by Paul Levine
What she said was: “Phil was the most giving man I’ve ever known. The way he cared for his first wife when she was terminally ill, if you could have seen that, if you all could have seen it.” Then she turned to the jury, an actress facing her adoring audience. “He never thought he could love again, but I brought something to his life. And to me, he was everything-a lover, a friend, even the father I never had. Then for him to die like this, in his prime.”
Clever. Very clever. So well rehearsed it didn’t look rehearsed. Explaining how a twenty-six-year-old woman marries a fifty-five- year-old man. A father, for crying out loud. No mention that the champagne corks were popping only six weeks after he buried his beloved first wife. And if I bring it out on cross, I’m a cad. It was a virtuoso performance. Even Judge Leonard was listening, practically a first. He had been in a fine mood at motion calendar in the morning, as well he should after Hot Touch paid $10.40, $5.40, and $4.80.
When Dan Cefalo turned to me and said, “Your witness,” he was smiling so broadly I almost didn’t notice that his fly was half undone and he had buttoned his shirt into his suitcoat.
The occasion called for brilliance. Roger Salisbury looked at me as if I were his last friend in the world. I approached the witness stand with a solicitous smile. I still hadn’t made up my mind. Behind those tears I saw a flinty toughness that I would love to bring out. But make a mistake, reduce her to tears or hysterics, and the jury would lynch me and nail enough zeroes on the verdict to buy an aircraft carrier. She looked straight back at me. The full lips lost a bit of their poutiness and set in a firm line. It’s there somewhere, I knew. But my investigators couldn’t find it in six months and my pretrial deposition came up empty. I couldn’t risk it now.
I turned to the judge. “Your Honor,” I said, as if seeking his approval, “I believe it would be unfair for us to keep Mrs. Corrigan on the stand to discuss this painful subject. We have no questions.” Roger Salisbury sank into his chair looking hopeless and abandoned. Men on Death Row have brighter futures.
“Very well,” Judge Leonard said, aiming a small smile in my direction. “Mr. Cefalo, call your next witness.”
“The plaintiff rests,” Dan Cefalo said, his goofy grin still lighting up the room.
“Any motions?” the judge asked. We approached the bench and the judge sent the jurors out to lunch.
“At this time, the defense moves for a directed verdict,” I said without a great deal of conviction.
“On what ground, Mr. Lassiter?” the judge asked.
“On the ground that there’s insufficient evidence of proximate cause, first that the surgery caused the aneurysm, and second that the aneurysm caused the death.”
“Denied,” the judge said before Cefalo even opened his mouth. “The plaintiff’s expert testified to that. Whatsa matter, Jake, it’s a jury question at least.”
I knew that. Somewhere between his Bloody Marys and his White Russians, Dr. Watkins had stuck us on proximate cause, at least sufficiently to beat a directed verdict, but I was giving the judge a little preview of our defense. Oh Dr. Charles W. Riggs, I need you now.
The judge looked over the courtroom, which was emptying, and waved us closer to the bench. With a hand, he signaled the court stenographer to take a hike. “You boys talk settlement?”
A practical enough question. If he could clear us out of the courtroom, he could spend the rest of the week at the track.
“Judge, we offered the policy,” I said apologetically. “A million dollars even, all we’ve got, no excess coverage. They oughta take it and spare the court all this time and effort.”
Cefalo shook his head. “Our liquidated damages alone, lost net accumulations for the estate, are over three million. To say nothing of the widow’s mental anguish and consortium claims.”
The judge laughed. “Danny, your widow lady don’t look like she’ll be without consortium for long.”
Good. I liked hearing that. Maybe the jurors will feel the same. Then we only get hit with three million, enough to wipe out the good doctor several times over.
The judge straightened. “All right, boys. Let’s cut through the bullshit. Danny, how much will you take, bottom line?”
“Two-point-five. Today. No structured settlement. All cash.”
The judge raised his eyebrows and ran a hand over his bald head. “Attaboy. I always figured you to bet the favorites to show, but you’re no ribbon clerk, hey? Jake, whadaya got?”
