by Paul Levine
A wave of murmurs swept over the courtroom like a thirty-foot tsunami striking the beach. Tears spilling, Ann Cavendish turned to the judge and said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Judge Gridley looked toward Orville Limegrover, his uniformed bailiff, who was sleeping peacefully in his chair. “Orville! Up and at ’em. Remove the jury!” Limegrover stirred and rounded up the jurors, guiding them back into their little room.
“Now let’s see who’s gonna be ejected and who’s gonna stay in the game,” the judge said.
I turned toward the gallery, spotted Pincher still standing by the door. “C’mon down, Sugar Ray. Suit up and take over! The quarterback job is yours.”
Pincher didn’t move.
“It doesn’t work that way, Mr. Lassiter,” Judge Gridley said. “May I assume you were not behind the hiring of this perjurious witness?”
“You assume correctly, Judge. I’d have hired a better actress.”
I considered what to do next. There was nothing to lose. I was inside a barrel, hurtling down the river, about to go over Niagara Falls. Meanwhile, the jet engines inside my head made the Falls seem like a whispering stream.
I walked slowly toward the swinging gate that separated the gallery from the well of the courtroom. In the first row, Suarez and Wetherall saw me coming. They each got to their feet and waited. Neither knew who I was going to slug first.
-64-
Disorder in the Court
I didn’t shove the swinging gate open. I kicked it like a cop bursting through the flimsy door of a cheap motel. The gate had a rusty hinge. It had been opened countless times by sleazy lawyers, lying witnesses, and the occasional innocent defendant. This time, the hinge tore out of the wood, and the door smacked J. T. Wetherall in both knees with a satisfying cra-ck.
Wetherall reflexively bent forward, both hands dropping toward his knees. It wasn’t fair. I had a clean shot and took it. A left uppercut that had a lot of hip in it. I hit him squarely on the nose, and I could hear the cartilage pop, even over the ferocious roar in my brain. Both his hands shot to his broken nose, which spurted blood. I curled a short right hook into his solar plexus. He exhaled a loud oomph and toppled into his seat.
Next to him, his boss, Pepe Suarez, wanted no part of me. He was crawling over his seat, trying to get into the second row. I grabbed the back of his shirt collar and whipped him backward, whiplashing his neck.
Judge Gridley didn’t throw a flag, didn’t call horse-collaring. He was, however, banging his gavel, shouting, “Order! Order! Bailiff, restore order!”
Limegrover, a retired parking-lot security guard, stood in the center aisle of the gallery, attempting to get my attention by waving at me and shouting, “Jake, please! Please!”
I still had Suarez by the scruff of his neck and shouted at him. “You bastard! You can pay off all the politicians you like, but you can’t buy the justice system.”
The newsmen and newswomen surrounded me. The television camera at the end of the front row had swung around, and I was about three feet from the lens. My close-up, ready or not.
Suarez tried to say something, but I had balled his shirt collar into my fist, and he was choking on his words. “Flu-ck you, Lash-i-ter.”
“Let him go, Jake!”
I turned. Ray Pincher stood in the aisle, glaring at me. “Let him go,” he repeated. “We need to talk. In private.”
Now the reporters began firing questions.
“Talk about what?”
“Is this a conspiracy?”
“Are you running for governor, Mr. Pincher?”
I ignored them all and focused on Pincher. “Did you know about this, Ray? Were you part of this?”
“Shut your stupid lawyer mouth. You know better than that.”
I pushed Suarez to the floor. “You’re going to jail, shitbird!” I turned my attention back to the State Attorney. “Ray, you gonna captain this sinking ship yourself or give the wheel to another sucker?”
“I’ll tell you one last time, Jake. Shut up. Let’s go talk to the judge in chambers.”
I could barely hear him over the jet engines.
“Mr. Lassiter!” the judge called out. “Kindly resume your position at the prosecution table so that I may resolve this matter and schedule further proceedings in accordance with what just occurred.”
“Whatever you do is fine with me, Judge. I’m retiring.”
