icky-whachamacallit does it for food, for survival.'
'Is that really an important distinction?'
Pulling the old Socratic method on me. 'Sure it is,' I said. 'Killing for food is justifiable homicide in the animal kingdom. I've watched enough Marlin Perkins to know that. Man kills for money or out of anger or passion. I've tried enough criminal cases to know that.'
He looked at me over the repaired glasses that hung lopsided on his nose. 'Either way, the victim is just as innocent, the pain just as real, is it not?'
I didn't answer, just sat there and listened to the sound of the swamp, the water stirred by unseen animals. Overhead I heard the short, mellow whistle of an osprey, the Florida fish hawk, and imagined its sharp eyes on full alert for catfish, talons at the ready. Two mosquitoes buzzed around my left ear, debating who would dine first.
Finally Charlie Riggs said, mostly to himself, 'Suc-cinylcholine. Be hard to trace. Breaks down into succinic acid and choline and both substances are normally present in the body. A physician would know that. We could check for needle tracks, though.' 'Isn't it a little late for that?'
He sprang from the chair and bounded into the cabin, banging the screen door behind him. 'Read the book,' he called out. 'Right where the mark is. I'll fix us some limeade. Key limes, sour as my ex-wife's disposition.'
I blew some dust off the book and it fell open to the year 1267. A crummy time to be alive unless you were handy with a sword. The book was in Latin on the left-hand pages and English on the right. Riggs had been reading the left side, making little notes. Never having gotten past amo, amas, amat, I opted for the English:
It happened in the vill of Goldington after vespers the eve of the feast of St. Dunstan that strife arose on the Green between William Read and John Barford concerning sheep. William received a wound on the head from which he seemed to recover. Then he died of ague and his wife raised the hue. The coroner found that William Read had already been buried and instructed that he be dug up. When he be dug up, the coroner said that William Read died of the wound, not the illness, and ordered John Barford attached.
Charlie Riggs toddled out of the cabin carrying two mason jars of limeade with no ice. I put down the book and asked, 'You want to exhume Corrigan's body?'
He handed me one of the jars, dropped into his rickety chair, and studied the swamp. 'You'd be surprised how well embalming preserves tissues. Might be hard to find needle tracks, though. The skin will be moldy, and if he's buried in damp ground, it's probably turned to adipocere, sort of a waxy gunk. And he isn't going to smell like Chanel No. 5.'
He let that hang in the still air, then said, 'If you're getting hungry, I'm about to put supper on. Fresh possum.'
I passed on the invitation, thoughts of parasitic wasps and moldy corpses failing to whet the appetite. I took a swig of the warm limeade. It puckered me up; he had left out the sugar.
'Well how about it, Jake? You ready to rob graves?'
'I've done worse, but Salisbury is my client. I can't do anything against his interests.'
Riggs scowled. 'The case is over, Counselor.'
'Not in the eyes of the Florida Bar. I can't use something I learned in the course of representing Salisbury in a way that may harm him. I try not to break more than two or three of the canons each week.'
I must not have sounded convincing. I hadn't convinced Riggs, and I hadn't convinced myself.
Charlie Riggs downed his limeade in one gulp, gave me his teacher-to-student look, and said, 'It's not as if you're going to the authorities. Just a little private investigation to answer some questions, settle your conscience. Besides, it'll give me something to do. And maybe your young lady friend will appreciate you searching for the truth, kind of set you apart from most members of your profession.'
He knew how to push all the right buttons. 'C'mon, Jake. To hell with your canons.'
'Come to think of it,' I said, 'they're not mine.' 'Good boy. Let's get to it. The grave is silent, magis mutus quam piscis, but you and 1, Jake, we can speak for the dead.'
12
The city swallowed up the Salisbury verdict just as it did everything else. A tiny morsel for the carnivorous media machines. Two paragraphs in the 'Courthouse Roundup' section of the newspaper, no television or radio coverage at all. 60 Minutes did not call me for an interview; young lawyers did not stop me on Flagler Street and ask for words of wisdom; my partners did not toast me with champagne or vote me a bonus.
If the jury had hit Salisbury with a ten-million-dollar verdict, headlines would have screamed the news from here to Tallahassee. But a defense verdict sinks into the muck of the day's events, a fallen twig barely stirring a ripple in the malevolent swamp.
I did receive a memo from Morris McGonigal, the senior partner, a guy with a gray flannel personality in a seersucker town. Or rather my secretary Cindy received a memo from his secretary. It said, 'Please advise Mr. Lassiter that Mr. McGonigal congratulates him on his recent verdict.'
The personal touch.
I wasn't complaining about the lack of notoriety. It probably was better for Salisbury. A doctor gets hit with a big verdict, the public thinks he's a butcher. The doctor gets off, the public thinks the jury fouled up. Besides, it was a heavy news day, even by Miami standards. Police arrested two Nic-araguans who had a dozen TOW missiles and an antitank rocket in their truck, the Miami version of a traffic violation. The Nicaraguans were planning to fight the Sandinistas, a holy mission hereabouts, and would probably get probation, if not a key to the city.
A few hours later, most Miami police were busy pumping bullets into the van of a 63-year-old Cuban plumber. They had good reason. He had fired five shots at an undercover cop. But then the plumber had good reason. The cop, dressed like a thug, was stuck in a monstrous traffic jam on Calle Ocho. The cop waved his gun at the plumber to get him to move his van. His motherfucking Cuban van, witnesses would later recall the officer screaming. There was a convenience store robbery coming down a block away, and the cop, his Firebird socked in by the van, was hollering in English, a language as foreign to the plumber as Sanskrit.
The plumber figured he was being robbed and opened fire. That drew seven police cars, a number of shotguns, and forty-seven holes in the van, three in the plumber, and one in his colostomy bag. The plumber survived, and the convenience store robbers got away with seventy-three dollars and a box of DoveBars.
I was mired in my typical psychological letdown after a trial, just puttering around the office, shuffling stacks of mail, trying to figure out where to go from here. I tried calling Susan Corrigan, but a bored voice on the copy desk said she was on the west coast, headed out early for pregame stories on the Dolphins' next opponent, their old nemesis, the Raiders. I wanted to see her, and not just to talk about digging up dear old Dad. I had a little buzz about Ms. Susan Corrigan. That happens sometimes when I get stiff-armed. Don't know why, maybe my ego needs bruising. Maybe too much easy flesh in the early years. Or maybe I had matured a notch or two until I finally appreciated a strong, savvy lady more than a lusty, dim one. Whatever the reason, the image of the suntanned and sharp-tongued sportswriter was hovering just below the surface of my consciousness.
I had just hung up with the newspaper when Cindy slipped me a note:
Widow Not Merry,
Do Not Tarry;
Commotion, Line Two.
I punched the flashing button and heard shouting in the background, a man's voice and a woman's voice. I couldn't make out the words. I said hello a bunch of times. The phone must have been put down. Some women need two hands to argue. The voices came closer. 'You owe me,' the man's voice said, booming over the wire. Then the sound of a woman laughing. More yelling, then a woman's loud voice telling the man to get out. I thought I heard a door slam. Then silence.
'Hello.' The woman's voice, under perfect control. 'Mr. Lassiter?'
I told her it was.
She told me it was Mrs. Corrigan calling. I knew that.
