Paul Levine - To speak for the dead

The five of us sat on my tiny back porch swatting mosquitoes, drinking Granny Lassiter's home brew, and arguing how to use the gift imparted by Abe Socolow.

"Show a video of Sergio winning the Karate King title," said Cindy. Ever efficient, she already had fished around town and found the tape.

"Let him split your head open with a shoe-toe oochi-koochi," Granny said. "Show his mean streak."

"Drop it now while we're ahead on the point," Roger Salisbury argued. His face was drawn, and he looked like he hadn't been getting much sleep. Being a defendant in a first-degree murder trial can do that. "Socolow will be ready for anything more about the karate."

Charlie Riggs drained the dark, headless beer from a mug that was once a peanut butter jar. "Not a bad idea. That was all off the cuff today. No matter what, we can't prove Sergio struck the decedent."

I shook my head, both at Charlie and at Granny, who was offering me a refill. Too heavy with hops, like an English bitter. "You're forgetting something, Charlie. We don't have to prove anything. All we need is to create a reasonable doubt that Roger aced him."

Charlie nodded and helped Granny into the hammock where she had decided to spend the night. I didn't think there was room for two.

"But it must be a reasonable doubt," Charlie Riggs declared. "Not a possible doubt, a speculative, imaginary, or forced doubt."

I laughed. "Whoa, Charlie, when did you start memorizing jury instructions?"

"I been in trials before you got out of knickers."

"Used to wet his knickers till he was four," Granny called out from the hammock.

Roger Salisbury leapt to his feet from an aging lawn chair. "I didn't kill Philip Corrigan!" Silently, three heads turned toward him. His normally placid face was twisted with pain. "When you talk about strategy, you seem to be trying to hide something, to get off a guilty man. You all forget I didn't kill Philip! He's the one person I could never kill. He was my friend."

Salisbury sagged back into the chair and turned toward the sprawling hibiscus that threatened to overrun the porch.

Everyone quieted down for a while. I thought about Roger's little speech. Something vague and fuzzy bothered me, but I let it go. We weren't getting anywhere except mosquito-bitten and drunk.

I was nearly dozing when the phone hollered. Everybody I wanted to talk to was within spitting distance. By the sixth ring, I stirred just to stifle the noise. Usually at this time of night, it's a boiler room call, somebody selling frozen beef from Colorado or solar water heaters made in Taiwan. Usually it's not Abe Socolow.

Breakfast before court? Sure. Bay Club? Sure.

"What does he want?" Roger asked, a tremble in his voice.

"Don't know. Maybe just wants to do a Power Breakfast."

Granny Lassiter snorted. "Then why call you?"

The Bay Club sits on the thirty-fifth floor of a new office building overlooking Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The dining room is chrome and glass, white tile, and a blinding brightness. All the charm of an astronaut's space capsule. The club was designed by a young architect adept at stealing ideas about modern design and making them worse.

Socolow was late. I looked around. There was Fat Benny Richards, all three hundred pounds of him, wolfing French toast with county commissioner Bradley Shriver. Fat Benny wore a six-hundred-dollar silk suit but looked like a ton of shit in a gunny sack. His clients called Fat Benny a lobbyist, which was a more polite term than bagman. Politicians courted him because he collected campaign contributions the way a sewage plant draws flies.

Fat Benny had the beady red eyes of an overfed rat, and his eyes were his best feature. His breath could kill a manatee and his toupee threatened to slide into his Bloody Mary. I picked up pieces of the conversation between the commissioner and the fat man. Arguing for a builder client, Benny wanted a variance from the ordinance requiring a parking space for every four hundred square feet of office space. A customary request by rapacious builders since parking garages cost a bundle and the cash return is diddly-squat compared to office space.

Fewer parking spaces, larger buildings, less green space, billboards the size of cruise ships-zoning was a scandal. But why not? In a town where William Jennings Bryan once hawked vacant lots from a floating barge, the hustle was still king.

Abe Socolow slid silently into his chair, folding his body like a scythe. He looked haggard. Black circles under his eyes, sunken cheeks, skin the color of a newspaper left in the sun. A waiter in a white vest and gloves took our order. Gloves at seven-thirty in the morning.

"Just coffee," Socolow said. "Black."

Naturally.

I ordered a large orange juice, a basket of sweet rolls, and shredded wheat with whatever fruit didn't come in a can. Let Abe suffer, I was hungry.

"That was some happy horseshit yesterday about a karate chop busting the aorta," he began irritably.

"Glad you liked it."

"Liked the bit about MacKenzie not testing stiffs who died after surgery, too."

"You ask me to breakfast to compliment my trial skills. How kind."

"Whadaya doing, Jake, just throwing shit on the barn door, seeing what'll stick?"

"Your breakfast conversation is most appetizing."

I didn't know where he was heading. He drained the coffee, and the waiter materialized silently with more from a silver pot. At the next table Fat Benny was offering the commissioner preferred stock in a cable television franchise.

"Just thought you should know," Socolow said, "I been at the morgue all night with MacKenzie…"

"The way you look, you're lucky they let you out."

He ignored me. "We got two stiffs out of surgery yesterday. Both had succinylcholine IVs as part of the anesthesia, and guess what?"

I didn't have to guess. No traces of succinic acid or choline. I figured Socolow would bust his balls to recoup after MacKenzie's debacle. Just didn't think he could do it so fast. Now I pictured him dashing from hospital to hospital, praying for patients to die in the OR, maybe pulling the plug in the ICU.

"As a personal favor, in a spirit of fairness," he went on, "I'll tell you about my rebuttal witness, an internal medicine guy. Feingold, head of the department at Jackson. He says a karate chop can't bust the aorta. No way. Too much padding in the abdomen, what with the fat and the stomach and all those organs."

"Kind of you to share your strategy with me, Abe. But we both know you can get Irv Feingold to say anything. I been around the rosy with him in two malpractice cases. Now, you didn't bring me here to talk about how strong your case is. What's up?"

He squinted at me through tired eyes. I smeared a large glob of butter on a heated cinnamon roll. Nearby, Fat Benny was extolling the virtues of a garbage compacting plant located upstream of a drinking well field.

"Jake, you know I'm fair. Tough, sure. But fair."

"Uh-huh," I mumbled. No use insulting him. If he had an offer, I would listen. Then I could insult him.

"We may have overcharged Salisbury," he said softly.

"Go on," I said.

"You know how juries are. Anything can happen. Hell, they can come back with Murder One and recommend death. Puts Crane in a tough spot."

"To say nothing of my client."

"Or they could compromise and recommend life."

"Yeah, and they could come back with a big fat NG."

He shook his head. "I'm not going to argue with you, Jake. Here it is. He pleads now to Murder Two, we agree to ten years. He'll be out in thirty-nine months."

It didn't take long to think about it. "No deal. A felony conviction, he loses his ticket to practice. Besides, he's not guilty. I won't plead him to jaywalking."