Paul Levine - False Dawn

“And isn’t it commonly called the tenderloin?”

Another pause. “I’ve heard it mentioned.”

“I’m sure you have,” I said quietly, causing the judge to stir, but no objection rose from the plaintiff’s table. H. T. Patterson knew when not to call attention to his client’s squirming. “Now, my client’s frozen food product, Percy’s Perfect Chickee Tender, also uses chicken from the tenderloin, does it not?”

“If you say so.”

“Oh, come now, Mr. Middleton. You hired a testing lab at great expense to analyze my client’s product.”

“Objection!” Patterson was on his feet, realizing there’s also a time to protect your witness. A former preacher at the Liberty City Baptist Church, my learned opponent was resplendent in a white linen three-piece suit. He stood ramrod straight, which took him to five-feet-five on his tippy-toes. “Mr. Lassiter is baiting, bedeviling, and badgering my client,” Patterson railed in his seductive revival meeting singsong. “If counsel were a novice at the bar, we could forgive his transgressions, but given his experience, his erudition, his perspicacity, yea, his very wisdom, acumen, and sagacity, we must consider these malefactions to be intentional violations of the rules of evidence and trial procedure.”

Was he talking about me, a guy who got straight C’s in law school because they didn’t offer phys ed?

“Sustained,” intoned Judge Harold Bricklin, a man of imposing girth and sour demeanor. “Ask questions, Mr. Lassiter, and refrain from comments on the testimony.” That was a mild rebuke from someone whose idea of judicial restraint is not plugging obstreperous lawyers with the seven-shot 380 Walther PPK he carried under his flowing black robes.

“ Did you hire a testing lab-”

“Yes, yes. Your client uses the same meat.” Middleton was growing edgy.

“So you don’t contend Percy’s Perfect Chickee Tender is misrepresenting its product?”

I knew the answer, of course. One of the trial lawyer’s oldest tricks is to exclude allegations against his client that have never been made.

“No.”

“And you don’t claim trademark infringement?”

“No.”

“And you can’t possibly contend that consumers are confused, since my client’s products are sold only in supermarkets while yours are sold only in your own fast-food convenience stores.”

I tried to make “fast-food” sound like toxic scum.

“Well, maybe not,” he allowed, “but Percy’s trading off our name. We created consumer name identification with our advertising, and they’re-”

“Thank you, Mr. Middleton. Nothing further.”

I left him stammering while H. T. Patterson rose, bowed to the jury, buttoned his suit coat, and stroked the pink carnation in his lapel. Patterson knew he could still rehabilitate his client on re-direct.

Percy Tucker looked fat and happy as I sat down next to him. They always do when someone else is skewered on the witness stand. His turn would come.

“Now, Mr. Middleton,” Patterson began in a tone of affection and deep respect, “how much money did your company expend on market research, consumer testing, and the like?”

I didn’t hear the answer because Percy was whispering suggestions in my ear. Clients always second-guess their lawyers-and often sue them-so it’s good to listen, or at least pretend. I doodled on a yellow pad so the jury thought I was taking notes. Percy was saying the jurors should taste both companies’ products. I wasn’t sure. The opposition’s chicken was soaked in a slimy grease, while Percy’s was dry, stringy, and coated with salt. I didn’t want to make the jurors sick and risk a mistrial. Trying this case once was enough.

At the end of the day, Marvin the Maven stopped me in the corridor. “Even though you didn’t ask, Jake, I think you’re meshuga, leaving on that woman, number four.”

Mrs. Kvajic. Late forties, a handsome woman with a big smile. “Dr. Weiner liked her earrings,” I said. “Large hoops, a little flamboyant. Figured she’d go for the chicken farmer over the big company.”

Marvin screwed his face into a septuagenarian’s pout. “Earrings, schmearrings. Did you look at her shoes, boychik? Charles Jourdan, three hundred bucks at Mayfair. She’s establishment all the way.”

Then Marvin walked away muttering to himself, not telling me how much I needed him.

The waiter served hors d’oeuvres on a silver tray.

I turned down the phyllo triangles stuffed with curried chicken and headed for the table stocked with iced-down stone crabs. On a small stage, a woman plucked at the strings of a harp, lending a formal air to the festivities. I gathered my beer and a plate of crabs and parked myself in front of an ice sculpture that towered over a bowl of shrimp. At parties, you can always find me within a fourth-and-one of the food.

I heard his voice before I saw him.

“There are four manners of death-accident, suicide, natural, and homicide-and the coroner’s first job is to ascertain one from the other.”

Doc Charlie Riggs was surrounded by a gaggle of young women. Most were taller than the bandy-legged and bearded wizard. The women wore cocktail dresses and jewelry that sparkled in the flickering reflection of the patio torches. We were on the broad expanse of red Spanish tile behind a Mediterranean mansion on Palm Island, one of the luxury landfills between Miami and Miami Beach. Years ago, Al Capone was an island resident. The current neighbors-lawyers, investment bankers, bond traders-aren’t as law-abiding.

“Right before I retired,” Doc Riggs was saying, “we had a hanging death that baffled the detectives. They couldn’t determine if it was suicide or homicide. A thirty-year-old married man was found in a hotel room. Bound, gagged, and dead. He was wearing a black brassiere and matching panties. His ankles were bound with a clothesline fastened to a dog collar around his neck. The body was positioned so that the man could see himself in the mirror, at least while he was alive. The panties were stained with seminal fluid.”

“A ritualistic torture murder?” one of the women guessed. She was a platinum blonde who squirmed with delight inside a skintight red leather mini.

“Colombian cowboys?” another offered, licking her glossy lips. “A revenge killing in a drug war. Or maybe a Santeria ritual?”

“A transvestite’s suicide?” said a third, a willowy model in a bare-shouldered silk dress patterned with cheetahs.

While the women were cooing and fluttering, Doc Riggs scratched his bushy beard. He pulled off his old eyeglasses, still mended with a fishhook where they had tossed a screw. “No, no, no, just like the police, you’ve come to a consensus audacium, a rash agreement. You’ve all assumed it was a homicide or a suicide.”

“But what else could it be?” asked the one in red leather, somewhat petulantly.

“ Non semper ea sunt quae videntur. Things are not always what they appear to be. Or as Gilbert and Sullivan put it in song-”

“‘Things are seldom what they seem,’” I chimed in. “‘Skim milk masquerades as cream.’”

Charlie whirled toward me. “Eureka! Jacob Lassiter, my favorite downtown mouthpiece. Jake, do you know these young ladies?” Charlie gestured toward his admirers with his drink and wrinkled his forehead. “Gracious, I do believe I have forgotten your names, but they all end in v’s, i’s, and double e’s. Candy, Bambi, Sandee, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, say hello to Jake Lassiter, shyster to the stars. So, Jake, what was the cause of death?”

“Got me, Charlie. And not for the first time.”

“Accident!” Charlie thundered. “Sexual asphyxia. A botched attempt at a rather elaborate masturbation. The deceased intended to heighten sexual pleasure by increasing pressure on his neck. You probably know that Eskimos often choke each other during sex.”