BUM DEAL: Jake Lassiter Legal Thrillers

by Paul Levine

  The jasmine-scented evening had just become fouled by a rank shit storm. I wondered what tomorrow would bring. Nothing short of a tsunami would surprise me.

  -60-

  Shrunk

  “Please state your name and occupation, sir,” I said.

  “Harold G. Freudenstein. Physician.”

  He did not appear to be stoned. I was not sure the same could be said for me. Waking up this morning with a crushing headache and a touch of vertigo, I stutter-stepped to the kitchen and had a breakfast of papaya, coffee, and Sour Diesel, the classic California strain of marijuana.

  Though tasting a bit like motor oil, Sour Diesel, sativa, delivered a quick and powerful high. I usually go for the milder strains, the hybrids, or even pure indica, known as “in-de couch,” because it will put you on your ass. But today I needed to be pain-free, with a sharp, focused mind, and the Diesel gave me the best chance. But there was also euphoria to contend with, which can have its downside. I didn’t want to burst into laughter for no apparent reason or start talking with the speed of a tobacco auctioneer. Another side effect: loss of inhibitions. I would take care not to begin disrobing in the courtroom.

  “Are you board certified in any specialties, Doctor?”

  “Psychiatry.”

  I had the shrink run through his educational background. Undergrad at Duke, med school at the University of Miami, residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital, an impressive fellowship at Stanford, a stint as director of behavioral medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital on Miami Beach, and a bunch of boards and committees in his younger day. I omitted his more recent hippie-dippy Key Biscayne guru credentials.

  “Have you published any scholarly articles, Dr. Freudenstein?”

  “Many. I’ve written articles related to studies of intimate partner violence, bipolar disorder, brain activation during sexual arousal, irrational beliefs in remitted depressives, socioeconomic factors in hyperactive sexual desire. I could go on.”

  “Please don’t. Sorry. Please do!” I realized I was speaking both too quickly and too loudly. Perhaps one fewer puff of the Sour Diesel would have been better.

  The shrink rattled off the names of papers he’d written around the time Sigmund Freud had dinner with Carl Jung, or so it seemed to me. Freudenstein had cleaned up well. He wore a seersucker suit with a white shirt and blue-and-white bow tie. His storm-gray ponytail was neatly tied into place. The only discordant note: the harsh fluorescent courtroom lights made his waxy, face-lifted complexion seem corpselike.

  “Have you lectured at professional gatherings on any of these subjects?” I asked after he had finished running through his publications.

  Solomon got to his feet. “In the interest of time, the defense will stipulate that Dr. Freudenstein is an expert for purposes of expressing medical opinions in the field of psychiatry.”

  “So stipulated,” I agreed.

  Of course, agreeing to the shrink’s credentials would not keep Solomon and Lord from savaging him on cross-examination and again in closing arguments.

  I laid the groundwork for the big reveal: Freudenstein’s prophetic letter of doom. About three months before Sofia disappeared, the doc testified, she brought her husband to a counseling session. She had been a patient for two years, engaging in talk therapy for her anxiety and depression.

  “After meeting with the Calverts, did you write a letter to both of them?” I nodded to the court clerk, and magically, a blowup of Freudenstein’s letter appeared on a large screen.

  “Ah, that,” he said. “Yes, I wrote that.”

  “Would you read the second paragraph aloud?”

  “Mrs. Calvert, it is my considered medical opinion that you are in danger of great bodily harm or death if you continue to reside with your husband. I urge you to immediately separate and refrain from all personal contact.”

  “Dr. Freudenstein, based on your professional training and decades of experience, you predicted that Dr. Calvert would harm and possibly kill his wife, did you not?”

  He stared at the image of the letter on the screen but didn’t immediately answer. I had no worries. The shrink made the prediction; the prediction came true; he had no choice but to confirm that. Seconds ticked by. It seemed even longer, my ability to judge time affected by the psychoactive weed.

  Finally, he said, “I did. Yes, I did. Those are my words.”

  “And you diagnosed Dr. Calvert as a psycho-sociopath, did you not?”

