Fool Me Twice

by Paul Levine

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I removed the brain and did the usual.”

  Easy for her to say.

  “Yes, Doctor, and what was that?”

  “Well, I examined the brain, of course. It was quite sodden with blood. I weighed it and replaced it in the skull.”

  McBain ran through a series of photographs, trying to get Cimarron’s bloody brain on display in front of the jury. Patterson objected, and the judge, bless his heart, sustained on the ground he’d already let in a police photo of Cimarron lying in a pool of blood, and his rule was one gory photograph per trial.

  Dr. Chin identified a nail in a little Baggie that the police had given her. It had been removed from a saddle and had been admitted into evidence when the crime scene technician testified. Dr. Chin’s tests revealed the presence of Cimarron’s blood, tiny fragments of his skull, and chunks of his gray matter, though it actually looked tan. She concluded that the nail had, in fact, been the projectile.

  “What did you do next?”

  “I completed an autopsy of the entire body.”

  “Any other abnormalities?”

  “Some coronary atherosclerosis, but that’s not what killed him.”

  “And what did kill Mr. Cimarron, Dr. Chin?”

  “A three-inch steel nail fired from a power tool directly into and through Mr. Cimarron’s brain.”

  “This nail?” McBain asked, holding up state’s exhibit seventeen.

  “It would certainly appear so.”

  “To a reasonable medical certainty?”

  “Yes, in my opinion, to a reasonable medical certainty.”

  Patterson was brief. There was little to be gained, and it doesn’t do you any good to get whacked twice.

  “Dr. Chin, other than what you have described, were there any other injuries to the head?”

  She put on a pair of glasses that dangled from a chain around her neck and took a moment to review the autopsy report.

  “On the back of the skull, there was swelling that was evidence of trauma with a blunt object.”

  “Based on your examination, can you tell us what caused that trauma?”

  “An object made of wood. We removed several splinters that were embedded in Mr. Cimarron’s hair and scalp.”

  “Can you tell us the severity of the blow?”

  “Not precisely.”

  “Well, can you tell us whether the blow was severe enough to fracture Mr. Cimarron’s skull?”

  “The skull fracture I described radiated from the site of the exit wound and was caused by the projectile. The blow to the back of the head did not cause it.”

  “Would the blow to the back of the head have been sufficient to render Mr. Cimarron unconscious?”

  Dr. Chin closed her eyes and thought about it. “It could have, but that is not to say that it did.”

  “I understand,” Patterson said, nodding.

  I was glad someone did.

  “Anything further?” Judge Witherspoon asked. “The jury looks hungry.”

  Me too. Autopsies do that to a guy.

  Patterson allowed as how he was finished. McBain had no redirect examination, and everybody gathered up their coats, scarves, and gloves and left for the lunch recess.

  ***

  Edie Laquer was thirty-eight, suntanned, and athletic. She worked as an assistant vice president at Southern Federal in downtown Miami. Her job this week was to fly to Houston on

  Continental, change planes, fly to Denver, take a commuter flight to Aspen, get a cab to the Little Nell Hotel at the foot of Aspen Mountain and check into a four-hundred-dollar-a-night room. The next day, she had eggs and a bagel at sunrise, rode the lift to the top of the mountain and skied until noon, then changed clothes, walked down Spring Street, past Le Tub, a bicycle shop, Wienerstube German restaurant, past Hyman Avenue and Hopkins to Main Street, where she turned left and continued two blocks to the courthouse. Edie Laquer carried a thin file of documents to the second floor, where she spent approximately ninety seconds on the witness stand authenticating my banking records. Whatever the glories of our justice system, efficiency is not among them.

  Judge Witherspoon admitted the records into evidence, so the jurors would have documents showing that seventy-five thousand dollars was deposited into my account. When I testified, you could be sure the prosecutor would have a few questions about the transaction.

