by Paul Levine
The assistant state attorney cleared her throat, trying to regain the momentum before the rest of the gallery voted. “Your Honor, the defendant was observed by numerous witnesses at Keys Memorial Beach. She was playing Frisbee while wearing state’s exhibit A.”
“Frisbee?” the judge demanded. “Is that illegal, too?”
I waited while Judge Gold ran through the rest of his calendar. It was a typical day. A man convicted of murder wanted a new trial and a divorce because his wife had an affair with his lawyer sometime between opening statement and closing argument. A Hialeah homeowner faced zoning charges for building a statue of La Virgen de La Caridad in his front yard. The Biting Bandit of Miami Beach was arraigned on charges of stealing two watches and thirty dollars in food stamps, and severing three ears and one index finger. The prosecutor was careful not to stand too close when pointing toward the carnivorous fellow and intoning, “This defendant…”
I waited through several dozen other hearings. The clerk called a number of minor drug cases, all scheduled for pretrial intervention, just one of a number of devices to toss cases out of the courthouse. The criminal justice system does not so much dispense justice as process defendants. The prisons cannot hold the miscreants already there, much less the thousands who should be added each year. So the prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers, and various state agencies engage in a gentle conspiracy with judges-real and retired-to spit out the defendants who are swept into the maw of a system that has bitten off more than it can chew.
We think of the courts as slow, unwieldy machines with creaking parts. Not in Miami. Here, what passes for justice takes place with frightening speed, each judge sometimes ruling on a hundred cases a day, hearing motions, taking pleas, dismissing charges, and occasionally even presiding at trial.
The players in the justice game speak their own language. Rapists are treated in a program for MDSO, mentally disordered sex offenders. Sleazy street criminals who rat on their pals are CI, confidential informants. First-time offenders get bounced into PTI, pretrial intervention with CTS, credit for time served.
“Set aside the alias capias, and send him back to PTI,” Judge Gold ordered the clerk, in a case where a drug defendant, a college instructor, finally showed up in court.
“The meter is ticking on the speedy trial rule,” an anxious prosecutor told the judge, pleading for an early court date.
“We’d take a deal,” the public defender offered, “if the state nolle prosses all but one count, agrees to CTS, in-house rehab, five years’ probation, early termination on completion of MDSO.”
“I’m thinking about one year incarceration,” the judge mused, considering a plea bargain.
“Min man is three,” the prosecutor responded, shaking her head, indicating she’d love to help, but the legislature has set minimum mandatory sentences.
Behind the bench, the flag of the state of Florida hung forlornly. The flag itself is a glorious historical fabrication. An Indian woman stands on the beach, greeting an arriving steamship with flower petals. A more appropriate state symbol would be a fat county commissioner taking cash from a condo developer with the skeleton of a rickety high-rise in the background.
Finally, the clerk called out: “State of Florida versus Francisco Crespo. Motion to dismiss.”
I stood, stretched my neck out of its eighteen-inch collar, and approached the lectern in front of the bench. Abe Socolow beat me there. Credit his daily power-walking routine. He hadn’t changed. Lean as a rake, mean as a snake. Black suit, black hair, white shirt, black tie decorated with gold handcuffs and prison bars. A sallow complexion, a sardonic sneer, a brooding intelligence that barely controlled his seething anger at every defendant who crossed his path. He is a rarity in today’s age of get-rich-quick lawyers who pass through the state attorney’s office long enough for a cup of coffee and a smidgen of trial experience before migrating downtown for the big bucks. Abe Socolow is a career prosecutor, and his career was built on being smart, tough, and nasty.
“Your Honor, this motion is frivolous, ludicrous, and utterly beyond the pale,” Socolow said. “It is a misuse of motion practice, outside the bounds of Rule three one-ninety, and should be summarily rejected by the court.”
Good day to you, too, Abe.
I cleared my throat and elbowed Socolow to one side. “There are no material disputed facts, and the undisputed facts do not establish a prima facie case of guilt against Mr. Crespo.”
Socolow snorted in my ear. “Mr. Lassiter is excellent at quoting the rule. Unfortunately, he does not know how to apply it. The evidence of a prima facie case is here.” He stabbed a finger at a stack of pretrial depositions.
