Paul Levine: Riptide

Lassiter had begun voir dire the same as always. We ask these questions only for the purpose of seating a fair and unbiased jury. A little white lie, he told himself. After all, he could hardly reveal the truth: We seek a jury predisposed by background and experience to favor our clients and to despise the opposition.

It’s an imperfect system, lawyers like to say, but the best one ever devised. Excluding trial by combat, of course.

While trying to decide about the accountant, Lassiter was still concerned about his neighbor, juror number two. A self-employed carpenter, he responded to questions quickly and loudly, then looked around, waiting for the applause. Might want to show off in the jury room, Lassiter worried, get macho and run roughshod over the others. A one-man jury, no lawyer wants that.

There were two other men seated so far, a college student wearing jeans and a cable TV installer in a khaki jumpsuit with his name above the pocket. Three women had survived the cut, a social worker, a flight attendant, and a homemaker. It was a typical jury, but hardly a fair cross-section of Miami. To truly represent the community, you’d have to include drug dealers, boiler-room bullion salesmen, small arms runners, porno filmmakers, swampland hucksters, and goat-sacrificing santeros.

Choosing jurors is like going out on a blind date. No matter how much you’ve been told in advance, there are always surprises. “Look at their shoes,” Marvin the Maven always advised. “Leather oxfords, shined up good, that’s your foreman.” Marvin had owned a shoe store in Pittsburgh, and he could analyze your temperament with a downward glance.

“What about the women?” Lassiter once asked him.

“Stay away from the ones who show their toes. Especially if they’ve painted their nails.”

Jake Lassiter looked at his notes. The carpenter wore paint-stained loafers, the student sandals. Only the accountant had shoes with laces. Tied tight, Lassiter figured. Two of the women wore conservative pumps, the flight attendant ankle-high work boots that make SoBe club hoppers look like lumberjacks.

Lassiter squeezed his six-foot-two frame out of the heavy oak chair and walked toward the jury box. Every juror watched him. He gave the impression of filling his space and the next guy’s too, had what they can’t teach in law school… presence. A dozen years since he’d torn down the field to make a tackle — or get his clock cleaned — on a kickoff, but you could still play racquetball against his abdominals. He watched the jury panel through clear blue eyes and tried not to betray his boredom, then pretended to study the juror chart on his yellow pad. Struggling to appear earnest, he stroked his chin and ran a hand through his thick, sandy hair. He looked toward Marvin the Maven who tugged his left ear this time and nodded.

“The defense accepts the jury panel,” Lassiter said to the judge.

Lester Jeffries, the plaintiff’s lawyer, walked to the podium and bowed formally to the jury before speaking to the judge. The obsequious bastard was trying to score points already, Lassiter thought.

Jeffries was short and squat with a high forehead and sparse, dark hair. He was partial to suspenders and bow ties and cowboy boots, a combination that made no sense to Lassiter. “Your Honor, I believe we tendered the jury panel to Mr. Lassiter without accepting it,” Jeffries said. “Therefore, at this juncture, without undue delay and without further inconvenience to the venire, and noting that the lunch recess is nearly upon us, the plaintiff now excuses juror number three.”

A lawyer will always use a bushel of words when just a peck will do. Lassiter slumped in his chair and rolled his eyes upward. A heavy teak beam split the middle of the ceiling and connected with rows of smaller beams that spiraled downward toward the walls. A giant spinal column with ribs attached. I’m in the belly of a whale, Lassiter thought, and in a moment, I’ll be whale shit. He glumly watched the accountant leave the jury box, then rose from the defense table and strode to the podium, where Lester Jeffries peered into the gallery, smile cemented into place.

“Jeffries, we’re gonna be here all week with this lousy case,” Lassiter whispered hoarsely.

“C’mon, Jake, that guy was an anal retentive numbers cruncher. It’d be malpractice for a plaintiff’s lawyer to seat him.”

“Yeah, but I left on the lady social worker with the heart of gold. We could have called it even.”

“Maybe next time,” Jeffries said.

“Next slip-and-fall, let’s make a deal. No peremptories, no challenges. We’ll seat the first six people, no matter what. Put your perjurious osteopaths and chiropractic quacks on the stand by ten a.m., case goes to the jury by noon.”

Jeffries thought about it and fiddled with his yellow bow tie.

“What if a juror doesn’t speak English?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Lassiter said.

“What if they’re all illiterates or cousins of the plaintiff?”

“Hell, I don’t care if they’re illegal aliens or convicted felons.”

“Actually, I’d like that,” Jeffries said. “Resentment of authority is always good for the plaintiff, but I don’t think they’re eligible.”

Lassiter shrugged. “I’m not kidding. Let’s grab the first six people on Flagler Street.”

“I’ll think about it,” Jeffries said, hooking a thumb into his suspenders, trying to look like Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird, but actually resembling Joe Pesci in My Cousin Vinnie.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” whined the judge, “if your colloquy is complete, may we resume picking a jury?”

Judge Morgan Lewis stood five feet three and sat three feet seven. When he sank into his cushioned chair, he disappeared from view, but he was still within earshot, and the lawyers could hear the rasp of the irascible jurist from time to time. Under his breath, Judge Lewis cursed them for their youth, his parents for his shortness, and himself for the dumb-ass decision to become a judge at $93,111 a year, while snot-nosed lawyers drove home in Porsches after knocking off seven-figure verdicts in his courtroom, the by-God biggest courtroom in the Eleventh Judicial Circuit in and for Dade County, Florida.

“Or if you prefer,” squeaked the voice from behind the bench, “I’ll pick the jury, and you two can keep quiet.”

The bailiff, a retired bail bondsman whose primary job was to collect campaign contributions for the judge, summoned a replacement for the accountant. Lassiter watched a woman with dyed-red hair and a leather mini rise from the gallery. As she walked toward the jury box, Lassiter noticed the earrings, large as basketball hoops. On her feet were Roman sandals, the toenails painted fuchsia and embedded with little gold stars. From the front row of the gallery, Lassiter thought he heard a sigh.

On Flagler Street a group of chanting Hare Krishnas competed for sidewalk space with Nicaraguan exiles denouncing the Sandinistas, or maybe these were Sandinistas denouncing the new regime, you could never tell. The fronds swayed gently on the palm trees in front of Miami Center, a skyscraper of brown travertine marble wedged between the bay and eight lanes of Biscayne Boulevard. Near the top floor, black turkey buzzards — ugly as death — glided outside the windows of Miami’s high-rise lawyers. Vultures and lawyers, Jake Lassiter thought, birds of a feather. One difference, though. The feathery scavengers arrive from the north each autumn and depart each spring. The birds in seersucker stick around all year.

“The souls of lawyers paying endless penance,” a Cuban spiritualist once told Lassiter, pointing at the vultures flying their endless circles.

“Not so,” he replied. “Lawyers never repent.”