“Oh, I don’t know. Do thoughts of Gina intrude on your consciousness despite your attempts not to think of her?”
“Maybe.”
“Jake, I’m trying to help you.”
“Okay, okay, I think about her a lot. You happy now?”
“Are your thoughts repetitive and distracting? Do they interfere with your work?”
“I guess so.”
“Have you been especially ruminative, your thinking un-spontaneous? Do these thoughts seem to come from somewhere other than yourself?”
“Now that you mention it, yeah.”
“Classic obsessional neurosis,” Charlie declared. “As a child, your personality development probably was hindered because of alienation due to losses suffered very young, but that, dear lad, is another story.” Charlie cleared his throat, perhaps signaling that our forty-five minutes was up. I was expecting him to hand me a bill, but instead he changed the subject. “And what do you think Peter Tupton found?”
“I don’t know, but whatever it was, it killed him.”
“As usual, you assume without knowing sufficient facts. You leap to conclusions.”
“Wrong, Charlie. I don’t assume anything, not even a seven percent mortgage. I listen. And what I hear is that Nicky Florio is a totally amoral, dangerous man who would do anything to achieve his goals. You know what he said to me?”
Charlie looked the question at me.
“‘The gods make their own rules.’ Is that arrogant or what?”
“Ovid.”
“Come again.”
“Publius Ovidius Naso, or as we call him, Ovid. The line comes from Metamorphoses. ‘Sunt superis sua iura.’”Charlie scratched at his beard and smiled to himself, doubtless remembering another pithy Latin verse. “Does Mr. Florio consider himself a god?”
“He thinks he’s untouchable.”
“Money and power do that to a man,” Charlie said.
I stood up and did a couple of spinal twists, picking up a splinter in my foot from a wooden plank. I couldn’t stop thinking about dead Peter Tupton and rich Nicky Florio. And because I generally say what I’m thinking, except in court, where I usually say the opposite, I asked Charlie, “What’s Florio up tor What the hell is it that could be even worse than the damn town in the middle of the Everglades?”
“Figure it out.”
“How?”
“Thank big, Jake.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think like a god,” Charlie Riggs said.
Chapter 10
Everyjury trial has a pace of its own. Some crawl along with countless interruptions and delays. Judges who like to start late and quit early prolong cases. So do blabbermouth lawyers and tardy witnesses. Repetitive testimony and excessive use of exhibits-lawyers overtrying the case-can stretch out the proceedings.
Then there are the trials with the quick heartbeat. A skillful plaintiff’s lawyer, and H.T. Patterson was certainly that, makes the courtroom crackle. The lawyer starts strong in opening statement, witnesses provide details in the middle, and the lawyer ends with a bang in closing argument.
Pacing.
Timing.
Ka-boom!
Patterson was doing his usual job. Crisp and focused, not letting the jurors get bored. In arguments with counsel, he could be a windbag, but he knew how to handle a jury. Lawyers who keep up with the times realize that jurors’ attention spans are shaped by television. On L.A. Law, the crew at McKenzie, Brackman wraps up three trials and two love affairs every sixty minutes, including commercials. So keep your questions short and your arguments cogent. If you don’t, the jurors will doze off and wonder why Judge Wapner doesn’t move things along.
I was in a daze when we started up again Monday. I half listened as Patterson ran through his case, calling the paramedics and an assistant medical examiner in the morning and an expert on alcohol-related deaths in the afternoon. There wasn’t much cross-examining to do. So I sat, chewing a pencil, staring at the sign above the judge’s bench: WE WHO LABOR HERE SEEK ONLY THE TRUTH. If that were true, and not even a first-year law student believes it, most of our labor goes for naught.
The next hour, I sat, half listening to the witnesses, half thinking about Nicky Florio and Rick Gondolier. At lunchtime, I let myself fret about the brown manila envelope marked “Personal and Confidential” that reached the office in Saturday’s mail while I was lazing with Charlie and Granny in Islamorada. Judge Herman Gold used all of eleven pages to find that one Jacob Lassiter, Esq., had illegally tape-recorded a client, and in so doing, had engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice. Further, by threatening his client with exposure to the state attorney, and subsequently doing so, the same miscreant mouthpiece breached the attorney-client privilege in acts “akin to extortion.” That’s what the old buzzard wrote.
Cindy, my trusty secretary, brought the order to the courthouse Monday morning. I read it the first time while a female paramedic who’s also a champion bodybuilder was recounting the efforts to revive Peter Tupton.
I read it again.
Akin to extortion.
Funny, as I recall it, I was trying to prevent a murder by putting my own life in jeopardy, and the law considered my action “akin to extortion.”
Granny Lassiter was right. I was in the wrong profession. I should have done something useful like sell Weed Whackers door-to-door.
“It’s only a ninety-day suspension, plus a public reprimand,” Cindy whispered, striving for encouragement. On the witness stand, the paramedic was saying something about Tupton’s skin being colder than a well-digger’s ass, and Judge Boulton scowled. Cindy leaned close to my ear. “And you can still appeal to the Florida Supreme Court, so don’t get all bent out of shape.”
I sent her back to the office, where she could use the time-honored (and occasionally true) dodge of telling clients that I was in trial and would return their calls upon my victorious return.
The assistant medical examiner, a lanky Harvard-educated pathologist with half-glasses perched on his nose, took the stand and told us what we already knew. Peter Tupton died of ventricular fibrillation brought about by hypothermia, an abnormal lowering of the body temperature. Next came an air force physician who studied the effects of cold on volunteers in Greenland. He testified that alcohol consumption contributed to the hypothermia. Throughout the day, Nicky Florio sat next to me, looking bored, occasionally opening his appointment book and making notes to himself.
Just after the mid-afternoon recess, we had a visitor. I felt a tap on my shoulder as yet another physician was testifying, attesting to Peter Tupton’s robust health prior to being chilled out. I swiveled around in my chair.
The long, sallow face of Abe Socolow was smiling down at me.
Smiling? Abe Socolow?
Then he gave me a teammate’s friendly slug on the back, moved a step toward Nicky Florio, and mumbled something in his ear. Facing the jury box, Socolow smiled, clasped Florio as if they were blood brothers, nodded to the judge, and left.
