by Paul Levine
There he was, perched on his high-back chair, peering into the cavern of the courtroom, a wizened bald buzzard of eighty-one, wearing his custom-made, mini-length fuchsia robes, yapping at court personnel, keeping order in the snake pit.
“A tango!” the judge demanded.
“A tanga, Your Honor,” replied Sally Corson, a proper young assistant state attorney in a blue suit and white silk blouse. “It’s a Brazilian bikini, and it’s illegal on state beaches.”
She held up state’s exhibit one, and if you had good eyes, you might identify a red piece of string as the bottom of a bikini. The evidence tag was at least twice as wide.
“Illegal?” the judge demanded. “Says who?”
“The legislature, Your Honor. No buttocks or breasts on state-owned beaches. Chapter eight forty-seven.”
The judge was shaking his head. “Meshuga. Ay, Marvin, what do you think?”
In the first row of the gallery, Marvin the Maven consulted with Saul the Tailor. “If she’s a shayna maidel, a Kim Basinger, what’s the problem? If she’s zaftig, a Roseanne Barr, I’d throw the book at her.”
Judge Gold nodded judiciously. At the defense table, a young woman who was demurely dressed in a knee-length skirt and long-sleeve blouse looked from the judge to Marvin and back again. Alice in Wonderland couldn’t have been more confused. At least her lawyer had the good sense to dress her for court. It’s one of the first rules. If you can manage it, even a murderer should look like a choirboy.
The assistant state attorney cleared her throat, trying to regain the momentum before the rest of the gallery voted. “Your Honor, the defendant was observed by numerous witnesses at Keys Memorial Beach. She was playing Frisbee while wearing state’s exhibit A.”
“Frisbee!” the judge demanded. “Is that illegal, too?”
***
I waited while Judge Gold ran through the rest of his calendar. It was a typical day. A man convicted of murder wanted a new trial and a divorce because his wife had an affair with his lawyer sometime between opening statement and closing argument. A Hialeah homeowner faced zoning charges for building a statue of La Virgen de La Caridad in his front yard. The Biting Bandit of Miami Beach was arraigned on charges of stealing two watches and thirty dollars in food stamps, and severing three ears and one index finger. The prosecutor was careful not to stand too close to the carnivorous fellow.
I waited through several dozen other hearings. The clerk called a bunch of minor drug cases, all scheduled for pretrial intervention, just one of many devices to toss cases out of the courthouse. The criminal justice system does not so much dispense justice as process defendants. The prisons cannot hold the miscreants already there, much less the thousands who could be added each year. So the prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers, and various state agencies engage in a gentle conspiracy with judges—real and retired—to spit out the defendants who are swept into the maw of a system that has bitten off more than it can chew.
We think of the courts as slow, unwieldy machines with creaking parts. Not in Miami. Here, what passes for justice takes place with frightening speed, each judge sometimes ruling on a hundred cases a day, hearing motions, taking pleas, dismissing charges, and occasionally even presiding at trial.
Finally, the clerk called out: “State of Florida versus Francisco Crespo. Motion to dismiss.”
I stood, stretched my neck out of its eighteen-inch collar, and approached the lectern in front of the bench. Abe Socolow beat me there. Credit his daily power-walking routine. He was the same as ever. Lean as a rake, mean as a snake. Black suit, black hair, white shirt, black tie decorated with gold handcuffs and prison bars. A sallow complexion, a sardonic sneer, a brooding intelligence that barely controlled his seething anger at every defendant who crossed his path.
Socolow is a rarity in today’s age of get-rich-quick lawyers who pass through the state attorney’s office long enough for a cup of coffee and a smidgen of trial experience before migrating downtown for the big bucks. A career prosecutor, Socolow’s career was built on being smart, tough, and nasty.
“Your Honor, this motion is frivolous, ludicrous, and utterly beyond the pale,” Socolow said. “It is a misuse of motion practice, outside the bounds of Rule three one-ninety, and should be summarily rejected by the court.”
Good day to you, too, Abe.
