Lassiter 03 - False Dawn (16 page)

The judge nodded judiciously. “Light weight’s an advantage, no doubt about it, but with a twenty-five millimeter, you’d better hit the perp in a kill spot.”

At this point, half the jurors were exchanging views on handguns. The court clerk, a black woman with a well-groomed Afro, told the stenographer she kept a Sig Sauer 230 in her gym bag to keep interlopers out of her spot in aerobics class. The stenographer was too busy typing to answer.

Bill the Bailiff looked gloomy as he moped over to the defense table to congratulate me. He hadn’t won an under bet in two years. “A little less onion this time, Bill,” I told him.

Finally, sensing that matters had careened off track, Judge Roth cleared his throat and plunged ahead. “Does any of you have a physical impairment that would keep you from serving on this jury?”

Nothing worse than your hardening of the arteries, I thought.

Eleven heads wagged no. “I got a pretty fair case of hemorrhoids,” answered an airline mechanic in a blue work shirt.

“The bailiff will find you a pillow,” Judge Roth said, dismissing the notion that an itch can keep you home. To get a medical excuse, a juror better qualify for last rites. There are just too few folks willing to spend a week with smart-alecky lawyers who ask nosy questions and try to trick them into believing that a degenerate slimebag is a misunderstood choirboy.

Finally, it was Abe Socolow’s turn. Before he stood up, a middle-aged man in a gray suit and wire-rimmed glasses walked from the gallery to the prosecutor’s table, leaned over, and whispered something in Socolow’s ear. The state gets all the help. I only had my client, who was sound asleep, and my secretary Cindy, who sat behind me and selected jurors by their astrological signs. Marvin the Maven was still miffed with me and was spending the week in Divorce Court.

Socolow unfolded his long, lean body from the carved wood chair and approached the jury box. He wore his trial suit of undertaker’s black, a white button-down shirt, and a black tie festooned with silver handcuffs. His sallow complexion had a hint of color today, and not from the sun. The start of a trial, the adrenaline flows, the heart picks up the pace. With Abe, it was an insatiable desire to win. Me? I just try not to embarrass myself.

“May it please the court.” Abe bowed deferentially to Judge Roth, who waved a liver-spotted hand signaling Socolow to begin. “This is the part of the trial known as
voir dire
.” Somehow Abe gave it four syllables,
voy-eur dy-ar
. “That’s a fancy foreign phrase meaning ‘to speak the truth.’ Judge Roth has asked some preliminary questions, and now it’s my turn, and then Mr. Lassiter’s. Each of us wants you to simply speak the truth. Now, why do we ask these questions, some of which can be quite personal. To embarrass you? No. To get a jury biased in our favor? No. We merely want a fair and impartial jury …”

Maybe you do, Abe, but I once seated a blond flight attendant for the simple reason that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

“… a jury that will decide the case solely on the evidence and free from any prejudice that may result from their backgrounds.”

Abe took up the rest of the morning asking everybody’s occupation, whether any of their kinfolk had run-ins with the law, and whether they believed in the grand old American jury system. “Mr. Bolanos, you heard the judge tell you that, to adjudge the defendant guilty, you must find that the state proved its case beyond and to the exclusion of a reasonable doubt.”

A hesitant nod. He knew there’d be a follow-up.

“And Mr. Bolanos, do you understand that beyond a reasonable doubt does not mean a shadow of a doubt, a fleeting doubt, an imaginary, illusory, or fanciful doubt?”

Bolanos nodded his profound agreement.

“To be a reasonable doubt, it must be …”

Reasonable
, I figured.

“Solid, substantial, real—”

“Objection!” I was on my feet. “Counsel for the state is rewriting the jury instructions before our very eyes.”

“Overruled. But that’s quite enough on that issue, Mr. Socolow. Move along.”

I sat down. I had lost the objection but won the point as Judge Roth ruled in the time-honored fashion of not offending either lawyer.

When it was my turn, I decided to be brief. I stood up, reintroduced myself, and shuffled my two-hundred-some pounds over to the rail. I ran a hand through my shaggy hair, showed my friendly grin, looked at the clock on the wall, and said, “Well, it seems the judge and the state attorney have asked all the good questions, and since it’s a few minutes until noon, I just want to know who’s ready for lunch.”

