Mortal Sin jl-4

by Paul Levine

  I listened to fat raindrops plopping against the window. The wind whistled through gaps in the barrel-tile roof. “Nothing and nobody ever turns out the way you think.”

  She turned away from me, either to express her displeasure or to show off her profile. “And what did you think, Jake, that I’d be doing brain surgery now? I just count my blessings that I’m not dancing tabletops in one of those dives near the airport.”

  In the distance, a police siren sang against the wind. “Maybe I’m just jealous that you’re with Nicky, and this is the way I show it.”

  “You? Jealous?” She laughed a throaty laugh, her breasts bouncing. “Since when? You never cared. You never once said you loved me, not even when it was just the two of us. We were close, Jake, or don’t you remember?”

  “I remember everything,” I said. “The Germans wore gray. You wore blue, and I missed the boat.”

  “The boat?”

  “The one to Grand Cayman-others too, I imagine. I never could keep up with you.”

  She turned back to me and brought an elbow down into my stomach. Not hard, but not soft either. I let out a whoosh. “Jeez, what’s that for?”

  “You jerk! You big, dumb jock jerk! You never asked me to stay. You think I wouldn’t have stayed? You never cared!”

  “Who says I didn’t care?”

  “Me! I say it. You didn’t care.”

  “I cared,” I said softly.

  “Then you’re a double dumb jerk for never saying so.”

  Gina sat on the edge of the bed, craning her long neck and blowing cigarette smoke into the air. She’d been quitting smoking ever since we met, probably longer. Self-discipline was not her strong suit. It took her another half hour to tell me the rest of the story.

  She had put on what she called her sweet face and served Peter Tupton a pitcher of mimosas to loosen him up. Nicky lent him a swimsuit, and before you knew it, there he was frolicking in the pool with a couple of Junior Leaguers from Old Cutler Road.

  “Is there a Mrs. Tupton?” I asked. Without a wife and kids, the value of the wrongful-death case would plummet.

  “There is, but he didn’t bring her,” Gina told me.

  “Why not? Were they separated?” An impending marital split could limit the damages, too.

  “Tupton said something about Sunday being her day to spend at Mercy hospital. She’s a volunteer with child cancer patients.”

  Oh shit. When the surviving spouse is an angel, tack another digit onto the verdict form.

  “Any little Tuptettes?”

  “No. They’d been married a couple of years. No kids yet.”

  Be thankful for small blessings.

  “How’d he get into the wine cellar?”

  She exhaled a puff into the draft of the ceiling fan. “Beats me. When he first arrived, Nicky gave him a tour of the house, including the cellar, which isn’t a cellar at all or it’d be under five feet of water. It’s a custom-built room off the kitchen. Lots of insulation, custom wood shelving, a couple thousand bottles. He must have come back into the house from the pool. Maybe the jerkoff wanted to steal a Chateau Petrus 1961. Or maybe he was looking for a place to pee.”

  I was trying to figure it out, but it made no sense. There was plenty to drink outside, where it was also warm, and tummy-tucked women in bikinis lounged poolside. “Why would he wander into a freezing room soaking wet, settle down, and drink two bottles of champagne? Did he lock himself in?”

  “Impossible,” she answered, tossing me the hand again. “The bolt slides open from the inside. Apparently, he didn’t want to leave.”

  Or couldn’t, I thought.

  The rain had stopped, and the wind had died. Outside the window, the late-afternoon sun peeked from behind the clouds, slanting shadows of a palm frond across the room. In the chinaberry tree, a mockingbird with white wing patches was yawking and cackling. Mimus polyglottos, Doc Charlie Riggs called him, using the bird’s Latin name. Mimic of many tongues. My mocker is a bachelor. They’re the ones who sing the songs. Maybe that’s what I was doing, too.

  “Who was the last person to see Tupton alive?” I asked.

  Gina looked around my bedroom for an ashtray. She seemed to consider the question before answering. “Nicky, I think.” She appeared lost in thought. There being neither an ashtray nor Iittala glassware on the premises, Gina dropped the cigarette butt into the mouth of an empty beer bottle. Her eyes brightened. “Sure, they were both sitting in the kiddie pool drinking the mimosas, Nicky trying to charm him. I remember thinking that Nicky must be making progress, maybe getting through to him. Then they walked toward the house together, going into the kitchen. That’s the last I saw him. You’ll have to ask Nicky what happened next.”