Judge Gold took one look and cringed. He didn’t read the newspaper unless the ponies were running at Calder. “Why don’t you fellows summarize it for me?”
“The case is entirely circumstantial,” I began, jostling Socolow with a shoulder and screening him from the judge’s view with my height. “What proof does the state have? That my client was found in proximity to the scene of an alleged homicide.
That he had an altercation with the deceased. Where is the direct evidence of the crime?”
You can get away with that sometimes with juries, ridiculing the state’s case as based on circumstantial evidence, but judges know better. A few even remember Thoreau’s admonition: Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
“Your Honor!” Exasperated now. “Mr. Lassiter sees what he wants and ignores the rest. His client’s latents were all over the steering wheel of the forklift that impaled the victim.”
“Mr. Crespo used that forklift every day,” I replied. “It would be highly suspicious if his fingerprints were not there. What is significant is that the state has no eyewitness to put him on the forklift at the time of the assault. Indeed, the only eyewitness testimony, that of the paramedics, puts Mr. Crespo several aisles away and unconscious when the attack took place. Finally, other than what appears to have been a fistfight between the two men, there is no evidence of an assault at all.”
I sneaked a peek at Socolow. His jaw muscles were doing aerobics. I kept going. “The forklift could have been driven negligently by a third party who simply bolted after he accidentally ran down the deceased. Perhaps there was no driver at all. It could have been a runaway forklift.”
“A runaway forklift!” A touch of crimson crept into Socolow’s sallow complexion. “Why not suicide? Maybe Mr. Smorod-whatever-his-name-is jumped at the moving forklift in order to kill himself. Mr. Lassiter isn’t arguing the undisputed facts. He’s relying on his own vivid imagination. There’s a jury question here…”
In the gallery, I saw Marvin the Maven’s head swivel as the rear door opened and a woman walked in. Marvin doesn’t miss anything. He nudged Saul the Tailor, who nodded his approval as Lourdes Soto took a seat in the second row. Even under the fluorescent lights, the ivory skin was perfect, accented by the jet black hair. She wore a black jersey dress that came to midcalf and gathered itself under a wide matching belt. She carried a woman’s leather briefcase, not the all-purpose aluminum model with camera, lenses, and voice-activated recorder.
Of course, the black onyx necklace might be a wire, for all I knew.
“The autopsy is consistent with an attack by a forklift traveling at maximum speed,” Socolow was saying. He was waving some papers at the judge. It could have been the autopsy report or his laundry list. No matter, the judge wouldn’t read either one.
I didn’t need to read the report, either. It was one of those rare cases when I’d been there, a foot away from the deputy medical examiner when he did his dirty work. Crespo had called me within minutes of being arrested. The autopsy was scheduled twenty-four hours later. I had phoned Doc Charlie Riggs, and calling on an old friend, he got me into the cool crisp confines of the Last Hotel, a place where the guests sleep on wooden pillows.
T he county morgue sits at Number One Bob Hope Road, just n
orth of the intersection with Ed Newman Street. Newman used to play for the Dolphins. So did I, but the only thing they named after me was a missed sack-the Lassiter Leap-for a peculiar habit of leaving my feet at the wrong time on a blitz. As for Bob Hope, I doubt he’s funny enough to wake the dead.
The morgue is nearly new, a gleaming place with a handsome waiting room of rose-colored sofas, a three-story skylight, and sturdy brick walls. It is a sad fact of city life that most of those who end up here never lived in such splendid surroundings.
“Interesting puncture wound.” Dr. Bruce Harper poked at the gash in Smorodinsky’s abdomen. “See a lot of knife wounds, bullet holes, once in a while a screwdriver. Even had a corkscrew through the jugular last week. Domestic dispute, of course.” He held a tape measure to the wound while an assistant took photos. “Ten point two centimeters in width. Point six four centimeters in height.” A lab technician wrote with a special marker on a white wall. Later, the numbers would be transferred to a written autopsy report and the wall washed down. “What’d you say did this?”
“Forklift blade,” I told him.
