Three To Get Deadly

by Lee Goldberg

  "Beggar pardon," Watkins mumbled, and Cefalo leapt forward to help him.

  A moment later the doctor was safely seated, gripping the rail of the witness stand and staring blankly out to sea. His shirttail hung over his belt and his tie was askew. He made Dan Cefalo look like the cover of GQ.

  "Dr. Watkins, you are still under oath," Cefalo began.

  "Oath?" Watkins ran a tongue over dry lips. Finally a light came on. "Of course. Years ago, I took the hick-ocratic oath. That is, of course, the hick …" A case of the hiccups was now distracting him and the clerk brought a glass of water. Watkins nodded a formal thank you.

  Cefalo plunged ahead. "Dr. Watkins, you testified that, based on the medical records in this case, you could determine to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that Dr. Stanton punctured the aorta with the rongeur, is that correct?"

  "Objection! Leading and an inaccurate summary of the testimony." I didn't need to win that one, just to figure out what the next ruling would be.

  "Overruled," Judge Leonard said. He started packing, dropping a cap and sunglasses into a briefcase.

  "Is that correct?" Cefalo repeated.

  Watkins nodded. Either he was saying yes, or he was falling asleep.

  "Doctor, you must speak audibly for the court reporter to record your answer."

  Watkins again nodded silently.

  Cefalo pushed forward. "Now, to speed this up, let me tell you that another witness has testified that the rupture in the aorta was on its anterior side, in the front, and that a surgeon entering from the back could not have made the rupture there."

  "Zat so?" Watkins asked, eyebrows arched in surprise.

  "My question, Doctor, is whether it is possible for a surgeon performing a laminectomy to perforate the front of the aorta?"

  Watkins stared into space.

  Sweat broke out on Cefalo's forehead. "You may remember our discussing this yesterday morning …"

  I was on my feet. "Objection! Leading. Your Honor, really, there is certain latitude, but this is too much."

  "Sustained. Move it along, Mr. Cefalo."

  Cefalo tried again. "The fact that the perforation was in front, What, if anything, does that tell you?"

  Watkins mumbled something, his eyes half closed. The jurors were shooting each other sideways glances. Get a load of this. Somewhere a trillion miles away, some intergalactic god of luck was shining on Roger Stanton.

  "Doctor?"

  "Squooshy," Dr. Watkins said.

  "Squooshy?" Cefalo asked, his eyes widening.

  A momentary brightness came to Dr. Watkins's face. "It's all squooshy in there. You might think it's like all these pretty pictures in the books, the vascular system here, the muscles there, the bones over there. Hah! Phooey!" The phooey shot a wad of expectorant toward the court reporter.

  "It's all squooshed up. And it moves. The son-of-a-bitch keeps breathing while you're cutting him up. It's all squooshing around and moving. Front, back, in between. Who the fuck can tell the difference?"

  Even Judge Leonard heard that. He aimed a murderous look at Dan Cefalo, who hastily advised that Dr. Watkins was now my witness. I didn't want him. The judge banged his gavel louder than usual and crisply ordered us adjourned. Then he shot off the bench, his maroon robes flying behind him.

  Roger Stanton was pumping my hand as if we'd already won. I told him to wait until tomorrow. You can never tell with juries. He said he felt like celebrating, maybe carousing, how about our finding a couple chicas. I didn't ask if they were both for him, just declined, saying I had to gather my thoughts for tomorrow. Then I asked him a question.

  "What about it? If you go in from the back, could you tear the aorta in front?"

  He smiled. "Our witness said no."

  "Right. And Watkins said everything's squooshy. What do you say?"

  He smiled again. "I say they're both right. Riggs is right in what he does. When a body is dead, it's inert. If you did a laminectomy on a corpse, you probably couldn't hit the front of the aorta with the rongeur. But Watkins was tight that with a living, breathing body, there's movement. It's a mess in there, things can happen. If you pushed the rongeur too far, it's possible that on the way back, it could nick the front of the aorta. It's possible."

  "But unlikely," I suggested.

  "Unless you were trying," Roger Stanton said.

