Paul Levine: Riptide

On the ground, Haitian immigrants lounged in nearby Bayfront Park hawking bags of oranges. Old Cuban men with pushcarts sold doughy empanadas and sweet pastelitos, jockeying for position with hot dog vendors. Slinging his navy blue suit coat over one shoulder, Jake Lassiter settled into the elevator of Miami Center, bulky trial bag resting on the handrail. As the elevator door closed, a woman’s hand snaked in and caught the rubber bumper. When the doors parted, Lassiter saw the smiling face of Cindy Clark, his secretary. Two middle-aged men in white guayaberas followed her in the door.

“Thought I recognized that hand,” he said. “So few women wear rings on all five fingers these days.”

“What about Cher?” his secretary laughed.

Cindy Clark, a twenty-two-year-old free spirit, was an aberration in a conservative, downtown law firm that represented banks, construction companies, and insurance carriers. Monday through Friday, Cindy was the perfect secretary, running interference through the law firm’s bureaucracy like a blocker leading a sweep. On weekends she could be found on the back of a candy-apple red Harley-Davidson Electra Glide Classic headed for the Keys. On the front in a sleeveless leather vest was Tubby Tubberville, all 260 pounds of him, much of which was decorated with tattoos.

If Cindy was different from the upscale secretarial staff, her boss was just as much an outsider. Jake Lassiter’s partners in the old Miami firm were buttoned-down MBA types, corporate lawyers who poisoned the worlds of business and law with clinically efficient takeovers, and litigators whose frivolous pleadings tied up opponents in strike suits and class actions. Wimps outside the boardrooms and courtrooms, these lawyers got their rocks off by manipulating the rules for money, power, and prestige.

“You’re back early,” Cindy said.

“Settled for one-fifty, sent everybody home.”

The elevator stopped, and the men in guayaberas got off on seventeen, home of a Panamanian banco with few customers but enormous cash transactions.

Cindy was thinking it over. “One-fifty, as in a hundred and fifty thousand?”

“Yeah.”

“Jeez, I thought you said her injuries were phonier than Dan Quayle’s smile.”

“Who?”

“C’mon, Jake. Why’d you throw in the towel?”

“Their orthopod was giving her a fifty percent disability of the upper-right extremity, fifteen percent of the body as a whole, and she’s got a whole lot of body. Plus she’s got an MRI printout that looks like the Milky Way and her expert is talking nerve damage. Then, there’s Mister Fraga-Freitas, who’s got his lost consortium claim. Says their sex life headed south, or as he put it, ‘ de mal en peor.’”

“What’s a broken collarbone got to do with sex?”

“I was dying to ask and hoping the answer had something to do with a trapeze or a chandelier.”

“So you settled, just like that?”

“I also had a short trial judge, a short plaintiff’s lawyer, and a short guy on the jury who might have ended up the foreman.”

“Not your Napoleonic complex theory again. What about your defenses? Remember, she showed up for her depo wearing glasses, but the day of the accident…”

“Yes, my performance could have rivaled Clarence Darrow’s in the Leopold and Loeb trial. ‘And now, Mrs. Fraga-Freitas, isn’t it true that when you did your half gainer into the soda display, you were not wearing your bifocals?’”

The elevator stopped at twenty-one, and a cleaning crew got in and rode to twenty-two, where they got off.

Cindy said, “Well anyway, it was something to try. The MP’s not going to be happy if he thinks you gave the store away.”

MP being Managing Partner, not Member of Parliament, though maybe it stood for Major Prick, too. “Yeah, Cindy, I know.”

“I mean, San Pedro’s Supermercado is his client.”

“Yeah, but who does he turn to when they’re in trouble. Who got them off the hook on health code violations?”

“I remember,” she said.

“Cockroaches in the frijoles negros. Story of my life.”

“Don’t knock it. Your closing argument was great.”

Lassiter lowered his voice and spoke to an invisible jury. ” ‘So what if there’s a little thorax with the beans, a hairy antenna with the rice. Once you mix in the onions and spices, who can tell?’”

“Don’t forget the part about insects being considered delicacies in certain parts of the world,” Cindy reminded him.

The elevator stopped at thirty-two with a soft whoosh, and Lassiter held the door open.

“I still don’t know why you settled,” Cindy said. “Your experts would contradict hers, plus you had a chance to win on liability.”

“No way. All the witnesses except Mr. San Pedro agreed the papaya was the color of licorice, meaning it had been on the floor long enough that some produce worker should have cleaned it up, if they all weren’t smoking reefer out on the loading dock.”

“So you caved in?”

“I settled. I didn’t want to lose.”

They walked together in silence along the burgundy-carpeted corridor of Harman amp; Fox. The walls were tastefully decorated with oil paintings of the British men’s club variety: hunting dogs, whaling ships, and leather riding gear. Lassiter always thought a school of feeding sharks would be more appropriate but the partners’ art subcommittee, which reported to the facilities committee, which in turn reported to the finance committee, never took him seriously.

Few of the lawyers were in their offices. It was usually that way. Fifty bucks a square foot for a view of the ocean, and hardly anyone was ever there. A few would be in court, a few might be interviewing witnesses, some would be goofing off at the racetrack, but others were just not accounted for, except when they padded their time sheets with the catchall entry for “research.”

“I didn’t think that’s the way you played the game,” Cindy said finally. “Just trying not to lose.”

“Maybe you thought wrong, or maybe that was another game. I decided I was saving San Pedro money by settling, and that happens to be my job.”

“Some job,” Cindy said.

“It is unnecessary to remind me that playing poker with half-assed lawyers and cantankerous judges is insufficient grounds for sainthood. And speaking of jobs, why aren’t you doing yours?”

They stopped in front of Lassiter’s office. The door was open, files propped on the desk and credenza inside. The windows faced east squarely over Biscayne Bay, Miami Beach, and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.

“I needed to get out of the ant farm, find some inspiration,” Cindy answered. “Listen to this.”

November sky,

Bums in park,

Miami.

Lassiter winced. “Haiku again, another lily pad and teahouse phase?”

“It’s spiritually uplifting, you should try it.”

“Sure thing,” Lassiter said. “How’s this?”

Back to work,

Type, type, type.

Cindy.

“Oh, Jake, there’s more to life than work. Besides, there was another reason I went to the park. I wanted to see the body. A Colombian cowboy got snuffed and dumped in the piss pool.”

She swung a handful of zebra-striped nails in the general direction of Bayfront Park and the octagonal Claude and Mildred Pepper Fountain. Much to the dismay of the city fathers, the derelicts used the four-million-dollar fountain as a urinal. This was the first time, however, a drug dealer had practiced the dead man’s float there. Usually, when a deal soured, the losing entrepreneur turned up behind the wheel of a Ferrari at the bottom of a West Dade canal, a neat pattern of entry wounds at the base of his skull. No need for lawyers to resolve those disputes. A MAC-10 leaves no grounds for appeal.