Lassiter 03 - False Dawn (33 page)

I held up the solid gold binoculars and looked at the waiting car in the glare of our headlights. Nothing but a blur. “I can’t see a thing. They don’t work.”

“How about that?” Foley said. “Isn’t that just like old Mother Russia?”

I
approached the witness stand and politely asked, “Isn’t it true that you bit into a finger cot, and not a condom, Mrs. Schwartzbaum?”

She pointed toward the defense table. “That’s what
they
say.”

“You’re not disputing the evidence, are you?”

Sylvia Schwartzbaum was fifty and not all that pleased about it. The frosted hair was lacquered into place, and if she turned too quickly, her immense silver earrings could cause whiplash. “All I know is when I bit into my endive, I chewed something rubbery, and when I spit it out, I thought it was a condom. That’s why I screamed. That’s why I spilled the soup in Harry’s lap, the poor dear.” She paused for effect and looked into the gallery, giving her husband a small, tragic smile. “And that’s why I have a severe case of mental anguish.”

“But now you know it wasn’t a condom, correct?” I was going to hammer away until she admitted it.

“At the time, it felt like a condom, and it looked like a condom.”

I wouldn’t be doing my job, such as it is, if I didn’t ask a follow-up question. “Did it taste like a condom, Mrs. Schwartzbaum?”

She gave me an icy stare. “Not being a pervert, I wouldn’t know about that.” She looked toward Harry, who nodded his approval.

Judge Dixie Lee Boulton leaned forward in her chair and peered at me through her bifocals, which dangled on a chain of imitation pearls. “Mr. Lassiter, I suggest you move it along. I’ve heard just about enough of this line of questioning.”

I hadn’t wanted to defend another restaurant case. Last year I lost the case of the flaming dessert. Bananas
flambé
cost the plaintiff his expensive toupee and my client, Le Parisian Eaterie, twenty-five grand. But win or lose, a trial lawyer gets typecast. Next, I was hired to defend the Calle Ocho cafeteria where an elderly man slipped and fell on an oil slick of spilled flan. Then I fought off the Consumer Protection Agency for the allegedly kosher Cuban restaurant that served
frijoles con puerco
.

Now I was dealing with the case of the rubber-in-the-rutabaga, as Marvin the Maven insisted on calling it. Every morning before court, I had to stop in the corridor as Marvin and Max (Just Plain) Seltzer told me fly-in-the-soup jokes, all of which I had heard before.

“Jacob, I got a new waiter joke for you,” Marvin said earlier today. “Direct from the Catskills, which, as you know, are the Jewish Alps. Two ladies are having lunch. The first orders the borscht, but the waiter says, ‘Take my advice, have instead the chicken soup.’ The second lady orders the pea soup, and the waiter says, ‘No, take the barley.’ They do as they’re told, and the first lady compliments him: ‘Best chicken soup I ever had.’ So the second lady asks, ‘Why didn’t you recommend
me
the chicken soup?’ The waiter says, ‘You didn’t ask for the borscht.’”

Marvin and Max were still laughing as I hauled my trial bag into the courtroom. My partners had insisted I handle the case after I had missed a couple days of work. Been lollygagging long enough, the managing partner said. Taking off without warning, leaving young associates to handle motion calendars and prepare cases for trial. The litany of complaints was piling up. So my punishment was the mental anguish suit of Sylvia Schwartzbaum, plaintiff from hell.

“Your expert witnesses have examined the rubbery object, plaintiff’s exhibit one, have they not?” I asked.

“They
better
have, after the bill I got.”

“And they told you that the object was not a condom, correct?”

“Objection!” H. T. Patterson was on his feet, poking a finger in my direction. “Hearsay and irrelevant. The report speaks for itself, and it doesn’t matter what my client thinks about it.”

“I think it cost too much money,” Mrs. Schwartzbaum told the judge and jury.

“Your Honor,” I pleaded, “the report’s in evidence. I’m merely eliciting evidence that will establish the plaintiff’s state of mind. It’s relevant to the damage issue.”

Judge Boulton pulled a pencil out of her 1950s bouffant, made a note on a legal pad, and allowed as how the objection was overruled.

I looked at the witness and waited.