  8

  THE LATE SHOW

  This is how I prepare my closing argument. I toss the files into the trunk of the 442 convertible and head home. Home is in the old part of Coconut Grove between Kumquat Avenue and Poinciana. You can't see the house from the street thanks to the jacaranda, live oak, and chinaberry trees that crowd the small lot. So little sun reaches the front yard that the lawn wouldn't support a hungry billy goat. The trees also shade the house, a 1920s coral rock pillbox that would be the last building standing after a direct hit by Alice, Bruce, Celia, or David. Granny Lassiter lived in the house when the Grove was full of artists and barnacled types, when there were saloons instead of boutiques. After the area became chic, Granny grabbed her fishing gear and headed for the Keys.

  I leave the files in the trunk and head into the kitchen. There is a refrigerator, a microwave, some cabinetry, and enough room for two very good friends to stand. The house is two stories but barely more than a cottage. It will never grace the pages of Architectural Digest but is perfect for someone who does not want to entertain or rub shoulders with society.

  I turn on all the ceiling fans. I don't like air-conditioning. It dries out the air and shuts you off from the natural sounds of birds, crickets, and neighborhood burglars.

  My porch looks into a jungle of overgrown shrubs and weeds that, like the battlement of a castle, shelters my tiny backyard. Because the neighborhood is secluded, drug dealers have been moving in. They are good neighbors for the most part, never noisy, never nosy. The ones who process the cocaine, however, are a problem. On Loquat Street last year, a house blew up when a barrel of ether ignited. Nothing left of the house or three Colombians. Charred pieces of greenbacks wafted over Coconut Grove, tiny embers blinking like fireflies in the nighttime sky. A portrait of U. S. Grant, his beard scorched, landed in my hammock.

  I put on the eight-ounce gloves and hit the heavy bag that hangs on the porch. It doesn't hit back. It doesn't say ouch. I go four rounds and win them all. I think about the case, the high points, what to emphasize, what to shrug off. It all comes back, witness by witness. I don't need the files or my notes. Each jab is a scrap of testimony to push, each hook a point to drive home.

  I lie on my back and do stomach crunches. When a man gets to a certain age, he has to work the stomach hard. If not, it starts to merge with the chest. The whole torso becomes one amorphous mass. I work my stomach hard.

  I finish with push-ups. First regular push-ups, then elevated, with feet propped up on the porch, hands on the ground, lowering myself into the overgrowth of the yard until the weeds tickle my nose.

  Then I check the refrigerator. Everything I need, starting with smoked amberjack. I find some mayo that hasn't quite turned green, some Muenster that has, a jar of Pommery mustard, half a lemon. There are fresh tomatoes on the counter, part of the Florida winter crop, pale and tough, the hide of tennis balls. I've brought home a fresh loaf of French bread. I stack some of the amberjack on the bread, slather on the mayo, layer three leathery tomato slices on top, and cover it with the cheese and mustard. Dinner is served. Life in the fast lane.

  Back at the refrigerator, I buy myself a beer. The choice, a sixteen-ounce Grolsch with the porcelain stopper or Anchor Steam, my one exception to the American beer boycott. I study them both. My biggest decision of the day, other than deciding whether to get sucked into a discussion of damages, or throw all my weight into shouting, "no liability." Cefalo will have to argue both, first that Stanton is liable for professional negligence, second that the damages should be roughly equal to Brazil's foreign debt. I have to argue there is no liability. Sometimes, if you t
hink you're going to lose that one, you slip into the alternative argument, but if you find the defendant liable, damages should not exceed the cost of a Dolphins' season ticket. Problem is, that weakens your liability case.

  Now about that beer, the mind still cranking away. Anchor Steam has a deep amber color. Knew a girl with eyes like that once. Every time I looked at her, I got thirsty. I go for the Grolsch.

  * * *

  The files were still in the trunk, an emptied four-pack of Grolsch was in the trash, and I was in the hammock, letting the mind run through it all, visualizing tomorrow. I didn't hear the phone until the third ring. Realized I wasn't visualizing at all. Dozing.

  "I need to see you," a woman's voice said. "Are you busy?"

  It took a moment, then I placed it. Susan Corrigan. "I'm hard at work trying to find justice in an imperfect world."

  "Do you know where Lagoon Road is?" she asked.

  "Sure, Gables Estates."