I got a dozen raised hands and just as many smiles.

W
e empaneled a jury in the afternoon, and Judge Roth gave us the next day off so he could attend a judicial seminar, and we could polish our opening statements. I still didn’t know what I was going to say. There was Crespo’s original story, which was a lie and would convict him; there was Lourdes Soto’s sequel, which was a lie but might acquit him; and there was the truth, which so far had managed to elude me. With nothing better to do, I tried to catch up on office work. My desk was covered with bulging files of undone chores, piles of unanswered mail, and various interoffice memos from the managing partner castigating me for failing to collect bills from our deadbeat customers whom we generally refer to as our angelic clients.

It was lunchtime and my partners at Harman & Fox were nowhere to be found. That is only partly accurate. They were not to be found on the thirty-second floor of their gleaming office building hard by Biscayne Bay. But if you checked the posh College Club, Metropolitan Club, or Downtown Club, you would find them feasting on Florida crab cakes with avocado butter, or fresh grilled swordfish with mango and black bean salsa, perhaps a sweet ginger flan for dessert.

I sat at my desk with a bacon cheeseburger growing cold and greasy inside its aluminum foil. Droplets of moisture had formed around my Styrofoam cup of iced tea and were leaving a perfect circle on my oak credenza. The credenza already was adorned with an Olympic symbol of old watermarks and was now working on abstract designs.

I took a bite out of the cheeseburger and left an oleaginous glob on my chin. I grabbed three files based on their proximity to my iced tea and went to work. There was the case of Coupon Carla, who started her career scavenging Dumpsters for canned sausage rebate slips, then ended in jail for a counterfeit kitchen coupon scheme. There was the pending appeal in the Russian Roulette case, where I represented a widow against a life insurance company. I lost when the judge determined that her husband’s game became suicide after the third
click
. And there was the medical malpractice case of the stripper against the plastic surgeon for allegedly using silicone implants of two different sizes in her breasts. He denied liability and claimed the defect was an optical illusion. I was studying the photos—hey, somebody’s got to do it—when Cindy buzzed.

“El creepo on line
dos, el jefe
.”

“What?”

“Crespo on line two,
su majestad
. I sure wish your clients had more class. Why can’t you represent rock stars instead of chicken farmers and hoodlums?”

“Why can’t you spell judgment with one ‘e’?”

She bleated something at me, and I picked up the phone.

“Jake, you were always my favorite player on the team,” Francisco Crespo said, “even though I knew you weren’t very good.”

I thought about saying thank you, but it didn’t feel quite right.

“You always treated me well. Not like some of the ones making the big money. Never a ‘Hello, Francisco.’ Most of them never knew my name.”

“Don’t take it personally,” I said. “Star athletes have been pampered so long they think the whole world exists to hand them towels and do their laundry.”

“What I mean, Jake, is that I have respect for you. My mother loves you. She wanted me to be like you, and that was very hard to accept. For a long time after I came to this country, I was jealous of you even as I respected you. So, instead of trying to be you, I did just the opposite. I got into trouble here, just as I did in Cuba. But now, I want your advice. You are the finest
abogado
in all of Miami.”

“That’s flattering, but I’m not even the best on this floor.”

“I’m going to listen to you, not Señor Yagamata.”

“Then you’ll have to tell me the truth.”

He paused, and I heard a television game show in the background. The announcer was gabbing away in Spanish, and the audience was cheering.

“Maybe there are some other things I remember now,” Francisco Crespo said.

I
headed the convertible west on Luis Sabines Way, which used to be called Seventh Street, and headed into Little Havana. I passed Pedro Luis Boitel Avenue, General Maximo Gomez Avenue, and Luis Medina Munoz Marin Avenue. Then came Ronald Reagan Avenue. I don’t know, so don’t ask me.

Seventh Street turned into Eighth, Calle Ocho, and I hit every stoplight for thirty blocks. The heat rolled up in waves from the pavement and pressed down at me through the black canvas top. Maybe it was the blistering day that made me remember. Maybe it was the country music station I found while twisting the old AM radio dial. Or maybe it was because I was on my way to see Francisco Crespo, and he always brought back the memory of a night that would last forever.