  I intended to do just that. As Nicky’s lawyer, I had to be ready for anything. I had to “zealously” defend my client. It’s in the Canons of Ethics, you can look it up. Just now, the lawyer inside me-the guy who sees evil and deception, artifice and mendacity-had a lot of questions to ask. And so would the state attorney, I was willing to bet.

  The death of Peter Tupton was just a bit too bizarre. Words like “inquest” and “autopsy” and “grand jury” were popping into my head. And motive, too. What was it Doc Riggs always said? When there’s no explanation for the death, always ask, cui bono, who stands to gain.

  Hey, Nicky Florio, this may be more trouble for you than just a wrongful-death suit that’s probably insurance-covered anyway. You could be up to your ass in alligators.

  Gina was up and getting dressed. She wriggled into her ultra tight jeans and shot me a look. “Jake, why are you smiling?”

  “Didn’t know I was.”

  “You were. Your blue eyes were crinkling at the corners, and you had that crooked grin you used to sweep me off my feet.”

  “So that’s what did it. I thought it was my witty repartee aided by ample quantities of Jack Daniel’s.”

  She was looking around the room for her bra. “No. It was your smile. That and shoulders I could lean on.”

  “Since then, one’s been separated, the other dislocated, and I’ve torn a rotator cuff.”

  She found the bra, red and frilly, in a tangle of bed sheets. “Just now, you were almost laughing. What were you thinking about?”

  “The Canons of Ethics. ”

  She gave me a shove. “No, really.”

  “Okay, then. The Ten Commandments, or at least one of them.”

  “Which one?”

  “Something about thy client’s wife,” I said.

  Chapter 2

  Self-inflicted Pain

  “How long have you known Mr. Lassiter?” asked Wilbert Faircloth.

  “Since he was a pup,” Doc Charlie Riggs answered.

  “May we assume that constitutes many years?”

  “We may,” Charlie said, wiping his eyeglasses on his khaki shirt. His old brown eyes twinkled at me. “When I was chief M.E., Jake was a young assistant public defender. Well, not as young as the others, since he’d spent a few years playing ball, though heaven knows why. He wasn’t very good, and he blew out his anterior cruciate ligaments.” Charlie scratched his beard and shot me a sidelong glance. “Anyway, when he began practicing-law, not football-we were on opposite sides of the fence. I’d testify for the state as to cause of death, the matching of bullets to weapons, that sort of thing, and Jake would cross-examine on behalf of his destitute and very guilty clients. He always did so vigorously, if I may say so.”

  “No one is questioning Mr. Lassiter’s competence,” Faircloth said.

  Good. Not that it was always that way. New clients, particularly, are suspicious. They want to see your merit badges-diplomas from prestigious universities, photos with important judges, newspaper clippings laminated onto walnut plaques. I don’t have any. No letters from the Kiwanis praising my good works. I don’t have a family, so no pictures of the kiddies clutter my desk. If anyone wants to examine my diploma from night law school, they can visit my house between Poinci
ana and Kumquat in Coconut Grove. The sheepskin isn’t framed, so the edges are yellowed and torn, but it serves a purpose, covering a crack in the bathroom wall just above the commode. I like it there, a symbolic reminder of the glory of higher education, first thing every morning.

  I don’t give clients a curriculum vitae or a slick brochure extolling my virtues. I just tell them I’ve never been disbarred, committed, or convicted of moral turpitude, and the only time I was arrested, it was a case of mistaken identity-I didn’t know the guy I hit was a cop.

  I keep my office walls bare except for a couple of team pictures and a black-and-white AP wire photo from some forgotten game. The sideline photographer caught me moving laterally, trying to keep up with the tight end going across the middle. The shutter must have clicked a split second after my cleats stuck in the turf. My right leg was bent at the knee in a direction God never intended. Nobody had hit me. It’s one of those rare football photos where the lighting is perfect and you can see right through the face mask.

  My eyes are wide, mouth open.