  "That's where I live, nine-ten Lagoon Road."

  "The newspaper must be paying handsomely these days."

  "It's Dad's house. Please come over. Now. It's important."

  Of course, Dad's house. Which means, it's now stepmommy's house.

  "I don't know if that's such a good idea. Ethically, I'm not permitted to speak to Mrs. Corrigan without her lawyer present."

  Not that I toe the line somebody else draws. Guys from big law firms in three-piece suits sit around hotel ballrooms at ABA conventions thinking up lots of rules. Their idea of ethics is to give the side with the most money the upper hand. My ethical standards are simple. I never lie to the court or knowingly let a client do it. Other than that I like to shoot the opposition in the kneecaps.

  "She's not here," Susan Corrigan said. "Just come around back to the cabana by the pool. This involves your client."

  Oh. A little bit of me knew that's what it was about. Another little bit of me hoped it was something else again. I stored a few megabytes of closing argument somewhere between my ears. Then I showered. I put on faded blue jeans that worked hard to get that way, a blue and orange rugby shirt, and a pair of well-worn running shoes in case I had to chase her again. I never got the 442 out of third gear going down Old Cutler, a two-lane, winding road heading south out of Coconut Grove. Huge banyan trees stood on each side of the road, their tangled trunks like giant snakes erupting from the ground. The thick branches met overhead, forming a dark umbrella that blocked out the moonlight. Briny smells of saltwater hammocks oozed from the bay side of the road. I turned left onto Arvida and headed down Millionaire's Row, lushly landscaped homes backed up onto canals with clear access to Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic beyond.

  The Corrigan house sat on a cul-de-sac lined with royal palms a hundred feet high. You could get a crick in your neck looking up at the trees. The house, too. The first thing you notice is its height. You look up to see the ground floor. Though Lagoon Road is only five feet above sea level, if you add forty feet of fill and top it with a heap of landscaping, you have a Florida mountain. Then the sound, a waterfall tumbling through huge coral boulders.

  You could look at the Corrigan house and be overwhelmed with its size or its styling, rough-hewn cedar flanking stone walls, sun decks overlooking the water. But I thought of only one word, electricity. How much juice did it take to run four separate central air-conditioning systems, to power the pump that ran the waterfall that cascaded down the man-made mountain, to illuminate with colored spotlights the palm trees and blooming poinsettias and impatiens? How much more electricity for the hot tub and the front gate and TV cameras? The Corrigan house was a one-family oil shortage.

  The front gate was open and I pulled into the brick driveway and sat there a moment. No other cars, no signs of life, the four-car garage buttoned up tight. A flagstone walk ran around the house. It was bordered with three-foot-high pine posts, each topped by a tiny lamp. Heavy hemp lines were strung post to post to form a path, like queues in a theater.

  Behind the house, a wooden deck led to a swimming pool. Fifty yards long but only twelve feet wide, a serious pool for laps. It smelled of salt water, not chlorine, probably a pipe right to the bay. Beyond the pool was a concrete dock, a boathouse, and a private lagoon that opened onto Biscayne Bay. Tied to the dock was a yacht that in time of war would be impounded for transporting troops.

  The cabana was an architect's idea of Tahiti. Whatever the building was made of was disguised by a bamboo front and topped, chickee style, with a palm frond roof. Half a dozen coconuts sat in primitive bowls on the front porch. A machete was wedged into one of the husks. I could hear the swish of a paddle fan through the open front door. I knocked on the bamboo.

  "Lassiter, come in and make yourself a drink. There's some Gatorade in the fridge."

  My potassium level seemed okay so I demurred on the Gatorade. I nosed around. Her voice was coming from what had to be the bedroom. The rest of the place was one room, a galley kitchen that opened into a small living room with TV, stereo, and VCR. A bookshelf with some sports reference books, some poetry anthologies—maybe a woman's heart lurked beneath the sweats—and a survival manual for Miami, a Spanish/English dictionary.

  Rustling noises women make when dressing were coming from the bedroom. She could have been changing into something sheer and flimsy and dabbing sweet essence behind her ears. But she emerged with a freshly scrubbed face, sans makeup, the faint aroma of Ivory soap in the air. Cut-off jeans revealed strong legs, calves that flexed with each step. Her short black hair was even shorter in a pony tail tied with a rubber band. She wore a Miami Dolphins' jersey that still had room for me inside.

