most intense of all emotions and therefore the shortest lived. Time heals. Grief ends. Life goes on. It is natural for you to feel sympathy for Mrs. Corrigan, as I do, but it is not to enter into your deliberations. Judge Leonard will instruct you that you are not to be swayed by sympathy. Sentiment has no place here. Only the facts and the law, and they will convince you that there is no liability in this case. Thank you.'
Melanie Corrigan's eyes burned a hole in my back as I walked to the defense table. Roger Salisbury's face was a mixture of hope and fear. Dan Cefalo didn't waste any time. He had the last shot.
'Ladies and gentlemen, I rise now to speak one last time for Philip Corrigan, who cannot speak for himself.'
Talk about non sequiturs. If Philip Corrigan could speak for himself, we wouldn't be here.
Cefalo raised his voice in lawyerly indignation. 'They've put this woman through the death of her husband, a funeral, a trial, a world of loneliness, and now they say, it'll pass. Go home, Mrs. Corrigan, it'll pass. Let me tell you folks something. When we're done here today, I'll go home to my family. You folks will go home to yours. Mr. Lassiter will see his friends and there will be cheery talk and hors d'oeuvres and the tinkling of glasses.'
That was news to me. I was planning to open a can of tuna.
'But the Corrigan house will be dark and empty when she turns the key in the lock tonight. It'll be that way tonight and tomorrow and the next night. So Mr. Lassiter would have you split hairs over this and that, but the fact is that a man went into the hospital for simple surgery and he didn't come out, and they have a bushelbasket full of reasons why, but you and I know the truth. So as you prepare to go into the jury room, I leave you and ask that you remember you are this woman's last and only hope. God speed.'
A dangerous combination, I thought, as the jurors filed into their windowless room. The intellect of man, the speed of God.
10
Waiting again, this time for a verdict. Waiting is not my strong suit. I never did the bit outside a hospital delivery room, but I know all the cliches, the pacing, the endless cigarettes, the furrowed brows. At least there, when it's over, you've got something to take home. I leave it all behind. Win, lose, or mistrial, I bury it. Winning is less joy than relief, removing the knife from the wound. Losing is not agony, just the fulfillment of promised pain.
Defending a case is particularly frustrating. If you win, you have broken even, restored the status quo. Your client wants to take you to dinner. He shows you his new bumper sticker, My Lawyer Can Beat Your Lawyer. If you lose, he questions what you should have done to win. And always finds something.
Roger Salisbury paced in the corridor. I sat with Cindy in the courtroom. While I read the latest Windrider magazine, she propped her bare feet on the defense table and painted her toenails a metallic silver that reminded me of a '71 Corvette. The bailiff came by and gave her a dirty look. She wiggled a burnished big toe at him.
Still waiting, two hundred minutes creeping along, life ticking away. Somewhere off the Canary Islands, tanned young men and women from France are sailing windsurfers at more than thirty knots. On a hundred slopes in the Rockies, skiers are whooping it up on fresh powder. Only a hundred miles away, bass fishermen are lazing across Lake Okeechobee. So why am I waiting, just waiting, in an old relic of a courthouse for six strangers to tell me if I'm worth a hot damn in my chosen field.
'Is it a good sign they're taking so long?' Roger Salisbury asked, coming in from the corridor.
'It could be,' I said. Very insightful. In truth, it's meaningless. If the jury comes back with a verdict after twenty minutes, you can be sure it's for the defense. They haven't had time to order steaks at taxpayer expense, much less determine both liability and damages. After that, anything goes. They could have determined liability in the plaintiff's favor hours ago and only now be deciding how many zeroes to tack onto the verdict form.
I picked up a newspaper and turned to the sports page. There was Susan Corrigan's by-line above a story on the Dolphins game, a loss at Cleveland. The Dolphins never did play well in cold weather, losing 24 to 10 to the Browns and their defense known as the Dawgs:
CLEVELAND-When the game was still dicey and the field was turning icy, the Browns showed the Miami Dolphins what a Dawg Day afternoon is like on the shores of frozen Lake Erie.