I turned my pockets inside out and shook my head. “A million, judge, just the policy. Client’s only been in private practice five, six years. Just finished paying off his debts. He’s pulling down big income, but no assets yet. We can’t pay it if we don’t have it. Besides, he’s simply not liable.”
“Okay, Jake, but it’s halftime, and you’re getting your ass kicked from here to Sopchoppy. You see what’s coming, don’t you?”
“Sure judge, but you haven’t heard my halftime speech.”
“Fine, we start with your first witness at one o’clock. Court’s in recess.” With that, he banged the gavel, and the hollow explosion echoed off the high, beamed ceiling. Roger Salisbury slumped onto the defense table as if felled by a rifle shot.
I headed into the corridor, nearly smashing into the lovely widow. She didn’t notice. She was toe-to-toe with another young woman. Each was jawing at the other, faces inflamed, just a few inches apart like Billy Martin and an umpire. I didn’t recognize the other woman. No makeup, short-cropped jet black hair, a turned-up nose and a deep tan, blue jeans and running shoes, maybe the last pretty woman in Miami with thick glasses. Tortoiseshell round frames, giving her a professorial look. Her language, though, was not destined to win tenure. “You’re a conniving slut and a little whore, and when I get to the bottom of this, we’ll see who’s out in the cold!”
The widow’s eyes had narrowed into slits. No tears now. Just sparks and flames. “Get away from me you ingrate, and clear your junk out of the house by six tonight or your ratty clothes will be floating in the bay.”
Dan Cefalo stepped in and separated the two. “Miss Corrigan, I think you best leave.”
Oh, Miss Corrigan. The one with the colorful vocabulary must be Philip Corrigan’s daughter by his first marriage. I followed her down the corridor.
“May I be of assistance?” I asked politely. Trying not to be your typical lawyer scavenging on the perimeter of misfortune.
She lowered the thick glasses and studied me with steaming eyes the color of a strong cup of coffee. The eyes had decided not to make any friends today. She looked me up and down, ending at my black wingtips. I could check for wounds later. Her nostrils flared as if I emitted noxious fumes.
“You’re that doctor’s lawyer, aren’t you?” She made it sound like a capital crime.
“Guilty as charged. I saw you discussing a matter with Mrs. Corrigan and I just wondered if I might help…”
“Why? Are you fucking her or do you just want to?” She slid her glasses back up the slope of the ski-jump nose and headed toward the elevators.
“No and yes,” I called after her.
4
THE SPORTSWRITER
My desk was covered with little white telephone messages. Office confetti. You think the universe comes to a halt when you are locked into your own little world, but it doesn’t. It goes on whether you’re in trial or at war or under the surgeon’s knife. Or dead. Dead rich like Philip Corrigan laid out on smooth satin in a mahogany box, or dead poor, a wino facedown in the bay.
Greeting me in my bay front office was the clutter of messages that would not be answered-lawyers who wouldn’t be called, clients who wouldn’t be seen, motions that wouldn’t be heard while my world was circumscribed by the four walls of Courtroom 6-1 in the Dade County Courthouse. Next to the phone messages were stacks of pleadings, letters and memos, carefully arranged in order of importance with numbers written on those little yellow squares of paper that have their own stickum on back. What did we do before
those sticky doodads were invented? Or before the photocopier? Or the computer, the telecopier, and the car phone? It must have been a slower world. Before lawyers had offices fifty-two stories above Biscayne Bay with white-coated waiters serving afternoon tea, and before surgeons cleared four hundred thousand a year, easy, scraping out gristle from knees and squeezing bad discs out of spines.
Lawyers had become businessmen, leveraging their hourly rates by stacking offices with high-billing associates, forming “teams” for well-heeled clients, and raking in profits on the difference between associates’ salaries and their billing rates. Doctors had become little industries themselves, creating huge pension plans, buying buildings and leasing them back, investing in labs and million-dollar scanning machines, getting depreciation and investment income that far outpaced patient fees.
