by Paul Levine
No to the metallic cherry red crochet dress with the scoop neck.
No to the shimmering, beaded lace dress with the sheer top.
They had settled on a Carolina Herrera wool flannel skirt suit in pearl gray, a tasteful belt at the waist. Now, on the escalator headed to the courtroom, Victoria listened to Solomon lecture her on jury selection in that annoying, superior tone.
“Watch the body language. Try to figure who are leaders, who are followers.”
“I will.”
“Strike all unattractive women, they'll hate our client.”
“I know,” she said.
“The man who sits with his elbows in his lap is submissive. The guy who encroaches on the next juror's chair is dominant.”
“I know. I know.”
“See who's carrying hardcover books, who's carrying the Daily Racing Form.”
“Got it.”
“Strike anyone reading a book by Bill O'Reilly.”
“Why?”
“They're gonna be obnoxious know-it-alls.”
They got off on the second floor and took the escalator to the third floor. “Watch Marvin the Maven in the front row,” Steve said. “If he tugs an earlobe—”
“He wants me to steal second base?”
“He wants you to challenge the juror. Another thing: Let the panel know right away that our client's guilty of adultery.”
“I'll do it in opening statement.”
“Too late. Do it first thing in voir dire. I want to see their reactions, strike anyone who gets uptight.”
“If we make too big a deal out of it, it'll look like we're afraid—”
“Look, I don't have time for a tutorial here. Just do what I say.”
“I don't need a tutorial.”
Why's he lashing out like this? she wondered. Because she didn't leap into his arms today?
I should never have slept with him. I'm an idiot!
“I'm worried about the infidelity issue,” he said.
You too? she thought.
“We get some religious nuts on the jury, they'll hang her for screwing Manko, no matter what the evidence is on murder. Are you up to speed on cognitive dissonance theory?”
“I studied psychology at Princeton.”
“Congratulations. Do you know this corollary? If you can get people to publicly commit to positions they didn't previously agree with, they'll change their behavior to conform to their new commitments.”
“I've read all the studies.”
“Another thing, don't stand too close to the box. It's intimidating. Be relaxed. Walk back and forth if you want, but maintain eye contact. You're having a conversation with the jurors, not interrogating them.”
“Jesus, Steve, I know how to pick a jury.”
“But when you're cross-examining, stand sniper still. Let the witness squirm.”
“I know how to cross-examine, too.”
“If you'd listen, I could make a great lawyer out of you.”
“That again? You're so damned overbearing.”
“And you're just as frigid as the day we met.”
“What!”
“Rigid. I meant to say rigid.”
“Screw you, Solomon.”
“You already did, Lord.”
Damn him, the cheap-shot artist.
“I know you're angry,” she said, “but could you try to be an adult about this?”
“I'm not angry.”
Men are such babies. If he keeps this up, the next week will be hell.
“You wanted all-business,” he said. “You got it.”
Just like old times, she thought. She'd almost forgotten how caustic he could be. What had she been thinking the other night? Could she even imagine being involved with this petulant child? Nothing but bicker and banter, bicker and banter. She was certain she'd made the right decision. How could she have ever doubted that Bruce was the one for her?
Another correct decision: her delay in giving Solomon the news.
She'd said: “I'm tabling you.” As if Solomon were a motion taken under advisement. As if she hadn't made up her mind.
A little white lie.
Okay, maybe it's cruel, letting him hang on like that. But they had two cases to try, and this was no time to tell him to get lost.
She didn't know how he would handle it. What if he cracked?
When they reached the fourth floor, the corridor was clogged with reporters and photographers. The questions came fast.
“Any chance of a plea?”
“Will Katrina Barksdale testify?”
“Any surprise witnesses?”
Steve held up a hand to quiet them. “You know I try my cases in the courtroom, not in the media.”
“What kind of jury you looking for?” one of the TV guys asked.
“Same as always. Alert and smart.”
Right, Victoria thought. Alert enough to stay awake. Smart enough to memorize two words: “not guilty.”
“Got any aces up your sleeve?” the guy persisted.
“Don't need tricks when your client's one-hundred-percent innocent.”
Are any of us one-hundred-percent innocent? Not me, Victoria thought.
Steve kept gabbing as they hustled down the corridor to the courtroom. Blasting the state's case and singing hosannas to their client, Katrina Barksdale. The world's perfect wife, the real victim here. Blah, blah, blah.
Whistling past the graveyard, as her mother liked to say.
Where did that cockiness come from? How could he always be so sure of his footing when anyone else would be sinking in quicksand?
The Barksdale trial was supposed to lift him out of the low-rent district and launch her career. But what if Steve pulled one of his crazed stunts? It's one thing to be held in contempt in a talking cockatoo trial, but in this case, with the news media camped in the corridors, the slightest peccadillo would make headlines. What if the case turned out to be professional suicide?
Not to mention my personal life.
She'd made a horrific mistake, tumbling into the straw with Steve. Now it seemed he had the potential to lay waste to both her nascent career and her impending marriage.
No. I won't blame Steve for any of that. I can't. Any damage to me is purely self-inflicted.
