Paul Levine - To speak for the dead

You could look at the Corrigan house and be overwhelmed with its size or its styling, rough-hewn cedar flanking stone walls, sun decks overlooking the water. But I thought of only one word, electricity. How much juice did it take to run four separate central air-conditioning systems, to power the pump that ran the waterfall that cascaded down the man-made mountain, to illuminate with colored spotlights the palm trees and blooming poinsettias and impatiens? How much more electricity for the hot tub and the front gate and TV cameras? The Corrigan house was a one-family oil shortage.

The front gate was open and I pulled into the brick driveway and sat there a moment. No other cars, no signs of life, the four-car garage buttoned up tight. A flagstone walk ran around the house. It was bordered with three-foot-high pine posts, each topped by a tiny lamp. Heavy hemp lines were strung post to post to form a path, like queues in a theater.

Behind the house, a wooden deck led to a swimming pool. Fifty yards long but only twelve feet wide, a serious pool for laps. It smelled of salt water, not chlorine, probably a pipe right to the bay. Beyond the pool was a concrete dock, a boathouse, and a private lagoon that opened onto Biscayne Bay. Tied to the dock was a yacht that in time of war would be impounded for transporting troops.

The cabana was an architect's idea of Tahiti. Whatever the building was made of was disguised by a bamboo front and topped, chikee style, with a palm frond roof. Half a dozen coconuts sat in primitive bowls on the front porch. A machete was wedged into one of the husks. I could hear the swish of a paddle fan through the open front door. I knocked on the bamboo.

"Lassiter, come in and make yourself a drink. There's some Gatorade in the fridge."

My potassium level seemed okay so I demurred on the

Gatorade. I nosed around. Her voice was coming from what had to be the bedroom. The rest of the place was one room, a galley kitchen that opened into a small living room with TV, stereo, and VCR. A bookshelf with some sports reference books, some poetry anthologies-maybe a woman's heart lurked beneath the sweats-and a survival manual for Miami, a Spanish/English dictionary.

Rustling noises women make when dressing were coming from the bedroom. She could have been changing into something sheer and flimsy and dabbing sweet essence behind her ears. But she emerged with a freshly scrubbed face, sans makeup, the faint aroma of Ivory soap in the air. Cut-off jeans revealed strong legs, calves that flexed with each step. Her short black hair was even shorter in a ponytail tied with a rubber band. She wore a Miami Dolphins' jersey that still had room for me inside.

"You like my place?" she asked.

"Sure. When you called, I didn't realize you lived in the cabana. Thought you were inviting me to a pool party. Have you been banished from the castle by the wicked stepmother?"

She shook her head. "I lived in the house until Dad married that. .. woman. Then I decided to give them some privacy. I do my mile in the pool every night. This is all I need."

"I like it. It's one of the few houses in Miami smaller than mine."

"Until yesterday I kept some things in the main house. My skis, scuba equipment, some clothes. She tossed everything out on the patio after we exchanged words in the courthouse."

"I heard some of those words. You can exchange them with the best. Mind telling me what you were arguing about?"

She was silent. I was sitting on a rattan loveseat and she sat facing me, legs crossed, enveloped in a peacock chair She smiled. That made two smiles if you counted one on the football field.

She was doing something with her hands, buying a little time to get into whatever it was that prompted her to call me She started slowly. "You finish the case tomorrow, don't you?"

"That's right."

"You think you're going to win."

That might have been a question. "I have my hopes."

"Would you feel badly if you get off a guilty man?"

"Guilty is a criminal law word. In civil practice, there's no such thing. I'm hoping for a no-liability verdict. But civi liability is a gray area. So I can't respond to the question as phrased."

"A real lawyer's answer," she said contemptuously.

"You don't care much for my profession, or is it just me?"

She laughed and put some rhythm in her voice:

Why is there always a secret singing When a lawyer cashes in? Why does a hearse horse snicker Hauling a lawyer away?

"I don't know," I said. "It wasn't on the bar exam."

She grimaced and gave me another stanza.

Singers of songs and dreamers of plays

Build a house no wind blows over.

The lawyers-tell me why a hearse horse snickers hauling a lawyer's bones.

"Do I win a new refrigerator with a correct answer, go on to the next round? Robert Frost, maybe."

She grimaced. "Carl Sandburg."

"Funny, he admired a pretty fair trial lawyer named Lincoln. And I was hoping your taste in poetry ran more to Grecian urns than lawyers' bones."

She steered the conversation back where she wanted it. "Murder is part of criminal law, isn't it?"

That didn't stir me so she kept going. "You said the other day I had no proof. Maybe you should look at something."

She hopped up and pushed a button on the VCR and another on the small Sony TV. She sat down again and turned away. The set blinked on, a typical home movie, jerky camera, panning too quickly through a lushly appointed room. It looked like a Beverly Hills hotel suite, piano bar, Lucite furniture, starlight ceiling. No people visible, just modern, expensive furniture, some lighted artwork, and a nighttime sky indoors.

"That's the main salon of the Cory," Susan Corrigan said.

"The Cory?"

"Didn't you see the boat outside?"

"Oh that. I thought it was the Nimitz, four thousand sailors on shore leave."

"Wouldn't that make her happy?" she asked, icily, gesturing toward the house. "The Cory is a custom-made Hat-teras, about eighty-two feet. One of Dad's toys."

The picture broke up, some snow, then Melanie Corrigan in a bikini on the screen, cocking a hip at the camera, pouting a come-hither look to stage left. The screen went to black for a second as a shoulder blocked the camera, a man walking into view. He was medium size, wearing swim trunks and a T-shirt, and he turned self-consciously to the camera. Roger Salisbury. If it was supposed to surprise me, it didn't.

"That's the main stateroom," Susan said.

A king-size waterbed sat on a floor of black and white tile and was illuminated from below with neon tubes. The headboard was the skyline of Miami, etched into black glass. Rock music played in the background. Roger Salisbury stood awkwardly at the foot of the bed and Melanie Corrigan began doing a striptease, if that's what you call it when you're starting out with only a black bikini that must have been made during a spandex shortage. The top was a strap slightly wider than dental floss, the bottom no bigger than your average Band-Aid. She was grinding to the music, rather expertly, some very fluid hip movements. She motioned for Roger to sit on the bed and he did, obedient little puppy.

She unhooked the halter top and squeezed her high firm breasts together, taking a deep breath as if the tiny scrap of fabric had been crushing her poor lungs to death. Acting right out of a high school play or a porno flick made on the cheap in Lauderdale. She tossed the halter at Roger. It landed on his head and slid over his nose and mouth. He could have robbed a bank in a B Western.

Next the bottom came off, and she wiggled her can in Roger's face in time with the music. She wiggled left and wiggled right, wiggled fast and wiggled slow. I had a feeling this was not her maiden cruise.

It took a minute more and then they were at it. A moment later the photographer discovered the electric zoom. First the long shot of two bodies writhing beneath the etched glass Miami skyline. Then the bodies got larger until only one body part, or two parts joined, filled the screen. Finally the camera zoomed back to show us the writhing bodies.