Paul Levine: Mortal Sin

Charlie took a sip of his lemonade and said, “A few years ago, a body turned up in Bayfront Park. It was July. A lad in his late teens, frozen stiff as a board and banged up a bit. Nobody could figure out what the deuce had happened. We checked the local meat lockers, ice plants, that sort of thing. I did the autopsy. Cause of death was asphyxia. Checked the inventory of his pockets. No wallet, no ID, no nothing except an Eastern Air Lines schedule and a hundred colons in Costa Rican currency. Of course, that solved the mystery.”

“It did?”

“The poor wretch had no visa and no money for a ticket, so he crawled into the wheel well of a jet at the airport in San Jose. There’s space up there that a man-well, not someone your size, but this fellow-could fit into. The wheel well isn’t pressurized, and if the lack of oxygen hadn’t killed him, the temperature would have.”

“The fall probably didn’t do him any good, either,” I speculated.

A group of Hare Krishnas chanted and bangled their way along the sidewalk, sweat glistening on their shaved heads. I took a bite of my cheeseburger. South Beach overflows with chichi cafes where the pasta is al dente and the tuna rare, but I’m still a burger-and-brew guy. I’m as health-conscious as the next guy, as long as the next guy is sitting on a barstool, but there are limits. It doesn’t bother me if someone waxes poetic about the joys of bean sprouts. If a scrawny woman feasts on grapefruit and lettuce, fine. If a guy is a vegetarian jogger, that’s great, too, though most look as if they couldn’t buck a force-three wind. I don’t tell other people how to live, and I appreciate reciprocity.

Once when I was chomping a cheeseburger with a side of fries at an outdoor cafe in Coconut Grove, a fragile-looking guy in a gold velour warmup suit and white bicycling helmet stopped short at my table. “I’d hate to see the inside of your arteries,” he said somberly.

“Fine,” I responded, taking a long swallow of my chocolate shake. “I’ll tear your heart out, and we’ll look at yours.”

He blinked and took a step backward. “Eat yourself to death, if you want. All that animal fat leads to cardiac arrest and the excess protein causes kidney failure.”

“So does a good left hook,” I advised him.

I don’t believe in being judgmental. You eat your tofu, I’ll eat my T-bone. Today, though, it was a rare burger with purple onions, ripe tomato slices, and tangy mustard on a fresh-baked roll. A nice slab of melted Jarlsberg cheese to keep the juices in the meat. With all the pasta and sushi places, it isn’t easy to find a good burger any more, so it’s a real quiniela if the same place also serves Grolsch, the Dutch beer.

“You say Mr. Tupton had been drinking?” Charlie asked.

“Heavily.”

“And the room temperature was in the fifties?”

“Fifty-six, right on the button, and Tupton was soaking wet.”

In the street, several young men carried a banner protesting discrimination against AIDS victims. The Miami Beach bicycle cops patiently directed traffic around the demonstrators. Charlie smoothed his beard with the back of his hand. “That could do it. Once in a while, in the winter down here, with the ambient temperature in the fifties, we’ll see a homeless person die of hypothermia. If there’s been excessive alcohol intake, vasodilation is the killer. The blood vessels dilate, body temperature plummets. All kinds of complications can result, metabolic acidosis, elevations in serum amylase, and pancreatitis.” A shirtless man walked by, a bright green mynah perched on his shoulder. Hardly anyone turned to stare. “How long was Tupton in there?”

“Twelve, fourteen hours. The maid discovered him in the morning. When the paramedics arrived, his body temperature was seventy-seven degrees. No respiration, no heartbeat.”

“Ventricular fibrillation was the likely terminal event. Seems like he died of natural causes, so what’s the problem, Jake?”

I shrugged. I didn’t know. It was just this vague uneasiness. I took a bite of the burger and drained the beer.

“Any surprises in the autopsy?” asked the man who had performed twenty thousand before retiring to a life of fishing and reading medical texts in their original Latin.

“M.F. says no. Nothing unusual in the system other than the elevated blood alcohol. No signs of a struggle, no toxins, no puncture wounds…”

That made us both pause. I can’t read minds, but Charlie Riggs had to be thinking about a twenty-gauge hypodermic track in the buttocks of rich old Philip Corrigan. Dead old Philip Corrigan, but that’s another story.

“The report confirms what you said, Charlie. Ventricular fibrillation caused by hypothermia.”

“So all you’re dealing with is a wrongful-death suit. Just another dispute about money.”

“Right. Social-host liability.”

Charlie seemed to be studying the man-made sand dunes on the beach across Ocean Drive. “Who’s the plaintiff’s lawyer?”

“Henry Thackery Patterson.”

“H.T.’s good, though a trifle flamboyant for my tastes,” Charlie observed.

“He’s already filed a boilerplate complaint. Simple negligence for serving alcohol to an intoxicated guest. I’ll file an answer with the usual affirmative defenses, comparative negligence and assumption of the risk.”

“Blame it on the victim, eh?”

“Sure. The old defense gambit. The plaintiff caused his own harm, so don’t point the finger at the party hosts who had to keep the hors d’oevres moving.”

Charlie shook his head. “Whatever happened to the concept ‘ de mortuis nihil nisi bonum’?”

“Damned if I know.”

“Speak kindly of the dead,” Charlie translated.

“Why? They’re the only ones who can’t sue for slander.”

Charlie tut-tut-tutted and finished cleaning his plate of the eggplant goo with a swipe of his pita. “I still don’t know what’s troubling you. Talk to me, Jake.”

“Too many questions don’t have answers. Didn’t they miss Tupton at the party? Didn’t anybody see him go in there or see his car parked all night in the street in front of the house? How about his clothes, still hanging in a closet in a guest room?”

Charlie wrinkled his forehead. “You’re talking like a prosecutor now. You’ve been retained to defend a simple civil suit. Just do your job.”

Charlie was right. I should file my pleadings, take my depos, make my motions, and eventually settle the case before trial. The usual old soft-shoe. I was trying to treat this like any other case. I really was. But my mind was buzzing with other thoughts. Gina. Nicky. Tupton.

“Is there coverage?” Charlie asked.

“A million in homeowner’s, another five-million umbrella policy.”

“So, you have no downside. Win, you’re a hero. Lose, the insurance company pays. Why go looking for goblins in the night?”

“Hey, you’re the guy who taught me not to accept things at face value. ‘Things are seldom what they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream.’ That was you talking, Charlie. And how about this little ditty, ‘Seek the truth,’ or however the hell you say it.”

“Quaere verum,” he instructed me. “And you’re the lad who told me that isn’t the lawyer’s job.”

“It isn’t,” I said. “My job’s to take the facts handed to me and present the best case I can. I’m not supposed to dig for stuff that’ll hurt my client.”

“Like in Philip Corrigan’s grave.”

“Thanks for reminding me. Can you believe that’s coming back to haunt me now?” I mimicked Wilbert Faircloth’s weasel voice: “‘Would grave robbery be ethical to you, Dr. Riggs?’ Jeez, Charlie, I’m in for a public reprimand, maybe even a six-month suspension.”