I
t was a hot Sunday in September after a home game, a one-point win over the egg-sucking Oakland Raiders. Clem’s was a tough country music place on Okeechobee Road between the airport and Hialeah. Half a dozen of my teammates were there, tossing darts, playing pinball, dropping quarters into the jukebox. But they all left early. Not me. Monday was a no-pads day, and tonight was for celebrating, so what’s the rush? I had two tackles on special teams and set an Eastern Division record for Gatorade consumed by a reserve linebacker in the second half, and now was having too much fun and too many beers. Three long-legged, fluffed-hair escapees from secretarial school had captured me, and I was demonstrating the swim move—or was it the snatch?—for getting around an offensive lineman on a blitz.

Which is when Big Mouth started yapping. A beefy, sunburned, greasy-haired guy in jeans, cowboy boots, and a tank top. He’d been at the game, and he was goddamned tired of all the faggot Miami Dolphins, half of ’em jigaboos, who never covered the spread, then come waltzing in here, talking big and waving their dicks around like they owned the place.

I ignored him, which only made him angrier. He stepped closer and breathed down the neck of one of the would-be secretaries, a redheaded kid from Pensacola with electric blue eye shadow and Clearasil-covered zits, who was clearly frightened of the big sloppy guy smelling of beer and sweat. I didn’t say a word until he ran his hand over her backside.

“Hey, pal, ease off,” I told him, as low-key as possible.

“You gonna make me, you bench-warming, second-string cocksucker?”

“Extremely clever riposte,” I told him. “Unfortunately, bench-warming and second-string are redundant, so you lose points for creativity.”

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”

“Ah, a regular Cyrano de Bergerac in the wit department. But judging from your looks, pal, you know more about horse fucking than I do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!” He was even uglier when he tried to think.

“Come on now, this is ridiculous,” I said. “Tomorrow morning, you’re going to wake up and feel like a shithead.”

He shoved the girl aside and stepped into my space. “Who you calling a shithead?”

“Nobody. Look, you’re making everybody uncomfortable.”

“Too fucking bad.”

Still looking at me, he reached out and grabbed the redhead’s breast. She jumped away, and he laughed. Around us, people were backing away. Big Mouth turned to little old me, as gentle a guy as ever walked into a bar, and I smiled, then popped him one, a straight left hand that didn’t have enough hip behind it. The punch bounced off a cheekbone made of granite. He blinked and backed up a step but didn’t fall or yell for his mama. Then he came at me with a saloon swing, a lunging roundhouse right. I could have read the comics waiting for it to arrive. I blocked it with my left, knowing I’d have a bruise on the tricep tomorrow, then tried to nail him with a straight right hand. This time I caught him on the forehead, doing more damage to my hand than his head.

He spit and cursed at me, then turned and scooped a Budweiser bottle from a table, held it by the top, and smashed off the bottom on the back of a chair, just like in the movies. Then he came at me, jabbing the ragged bottle in front of him.

I backpedaled, and he kept coming.

Where the hell were the bouncers, the police?

I brushed up against a table and nearly fell over backward. He took a long, looping swipe, and as I whipped my head back, the jagged edge just passed in front of my eyes. I backpedaled some more, then stepped to my left, picked up a chair, and slung it at him. Instinctively, he raised his right arm. The chair knocked the bottle out of his hand, breaking the glass. He yelped, cursed my ancestry, and licked at blood coming from the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. “You cocksucker!”

“You thumbsucker,” I said.

He bent over and reached into his boot. Either his feet were bothering him, or he was grabbing at something. His hand came out holding a gun.

It was a small gun.

Probably a .32.

But it didn’t look small pointed at me.

The gun, blood dripping onto the butt, was four feet from my sternum. No one made a sound. Except for the Doobie Brothers on the jukebox, everything was quiet.

The song.

Now, I forced myself to remember the words, something about what a fool believes. I summoned up the tune. That’s how I chased the memory away, blanked it out. Let the image of the gun fade into a melody. It always worked.

Except at night.

In dreams, that’s always where the memory began.