by Paul Levine
Lourdes sat up and seemed to be looking for her clothes. The last I had seen them, they were scattered on the kitchen floor. She stood and turned away, leaving me watching the smooth, naked expanse of her flank. “You’re just an overgrown Boy Scout, aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer and she continued, a tinge of sadness in her voice. “You want a merit badge and a pat on the back. You want to be told just how wonderful and decent you are. Okay, here it is. You’re honest and noble and virtuous. You have principles and scruples and morals. You’re all that and more.”
“More?”
Her bare feet were already padding down the stairs as she called to me over her shoulder. “You’re also a goddamn fool.”
10
TO SPEAK THE TRUTH
Judge Herman Roth adjusted his eyeglasses, ran a hand over his shiny skull, and peered in the general direction of the twelve warm bodies filling the jury box. “Does each of you understand that a defendant is not required to prove his innocence or to furnish any evidence whatsoever, and that this right is guaranteed by the Constitution?”
Twelve heads bobbed yes.
“And does each of you promise not to hold it against this defendant if he chooses to exercise his constitutional right not to testily?”
The double negative notwithstanding, on cue, all the sheep baaed.
Sure, I thought. They’ve all heard of the Fifth Amendment, some technicality used by wily lawyers to keep racketeers out of jail. Jurors want to follow the law, they really do. And they’ll answer all the questions correctly in voir dire. But behind the closed door, whether it’s said openly or not, the thought is there. Dadgummit, if I was innocent, I’d just get right up there and say so. What’s that fellow hiding? Every lawyer knows this, but there are simply times you cannot subject a client to cross-examination. It is often the most important decision a lawyer will make in a criminal case.
With Francisco Crespo, it was easy. If Crespo took the stand and told the story he had recited to me, he would convict himself. No doubt about it. So my original plan was to keep him sitting at the defense table looking frail and innocent while I took a whack at the state’s witnesses and tried to ferret out some reasonable doubt. That morning, I had asked him whether he had forgotten to tell me about Smorodinsky threatening him with a knife three days before the fatal fight.
“ Ay, el cuchillo. Three rows of saw teeth.”
Those teeth again. At least they had their stories straight. “And on the sixteenth. Did he come at you again with this knife?”
“Would it get me off if I said he did?”
I like someone who thinks before answering.
“Maybe. But you never mentioned it to the cops and nobody found a knife. If the jury thinks you’re lying, you’ll be convicted for sure.”
“ Veintecinco anos.”
“Right, without parole, and it would be a damn shame, Francisco, because you didn’t kill him. If you’d only tell me what happened…”
He shrugged and his neck disappeared inside the dress shirt I had just bought for him. I got him a new suit two sizes too large and a white shirt with a collar that would fit me. When Crespo dozed off during the judge’s preliminary statement to the jury, his chin disappeared inside the shirt collar.
Emilia Crespo sat in the first row of the gallery, directly behind me. She gave us moral support plus a bag of homemade guava pastries. In the corridor that morning, she kissed Francisco and hugged me, but without the strength I remembered. Then she whispered a prayer in Spanish, crossed herself, and said again, “ Protegeme a mi hijo.”
I hugged her back and promised I would. I looked into her eyes. She had gotten old without my noticing it. Dark shadows clung to the folds below her eyes. Along the jawline, the skin was no longer taut. She moved slowly and seemed to have lost weight. A robust woman when I first met her-she carried my suitcase into the house that day years ago-she had shrunken with age.
Now Judge Roth was holding up a blue-backed document and waving it at the jury. “Does each of you understand that this piece of paper called the information is not evidence. It carries no inference of guilt.”
Twelve heads nodded in unison. But where there’s smoke, there’s fire. That sumbitch didn’t get here by helping little old ladies cross the street. Sometimes, I wonder why we even bother. Just round up the first six people you find and sit them in the box. Our juries wouldn’t be any better or any worse.
Abe Socolow sat at the state’s table, furiously taking notes, recording observations about each prospective juror on the twelve-square grid he had drawn on his legal pad. He was also trying to memorize each name before he began his questioning. All lawyers do that. How about you, Mrs. Ferbergooble? Can you give the state a fair trial, Mrs. Ferbergooble? We all love to hear our own names. If you don’t believe it, you haven’t been imprisoned in an eight-foot-square cubicle with a car salesman.
