“Sustained.”
Patterson licked his lips, tried to remember where he was, and closed up with a plea to award just compensation for Melinda Tupton’s sorrow.
The judge gave his instructions and sent the jurors into their room, telling them to first pick a foreman. For a while, the county had switched the language to “foreperson” but switched back again after one verdict form came back to the judge all bollixed up. Below the signature line for the foreperson, four jurors signed their names.
The knock from inside the jury room came seventy-eight minutes later. Fast. Figure ten minutes to pick the foreman, fifteen for everyone to use the bathroom, and another ten to order dinner. Which left less than forty minutes to decide that Nicholas Florio was not liable for either compensatory or punitive damages and “shall go hence without day.” That’s what it says on the form, and I’ve never known what it means.
Nicky Florio laughed, then cuffed me twice on the shoulder and told me I was a better lawyer than he thought.
Thanks a lot, I told him.
He said I’d have to come play poker with him some night; we’d drink beer and swap lies. He was nearly skipping down the limestone steps on the way out of the courthouse when he asked something else. “What was that stuff about the leftover champagne?”
I didn’t want to go into it. I really didn’t want to know. Still, I answered him, Charlie Riggs style, with a question. “The party ended about eight o’clock, right?”
“Yeah. It was supposed to go until six. But you knowhow it is, some hit you for dinner as well as lunch. The last people left around eight.”
“And nobody saw Tupton after what, three or four o’clock?”
“I guess.”
We crossed Flagler Street, avoiding a Miami policeman on horseback and a clutch of South American tourists wheeling microwave ovens in shopping carts.
“The champagne. Did the caterers provide it?”
“Hell no, not at a hundred percent markup. I buy in bulk. It came from my wine cellar.”
“That’s what I figured. Patterson figured it, too, but not quickly enough.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Who took care of the leftover champagne?” I asked.
“I don’t know, the bartenders, some of my workers. Why?”
“When did they do it?”
“Right after the party. They wanted to clean up and get home. I’d say they were finished no later than nine.”
“And what did they do with the leftover champagne?”
“They put it back in the wine…”
A bus horn bleated at us as we jaywalked across First Street, heading for the parking lot. Nicky Florio wasn’t going to do it, so I finished his answer for him. “They put it back in the wine cellar, of course. That’s where it had come from. If Peter Tupton had been there, they would have stumbled over him. He would have been alive, and they would have saved him. But, of course, they never found him. You’re the one who found him, right in front of the champagne racks the next morning, right?”
We stopped in front of a hot-dog vendor. Nicky Florio didn’t look hungry. “So Peter Tupton wasn’t there, Nicky. He was someplace else from the middle of the afternoon until he was dumped in the wine cellar sometime after nine o’clock. Dumped there by party or parties unknown, as the police like to say.”
“There’s no evidence-”
“Don’t talk like a lawyer, Nicky. And don’t look so worried. I’m your lawyer. I did my job, and I won. I owe you the duty of loyalty and confidentiality. You bought it fair and square.”
Chapter 12
I seldom drink.
Really drink.
Sure, I’ll have a beer or two with a burger or a steak. But sit at a bar and down the hard stuff? Not for me.
Usually.
If I’ve lost a case or a woman, I’ll head to the Gaslight Lounge downtown and watch Mickey Cumello make a martini. Plymouth gin, two and a half ounces give or take a drop, four ice cubes, and a splash of dry vermouth. He stirs with a glass swizzle because shaking clouds the drink. Then Mickey strains the potent concoction into a chilled glass. Finally, he squeezes a lemon peel above a burning match, letting the oil pass through the flame and into the drink. The perfect martini-sharp as a polished blade-with just a hint of burnt lemon.
Okay, so I don’t just watch him make the martini. But I seldom drink more than two.
Sometimes, I tell Mickey Cumello my problems. He’s a good listener. Quiet, attentive, thoughtful. I’ve never seen Mickey in the light of day and probably wouldn’t recognize him if he came out from behind the scarred teak bar. In the dark, windowless lounge, he’s a stocky man of indeterminate age wearing a short-sleeve white shirt and black bow tie, his gray hair combed straight back, revealing a lot of forehead and a widow’s peak.
“A woman or a trial?” Mickey asked.
“I lost the woman and won the trial,” I told him, “but I wish it was the other way around.”
From behind me, a woman’s voice: “You were always a romantic, Jake.”
I turned on the barstool and didn’t fall off. She was holding a tray full of empty cocktail glasses and soggy napkins. Wanda had red hair she hadn’t been born with, long legs, and the practiced smile of a woman who depended on tips to pay the rent. She was wearing one of those outfits that makes a waitress look like a French maid in a porno flick, a black mini with a deep-V top, bare shoulders, stockings with meandering black seams, and black shoes with stiletto heels. If she had a tail, she could have been a bunny, if they still had bunnies. She’d been in the chorus line in a couple of Broadway musicals, but that had been twenty years and three husbands ago. “I always told Mickey you were a romantic,” Wanda said, winking at me. “Just like what’s-his-name tilting at windmills.”
“Wanda, how long have we known each other?” I asked.
“Jeez, Jake, forever. You handled my last divorce, remember?”
“Do you think I’m a good man?”
“The best. You’re practically the only guy who comes in here who doesn’t hit on me. Except for the choreographer types, I mean.”
“But do you think I’m essentially moral? When faced with questions of good versus evil, which path would I choose?”
“I dunno, Jake. Good, I suppose.”
“What if evil is an easier path, paved with milk and honey?”
“Sounds sticky.”
“While the good path is a potholed son of a bitch.”
“Just like Bird Road,” she agreed, emptying her tray onto the bar. “Hey, Mickey, how ’bout a frozen ’rita, hold the salt, a Campari and soda with a slice, one Pellegrino, and one Calistoga.”
Mickey tried not to wince, but I caught him, anyway. He was from the old school. Bourbon, rye, scotch, and gin, maybe something fizzy for the ladies.
“Good is always the harder path,” I said.
“I know what you mean,” Wanda whispered to me, leaning close. There were freckles at the top of her cleavage. “Like should I declare all my tips to Uncle Sam, right?”
“Something like that.”
“Yeah, and like last weekend, this gentleman-at least I thought he was a gentleman-asked me to cruise the
