the national advertisers wouldn't touch her, the publicity in Miami had made her a star. A Hialeah garment manufacturer had hired her as the spokesperson for Fem-Gun, a brassiere with a compartment for a .22 pistol. She'd been asked to speak to various women's clubs, including Daughters Against Rape, an incest survivors' group, and Bitches with Balls, a lesbian support group.

  Reporters followed her to the courthouse, reported on her clothing, her lifestyle, her garbage (yogurt, torn panty hose, spermicidal jelly), and her reading habits, which consisted of fashion magazines and mysteries by Carol Higgins Clark. So, when a new club opened, it paid to have Chrissy there, along with the likes of Madonna, Sly, and occasionally Jack Nicholson. And if she was going, I was going, too.

  The bouncer wore a muscle T-shirt and three earrings, one of which was embedded, like an errant fishhook, in his right eyebrow. His trapezius muscles bulged almost to his ears and bore the telltale acne of steroid abuse. While the plebeians strained against the red velvet rope, my lady and I were waved to the front, Musclehead's dim face showing recognition when he saw Chrissy in her red leather mini.

  "Maybe I should frisk you," he said with a leer.

  "I already have," I said, and we pushed past him into Quicksand, the newest club about to enjoy its fifteen minutes of South Beach fame.

  The throbbing music grated at a decibel level that once induced General Noriega to come out of hiding. Multicolored lasers pierced through a man-made fog that drifted to the ceiling. Some undressed bodybuilders, male and female, frolicked in the pit filled with mud that gave the club its name. On the dance floor, folks of various genders spun and twirled: bare-chested gay boys, their pecs slicked with oil; girls dancing with girls; a few guys with their dates, hanging on for dear life. It was a sea of leather, chains, boots, and bare flesh, each person trendier than the next.

  Chrissy leaned close and yelled something into my ear. I couldn't hear a thing. She motioned toward two middle-aged men in double-breasted suits over black T-shirts. A covey of Miami Beach quail hovered around them, and a photographer for Ocean Drive magazine snapped off a dozen pictures. One of the men had a ponytail, though he was nearly bald on top. The other had a shaved head, reminding me of Larry Schein. I still couldn't hear Chrissy, but as she moved to talk to the guys, I figured they were the owners of this newest establishment of high culture.

  I let Chrissy go do her thing and wandered off on my own. Foam poured into a nearby pit, and several naked revelers dived in and disappeared. A few yards away, a guy/gal in camouflage pants, combat boots, and a pink halter top (which covered his/her small breasts) was pouring pills from a Baggie into the hands of two identically dressed girls who were too young to vote. I took a second look. They seemed familiar. Sure, I'd seen them at SoBeMo auditioning, their mother leading the charge. Somehow they'd gotten into the party scene, if not the modeling scene. One of the girls handed several bills to the transgender Rambo, who kissed them both on each cheek and put the Baggie back into a pocket of his camouflage pants.

  I don't know crack from smack, crank from coke, XTC from LSD. Sure, I smoked some weed in my younger days, but now I won't ingest anything stronger than caffeine. I walked over and yelled at the girls, "That stuff will kill you!"

  In unison, they stuck out their tongues at me, so I decided to mind my own business. I walked around the perimeter of the dance floor. At the roped-off entrance to one of the VIP rooms, the tuxedoed guardian recognized me. He should have; I'd gotten him probation once on a bad-check charge. He waved me past the ropes, and once inside, I saw several local politicians, a Hispanic soap-opera star, and a few other familiar faces. Softer music played. A spotlight played on a small stage where a naked black woman covered with whipped cream was moving seductively toward a naked white woman covered with chocolate. Though I am inexperienced in South Beach revelry, I figured this was not a cooking class.

  The women took each other's hands, then slid thigh against thigh, exchanging whipped cream for chocolate. Then they lay down on the stage, their heads facing in opposite directions, their legs intertwined. Two well-muscled young men appeared. Naked, Caribbean-brown. They placed maraschino cherries on the women's nipples, then lay down next to them, one to either side, the men bent at the waist, their bodies arching into parentheses. All four began moving to the music, and then a young woman stepped from the crowd onto the stage. Applause greeted her.

  "There's the artist," someone said excitedly, next to me.

  "I call this work Banana Split," she said proudly, and the crowd applauded heartily.

  By now I had a headache and wanted to go home. I hoped Chrissy had done her networking and had picked up her check. Her name would be in Tara Solomon's "Queen of the Night" column in the paper, and the ponytailed Quicksand boys should be happy.

  I left the VIP room and found a rest room that had three condom machines. I was bent over the sink, tossing cold water onto my face, when I heard his gravelly voice. "Lassiter, you're making a big mistake."

  I lifted my head and saw Guy Bernhardt in the mirror. He still looked like a pig.

  "Accusing Larry Schein like that. It makes good press, but it's just a sideshow. The jury won't buy it."

  "I'm not done with him yet. Before I'm through, he'll sing a song with your name in it."

  "Damn it, Lassiter. You've said the wrong thing."