  Edie Laquer left the courthouse, and the wheels of justice continued to turn. Housekeeping is what lawyers call it. The official seal of the secretary of state of Florida was emblazoned on the certificate of incorporation of Rocky Mountain Treasures, Inc. The shareholders’ agreement also came into evidence, as well as the prospectus, and various books and records.

  As a case builds, you get the drift of where the state is going. The prosecutor was taking no chances on the issue of motive. It wasn’t just the lust for Cimarron’s woman that drove this brutal man. It was greed for Cimarron’s money, too. Already, I was imagining McBain’s cross-examination.

  So, Mr. Lassiter, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you embezzle seventy-Jive thousand dollars from Mr. Cimarron’s company and thereafter stalk Ms. Baroso to Colorado where she was visiting him, trespass on his property at night, sexually assault Ms. Baroso, then viciously attack Mr. Cimarron, finally killing him by shooting a steel nail through his brain?

  Yes, it’s true! All of it! And not only that, I also picked protected wildflowers on state-owned lands.

  My mind does that in trial sometimes, takes flight on winged journeys. Now, everything seemed so ludicrous it would be funny if it weren’t so damn real. What had happened? A few months ago, I was a moderately successful trial lawyer doing his best in an imperfect world. Now, I was caught up in…what did Patterson call it last night? A Kafkaesque tragedy.

  Right. One of the few books I read in law school that wasn’t filled with legal citations and jurisprudential mumbo jumbo was The Trial. To this day, I can remember the first line. “Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong, he was arrested one fine morning.”

  Hey, Joseph K., this is Jacob L.

  Me too.

  CHAPTER 24

  WHO DROPPED WHOM?

  “How long have you known the defendant?” Mark McBain asked.

  “Years,” Abe Socolow said. “Ever since he started practicing law. He was an assistant public defender, and I was an assistant state attorney.”

  “You know him well?”

  “Yes.”

  “Both in and out of court?”

  “Yes.”

  “The two of you speak freely with each other?”

  “I like to think so.”

  “Now, Mr. Socolow, did there come a time when you and the defendant had an occasion to discuss Mr. Cimarron?”

  “Yes. About six months ago, the two men had an altercation in Miami.”

  “Please tell the jury exactly what you said to the defendant and what he said to you.”

  Socolow sighed and glanced at me. He didn’t want to be here. He looked as out of place on the witness stand as I did in the client’s chair. We had been adversaries for a long time, but there was always a certain amount of respect. Now he was being asked to tattle. His long, lean frame hunched forward. His complexion was more sallow than usual. He looked as if he hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. Good, that made two of us.

  “Jake…Mr. Lassiter wanted to press charges against Mr. Cimarron for a fight that took place in the home of Josefina Baroso. In fact, Mr. Lassiter swore out an affidavit so that Mr. Cimarron could be arrested for assault and battery. I contacted Mr. Cimarron who said he’d be happy to—”

  “Objection, hearsay!”

  “No!” I tugged at Patterson’s sleeve. “Let him answer.”

  “Why?”

  “Trust me.”

  The judge cleared his throat, ah-hem, and looked at us with the same bemusement one might have when watching a dozen clowns tumble
out of a car at the circus. “Is there an objection?”

  “Objection withdrawn, Your Honor,” Patterson said, graciously.

  “You may continue, Mr. Socolow,” the judge said.

  “Mr. Cimarron said he’d be happy to return to Miami and face assault charges, or if Mr. Lassiter wanted, the two of them could go another couple of rounds.”

  A couple of the jurors looked surprised, and I winked at Patterson.

  “And what did Mr. Lassiter say?”

  “He said, ‘To hell with that. Next time, I’ll just shoot him in the kneecaps.’

  Damn, I’d forgotten that.

  The lady schoolteacher gasped. The judge shook his head. A reporter for the local fish-wrapper scribbled away in the front row of the gallery. Next to me, Patterson turned, shielding his face from the jury, and gave me a withering look.

  “In the kneecaps,” McBain repeated, as if once weren’t enough.

  “Yes, that’s what he said.”

  “Are you aware of any other verbal threats made by the defendant?”

