Bum Deal

by Paul Levine

  “Really, Jake, the pills are the last resort. Only take them if you’d rather jump off a bridge than take another breath. And only one a day. Don’t double up, no matter how bad the pain. Let me know at once if you have side effects.”

  “Such as?”

  “The pills will lower your blood pressure. Some people become dizzy and faint. So never drive after taking the medication. And don’t go to court. You could end up speaking gibberish.”

  “Who will notice the difference?” I asked.

  “I don’t want you held in contempt when you tell a judge he has a face like an orangutan’s anus.”

  “Got a couple like that. But contempt doesn’t scare me. A lawyer who’s afraid of jail is like a surgeon who’s afraid of blood.”

  “Just promise to be careful.”

  “Okay. What the hell are these pills, anyway?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say. They’re not approved, but they’ve been found to be effective for migraines and might have some ability to halt the advance of tau proteins.”

  Oh, brother. Another experiment with yours truly, the big, fat guinea pig.

  I opened the bottle of unmarked pills, tapped one into the palm of my hand.

  “Wait,” she said. “I want to take your blood pressure for a baseline today.”

  “I know what it was around midnight. A zillion over a quintillion. These pills aren’t going to interfere with . . . you know . . . are they?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about blood going that direction,” she advised with a smile.

  As she took my blood pressure, I examined the pill. It was about three times as large as an aspirin. No markings. I’m not sure what I was looking for. A skull and crossbones, maybe. I washed it down with the remains of the smoothie.

  Sure enough, within twenty minutes, my headache had subsided from mortal stab wounds to a dull ache that could have been caused by a football helmet one size too small.

  Melissa left for the hospital, and I aimed the old Caddy toward the Justice Building complex and my temporary digs in the State Attorney’s office. I arrived in the war room at 8:30 a.m. In twenty-four hours, we would pick a jury. The State vs. Calvert file was spread out on the scarred and sweat-stained conference table. The only sound was an old-fashioned coffee percolator that was pure Maxwell House.

  Detective George Barrios entered, carrying a cup of a Starbucks Frappuccino with whipped cream on top. For a guy approaching retirement, he was way more au courant than I was.

  “Crime scene techs turned up zilch inside the cockpit and the storage space,” Barrios said.

  “Not surprising,” I said. “If Calvert had strangled Sofia and smushed her body into some extrasize duffel, there likely wouldn’t be any blood or bodily fluids. Just like at the house.”

  “Hair, Jake. Sofia frequently flew with him in the Citabria. I would have expected a couple strands of her hair plus prints. No latents in the cockpit, not even Calvert’s. The storage-space carpeting was freshly vacuumed and practically antiseptic. Not a grain of sand, a leaf, a blade of grass. No scuff marks from luggage on the bulkhead. Showroom new.”

  “Can you get a tech to testify that the scene looks tampered with?”

  He took a sip of his frothy drink. “Sure, I can. Then the defense moves to strike because it’s total speculation.”

  “But the jury will have heard it. All I care about.”

  Barrios laughed. “You got the hang of this side of the courtroom real quick.”

  “Maybe I’m a natural-born per-se-cutor.”

  “You feeling okay, Jake?”

  “Tip-top. Why you asking?”

  “’Cause you’re swaying a little bit.”

  “What?” I honestly didn’t know.

  “Not a lot. Sort of like Stevie Wonder singing ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered.’”

  Somehow I made it through the day and worked through most of the night with last-minute preparation. You’re never fully prepared for trial. There is always one more thing that can be done. Trial dates arrive with amazing speed. One moment you’re buried in files, gathering evidence, and you think you can never be ready, and the next moment, it’s showtime.

  -49-

  A Trout in the Tub

  Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jake Lassiter. I’m a specially appointed assistant state attorney.”

  Making myself sound very special, indeed.

  “As such, I represent the people of the great state of Florida, more particularly the people of Miami-Dade County. Your friends, your neighbors, even yourselves.”