  Startled. No pain yet, just complete astonishment.

  The agony came later. It always does.

  What had been perfectly fine ligaments were shredded into strands of spaghetti. Doc Riggs gave me the photo on the day I retired, which is a polite way of saying I was placed on waivers and twenty-seven other teams somehow failed to notice. Because he always has a reason for everything, I asked Charlie why he went to the trouble of having the photo blown up and framed.

  “Why do you think?” he asked right back. Sometimes, his Socratic approach can be downright irritating.

  “You want me to remember the pain so I don’t miss the game so much.”

  “No, you’ll do that without any prompting. As Cicero said, Cui placet obliviscitur, cui olet meminit. We forget our pleasures, we remember our sufferings.”

  “Okay, so why-”

  “Most of the pain we suffer we inflict on ourselves,” he said.

  I still didn’t understand. “You want me to be cautious? Doesn’t sound like you, Charlie.”

  “I want you to examine the consequences of your actions before you act. Respice finem. You have a tendency to…”

  “Break the china.”

  “Precisely. And usually your own.”

  I knew I’d never be a great lawyer. I lost most of my cases as a public defender. The clients-I didn’t start calling them “customers” until they could pay-either pleaded guilty, or a jury did it for them. Occasionally, the state would violate the speedy-trial rule, or witnesses wouldn’t show, or the evidence would get lost, and someone would walk free, at least for a while.

  I can still remember my first jury trial. State of Florida v. Monroe Shackleford, Jr. Armed robbery of a liquor store. Abe Socolow was the prosecutor. More hair then, but same old Abe. Dour face, sour disposition. Lean, mean Abe in his black suit and silver handcuffs tie. “Can you identify the man with the gun?” he asked.

  “He’s sitting right over there,” the store clerk answered, pointing directly at Shackleford.

  Outraged, my saintly client leaped to his feet and shouted, “You motherfucker, I should have blown your head off!”

  I grabbed Shackleford by an elbow and yanked him into his chair. Sheepishly, he looked toward the jury and said, “I mean, if I’d been the one you seen.”

  Wilbert Faircloth appeared to be studying his notes. “Dr. Riggs, did there come a time when you and Mr. Lassiter became friends?”

  Charlie fidgeted in the witness chair. He’d been in enough courtrooms to know that Faircloth was attempting to discredit Charlie’s favorable testimony by showing bias. It’s the oldest trick in the cross-examination book.

  “I took the lad under my wing, showed him around the morgue,” Charlie admitted. “He watched me perform a number of autopsies, didn’t toss his lunch even once. It took a while, but Jake learned the basics of serology, toxicology, and forensic medicine.”

  “The question, Dr. Riggs, was whether the two of you became friends.”

  Charlie turned his bowling-ball body toward me. He had a mess of unkempt graying hair, a bushy brown beard streaked with gray, and eyeglasses mended with a fishhook where they had tossed a screw. He wore brown ankle-high walking boots, faded chinos, a string tie, and a sport coat with suede elbow patches. He gave the appearance of a bearded sixty-five-year-old cherub. Charlie never lied under oath or anywhere else, and he wasn’t going to start now. “Yes, I’m proud to be his friend, and as far as I know, Jake’s never done anything unethical.”

  “Ah so,” Faircloth said, mostly to himself, smiling a barracuda’s smile. Wilbert Faircloth was in his mid-forties and razor thin, even in a suit with padded shoulders. He had a narrow black mustache that belonged in Ronald Colman movies and an unctuous manner of referring to the judge as “this learned Court.” After a mediocre career defending fender benders for a now-bankrupt insurance company, he became staff counsel of the state bar.

  Now Faircloth was making a show of thumbing through his yellow legal pad. He rested the pad on the railing of the witness stand and fiddled at his mustache with the eraser of his pencil. “Would grave robbery be ethical to you, Dr. Riggs?”

  “Objection!” I was on my feet. “Your Honor, that’s beyond the scope of the bar complaint. It’s ancient history, and no charges were ever filed.”

  Faircloth looked pleased as he approached the bench, cutting off my view of the judge. “The witness opened the door, and as this learned Court knows, I may walk through it if I please. In addition, I will demonstrate a pattern of misconduct.”