  “Yes. I told you that when we met.”

  “Did you further state that you had no doubt that Clark Calvert was fully capable of killing Sofia and of having no remorse for doing so?”

  “I said those words, yes. Do you remember what you said in return?”

  Damn right, I remember. My sativa-sharpened synapses are clicking at 120 miles per hour. But we’re not going there.

  “Dr. Freudenstein, I’m the one who asks the questions. So moving along—”

  “You said to me, ‘Don’t you think such a quick diagnosis is, at the very least, premature and, at the worst, reckless and wrong?’ And now I’ve had a chance to think about it…”

  “Doctor, there’s no question pending.”

  “I just want to explain my letter in light of further thought and reconsideration.”

  Reconsideration? No way! Further thoughts? Keep them to yourself!

  “Please wait for a question, sir,” I ordered him.

  Solomon was on his feet. “Your Honor, Mr. Lassiter is arguing with his own witness, who ought to be able to explain himself.”

  “Very well. Doctor. What is it you want to say?” Judge Gridley said.

  “Mr. Lassiter was right. I had insufficient information to make that diagnosis and to write that letter. As I look at it now, there was no reasonable basis upon which to make such definitive conclusions. I was reckless, and I regret it.”

  What the hell is happening? Was this even real? I’d been strolling down the sidewalk, and suddenly a piano had fallen out of a window and pulverized me.

  “Hold on, Doc!” I ordered, trying to recover. “What about the house-tree-person test?”

  Dr. Freudenstein dismissed the notion with a wave of the hand. “Diagnosing neuroses and psychoses from the way a person draws a tree. It’s hocus-pocus, Counselor.”

  I stood there, gaping, my mind racing and my heart ka-thumpety-thumping in my ears. Louder and louder with each beat. If anyone in the courtroom was talking, I couldn’t hear them. I’ve been sandbagged in court before and never had a physical reaction. Maybe it was the weed. Maybe my damaged brain cells. I couldn’t get my mind or my heart to slow down.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and saw a long-ago football field. But where? I could feel the cold and see diagonal slashes in the end zone, so it had to be Notre Dame. The Irish offense was in a huddle. And there I was, number 58, a Penn State linebacker. Jeez, look at me. Young, healthy, strong.

  The crowd noise was deafening. I saw the scoreboard. Penn State: 24, Notre Dame: 19. But the Irish had the ball first and goal on our six-yard-line with 1:28 to play in the game. Standing two steps onto the field, his tie flapping in the breeze, Joe Paterno was yelling at me and waving his arms toward the sideline. I shuffled in that direction as Notre Dame quarterback Steve Beuerlein barked the signals. He took the snap and pitched the ball to Tim Brown, a blazer who had already returned a kickoff for a touchdown that had been nullified by a penalty. How fast was he? He could hit the light switch and be in bed before the room got dark.

  Brown planted a foot and cut upfield, headed my way. I lumbered toward him, knowing the tight end would be smacking me any second, blocking for the speedster, who would likely scoot around me, high-stepping toward the end zone and victory.

  But there was no tight end!

  Brown was in my sights. He juked, but I came straight on, ignoring the move, aiming for his belt buckle. I made a solid tackle for a three-yard loss. We would keep Notre Dame out of the end zone and win the game, defeat archrival Pitt the following wee
k, and then upset Miami in the Fiesta Bowl for the national championship. I was one of the big lugs carrying Coach Paterno off the field that night. The high point of my life? Maybe.

  Without my play, none of that might have happened. But my tackle was the result of fortuity, not fortitude. Luck, not skill. Notre Dame had only ten men on the field with no tight end to my side. Just how much of life is built on a foundation of chance? Probably far more than the rich and powerful would care to admit.

  Where these images came from and why—just now—I had no idea. In the courtroom, I blinked, and the images were gone. I heard someone babbling, but who?

  Oh, me!

  “Doctor. Doc. Freudman. Schadman. Schadenfreudenstein. When? Why? What do you mean?”

