I put on my best Edward G. Robinson. 'You sprung me? You dirty screw. I was going over the wall tonight with the boys. What'll they think?'
He didn't smile; he didn't scowl, just the same straight-faced look. Ten years and he has yet to laugh at one of my jokes.
With Socolow running interference, we sailed through the paperwork for my return to society. We headed east in his government Chrysler-four doors, blackwalls-toward Miami Beach. Abe wore a dark three-piece suit with his Phi Beta Kappa pin slung from a vest pocket. I wore a blue chambray shirt with a nine-digit number. If we went to a Coconut Grove club, I'd be considered highly trendy and he'd be stashed next to the kitchen with a busload of retirees from Century Village. We took the Julia Tuttle Causeway, which connects the mainland with Arthur Godfrey Road on
Miami Beach. It's a great drive, high above Biscayne Bay, sailboats swooping beneath the pillars of the bridge, a fine view of the white and pink buildings of Miami Beach. From the top of the causeway you appreciate the fragility of that long, skinny sandbar with the bay on one side, the vast ocean on the other.
On the way Socolow told me he'd asked Charlie Riggs to meet us there. I thought that over a second. 'Why not the ME? He's the guy on your side.'
Socolow was silent. Like a good soldier, he wouldn't squawk about intramural warfare. Then he surprised me. 'Maybe too much on my side.'
I let it go. But he didn't. 'MacKenzie's a turd,' he said stiffly.
I had noticed a certain scatological bent to Abe's patter lately, but this was not the time to question whether he had been toilet trained at the appropriate age.
'A turd?' I delicately inquired.
'I can't prove it, but I think he cooked those chromatographic tests that night in the morgue, the guys who died in surgery. He wouldn't let me near Blumberg all night.'
Why was he telling me this?
'You're probably surprised I'm telling you this,' he said.
Mind reader.
'There won't be a new trial,' Socolow continued. 'The widow refuses to testify.'
'You could lean on her,' I suggested, hoping he'd already tried and failed. 'You've done it before with reluctant witnesses.'
'Not in a case like this,' he said. 'What's it mean, Jake, 342 if a woman won't testify against a man she swore killed her husband?'
I thought about it. 'Different possibilities. That she knows the defendant didn't do it. Or the defendant did it and she helped him. Or she knows who did it and she's afraid a trial would bring that out.'
Abe Socolow didn't say a word, just nodded to himself, watched the causeway straight ahead, and kept both hands on the wheel, at ten o'clock and two o'clock, just the way they teach you. Some guys play it strictly by the book.
Charlie Riggs was standing inside the double doors of the ICU talking to a young doctor in a white lab coat. The doctor was short and pale with a bushy, unkempt beard. Charlie stroked his own beard; the young doctor stroked his. Charlie barely noticed our arrival. No introductions, we just picked up listening.
'He went fast,' the doctor said with a shrug. 'Ambulance brought him in, eyes bulging, stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea, stiff joints, then paralysis. We tried to stabilize him. Barely got the IV in. Bang! Liver and kidneys fail, goes into respiratory arrest.'
'Classic indicia of food poisoning,' Charlie said dispassionately. 'We used to see two or three deaths a year, green beans at church picnics. Botulism.'
The two doctors kept talking, ignoring us. There wasn't much two lawyers could add anyway.
'That's what we thought,' the doctor said. 'But we checked it out. Last two meals were banquet style for the karate convention. Three hundred people, no one else even burped.'
Charlie scratched his beard. The young doctor did the same. I didn't have a beard, so I ran a hand through my shaggy hair. Socolow didn't have much hair, so he lit a cigarette, then ground it into the tile after a nurse wagged a finger at him.
'Have you checked the body for punctures, fresh injections?' Charlie asked.
'Sure did, after Mr. Socolow told us his suspicions. Noth-ing.
Charlie Riggs turned to Abe Socolow. They had worked together in the past, shared a mutual respect, even if Charlie thought Abe was a little sharp around the edges. 'What was he doing just before he was stricken?'
'Best we can figure,' Socolow said, 'he just finished chopping up a stack of boards with his bare hands.' Socolow looked at me. 'Except nobody slugged him afterwards.'
'I see,' Charlie said. He was the only one who did. 'I think I'll take a drive to Convention Hall.'
I was sleeping in my own bed with two pillows for company when four headlights glared malevolently through my front windows, and two horns blared. I rolled over and looked at the clock. The green digital numbers flashed from 2:57 to 2:58 as my feet hit the floor. Downstairs, a flashing of high beams. Maybe the cops picking me up. Maybe I really did go over the wall.
I wrapped a towel around my waist and opened the front door. Granny Lassiter and Charlie Riggs.
'Sorry to disturb you, Jake,' Charlie said, sounding not a bit sorry.
'Let me guess,' I said groggily, 'you want my permission to marry this woman. Forget it. Elope if you like.'
'I'm game,' Granny said. 'Only fellow my age I know still got lead in his pencil.'
'C'mon Jake,' Charlie commanded, his face serious, no twinkle in his eye. 'Let's take a ride and talk.'
If Charlie wanted to talk, I wanted to listen. I slipped on an old pair of gym shorts, running shoes, and a gray T-shirt, stepped into the humid night, and slid into the front passenger seat of Granny's mammoth 1969 Cadillac. Over the bay, lightning flashed and distant thunder followed, a thunderstorm brewing in the southeast, headed our way. Granny had the engine running and Charlie was already in the back. Before I had dented the velour upholstery, the smell rolled over me.
'Granny, you leave a mess of last week's grouper under the seat?'
She didn't even look at me, just jerked a thumb toward the backseat and flicked on the overhead light. My gaze followed the thumb and left me staring into the waxy, dissolving face of the late Sylvia Corrigan.
'What the hell!'
'Relax, Jake,' Charlie said. 'Jane did us a great favor by bringing the body here tonight.'
Everybody was doing me favors today. As for 'Jane,' the name still struck me funny, like calling Charlemagne, 'Chuck.'
'Weren't nothing,' Granny said. 'That old gal been taking up room in my cooler anyhow.'
'What's going on?' I demanded.
'I found the boards Sergio had broken at Convention 345
Hall,' Charlie explained. 'Easy enough. He did the noon demonstration. Slabs of pine were in the trash, stacked in nearly the same order that he broke them. I thought it quite natural to assume that the one with the cleanest break would have been the top board.'
'Quite natural,' I agreed.
Granny pulled onto Douglas Road, then turned right at Dixie Highway heading downtown. You expect traffic to be light after three a.m., but it never is. You wonder who these people are, looking for a party or heading for their night shifts.
'On close inspection I could see the top board had been coated with something. I took it to Dr. Kalian at the lab, and he confirmed my suspicions. Clostridium botulinum, and quite a liberal dose of it.'
'The stuff that causes food poisoning,' I said.
'The very stuff,' Charlie said.
'What'd Sergio do, eat the boards for breakfast?'
'No, he just hit one with a hand that he had cut on the tile in the courtroom. Even without the cut, the abrasion from the board probably would be sufficient to allow the toxin to enter the blood. With the wound still healing and Sergio not wanting to show weakness by wearing a bandage -I asked around-it was an open invitation to the toxin.'
'And you think Roger Salisbury cooked this up?' I asked.
