better in the 1950s. Now he sits at the plaintiff's table and glares at Tammy.
Silver's lawyer is the infamous Todd “the Rod” Eckhardt, a plaintiffs' lawyer known around the greater San Diego Bar community for his shameless willingness to sue anybody for anything. Todd has sued for all those reasons that make the general public loathe and despise lawyers- the hot coffee spilled on the lap of a driver doing seventy in a thirty-five-mph zone; the “food product” that came out of a microwave hot; and, Boone's personal favorite, a lady of the evening who sued a blessed-by-nature john for neck injuries that would prevent her from ever effectively again carrying out her trade and earning a living.
So Todd the Rod is a millionaire many times over and doesn't try to disguise the fact. He comes into depositions and hearings with a valet- yes, a valet-who looks like he came out of some 1940s British black-and- white film about exploring the Irrawaddy or something, carries Todd's briefcases and Red Files, and helps him off with his coat. Todd leaves him at home for trials, however, lest it provoke jealousy from the jurors. At the trial level, Todd is strictly a man of the people.
His only saving grace as far as Boone is concerned-and Todd has tried to hire Boone on several occasions-is that Todd is perhaps the homeliest human being ever to waddle into a courtroom. Todd would have to approach obese from the upside-looking at Todd, it's hard to believe that he has a skeletal structure, more like he's a single- cell-well, a fat single cell-organism with a shock of white hair, bug eyes, and a very large brain. If you propped Todd up beside Dave the Love God, you could only come to the conclusion that extraterrestrials do roam the earth, because these two specimens could not possibly spring from the same species. Todd doesn't sit down; he sort of oozes into a chair and assumes a slouching posture that makes you think he's Play-Doh that some negligent child left out in the rain. Greasy sweat runs out of his pores like an oil leak. He's disgusting.
Todd the Rod got his sobriquet back in the nineties when a lot of San Diego beachside houses were collapsing. Todd would stick a metal rod into the dirt of the building pad, pronounce it “improperly compacted,” file suit against the contractor, the city engineers, the building inspector, and the insurance company, and usually win.
Alan has a different version of how Todd got his name. “Don't let his prehuman appearance fool you,” Alan told Boone before a trial against Todd a couple of years ago. “If you give him the slightest opening, he'll jam a rod so far up your ass, it will come out your mouth.”
So Alan has no intention of giving Todd the Rod an opening. In fact, he's getting ready to counterjam the rod. He asks Tammy the usual warmup questions-name, address-and then gets right into it.
“And where were you employed at that time?” Alan is asking.
“Silver Dan's,” Tammy replies.
“What did you do there?” Alan asks.
“I was a dancer,” Tammy says, looking calmly at the jury.
“A dancer.”
“A stripper, ” Tammy says.
“Objection,” Todd mumbles.
The judge, Justice Hammond, is a former federal prosecutor, a by-the-book, no-nonsense hard-ass not known for his patience with courtroom antics or his sense of humor. Like most members of the human race, he despises Todd the Rod, but he's keeping his emotions very much in check.
“Overruled,” Hammond says.
Alan continues: “And were you at Silver Dan's the night of October 17, 2006?”
“Yes,” Tammy says.
“And were you there after closing?” Alan asks.
“Yes, I was.”
“Why?”
“I was dating Dan at the time,” Tammy says. “We were going to go out to breakfast.”
“And did you go out to breakfast?”
“Not directly,” Tammy says, looking at Dan.
“Where did you go?”
“Dan said he had an errand to do,” Tammy says, “at a warehouse he owned.”
“And did you go to the warehouse?” Alan asks, closing in. He spots Boone in the gallery and gives him a quick wink before turning back to Tammy.
“We did,” Tammy says.
Alan turns his back to her to look at the jury, then at Dan, then at Todd-just to stick it in a little-then back at the jury. He walks over to the jury box and asks, with the immaculate timing of a really good stand-up comic, “When you went there, did you get out of the car?”
“Yes.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I went inside.”
“And…” Alan pauses to signal the jury that something important is coming up. “… did you see anything unusual?”
Here it comes, Boone thinks. A few more words out of her mouth and we're done. We can all get on with our lives, and I can try to find a little peace inside a giant wave.
Tammy looks straight at Dan, who pulls a little silver cross on a chain out of his pocket and fingers it nervously. Yeah, Boone thinks as he watches this, like Jesus is going to jump in on your side, pull you out of the deep water.
“No,” Tammy says.
Shit, Boone thinks.
Alan keeps the smile on his face, but it definitely tightens up. This wasn't the answer he was expecting. Boone can see Petra's back stiffen, her head straighten up.
Dan Silver just smiles.
Alan moves away from the jury and walks up to the witness stand. “I'm sorry, Ms. Roddick. Perhaps I wasn't being clear. When you went into the warehouse that night, did you see Mr. Silver there?”
“Yes.”
“And was he doing something?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“He was just looking around, checking the back door, that kind of thing,” Tammy says. “Then we went to Denny's.”
She looks at the jurors with an expression of total innocence.
“Ms. Roddick,” Alan asks, his voice edging toward threat, “didn't you tell me that you saw Mr. Silver pouring kerosene on the floor in the basement?”
“No,” Tammy says.
“You didn't tell me,” Burke says, “that you saw him run a twisted sheet into that kerosene?”
“Objection.”
“No.”
“Or hold his cigarette lighter to that sheet and set it on fire?” Burke asks.
“Objection…”
“No.”
“Ob-”
“I have your sworn deposition here,” Burke says. “I can show it to you, if you'd like.”
“-jection!”
Boone sees Petra start hammering on her laptop, bringing up Tammy's deposition transcript. The jurors are literally leaning forward in their seats, totally awake now; the case has suddenly become really interesting, like they see on Law amp; Order.
“Yeah, okay. I told you those things,” Tammy says.
“Thank you,” Alan says. But he's not happy. Torching your own witness, as it were, is never a good thing, because the other side gets to stand up and confront her with the conflict in her own testimony. But it's better than nothing.