Maybe doctors were too busy following the stock market to be much good at surgery anymore. Maybe the greed of lawyers and doctors equally contributed to the malpractice crisis. But maybe an occasional slip of the scalpel or a missed melanoma just couldn’t be helped. What was it old Charlie Riggs said the first day he reviewed the charts in Salisbury’s case? Errare humanum est. To err is human. Sure, but a jury seldom forgives.
I grabbed the first message on stack one. Granny Lassiter called. I hoped she hadn’t been arrested again. Granny lived in Islamorada in the Florida Keys and taught me everything I know about fishing and most of what I know about decency and principle. She was one of the first to speak against unrestrained construction in the environmentally fragile Keys. When speaking didn’t work, she got a Key West conch named Virgil Thigpen drunk as an Everglades skunk and commandeered his tank truck. The truck, not coincidentally, had just sucked up the contents of Granny’s septic tank and that of half a dozen neighbors. Granny drove it smack into the champagne and caviar crowd at the grand opening of Pelican Point, a plug-ugly pink condo on salt-eaten concrete stilts that would soon sink into the dredged muck off Key Largo. While the bankers, lawyers, developers, and lobbyists stood gaping, and TV cameras whirred, Granny shouted, “Shit on all of you,” then sloshed twelve hundred gallons of crud onto the canape table.
The judge gave her probation plus a hundred hours of community service, which she fulfilled by donating a good-sized portion of her homemade brew to the Naval Retirement Home in Marathon.
I returned the call. Granny just wanted to pass the time of day and give me a high-tide report. Next message, the unmistakably misshapen handwriting of Cindy, my secretary:
Across the River,
A Voice to Shine,
Tempus Fugit,
Doc Speaks at Nine.
What the hell? A headful of tight, burnt orange-brown curls popped through my door. To my eye, Cindy’s hair seemed to clash with the fuchsia eye shadow but clearly matched her lipstick. If the lipstick were any brighter, you could use it for fluorescent highway markers.
“Cindy, what’s this?”
“Haiku, el jefe.”
“Who?”
“I do.”
“What you do?”
“I do haiku,” she said, laughing. “Haiku is three-line Japanese poetry, no breaking hearts, just recording the author’s observations of nature and the human experience.”
“What’s it mean?”
“C’mon boss. Get with it. Crazy old Charlie Riggs is set to testify at nine tomorrow morning. He’ll tell one and all what killed filthy rich Philip Corrigan.”
“Good, he’s our best witness.”
“I don’t know,” Cindy said, twirling a finger through a stiff curl. If a mosquito flew into her hair, it would be knocked cold. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this case. Your Dr. Salisbury has a weird look in his eye.”
“All men look at you that way, Cindy. Try wearing a bra.”
“I never thought you noticed.”
“Hard to miss when the air conditioning turns this place into a meat locker. Now c’mon Cindy, help me out. We have anything on Corrigan’s daughter by his first marriage?”
“Sure, a little.” Cindy was not as ditsy as she looked. She could turn heads with her hyped-up looks, bouncy walk, and easy smile, but underneath were brains and street smarts, an unusual combination.
“Susan Corrigan,” Cindy said, without consulting the file. “About thirty, undergrad work at UF, then a master’s in journalism at Northwestern. Sportswriter at the Herald.”
“You’re amazing,” I said, meaning it.
“In many splendored ways unbeknownst to you.”
I chose not to wade in those crowded waters.
“Wait a second,” I said. “Of course. Susan Corrigan. I know the by-line, the first woman inside the Dolphins’ locker room.” I picked up yesterday’s paper, which had been gathering dust in a wicker basket next to my desk. I found the story stripped across the top of the sports section under the headline, “Dolphin Hex? Injuries Vex Offensive Line.”
By Susan Corrigan
Herald Sports Writer
On a team where the quarterback is king, something wicked keeps happening to the palace guard.
And the palace tackles. And the palace center.
“ It’s scary the things that happened to our offensive line in the last three weeks,” Dolphin Coach Don Shula said yesterday.
“ When injuries hit us, they come in bunches.”
Sure, Susan Corrigan. Made a name for herself playing tennis against Martina, sprinting against Flo-Jo, then writing first-person pieces. I’d read her stuff. Tough and funny. Today I’d seen half of that.