“Whoa, Nellie!” Judge Gridley called out. “You can’t just hang up your jock in the middle of the game. It isn’t done.”
“Going home now, Judge. It’s been a pleasure. Seriously. You’re fair and honest, and I apologize for this goat fuck. Maybe I should have seen this coming, but I didn’t. Maybe this is the way I find out that I just don’t have it anymore.”
I took a step toward the aisle, and Pincher blocked my path. “You’re embarrassing me, Jake.”
“Me? What about your buddy there?” I gestured toward Suarez, who had crawled into a chair in the second row and straightened his collar, trying to regain some semblance of self-respect.
“Get back to your table and play this out. That’s an order.”
I laughed. “Go screw yourself, Ray. That’s a suggestion.”
Around us, cameras clicked and reporters buzzed. Pincher’s chances of being our next governor were somewhere between laughable and nil.
“I don’t know if you took part in the bribery and perjury, Ray,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean you’re clean. You walk so close to the line, your shadow’s in foul territory.” I turned to the reporters. “Sugar Ray Pincher’s campaign slogan is ‘Elect a Fighter.’ From his Golden Glove days. Sounds better than ‘Elect a Crook.’ From his three terms in office.”
I saw a blur from the corner of my eye. In the next trillionth of a second, I realized it was Pincher’s fist. Twenty years ago, my fast-twitch muscle fibers would have reacted with lightning speed. I would have bobbed or weaved or ducked. Maybe blocked the punch. But now my brain sent smoke signals in slow motion to my muscles.
As I would later learn from endless television news replays, it was a left hook. A gorgeous, well-timed, powerful blow. Pincher was on his toes, his torso twisted slightly to the left, his left arm cocked at ninety degrees. He pivoted on his left foot, his body unwinding with startling speed. Head down and chin still, he uncorked the punch, which landed like a sledgehammer on the point of my chin.
I was aware of stumbling backward, toppling ass-over-elbows across the bar and into the well of the courtroom, my feet comically in the air over my head. As I fell, I heard music. A drum-and-bugle corps banging away with a military march. Horns blaring, cannons firing, thunder echoing.
And then darkness fell.
-65-
Cosmic Questions
No one likes hospitals.
The smell. The noise. The fear.
Even if I’m visiting, I’m aware that one day I’ll be the one in the bed. Likely, it will be where I draw my last breath, hooked to tubes, monitors flashing, buzzers singing the tune of my last exit from Shakespeare’s stage.
Today, I was not visiting.
I was the occupant of a dandy room at Baptist Hospital, complete with a peaceful view of the lake and its waterbirds. I was pondering my life. How much sand was left in the hourglass?
I asked myself cosmic questions about the meaning of it all. We know that nearly fourteen billion years ago, all matter and energy in the universe was compacted into an infinitely dense mass so tiny as to be invisible. Then whoosh, the Big Bang, the galaxies, the stars, the planets, and eventually the cosmically laughable and insignificant human race. Which makes me—makes all of us—as trivial as a speck of asteroid dust.
My thoughts were interrupted by voices in my room. They sounded worried.
I say “sounded” because I kept my eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, so I could hear them talk among themselves.
“The last thing Jake needed was another concussion,” Melissa said.
; “Will this worsen his condition?” Victoria asked.
“She means, will it kill him quicker,” Solomon added, never one to add sugar to his coffee.
“It won’t help,” Melissa said, “but I’m not sure that a new concussion will have any immediate impact. My concerns are the tau proteins already formed.”
“Bummer,” Solomon said.
“Jake told us about the experimental treatments. Is he responding?” Victoria said.
Silence. C’mon, Melissa. I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in.
“There is a new report,” Melissa said in her neutral doctorly tone. “But I think I need to tell Jake first.”
Maybe it’s my imagination, but she sounds a little grim.
I cracked my eyes open just enough to see Solomon reaching for a box of chocolates. Presumably, my chocolates. The box was on a table with several flower arrangements, a bottle of Perrier-Jouët, and a few fruit baskets, each with a bottle of wine.