Forty-two
DEAREST
The carnival started with Ray Pincher telling the panel he wanted to seat a jury that would be fair and impartial, not one that would favor the state. It was the first of numerous lies that will be told in the courtroom today, Steve thought glumly.
The first dozen souls in the box were fairly typical by Miami standards. Three retirees, two homemakers, an unemployed man, and a Protestant minister filed into the box. Then a cross-dressing South Beach party planner, a mime who failed to answer audibly, an exotic dancer noted for wrestling men in tubs of coleslaw, a beauty-salon colorist who specialized in pubic hair, and an elderly Hispanic who described himself as a freedom fighter against that butcher Fidel Castro.
Steve sat at the defense table beside Katrina Barksdale, who was demure in her gray suit, seeming to Steve neither slutty nor homicidal. Pincher sat ramrod straight at the state's table. His bulging eyes were alert and wary.
Standing a perfect six feet from the jury box, Victoria said: “Now, Reverend Anderson, you're familiar with the Ten Commandments?”
“Every one,” the minister avowed.
“The Commandments say, Thou shalt not commit adultery, and Thou shalt not kill. But do you understand, Reverend Anderson, that in this courtroom, we're concerned only with killing?”
“Indeed I do. Judging adultery is in someone else's jurisdiction.” The minister pointed skyward.
Steve heard someone whisper his name. When he turned, he saw Marvin gesturing toward the rear of the courtroom. Teresa Toraño, Marvin's lady, stood near the door. Steve gave Marvin a What's up? look. The Maven nodded in Teresa's direction. Go boychik, go.
Steve rose and walked to the back row of the gallery,
where Teresa had taken a seat. Her black hair was pulled back into a bun, and she wore a dark tweed jacket and matching skirt. When he slid into the seat next to her, she reached in her purse and took out an envelope.
“Cashier's check,” she whispered.
Steve looked at her blankly.
“One hundred thousand dollars,” she said.
“You, Teresa?”
“Me.”
“Marvin said something about asking his friends. I didn't think he meant you.”
“Something wrong with my money?”
“I'm just a little embarrassed, is all.”
“You should be. For not coming straight to me.”
“I don't know about this, Teresa.” If he was going to take the hundred thousand, he wanted her to know the spot he was in. “If Katrina's convicted, I don't get a fee. It'll take me years to pay you back.”
“So you'll work it off.”
“The funeral homes still have litigation?”
She smiled and folded the envelope into his hand. “No. But you can learn embalming.”
From her position in front of the jury box, Victoria glanced toward him. The glance seemed to ask: Why the hell are you kibitzing while I'm picking a jury?
“The money is for Bobby's case, yes?” Teresa whispered.
Steve nodded. “I'd rather not tell you more than that.”
“I pray for you to Philomena, Patron Saint of Children.”
“Thank you, Teresa. For everything.” He slipped the envelope into his suit coat pocket.
Victoria was asking the jurors if they understood that Katrina Barksdale sat before them an innocent woman, and that the state bore the burden of proving her guilty. Eleven jurors chimed variations of “yes,” “sure,” “yeah,” “uh-huh,” and “sí.” The mime nodded.
Teresa whispered: “So, for you to pay me back before I'm in a rest home, I have to hope you get the puta off?”
“Hey, none of that. Katrina's my client, which means she's a saint. Like Philomena.”
“Por Dios.” Teresa scowled her disapproval.
“The picture of perfection,” he said, which brought another line to mind. “The woman is perfected.”
“‘Her dead body wears the smile of accomplishment.'”
“What?”
“The second line of the poem,” Teresa said.
“Holy shit. It's a real poem?” Several jurors turned his way; he'd raised his voice. Victoria looked toward him and pursed her lips, as if to say, “Shush.”
“‘Edge' by Sylvia Plath,” Teresa said.
Steve's knowledge of poetry was minimal. There was Olaf and the shit he would not eat. There were some brawny verses by Carl Sandburg he'd learned in college. “Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Gary, they make their steel with men.” And there were little ditties that began: “There once was a girl from Red China.” He could not name one of Plath's poems, but he knew about her, mainly from seeing the Gwyneth Paltrow movie.
“Sylvia Plath committed suicide, didn't she?” he said.
“Just a few days after writing ‘Edge.'”
“Wow,” he said. The pieces of the puzzle were coming together. He'd assumed Barksdale had written the line himself. But no. He'd stolen a real poem, then created multiple anagrams. Now Steve remembered the note Barksdale sent his wife the day before his death. Victoria had called it “quaint.”
“Teresa, do you know this line? Something like, ‘Dearest. Nobody could have been so good, from the beginning to the end'?”
She gave him a kind smile, a patient teacher to a slow student. “‘Dearest . . . No one could have been so good as you have been, from the very first day till now.'”
“That's it! Did Plath write that, too?”
Hoping now. A defense forming.
“No. Sylvia Plath didn't write it.”
“Damn.” Steve instantly deflated. He thought he'd been onto something. Suicide. But if the “Dearest” line didn't come from Plath, where did that leave him?
“Virginia Woolf wrote it,” Teresa said. “It was her suicide note to her husband.”
