Three To Get Deadly (4 page)

"Okay, didn't know I was doing it. Probably just staring into space."

"Yeah, sure. The point is, she's likely to be a very good witness. The men in the jury all want in her pants, the women want to mother her."

"Okay already, I get the point."

"Good. I don't want to concern you, but the lovely widow is a real problem for us. She can make the jury forget all our medical mumbo jumbo. That gray silk dress today with the strand of white pearls. Classy but not too flashy."

Stanton laughed. "You ought to see her in a strapless cocktail dress."

Uh-huh
is what I say when I don't know what to say. I would have liked Stanton to fill me in here, but he didn't give me any help. After a moment I asked, "Since when are you Mrs. Corrigan's fashion consultant?"

"Oh that. I probably never told you. When Philip started seeing me for the back and leg pain, we became friendly. I wasn't dating anybody. They were just married. He started asking me over to their house in Gables Estates. Cocktail parties, dinners, sometimes just the three of us."

"So you know Mrs. Corrigan?"

"Melanie. Sure."

"Melanie, is it?"

He looked at me with a what's-the-big-deal look and I didn't have an answer so I polished off the palomilla and thought it over. No big deal. I just would have liked to have known about it sometime before trial.

In a moment our new friends cruised back, eyes a thousand watts brighter, ready to roll. I mumbled my apologies to Miss Earrings, who, with no apparent regret, shifted her electrified look to the blandly handsome doctor. I left them there, two women with a buzz on, and the man who had entrusted his career to me, the man who hadn't told me everything. What else, I wondered, had he left out?

I paused at the door to look back. The restaurant was filled now.

Some of the yuppies were crowding the bar, making too much noise, pushing limes into their Mexican beer, a trendy brand aged about as long as their attention spans. If you have to put lime in your beer, you might as well drink diet cola.

Back at the table, one woman sat on each side of Roger Stanton. They all laughed. I left the three of them there, the mathematical possibilities of their union crowding Melanie Corrigan's testimony into a dusty recess of my mind.

"Mrs. Corrigan, do you love your husband?"

"I do." A pause, a catch in the throat, a quiver, the beginning of a tear, then like a lake swollen by a summer storm, an overflow cascading down sculpted cheekbones. "That is, I did. I loved him very much."

Blessed timing. They don't teach that in finishing school. Dan Cefalo continued his questioning. "Do you miss him?"

Another leading question, but only a dunce would incur the jury's wrath by interrupting the soap opera with a news bulletin.

"Very much. Every day. We shared so much. Sometimes, when a car pulls into the driveway, I forget, and I think, well, maybe it's Phil."

And maybe it's the paperboy. God, could she lay it on thick. She looked toward the jury and then away as if the memory was too much to bear. A lace handkerchief appeared out of a navy leather clutch and the big, brown, wet eyes were dabbed dry. The pain radiated from her, but I was the one who was dying. Every question launched an arrow, and every answer pierced my heart. The widow was majestic, thick russet hair swept straight back to lay bare those chiseled lines, to expose her suffering. All for the glory of justice and a seven-figure award for mental anguish, loss of society, comfort, and consortium.

"Tell us about your husband, your late husband, Mrs. Corrigan. And I know it's a painful subject, so if you need a recess to gather yourself, please just say so." Cefalo extended his arms toward the widow and bowed from the waist, as if she were royalty. And she did look regal, white gloves setting off a navy and white double-breasted cardigan that covered a matching skirt. Maybe the gloves hid Racy Red nail polish, already slathered on for a night of romping through Coconut Grove clubs. Maybe on cross-examination I should order her to take off the gloves and bare her claws. Sure, or maybe I should just grab a sword and mutter a hara-kiri chant.

"I don't know where to begin, there's so much to say," she said, obviously knowing exactly where she would begin. I wanted her to say:
He was boffing half the stewardesses in town while his first wife lay dying; he made millions bribing county commissioners to grant zoning variances; and if it weren't for high-placed friends in Washington, he would have been indicted for tax evasion.

What she said was: "Phil was the most giving man I've ever known. The way he cared for his first wife when she was terminally ill, if you could have seen that, if you all could have seen it." Then she turned to the jury, an actress facing her adoring audience. "He never thought he could love again, but I brought something to his life. And to me, he was everything—a lover, a friend, even the father I never had. Then for him to die like this, in his prime."