I cleared my throat and elbowed Socolow to one side. “There are no material disputed facts, and the undisputed facts do not establish a prima facie case of guilt against Mr. Crespo.”
Socolow snorted in my ear. “Mr. Lassiter is excellent at quoting the rule. Unfortunately, he does not know how to apply it. The evidence of a prima facie case is here.” He stabbed a finger at a towering stack of pretrial depositions.
Judge Gold took one look and cringed. He didn’t even read the newspaper unless the ponies were running at Calder. “Why don’t you fellows summarize it for me?”
“The case is entirely circumstantial,” I began, jostling Socolow with a shoulder and screening him from the judge’s view with my bulk. “What proof does the state have? That my client was found in proximity to the scene of an alleged homicide. That he had an altercation with the deceased. Where is the direct evidence of the crime?”
You can get away with that sometimes with juries, ridiculing the state’s case as based on circumstantial evidence, but judges know better. A few even remember Thoreau’s admonition: “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”
“Your Honor!” Exasperated now. “Mr. Lassiter sees what he wants and ignores the rest. His client’s latents were all over the steering wheel of the forklift that impaled the victim.”
“Mr. Crespo used that forklift every day,” I replied. “It would be highly suspicious if his fingerprints were not there. What is significant is that the state has no eyewitness to put him on the forklift at the time of the assault. Indeed, the only eyewitness testimony, that of the paramedics, puts Mr. Crespo several aisles away and unconscious when the attack took place. Finally, other than what appears to have been a fistfight between the two men, there is no evidence of an assault at all.”
I sneaked a peek at Socolow whose jaw muscles were doing aerobics. “The forklift could have been driven negligently by a third party who simply bolted after he accidentally ran down the deceased. Perhaps there was no driver at all. It could have been a runaway forklift.”
“A runaway forklift!” A touch of crimson crept into Socolow’s sallow complexion. “Why not suicide? Maybe Mr. Smorod-whatever-his-name-is jumped at the moving forklift in order to kill himself. Mr. Lassiter isn’t arguing the undisputed facts. He’s relying on his own vivid imagination. There’s a jury question here …”
In the gallery, I saw Marvin the Maven’s head swivel as the rear door opened and a woman walked in. Marvin doesn’t miss anything. He nudged Saul the Tailor, who nodded his approval as Lourdes Soto, P.I., took a seat in the second row. Even under the fluorescent lights, the ivory skin was perfect, accented by the jet black hair. She wore a black jersey dress that came to mid-calf and gathered itself under a wide matching belt. She carried a woman’s leather briefcase, not the all-purpose aluminum model with voice-activated recorder tucked inside.
Of course, her black onyx necklace might be a wire, for all I knew.
“The autopsy is consistent with an attack by a forklift traveling at maximum speed,” Socolow was saying. He was waving some papers at the judge. It could have been the autopsy report or his laundry list. No matter, the judge wouldn’t read either one.
I didn’t need to read the report, either. I’d been there when the deputy medical examiner when he did his dirty work in the crisp, cool confines of the county morgue. Or, as I like to call it, the Last Hotel, a place where the guests sleep on wooden pillows.
***
The county morgue sits on Bob Hope Road, just north of the intersection with Ed Newman Street. Newman used to play for the Dolphins. So did I, but the
only thing they named after me was a missed sack—the Lassiter Leap—for a peculiar habit of leaving my feet at the wrong time on a blitz.
The morgue is a modern gleaming place with a handsome waiting room of rose-colored sofas, a three-story skylight, and sturdy brick walls. It is a sad fact of city life that most of those who end up here never lived in such splendid surroundings.
“Interesting puncture wound.” Dr. Bruce Harper poked at the gash in Smorodinsky’s abdomen. “See a lot of knife wounds, bullet holes, once in a while a screwdriver. Even had a corkscrew through the jugular last week. Domestic dispute, of course.” He held a tape measure to the wound while an assistant took photos. “Ten point two centimeters in width. Point six four centimeters in height.” A lab technician wrote with a special marker on a white wall. Later, the numbers would be transferred to a written autopsy report and the wall washed down. “What’d you say did this?”