  Judge Erwin Gridley whistled. Really. He put his lips together and blew. Pretty darn close to the sound of an official’s whistle in a football game. Which made sense, because Judge Gridley was a part-time college football referee. He was in his early sixties, with wispy white hair on a mostly bald head. Looking sternly at me, he formed the letter T with both hands. Time-out. Meaning get your ass up here for a sidebar.

  I nodded to the prospective panel and sidestepped to the end of the bench away from the jury box. Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord slipped away from the defense table to join me.

  Judge Gridley stared at me over the top of his rimless trifocals. He never wore the glasses when officiating games, which might explain how he once called encroachment on the Florida State mascot, which happens to be a horse.

  “It isn’t often I flag a lawyer when he introduces himself to the jury in voir dire.” Judge Gridley gave me an admonishing look. “But, Jake, did I just hear you say you represented the jurors?”

  “I believe I may have inadvertently implied that in some fashion,” I semi-admitted.

  “What in the name of Amos Alonzo Stagg are you doing?”

  “No idea, Your Honor. I’ve never been on this side of the courtroom. I guess I misspoke.”

  “Illegal procedure, Jake. Now settle down.”

  It’s true I was a little nervous. Jumpy. If you watch football players on the sideline just before kickoff, you’ll see them hopping up and down in place. That’s not part of the pregame warm-ups. They’ve already stretched and jogged and run mythical plays. Now their adrenaline is flowing, and they’re blowing off steam like a kettle on the stove. I always needed that first physical contact on the kickoff to settle my nerves. Same thing in the courtroom, except I couldn’t hit juror number one with a forearm smash to the Adam’s apple.

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” I said, as if he’d just complimented my trial skills or the cut of my off-the-rack suit. Courtroom protocol. A judge could call you an illiterate chimpanzee with bad breath, and you bow slightly and say, “Thank You, Your Honor.”

  “Word downtown is you got your brain rattled one too many times,” the judge whispered.

  “Baseless rumors, Your Honor.”

  Judge Gridley turned to Solomon and Lord. “You two got anything to add?”

  Both shook their heads and said, in unison, “No, Your Honor.”

  “Fine. Git on back to your tables, and let’s pick us a jury.”

  Some lawyers think you win or lose cases in jury selection. I’m not sure I agree, but voir dire is surely crucial. To convict Clark Calvert, I needed jurors who didn’t expect perfection in the state’s case.

  “Do you understand that a real murder trial isn’t like a TV show?” I asked the panel, which murmured its acquiescence.

  “Real cases don’t always have fingerprints and DNA. Real cases usually don’t have eyewitnesses or a confession. Not every murder trial has a body. Do you understand it’s still possible to convict a defendant under all those circumstances?”

  I got a few nods of the head and a few blank stares.

  “Have you all heard the term circumstantial evidence?”

  Everybody had. I knew better than to ask if the jurors could define the term. They couldn’t. So I gave my own example.

  “Suppose Mary walks into the bathroom and finds a trout swimming in the bathtub. Does she have a circumstantial case that her husband, Joe, put i
t there?”

  The jurors all shook their heads no.

  “That’s right. It’s a very weak case, at best. But what if I told you that Mary and Joe live out in the country, thirty miles from the nearest neighbor? They have no children. No houseguests. No visitors for months. Joe’s an avid fisherman who just this morning said he’d love fresh fish for dinner. A stream loaded with trout flows through their property. When Mary comes home, she sees Joe’s waders on the front porch, still wet. And there in the bathtub is that live trout. Now does Mary have a solid case that Joe went fishing and caught that fish?”

  A bunch of smiles and nods.

  “I agree. Mary has every right to yell, ‘Darn it, Joe! You promised to fix the garage door today, not go fishing.’”

  More smiles and a few knowing laughs. Yes, they understood the concept of a strong circumstantial case.

  I kept at it for a while, winnowing out people I figured wouldn’t be open to the state’s case. In other words, people I would have wanted if I were defending the case. After about ninety minutes, I thanked all the potential jurors for doing their patriotic duty by driving to the civic center through rush-hour traffic, making them sound as heroic as Navy SEALs attacking Osama bin Laden’s compound.