“I hope Jake doesn’t turn into a drooling idiot or die before the wedding,” Solomon continued. “What will I do for a best man?”
“Rent one!” I exploded.
“It lives.” Solomon burst into laughter. “I knew you were awake, you big galoot. I was punking you.”
Melissa, in a white lab coat, her russet hair pulled back, came to my bedside and stroked my cheek. I hoped she didn’t do that with every patient. “How do you feel, Jake?”
“Not terrible, surprisingly.” That was true. Okay, a penny-ante headache for a guy who’s used to high-stakes pain. And my vision was in soft focus, like morning fog on the California coast. “Melissa, why am I here?”
“Do you remember Ray Pincher striking you?”
“Pincher? I thought I’d stepped in front of a bus.”
“You were unconscious. Concussion protocol for someone with your condition requires forty-eight hours observation.”
“Your condition?” Brain damage to some undefinable degree. A route that cannot be mapped like a ship on the high seas . . . unless it’s the Titanic.
“Only forty-eight hours?” I took her hand. “I’ll stay longer if you’re gonna be here.”
Melissa leaned over and kissed me on the lips.
“Oh, get a room, you two!” Solomon was munching on chocolate-covered nuts.
“This is our room. And stay out of my chocolates, unless you gave them to me.”
Victoria said, “They’re from Pincher.”
“What about the rest of the stuff? I didn’t know I had that many friends.”
“You don’t!” Solomon said. “Everything is from Pincher.”
“He’s very contrite,” Victoria added. “He wants to apologize in person.”
“I’d like to go four rounds in the ring with him. He can apologize then.”
“No, Jake!” Melissa pointed an index finger at me. “No boxing. No contact sports of any kind.”
“Any kind?” I gave her my crooked smile.
“There he goes again,” Solomon said. “Getting KO’d make you horny, pal?”
“Solomon, why don’t you go downstairs and donate blood?”
On the loudspeaker, a Dr. Prystowsky and a Dr. Emery were being summoned to ICU. There are lots of patients, I reminded myself, in far worse condition than yours truly.
“We thought you might want to know what happened in court after you checked out,” Solomon said.
Court! State vs. Calvert. I had nearly forgotten.
“I’m a little fuzzy. Did I get held in contempt?”
“Couple of times. But Judge Gridley has bigger catfish to fry. He dismissed the case against Calvert.”
“Mistrial, you mean?”
“Nope. Dismissal with prejudice for prosecutorial misconduct.”
A sound came from my throat—aargh—like a death rattle.
“Not to worry, Jake,” Solomon said. “The witness’s perjury is imputed to the state, but not to you personally. After you took a nap, the judge questioned Cavendish, who said Wetherall ordered her not to mention anything to you about the falsity of her testimony because you wouldn’t play along. She saved your ass, buddy.”
“What’s going to happen to her?”
“Pincher’s giving her immunity. She’s flipping on Wetherall, who’s almost certain to flip on Suarez.”
“No governor’s mansion for Ray Pincher. He must be pissed.”
“Not at all,” Victoria said. “He’s gonna prosecute Suarez himself. Thinks taking on his biggest financial backer will get him votes. ‘Sugar Ray Can’t Be Bought’ is his new campaign slogan.”
“And your client?”
“Says he’s going to take some time off. Charitable work in a third-world country.”
“Is he an innocent man who was exonerated? Or a guilty man who got away with murder?” I asked.
“Above my pay grade, pal,” Solomon said. “Vic says he’s innocent. Me? I don’t know.”
“Your client paid off Freudenstein to tank my case.”
Solomon shrugged. “Probably. But that doesn’t mean he’s guilty.”
“What about the missing Billy Burnside? Did Calvert get to him, too?”
“He swears he didn’t, but who knows? You know what I tell clients, Jake?”
“Don’t write a check that bounces.”
“I tell them, ‘Lie to your spouse. Lie to your priest. Lie to the IRS. But always tell your lawyer the truth.’ Not that it does any good. Calvert? Your guess is as good as mine.”
“I think I need some of that booze,” I told my pals, gesturing toward the gifts.
