Paul Levine: Fool Me Twice

Abe Socolow packed his briefcase, stopped by the defense table, gave me a friendly pop on the shoulder, and said, “Go figure, huh, Jake?” That was as close to a compliment as I would get.

“ I figure it was a compromise,” I told him. “Some wanted to acquit them both, some wanted to convict them both. You made Hornback look bad on cross, and they remembered that. Blinky never testified, so the lingering image was Hornback fidgeting on the stand. Just reinforces my long-standing rule against letting defendants testify.”

Socolow smiled grimly. “You mean letting guilty defendants testify.”

“ Let’s just say I don’t want a client to testify if he’s subject to impeachment on cross.”

“ You got a way with words,” Socolow said, hoisting his briefcase toward the door.

The rest of us sat there, the four horsemen of the defense, H. T. Patterson and his unhappy client, Blinky Baroso and little old me.

“ I don’t believe this shit.” It was Hornback, his handsome face flushed. He got to his feet and was leaning over Blinky. “You owe me, man. You coulda gotten me off if you’d pleaded out.

“ Kyle, Kyle baby,” Blinky said, in the same soothing voice I imagined he used when selling swampland to rubes from the Midwest. “You know I couldn’t do that. I’m on probation. I woulda done time.”

It was true. Two years ago, Blinky was convicted in the Dumpster Diver scam. Police found him up to his elbows in trash behind a rental car agency near the airport. One good dive, and he could come up with a dozen discarded rental contracts complete with credit card numbers. Then he’d order stereos, televisions, and battery-powered dildos from home shopping networks.

Hornback raised his voice. “Yeah, well maybe you’ll still do time if I cut a deal.” He swung to face his lawyer. “How ‘bout it, Mr. Patterson? You think the prosecutor still wants to talk?”

H.T. placed a calming hand on his client’s arm. “I, too, am confounded and confused. However, now is not the time to discuss such weighty matters. After a good night’s sleep, we’ll pursue every avenue, explore every venue…”

“ Climb every mountain,” I added, helpfully.

“ It’ll be okay, Kyle,” Blinky said. “I’ll take responsibility.”

Hornback snorted a mirthless laugh. “Yeah, will you do my time?”

“ Kyle, we stand together. That was the plan.”

“ Me getting convicted was not the plan. You said we’d both be acquitted or only you would be convicted. You never said nothing about this.”

Blinky shrugged. “I didn’t think it would turn out this way. Did you, Counselor?”

I shook my head. “You can never tell with a jury.”

“ Well, I can tell you one thing,” Kyle Hornback said, his face hardening. “I get time, I’ve got some things to say to the state attorney. I got stories to tell. I got-”

“ Kyle, that’s enough!” Blinky tried to look tough. It didn’t work.

“ I’ll tell them about the tunnels in the mountains and what’s in them, and what’s not,” Hornback said, his voice rising. “You sold stock across state lines, so it’s federal. They’ll send you to Marion where some hard cases will pass you around like a volleyball.”

“ It’s a perfectly legitimate venture, and you don’t know anything about it,” Blinky announced with such conviction and a flapping of eyelashes I was sure he told two lies in one sentence.

“ I see there’s no honor among thieves,” Josefina Jovita Baroso said, sneaking up behind us, the same way she did in the Gaslight. She turned to me. “I suppose I should congratulate you, Jake. You hoodwinked the jury, so they convicted the lesser of two evils. That is the hallmark of the defense lawyer, is it not, to obfuscate the facts until the jury can only guess?”

“ Funny, I thought my job was to force the state to prove its case. Abe didn’t do it, so your brother goes free. That’s the way the game is played.”

“ That’s what it is to you, isn’t it, a game?”

“ Sure, it’s got rules, like any other game. You can’t bang into the receiver when the ball’s in the air. You can’t admit hearsay, even if it’s the truth.”

“ The rules are intended to do justice, not thwart it.”

“ Yeah, well justice doesn’t enjoy an intimate relationship with the law, and you damn well know it.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she lowered her voice. “I didn’t realize it before, but you’re just like all the rest of them.”

“ Them?”

“ Silver-tongued shysters who can rationalize their every act. It must come with the territory, with the briefcase full of tricks and the amusing stories about bamboozling judges and juries.”

“ Give me a break, Josie. Some of us just plod along, doing our jobs. We all can’t be as saintly as you.”

Josefina Jovita Baroso turned on her heel and stormed out. I started to say something, but Blinky was stirring next to me. “Let her go. You can’t win an argument with her.”

I sat there a moment while Patterson and his client headed out of the courtroom. As he got to the door, Kyle Hornback shot us a look over his shoulder. “I’m warning you, Baroso. You’ve got to make good to me.”

Patterson took his client by the arm and hustled him into the corridor, leaving just Blinky and me, unless you count the portraits of long-deceased judges with fine crops of chin whiskers.

“ He’s full of shit,” Blinky said. “Don’t worry about anything, Jake.”

“ Me? Why should I worry. You’re the one he’s threatening.”

“ He’s a con man. I ought to know. I taught him the trade.”

I packed my trial bag, and Blinky started down the aisle without waiting for me. “Well, I guess that’s it, Jake,” he called back to me. “Thanks for a great job.”

“ There’s one more thing,” I said.

Blinky stopped by the door, poking his head back at me, resembling a rabbit sniffing the air for danger. “What’s that, Jake?”

“ There’s the matter of the fee.”

We were fishing in the saltwater flats off Key Largo, baking in the heat of a cloudless, still June morning. More accurately, Granny Lassiter was fishing, Doc Charlie Riggs was reminiscing, a skinny, towheaded kid whose name I didn’t catch was pouting, and I was poling the skiff through the shallow water, simultaneously working up a sweat, a headache, and a sunburn.

“ Jake, you look a tad green around the gills,” Granny said. “You’re not coming down with the grippe, are you?”

I grunted a negative response, and Granny announced, “Boy always took ill at the worst times. Made me miss a billfish tournament once when he caught the flu.”

“ I was only eight, Granny. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Charlie Riggs cleared his throat. “Have I told you two about the case of the poisoned nasal spray?”

“ Not recently,” I said.

“ Oh hush up, Jake,” Granny admonished me. “I’d rather listen to Doc’s yarns than hear about criminals you’ve helped keep on the streets.”

Ouch. Why’s everyone on my case these days? Now there were two of us pouting.

Charlie gnawed on a cold meerschaum pipe, waiting for a break in the Lassiter family banter. He had been county coroner for twenty-five years, and in retirement, his interests had expanded from corpses to virtually every bit of knowledge worth knowing and a lot that wasn’t. Doc Riggs was a short, bandy legged, bushy-bearded cherub with bright brown eyes behind eyeglasses that were slightly cockeyed, probably because one of the hinges was held together with a bent fishhook where a screw had long since dropped out. Charlie was wearing green work pants cut off at the knees, an army camouflage T-shirt, and a Florida Marlins cap. His nose was smeared with gooey, white sun block.