“Yes!” Steve gave her a hug. “You're beautiful, Teresa!”
She laughed. “You are a crazy man, but if I were forty years younger . . .”
“I can answer your question now.”
She cocked her head, not quite knowing where he was going.
“I'm going to get the puta off,” Steve said.
Forty-three
THE MEANING OF SYNERGY
“Charles discovers Katrina's affair, so he kills himself?” Victoria said. “What sense does that make?”
“Victoria's right,” Katrina said. “If he was gonna kill anybody, it would have been me.”
“Are you two listening to me?” Steve said. “This is a great defense.”
They were sitting in the empty courtroom. Minutes earlier, the jury had been sworn, standing at attention with hands raised, good little Scouts, promising to determine the case solely on the evidence and the judge's instructions. Steve had taken a peek to see if they had their fingers crossed.
Then Judge Hiram Thornberry cleared his throat and said: “Noting the lateness of the hour, we'll stand in recess until tomorrow morning.”
Steve noted the hour was only three-thirty P.M. but His Honor liked to beat the traffic home and play nine holes before dark. After the courtroom emptied, Steve told Victoria and Katrina that Charles had committed suicide. The two women spent the next ten minutes trashing his theory.
“Charlie never did anything without help,” Katrina said, “including jerk off.”
“You're basing all this on the poem?” Victoria shook her head.
“Charles was a literary guy,” Steve argued. “He collected books. He sponsored seminars: ‘Women Poets, Tortured Souls.'”
“Extremely flimsy evidence,” Victoria said.
“C'mon, Vic. What's the first thing you told me about Charles?”
“That he always had to prove he was the smartest guy at the table.”
“Exactly. Don't you see how it all fits together? Charles makes an anagram out of a line Sylvia Plath wrote just days before she took her own life. He quotes Virginia Woolf's suicide note, then strangles himself in a contraption where he could control the pressure on his throat.”
Victoria was biting her lower lip, thinking it through. “It doesn't make sense. Charles is furious with Katrina. If he dies while they're still married, she inherits her share of the estate.”
“Not if she's convicted of murder,” Steve said.
“So Charlie framed me?” Katrina said. Her head was swiveling back and forth watching her lawyers' tennis match.
“That's my guess,” Steve said. “Some murderers try to disguise their crimes as suicide. Charles flipped it around. He committed suicide and disguised it as murder.”
“Then why write a note that might give it all away?” Victoria said.
“He doesn't exactly give it away. Three anagrams that lead to a source gram that still has to be connected to a poem. Who would figure it out?”
“Not me,” Katrina said with a shrug.
“One last chance to prove he was smarter than everyone else,” Steve said. “He's laughing from the grave.”
“I'm still not buying it,” Victoria said. “No man ends his life just to cheat his wife out of some money.”
“That's not why he did it. That's just the cream cheese on the bagel.”
“And the lox? What's that?”
“Once Katrina broke his heart, Charles had nothing to live for,” Steve said. Sending up a trial balloon.
“Charlie wasn't like that,” Katrina said, bursting it. “I mean, he'd just divorce me and find someone else.”
“Okay, he was suicidal for another reason,” Steve said, refusing to give up. “But as long as he was gonna do it, he was gonna nail you.”
“What reason?” Victoria demanded. “We keep coming back to the same place.”
“I don't know! I just know he did it.”<
br />
“We'll never prove it without a reason he'd kill himself,” Victoria said.
“Mental illness, maybe,” Steve said. “Bipolar disorder. Depression.”
“No way.” Katrina shook her head, her dark tresses swaying. “Not good-time Charlie.”
“Financial reasons,” Steve suggested.
“He was stinking rich,” Katrina pointed out.
“Medical problems.”
“Not once they invented Viagra.”
“Did he abuse drugs?”
Another shake, another hair swoosh. “Nothing without a doctor's prescription, and that includes the painkillers.”
“What painkillers?” Victoria said.
“Vicodin. A couple of others. I don't remember their names.”
“Why was Charles taking them?”
“A couple of weeks before he died, he came down with a stomach virus.”
“They don't give you painkillers for a stomach virus,” Victoria said.
Katrina wrinkled her forehead. “That's what Charlie brought home from the doctor. I'm sure of it.”
“What doctor?” Steve asked.
Philip Atherton, MD, didn't play a doctor on TV, but he sure looked like one. Handsome, early fifties, salt-and-pepper hair carefully swept back, crisp lab coat with his name stenciled above the pocket, the obligatory stethoscope slung around the neck. There was something proper and vaguely British about him. Victoria expected him to sound like Masterpiece Theatre.
“I fucking hate lawyers,” Dr. Atherton barked in a harsh New York accent. “Bloodsucking parasites.”
“I couldn't agree more,” Victoria said. She was determined to find common ground. They needed this guy's help, and quickly. She shot a look at Steve, who was scowling.
They were sitting in Atherton's upscale medical suite just off Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. The office had a marble-floored waiting room with a burbling fountain and vases of fresh lilies on glass pedestals. The seven-story building was earth-toned stucco with orange tile terraces. An architect's attempt to make the place look like a Mediterranean villa instead of home to proctologists, podiatrists, and internists.