  Judge Herman Gold peered into the courtroom, empty now except for my old buddy Charlie, the slippery Wilbert Faircloth, and little old grave-robber me. Judge Gold had retired years ago, but you couldn’t keep him off the bench. He accepted appointments to hear disciplinary cases against wayward lawyers, bringing as much of the law as he could remember to the deserted courthouse after hours. It was past 9:00 P.M. now, the grimy windows dark, and little traffic sloshed through the rain below us on Flagler Street. With its ceiling of ribbed beams and portraits of judges long since deceased, the huge courtroom was cold and barren as the old air-conditioning wheezed and cranked out dehumidified air.

  “Overruled,” Judge Gold pronounced, squinting toward the clock on the rear wall. He had missed the opening of jai alai at the fronton on Thirty-sixth Street and was not in a pleasant mood. “Past actions are relevant in aggravation or mitigation of the present transgression.”

  “Alleged transgression,” I piped up.

  Judge Gold ignored me and gestured toward Charlie Riggs to answer the question. I sank into my chair, armed with the knowledge that I had a fool for a client.

  “What was the question?” Charlie asked.

  “I’ll happily rephrase,” Faircloth offered. “To your knowledge, did Mr. Lassiter ever commit the crimes of trespassing, grave robbery, and malicious destruction of property?”

  “It wasn’t malicious,” Charlie answered, somewhat defensively. “And it was my idea. I was his partner in crime…”

  Great, Charlie, but they can’t disbar you.

  “And besides, it was for a good cause,” Charlie Riggs continued. “By exhuming Philip Corrigan’s body, we were able to ascertain the identity of his killer.”

  “But Mr. Lassiter didn’t obtain court permission for this so-called exhumation, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “Just as he didn’t obtain court permission for the blatantly illegal surreptitious tape recording in this case, correct?”

  “I’m not familiar with this case, Counselor.”

  “Ah so,” Faircloth said, as if he had elicited a devastating admission.

  On his way out of the courtroom, Charlie patted me on the shoulder and whispered, “ Vincit veritas. Truth wins out.”

  Damn, I thought. Truth was, I committed a crime.

  We took a brief recess so the judge could call his bookie. When we resumed, my backside hadn�
��t even warmed up the witness chair when Wilbert Faircloth announced, “Mr. Lassiter, you have the right to counsel at this hearing. So that the record is clear, do you waive that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you do so freely, knowingly, and voluntarily?” Faircloth asked in the typical lawyer’s fashion of using three words when one will suffice.

  “Affirmative, yessir, and friggin’ A,” I answered. One of these days my sarcasm was going to get me in trouble. Maybe this was the day.

  Faircloth seemed to puff out his bony chest. “The hour is growing late, so I suggest we cut to the chase without further ado.”

  “I’m all for skipping the ado,” I agreed. Judge Gold gave me a pained look, or maybe he just had stomach gas.

  “Now, sir,” Faircloth continued, “did you or did you not surreptitiously tape-record your own client, one Guillermo Diaz, on or about February 12, 1993?”

  I remembered the day. It was cool and breezy. I should have gone windsurfing. The black vultures soared effortlessly around the windows of my bayfront office, lazing in the updrafts. Thirty-two stories below, the predators in double-breasted suits were toting their briefcases to the courthouse. Birds of a feather.

  Guillermo Diaz was chunky and round-faced with a nose somebody hadn’t liked. He wore loafers with elevator heels, a short-sleeve knit shirt that was stretched taut against his belly. He had soft white hands and hard black eyes. He was harmless-looking, which made him better at his job. His job was killing people.

  Diaz worked with a brute named Rafael Ramos who was twice as big but only half as tough. Together they were hired to shake down a horse trainer in Ocala who borrowed sixty thousand dollars from their boss at 5 percent interest. A week.

  The trainer figured he’d pay it back quickly out of winnings, but his nags had an annoying habit of either finishing fourth, tossing their riders, or suffering heart attacks in the backstretch. With interest accumulating at three thousand a week, before compounding, the debt soon reached a hundred grand. When the trainer couldn’t pay, Diaz and Ramos headed north on the Turnpike in a blue-black Lincoln Town Car.