“You need rest,” Melissa said.
On cue, Solomon and Victoria said their good-byes and reminded me not to be late for their wedding rehearsal dinner on Friday night.
When they were gone, Melissa said, “They love you. You know that, right?”
“Aw, they’re good kids. Gonna be great lawyers when they grow up.”
On the loudspeaker, there was a Code Blue on the second floor. Someone in dire need of resuscitation. Another reminder of the fragility of life and the need to be thankful for every breath we take.
“So what’s new? With my brain?”
“You were listening, weren’t you?”
“If your medical advice is not to buy any green bananas, I’d like to hear it.”
Melissa sat on the edge of my bed and took my hand. “Actually, your newest MRI is quite interesting. It’s the first one since we started you on the new recipe.”
“More gin, less vermouth.”
“I don’t want to oversell this, Jake, but we’re seeing something remarkable. The strands of misshapen tau proteins are shrinking. Whether they’ll disappear or return and eventually harden into tangles, we don’t know. We’ll monitor further changes, but for now, Infusion X-7 is our best chance yet for defeating the disease before it fully takes hold.”
“Wow!”
“Yes, wow.”
I spent a quiet moment pondering where I’d been, where I am, where I might be going. So much to ponder.
“What are you thinking about, Jake?”
I straightened to a sitting position. “This hand I’ve been dealt . . .”
“Yes?”
“It’s no bum deal. It’s a great deal! A great life!”
“I’m so happy to hear you say that,” Melissa said.
“Lately, I’ve been thinking about the big picture, trying to figure what’s important in life.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“Us, of course. I’ve been reluctant to move forward with you. Not because of any doubts or reservations about us, but because, well, of my condition.”
“I know that, Jake. We’ve discussed this. I know you’re concerned about me, should anything happen to you.”
“Exactly. I don’t want you to be a young widow.”
She smiled sadly at that bittersweet notion. Love, marriage, death.
“But lying in a hospital bed, I was thinking. We’re all dying. The
patients. The doctors. The nurses. The visitors. The cafeteria workers. Everybody. It’s a question of when, not if. So isn’t the answer to the great human dilemma that we have to make the most of every day, of every minute, of every breath, of every step we take?”
She didn’t answer, unless a kiss on the lips is an answer. I closed my eyes and kissed her back. In my mind, I saw a sailboat on smooth seas with a steady breeze on a spring day. There we were, the two of us, the sail crackling in the wind. I saw happiness on earth, joy in the quotidian moments with the woman I loved.
So just say it!
When our lips parted, I said, “I love you, Melissa.”
“I love you, too, Jake.”
“Then, why don’t we . . . I mean, will you . . .”
“Go on, Jake.”
“Melissa, will you marry me?”
-66-
The Isles of Hidden Loot
Tomorrow night we will gather in a big white tent on the grounds of Vizcaya Gardens. Potted birds-of-paradise will line the interior. There will be an ice sculpture of Lady Justice, and the proceedings will be officiated by both a rabbi and a Protestant minister. Victoria will wear white and look regal. Solomon will be nervous and gabby.
Tonight, at the rehearsal dinner, Melissa will wear a rather daring cobalt-blue off-the-shoulder cocktail dress with tiered ruffles front and back. Her shoes will be white Manolo Blahnik satin pumps with some crystal beaded doodads on the front. The four-inch heels could be used as a deadly weapon.
Oh, I left something out.
Melissa said yes!
Actually, she said, “Hell yes!”
Tonight she’d be wearing her new engagement ring. Fernando, at Richard’s Gems and Jewelry downtown, called it a “French set band with surprise diamonds.” My own description would be shiny and expensive. We hadn’t told Solomon and Lord about our engagement. Later, after stone crabs and Key lime pie in the private dining room at Joe’s on South Beach, we’ll deliver the news.
Call it a reenactment. In the hospital room, I didn’t have a ring. And my presentation, frankly, was pretty amateur. Tonight I’ll drop to one knee like a quarterback in the victory formation and do everything again, this time with the ring. Hopefully, Melissa will give the same answer.
