Lassiter 01 - To Speak for the Dead (39 page)

So here I was about to deliver my closing argument in the big barn of a courtroom on the sixth floor of the Dade County Courthouse, an aging tower of gray limestone where the elevators seldom work and neither do the judges if they can help it. Heavy drapes matted with dust covered the grimy windows. The walnut paneling had darkened over the decades, and an obsolete air-conditioning system rumbled noisily overhead.

Several years ago, the electorate was asked to approve many millions of dollars in bonds for capital projects around the county. The voters said
yea
to a new zoo and
nay
to a new courthouse, expressing greater regard for the animals of the jungle to the animals of Flagler Street. And who could blame them?

Now I stood and approached the jury box, all six-two, two-hundred-something pounds of me. I tried not to get too close, avoiding the jurors' horizontal space. I shot a glance at the familiar sign on the wall above the judge's bench: "
we who labor here seek only the truth
." There ought to be a footnote: . .
subject to truth being misstated by perjurious witnesses, obfuscated by sleazy lawyers, excluded by inept judges, and overlooked by lazy jurors. "
Planting myself like an oak in front of the jury, I surveyed the courtroom. Symington Foote sat at the defense table next to the chair I had just abandoned. The publisher fingered his gold cufflinks and eyed me skeptically. Behind him in the row of imitation leather chairs just in front of the bar were two representatives of the newspaper's libel insurance company. Both men wore charcoal-gray three-piece suits. They flew in from Kansas City for the trial and had that corn-fed, pale-faced, short-haired, tight-assed look of insurance adjusters everywhere. I wouldn't have a drink with either one of them if stroking the client's pocketbook wasn't part of my job. In the front row of the gallery sat three of the senior partners of Harman & Fox, awaiting my performance with anxiety that approached hysteria. They were more nervous than I was, and I'm prone to both nausea and diarrhea just before closing argument. Neither Mr. Harman nor Mr. Fox was there, the former having died of a stroke in a Havana brothel in 1952, the latter living out his golden years in a Palm Beach estate—Chateau Renard— with his sixth wife, a twenty-three-year-old beautician from Barbados. We were an old-line law firm by Miami standards, our forebears having represented the railroads, phosphate manufacturers, citrus growers and assorted other robber barons and swindlers from Florida's checkered past. These days, we carried the banner of the First Amendment, a load lightened considerably by our enormous retainer and hefty hourly rates.

Much like a railroad, a newspaper is a great client because of the destruction it can inflict. Newspaper trucks crush pedestrians in the early morning darkness; obsolete presses mangle workmen's limbs; and the news accounts themselves— the paper's very
raison d'etre,
as H. T. Patterson had just put it in a lyrical moment—can poison as surely as the deadliest drug. All of it, fodder for the law firm. So the gallery was also filled with an impressive collection of downtown hired guns squirming in their seats with the fond hope that the jury would nail my hide to the courtroom door. When I analyzed it, my only true friend inside the hall of alleged justice was Marvin the Maven, and he couldn't help me now.

I began the usual way, thanking the jurors, stopping just short of slobbering my gratitude for their rapt attention. I didn't point out that Number

Two had slept through the second day and that Number Six was more interested in what he dug out of his nose than the exhibits marked into evidence. Then after the brief commercial for the flag, the judge and our gosh-darned best-in-the-world legal system, I paused to let them know that the important stuff was coming right up. Summoning the deep voice calculated to keep them still, I began explaining constitutional niceties as six men and women stared back at me with suspicion and enmity.

"Yes, it is true that the
Journal
did not offer testimony by the main source of its story. And it is true that there can be many explanations for the receipt of cash contributions and many reasons why State's Attorney Wolf chose to drop charges against three men considered major drug dealers by the DEA. But Judge Witherspoon will instruct you on the law of libel and the burden of the plaintiff in such a case. And he will tell you that the law gives the
Journal
the right to be wrong ..."

I caught a glimpse of Nick Wolf, giving me that tough guy smile. He was a smart enough lawyer in his own right to know I had no ammunition and was floundering.

"And as for damages," I told the jury, "you have just heard some outrageous sums thrown about by Mr. Patterson. In this very courtroom, at that very plaintiff's table, there have sat persons horribly maimed and disfigured, there have sat others defrauded of huge sums of money, but look at the plaintiff here ..."

They did, and he looked back with his politician's grin. Nick Wolf filled his chair and then some. All chest and shoulders. One of those guys who worked slinging bags of cement or chopping trees as a kid, and with the good genes, the bulk stayed hard and his Brahma Bull neck would strain against shirt collars for the rest of his life. On television, with the camera focused on a head shot, all you remembered was that neck.

"... Has he been physically injured? No. Has he lost a dime because of this story? No. Has he even lost a moment's sleep? No. So even if you find the
Journal
liable . . ."

H. T. Patterson still had rebuttal, and I wondered if he would use the line from Ecclesiastes about a man's good name being more valuable than precious ointment or the one from
Othello
about reputation as the immortal part of self.

He used them both.

Then threw in one from
King Richard II
I'd never heard.

• • •

"You could have advised us to settle," Symington Foote said, standing on the courthouse steps, squinting into the low, vicious late afternoon sun.

