subcutaneous tissue and adipose tissue. Bleeders were clamped and cauterized. I identified the L3-L4 interspace. I removed the ligamentum flavum and superior portion of L4 and inferior portion of L3 without incident.'
I walked him through every step of it, sending the jurors messages that this doctor knew what he was doing. He was there, dammit. Dan Cefalo wasn't. Wallbanger Watkins wasn't. Now Salisbury was a teacher and the jurors, his students, listened to every word. Some might not have followed every move of the scalpel, but it didn't matter. Roger Salisbury knew his stuff, knew more than the jurors-a travel agent, two housewives, a student, two retired businessmen- ever would. The impression I wanted to create was simple: Who are we to judge this man?
'I removed the disc material, the nucleus pulposus.' Roger Salisbury pointed to a chart we blew up to poster size. 'In a herniated disc, it's like toothpaste that's been squeezed out of the tube. It's pushed out of the disc space and there's no putting it back.'
Good imagery. It should have been. We practiced it for months.
'Then what did you do?' I asked.
'I removed the degenerative disc material with the rongeur.'
'Was there anything unusual up to this point?'
'Nothing up to then or later,' he said evenly. 'The procedure was without incident.'
'What were the patient's vital signs?'
'All normal. Blood pressure, pulse rate, breathing.'
The anesthesiologist would confirm this when we read his deposition to the jury.
'You heard Dr. Watkins's testimony about the rongeur?' 'I did.'
'Did anything unusual happen with the rongeur?'
'No, it never went through the disc space, certainly not around to the front of the aorta. In all respects the patient tolerated the surgery normally.'
'When was the last time you saw Philip Corrigan?'
'I checked him in the recovery room and once later in his private room.'
'And his condition?'
'Normal. No evidence of a mass in his abdomen, normal 78 blood pressure, hemoglobin, and hematocrit. No sign of hemorrhage or aortic aneurysm.'
I kept him up there a few minutes longer to say how surprised he was the next morning when he learned that Corrigan's aorta ruptured during the night. And, sounding sincere, he expressed regret at the death of his patient. I nodded gravely with my own look of sincerity, a look that took three years of law school, a dozen years of practice, and a couple Jimmy Stewart movies to perfect. Then I sat down, and Dan Cefalo stood up.
Cefalo was in a box. He had deposed everyone in the OR, and they all corroborated Salisbury's testimony concerning Corrigan's vital signs. The aneurysm had not happened simultaneously with the surgery. Cefalo needed to convince the jury that Salisbury nicked the front of the aorta, causing it to rupture ten hours later. No use asking Salisbury whether that happened. He'd get a big fat no. He needed Watkins back for rebuttal testimony. But that would come later. Now, the jurors watched Cefalo, waiting to see if he could counter-punch.
Cefalo looked even worse than usual today. All the courthouse regulars knew that his trial wardrobe was a hoax, the result of a case he tried upstate years ago. In the wilds of Okeechobee County he had worn a sharkskin suit when defending a man accused of stealing fruit from an orange grove, a felony akin to cattle rustling in the Old West. The prosecutor was a good old boy and in closing argument told the jury that they could listen to him or they could listen to that Mia-muh lawyer in the shiny suit. They listened to the good old boy.
Dan Cefalo learned his lesson. He stripped off the Rolex 79 and the pinky ring and left the silk ties at home. He wore a selection of suits that the Salvation Army couldn't give away. As he won bigger verdicts, his clothes became more decrepit.
Today, though, it wasn't the clothing. Cefalo was pale and nervous. He came to court with a jagged square of toilet paper sticking to his chin. A spot of blood shone through. Hands shaky this morning, my man? He kept huddling with a young lawyer and two paralegals from his office. I picked up only three words of their conversation. 'He here yet?' Cefalo asked. The young lawyer shook his head.
Cefalo started his cross-examination by asking whether it might be possible to pierce the aorta and not be aware of it.
'Not likely,' Salisbury replied. 'You watch how far you insert the rongeur and when you meet resistance, you stop.'
I sneaked a look at Melanie Corrigan, who sat with legs demurely crossed at the ankles. She wore a simple black linen dress, probably to signify her continuing grief. I wanted to see, close up, what kind of woman plots to kill her husband. An actress, I thought. A fooler of men ripe to be fooled.
I turned her down, Roger had assured me last night. Philip was my friend. I would never kill him.
Did she take no for an answer?
Roger shrugged. Said she knew some guys who'd kill Philip and never blink.
I'll bet she did. A woman can't tiptoe through the gutter and keep her feet clean. If she'd been grinding in one of those jerk-off joints, she'd have run into pimps, dopers, dirty cops, confidence men, porno kings, and the other flotsam of the city. Plus, more than a few triggermen. Roger Salisbury was in over his head with that crowd. Of course, Philip
Corrigan didn't die from a bullet or knife or garrote. He died from an aneurysm twelve hours after my client operated on him.
Dan Cefalo kept after Salisbury for another twenty minutes but couldn't shake him. Then, tripping on his untied shoelaces, Cefalo called it quits and dropped into his chair. We tidied up some of the trial's loose ends, reading depositions into the record, admitting certain medical reports into evidence. I had no other ammo so I announced that the defense rested. We renewed our motions for a directed verdict, and Judge Leonard denied them, saying we had issues for the jury. Actually what he said was, 'You boys got yourself a real horse race here.'
Dan Cefalo said he had one rebuttal witness, and the judge figured we could breeze through that after lunch and he'd still have time to make it to Hialeah. The Widener Cup was Saturday, and, like football fans who go to practice, he visited the stalls and watched the horses eat their oats and crap in the paddock.
Another down time, waiting for the judge after lunch recess. While Cefalo paced, I made notes for tomorrow's closing argument, Roger Salisbury flipped the pages of a medical journal, and my secretary Cindy waltzed into the courtroom as inconspicuous as a shark in the wading pool. She wore a white miniskirt, black fishnet stockings, leather earrings with chrome studs, all topped by a new hairdo that was spiked, punked, and Day-Glo pinked. Her hair shot in various directions like hundreds of porcupine quills. It looked like she stuck her finger in an electrical outlet.
''Que pasa, el jefe?'
'Do I know you?' I said.
'Not as well as some men I could name.'
'Not enough time for that.'
'You don't look so busy to me.'
'We're waiting for the judge. At least I'm waiting for the judge. The grieving widow is waiting for Probate Court to release the estate funds. And Cefalo's waiting for Wallbanger Watkins, his rebuttal witness.'
'He's got a long wait,' Cindy said.
'Huh?' That's my probing question technique.
Cindy sat down and propped her feet on the counsel table. 'Got a long wait for the good doctor,' she said matter-of-factly.
'What do you know that I don't, but should?'
'So many things. But I'm willing to teach.'
'Cindy, this is serious. We're in trial.'
She frowned. 'Lighten up. I just have a sneaking suspicion that Watkins is AWOL, and Dan Cefalo is so shit out of luck he oughta buy a new suit.'
'You didn't kidnap him, did you?' With Cindy you never could tell. Once in a sex discrimination case, a department store executive denied that he ever hit on my client, his young female assistant. Said he'd never been unfaithful to his wife, never even made a pass at another woman. Cindy tracked the guy to his favorite watering hole, ran an inviting toe inside his pantleg, and took him home. Luis (Long Lens) Morales, a convicted counterfeiter