  “Mr. Lassiter,” the judge said, “perhaps I should intervene here. Dr. Freudenstein, so that it is clear to the jury, are you repudiating state’s exhibit seven, your letter to the Calverts?”

  “I take back every word after ‘Dear Dr. and Mrs. Calvert.’ He looked toward the defense table. “I’d like to also apologize to Dr. Calvert for my lack of professionalism.”

  Calvert nodded his thank-you with a pleasant look.

  “May I make a confession?” the shrink said.

  “I wish someone would!” I fired back, my head spinning.

  “When I realized I was too rash in reaching my conclusions, I asked myself why. And it was so apparent.”

  “How’s that?” Judge Gridley asked.

  “Some of the personality characteristics I found in Dr. Calvert—his brusqueness with his intellectual inferiors, his cocksureness, his abrasiveness—well, I recognize the same disagreeable traits in myself. And here’s where the self-analysis came in. I realized I created Calvert the boogeyman, Calvert the psychotic, Calvert the enemy, to separate him from me. It’s so simple, really.”

  “How much did he pay you, Dr. Fraud?” I yelled.

  “Not a farthing, Mr. Lassiter. And I resent the insinuation.”

  “What a crock of shit!” I heard myself shout.

  In the gallery, gasps, whispers, and laughter.

  “Mr. Lassiter!” Judge Gridley raised his voice.

  “What a load of horse manure!”

  “You’re flirting with contempt, sir!”

  “Flirting, hell! I’m gonna take contempt to the motel and hump her from here to Hialeah.”

  “That’s it, Mr. Lassiter. You are to remain silent. Do you understand?”

  “I made the tackle, Judge. They can’t take that away from me.”

  “What tackle?”

  “There was no tight end to block, but that doesn’t diminish my play, does it?”

  “Mr. Lassiter, that’s quite enough. We’re going to take a ten-minute recess and calm down.”

  I pointed a finger at the witness stand, where Dr. Freudenstein looked at me with curiosity and a bit of wonderment, as if he’d found a chimpanzee lounging in his waiting room. “You quack! You fraud! You shamster! Quack! Quack! Quack! If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a fucking duck!”

  Bang!

  The judge’s gavel crashed down, the echo a rifle shot.

  “You’re in direct contempt, Mr. Lassiter. The bailiff will remove the jury, instanter. Counsel, in my chambers, now!”

  -61-

  A Church, Not a Circus

  Out of his robes, slouched in his high-backed, deep-cushioned chair, surrounded by unread law books and University of Florida gridiron memorabilia, Judge Gridley fired up a Camel with his Bull Gator cigarette lighter.

  “Jake, what in the name of Tim Tebow just happened in there?”

  “Don’t know, Your Honor. One moment I was there, and then I was someplace else. Another time, another place.”

  “I got a third place for you. The stockade. Twenty-four hours to be served the day after the trial concludes. Plus, fifteen-hundred-bucks fine. You got anything else to say?”

  “I apologize to the court and to Mr. Solomon and Ms. Lord for my conduct.”

  My two opponents nodded. Victoria looked at me with concern. Solomon, the cynical one of the pair, seemed to be appraising me.

  “That’s a good start,” the judge said.

  I wasn’t sure what else was required, so I said, “Also to James Madison and Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and all the Founding Fathers. They’d be pissed.”

  “Okay, that’s enough, Jake. Now, tell me the truth. How’s your mental state?”

  “I can see clearly now, Your Honor.”

  “Good.”

  “The rain is gone.”

  “It didn’t rain today, Jake. Wait! Isn’t that a song?”

  I had the good sense not to start singing. I remembered what Pincher told me. I could use my brain damage, or whatever it was, in court. For sympathy. To excuse bad behavior.

  “It might be those experimental drugs messing me up,” I said.

  Not a total lie. I am taking experimental drugs, though Sour Diesel cannabis isn’t one of them.

  The judge tapped ashes into a coffee cup on his desk. “Oh, my. I’m sorry. Heavy doses?”

  “Right now, I couldn’t pass the pee test Walmart gives its cashiers.”

  “Side effects, too, I suppose.”

  “They shake my nerves and they rattle my brain.”