Socolow was good. He was always prepared, and once he worked with them, so were his witnesses. Once, when I was new at this and he was still handling misdemeanors, I defended a DUI case where my client caused an accident that didn’t hurt anybody but ruptured his own car’s radiator. Socolow’s main witness, the investigating officer, testified that he smelled alcohol on my client’s breath.
“Isn’t it possible,” I asked on cross-examination, “that what you smelled was antifreeze?”
“Sure,” the cop replied, not missing a beat, “if that’s what he was drinking.”
Judge Roth was reciting his litany, asking if anyone had served on a jury before, if there were any policemen in the family, and if each juror would base his or her verdict solely on the testimony and the law. He received what he sought, mindless agreement. The judge droned on, hunched over the bench, a wizened old bird who liked running a courtroom better than poling for bonefish or whacking a little ball out of the sand or any other sane activity. He asked whether they would be more likely to believe testimony of police officers, and they all solemnly said no. Funny, I whispered yes because cops are the best liars.
I kept waiting for my favorite question as did Bill the Bailiff. Bill is a retired postal worker who’s even older than Judge Roth and skinnier than Abe Socolow. We had a standing bet on the victim-of-crime question. I took “over”; he took “under.” Although we only needed to seat six jurors plus two alternates, there were twelve prospects sitting in the box at all times. If more than six raised their hands, I would win the over, and Bill would bring me a quart of his homemade cerviche, bay scallops marinated in lime juice with onions, peppers, and cilantro. It’s my one exception to the no-raw-fish rule. If fewer than six jurors raised their hands, I would bring him a lug of Saigon mangoes I would steal from neighborhood trees. An even six, and the bet would be a push.
“Any of you ever been a victim of a crime?” Judge Roth asked. Bill the Bailiff tugged his suspenders and winked at me.
Eight hands shot up, then slowly a ninth, a computer systems analyst for a department store chain. “Does it count if my car was broken into but not stolen?” he asked.
Judge Roth considered the question as if it were of momentous gravity. “Nothing stolen, you say?”
“Well, my gun, of course. A Colt Combat Commander. 45 taken from the glove compartment.”
Two other jurors nodded and murmured something about their guns being stolen in home burglaries.
The judge let out a low whistle and shook his head. “Never leave a gun like that in your car. Too valuable. Personally, I prefer something lighter, but not too small.” He pulled up his fuchsia robe until it covered his bald head. We were now treated to a view of a sweat-stained armpit and a shoulder holster with a small pistol. With a palsied hand, the judge drew the gun, squinted one eye shut and aimed in the general direction of Francisco Crespo, who sat about two feet to my right. I leaned the other way but decided not to raise an objection.
“Colt Mustang 380,” Judge Roth announced, using a two-hand grip now, the barrel bouncing up and down as if he sto
od on a pitching boat. “Only five rounds, but packs four times the knockdown power of the 25 ACP automatic.”
A middle-aged woman juror-a registered nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital-raised her hand. “I think firepower is overrated, Your Honor. I just carry a Beretta 25 semiautomatic. Seven rounds and only weighs twelve ounces. Fits in my purse.”
The judge nodded judiciously. “Light weight’s an advantage, no doubt about it, but with a twenty-five millimeter, you’d better hit the perp in a kill spot.”
At this point, half the jurors were exchanging views on handguns. The court clerk, a black woman with a well-groomed Afro, told the stenographer she kept a Sig Sauer 230 in her gym bag to keep interlopers out of her spot in aerobics class. The stenographer was too busy typing to answer.
Bill the Bailiff looked gloomy as he moped over to the defense table to congratulate me. He hadn’t won an under bet in two years. “A little less onion this time, Bill,” I told him.
Finally, sensing that matters had careened off track, Judge Roth cleared his throat and plunged ahead. “Does any of you have a physical impairment that would keep you from serving on this jury?”
Nothing worse than your hardening of the arteries, I thought.