  Then I saw the two guys behind him. I remembered them from the ride through the mango fields. Short, burly Hispanic men owned by their master. Bernhardt took a step back and they came forward. I spun around, flexed my knees, and let my hands dangle at my side. Adrenaline awakened me. I caught the first one with a straight left jab that snapped his head back. I pivoted in time to see the flash of a blade, the second one waving a knife under my nose. I backed up until my ass hung over the sink.

  The knife moved closer. It was a shiny switchblade with a black enamel handle. The point was just below my chin when he brought it up and pricked the skin. I felt a drop of blood fall. My head tried to arch backward until my neck hurt. I couldn't move. All I could do was listen to Guy Bernhardt.

  "Rusty said you were hardheaded. . . ."

  "He doesn't know the half of it."

  "He said I couldn't reason with you, deal with you. Apparently he's right. But even a mule, a jackass, can be taught. And today's lesson is that a bigmouth lawyer who points his finger at me is likely to get it cut off. You think you're a tough guy, but you know what? You bleed just like anybody else."

  He nodded, and the man dragged the knife across the underside of my chin. A line of blood formed, then began to spill in drops. The man backed off and cleaned the knife on my jacket. His pal stepped forward, and while I had one hand cupped under my chin, he caught me in the gut with a short right hook. I crumpled to the tile floor, coughing and bleeding.

  I had two Band-Aids under my chin when Abe Socolow greeted me in the morning. "What happened to you?"

  "Cut myself shaving."

  "Nervous, huh?" he said, and made his way to the prosecution table.

  I had told Chrissy what happened and had grounded both of us for the duration o
f the trial. Now, we were in the courtroom of the Honorable Myron Stanger, and I was trying to focus on my witness.

  The clerk called out her name, and Dr. Milagros Santiago marched to the witness stand, nodded to the jurors, and sat down. She was dressed in a navy skirt and matching jacket, her eyeglasses perched on top her head. She was one of those women who proudly carry twenty extra pounds and to hell what anybody else thinks. Millie gave her credentials and background; then we got down to business.

  "The old view of autobiographical memory stems from Freud," Dr. Santiago said. "He described repression as a defense mechanism used to suppress the psychic pain of anxiety, guilt, or shame. We came to believe that every experience of a person's life was stored somewhere in the brain, waiting to be recalled by therapy or drugs, hypnosis or meditation. But now we know it's not that simple. Our memories are constantly being refashioned, and when we dredge them up, it's from a murky sea. There are true memories with false details, and false memories with true details."

  She told the jury how historical truth, what actually happened, differs from narrative truth, what we remember.

  "We don't store memories like bytes of data on computer disks, ready to be called up with total accuracy at the touch of a keystroke," she said, looking directly at the jury. "Memories are malleable and tend to change and drift with time. When recalled, they're a blend of fact and fiction."

  I took Dr. Santiago through her research and that of others. She quoted the work of Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, using her analogy of the memory as a giant blackboard with an endless supply of chalk and erasers. Memory is dynamic, ever changing, susceptible to suggestion, and no one knows where truth ends and the imagination begins. She talked about the personal myths each of us creates about the past, about the dreams we mistake for reality. She told about pseudomemories of past lives and tales of abduction by aliens and satanic abuse.

  "The people with these memories aren't lying," she said. "They could pass lie detector tests, and indeed it might be difficult to disprove them. But we know that such memories can be seriously flawed. We confuse dreams with recalled events. As for cases of abuse, memory is weakest at both ends of the spectrum of stress and boredom. Both mundane and violent events actually decrease the accuracy of memory. And, of course, memories can be implanted, either purposely or not, by others."

  As she spoke, I watched the jurors. Rapt attention, some nodding with recognition of instinctual truths. The best expert testimony makes sense to the layman. It fits with reality as we know it. DNA testing, combining genetics and statistics, is a challenge to your average Dade County juror, whose knowledge of English, much less chemistry, is rudimentary. Given a choice between Ph.D.s dishing out scientific mumbo-jumbo or the visual presentation of a glove that doesn't fit, I'll take the glove every time.

  After twenty minutes of listening to Millie Santiago, I wasn't sure I believed my own memories. Had I really seen my father cry that day on the porch when my mother ran out to meet her lover? Or had those been my tears?

  "Are you saying there is no such thing as recovering repressed memories?" I asked.

  "No," Millie said.

  On direct examination, just like Socolow, I set up straw men, then knock them down.

  "Memory suppression is hardly unknown," she continued. "In one study, researchers found that thirty-eight percent of adult women who had been treated for sexual abuse as children had no memories of the incidents. The difficulty is to recover the memories without contamination by postevent occurrences or suggestions by therapists, whether innocent or malevolent."

  Malevolent. Nice word. I wanted to make it Lawrence Schein's middle name.

  "The literature is replete with false accusations," she continued, "such as the former altar boy who accused a Roman Catholic cardinal of sex abuse, only to recant. We now know that many such accusations are therapy driven."

  It was time to move from the general to the specific.

  "Have you had an opportunity to examine the defendant, Chrissy Bernhardt?"

  "Yes, I examined her."

  "Have you reviewed any records in connection with the examination?"

