Paul Levine - False Dawn

“Your expert witnesses have examined the rubbery object, plaintiff’s exhibit one, have they not?” I asked.

“They better have, after the bill I got.”

“And they told you that the object was not a condom, correct?”

“Objection!” H. T. Patterson was on his feet, poking a finger in my direction. “Hearsay and irrelevant. The report speaks for itself, and it doesn’t matter what my client thinks about it.”

“I think it cost too much money,” Mrs. Schwartzbaum told the judge and jury.

“Your Honor,” I pleaded, “the report’s in evidence. I’m merely eliciting evidence that will establish the plaintiff’s state of mind. It’s relevant to the damage issue.”

Judge Boulton pulled a pencil out of her 1950s bouffant, made a note on a legal pad, and allowed as how the objection was overruled.

I looked at the witness and waited.

Mrs. Schwartzbaum shrugged her shoulders. “Sure, they said it was one of those little whatchamacallits…”

“Finger cots?”

“… so they don’t slice their filthy fingernails into your salad with the cucumbers.”

“And you learned this within days of the incident, did you not?”

“Yeah, so what?” Suspicious now.

“ So, in the restaurant, when you screamed at the top of your lungs that you were going to catch AIDS from…” I riffled through the transcript of the previous day’s proceedings even though I knew the line by heart. “‘… from the grimy Haitian wetback who jerked off in my salad,’ you were obviously mistaken.”

“I don’t know which island the kitchen help comes from, if that’s what you mean,” she said.

“What I mean is you now are secure in the knowledge that you will not contract a disease from eating at Norma’s Natural Food Emporium, correct?”

“I wouldn’t go back there for a million dollars.”

Funny, a million bucks was her settlement demand. I turned to the judge. “Your Honor, the witness is not being responsive.”

Sylvia Schwartzbaum sighed. “That’s what Harry says. Ever since they poisoned me, I’ve not been responsive. Now, we don’t even have relations. It’s his lost-consorting claim.”

“Consortium,’’ her lawyer, H. T. Patterson, piped up.

“In that case, Harry should pay my client,” I stage-whispered a tad too loud.

“Mr. Lassiter!” Judge Boulton was seldom awake long enough to get involved in the proceedings. But now Dixie Lee was steamed, and my old buddy Patterson was not doing me any favors, prancing around, demanding a sidebar where he accused me of multitudinous sins.

“Atrocious and abominable, disgraceful and dastardly,” Patterson began in the singsong he had perfected as a one-time preacher at the Liberty City Baptist Church. “Impudent and insolent, an utterly appalling, barbarous breach of ethics to make such a shameful statement in front of the jury…”

Oh, I don’t know. A couple of them had nodded their heads with appreciation and one laughed out loud.

“Despicable and defamatory, disgusting and detestable, vile and vulgar, repulsive and repugnant.” Patterson was on his toes now, chin thrust forward, strutting his stuff. I knew it was an act, and I would have to wait it out. Patterson did have an unfortunate habit, however, of bouncing close and spraying me with saliva as he worked himself into a frenzy. It reminded me of a recent study, which concluded that male trial lawyers have more testosterone than their brethren who practice real estate, tax, or corporate law. The psychologist learned this by testing saliva, a few globs of which were now affixed to my Italian silk tie. I always thought Patterson’s pugnaciousness had more to do with being five feet five than overdosing on male hormones.

He was still going. “Calumnious and…”

“Contemptuous,” Judge Boulton helped him out. “Twenty-four hours in the county stockade, Mr. Lassiter.”

I like quiet contemplation. A day and night behind bars was neither novel nor particularly unsettling. In a trial a few years ago, a judge ordered me not to ask a cop if he was under investigation by Internal Review. I persisted, and the judge warned me that one more question and he’d send me to a place I’d never been.

“Already been to jail,” I told him.

“Not jail,” the judge said. “Law school.”

I was even held in contempt once for telling a good-natured joke to a judge who had just ruled against me.

“What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of fifty?” I asked.

The judge shrugged.

“Your Honor,” I answered.

I don’t mind some time away from home. I don’t have a dog to walk, a bird to feed, or grass to cut. No feminine companion awaits me at the door, a duck roasting in the oven. The women come and go, and life stays the same though their faces change. There were stewardesses when they were still called that, a real estate broker with a penthouse condo, more than one South Beach model with tales of Milan and Paris and how our humidity is hell on the hair, a nurse who held my hand when I tore ligaments in a knee, a statuesque literature professor from Yugoslavia who could outcuss Granny Lassiter and didn’t disparage Hemingway, a Dolphin cheerleader to whom every new experience was either “far out” or “queer,” and who left me for a commodities broker with a yacht. And there, too, was the sportswriter I let down when she needed me to protect her. Since then, I hadn’t let anybody need me.

I always take a good book and my first baseman’s mitt when I get sent up. I never apologize, post bond, or seek rehearing. I’m not sure why, but it may have something to do with the stubborn streak I inherited from my granny.

The stockade is not so bad, even if the food tends to the starchy side. The prisoners are no more reprehensible than most of my partners and more forthright about their chicanery. There’s a good set of weights and a decent softball field. I like playing first base because there’s plenty of action, and you don’t have far to run.

So now I stood on the field in shorts and sneakers, a Marlins cap and dark shades. I had just fielded a bunt and flipped it home trying to nip a cat burglar on a squeeze play. He had quick feet, and the catcher, a sago palm thief, had bad hands, so the run scored.

“A day late and a dollar short,” someone said behind me.

I turned around to find Abe Socolow. Squinting into the sun, the state attorney wore his customary funeral suit, a cigarette locked in his lips. “Want to take a turn at bat, Abe? We need a designated killjoy.”

“ You need a lawyer.”

“Not me. Done my hard time. Getting out at two o’clock, thirty minutes off for good behavior.”

I was trying to hold the runner on the base and banter with Socolow at the same time. Complicating the task was my awareness of the runner’s vocation as a pickpocket. I didn’t like him behind me.

“We gotta talk.” Socolow dropped his cigarette and ground it into the base path. He looked out of place on a ballfield. In fact, he looked out of place anywhere but under the sickly fluorescent lighting of the Justice Building. He belonged there with the vaguely institutional smell, the incessant din of official commotion. He brought order to a disordered world, and did it as if he alone had the power. Sweat beaded on his high forehead, and in the sunlight, I could see his dark hair was thinning on top. “I got a call from Washington this morning. Someone asking a lot of questions about you.”

The pitcher, a con man who had perfected the pigeon drop and the week-late lottery scam, used a windmill windup, then threw a change-up. The batter was so far in front of the pitch he twisted himself into a pretzel on his follow-through.

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “I’m about to be nominated for the Supreme Court.”