  "You like my place?" Susan asked.

  "Sure. When you called, I didn't realize you lived in the cabana. Thought you were inviting me to a pool party. Have you been banished from the castle by the wicked stepmother?"

  She shook her head. "I lived in the house until Dad married that … woman. Then I decided to give them some privacy. I do my mile in the pool every night. This is all I need."

  "I like it. It's one of the few houses in Miami smaller than mine."

  "Until yesterday I kept some things in the main house. My skis, scuba equipment, some clothes. She tossed everything out on the patio after we exchanged words in the courthouse."

  "I heard some of those words. You can exchange them with the best. Mind telling me what you were arguing about?"

  She was silent. I was sitting on a rattan loveseat and she sat facing me, legs crossed, enveloped in a peacock chair. She smiled. That made two smiles if you counted one on the football field.

  She was doing something with her hands, buying a little time to get into whatever it was that prompted her to call me. She started slowly. "You finish the case tomorrow, don't you?"

  "That's right."

  "You think you're going to win."

  That might have been a question. "I have my hopes."

  "Would you feel badly if you get off a guilty man?"

  "Guilty is a criminal law word. In civil practice, there's no such thing. I'm hoping for a no-liability verdict. But civil liability is a gray area. So I can't respond to the question as phrased."

  "A real lawyer's answer," she said contemptuously.

  "You don't care much for my profession, or is it just me?"

  "Either way, you're defending a murderer."

  "Allegations without proof are meaningless."

  "Maybe you should look at something." She hopped up and pushed a button on the VCR and another on the small Sony TV. She sat down again and turned away. The set blinked on, a typical home movie, jerky camera, panning too quickly through a lushly appointed room. It looked like a Beverly Hills hotel suite, piano bar, Lucite furniture, starlight ceiling. No people visible, just modern, expensive furniture, some lighted artwork, and a nighttime sky indoors.

  "That's the main salon of the Cory," Susan Corrigan said.

  "The Cory?"

  "Didn't you see the boat outside?"

  "Oh that. I thoug
ht it was the Nimitz, four thousand sailors on shore leave."

  "Wouldn't that make her happy?" she asked, icily, gesturing toward the house. "The Cory is a custom-made Hatteras, about eighty-two feet. One of Dad's toys."

  The picture broke up, some snow, then Melanie Corrigan in a bikini on the screen, cocking a hip at the camera, pouting a come-hither look to stage left. The screen went to black for a second as a shoulder blocked the camera, a man walking into view. He was medium size, wearing swim trunks and a T-shirt, and he turned self-consciously to the camera. Roger Stanton. If it was supposed to surprise me, it didn't.

  "The main stateroom," Susan said.

  A king-size waterbed sat on a floor of black and white tile and was illuminated from below with neon tubes. The headboard was the skyline of Miami, etched into black glass. Rock music played in the background. Roger Stanton stood awkwardly at the foot of the bed and Melanie Corrigan began doing a striptease, if that's what you call it when you're starting out with only a black bikini that must have been made during a spandex shortage. The top was a strap slightly wider than dental floss, the bottom no bigger than your average Band-Aid. She was grinding to the music, rather expertly, some very fluid hip movements. She motioned for Roger to sit on the bed and he did, obedient little puppy.

  She unhooked the halter top and squeezed her high firm breasts together, taking a deep breath as if the tiny scrap of fabric had been crushing her poor lungs to death. Acting right out of a high school play or a porno flick made on the cheap in Lauderdale. She tossed the halter at Roger. It landed on his head and slid over his nose and mouth. He could have robbed a bank in a B-Western.

  Next the bottom came off, and she wiggled her can in Roger's face in time with the music. She wiggled left and wiggled right, wiggled fast and wiggled slow. I had a feeling this was not her maiden cruise.

  It took a minute more and then they were at it. A moment later the photographer discovered the electric zoom. First the long shot of two bodies writhing beneath the etched glass Miami skyline. Then the bodies got larger until only one body part, or two parts joined, filled the screen. Finally the camera zoomed back to show us the writhing bodies.