Eleven heads wagged no. “I got a pretty fair case of hemorrhoids,” answered an airline mechanic in a blue work shirt.
“The bailiff will find you a pillow,” Judge Roth said, dismissing the notion that an itch can keep you home. To get a medical excuse, a juror better qualify for last rites. There are just too few folks willing to spend a week with smart-alecky lawyers who ask nosy questions and try to trick them into believing that a degenerate slimebag is a misunderstood choirboy.
Finally, it was Abe Socolow’s turn. Before he stood up, a middle-aged man in a gray suit and wire-rimmed glasses walked from the gallery to the prosecutor’s table, leaned over, and whispered something in Socolow’s ear. The state gets all the help. I only had my client, who was sound asleep, and my secretary Cindy, who sat behind me and selected jurors by their astrological signs. Marvin the Maven was still miffed with me and was spending the week in Divorce Court.
Socolow unfolded his long, lean body from the carved wood chair and approached the jury box. He wore his trial suit of undertaker’s black, a white button-down shirt, and a black tie festooned with silver handcuffs. His sallow complexion had a hint of color today, and not from the sun. The start of a trial, the adrenaline flows, the heart picks up the pace. With Abe, it was an insatiable desire to win. Me? I just try not to embarrass myself.
“May it please the court.” Abe bowed deferentially to Judge Roth, who waved a liver-spotted hand signaling Socolow to begin. “This is the part of the trial known as voir dire.” Somehow Abe gave it four syllables, voy-eur dy-ar. “That’s a fancy foreign phrase meaning ‘to speak the truth.’ Judge Roth has asked some preliminary questions, and now it’s my turn, and then Mr. Lassiter’s. Each of us wants you to simply speak the truth. Now, why do we ask these questions, some of which can be quite personal. To embarrass you? No. To get a jury biased in our favor? No. We merely want a fair and impartial jury…”
Maybe you do, Abe, but I once seated a blond flight attendant for the simple reason that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
“… a jury that will decide the case solely on the evidence and free from any prejudice that may result from their backgrounds.”
Abe took up the rest of the morning asking everybody’s occupation, whether any of their kinfolk had run-ins with the law, and whether they believed in the grand old American jury system. “Mr. Bolanos, you heard the judge tell you that, to adjudge the defendant guilty, you must find that the state proved its case beyond and to the exclusion of a reasonable doubt.”
A hesitant nod. He knew there’d be a follow-up.
“And Mr. Bolanos, do you understand that beyond a reasonable doubt does not mean a shadow of a doubt, a fleeting doubt, an imaginary, illusory, or fanciful doubt?”
Bolanos nodded his profound agreement.
“To be a reasonable doubt, it must be…”
Reasonable, I figured.
“Solid, substantial, real-”
“Objection!” I was on my feet. “Counsel for the state is rewriting the jury instructions before our very eyes.”
“Overruled. But that’s quite enough on that issue, Mr. Socolow. Move along.”
I sat down. I had lost the objection but won the point as Judge Roth ruled in the time-honored fashion of not offending either lawyer.
When it was my turn, I decided to be brief. I stood up, reintroduced myself, and shuffled my two-hundred-some pounds over to the rail. I ran a hand through my shaggy hair, showed my friendly grin, looked at the clock on the wall, and said, “Well, it seems the judge and the state attorney have asked all the good questions, and since it’s a few minutes until noon, I just want to know who’s ready for lunch.”
I got a dozen raised hands and just as many smiles.
11
ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO
We empaneled a jury in the afternoon, and Judge Roth gave us the next day off so he could attend a judicial seminar, and we could polish our opening statements. I still didn’t know what I was going to say. There was Crespo’s original story, which was a lie and would convict him; there was Lourdes Soto’s sequel, which was a lie but might acquit him; and there was the truth, which so far had managed to elude me. With nothing better to do, I tried to catch up on office work. My desk was covered with bulging files of undone chores, piles of unanswered mail, and various interoffice memos from the managing partner castigating me for failing to collect bills from our deadbeat customers whom we generally refer to as our angelic clients.
