Paul Levine - Mortal Sin

“The computer printout in the truck,” Charlie said. “Describe it, please.”

“Just a bunch of squiggly lines, like an EKG.”

He scowled at me. “You might have thought to bring it with you.”

“Hey, Charlie. I was traveling light. I didn’t even have pants.”

“Sorry. Let’s have a look at where you found the truck.”

The sandwich arrived, but I slid my plate away and spread the map over the counter. Charlie studied it, then tapped a pudgy finger on what looked like a tiny island among hundreds of others. “A-653-G2,” he said, reading the handwritten notation. “That’s where you were. Notice anything different about A-653-GI?”

I looked at a hammock maybe a mile away. “It’s underlined. That’s all.”

“How about A-653-G3?”

It took me a while to find it. “Not underlined.”

“Which means what?”

“I don’t know, Charlie. C’mon. I got bored with the Socratic method my first semester in night law school.”

“Not only does the numbering system identify the islands, it’s the order they’re being examined.” His finger stayed on A-653-G3. “You were on G2. So were the workers, maybe a day or two before you got there. Next, your boys are headed to G3. Think you could find it?”

I looked at the map. A hammock like all the others. Teardrop-shaped, with the fatter end toward the north. The southerly water flow tended to erode the hammocks in that direction. “Not quickly, I couldn’t. You get out there, they all look alike. It’d take a week.”

“What about from the air?”

“Yeah, maybe. But so what? Do you know what’s going on out there?”

“I think so.”

“What! What is it?”

“ Sapiens nihil affirmat quod non prohat. A wise man states as true nothing he cannot prove.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? What am I going to do when I find the hammock?”

Charlie smiled at me. It was the sad smile of the patient teacher to the slow student. “You’re a lawyer, Jake. What is it that you do?”

“Breach confidences, commit malpractice, sleep with my client’s wife. Why do you ask?”

Charlie frowned with disapproval. “As I understand what you’ve told me, there’s a hearing tomorrow…” He looked at his watch. “Dear me, look at the time. There’s a Water Management Board hearing today at two P.M. in Belle Glade. The press will be there. The public will be there. Environmental groups will be out in force. You’ve got to find your witnesses, Jake. You’ve got to present your testimony. You’ve got to win your case.”

Shrimp boats were chugging down the Miami River, heading out on their predawn runs. Across the black water, the high-rises on Miami Beach blinked in the darkness. I sat in the isolation of my thirty-second-floor office, thinking and waiting.

One chance. A long shot. Even if Charlie was right, I didn’t know if I could bring it off. Like a double reverse to the wideout coming around, the timing had to be perfect. I needed a witness who would talk, a public forum to hear what he had to say, and enough people around to keep me from getting a machete in the back. And I needed it all by two o’clock this afternoon.

Cindy arrived at 3:00 A.M., bleary-eyed and curly-haired. Copper-colored curls, tight against her skull, like a 1920s flapper. She wore white jeans and a red T-shirt emblazoned SOME GIRLS DON’T, BUT I JUST MIGHT.

“What happened to the blond look?” I asked.

“What happened to nine-to-five? What happened to a boss who shows up for work, who still has his ticket to practice law, who isn’t being chased by-”

“You fall out the wrong side of someone’s bed?”

“ My bed, and it didn’t please Miguel one bit.”

“Miguel? The firm messenger?”

“He can tote the mail. Now what’s so urgent?”

“You still take shorthand?”

“With my eyes closed, which they Ye gonna be if you don’t-”

“Okay, take a lawsuit. A class-action suit, Jane Lassiter and all others similarly situated versus Environmental Systems, Inc., Florio Enterprises, Inc., Nicholas Florio, and a few others I’ll make up as I go along. Are you taking this down?”

She picked up a pad and pencil. “Did you say Jane?”

“Sounds better than Granny in a formal pleading, don’t you think?”

So I dictated, and she scribbled. A suit for violation of every federal, state, and county environmental law I could find, plus some that ought to be on the books but aren’t. By dawn, crisp double-spaced sheets were flowing from the laser printer, and when the clerk’s office opened at 8:00 A.M., we’d have a pending suit and officially issued subpoenas.

In the partners’ lounge, I splashed water on my face and changed into a dark blue suit, white shirt, and burgundy tie that always hang in my office closet for emergencies. After Cindy collated and stapled all the copies of the lawsuit, we drove in her car to the courthouse, where she paid the filing fees in cash. I dropped her off at the Metromover station with instructions to deliver copies to the newspaper and have Miguel do the same for the television stations, assuming he could still walk. Then I headed toward Tamiami Airport.

Hank Scourby flew F-4 Phantom II fighter-bombers in Vietnam. He survived a dose of the clap, a botched carrier landing that cost the taxpayers an aircraft, and the bombing of a Saigon brothel that broke both his eardrums. He came home a skilled pilot and a paranoid schizophrenic with a drug problem.

Scourby retired to Homestead, thirty miles south of Miami, tended a garden for a few years, then took up piloting 727s for East Coast Airlines. In those days, he drove a red Corvette that had a habit of bashing into parked cars in back of late-night saloons. I helped him keep his FA A license by beating threeDUII charges. Just another public service by your neighborhood lawyer.

When the airline sank into the morass of bankruptcy, Scourby began flying charter helicopters for one of the few companies that didn’t bring drugs in from the islands. I tossed some business his way, usually when I needed aerial photographs for a case.

Today, Scourby wore a U.S. Navy jumpsuit and tied his shoulder-length gray hair into a ponytail under his helmet. His bloodshot eyes tended to dart back and forth when he was excited and to glaze over when he was not.

I showed him the map. “Can you find this little island? A-653-G3.”

“Find it? I could fucking napalm it.”

Hank did a visual check of a four-seat helicopter, told me to climb aboard, chanted a Buddhist prayer to bless our journey, then got in next to me. He chattered to the tower, revved up the engine, then, in that up-up-and-away sweep peculiar to helicopters, we were airborne. We headed west, passing over town houses and tract homes of the suburban sprawl. Below us were strip shopping centers with empty parking lots and mounting vacancies. What used to be the eastern edge of the Everglades was a tangle of curving streets, barrel-tiled roofs, and turquoise swimming pools.

In a few minutes, the endless concrete and asphalt disappeared. Patches of saw grass, a wet prairie unfolded, the morning sun bursting off the water. From five hundred feet, the tracks of swamp buggies were clearly visible, scars in the tawny pelt of grass. A flash of movement, and a small white-tailed deer splashed through the water.

We soared over the national park, the water deeper and darker in the Shark River Slough. Turning north, we crossed Tamiami Trail and headed for the Big Cypress Swamp. We passed over mudflats and marshy hammocks, sparse trees, and thick forests. We watched the terrain change from pine rockland to mangrove swamps to cypress heads. We flew through morning mist and emerged into brilliant sunlight, watching the shadow of the helicopter skirt across the dark water below.