Lassiter 01 - To Speak for the Dead (23 page)

The next morning I was at my desk at eight o'clock when the call came on my private line. "You gonna surrender that pervert murderer or should a couple boys from major crimes cuff him and bring him in the front door with all the TV assholes outside?"

Abe Socolow had such a folksy way of saying hello. He was delivering a message, just in case I missed it the day before. There would be no breaks, no special treatment because we used to break bread together. Now I was just another problem for him. After he brushed me aside, he could sweep up the scum he saw in front of him.

"You shouldn't skip breakfast, Abe. Affects your disposition."

He snorted at me. "I chew nails for breakfast."

"And spit out tacks," I said. "Roger will be there whenever you want. We aim to cooperate. But we'd like some cooperation from the state, too."

"Like what?" he asked, suspicion rising in him like steam in a kettle.

"Bond, reasonable bond for someone never before arrested, much less convicted of a crime."

"Hey, Jake, don't pee on my leg, okay. We're talking a capital crime here. No bond. You remember your criminal procedure, don't you, or is the money too good handling divorces and corporate mergers?"

Socolow was going to make my life miserable, and if I couldn't figure that out, he was telling me about it. He wanted me to grovel a little, so I did. It wouldn't help my client to insult the guy trying to fry him. "Abe, the court will grant him bond if the state stipulates to it. He's not going anywhere. He's got his medical practice here. He'll show up for arraignment, the preliminary, the trial, the whole works."

"And what if he splits for Argentina with some
bambina?
I'll look like a schmuck."

"Who'd notice the difference?" I said, without thinking. I pictured Socolow scowling at me at the other end of the line.

"Fuck him and the horse he rode in on. Let him sit in the can with all the other shitheads."

Stay in the prosecutor's office long enough, you get warped. You start thinking like a cop and talking like a cop. Cops are everywhere—homicide, vice, narcs—telling macho stories, hanging together in the paranoid world of Us against Them. Then in the corridors of the Justice Building, you rub up against the silk-suited shoulders of criminal lawyers and their depraved clients. No way you can stay sane. Not after eighteen years.

He always thought I was too flippant. Become a judge if you want to be a wiseguy, Socolow once told me. They get away with that shit.

"So what's it gonna be?" Socolow said finally.

"I'll bring him in, but I want an immediate bond hearing. You and I both know he shouldn't have to cool his heels in that hellhole across the street."

Socolow laughed. "Good enough for spicks and spades, but not for the saintly doctor. Bring him in, and I'll get you a bond hearing this afternoon. But you know your burden under
Arthur v. State."

I knew, I knew. Unlike a trial, where the state has the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, at a bond hearing in a capital case, the defendant must show that the state lacks sufficient evidence of guilt. But there was something in that for us, too. I could cross-examine Socolow
's
witnesses. One more time to put them under oath, a great advantage, because the best trick in the defense lawyer's trial bag is to elicit conflicting statements from prosecution witnesses. Jurors love that, even if the testimony is as innocuous as the color of the tie someone was wearing on the day of a murder. So the state's case would be unfolded in front of me, and the state's star witness, Mrs. Melanie Corrigan, would have to testify much sooner than she could have expected.

"I can't believe Melanie set me up," Roger Salisbury said as we looked for a parking space in front of the Justice Building. He squirmed in the bucket seat.

"Believe it," I said. "Hey, she sued you for malpractice, planted the drug in your house, and gave the State Attorney's Office an affidavit for the search warrant. What more does it take?"

He slammed a hand against the dashboard. "I'll believe it when I see her take the stand against me, not before."

"Fine," I said, pulling the old convertible into the meager shade of a thatch palm. "That should be right after lunch."

CIRCUS MAXIMUS

The Justice Building hadn't changed, except to become more crowded, dirtier, and more forbidding. When I started practicing law, six Criminal Court judges handled all felony cases in Dade County. But that was before Miami became the major port of entry for various grasses, powders, and pills from south of the border, and before Miami earned its civic bones as murder capital of the U.S. of A. Now Miami has the highest crime rate in the country. That's important. Americans have a passion for being number one. Like having the highest humidity, the murder rate is the source of a bizarre sense of pride among locals. It takes a tough
hombre
to battle

Miami's mosquitoes each summer and the criminals all year round.

