“Yeah sure. The point is, she’s likely to be a very good witness. The men in the jury all want in her pants, the women want to mother her.”
“Okay already, I get the point.”
“Good. I don’t want to concern you, but the lovely widow is a real problem for us. She can make the jury forget all our medical mumbo jumbo. That gray silk dress today with the strand of white pearls. Classy but not too flashy.”
Salisbury laughed. “You ought to see her in a strapless cocktail dress.”
Uh-huh is what I say when I don’t know what to say. I would have liked Salisbury to fill me in here, but he didn’t give me any help. After a moment I asked, “Since when are you Mrs. Corrigan’s fashion consultant?”
“Oh that. I probably never told you. When Philip started seeing me for the back and leg pain, we became friendly. I wasn’t dating anybody. They were just married. He started asking me over to their house in Gables Estates. Cocktail parties, dinners, sometimes just the three of us.”
“So you know Mrs. Corrigan?”
“Melanie. Sure.”
“Melanie, is it?”
He looked at me with a what’s-the-big-deal look and I didn’t have an answer so I polished off the palomilla and thought it over. No big deal. I just would have liked to have known about it sometime before trial.
In a moment our new friends cruised back, eyes a thousand watts brighter, ready to roll. I mumbled my apologies to Miss Earrings, who, with no apparent regret, shifted her electrified look to the blandly handsome doctor. I left them there, two women with a buzz on, and the man who had entrusted his career to me, the man who hadn’t told me everything. What else, I wondered, had he left out?
I paused at the door to look back. The restaurant was filled now.
Some of the yuppies were crowding the bar, making too much noise, pushing limes into their Mexican beer, a trendy brand aged about as long as their attention spans. If you have to put lime in your beer, you might as well drink Kool-Aid.
Back at the table, one woman sat on each side of Roger Salisbury. They all laughed. I left the three of them there, the mathematical possibilities of their union crowding Melanie Corrigan’s testimony into a dusty recess of my mind.
3
“Mrs. Corrigan, do you love your husband?”
“I do.” A pause, a catch in the throat, a quiver, the beginning of a tear, then like a lake swollen by a summer storm, an overflow cascading down sculpted cheekbones. “That is, I did. I loved him very much.”
Blessed timing. They don’t teach that in finishing school. Dan Cefalo continued his questioning. “Do you miss him?”
Another leading question, but only a dunce would incur the jury’s wrath by interrupting the soap opera with a news bulletin.
“Very much. Every day. We shared so much. Sometimes, when a car pulls into the driveway, I forget, and I think, well, maybe it’s Phil.”
And maybe it’s the paperboy. God, could she lay it on thick. She looked toward the jury and then away as if the memory was too much to bear. A lace handkerchief appeared out of a navy leather clutch and the big, brown, wet eyes were dabbed dry. The pain radiated from her, but I was the one who was dying. Every question launched an arrow, and every answer pierced my heart. The widow was majestic, thick russet hair swept straight back to lay bare those chiseled lines, to expose her suffering. All for the glory of justice and a seven-figure award for mental anguish, loss of society, comfort, and consortium.
“Tell us about your husband, your late husband, Mrs. Corrigan. And I know it’s a painful subject, so if you need a recess to gather yourself, please just say so.” Cefalo extended his arms toward the widow and bowed from the waist, as if she were royalty. And she did look regal, white gloves setting off a navy and white double-breasted cardigan that covered a matching skirt. Maybe the gloves hid Racy Red nail polish, already slathered on for a night of romping through Coconut Grove clubs. Maybe on cross-examination I should order her to take off the gloves and bare her claws. Sure, or maybe I should just grab a sword and mutter a hara-kiri chant.
“I don’t know where to begin, there’s so much to say,” she said, obviously knowing exactly where she would begin. I wanted her to say: He was boffing half the stewardesses in town while his first wife lay dying; he made millions bribing county commissioners to grant zoning variances; and if it weren’t for high-placed friends in Washington, he would have been indicted for tax evasion.
What she said was: “Phil was the most giving man I’ve ever known. The way he cared for his first wife when she was terminally ill, if you could have seen that, if you all could have seen it.” Then she turned to the jury, an actress facing her adoring audience. “He never thought he could love again, but I brought something to his life. And to me, he was everything-a lover, a friend, even the father I never had. Then for him to die like this, in his prime.”
Clever. Very clever. So well rehearsed it didn’t look rehearsed. Explaining how a twenty-six-year-old woman marries a fifty-five- year-old man. A father, for crying out loud. No mention that the champagne corks were popping only six weeks after he buried his beloved first wife. And if I bring it out on cross, I’m a cad. It was a virtuoso performance. Even Judge Leonard was listening, practically a first. He had been in a fine mood at motion calendar in the morning, as well he should after Hot Touch paid $10.40, $5.40, and $4.80.
When Dan Cefalo turned to me and said, “Your witness,” he was smiling so broadly I almost didn’t notice that his fly was half undone and he had buttoned his shirt into his suitcoat.
The occasion called for brilliance. Roger Salisbury looked at me as if I were his last friend in the world. I approached the witness stand with a solicitous smile. I still hadn’t made up my mind. Behind those tears I saw a flinty toughness that I would love to bring out. But make a mistake, reduce her to tears or hysterics, and the jury would lynch me and nail enough zeroes on the verdict to buy an aircraft carrier. She looked straight back at me. The full lips lost a bit of their poutiness and set in a firm line. It’s there somewhere, I knew. But my investigators couldn’t find it in six months and my pretrial deposition came up empty. I couldn’t risk it now.
I turned to the judge. “Your Honor,” I said, as if seeking his approval, “I believe it would be unfair for us to keep Mrs. Corrigan on the stand to discuss this painful subject. We have no questions.” Roger Salisbury sank into his chair looking hopeless and abandoned. Men on Death Row have brighter futures.
“Very well,” Judge Leonard said, aiming a small smile in my direction. “Mr. Cefalo, call your next witness.”
“The plaintiff rests,” Dan Cefalo said, his goofy grin still lighting up the room.
“Any motions?” the judge asked. We approached the bench and the judge sent the jurors out to lunch.
“At this time, the defense moves for a directed verdict,” I said without a great deal of conviction.
“On what ground, Mr. Lassiter?” the judge asked.
“On the ground that there’s insufficient evidence of proximate cause, first that the surgery caused the aneurysm, and second that the aneurysm caused the death.”
“Denied,” the judge said before Cefalo even opened his mouth. “The plaintiff’s expert testified to that. Whatsa matter, Jake, it’s a jury question at least.”
I knew that. Somewhere between his Bloody Marys and his White Russians, Dr. Watkins had stuck us on proximate cause, at least sufficiently to beat a directed verdict, but I was giving the judge a little preview of our defense. Oh Dr. Charles W. Riggs, I need you now.
The judge looked over the courtroom, which was emptying, and waved us closer to the bench. With a hand, he signaled the court stenographer to take a hike. “You boys talk settlement?”
A practical enough question. If he could clear us out of the courtroom, he could spend the rest of the week at the track.
“Judge, we offered the policy,” I said apologetically. “A million dollars even, all we’ve got, no excess