Dr. Harper was one of the young ones, three years out of his residency in pathology, a guy who grew up not knowing whether he wanted to be a detective or a physician. Now he was both. He was of medium height and weight but with solid wrists and veined forearms. He had neatly parted dirty blond hair and wore latex gloves and a green smock. On a tray next to him, another deputy M.E. worked on the body of an enormous black woman killed in a head-on traffic accident on the Don Shula Expressway. He was whistling-it must have been the doc-the theme music from Rocky.
Dr. Harper went to work, grinning at the world, oblivious to his surroundings. After photos were taken of the entrance and exit wounds, he used a scalpel to make a Y incision in the chest. In one smooth motion, he sliced straight down the midline of the abdomen, then peeled the skin back, exposing a thick layer of yellow, fatty tissue and the rib cage beneath. Using what looked like your Saturday afternoon pruning shears, he cut through the cartilage of the ribs near the breastbone.
With quick, deft movements, he was inside the chest cavity, slicing away. He removed the heart and plop ped it into a scale. Three hundred grams, the technician wrote on the wall. The right lung was five hundred fifty grams; the left lung five twenty-five. In the abdomen, he inspected the wound track, and an assistant took more photos.
“A clean path through and through,” he said to nobody in particular. “Nicked the bottom rib, then a direct hit on the ascending colon, the right kidney, the duodenum, and then bingo, the inferior vena cava.”
Dr. Harper reached into the abdomen with what looked like a soup ladle. He scooped out several portions of blood and filled two plastic containers. “The rib cartilage and bone show marks consistent with a powerful and moderately sharp instrument.”
He started peeling out the large intestine, hand over hand, like a candy maker pulling salt-water taffy. At the same time, he kept up a running conversation. “I’ll drain some urine from the bladder and the vitreous humor from the eye to check for alcohol, but I can tell you right now, he’d been drinking, for what that’s worth.”
I asked him, “How can you-”
He pointed a bloodied glove toward his nose. His head disappeared into the open cavity. What had been a body now was an empty shell. No wonder they call them canoe makers. His voice was an echo from inside what used to be Vladimir Smorodinsky. “They say your buddy Doc Riggs could distinguish rye from bourbon. Don’t know what this is, but it’s booze. Want to check it out?”
I took his word for it.
He kept slicing and measuring, telling his technician there was evidence of a right retroperitoneal hematoma where the blade went through. The liver was enlarged and greasy, but still not cirrhotic. The coronary arteries showed some arteriosclerotic blockage, but “he didn’t die of a heart attack, sorry, Lassiter.”
I made some observations myself. The fingernails were missing. The crime lab was checking for skin and blood-Crespo’s-underneath the nails. They would find what they were looking for. There was recent bruising on Smorodinsky’s forearms. All in all, no surprises.
A nything else?” Judge Gold asked, glaring at the clock on the wall, if he could see that far.
Both Socolow and I shook our heads, and the judge shook his. “Motion denied. Jake, you got yourself a jury question here. Now, that doesn’t mean I won’t hear a motion for a directed verdict at the close of the state’s case, but that’s the way I see it now, and I call them as I see them.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said, in the classic statement of the losing lawyer, acknowledging his respect for the court, even as it crushes him.
I turned to go and caught sight of Lourdes Soto in the gallery. She wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were on Socolow, and a small smile played across her lips. I was trying to figure it out when the judge stopped me. “Say, Jake, you still playing ball?”
“Not for a long time,” I said.
“Ah.” A look of confusion, his memory futilely paring away the years.
When I turned back, Lourdes Soto was watching me. Her dark eyes were bright, her face composed. The eyes and mouth worked themselves into a look of concern and empathy. It was so subtly done, a cocking of the head, a pursing of the lips, a gentle furrowing of the brow calculated to show just how much she cared about poor Francisco Crespo and little old me. It was so damn good it sent a chill right up my spine.
7
THE COMBINATION
I parked the old convertible under a bonsai banyan tree that had been there a lot longer than any of us and would be there long after we are gone. When the top is down on the 442, I avoid Spanish olive trees. Same for bottlebrush and a few others whose leaves, seeds, and blossoms leave stains on the ancient upholstery. Only trouble I ever had with a banyan was when a green iguana dropped from a branch as I was tooling south on Old Cutler Road. It didn’t bother me, but the young lady into whose lap it fell-a humorless lass whose idea of getting close to nature was suntanning topless on her condo balcony-refused to see me again.