  “Jake, are you jerking me off here?”

  “Sorry, Your Honor. The drugs fog my mind and release my inhibitions.”

  Gridley exhaled smoke in the general direction of a poster of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, packed with Gator lovers. “I hated like hell to hold you in contempt, Jake. But we were in open court with media present. I had no choice.”

  The judge sounded apologetic. Pincher was right. I can play the sympathy card. Get a free pass and maybe a fruit basket with helium balloons, too.

  Victoria spoke up. “Your Honor, Jake’s health comes first. Perhaps we should adjourn early today.”

  The judge stubbed out his cigarette in the coffee cup. “Or permanently. After that three-ring fire drill, the court would entertain a motion for mistrial from the defense.”

  “No way,” Solomon said. “Let’s try this to a verdict. Our client deserves that.”

  “My partner’s right,” Victoria said. “The state shouldn’t get two bites at the apple.”

  “Can’t say I blame you,” the judge said. “You’re way ahead.” He turned to me. “Jake, you realize you haven’t yet made out a prima facie case? If I were to rule today, the defense would get a directed verdict.”

  “If last year’s Big Ten championship had been over at halftime, Wisconsin would have won. But Penn State took home the trophy.”

  “I take your point. But I gotta warn you. No more clowns piling out of a little car. My courtroom is not a circus. It’s a church, a holy place. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir. No elephants crapping in the pews.”

  “Exactly. Any more theatrics, any more expletives, any more disrespect for the court, it ain’t gonna be Thomas Jefferson who’s pissed at you.”

  “Understood, Judge.”

  “I’ll dismiss with prejudice for prosecutorial misconduct and report you to the Florida Bar, experimental drugs or not.”

  So much for sympathy.

  “Message received,” I said.

  “Well, then, shall we adjourn for the day, as Ms. Lord suggests?”

  “Your Honor, I have an out-of-town witness who would love to get home tonight,” I said. “Someone who will get the state’s case back on track.”

  The judge looked toward Solomon and Lord. They each shrugged.

  “Okay, let’s hear what he has to say,” the judge said.

  “She,” I said. “The state calls Ann Cavendish.”

  -62-

  Star Witness

  In the corridor, on the way into the courtroom, Pepe Suarez, his face florid, grabbed me. Physically grabbed me, his hand clenching the lapel of my suit coat.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded.
>
  “Take your hand off me, or I’ll break every one of your manicured fingers.” The marijuana high had mostly dissipated, and I was back to my normal, combative self.

  He loosened his grip.

  I smoothed the fabric of my coat and said, “I dunno.”

  “What the hell kind of answer is that? That jagoff shrink just sunk our case.”

  “My case. And it’s not sunk yet.”

  I saw Solomon and Lord enter the courtroom. Waiting by the door were Detective Barrios and Ann Cavendish. The old cop wasn’t letting our star witness out of his sight, not after what happened to Billy Burnside.

  “I assume Calvert got to Freudenstein,” I said. “Paid him off. Or threatened to sue him or go after his license.”

  “What’s your strategy now, Lassiter?”

  “Now? Now, I’m gonna destroy Clark Gordon Calvert. Ruin his reputation in twenty minutes. Make it easy for the jury to believe he could kill. Now, I’m gonna take my last best shot at winning the damn case.”

  *

  Ann Cavendish wore a tailored navy-blue two-button jacket over a white blouse. Light-gray trousers. Sensible black pumps. An overall impression of a woman dressed for professional work. Her dark hair came to her shoulders in waves.

  Her lower lip quivered as she swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Her voice trembled just saying her name and occupation.

  She was nervous.

  I gave her a warm smile and said gently, “I know this isn’t easy for you, Ms. Cavendish.”

  “It’s not. It’s really not.”

  “I admire your courage.”

  Victoria was on her feet. “Really? Your Honor…”

  “Mr. Lassiter. Please just ask questions and refrain from editorial comments.”

  “Of course, Your Honor,” I said. “Ms. Cavendish, do you know the defendant, Clark Gordon Calvert?”