Mrs. Schwartzbaum shrugged her shoulders. “Sure, they said it was one of those little whatchamacallits …”

“Finger cots?”

“… so they don’t slice their filthy fingernails into your salad with the cucumbers.”

“And you learned this within days of the incident, did you not?”

“Yeah, so what?” Suspicious now.

“
So
, in the restaurant, when you screamed at the top of your lungs that you were going to catch AIDS from …” I riffled through the transcript of the previous day’s proceedings even though I knew the line by heart. “‘… from the grimy Haitian wetback who jerked off in my salad,’ you were obviously mistaken.”

“I don’t know which island the kitchen help comes from, if that’s what you mean,” she said.

“What I mean is you now are secure in the knowledge that you will not contract a disease from eating at Norma’s Natural Food Emporium, correct?”

“I wouldn’t go back there for a million dollars.”

Funny, a million bucks was her settlement demand. I turned to the judge. “Your Honor, the witness is not being responsive.”

Sylvia Schwartzbaum sighed. “That’s what Harry says. Ever since they poisoned me, I’ve not been responsive. Now, we don’t even have relations. It’s his lost-consorting claim.”

“Consortium,’’ her lawyer, H. T. Patterson, piped up.

“In that case, Harry should pay my client,” I stage-whispered a tad too loud.

“Mr. Lassiter!” Judge Boulton was seldom awake long enough to get involved in the proceedings. But now Dixie Lee was steamed, and my old buddy Patterson was not doing me any favors, prancing around, demanding a sidebar where he accused me of multitudinous sins.

“Atrocious and abominable, disgraceful and dastardly,” Patterson began in the singsong he had perfected as a one-time preacher at the Liberty City Baptist Church. “Impudent and insolent, an utterly appalling, barbarous breach of ethics to make such a shameful statement in front of the jury …”

Oh, I don’t know. A couple of them had nodded their heads with appreciation and one laughed out loud.

“Despicable and defamatory, disgusting and detestable, vile and vulgar, repulsive and repugnant.” Patterson was on his toes now, chin thrust forward, strutting his stuff. I knew it was an act, and I would have to wait it out. Patterson did have an unfortunate habit, however , of bouncing close and spraying me with saliva as he worked himself into a frenzy. It reminded me of a recent study, which concluded that male trial lawyers have more testosterone than their brethren who practice real estate, tax, or corporate law. The psychologist learned this by testing saliva, a few globs of which were now affixed to my Italian silk tie. I always thought Patterson’s pugnaciousness had more to do with being five feet five than overdosing on male hormones.

He was still going. “Calumnious and …”

“Contemptuous,” Judge Boulton helped him out. “Twenty-four hours in the county stockade, Mr. Lassiter.”

I
like quiet contemplation. A day and night behind bars was neither novel nor particularly unsettling. In a trial a few years ago, a judge ordered me not to ask a cop if he was under investigation by Internal Review. I persisted, and the judge warned me that one more question and he’d send me to a place I’d never been.

“Already been to jail,” I told him.

“Not jail,” the judge said. “Law school.”

I was even held in contempt once for telling a good-natured joke to a judge who had just ruled against me.

“What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of fifty?” I asked.

The judge shrugged.

“Your Honor,” I answered.

I don’t mind some time away from home. I don’t have a dog to walk, a bird to feed, or grass to cut. No feminine companion awaits me at the door, a duck roasting in the oven. The women come and go, and life stays the same though their faces change. There were stewardesses when they were still called that, a real estate broker with a penthouse condo, more than one South Beach model with tales of Milan and Paris and how our humidity is hell on the hair, a nurse who held my hand when I tore ligaments in a knee, a statuesque literature professor from Yugoslavia who could outcuss Granny Lassiter and didn’t disparage Hemingway, a Dolphin cheerleader to whom every new experience was either “far out” or “queer,” and who left me for a commodities broker with a yacht. And there, too, was the sportswriter I let down when she needed me to protect her. Since then, I hadn’t let anybody need me.

I always take a good book and my first baseman’s mitt when I get sent up. I never apologize, post bond, or seek rehearing. I’m not sure why, but it may have something to do with the stubborn streak I inherited from my granny.