Lourdes Soto lived in an old section of Coral Gables just off Alhambra Circle. It was once a neighborhood of grand homes in the Mediterranean Revival style, full of columns and courtyards, Spanish tile and loggias. Many of the houses have been razed and modern concrete creations erected in their place. Oddly, though, the postmodern trendy architects are borrowing from the older Florida styles. Curved eyebrows above windows and doors are derived from the Art Deco hotels and apartment buildings of South Beach. Arches are distinctively Mediterranean. The sloping roofs with steep overhangs and deep porches recall the old Florida cracker houses of the 1800s. So the old neighborhood is a hodgepodge of styles, some combined in the same house.
Next to the Soto home, workmen were putting finishing touches on one of the new models. It was designed by a young Argentinian architect. I knew this because of the tasteful sign with his name, address, and phone number plus a history of his obscure design awards, all indicating he’d be ever so willing to perform the same feats of mishmash postmodern tropical-Deco neurotic construction on your lot, if you were so inclined. Other signs adorned the front yard, fastened there on stakes driven into the fresh sod. The grass, as well as the bougainvillea, coco plum, and sweet acacia, were courtesy of Manuel Diaz Landscaping. Burglars were kept away by Advanced Security. Bugs were gassed by Truly Nolen Fumigation, and the pool was cleaned by Sparkling Waters, Inc. While I learned all this, a black Labrador retriever was relieving himself on the mailbox post. The dog was apparently not part of the marketing plan; at least, he didn’t have a sign.
The Sotos lived in one of the few remaining Spanish-style villas. By the time I rapped twice on the double doors of Dade County pine, Lourdes was there. She was wearing a baggy white T-shirt and chocolate-colored twill slacks with a web belt and lots of pockets. The brown velvet eyes seemed to warm up at the sight of me. She touched a finger to her forehead, adjusting the bangs of her jet
black hair the way women do when they’re taking their own inventory while in the presence of a man.
Instead of inviting me in, she guided me around back on a path of pink terrazzo. We were nicely shaded by a loggia of Roman arches, Spanish tile, and wood-beamed ceiling. We emerged in a courtyard with a tinkling fountain, molded columns with pockmarked stucco, and a rose garden surrounded by jasmine hedges.
A small, wiry man sat in a turquoise wrought-iron chair at a matching table covered with papers, clipboards, and ledgers. He wore a white guayabera and had thick black hair swept straight back and a bushy black mustache. He held a fountain pen in his left hand. There wasn’t another hand. The right arm ended in a stump just inside the guayabera sleeve. The left arm was heavily veined with a ragged scar just below the elbow. An unlit cigar was clamped into his teeth. He was weathered around the eyes, his face comfortably creased and lived in.
“Papi, this is Mr. Lassiter,” Lourdes said.
The man nodded but didn’t stand up. He placed the pen carefully into a white marble holder, and extended his left hand. I shook it awkwardly with my right. “Mr. Soto, I’ve heard a lot about you.” It was true. A folk hero to the Cuban refugees, Severo Soto’s fame had spread through the Anglo community as well.
Soto released my hand, nodded, and removed the cigar. “I understand Francisco Crespo has finally killed someone. Not that it surprises me.”
So much for a character witness.
“He’s accused of murder,” I said, taking a seat opposite him. “Lourdes tells me he once worked for Soto Shipping Company.”
The dark eyes locked on mine. “Some years ago, in the freight-forwarding division. It is all in there.”
The voice was remarkably free of an accent. He gestured toward a manila folder. I riffled through some meaningless payroll records and company medical exams. Lourdes Soto had teased me with the concept of inside information. In the week since we first met, she had given me three written reports that didn’t tell me anything new. If she had something useful, she was keeping it to herself. At the same time, she plied me with questions about my progress and strategy. I told her everything I knew, which was nothing, other than my suspicion that Crespo wasn’t nearly as guilty as he claimed to be.
