show up for arraignment, the preliminary, the trial, the whole works.'
'And what if he splits for Argentina with some bambina? I'll look like a schmuck.'
'Who'd notice the difference?' I said, without thinking. I pictured Socolow scowling at me at the other end of the line.
'Fuck him and the horse he rode in on. Let him sit in the can with all the other shitheads.'
Stay in the prosecutor's office long enough, you get warped. You start thinking like a cop and talking like a cop. Cops are everywhere-homicide, vice, narcs-telling macho stories, hanging together in the paranoid world of Us against Them. Then in the corridors of the Justice Building, you rub up against the silk-suited shoulders of criminal lawyers and their depraved clients. No way you can stay sane. Not after eighteen years.
He always thought I was too flippant. Become a judge if you want to be a wiseguy, Socolow once told me. They get away with that shit.
'So what's it gonna be?' Socolow said finally.
'I'll bring him in, but I want an immediate bond hearing. You and I both know he shouldn't have to cool his heels in that hellhole across the street.'
Socolow laughed. 'Good enough for spicks and spades, but not for the saintly doctor. Bring him in, and I'll get you a bond hearing this afternoon. But you know your burden under Arthur v. State.'
I knew, I knew. Unlike a trial, where the state has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, at a bond hearing in a capital case, the defendant must show that the state lacks sufficient evidence of guilt. But there was something in that for us, too. I could cross-examine Socolow's witnesses. One more time to put them under oath, a great advantage, because the best trick in the defense lawyer's trial bag is to elicit conflicting statements from prosecution witnesses. Jurors love that, even if the testimony is as innocuous as the color of the tie someone was wearing on the day of a murder. So the state's case would be unfolded in front of me, and the state's star witness, Mrs. Melanie Corri-gan, would have to testify much sooner than she could have expected.
'I can't believe Melanie set me up,' Roger Salisbury said as we looked for a parking space in front of the Justice Building. He squirmed in the bucket seat.
'Believe it,' I said. 'Hey, she sued you for malpractice, planted the drug in your house, and gave the State Attorney's Office an affidavit for the search warrant. What more does it take?'
He slammed a hand against the dashboard. 'I'll believe it when I see her take the stand against me, not before.'
'Fine,' I said, pulling the old convertible into the meager shade of a thatch palm. 'That should be right after lunch.'
18
The Justice Building hadn't changed, except to become more crowded, dirtier, and more forbidding. When I started practicing law, six Criminal Court judges handled all felony cases in Dade County. But that was before Miami became the major port of entry for various grasses, powders, and pills from south of the border, and before Miami earned its civic bones as murder capital of the U.S. of A. Now Miami has the highest crime rate in the country. That's important. Americans have a passion for being number one. Like having the highest humidity, the murder rate is the source of a bizarre sense of pride among locals. It takes a tough hombre to battle
Miami's mosquitoes each summer and the criminals all year round.
The city padres can't do much about the weather, but they keep adding personnel to the justice system. Now, eighteen state judges churn through calendars stocked with up to sixty felonies each day, hurrying through arraignments, motions, bond hearings, reports, soundings, trials, and sentenc-ings. A constant flow of humanity crowds the corridors- Liberty City blacks, Hispanics from a dozen countries, dirt-poor whites-calling out for their public defenders in a Babel of tongues, inner-city jive, machine-gun Spanish, back-country Southern drawl.
I was pacing the fourth floor, getting the feel of the place again, waiting for the bond hearing. The tile floors were filthy, the corridors dim with dead fluorescent bulbs. Acoustic tiles were missing from the ceiling, leaving gaps like missing teeth. Every thirty feet or so, huge twists of electrical wires dropped from overhead conduits, waiting for county electricians to install some new device, maybe TV cameras, escape alarms, or other technological marvels. The wires could have been there a week or a year. In the Justice Building, time is another dimension.
An ancient bailiff in a baggy blue uniform came out of a courtroom shouting, 'Judge Snyder's calendar is now being called!' All aboard.
A young assistant state attorney with too much hair and an unkempt moustache sang out, 'Teddy Figuero-a! Teddy Figuero-a!' A prosecutor's missing witness, a case about to go down the tubes.
A huge black woman slammed into me. She held her even larger son by the scruff of his T-shirt and horse collared him down the corridor. The son was about twenty, with shoulders like a water buffalo but a choreographer's hips.
'What day they say your trial be?' the mom demanded.
'February four, Momma.'
'No. No. The ar-rangement be February four. The trial be when, March something…'
They trundled toward the escalators, still debating.
Shackled defendants crossed the corridor in twos, shuffling from one holding cell to another, eyes darting left and right, looking for girlfriends, mothers, lawyers, or bondsmen.
A sunburned redhead in her forties removed one high-heeled shoe and wiggled the toes of her right foot. Four toes, the little one missing. Maybe the evidence in a criminal case. Who knows? The performers are crazed at Circus Maximus.
I threaded my way to Judge Randolph Crane's courtroom, a spacious arena with thirty-foot ceilings, paneled walls on two sides, and a stained glass ornamental wall behind the bench into which was cut a door and through which the judge miraculously appeared from chambers. Under his raised bench of simulated walnut was a red panic button that summoned corrections officers in the event a deranged defendant (or lawyer) attacked him, and on a hidden shelf sat a loaded. 357 Magnum in case the officers were all squeezing up against the young women clerks in the police liaison office.
I was waiting for the officers to bring Roger into the courtroom from the county jail next door where he had been booked two hours earlier. The prisoners came through an overpass that crossed the street and led directly into holding cells attached to the courtrooms. I had stayed with Roger as long as they let me in jail processing, and when they took him back through the huge steel door that clanged shut with a sound of malice and finality, he shot me a helpless look.
It hit me then, the load I carried, Roger Salisbury's life weighing a ton on my shoulders. The first rule of criminal cases and here I was emoting, instead of thinking, feeling anguish for him instead of masterminding a brilliant strategy to set him free. If any there be.
A dozen defendants sat in the jury box waiting for their cases to be called. Lawyers milled about in front of the bar, whispering to each other, poring through files, making deals, swapping stories. The courtroom resembled a basketball court before the game, players at both ends warming up, taking shots from all over the court, slapping each other on the back, a kind of camaraderie before the battle. At the same time, the judge kept calling his calendar, sometimes banging his gavel to bring the uproar to a manageable din.
Judge Randolph Crane was serving his fourth six-year term on the bench. He was tall and spare with a long, gloomy, gray face. His pale blue eyes had seen it all and not liked any of it. He spoke quickly as if he wanted to get it over with, sometimes thumbing through his calendar, shaking his head at the number of cases still to be heard.
'Rodolfo Milan,' the judge called out. A pot-bellied man in a stained guayabera dragged himself out of the jury box. A public defender whispered in his ear. In a singsong voice, the judge began his mournful chant, 'You're charged with aggravated assault, grand theft, breaking and entering, possession of a weapon in the commission of a felony. Rodolfo Milan, how do you plead?'
The defendant looked for his public defender, who now was huddled with a young woman prosecutor in a