“Forklift blade,” I told him.
Dr. Harper was one of the young ones, three years out of his residency in pathology, a guy who grew up not knowing whether he wanted to be a detective or a physician. Now he was both. He was of medium height and weight but with solid wrists and veined forearms. He had neatly parted dirty blond hair and wore latex gloves and a green smock.
Dr. Harper went to work, grinning at the world, oblivious to his surroundings. After photos were taken of the entrance and exit wounds, he used a scalpel to make a Y incision in the chest. In one smooth motion, he sliced straight down the midline of the abdomen, then peeled the skin back, exposing a thick layer of yellow, fatty tissue and the rib cage beneath. Using what looked like your Saturday afternoon pruning shears, he cut through the cartilage of the ribs near the breastbone.
With quick, deft movements, he was inside the chest cavity, slicing away. He removed the heart and plopped it into a scale. Three hundred grams, the technician wrote on the wall. The right lung was five hundred fifty grams; the left lung five twenty-five. In the abdomen, he inspected the wound track, and an assistant took more photos.
“A clean path through and through,” he said to nobody in particular. “Nicked the bottom rib, then a direct hit on the ascending colon, the right kidney, the duodenum, and then bingo, the inferior vena cava.”
Dr. Harper reached into the abdomen with what looked like a soup ladle. He scooped out several portions of blood and filled two plastic containers. “The rib cartilage and bone show marks consistent with a powerful and moderately sharp instrument.”
He started peeling out the large intestine, hand over hand, like a candy maker pulling salt-water taffy. At the same time, he kept up a running conversation. “I’ll drain some urine from the bladder and the vitreous humor from the eye to check for alcohol, but I can tell you right now, he’d been drinking, for what that’s worth.”
I asked him, “How can you—”
He pointed a bloodied glove toward his nose. His head disappeared into the open cavity. What had been a body now was an empty shell. No wonder they call them canoe makers. He started sniffing, and when he spoke, his voice was an echo from inside a cave. “Doc Riggs could distinguish rye from bourbon. Don’t know what this is, but it’s booze. Want a whiff?”
I chose not to.
He kept slicing and measuring, saying there was evidence of a right retroperitoneal hematoma where the blade went through. The liver was enlarged and greasy, but still not cirrhotic. “The coronary arteries shows some arteriosclerotic blockage, but he didn’t die of a heart attack. Sorry, Lassiter.”
I made some observations myself. The fingernails were missing. The crime lab was checking for skin and blood—Crespo’s— underneath the nails. They would find what they were looking for. There was recent bruising on Smorodinsky’s forearms from the fight. All in all, no surprises.
***
Anything else?” Judge Gold demanded, glaring at the clock on the wall, though I doubted if he could see that far.
Both Socolow and I shook our heads, and the judge shook his. “Motion denied. Jake, you got yourself a jury question here. Now, that doesn’t mean I won’t hear a motion for a directed verdict at the close of the state’s case, but that’s the way I see it now, and I call them as I see them.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said, in the classic statement of the losing lawyer, acknowledging his respect for the court, even as it crushes him.
I turned to go and caught sight of Lourdes Soto in the gallery. Strange. She wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were on Socolow, and a small smile played across her lips. I was trying to figure it out when the judge spoke up. “Say, Jake, you still playing ball?”
“Not for a long time,” I said. “Before I went to law school.”
“Ah.” A look of confusion, his memory futilely paring away the years.
When I turned back, Lourdes Soto was watching me. Her dark eyes were bright, her face composed. The eyes and mouth worked themselves into a look of concern and empathy. It was so subtly done, a cocking of the head, a pursing of the lips, a gentle furrowing of the brow calculated to show just how much she cared about poor Francisco Crespo and little old me.
It was so damn good it sent a chill right up my spine.
