Paul Levine - To speak for the dead

"Mr. Lassiter, I don't make the rules, I just apply them," the judge said. "Now, one more remark like that in the jury's presence and I'll hold you in contempt. Verste?"

"Understood, Your Honor."

We would have a bloodthirsty, gung-ho, hang-em-high jury because the law allowed it. But I wasn't doing Roger Salisbury any good whining about it. I would just try to keep some people on the panel who neither belonged to the National Rifle Association nor folded their bodies into tight balls when I asked my questions.

So here I was, bobbing and weaving, trying to seat twelve honest men and women without itchy trigger fingers. Not that I wanted to be picking a jury. I didn't want to be doing anything except feeling sorry for myself. The three weeks since her death had been a blur. Preparing for trial, arguing with Socolow, waiting for some word about Susan from Charlie Riggs. At night, when sleep came, it was filled with dreams. An expanse of water, iridescent blue, a calm seductive lagoon. But when I dived in, the water thickened into a gelatinous muck and 1 sank to the bottom, gasping for air. Anonymous hands rescued me and dragged me to the beach where a laughing Roger Salisbury bent over me, giant syringe in hand.

Waking at dawn, I drifted uneasily toward consciousness, vaguely aware of an undefined pain. As my eyes focused on the light, the pain took shape, a vision of Susan Corrigan. Pretty and smart and tough. And dead.

Charlie Riggs had pulled some strings, and the ME's office performed an autopsy. Salt water in the lungs. A pinkish foam in the airway. Absolute proof, Charlie said, that Susan was alive when she stepped into the pool. If she'd been killed and dumped there, the lungs wouldn't produce the foam. Death by drowning on the certificate. Nothing to dispute it.

It was murder, I told Abe Socolow. He didn't buy it, asked for proof. I told him about the cabana break-in, the theft of the drug, the widow clamoring for the videotape. Proof, he reminded me, consisted of witnesses and physical evidence. Then I told him of my run-in with Sergio and his pal with the baseball bat.

He laughed. "Ambush at Shark Valley. Sell it to Hollywood."

"Your star witness set me up."

"Not the way I heard it," Socolow said, poking a finger at me. "She says you tried to extort her. If she testifies, you play the tape. She doesn't testify, you give her the tape.

Gonna get your balls whacked, Jake, you don't watch out. Could bust you for obstruction right now."

But he wouldn't. Because I was his buddy, he said. He wanted a copy of the tape. Fine with me, I told him, because it's defense exhibit number one.

He laughed again. "What's its relevance, that Melanie Corrigan is a sword swallower?"

"Pure impeachment. Lying under oath. On deposition, she denied the affair with Roger."

He wasn't impressed. "Nice try. She denied banging the doc after her marriage to Corrigan. The videotape was premarriage, so no lie on deposition, no impeachment. I'm filing a motion in limine to keep it out."

Judge Crane reserved ruling on the motion. Said he wanted to see the videotape. A couple of times. So did the clerk, the bailiffs, the probation officers, and everybody else within ten blocks of the Justice Building.

Without the tape, what would I have? Charlie Riggs saying that Corrigan died of an aneurysm, not succinylcholine. But no suspect to feed to the jury in place of Roger Salisbury. It would come down to a swearing match, beautiful widow versus spurned lover. Who said what to whom? Where did the drug come from? Who did what in Philip Corrigan's hospital room? Would the jurors even listen to Charlie Rigg's technical explanation of a bursting aorta? Probably not. Not with a black valise, two hypodermics, and a deadly drug staring them in the face.

Socolow had a tight little smile on his hawkish face as Judge Crane gave the newly empaneled jurors their preliminary instructions. Don't discuss the case among yourselves or with family members and friends. Don't speak to the witnesses or lawyers. Don't read the newspapers or watch television reports about the case.

Do jurors have the willpower not to follow their cases in the press? In a bribery trial a few years ago, a local columnist complained in print that the male jurors looked like they were headed for a ball game, all polo shirts and guayaberas. Next day, they all wore coats and ties.

My mind was wandering as the judge did his stuff. We would be back in the morning for opening statements. Tonight I would see Charlie Riggs. Beside me sat Roger Salisbury. Worried, a little grayer around the temples than at the first trial. His future a black hole.

"It is your solemn responsibility to determine if the state has proved its accusation beyond a reasonable doubt against this defendant," the judge gravely intoned. "Your verdict must be based solely on evidence, or lack of evidence, and the law."

I walked out of the courthouse into the blast furnace of a Miami afternoon. The blinding sun bounced ferociously off the marble steps. Thick fumes from the buses fought to rise through the soggy air.

There is no industrial smog in Miami. No steel mills, no oil refineries. Heavy industry is cocaine processing; high technology is money laundering. But a million cars in the shimmering heat add their own color to the horizon. Most days a fine red haze sprouts from the expressways and hovers over the city, hugging the ribbons of 1-95 from downtown Miami northward to Fort Lauderdale. Not a thick smog, just enough airborne particles to add a counterfeit glitter to the sky, a reddish breast on the feathery clouds drifting over backlit beaches. One good blow, a cold front from the northwest, and the muck would be shoved out to sea.

But no more cold fronts. Not for six months. Until then, just broiling days and steaming nights. Purgatory for those who inhabit the swamp. My own fire burned deep inside. A score to settle. A woman had died. A woman I loved. I made a vow. When I knew for sure the how and the who of it, someone else would die, too.

It had taken Charlie Riggs two weeks, but he had figured it out. Just as I knew he would. He kept it from me another week, not wanting to disturb me during trial preparations. But I badgered him and finally he told me to meet him at the morgue.

By the time I finished preparing my opening statement for the morning, it was nearly midnight. Charlie was waiting for me in the parking lot outside the»gw brick and glass building that looked less like a morgue than a modern office complex for a computer software company.

He puffed his pipe and scratched at his beard. I recognized the look. Acute discomfort. He took off his patched-up glasses, wiped them on his short-sleeve white shirt, and put them back on where they rode askew like a sailboat heeling in a strong wind.

"This won't be easy for you."

"Let's get it over with," I said.

The morgue was quiet. Two sheriff's deputies were hanging around the waiting area, drinking coffee, filling out forms after bringing in two bodies, a middle-aged man and his wife. The man had carved her up with a kitchen knife, then jammed a shotgun under his own chin and pulled the trigger with his big toe.

"Least he done the right thing," one cop said to the other.

"Yeah, saved us a lot of crap, blowing himself away."

A skinny kid with long, greasy hair in a ponytail sat at the reception desk, working the overnight shift. He leaned back in a swivel chair with his feet on a modern oak desk flipping the pages on a porno magazine and giggling. He kept sticking his hand in a huge bag of French fries, rooting around and popping them into his mouth, three at a time. He wore a green hospital smock and the shit-eating grin of the yahoo young. His nametag read Curly.