  “Yes. About two weeks before my conversation, he told Dr. Charles Riggs—”

  “Objection, hearsay.” Patterson rose halfway out of his chair. “In fact, hearsay within hearsay.”

  “Not so,” McBain responded. “Mr. Lassiter is here and can refute the statement if he so wishes. Additionally, he can call the doctor to testify if he denies the statement was made.”

  “You’re both barking up the wrong tree,” the judge said. “Send the jury out for a short break.”

  The bailiff escorted the jurors into their little room, and the judge turned to McBain. “I assume your witness is going to testify that the doctor told him Mr. Lassiter threatened Mr. Cimarron.”

  “That’s it, Your Honor. We attempted to serve a subpoena on Dr. Riggs, but he avoided service. In fact, he nearly ran down our process server in his pickup and screamed gibberish at him.”

  That wasn’t gibberish. It was Latin, Marcus Ineptus.

  “Mr. Socolow,” the judge said. “Was the defendant present when the doctor told you of his threat?”

  “No, Your Honor. I did repeat the statement to him, however.”

  “And did he respond by denying he made the threat?”

  “No, Your Honor, he did not.”

  Patterson was prancing in front of the bench. One of my threats was quite enough for the jury’s ears, and Patterson knew it. Experienced lawyers know what points are worth fighting for, and this was one of them.

  “Your Honor, a man has a right to confront his accusers,” Patterson said, “and when he’s faced with hearsay, he is deprived of that right. This testimony is highly prejudicial, inflammatory, and if I may say so, might well be grounds for reversal if a conviction results.”

  Judge Witherspoon narrowed his eyes at my bantamweight lawyer. I’ve never met a judge yet who likes to be reminded of his fallibility. “That’s what we’ve got appellate courts for, Mr. Patterson. Please feel free to appeal me on anything you like.”

  “Your Honor,” McBain began, “the statement is not hearsay…”

  “Yes, it is,” the judge said, “but when it was repeated to the defendant by this witness, who is available for cross-examination, and the defendant did not deny making the statement, it becomes an exception to the hearsay rule as an adoptive admission. Bring in the jury.”

  I sunk lower in my chair, and Patterson slowly returned to the defense table. It was the first time I’d ever seen his shoulders slump in a courtroom. Usually, it’s the lawyer who gives pep talks to the client, but just now Patterson was the one who needed cheering up. We had made a big deal out of trying to keep my statement out of evidence, and the jury knew it. We had lost, so my twelve peers would be keenly interested in what we didn’t want them to hear.

  The judge turned to the stenographer, a young woman in a pantsuit and cowboy boots. “Please read back Mr. McBain’s last question.”

  The stenographer riffled through her accordion stacks of paper and read “‘Are you aware of any other verbal threats made by the defendant?’

  Socolow nodded. “About two weeks before the conversation I earlier related, he had a conversation with Dr. Charles Riggs, retired coroner. I wasn’t there, but Dr. Riggs repeated it to me, saying he was worried about Jake, who was acting strangely. I asked what he meant, and he answered that Jake was enraged with Mr. Cimarron and had threatened to tear his heart out.”

  “Tear his heart out,” McBain echoed, shaking his head, sadly. “Were those his exact words?”

  “I don’t know if they were Mr. Lassiter’s exact words, but they were Dr. Riggs’s words, verbatim.”

  “Did you repeat Dr. Riggs’s statement to the defendant?”

  “Yes, in the same conversation I spoke about earlier.”

  “The one in which the defendant threatened to shoot Mr. Cimarron in the kneecaps?” McBain asked, in case the jurors had forgotten.

  “Yes.”

  “And did the defendant deny threatening to tear out Mr. Cimarron’s heart?”

  “No, he did not.”

  “Did he say he was only joking?”

  “No, he did not.”

  “What did he say?”

  “First, he said something about once punching out a tight end for the Jets and drawing a penalty. Then he said he hated Mr. Cimarron.”