Clever. Very clever. So well rehearsed it didn't look rehearsed. Explaining how a twenty-six-year-old woman marries a fifty-five-year-old man. A father, for crying out loud. No mention that the champagne corks were popping only six weeks after he buried his beloved first wife. And if I bring it out on cross, I'm a cad. It was a virtuoso performance. Even Judge Leonard was listening, practically a first. He had been in a fine mood at motion calendar in the morning, as well he should after Hot Touch paid $10.40, $5.40, and $4.80.

When Dan Cefalo turned to me and said, "Your witness," he was smiling so broadly I almost didn't notice that his fly was half undone and he had buttoned his shirt into his suitcoat.

The occasion called for brilliance. Roger Stanton looked at me as if I were his last friend in the world. I approached the witness stand with a solicitous smile. I still hadn't made up my mind. Behind those tears I saw a flinty toughness that I would love to bring out. But make a mistake, reduce her to tears or hysterics, and the jury would lynch me and nail enough zeroes on the verdict to buy an aircraft carrier. She looked straight back at me. The full lips lost a bit of their poutiness and set in a firm line. It's there somewhere, I knew. But my investigators couldn't find it in six months and my pretrial deposition came up empty. I couldn't risk it now.

I turned to the judge. "Your Honor," I said, as if seeking his approval, "I believe it would be unfair for us to keep Mrs. Corrigan on the stand to discuss this painful subject. We have no questions." Roger Stanton sank into his chair looking hopeless and abandoned. Men on Death Row have brighter futures.

"Very well," Judge Leonard said, aiming a small smile in my direction. "Mr. Cefalo, call your next witness."

"The plaintiff rests," Dan Cefalo said, a note of triumph in his voice.

"Any motions?" the judge asked. We approached the bench and the judge sent the jurors out to lunch.

"At this time, the defense moves for a directed verdict," I said without a great deal of conviction.

"On what ground, Mr. Lassiter?" the judge asked.

"On the ground that there's insufficient evidence of proximate cause, first that the surgery caused the aneurysm, and second that the aneurysm caused the death."

"Denied," the judge said before Cefalo even opened his mouth. "The plaintiff's expert testified to that. C'mon, Jake, it's a jury question at least."

I knew that. Somewhere between his Bloody Marys and his White Russians, Dr. Watkins had stuck us on proximate cause, at least sufficiently to beat a directed verdict, but I was giving the judge a little preview of our defense. Oh Dr. Charles W. Riggs, I need you now.

The judge looked over the courtroom, which was emptying, and waved us closer to the bench. With a hand, he signaled the court stenographer to take a hike. "You boys talk settlement?"

A practical enough question. If he could clear us out of the courtroom, he could spend the rest of the week at the track.

"Judge, we offered the policy," I said apologetically. "A million dollars, all we've got. They oughta take it and spare the court all this time and effort."

Cefalo shook his head. "Our liquidated damages alone, lost net accumulations for the estate, are over nine million. To say nothing of the widow's mental anguish and consortium claims."

The judge laughed. "Danny, your widow lady don't look like she'll be without consortium for long."

Good. I liked hearing that. Maybe the jurors will feel the same. Then we only get hit with nine million, enough to wipe out the good doctor several times over.

The judge straightened. "All right, boys. Let's cut through the bullshit. Danny, how much will you take, bottom line?"

"Four-point-five. Today. No structured settlement. All cash."

The judge raised his eyebrows and ran a hand over his bald head. "Attaboy. I always figured you to bet the favorites to show, but you're no ribbon clerk, hey? Jake, whadaya got?"

I turned my pockets inside out and shook my head. "A million, judge, just the policy. Client's only been in private practice five, six years. Just finished paying off his debts. He's pulling down big income, but no assets yet. We can't pay it if we don't have it. Besides, he's simply not liable."

"Okay, Jake, but it's halftime, and you're getting your ass kicked from here to Sopchoppy. You see what's coming, don't you?"

"You haven't heard my halftime speech."

"Fine, we start with your first witness at one o'clock. Court's in recess." With that, he banged the gavel, and the hollow explosion echoed off the high, beamed ceiling. Roger Stanton slumped onto the defense table as if felled by a rifle shot.

