Paul Levine: Fool Me Twice

These days, I represent a higher grade of dirtbag. My clients are too smart to pistol-whip a liquor store clerk for a hundred bucks in the till. But they might sell paintings by a coked-out South Beach artist as undiscovered works by Salvador Dali, or ship vials of yogurt as prize bull semen, or hawk land on Machu Picchu as the treasure trove of the Incas. All of which Blinky Baroso did, at one time or another. Sometimes twice.

But back to ethics. I’m not interested in the rules made up by bar association bigwigs in three-piece suits who gather in ritzy hotels to celebrate their own self-importance. Their rules are intended to protect clients and industries with the most money. It’s just like my old game, which they sissified to protect the lah-de-dah quarterbacks. To me, a late hit is just a reminder that football is a contact sport.

Anyway, as far as I could tell, no one in courtroom 4-2 of the Justice Building was zealously engaged in truth seeking at the moment. My client had a more elementary quest. Blinky Baroso merely sought a not-guilty verdict (“Gimme a big N.G., Jake”) so he could resume his career of shams, swindles, and sleight-of-hand business deals.

Judge Herman Gold, peering at us over his rimless spectacles, just wanted a verdict-any verdict-in time to play a couple of quinielas at the jai alai fronton.

Chief Prosecutor Abe Socolow, looking appropriately funereal in his black suit, wanted another slam-dunk guilty verdict to add to his ninety-six percent conviction rate.

The jurors gave no indication of wanting anything at all, although number five, a female bus driver, looked like she had to pee. It was a fairly typical jury by Miami standards. Besides the bus driver, we had a body piercer (noses, nipples, and ears), a shark hunter, a lobster poacher, a county kosher meat inspector, and a self-proclaimed show girl, who was telling half the truth, since she was a he who performed at a cross-dresser’s club on South Beach.

The jurors sat, poker-faced (except for the squirming bus driver), occasionally shivering in the air-conditioning, usually staring into space, once in a while smiling at an inadvertent witticism. Trials are usually so stultifyingly boring that the slightest glimmer of humor is nearly as welcome as the mid-afternoon recess. When I was a newly minted lawyer, having just passed the bar in what was most likely a computer glitch, a judge asked my first client, a repeat offender car thief, if he wanted a bench trial or a jury trial.

“ Jury trial,” my client responded, somewhat hesitantly.

“ Do you know the difference?” the judge asked.

“ Sure, Judge. A jury trial is six ignorant people instead of one.”

Ah, from the mouths of babes and felons.

Abe Socolow was still droning on about the evil deeds of Blinky Baroso, whose eyes fluttered three times whenever he was nervous, or whenever he told a fib. His eyes had been flapping like Venetian blinds the last four days.

“ You have heard the testimony,” Socolow said, his long, lean frame hunched over the podium. “Louie Baroso and Kyle Hornback are con men, pure and simple.”

Blinky leaned close and gave me another whiff of his partially digested sopa de frijoles negros. “Nobody calls me Louie,” he protested, as if we could use that point on appeal.

“ These unscrupulous men used what is known as affinity fraud,” Socolow continued. “By pretending to be born-again Christians, they ingratiated themselves into the lives of decent, God-fearing citizens at the West Kendall Baptist Church. They conned hundreds of thousands of dollars from their victims, who were taken in by promises of huge returns on their investments. These criminals wove a clever web of deception, promising both profits and holy redemption. The parishioners, honest citizens all, were induced to spend their retirement funds on diamond investment scams only to learn that Mr. Baroso and Mr. Hornback never bought the diamonds. Where did the money go? Into the pockets of Louie Baroso and his underling, Kyle Hornback.”

Blinky whispered something in my ear that sounded like caveat emptor.

“ Next, you heard proof of the real estate scam. Su casa, mi casa . Your house, my house. You heard how Mr. Baroso was a regular visitor in the real estate deed room of the courthouse…”

“ Is that a crime?” Baroso grumbled.

“…where he researched titles on various expensive homes. Then Mr. Hornback, armed with a fake driver’s license and the legal description of the property, persuaded banks that he was the owner, and secured loans on other people’s property. Again, honest citizens were shocked to learn that second and third mortgages were recorded on their properties.”

“ So what, the title insurance company paid,” Blinky whined. “The owners didn’t get hurt.”

At the far end of the defense table, Kyle Hornback, a handsome young man whose clean, chiseled features disguised a reservoir of guile, was scratching furiously on a legal pad. If the jurors looked at his lawyer, H. T. Patterson, they would see a smile so confident, it stopped just short of smugness. H.T. had been around long enough to know the first rule of the trial lawyer: Never let them see your fear.

“ Now, when I sit down,” Socolow continued, removing his eyeglasses and pinching the top of his nose, “Mr. Lassiter is going to tell you that there is no direct evidence against his client, Louie Baroso. He is going to tell you that all the victims dealt with the salesman, Kyle Hornback.”

I just love it when the opposition makes my closing argument for me.

“ But you are entitled to use your common sense. Who was the boss? Whose name appeared on all the fraudulent paperwork? Who gave Kyle Hornback his marching orders? You all know who.”

Or was it whom? I never know the difference.

“ Louie Baroso, that’s who,” Socolow announced, cranking up the volume.

Just then, the ornate wooden door to the courtroom opened with its usual squeak. Three of the jurors looked that way, and three didn’t. One of the alternates sneaked a peek, and the other didn’t. Okay, so half were paying close attention. About average.

I swung around, too. A tall young woman walked through the door and down the aisle that split the nearly empty gallery. She sat down at the end of one of the church pews in the first row.

Josefina Jovita Baroso. I used to call her Jo Jo, although I suppose the correct pronunciation would be Ho Ho. And we did have some laughs, as well as tears.

“ Why’s your sister here?” I whispered.

Blinky shrugged. “To wish me bad luck. Maybe you, too. Too much history.”

History.

Blinky was right. How many years since we had met? I was still playing ball, Blinky was a small-time bookie who hadn’t yet Americanized his name by adding an “o” to Luis, and Jo Jo was a poli-sci major at Florida State. Blinky asked me to Christmas dinner at his mother’s home on Fonseca, just a block off Ponce de Leon in Little Havana. Why not? I’d blown five grand with him during the last season alone, without once betting on a Dolphins game. I’ve got ethics, you know.

Senora Baroso was cooking a whole pig, lechon asado, in the backyard when Josefina Jovita walked through the wrought-iron gate past the lawn statue of the Virgin Mary. Jo Jo was toting her books and laundry in an army-green duffel bag, and she looked at me with bright, dark, fearless eyes. We sat outside at a redwood picnic table, telling our life stories while sharing the juca con mojo, and over espresso and flan, I asked whether she’d like to be my guest at the Jets game Sunday, maybe come over to the house afterward. She didn’t say no.

History.

We became friends, then lovers. Looking back, I cared more for her than she did for me. To her, I was a project. Mature beyond her years, Jo Jo encouraged me to apply to law school when my demi-career was fading. My other choices were tending bar or becoming the assistant to the regional vice president of a beer distributor. I went to law school, and so did she. But we headed down different paths. I always rooted for the underdog, so the P.D.’s office was a natural. She was less forgiving of human failings, so the prosecutor’s office was a second home.