8
CHAOS AND CONFLICT; HONEY AND WINE
I parked the old convertible under a bonsai banyan tree that had been there a lot longer than any of us…and would be there long after we were gone. When the top is down on the 442, I avoid Spanish olive trees. Same for bottlebrush and a few others whose leaves, seeds, and blossoms leave stains on the ancient upholstery. Only trouble I ever had with a banyan was when a green iguana dropped from a branch into my passenger’s lap as I was tooling along Old Cutler Road. It didn’t bother me, but the young lady screamed and refused to see me again. Of course, her idea of getting close to nature was sun tanning topless on her condo balcony.
Lourdes Soto lived in an old section of Coral Gables just off Alhambra Circle. It was once a neighborhood of grand homes in the Mediterranean Revival style, full of columns and courtyards, Spanish tile and loggias. Many of the houses have been razed and modern concrete creations erected in their place. Oddly, though, the postmodern trendy architects are borrowing from the older Florida styles.
The Sotos lived in a Spanish-style villa. By the time I rapped twice on the double doors of Dade County pine, Lourdes was there. She was wearing a baggy white T-shirt and chocolate-colored twill slacks with a web belt and lots of pockets. The brown velvet eyes seemed to warm up at the sight of me. She touched a finger to her forehead, adjusting the bangs of her jet black hair the way women do in the presence of a man.
Instead of inviting me in, she guided me around back on a path of pink terrazzo. We were nicely shaded by a loggia of Roman arches, Spanish tile, and wood-beams. We emerged in a courtyard with a tinkling fountain, molded columns with pockmarked stucco, and a rose garden surrounded by jasmine hedges.
A small, wiry man sat in a turquoise wrought-iron chair at a matching table covered with papers, clipboards, and ledgers. He wore a white guayabera and had thick black hair swept straight back and a bushy black mustache. He held a fountain pen in his left hand. There wasn’t another hand. The right arm ended in a stump just inside the guayabera sleeve. The left arm was heavily veined with a ragged scar just below the elbow. An unlit cigar was clamped into his teeth, and he was weathered around the eyes.
“Papi, this is Mr. Lassiter,” Lourdes said.
The man nodded but didn’t stand up. He placed the pen carefully into a white marble holder, and extended his left hand. I shook it awkwardly with my right. “Mr. Soto, I’ve heard a lot about you.” It was true. A folk hero to the Cuban refugees, Severo Soto’s fame had spread through the Anglo community as well.
Soto released my hand, nodded, and removed the cigar. “I understand Francisco Crespo has finally killed someone. Not that it surprises me.”
So much for a character witness.
“He’s accused of murder,” I said, taking a seat opposite him. “Lourdes tells me
he once worked for Soto Shipping Company.”
The dark eyes locked on mine. “Some years ago, in the freight-forwarding division. It is all in there.”
He gestured toward a manila folder. I riffled through some payroll records and company medical exams. Nothing of any use. Lourdes Soto had teased me with the concept of inside information from her father, a well-known anti-communist activist. In the week since we first met, she had given me three written reports that didn’t tell me anything new. If she had something useful, she was keeping it to herself. At the same time, she plied me with questions about my progress and strategy. I told her everything I knew, which was nothing, other than my suspicion that Crespo wasn’t nearly as guilty as he claimed to be.
“Mr. Soto, could Crespo have been involved in any anticommunist groups?” I asked.
“Crespo is a peasant,” Severo Soto said, “too young to remember Cuba antes de Fidel.”
“Did he have any political leanings?”
“Like nearly everyone who left Cuba, he was against the comunistas. But was he active? Not that I am aware.”
Lourdes placed a hand on her father’s forearm. “The man he killed—”
“Allegedly killed,” I reminded them.
“…Was Vladimir Smorodinsky.”
Soto raised his eyebrows but didn’t say a word.
“You knew him,” I said.
“A Russian who worked for Yagamata in Leningrad. St. Petersburg. We have met.”
“Yagamata got him an exit visa,” Lourdes said. “I checked the immigration files.”
Soto nodded. “Yagamata could do that. He has made much money with the Russians. He would do business with the devil if the price was right.”