I headed into the corridor, nearly smashing into the lovely widow. She didn't notice. She was toe-to-toe with another young woman. Each was jawing at the other, faces inflamed, just a few inches apart like Lou Piniella and an umpire. I didn't recognize the other woman. No makeup, short-cropped jet black hair, a turned-up nose and a deep tan, blue jeans and running shoes, maybe the last pretty woman in Miami with thick glasses. Tortoiseshell round frames, giving her a professorial look. Her language, though, was not destined to win tenure. "You're a conniving slut and a little whore, and when I get to the bottom of this, we'll see who's out in the cold!"

The widow's eyes had narrowed into slits. No tears now. Just sparks and flames. "Get away from me you ingrate, and clear your junk out of the house by six tonight or your ratty clothes will be floating in the bay."

Dan Cefalo stepped in and separated the two. "Miss Corrigan, I think you best leave."

Oh, Miss Corrigan. The one with the colorful vocabulary must be Philip Corrigan's daughter by his first marriage. I followed her down the corridor.

"May I be of assistance?" I asked politely. Trying not to be your typical lawyer scavenging on the perimeter of misfortune.

She lowered the thick glasses and studied me with steaming eyes the color of a strong cup of coffee. The eyes had decided not to make any friends today. She looked me up and down, ending at my black wingtips. I could check for wounds later. Her nostrils flared as if I emitted noxious fumes.

"You're that doctor's lawyer, aren't you?" She made it sound like a capital crime.

"Guilty as charged. I saw you discussing a matter with Mrs. Corrigan and I just wondered if I might help …"

"Why? Are you fucking her or do you just want to?" She slid her glasses back up the slope of the ski-jump nose and headed toward the elevators.

"No and yes," I called after her.

My desk was covered with little white telephone messages. Office confetti. You think the universe comes to a halt when you are locked into your own little world, but it doesn't. It goes on whether you're in trial or at war or under the surgeon's knife. Or dead. Dead rich like Philip Corrigan laid out on smooth satin in a mahogany box, or dead poor, a wino facedown in the bay.

Greeting me in my bay front office was the clutter of messages that would not be answered—lawyers who wouldn't be called, clients who wouldn't be seen, motions that wouldn't be heard while my world was circumscribed by the four walls of Courtroom 6-1 in the Dade County Courthouse. Next to the phone messages were stacks of pleadings, letters and memos, carefully arranged in order of importance with numbers written on those little yellow squares of paper that have their own stickum on back. What did we do before those sticky doodads were invented? Or before the photocopier? Or the computer, the telecopier, and the cell phone? It must have been a slower world. Before lawyers had offices fifty-two stories above Biscayne Bay with white-coated waiters serving afternoon tea, and before surgeons cleared four hundred thousand a year, easy, scraping out gristle from knees and squeezing bad discs out of spines.

Lawyers had become businessmen, leveraging their hourly rates by stacking offices with high-billing associates, forming "teams" for well-heeled clients, and raking in profits on the difference between associates' salaries and their billing rates. Doctors had become little industries themselves, creating huge pension plans, buying buildings and leasing them back, investing in labs and million-dollar scanning machines, getting depreciation and investment income that far outpaced patient fees.

Maybe doctors were too busy following the stock market to be much good at surgery anymore. Maybe the greed of lawyers and doctors equally contributed to the malpractice crisis. But maybe an occasional slip of the scalpel or a missed melanoma just couldn't be helped. What was it old Charlie Riggs said the first day he reviewed the charts in Stanton's case?
Errare humanum est.
To err is human. Sure, but a jury seldom forgives.

I grabbed the first message on stack one. Granny Lassiter called. I hoped she hadn't been arrested again. Granny lived in Islamorada in the Florida Keys and taught me everything I know about fishing and most of what I know about decency and principle. She was one of the first to speak against unrestrained construction in the environmentally fragile Keys. When speaking didn't work, she got a Key West conch named Virgil Thigpen drunk as an Everglades skunk and commandeered his tank truck. The truck, not coincidentally, had just sucked up the contents of Granny's septic tank and that of half a dozen neighbors. Granny drove it smack into the champagne and caviar crowd at the grand opening of Pelican Point, a plug-ugly pink condo on salt-eaten concrete stilts that would soon sink into the dredged muck off Key Largo. While the bankers, lawyers, developers, and lobbyists stood gaping, and TV cameras whirred, Granny shouted, "Shit on all of you," then sloshed twelve hundred gallons of crud onto the canapé table.