by Alex Abella
"Thank you. I won't forget all you're doing."
"So we have a date when you get out?"
"I'm all yours."
I was in heaven.
We didn't see each other again until the day before jury selection was to start. I went by the jail to review the statements and documents. That's when she said, "I need more, Charlie."
"All gone?"
"It's not for me, you understand."
"I can't. It's too risky."
The next day at the trial, when she was brought into the courtroom, her forehead was slashed and a big bruise had swollen the side of her head. I took a look at her and nodded. She put her hand over mine and squeezed it ever so lightly as the TV crews pointed their cameras at us and the show began.
By the end of the day we had selected the twelve jurors and had only to pick the four alternates. But instead of preparing my papers I drove down to the bar in Miami Beach where I had gone once before for Doris. Armando recognized me from the news.
"You sure go through the stuff, Counselor."
"Comes with the territory."
"You should know. That will be a hundred dollars."
Once in my car I opened up the paper bindle and spread its white powdery contents on a flat sheet of paper. I took a bottle of white correction fluid, spread a thin line around the edge, then carefully lowered the third page of a brief down onto the second paper. I restapled the brief and headed down to the jail.
I was waiting in the attorney room for Doris, nervously going over our papers, when a deputy tapped me on the shoulder. I jumped up, startled.
"Easy, Counselor," said the matron, "don't get so rattled. Just wanted to tell you Miss Diaz will be down in five minutes, her bus just pulled in."
I took out a yellow notepad and started writing my opening argument, which I intended to give the following day if all went well. I opened with a literary quote by Eudora Welty, a touch of theatrics that always goes down well in the South.
"Mr. Morell?"
I glanced up unworriedly. "Yes?"
Two male sheriff's deputies stood before me.
"We're conducting a search of materials for possible contraband. Could you please hand over your briefcase."
I put down my pen almost at the same time that the second deputy seized my attache case.
"You have no right to do that!"
"Just a routine search, sir. We've received reports cocaine has been smuggled into the facility and we're searching everyone." The younger deputy flipped over and emptied my briefcase on the table, then felt everyone of my papers, running his fingers expertly along the edge of each sheet.
Doris was walking into the room when the deputy felt the double page and turned excitedly to his superior.
"We got something here, Sarge."
The young man ripped open the page and at once all the white powder poured out. The sergeant shook his head regretfully.
"Better come with us, Counselor."
Doris watched in silence as the two deputies lifted me from my chair and hauled me away.
"I'll see you tomorrow!" I shouted at her. She waved Italian style, one hand opening and closing, then turned and walked out of the room.
Ultimately I was proven right. The deputies did not have a right to search my briefcase since by doing so they violated the confidentiality of my papers, and therefore no formal charges were filed. My license was not revoked and I was merely suspended by the bar. But the media had a field day with the incident, which led to a mistrial. A new judge took the case and this time granted fifty thousand dollars bail, which Doris promptly made and promptly skipped out on, fleeing to Colombia. The papers found out what Frieda and I had not known, that Lazo, Doris's lover, was laundering money for the Cali cartel and that his projects were just a facade for his more profitable business arrangements down south. There was speculation Doris had actually killed Lazo as a contract killer for half a million dollars, since he had stolen capital from the cartel to subsidize his life-style. There was also talk that Doris took the fall thinking that with her background she would be able to get out on bail. When the terrain shifted and her sterling character was of no use to her, they looked for a chump and found the biggest one in all Dade County, a lawyer who let his heart and his dick tell him how to defend a case.
Olivia and I divorced after that. Eventually, I chased my last dreams down to California, where I remain, doing penance. My father, my sister, my mother, my wife, my son, I have failed them all.
"Well, Charlie, what did happen to you in Florida?"
Judge Reynolds barrels his bushy eyebrows at me again, expecting his answer. I finally give it to him.
"Nothing happened, sir. Nothing at all. It was all lies and speculation."
He holds my gaze for a moment, then looks away, satisfied.
"Well, there you have it. No point in continuing with this hearing. Nothing happened at all."
15
a fter that hearing, everyone sort of lost interest in my background. I realized nobody was really interested in me or in getting me off the case except for Clay and Mrs. Schnitzer. I was just another tool in their legal strategy, a cog to be tended to but certainly not fussed over. Surveying the emptiness of my life, I declared myself fit for duty again and once more into the wind we sailed.
For some unexplainable reason, the number of alternate jurors had dwindled to nothing while I was gone, as though some celestial landscaper were weeding out the laggards, leaving us only the blessed, the devoted and the loyal.
We had selected the usual twelve regulars, along with twelve alternates, making sure in our minds that there would be enough to go around in case something unexpected occurred, as it always does in a trial. But first, six of the alternates were laid off when their employer, a huge aerospace concern with wide latitude in jury service payment, closed its doors and moved to Nevada. The alternates, without a source of income to guarantee their attendance at the trial, were released for financial hardship. Then came the odd illnesses.