  When I was finished, Victoria Lord stood and introduced herself. After a few preliminaries, she said, “There’s a problem with circumstantial cases. Add one more fact, one more circumstance, and the case collapses like a house of cards.”

  Where was she going with this? A slight smile at the corners of her mouth told me I wouldn’t like the destination.

  “Suppose Mr. Lassiter left out this fact. Joe’s best friend lives on the other side of the trout stream. That day, Joe put on his waders, forded the stream, and visited his neighbor, who gave him a fresh trout from his catch. Joe splashes back home, puts the trout in the bathtub, and fixes the garage door. Mary’s circumstantial case that Joe went fishing is as leaky as a trout net.”

  Touché.

  Victoria glanced at me, her eyes twinkling with self-satisfied delight. Next to her, Calvert peeled his thin lips back to reveal his mortician’s smile.

  I gave Victoria an appreciative nod. Nice work. I admire sculptors who carve statues from chunks of stone, composers who translate the music in their heads to notes on the page, and lawyers who can turn tin into gold.

  At the defense table, Solomon stared at me with a look I couldn’t decipher. Maybe it was, “Do something!” But that would mean he really wanted to tank the case, wanted Calvert to be convicted. And now I wasn’t sure about that. Was he really the one who’d given me Ann Cavendish’s name? But if he didn’t, who did?

  Solomon’s facial expression could just as easily have meant, “How about that, Jake?” Meaning his fiancée was a step quicker and would dance circles around me in the courtroom.

  As things now stood, I couldn’t disagree.

  -50-

  Ready, Willing, and Able

  At eight the next morning, Victoria Lord stunned me with a trick play.

  The three of us—Solomon, Lord, and little old me—were huddled in Judge Gridley’s chambers, sipping coffee from paper cups and taking care of housekeeping before opening statements. The chambers were a minimuseum to Gridley’s alma mater, the University of Florida. The carpet was orange and blue. A plaque on the wall was testament to the fact that Erwin Gridley was a “Bull Gator Emeritus.” On his desk was a stuffed alligator head, mouth open, jagged teeth exposed, like a ravenous lawyer.

  “The defense has filed three motions in limine,” Judge Gridley said. “First one seeks to preclude Dr. Harold Freudenstein from testifying to certain matters on grounds of doctor-patient privilege.”

  “We withdraw that motion, Your Honor,” Victoria said.

  I nearly spilled my coffee.

  “Really?” The judge peered at Victoria above the eyeglasses perched on his nose, his bushy eyebrows curling upward. “Next is the defense motion to limit inquiries from a Mr. William Burnside as to hearsay statements made by the alleged victim concerning her fear of the defendant.”

  “Withdrawn,” Victoria said. “Let Mr. Burnside have his say.”

  I took a gulp of my coffee rather than spill it on the snarling alligator woven into the carpeting. It was my fourth cup since five o’clock, when I’d awoken from a restless sleep. A headache startled me awake, and I took one of those no-name experimental pills. The pain subsided, but I was left feeling groggy and slow, as if walking through a vat of pudding.

  Now I was trying to assess Victoria’s strategy and getting nowhere. The look on her face was inscrutable. I glanced at Solomon, who hadn’t spoken a word. He was taking notes, or maybe completing a crossword puzzle.

  “Very well, Ms. Lord,” Judge Gridley said. “I was rather looking forward to Mr. Lassiter’s argument that the statements are admissible under the hearsay exception in spousal-abuse cases. Just wondering if a homicide case fits that category.”

  “If murder isn’t abuse, I don’t know what is,” I said.

  “We’ll save that for another day. Ms. Lord, you’ve also moved to bar the testimony of a Ms. Ann Cavendish. Mr. Lassiter, do you intend to elicit testimony from this witness as to an unrelated assault by the defendant?”

  “I do, Your Honor. A prior bad act is admissible under an exception to—”

  “Slippery slope, Jake. Slipperier than Lambeau Field in January.”

  “We withdraw that motion, also,” Victoria said. “Let Mr. Lassiter take his best shot with all the witnesses he can muster.”