Cute. I wanted to see her. Maybe after the verdict, if she calms down about this murder business. My daydreaming was interrupted by The Knock. It's the knock that sets the adrenaline pumping, the knock from inside the jury room. It could mean anything, including the fact that the jurors are hungry. The bailiff hurried over, as best he could. He was a retired motorcycle cop with snow-white hair, a bow-legged walk, and a hacking cough. When he came out, he headed straight for the judge's chambers, a poker face all the way. Must have forgotten about the bottle of Jack Daniels I schmear him with every Christmas.
In a moment the judge flew through the rear door of the courtroom, still hooking his robe in front, its tail aflutter like a mainsail tacking. Things would happen fast now if there was a verdict. But the jury might have a question, not an answer. Usually baffling questions. Could the court reporter read back the nurse's testimony about the patient's postsurgery constipation? You can never tell what goes through their minds.
But no questions this time. The foreman was holding a piece of legal-size paper neatly folded at the middle. He was a retired accountant. No trace of a sense of humor or spontaneity when I questioned him on voir dire. I had asked him the last book he read. 'The Price Waterhouse Guide to the New Tax Law,' he responded. Not the kind of a guy to have a beer with, but perfect for the defense in a personal injury or medical malpractice case. I tried to catch the foreman's eye. No soap. Looked at the rest of them. Still no luck. Legal folklore has it that they avoid your eyes when they've voted against you.
One of the women, a housewife, looked toward Melanie Corrigan and teared up. Now what the hell did that mean? The widow was through with her tears. She had dusted on some blush during the long break. A nice mixture of healthy and sultry, shedding her mourning widow image a mite early. Her lips were freshly painted in a pink liquid gloss, a wet look. Her hair now cascaded over her shoulders. She ran a hand through the reddish brown waves and tossed her head back, showing me a fine line of neck. A splendid pose for a shampoo ad.
Roger Salisbury could have been in an ad, too. For Plum-mer Funeral Home. When news of The Knock reached the corridor, he quit pacing and hastily joined me at the defense table, the color draining from his face. Now his complexion was the gray of a California seal. I wondered if he was too young for a coronary.
'Has the jury reached a verdict?' Judge Leonard asked in a grave tone suitable for an execution.
'We have, Your Honor,' said the foreman, with no wasted breaths. He stood and handed the verdict form to the bailiff, who used it to shield a cough, then handed it to the judge. Judge Leonard took a thousand years to read it, and I strained with X-ray eyes to read it from fifty feet away. Not a trace of emotion crossed Judge Leonard's face as he handed the form to the clerk. Annoyed at having been interrupted, she reluctantly put down her new paperback, this one a survey of women's sexual fantasies.
'The clerk will publish the verdict,' Judge Leonard said in the same stern voice.
The clerk stood up, lodged her chewing gum in the roof of her mouth, jammed a pencil into her Afro, and in a bored monotone, started reading:
'In the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, in and for Dade County, Florida, Case Number eight-seven, one-eight-three- seven-six, Melanie Corrigan, as Personal Representative of the Estate of Philip M. Corrigan, deceased, versus Roger A. Salisbury, M.D.' She paused, cleared her throat, ah-chem. Oh get to it, already. 'We, the jury, find for the defendant.'
Boom. That was it. She sat down. Roger Salisbury slapped me on the back. Dan Cefalo winced once, recovered like the pro he was, and asked the judge to poll the jury. He did. Each one affirmed the verdict. Melanie Corrigan looked over at Roger Salisbury and gave him a small, bittersweet smile. Like it didn't matter. Like that's one for you. If that wasn't the damnedest thing.
Judge Leonard was doing his thank-yous to the jurors while his bailiff handed them certificates bearing a sketch of the judge that made his round face look like Abe Lincoln on Mount Rushmore. Good for a few votes in the next election.
Then it was over. The jurors picked up their things, the few spectators ambled down the corridor looking for
