the party.
“Did there come a time that you saw Peter Tupton?”
“Several times,” he said. “Nicky introduced me to him by the buffet table near the pool.” Gondolier gestured toward the defense table, where Florio nodded his approval. “That was early afternoon.”
“Can you describe that first meeting?”
“Nothing remarkable. I told Mr. Tupton I knew of his work and that I was a proud member of the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club. He told me he had visited the bingo hall. It was very pleasant.”
“What was Mr. Tupton’s physical condition at the time?”
Gondolier seemed to think about it. “Nothing unusual. It was very hot outside, and all of us were in swim trunks. The buffet table was in the shade, and there was a slight breeze from the water, but it was still hot. Mr. Tupton was drinking a mimosa. More than one, actually. I wandered off to say hello to Mrs. Florio and some of the guests, Mr. de La Torre from National Sugar, the mayor, a few others.”
“Did there come a second time you saw Mr. Tupton?”
“Yes.”
“And when was that?”
“Perhaps an hour later.”
“And what transpired then?”
“It was still brutally hot, and I saw Mr. Tupton by the seawall. He was alone and seemed to be talking to himself. He was wobbling…”
Oh boy. Where did this come from? Gilding the lily, Gondo?
“…so I told him to watch the mimosas, they sneak up on you. As I recall it, he giggled and grabbed another drink from a waiter who was passing with a tray on his way to the pool. Then he said he had to relieve himself and headed toward the house.”
“Did there come another time that you encountered Mr. Tupton?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I was watching Patterson. Alert but not alarmed. He didn’t know what was coming, and with this witness, neither did I.
“Maybe twenty minutes later,” Gondolier said, “he came back, all in a lather.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“He’d been in the house, and apparently he’d seen some papers in Nicky’s den. He was ranting and raving…”
Patterson was wide awake. He couldn’t believe we were shooting ourselves in the foot like this. Gondolier was eliminating any chance I could claim that it never happened. Just wait, H.T. This witness has been sucker- punching guys since the sixth grade.
“…about our golf course.”
“Your golf course?”
“Yeah. Apparently, he’d seen the plans for the course at Cypress Estates, and he was very unhappy about it. He was saying something about golfers yelling ‘fore’ and scaring off the birds, something like that. At first I thought he was joking, the way some people do when they drink too much. But he kept up, carrying on about the threats to the animals.”
“Objection!” Patterson called out, glaring at me.
“Grounds?” the judge asked.
Patterson’s eyes darted back and forth. “Violates the dead man’s statute.”
For once I was ready. “Not so, Your Honor. Section 90.602 only applies to probate proceedings where the witness has a financial stake in the estate. These statements are party admissions that are exceptions to the hearsay rule and not covered by the dead man’s statute.”
“Overruled,” Judge Boulton declared.
So Gondolier told the story his way: A party guest who was a drunken lout raised a ruckus over nothing, a golf course, for crying out loud. I looked at Patterson. He was doing his best to keep the jury from seeing his dismay. He hadn’t wanted the mystery of the den solved. It destroyed the insidious implication that Nicky Florio wanted Peter Tupton dead to cover up some horrible secret.
Rick Gondolier’s yarn sounded just fine. Much like Florio, he was a good witness. So good, in fact, I almost believed him.
After Rick Gondolier left the stand, I took a deep breath and rested the defendant’s case. I hadn’t even had time to consider whether I had violated my own ethical rules. I hadn’t lied to the court, but I was pretty sure my witness had. I shoved the thought to the deepest recesses of my mind. There would be time for self-analysis later.
The judge told us we’d give closing arguments at nine the next morning, so I had to prepare something to say. I did this the usual way. I headed to Coconut Grove in my ancient but amiable convertible and changed from my uniform-Lane’s men’s store off-the-rack blue suit, 46 long, white shirt, burgundy tie-into cutoffs and sneakers. I was shirtless. That can get you arrested in Palm Beach, but thankfully, Miami doesn’t try to emulate the snob mob to the north.
It was an unusually humid day for March. The cold front was a distant memory. As thunderheads gathered in the western sky over the Everglades, I jogged the vita course in the park along Bayshore Drive. I did pull-ups, first palm-out for the triceps, then palm-in for the biceps. I jogged some more and was nearly sideswiped by two Rollerblading teenage girls in satin shorts and bikini tops. A coed volleyball game was under way on the grass. Bicyclists and speed walkers and mothers with strollers shared the asphalt paths that cut through the park to the shore of Biscayne Bay.
I stopped alongside an inclined plank, dropped to the ground, and did elevated push-ups. While I worked on my body, I was folding, spindling, and collating my thoughts. Later, at home, I’d bang out some notes on my old Royal typewriter. I like it because it works even during a power outage.
The wind was picking up, shifting direction from the bay to the Everglades. The white clouds turned an angry gray, and fat raindrops started plopping, wet and cold, on my bare back. A bolt of lightning cracked, followed by a thunderclap. When I looked up, there was an open patch of sky, the darkness parting just where the land ended and the bay began. Something caught my eve. A billowy cloud on the landward side resembled the face of a bearded, hatchet-jawed man. In the sky-or was it in my mind-the cloud took on a wrathful countenance. I studied it as another lightning bolt creased the air, flashing across the face, which then appeared to glower directly at me from on high. As it moved across the sky, the cloud took shape, the face darkening into a shadowy silver-black furious glare.
It looked familiar. I remembered an old musty text I had read, or at least skimmed, in college. Introduction to Mythology. I had needed a three-credit elective, and it sounded easier than quantum chromodynamics.
And there he was. A familiar face.
Zeus, lord of the sky, chief deity of the pantheon.
So why was he so pissed off at me?
Chapter 11
“I don’t want to become excited,” H. T. Patterson was saying, his voice rising to fever pitch. “I don’t want to get emotional.” His eyes filled with a reservoir of tears. “I simply wish to address your attention, ladies and gentlemen, to the circumstances under which this man died. Needlessly died. Died deprived of comfort and dignity. This was an unnecessary death caused by the negligence of the defendant. And when you consider compensation for that needless, wrongful act, do not strip the last vestiges of dignity from his memory. No, let your verdict stand as a recognition by you of Peter Tupton’s humanity and dignity.”
Dignity seemed to be the key word here, I thought. Patterson had already run through the liability portion of his closing argument, and now he was sharpening his tools to ask for umpteen million dollars. But he wasn’t as confident as he had been after the widow’s testimony. Rick Gondolier had taken some of the wind out of his