  “I see. So in the course of one conversation, the defendant threatened to shoot Mr. Cimarron in the kneecaps, and when reminded of his earlier threat regarding tearing Mr. Cimarron’s heart out, he concluded by saying he hated the man.”

  “Yes, that’s just about it.”

  “And what did you say to him?”

  “I told him I wanted him to come into the office after the grand jury—”

  “Objection!” Patterson pounded the table so hard, it woke up the bailiff. “Your Honor, this is the subject of our motion in limine.”

  The judge called the lawyers to the bench for a sidebar conference. He had already indicated he would prohibit any mention of the indictment against me in Miami for Kyle Hornback’s murder. I couldn’t hear the whispers at the side of the bench, but in a moment the two lawyers, the stenographer, and the judge were back to business.

  “Mr. Socolow,” McBain said, “without telling us the surrounding circumstances, did you give Mr. Lassiter any advice regarding Mr. Cimarron?”

  “Yes. I suppose you’d call it advice. I told him to stay away from Mr. Cimarron.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I advised him not to leave the state because of certain…ah…potential court proceedings in Miami.”

  “Did he follow your advice?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Socolow. Your witness.”

  H. T. Patterson was in a bind. If he brought out the mutual respect Socolow and I shared, it would help polish my tarnished image. It would also show the jury that Socolow, this good, decent state attorney, had concluded his old buddy had sunk so low into depravity he would now testify against him.

  Patterson stood at the lectern a respectful distance from the witness stand.

  “Now, Mr. Socolow, you never thought Mr. Lassiter intended to shoot Mr. Cimarron in the kneecaps, did you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Or tear his heart out?”

  “No, sir.”

  “We all say things in the heat of passion that we don’t mean?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Lassiter was upset at the time of these statements?”

  “He seemed to be.”

  “Was he, in fact, recuperating from injuries inflicted by Mr. Cimarron?”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “A fight in which Mr. Cimarron was the aggressor?”

  “That was Mr. Lassiter’s position. It was not shared by Mr. Cimarron.”

  “And Ms. Baroso?”

  “Mr. Lassiter wanted her to press charges against Mr. Cimarron. She declined. Frankly, I don’t know who did what that night.” />
  “But Mr. Lassiter suffered serious injuries?”

  “I believe he broke his hand and had a number of bruises and scrapes, that sort of thing.”

  “You’ve known Jake Lassiter a long time. Have you ever known him to provoke violence?”

  Socolow wrinkled his high forehead. He didn’t want to answer. “I’m not sure what you mean. Once, in a trial, he provoked a witness into a fistfight, but it was a ploy, a strategy to show the violent streak of the witness.”

  “They must do things differently down in Miami,” the judge said, and a couple of the jurors smirked.

  H. T. Patterson had heard all he wanted on that subject and sat down. “Nothing further.”

  “Redirect?” the judge asked.

  McBain stood and buttoned his suit coat. “Are you saying, Mr. Socolow, that you didn’t take Mr. Lassiter’s threats seriously?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I didn’t take them literally. I didn’t think he intended to shoot Mr. Cimarron in the kneecaps or tear his heart out.”

  “I suppose not,” McBain said, already easing back into his chair. “I suppose he just intended to shoot a nail through the man’s brain.”

  “Objection,” Patterson yelped.

  “Withdrawn,” McBain said, sitting down.

  The judge called for the noon recess, and not a moment too soon. Socolow walked by my table, clasped me on the shoulder, and left without a word. The jurors filed out, then the judge, and then the spectators. The prosecutor and his assistants hitched up their pants and walked out, too.

  Patterson and I were alone.

  “H.T., you look a tad peaked.”

  “What?”

  “You look pale.”

  “That’s impossible, I assure you.”

  “Okay, then you look stressed out. Hey, it’s still the top of the first inning. We haven’t been to bat yet.”

  He forced a smile, but his eyes were glazed over and distant.

  “H.T., I think you need to drink some lunch.”

  “Demon rum won’t cure what ails me.”

  “Counselor, you’re a little rattled, that’s all.”