One alternate came down with appendicitis, another with Epstein-Barr, a third with, of all things, gout, and a fourth had major dental surgery that wired her jaw shut for months. Then, of the last two, one had a car accident that landed him in traction and the other developed liver cancer, so that, at the end, we had no alternates left.
The prospect of having to declare a mistrial should any of the jurors take ill did not bother Phyllis, however. She felt confident the judge would allow the case to proceed with fewer than twelve jurors.
"There's ample precedent," she said in the Criminal Courts Building cafeteria, when the first six had bowed out. "It's all at the discretion of the magistrate."
I took a sip of my milk. At a nearby table an unkempt, emaciated woman with no teeth smoked a cigarette as her three children played with their fried chicken to the woman's total indifference.
"Not with this judge. Reynolds wants to make sure there are no reversible errors."
"If he thinks that's possible, he's even more of a fool than I thought," she replied, studiously biting into a small piece of prime rib. "Unless there is a wanton disregard for procedure, more errors are made from excessive caution than not. Anyhow, he knows which side his bread is buttered on. He's up for reelection next year and I'm sure he doesn't want the D.A.'s office to go against him."
''Just because of our case?"
"This is a major case. We don't intend to let it slip away. I don't intend to let it."
"That's nice."
She gave a small cry of laughter.
"That's right, I keep forgetting who you work for."
"The courts, the courts."
"Of course. But I don't see you as-"
"What? The type that associates with known criminals?"
"Oh, I know it's silly of me, but I've never understood how anyone can defend those people."
"Here we go. A, I'm not defending him. B, what do you propose, we line them up and shoot them all at the crack of dawn?"
"Something like that."
My look must have stunned her for she quickly corrected herself.
''Just kidding. Anyway, that's what they did in China, I remember that. I wouldn't want that to happen here."
The gravity of what she remembered fell on her features like a dark veil; at that moment she was no longer the giver of a justice impartial and stern but a still frightened woman looking over her shoulder at a gory past.
"You know I'm Cuban, don't you?"
She took measure of me. "No, I wouldn't have thought it."
"We went through a revolution too. How bad was it for you? When I was a kid the militia came looking for my dad. He hid behind the pots and pans in the kitchen cupboard, but this young kid with a submachine found him."
"How did you, did he ... ?"
"He paid off a local comandante. We all left safely within a week."
"I'm afraid mine was worse than that. We lived in Canton and my father had been with the Kuomintang. When the Communists took over they came and killed him in the front yard of our home. They beat him with sticks till he died."
"I'm sorry. That must have been awful."
"Must have been. I don't recall. I was only three years old. My mother says I wasn't crying but I was so frightened I was singing and wetting my pants. I still have no memory of it."
"How did you get out?"
"After they killed my dad, the troops left saying they'd be back the next day for us. An uncle of mine had a Buick and he came by and took us to the Yacht Club. Somehow we managed to get a boat ride to Hong Kong, my mother, my sister and myself. I stayed there until I married Paul, my former husband. Then we came to America." She turned to me, her oval black eyes gathering inward storms. "You see, we all have our losses, our dead to bury. You know what happened to me before I came down here."
"Yes. I'm sorry about that."
"Thank you. But that's why I don't put up with people like Valdez, that's why I asked to be given the case. I know what Pellegrini thinks, that he'll stick me with the dead if I lose. Well, I don't think I will but even if I do, I don't care. You know why? I have a big burial yard and I've buried a lot of people in it already. I don't live for politics or money, I care about principles. That's why I won't put up with the kind of argument Valdez is going to make. Oh, I know what he's going to say, society made him what he is. Well, I don't buy that. We all have a choice. We can be diamonds or we can be dust. The end is up to us."
She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and stood up.
"We can't all be diamonds, Phyllis."
"No, but we sure can try. Trial resumes at two. See you there."
I find it difficult to describe the tumult caused in me by the detached and precise words of Phyllis's first trial witness that afternoon-the county medical examiner.
"Doctor, how do you pronounce your name?"
"With pleasure. My name is Lakshmanan Sathyavagiawaran Tagore. That's spelled L-A-K-S-H-M-A-N-A-N-S-A-T-H-Y-A-V-A-G-I-A-W-A-R-A-N-T-A-G-O-R-E. But you can call me Lou."
The jurors and the audience burst into laughter, even Ramón looked up from his pad and smiled. Only dour, dedicated, steadfast Phyllis remained serious, her tight little body in a black and white silk suit fully erect by the podium. Death is no joking matter.
She waited until the laughter died down, then looked sharply at the jurors. Her frown cut them short.
"Could you tell us what is your employment, Doctor?"
"Most certainly. I am a forensic pathologist employed by the Los Angeles County Coroner's office."
"Will you tell us about your training and experience in the field of forensic pathology."
"Gladly. I was educated at the University of Bombay ... "
Ramón looked up at the judge, rattled his ankle chain. "Stipulate to the doctor's expertise."
