2
Roger Salisbury was pouring black bean soup over the rice, then carefully layering a row of chopped onions on top, building a little mound. Not a drop of the dark soup spilled. The Cuban crackers, which in my hands crumble into dust, he split down the middle with a thumb and index finger, a clean break like marble under a sculptor's chisel. The hands of a surgeon. Not hands that would have slipped, letting the rongeur puncture the aorta, leaving Philip Corrigan to die of internal bleeding and Melanie Corrigan to live as a young, beautiful, and very rich widow. Which is why Roger Salisbury was questioning my strategy in cross-examining the white-haired baron of bombast who nearly blew me out of the courtroom this very day.
'If our defense is that I didn't nick the aorta, why were you trying to get Watkins to admit that a surgeon can't see what he's doing in a laminectomy? It sounded like you were trying to excuse me for something I didn't do.'
When a client thinks that you are letting him sink into the treacherous waters of the justice system, it is best to appear calm and knowledgeable, even when you are floundering about, looking for the nearest lifeboat yourself. This is easier to do when not distracted by two young women who are appraising you with large, luminous, and inviting eyes.
'It's called alternative pleading,' I said with authority and a polite smile toward our observers, perched on bar-stools at the counter. When confronted with large, luminous, and inviting eyes, I am polite without fail. 'We say to the jury, first, the good doctor didn't come within a country mile of the damn blood vessel. Second, even if he might have sideswiped it, that's not negligence. It's an accepted risk of this kind of surgery because of the small disc space and the proximity of the aorta.'
'I get the feeling you don't believe me,' Roger Salisbury said. He ladled more soup onto the rice with those sturdy hands, and I watched the steam rise, a pungent aroma enveloping us. One of the women was smiling now. At me, I thought. Or was it at Roger? He was handsome in a nondescript way. Medium height, medium build, medium features. The kind of guy who gives police artists fits. Nothing to work with, no missing teeth, bent nose, or jagged scars, nothing protruding, nothing receding.
I dug into my palomilla, a tough piece of flank steak marinated in oils and spices and likely left on the hood of a '59 Chevy in the Miami sun. I was talking with my hands, or rather my fork, which had speared a sweet fried plantain.
'It's a historic legal strategy. In olden times, a plaintiff might sue his neighbor and say, T lent him my kettle, and when he returned it, it was cracked.' The neighbor answers the lawsuit and says, 'I never borrowed the kettle, but if I did, it was cracked when he gave it to me.' '
Roger Salisbury shook his head. 'Your profession is so uncertain, so full of contradictions. I'll never understand the law.'
'Nor I, women.' Their eyes were lighting up with magical, come-hither glints. I stayed put and Roger kept talking.
'Jake, I have a lot of faith in you, you know that.'
Oh boy, I got fired once by a client who started off just like that. 'Sure, and you should have,' I said, showing the old confidence.
'But I can't say I'm happy with the way the trial's going.'
'Listen, Roger. There's a psychological phenomenon every defendant goes through during the plaintiff's case. Try to remember it's still the top of the first inning. We haven't even been to bat yet. Wait'll old Charlie Riggs testifies for us. He's honest and savvy, and he'll make Wallbanger Watkins look like the whoring sawbones he is.'
'Sure.'
'You don't sound convinced.'
'Riggs is on the verge of senile dementia, if not over it. He speaks Latin half the time. He's the friggin' coroner-or was until they retired him-not an orthopedic surgeon.'
'Roger, trust me. We need a canoemaker, not a carpenter. Charlie Riggs is going to tell the jury why Philip Corrigan died. It's a hole in their case, and I'm going to ride the U.S. Cavalry through it.'
Finally the two women set sail for our table. One looked straight at me from under a pile of auburn hair that reached her shoulders and kept going toward Mexico. She had caramel skin and lustrous ebony eyes. The other had thick, jet black hair that only made her porcelain complexion seem even more delicate. She wore one earring shaped like a golden spermatozoan and another of ivory that could have been a miniature elephant tusk. Both women wore tourniquet-tight slacks, high-heeled open-toed shoes, and oversized cotton sweatshirts, with spangles and shoulders from here to the Orange Bowl.
'May we join you for a moment?' Miss Caramel Skin asked. The you was a chew.
Roger Salisbury looked up and grinned. Even the punitive damage claim hadn't sent his hormones into hibernation. I could have used the distraction. My social life was as empty as a Miami Beach hotel in July. But I took inventory quickly, knowing I had several hours of work ahead. There is a time for dallying, but the middle of a trial is not such a time. I wanted to finish the postmortem on the day's events and prepare for tomorrow and the widow's testimony. Still, an old reflex, maybe eons old, had the mental computer figuring a sort of cost-benefit analysis-how long it would take-the flirting time, make-nice time, bone-jumping time, and call-you-again time. Too long.
They already were sitting down and Caramel Skin was chattering about her ex-boyfriend, a Colombian, and what a scumbag he was. Skoombag. She was Costa Rican, Miss Earrings Honduran.
I shouldn't have brought Roger to Bayside, a yuppie hangout with shops, restaurants, and bars strung along Biscayne Bay downtown. It was a pickup place, and these two probably assumed we were in the hunt-two decent- looking guys under forty in suits-when all we wanted was solitude and an early dinner. Outside the windows, the young male lawyers, accountants, and bankers headed for the nearby singles bars, suitcoats slung over shoulders, red suspenders holding up Brooks Brothers suit pants. They slouched against open-air bars waiting for their frozen margaritas to ooze out of chrome-plated machines that belong in Dairy Queens, not taverns. Nearby the young women-mirror images in business suits or no-nonsense below-the-knee dresses-their mouths fixed in go-to-hell looks, struggled with the degree of toughness and cool necessary to beat the men at their own game. Altogether, a smug clique of well-dressed boys and girls.
'Carlos had a Cigarette,' Caramel Skin was saying. 'Used to go like a son-of-a-bitch.' Sunavabeach. 'Liked the Cigarette more than he liked me. Now he's at FCI.'
Salisbury wore a blank look. I said, 'Federal Correctional Institution. Probably used the boat to bring in bags of the white stuff.'
'Si. Hizo el tonto. He played the fool for others. And, como si esto fuera poco, he used to beat me. Tie me up and spank me with a hairbrush. It was fun at first, but then…'
Roger Salisbury was into it now, asking Caramel Skin whether Carlos the Con used leather or plain old rope. Scientific study or kinky curiosity, I wondered. Miss Earrings was telling me that they were fashion models-aren't they all?- who really didn't have work permits. Came here on tourist visas. Which meant they also were following the scent for the Holy Grail, green cards. Bagging American husbands would do the trick.
The earrings dangled near my face. Our knees touched and her voice dropped to a whisper, a ploy to get me to lean closer. Do they teach this stuff or is it in their genes? A long fingernail traced the outline of my right ear. In the right time and place, it could have been erotic. In a brightly lit restaurant with my mind on business, it itched.
'Thick hair, Mister Broad Shoulders,' she said. Theek and Meester. 'Some of the Yankees, their hair is like, how they say, telaranasV
'Cobwebs,' Caramel Skin said.
'Si, cobwebs. But yours, chico, is thick like cahamo. And rubianco.'
'Like hemp and almost blond,' Caramel Skin said, helpfully. Her friend gave a tug on my theek rubianco cahamo, which did not help me get a fried plantain into my mouth. 'And ojos azules,' she said, giggling, looking into my eyes.
The women excused themselves to go to the restroom, probably to divide up the spoils. Caramel Skin would get the smaller guy with neat, salt-and-pepper hair who was practically smacking his lips over images of sweet