Funny, I thought I had.

"Three hundred twenty-two thousand," I said. "Could have been worse."

"Where the hell did that number come from? Where do these jurors get their—"

"Probably a quotient verdict. Someone wanted to give him a million, someone else only a hundred thousand. They put the numbers on slips of paper, add 'em up and divide by six. They're not supposed to do it, but it happens . . ."

Foote sniffed the air, didn't like what he smelled, and snorted. "Maybe it's time for a hard look at the jury system. I'll talk to the editorial writers in the morning."

He stomped off without telling me how much he looked forward to using my services in the future.

DONT MISS THESE EXCITING NEW MYSTERIES COMING FROM BANTAM'S CRIME LINE IN THE SUMMER OF 19911

NEW IN HARDCOVER

A SUITABLE VENGEANCE by Elizabeth George
(Also available on Bantam Audio Cassette)
PROWLERS by Eugene Izzi THE CHRISTIE CAPER by Carolyn G. Hart MOTOWN by Loren D. Estleman

FIRST TIME IN PAPERBACK

THE GETAWAY BLUES by William Murray WELL-SCHOOLED IN MURDER by Elizabeth George SOMEONE'S WATCHING by Judith Kelman WHISKEY RIVER by Loren D. Estleman MUM'S THE WORD by Dorothy Cannell TONY'S JUSTICE by Eugene Izzi TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD by Paul Levine

PROOF OF PURCHASE

TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD

They thought they could get away with murder...

They overlooked one thing.

BANNERMAN'S LAW by John R. Maxim author of
The Bannerman Effect

Things were quiet behind Bannerman's Maginot line of safe houses and front operations in Westport, Connecticut. His elite group of contract agents was retired, getting on with their lives, blending into the community as ordinary citizens. Just the way it was supposed to be — until a phone call brings them out of hiding for their most disturbing assignment yet.

A serial murderer is loose in Los Angeles, and he's already murdered and mutilated at least six young women. Now it looks like a copycat killer is at work. The police have next to nothing to go on. But they are about to get more help than they could have ever expected
or wanted — because the latest victim is the sister of one of Bannerman's best people.

Graduate student Lisa Benedict had stumbled onto something that no one was meant to see — something big enough to cost her life. It won't take long for Bannerman and his deadly band of operatives to start finding answers in some very unlikely places...answers that make some very important people very nervous. No one - not the LAPD, not the FBI, and certainly not the State Department thinks that Paul Bannerman left Westport just to attend a funeral. And they're right. In fact, before he is done, he'll be the cause of more than one funeral ~
maybe even his own.

Bannerman's Law.

On sale wherever Bantam Books are sold.

an342-10/91

Three time Shamus Award winner Loren D. Estleman turns his sights on the darker side of America's recent history in the first two novels of his Detroit Trilogy.

WHISKEY RIVER

"Estleman's
Whiskey River
is gritty, turbulent, unsettling, violent....It also is superb...." -
Chicago Sun-Times

it all begins in 1928. Detroit is growing by leaps and bounds. From the Mob's swankiest speakeasies and whorehouses to their private burial grounds, newspaperman Connie Minor chronicles the rise and fall of a charismatic young gangster named Jack Dance. He swaps secrets and strikes bargains with gang lords and on-the-take cops. But in a town like Detroit, knowing too much can be bad for your health, and soon the tabloid scribe finds himself not just a witness, but a key player in a story that gets hotter by the minute - a story that could make him famous if it doesn't kill him first.

MOTOWN

The year is 1966, and Detroit reigns supreme at the height of America'sloveaffairwiththeautomobile. Threatened by the specter of safety legislation, the city's biggest manufacturer hires ex-cop and fervent car lover Rick Amery to go undercover and put the brakes on creeping consumer advocacy. It proves to be more than Rick bargained for as tensions between the Mob, unions and the black community escalate to all out war.
Motown
is a motor-driven snapshot of Detroit at critical mass. And when Detroit blows, she's going in a mushroom cloud - every bloodstained block, all at once.

Whiskey River and Motown by Loren D. Estleman. On sale wherever Bantam Books are sold.

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Elvis Cole is a literate Vietnam vet who quotes Jiminy Cricket, drinks from a Spider-Man mug, carries a Dan Wesson .38, and is determined never to grow up. We met him for the first time in the award-winning novel
The Monkey's Raincoat
and now he returns here in

STALKING THE ANGEL
by
Robert Crais

The blonde who walked into Cole's office was the best-looking woman he had seen in weeks. She had a briefcase on one arm and an uptight corporate hotel magnate named Bradley Warren on the other.

Bradley Warren has iost something very valuable that belongs to someone else - an eighteenth-century Japanese manuscript called the Hagakure. The book outlines proper behavior for a samurai. It is also worth three million bucks. Somebody took it from Warren's safe at his Beverly Hills mansion. Cole's job is simply to get it back.

Nothing's that simple, as Cole and his borderline sociopath partner Joe Pike soon discover. Full of deadly high jinks, secrets of the orient, sex, madness, and encounters with the Japanese mafia sect known as the
yakuza,
Stalking the Angel is a detective story with something for everyone.

On sale soon wherever Bantam Crime Line Books are sold.

AN343-10/91