Clay looked at him, then shrugged. "Stipulate."
Judge Reynolds cleared his throat and addressed the jury.
"Ladies and gentlemen, what you have heard is a stipulation of fact. That means the attorneys for both sides, Mr. Smith for Mr. Pimienta and Mr. Valdez in propria persona, have agreed to accept a particular piece of information. In this case it's the qualifications and expertise of Dr .... of the doctor. You are to regard that fact, the doctor's expertise, as having been conclusively proven even though no evidence was presented."
Phyllis moved to the side of the room and brought out a large piece of cardboard, wrapped in brown paper, which she placed on an easel by the witness stand and uncovered. There, in large blown-up color pictures, were the likenesses of the victims, before and after their deaths. Smiling faces on one side, the happiness of snapshots at the beach and business occasions next to photos of lifeless bodies, bullet riddled, gore tracing lacy rivulets of blood on their complexions.
"Doctor, did you perform autopsies on these bodies?" said Phyllis.
The doctor removed thick bifocal glasses from his coat pocket, placed them on the tip of his nose. "Yes, with regret."
"Objection!" boomed Clay. "Irrelevant!"
"Sustained."
"Your Honor," contended Phyllis, "I believe the doctor's state of mind-"
"The doctor's state of mind is not at issue here, Ms. Chin. Please proceed to your next question."
Blocked in her attempt to milk the impact of the pictures, Phyllis offered herself as the subject of emotion and turned to the doctor with tear-brimmed eyes.
"Doctor, what did you think when these bodies were brought to you?"
"Think? This was work to be done, deplorable work, to be sure, but work. It is sad to be the undertaker of society, cataloguing the results of its ills, but it's the job I have chosen. Rama-"
"Objection, Your Honor," countered Clay' again. "I don't see what role the doctor's opinions or religious beliefs play in all this. Irrelevant!"
"Sustained."
"But I want to hear it!"
All our heads turned to the speaker, Mrs. Gardner in the jury box, who looked with defiance at the judge.
"You are ... " Judge Reynolds looked down at his notes. "Mrs. Chauncer."
"Mrs. Gardner."
"That's right, Mrs. Chauncer was disqualified. Well, Mrs. Gardner, we ask the questions and determine what you should hear to decide upon."
"Why is that? Why can't we ask questions?"
"Because then you'd ask stupid questions like the one you just asked."
Gardner looked shocked. "Excuse me," the judge hastily corrected himself, "I didn't mean to say stupid, just unimportant, er, irrelevant. The judge is the trier of law, not you. You are the triers of fact. You decide, based on what we present to you. Now, remember, you swore an oath to follow my instructions."
"All right, but I hear in other states juries are allowed to question witnesses. I want to know why we can't."
"Because you can't!" bellowed Reynolds. "The law in this state does not allow it. Any other questions?"
"No. I just don't think it's fair."
"Then write to your legislator and tell him you want the law changed. Proceed with your questioning, Ms. Chin."
"May we approach?"
"Yes, of course. Counsel?"
Clay moved to the bench. I looked at Ramón, who nodded at me to go on over. When I reached the group, the judge was trying his best to lower his voice and not quite succeeding.
"I just can't believe all these things in one cotton pickin' trial. First an uppity defendant, now an uppity juror. You folks want to kick her?"
''Judge, we can't," said Phyllis. "We have no alternates. Maybe we should call a break for people to cool off."
"People?" The judge smiled at her indirection. "You're probably right." He looked up and announced, "This court is taking a ten-minute recess."
The jurors filed out.
"Well, folks, you better take a break too 'cause I'm afraid this ain't gonna get any easier."
As I walked out into the hall, heading for the snack bar, I overheard Mrs. Gardner tell Mrs. Vaught as they entered the l
adies' room, "All them southerner's prejudiced, anyhow. I'll be damned if I'm gonna do what he says."
I told this to Ramón when I visited him in the lockup, moments before the trial resumed.
"Chico, that cracker's putting it on a fucking silver platter for us, God bless his heart."
"Which god, Ramón?"
"Any god, all the gods!" He looked in a small hand mirror, adjusted his tie-my tie, my suit-and grinned. "Like Mrs. Gardner said, 'Showtime!'"
The show was long, difficult and at times hard to follow, but never tedious, as the doctor explained, in his best layman's terms, the mayhem wreaked in the jewelry store. For two days he spoke at length of bullet trajectories, pierced aortas, shattered femurs, splintered cervical spines, crumbled larynxes, burst eyeballs and blood. Blood types, blood prints, blood marks, blood everywhere.
Phyllis showed us more pictures of the destruction-the owner of the store and the manager lying side by side behind the cases, gray matter oozing from gaping wounds in their foreheads; the security guard folded in on himself, his gun still in his hand in his futile attempt to halt the tragedy; the Vietnamese grandmother, her face contorted in fear. Death throughout, death at its most brutish, its most insolent, its most incomprehensible.