Paul Levine - To speak for the dead

CLEVELAND-When the game was still dicey and the field was turning icy, the Browns showed the Miami Dolphins what a Dawg Day afternoon is like on the shores of frozen Lake Erie.

Cute. I wanted to see her. Maybe after the verdict, if she calms down about this murder business. My daydreaming was interrupted by The Knock. It's the knock that sets the adrenaline pumping, the knock from inside the jury room. It could mean anything, including the fact that the jurors are hungry. The bailiff hurried over, as best he could. He was a retired motorcycle cop with snow-white hair, a bow-legged walk, and a hacking cough. When he came out, he headed straight for the judge's chambers, a poker face all the way. Must have forgotten about the bottle of Jack Daniels I schmear him with every Christmas.

In a moment the judge flew through the rear door of the courtroom, still hooking his robe in front, its tail aflutter like a mainsail tacking. Things would happen fast now if there was a verdict. But the jury might have a question, not an answer. Usually baffling questions. Could the court reporter read back the nurse's testimony about the patient's postsurgery constipation? You can never tell what goes through their minds.

But no questions this time. The foreman was holding a piece of legal-size paper neatly folded at the middle. He was a retired accountant. No trace of a sense of humor or spontaneity when I questioned him on voir dire. I had asked him the last book he read. "The Price Waterhouse Guide to the New Tax Law," he responded. Not the kind of a guy to have a beer with, but perfect for the defense in a personal injury or medical malpractice case. I tried to catch the foreman's eye. No soap. Looked at the rest of them. Still no luck. Legal folklore has it that they avoid your eyes when they've voted against you.

One of the women, a housewife, looked toward Melanie Corrigan and teared up. Now what the hell did that mean? The widow was through with her tears. She had dusted on some blush during the long break. A nice mixture of healthy and sultry, shedding her mourning widow image a mite early. Her lips were freshly painted in a pink liquid gloss, a wet look. Her hair now cascaded over her shoulders. She ran a hand through the reddish brown waves and tossed her head back, showing me a fine line of neck. A splendid pose for a shampoo ad.

Roger Salisbury could have been in an ad, too. For Plum-mer Funeral Home. When news of The Knock reached the corridor, he quit pacing and hastily joined me at the defense table, the color draining from his face. Now his complexion was the gray of a California seal. I wondered if he was too young for a coronary.

"Has the jury reached a verdict?" Judge Leonard asked in a grave tone suitable for an execution.

"We have, Your Honor," said the foreman, with no wasted breaths. He stood and handed the verdict form to the bailiff, who used it to shield a cough, then handed it to the judge. Judge Leonard took a thousand years to read it, and I strained with X-ray eyes to read it from fifty feet away. Not a trace of emotion crossed Judge Leonard's face as he handed the form to the clerk. Annoyed at having been interrupted, she reluctantly put down her new paperback, this one a survey of women's sexual fantasies.

"The clerk will publish the verdict," Judge Leonard said in the same stern voice.

The clerk stood up, lodged her chewing gum in the roof of her mouth, jammed a pencil into her Afro, and in a bored monotone, started reading:

"In the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, in and for Dade County, Florida, Case Number eight-seven, one-eight-three-seven-six, Melanie Corrigan, as Personal Representative of the Estate of Philip M. Corrigan, deceased, versus Roger A. Salisbury, M.D." She paused, cleared her throat, ah-chem. Oh get to it, already. "We, the jury, find for the defendant."

Boom. That was it. She sat down. Roger Salisbury slapped me on the back. Dan Cefalo winced once, recovered like the pro he was, and asked the judge to poll the jury. He did. Each one affirmed the verdict. Melanie Corrigan looked over at Roger Salisbury and gave him a small, bittersweet smile. Like it didn't matter. Like that's one for you. If that wasn't the damnedest thing.

Judge Leonard was doing his thank-yous to the jurors while his bailiff handed them certificates bearing a sketch of the judge that made his round face look like Abe Lincoln on Mount Rushmore. Good for a few votes in the next election.

Then it was over. The jurors picked up their things, the few spectators ambled down the corridor looking for more action. Roger Salisbury began babbling about how brilliant I was, how great Charlie Riggs was, how beautiful Cindy was. He wanted to treat me to dinner, champagne, wenching.

I was spent. I told him I would be poor company. In truth

I was tired of his company. I had given him a piece of myself. The camaraderie that comes from the shared experience evaporates when the experience ends. Like war buddies, you drift apart when the conflict is over. Quickly.

So why did I feel that the case of Corrigan versus Salisbury was only just beginning?

Cindy headed back to the office and I aimed the 442 convertible west on Tamiami Trail toward the Everglades. No way I was going to return phone calls and compile expense account forms after coming out of trial. I wanted some open air. Tamiami Trail is Calle Ocho in Little Havana. I passed city parks where old Cuban men played dominoes, drinking espresso, cigars clenched in brown teeth, vowing to return to a Cuba Libre. They do not consider themselves immigrantes, a term that implies a voluntary move to a new home. They are exilados, refugees in exile. When their homeland is liberated from the Communist butcher, they will return.

The young Cubans, the teenagers born in Miami, look at matters differently. With their 280Z's, late nights in Coconut Grove discos, and weekends on Key Biscayne beaches, they have no desire to take up arms or swing machetes in the sugarcane fields. If they don battle fatigues, it is only because the look is fashionable this season at the Banana Republic boutique.

When hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees flooded Miami in the 1960s, there were few directions to go. East was the small downtown and Biscayne Bay. South was pricey Coral Gables, and it would be years before most exiles could move there. North was Liberty City, officially the Central Negro District on old police reports, a place the Great Society passed by, the scorching pavement without the palm trees of the Gables or the pines of South Dade.

The only direction was west, and those who fled Castro pushed Miami that way, blowing the city out at the seams, bringing new food and music and clothing, and in a generation, they owned the gas stations and restaurants and auto dealerships and furniture stores and even banks. From the bay westward for one hundred forty blocks, onto the fringes of the Everglades, on both sides of Tamiami Trail, they lived and worked and prospered. In the middle of what was a sleepy Southern town another country grew, strange and forbidding-Fantasias Ropas, Vistas Funeraria, Clinicas Quiropracticas-its premises off-limits to English speakers.

The Anglo immigrants of a generation before came from Georgia and Alabama. They lived in small concrete block stucco houses with no garages, and in their front yards pickup trucks were hitched to airboats, ready for midnight frogging in the Glades. These whites-airline mechanics, truck drivers, power company linemen-already feared the mean street blacks and resented the Miami Beach Jews. Culture shock for these Southern Baptists was a Florida town turned upside down, where native-born whites got the hell out, bumper stickers pleading sarcastically, WILL THE LAST ANGLO TO LEAVE MIAMI PLEASE TURN OFF THE LIGHTS.