looked up, leaving me staring into the top of her Afro. She was reading a paperback with a castle and a dark-eyed woman on the cover.
“Now, this rongeur, Plaintiff’s Exhibit Five, is the perfect instrument for removing the herniated disc material, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know if it’s perfect, but that’s what’s used.”
They’ll be examining his liver under a microscope before he’ll give a defense lawyer a yes. I walked to the rear of the courtroom, the doctor’s eyes tracking me, suspicion wrinkling his brow. He wouldn’t trust me with the petty cash.
“But perfect as it is for one job, it poses a real and known danger to the aorta, doesn’t it?”
Dr. Watkins smiled. The eyes seemed to clear. His chin thrust out and he shot a look at the jury, just to make sure they were paying attention.
“The rongeur poses no danger,” he said in deep, senatorial tones. “The surgeon who is too hasty or too rough or loses track of where he is, that’s the danger. A rongeur does not do the damage except in a most elementary way, the same way a gun kills, but it is the man pulling the trigger who is brought to justice. A surgeon who is negligent, that is the danger. It is professional negligence, or as you lawyers like to call it, malpractice, to damage the aorta while doing a laminectomy-”
“Your Honor!” I am much too loud, a wounded boar. “The witness is not being responsive. He is the one who is speech making for the benefit of the party that pays him royally.” Anything to distract the jury from my blood spilling across the floor. One question too many, the classic bozo move on cross.
Judge Leonard swiveled in his cushioned chair. “Is that an objection?”
I toted up the judge’s prior rulings like a blackjack player counting face cards. “Yes, Your Honor, I ask that the jury be instructed to disregard the witness’s self-serving soliloquy.”
“Sustained. The jury will disregard the last statement of the witness.”
Fat chance, the jurors figuring that anything they’re supposed to forget must be worth remembering. How to rescue the moment? I caught sight of Cefalo. If his smile were any wider, his uppers would fall out.
“No further questions are necessary, Your Honor,” I said with more than a touch of bravado. Then I swaggered to my seat, as if I had just vanquished the witness. I doubted the jury bought even a slice of it. Lassiter, why didn’t you shut up when you had the chance?
Ramrod straight, white hair in place, Dr. Watkins strode from the witness stand, pausing to nod graciously at the jury, a general admiring his troops. Then he walked by the plaintiff’s table, bowed toward Dan Cefalo and tenderly patted Mrs. Melanie Corrigan, the young widow, on the arm. As he passed me, he shook his head, ever so slightly, a compassionate look, as if this poor wretch of a mouthpiece couldn’t help it if he was on the wrong side and an incompetent boob to boot. What a pro. The jurors never took their eyes off him.
My eyes closed and behind them were visions of green hills and cool streams, where the courthouses were only for marriage licenses and real estate deeds. Then I wondered if it was too late to coach powder-puff football at a prep school in Vermont.
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. Steady hands, 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 barstools 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, ‘I 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