  "I read Dr. Schein's entire file, including notes detailing the therapy sessions, his tests and diagnoses, and I listened to the tapes. Additionally, I reviewed as many of the patient's childhood medical records and current records as I could locate."

  "Based on your examination and the records you reviewed, are you able to state to a reasonable degree of medical certainty whether Chrissy Bernhardt was sexually abused by her father?"

  "No."

  The jurors responded with puzzled looks. I had disappointed them. They expected a revelation, and I had none. Yet.

  "What could you determine?"

  "Christina suffered severe trauma when she was approximately eleven years old, and she repressed the memories of the incidents," Dr. Santiago said. "There are certain indicia of sexual abuse which coincide with the time frame. She had several urinary tract infections at ages eleven through thirteen and also suffered eating disorders, including bulimia. Her schoolwork suffered and she became rebellious at about the same time. These can demonstrate a history of sexual abuse, though they are not conclusive."

  "What about the fact that, while under hypnosis, Chrissy revealed alleged instances of sexual abuse by her father?"

  "Those statements are as reliable as a witness to a crime who picks the alleged criminal out of a lineup while being coaxed by a policeman. Christina's revelations are tainted by Dr. Schein's overly suggestive questioning and are completely unreliable. In fact, at the present time, they have been recanted, at least to the extent that Christina now states she no longer knows what happened to her."

  "Then how can we determine what really happened?"

  "There's no certain way, but with appropriate, neutral questioning under hypnosis, without the use of drugs, there's a possibility."

  I turned toward the judge. "Your Honor, at this time, we call Christina Bernhardt to undergo questioning under hypnosis by Dr. Santiago."

  "What!" Abe Socolow leaped to his feet. He leaned toward the bench, resembling the bowsprit of a sailboat. "The state objects. You can't put two witnesses up there together and have a tea party."

  "Is that a sexist remark?" I asked, aiming for the female jurors.

  "There's no precedent for this," Socolow complained.

  "It's an evidentiary demonstration, no different than any other," I responded.

  Socolow's Adam's apple bobbed above his shirt collar. "It's cheap theatrics!"

  The judge motioned us up to the bench. "Let's have a brief sidebar." When we got there, he looked at me. "What are you pulling here, Jake?"

  "Nothing," I whispered. "I don't know what my client's going to say. No one does."

  "Then you're incompetent," Socolow said. "First you impeach your own expert. Now this! The court should protect your client from you."

  "I appreciate the state's concern for my client's welfare," I said, "but I've fully discussed this with my client, and she wants to do it. She wants to know the truth and wants the jury to know, too."

  "How do I cross-examine a defendant under hypnosis?" Socolow whined.

  "You don't," I said. "I don't examine her while she's under, and neither do you. When she comes out of it, she'll remember everything. Then, if you want, ask her questions 'til everybody falls asleep. You usually do."

  "That's enough, boys," the judge said, shooting a look at the jury. "This is a murder trial, and I'm not going to unduly limit the defense. But, Jake, if you start getting into past lives or some kind of witch doctor voodoo, I'll cut it off quicker than Lorena Bobbitt with a pair of shears."

  "Judge, I don't know what's going to happen, so I can't make any promises."

  "You really didn't rehearse it?" the Honorable Myron Stanger whispered.

  "Nope. Dr. Santiago said it wouldn't be proper."

  The judge whistled under his breath. "Jesus H. Christ, if they weren't paying me to sit here,
I'd buy a ticket."

  "That's what I mean. Judge," Socolow said. "Jake's turning your courtroom into a circus."

  "Well, if the elephants shit on the floor, we'll just pile on the sawdust," the judge said.

  I nodded in appreciation of this gem of judicial sagacity and resumed my position in front of the jury box. Turning to my client with a slight bow, I said, "Chrissy Bernhardt, would you please step forward?"

  32

  And When Chrissy's Bad . . .

  The lights were dimmed. New Age music played from Millie's tape recorder. It sounded like tinkling wind chimes, a flute, and waves pounding a rocky shore. Chrissy leaned back in a recliner in front of the jury box, Millie telling her to relax, to let her mind run free, to approach a brilliant white light. Her body was growing heavy, Millie said; it was sinking deeper and deeper into the chair. Then she had Chrissy count backward from fifty, her voice logy.

  I didn't know about Chrissy, but I was getting sleepy. I was also watching her cream-colored Emanuel Ungaro skirt creep up her thighs and hoped it neither distracted the men nor pissed off the women sitting in the jury box.

  It only took a few moments before Chrissy was in that never-never land between somnolence and wakefulness. "What is your name?" Millie Santiago asked.

  "Christina Bernhardt," she said, eyes still closed, "but on my card, it just says Chrissy."

  "What card, Chrissy?"

  "My composite. I'm a model."

  "Are you a good model, Chrissy?"

  "When Chrissy's good, she's very good." She chuckled to herself. "And when Chrissy's bad . . ."

  "What do you do, Chrissy?"

  "I make scads of money for pouting or cocking a hip or hitting a volleyball on the beach."

  "Do you enjoy your work?"

  "It's all right." Sounding bored.

  "Are you happy?"

  No answer.

  "Chrissy . . ."

  "Sometimes."