It was lunchtime and my partners at Harman amp; Fox were nowhere to be found. That is only partly accurate. They were not to be found on the thirty-second floor of their gleaming office building hard by Biscayne Bay. But if you checked the posh College Club, Metropolitan Club, or Downtown Club, you would find them feasting on Florida crab cakes with avocado butter, or fresh grilled swordfish with mango and black bean salsa, perhaps a sweet ginger flan for dessert.
I sat at my desk with a bacon cheeseburger growing cold and greasy inside its aluminum foil. Droplets of moisture had formed around my Styrofoam cup of iced tea and were leaving a perfect circle on my oak credenza. The credenza already was adorned with an Olympic symbol of old watermarks and was now working on abstract designs.
I took a bite out of the cheeseburger and left an oleaginous glob on my chin. I grabbed three files based on their proximity to my iced tea and went to work. There was the case of Coupon Carla, who started her career scavenging Dumpsters for canned sausage rebate slips, then ended in jail for a counterfeit kitchen coupon scheme. There was the pending appeal in the Russian Roulette case, where I represented a widow against a life insurance company. I lost when the judge determined that her husband’s game became suicide after the third click. And there was the medical malpractice case of the stripper against the plastic surgeon for allegedly using silicone implants of two different sizes in her breasts. He denied liability and claimed the defect was an optical illusion. I was studying the photos-hey, somebody’s got to do it-when Cindy buzzed.
“El creepo on line dos, el jefe.”
“What?”
“Crespo on line two, su majestad. I sure wish your clients had more class. Why can’t you represent rock stars instead of chicken farmers and hoodlums?”
“Why can’t you spell judgment with one ‘e’?”
She bleated something at me, and I picked up the phone.
“Jake, you were always my favorite player on the team,” Francisco Crespo said, “even though I knew you weren’t very good.”
I thought about saying thank you, but it didn’t feel quite right.
“You always treated me well. Not like some of the ones making the big money. Never a ‘Hello, Francisco.’ Most of them never knew my name.”
“Don’t take it personally,” I said. “Star athle
tes have been pampered so long they think the whole world exists to hand them towels and do their laundry.”
“What I mean, Jake, is that I have respect for you. My mother loves you. She wanted me to be like you, and that was very hard to accept. For a long time after I came to this country, I was jealous of you even as I respected you. So, instead of trying to be you, I did just the opposite. I got into trouble here, just as I did in Cuba. But now, I want your advice. You are the finest abogado in all of Miami.”
“That’s flattering, but I’m not even the best on this floor.”
“I’m going to listen to you, not Senor Yagamata.”
“Then you’ll have to tell me the truth.”
He paused, and I heard a television game show in the background. The announcer was gabbing away in Spanish, and the audience was cheering.
“Maybe there are some other things I remember now,” Francisco Crespo said.
I headed the convertible west on Luis Sabines Way, which used to be called Seventh Street, and headed into Little Havana. I passed Pedro Luis Boitel Avenue, General Maximo Gomez Avenue, and Luis Medina Munoz Marin Avenue. Then came Ronald Reagan Avenue. I don’t know, so don’t ask me.
Seventh Street turned into Eighth, Calle Ocho, and I hit every stoplight for thirty blocks. The heat rolled up in waves from the pavement and pressed down at me through the black canvas top. Maybe it was the blistering day that made me remember. Maybe it was the country music station I found while twisting the old AM radio dial. Or maybe it was because I was on my way to see Francisco Crespo, and he always brought back the memory of a night that would last forever.
I t was a hot Sunday in September after a home game, a one-point win over the egg-sucking Oakland Raiders. Clem’s was a tough country music place on Okeechobee Road between the airport and Hialeah. Half a dozen of my teammates were there, tossing darts, playing pinball, dropping quarters into the jukebox. But they all left early. Not me. Monday was a no-pads day, and tonight was for celebrating, so what’s the rush? I had two tackles on special teams and set an Eastern Division record for Gatorade consumed by a reserve linebacker in the second half, and now was having too much fun and too many beers. Three long-legged, fluffed-hair escapees from secretarial school had captured me, and I was demonstrating the swim move-or was it the snatch? — for getting around an offensive lineman on a blitz.