The stockade is not so bad, even if the food tends to the starchy side. The prisoners are no more reprehensible than most of my partners and more forthright about their chicanery. There’s a good set of weights and a decent softball field. I like playing first base because there’s plenty of action, and you don’t have far to run.

So now I stood on the field in shorts and sneakers, a Marlins cap and dark shades. I had just fielded a bunt and flipped it home trying to nip a cat burglar on a squeeze play. He had quick feet, and the catcher, a sago palm thief, had bad hands, so the run scored.

“A day late and a dollar short,” someone said behind me.

I turned around to find Abe Socolow. Squinting into the sun, the state attorney wore his customary funeral suit, a cigarette locked in his lips. “Want to take a turn at bat, Abe? We need a designated killjoy.”

“
You
need a lawyer.”

“Not me. Done my hard time. Getting out at two o’clock, thirty minutes off for good behavior.”

I was trying to hold the runner on the base and banter with Socolow at the same time. Complicating the task was my awareness of the runner’s vocation as a pickpocket. I didn’t like him behind me.

“We gotta talk.” Socolow dropped his cigarette and ground it into the base path. He looked out of place on a ballfield. In fact, he looked out of place anywhere but under the sickly fluorescent lighting of the Justice Building. He belonged there with the vaguely institutional smell, the incessant din of official commotion. He brought order to a disordered world, and did it as if he alone had the power. Sweat beaded on his high forehead, and in the sunlight, I could see his dark hair was thinning on top. “I got a call from Washington this morning. Someone asking a lot of questions about you.”

The pitcher, a con man who had perfected the pigeon drop and the week-late lottery scam, used a windmill windup, then threw a change-up. The batter was so far in front of the pitch he twisted himself into a pretzel on his follow-through.

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “I’m about to be nominated for the Supreme Court.”

“You’re about to be charged in the largest art theft in history.”

The con man’s fastball fooled the batter, who swung late, grounding a soft three-hopper right at me. I swiped at it, but never got the glove down. Sheesh. They teach you how to do that in Little League. I watched the ball roll between my legs and into right field.

“Fix! Fix!” The second baseman, a three-hundred-pound bookie and bolita operator, was screeching at me.

“What are you talking about?” I asked Socolow.

“You and that renegade CIA agent, Foley. I figure he’s the mastermind. Anybody who knows you would realize that. You’re the accessory, and probably an incompetent one. But Foley’s missing, and so are a few billion dollars of arts and antiquities, and you’re here. There’s a team from CIA, Justice, FBI, and State on their way. I’m your baby-sitter, Lassiter.”

T
raffic was backed up on the way to the Justice Building. This time it wasn’t a shoot-out between drivers bickering over the right-of-way. It wasn’t an octogenarian with cataracts going the wrong way on the interstate. It was a leaky toilet on a jet.

Two lanes of the expressway exit that spanned the Miami River were closed while workers filled a crater caused by a jet engine that dropped off a 727 during the night. A tractor-trailer carrying twenty thousand pounds of live tropical fish sideswiped the engine, veered to the right, and overturned. The concrete guardrail sliced through the trailer’s roof like a can opener. Which is how thousands of angelfish, sea horses, and parrotfish came to be dumped into the river that pours into the bay, which opens into the Atlantic and theoretically gives the fish a chance to swim back to the Bahamian reefs from which they were so recently kidnapped.

The fish were happier than the airline P.R. people. They issued press releases explaining that a leaky toilet had caused the lavatory water to escape onto the fuselage of the 727, where it formed a huge blue chunk of ice that broke free and cleanly knocked the tail engine off the plane.

Traffic eased and then clogged again near Government Center. By order of the city commission, workers were hat-racking the black olive trees that shaded the street. Our local politicians somehow believed that street drug dealers would cease doing business if threatened with sunstroke. Next they’ll try draining the ocean to prevent shark attacks.

It took Socolow another ten minutes to find a parking spot. The Justice Building was surrounded by Santerfa worshipers carrying lighted candles and bowls of animal blood. They were apparently displeased with the arrest of one of their priests on animal cruelty charges after he sacrificed a dozen goats and chickens on the median strip of Biscayne Boulevard during rush hour.

“I used to think New York was weird,” Socolow said, as he nudged the county-owned Plymouth into a compact space six inches from a defense lawyer’s candy-apple red Porsche.