“What’s she have to do with Salisbury’s case?” Cindy asked.
“Don’t know. But there’s more to the second Mrs. Corrigan than tears and white gloves, and Susan knows something.”
“What’s she look like, an Amazon warrior?”
“Hardly. Cute, not beautiful. Long legs, short dark hair like Dorothy Hamill, wears glasses, wholesome as the Great Outdoors. No hint of scandal.”
Cindy laughed. “Doesn’t sound like your type.”
“Did I mention foulmouthed?”
“We’re getting warmer.”
“Cindy, this is all business.”
“Isn’t it always?”
***
Practice was almost over and only a few players were still on the field. Natural grass warmed by the sun, a clean earthy smell in the late afternoon Florida air. It had been one of those days when it’s a crime to be shackled to an office or courtroom. Winter in the tropics. Clear sky, mid-seventies, a light breeze from the northeast. On the small college campus where the Dolphins practice, the clean air and open spaces were a world away from Miami’s guttersnipes and bottom feeders.
I spotted Susan Corrigan along the sideline. She wore gray cotton sweats and running shoes and seemed to be counting heads, seeing what linemen were still able to walk as they straggled back to the locker room. A reporter’s notepad was jammed into the back of her sweatpants and a ballpoint pen jutted like a torpedo out of her black hair. All business. On the field in front of her only the quarterbacks and wide receivers were still going through their paces, a few more passes before the sun set. On an adjacent practice field, a ballboy shagged kick after kick from a solitary punter.
“Susan,” I called from a few yards away.
She turned with an expectant smile. The sight of me washed it away. I asked if we could talk. She turned back to the field. I asked if she was waiting for somebody. She studied the yard markers. I asked who she liked in the AFC East. She didn’t give me any tips. I just stood there, looking at her profile. It wasn’t hard to take.
She turned toward me again, a studious yet annoyed look through thick glasses, as if an interesting insect had landed in her soup. “Why should I help you?”
“Because you’re not real interested in helping Melanie Corrigan. Because you know things about her that could help an innocent doctor save his career. Because you like the way I comb my hair.”
“You’re dumber than you look,” she hissed.
&n
bsp; “Is there a compliment buried in that one?”
“You’re hopeless.”
I can take being put down. Judges do it all the time. So do important people like a maitre d’ in a Bal Harbour restaurant who insists that diners wear socks. But this was different. I looked at her, a fresh-faced young woman in cotton sweats that could not hide her athletic yet very womanly body. I gave her a hangdog look that sought mercy. She turned back to the field. Dan Marino was firing short outs to Mark Duper and Mark Clayton. Though each pass arrived with ferocious speed, there was no slap of leather onto skin at the receiving end.
“Soft hands,” Susan Corrigan said, mostly to herself.
“These guys are good but Paul Warfield will always be my favorite,” I said. “Had moves like Baryshnikov. Stopping him was like tackling the wind.”
“Sounds like you know more about football than about your own client.”
I gave her my blank look and she kept going. “You still don’t get it. You still don’t know the truth.”
“Get what? Look, I’m defending a man accused of professional malpractice. I don’t know what the truth is. I never know. I just take the facts-or as much of them as I can get from people biased on all sides-and throw them at the jurors. You never know what jurors hear or remember or care about. You never know why they rule the way they do. They can right terrible wrongs or do terrible wrongs. They can shatter lives and destroy careers, and that’s what I’m worried about with Roger Salisbury.”
“Bring out the violins.”
Suddenly a shout from behind us: “Heads up!” I looked up in time to see a brown blur dropping from the sky. Susan Corrigan’s hands shot out and she caught the ball with her fingertips. A cheer went up from the wide receivers, anonymous behind their face masks.
“Soft hands,” I said, “and a lot of quick.” I gave her my best smile. It had been good enough for several generations of University of Miami coeds, their brains fried from working on their tans. It had lowered the minimal resistance of stewardesses from half a dozen failing airlines. It did not dent the armor of Susan Corrigan.