  “Okeydokey.” The judge took off his eyeglasses and chewed on the stem. “Ms. Lord, I’m not sure what razzle-dazzle you have cooked up. The fumblerooski or maybe a double reverse with a dipsy-doodle. But it seems like you’re giving old Jake the ball at your own ten-yard line.”

  “We have an excellent goal-line defense, Your Honor,” Victoria said.

  While I tried to decipher that, the judge addressed both of us. “Seems to me you folks get along so well I don’t have to remind you of the rules once we get into the courtroom. But they’re simple enough. No arguing my calls. No hitting after the whistle. And no playing to the crowd, by which I mean the jury. Play hard but play clean. So, if the pregame rituals are over, shall we trot onto the field and kick off?”

  “State’s ready, Your Honor.” That’s what I said, but was it the truth? Just what was up Victoria’s sleeve? The dreaded derringer?

  “Defense is ready, willing, and able,” Victoria said. “Locked and loaded, ready to rock and roll.” She shot me a look along with a fetching smile. Those were my words, my usual patter at the start of a trial. I’d forgotten to use the line, so Victoria unabashedly stole it.

  Take that, Jake, she seemed to be saying. Leaving me wondering if I’d ever be ready, willing, and able again.

  -51-

  Salacious Evil

  Nearly sixty years ago, Fidel Castro gave a speech at the United Nations that lasted four hours and twenty-nine minutes. Just imagine the fun of listening to the United States being bashed for 269 minutes for its imperialism, colonialism, and general rude manners. It was awful then and would be unthinkable now.

  People nowadays have attention spans the approximate length of a tweet. Knowing this, I have tailored my opening statements and closing arguments accordingly.

  Start fast. Score points. Sit down.

  The boring, outdated gasbag style would be to take your sweet time warming up, then start with the disclaimer, “Now, what I’m about to say is not evidence . . .”

  Though true, why say it? Might as well begin, “What I’m about to say is not important. You may begin your snooze now.”

  I want the jurors to think every word I say is a thunderbolt from Zeus himself.

  Some lawyers resort to this oldie but not goodie: “The opening statement is like the table of contents of a book . . .”

  Books are boring! Put on a show, not a book report.

  Then, there’s that old saw, repeated e
ach time you refer to a witness’s expected testimony: “The evidence will show that . . .”

  Oh, spare me your technicalities.

  I stood, bowed slightly to Judge Gridley, more to stretch my lower back than to show respect, then positioned myself at an angle to the jury box that blocked the defense table from view. If Solomon and Lord wanted to see, let them scoot to the corner rail of the gallery where the television camera whirred away, interfering with their hearing.

  At my request, the court clerk had placed a thirty-by-forty-inch head shot of Sofia at one end of the jury box and one of Calvert at the other. I had chosen a color photograph of Sofia in a bright-turquoise peasant blouse. Her smile was so wide, her eyes so bright, she might have been laughing. The overall impression: a pretty young woman full of life. I had found a dour black-and-white shot of Calvert on the Internet. He’d been speaking at some sawbones convention. The lighting made his complexion gray. His impenetrable eyes were even darker than in person. He looked as if he needed a shave, and his mouth was the narrow slash of a switchblade. The overall impression: the funeral director will see you now.

  I waggled my neck, always tight in a dress shirt and tie. I didn’t say thank you. I didn’t say good morning. I believe in getting right to the point and doing it in plain, straightforward language, preferably with one- and two-syllable words.

  “This is a simple case,” I began. “The husband killed the wife’s cat, and then he killed her.”

  I let that sink in a moment. “On June 3, 2017, in their home on Miami Beach, Clark Gordon Calvert strangled his wife, Sofia. He placed her dead body in the trunk of his Ferrari and drove to a strip club in Pompano Beach. He paid for and received one lap dance, and after ejaculating into his pants, returned to his car and drove four miles to a small airport. He placed Sofia’s body in the cockpit of a single-engine aircraft and took off for parts unknown . . . but not mission unknown. He dumped her lifeless body, most likely in an oversize duffel, somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. He then returned to the airport and drove home to Miami Beach. The next day, with the body disposed of, Clark Gordon Calvert called the police to report his wife missing.”