The city
padres
can't do much about the weather, but they keep adding personnel to the justice system. Now, eighteen state judges churn through calendars stocked with up to sixty felonies each day, hurrying through arraignments, motions, bond hearings, reports, soundings, trials, and sentenc-ings. A constant flow of humanity crowds the corridors— Liberty City blacks, Hispanics from a dozen countries, dirt-poor whites—calling out for their public defenders in a Babel of tongues, inner-city jive, machine-gun Spanish, back-country Southern drawl.

I was pacing the fourth floor, getting the feel of the place again, waiting for the bond hearing. The tile floors were filthy, the corridors dim with dead fluorescent bulbs. Acoustic tiles were missing from the ceiling, leaving gaps like missing teeth. Every thirty feet or so, huge twists of electrical wires dropped from overhead conduits, waiting for county electricians to install some new device, maybe TV cameras, escape alarms, or other technological marvels. The wires could have been there a week or a year. In the Justice Building, time is another dimension.

An ancient bailiff in a baggy blue uniform came out of a courtroom shouting, "Judge Snyder's calendar is now being called!" All aboard.

A young assistant state attorney with too much hair and an unkempt moustache sang out, "Teddy Figuero-a! Teddy Figuero-a!" A prosecutor's missing witness, a case about to go down the tubes.

A huge black woman slammed into me. She held her even larger son by the scruff of his T-shirt and horse collared him down the corridor. The son was about twenty, with shoulders like a water buffalo but a choreographer's hips.

"What day they say your trial be?" the mom demanded.

"February four, Momma."

"No. No. The arrangement be February four. The trial be when, March something . . ."

They trundled toward the escalators, still debating.

Shackled defendants crossed the corridor in twos, shuffling from one holding cell to another, eyes darting left and right, looking for girlfriends, mothers, lawyers, or bondsmen.

A sunburned redhead in her forties removed one high-heeled shoe and wiggled the toes of her right foot. Four toes, the little one missing. Maybe the evidence in a criminal case. Who knows? The performers are crazed at Circus Maximus.

I threaded my way to Judge Randolph Crane's courtroom, a spacious arena with thirty-foot ceilings, paneled walls on two sides, and a stained glass ornamental wall behind the bench into which was cut a door and through which the judge miraculously appeared from chambers. Under his raised bench of simulated walnut was a red panic button that summoned corrections officers in the event a deranged defendant (or lawyer) attacked him, and on a hidden shelf sat a loaded .357 Magnum in case the officers were all squeezing up against the young women clerks in the police liaison office.

I was waiting for the officers to bring Roger into the courtroom from the county jail next door where he had been booked two hours earlier. The prisoners came through an overpass that crossed the street and led directly into holding cells attached to the courtrooms. I had stayed with Roger as long as they let me in jail processing, and when they took him back through the huge steel door that clanged shut with a sound of malice and finality, he shot me a helpless look.

It hit me then, the load I carried, Roger Salisbury's life weighing a ton on my shoulders. The first rule of criminal cases and here I was emoting, instead of thinking, feeling anguish for him instead of masterminding a brilliant strategy to set him free. If any there be.

A dozen defendants sat in the jury box waiting for their cases to be called. Lawyers milled about in front of the bar, whispering to each other, poring through files, making deals, swapping stories. The courtroom resembled a basketball court before the game, players at both ends warming up, taking shots from all over the court, slapping each other on the back, a kind of camaraderie before the battle. At the same time, the judge kept calling his calendar, sometimes banging his gavel to bring the uproar to a manageable din.

Judge Randolph Crane was serving his fourth six-year term on the bench. He was tall and spare with a long, gloomy, gray face. His pale blue eyes had seen it all and not liked any of it. He spoke quickly as if he wanted to get it over with, sometimes thumbing through his calendar, shaking his head at the number of cases still to be heard.

"Rodolfo Milan," the judge called out. A pot-bellied man in a stained guayabera dragged himself out of the jury box. A public defender whispered in his ear. In a singsong voice, the judge began his mournful chant, "You're charged with aggravated assault, grand theft, breaking and entering, possession of a weapon in the commission of a felony. Rodolfo Milan, how do you plead?"

The defendant looked for his public defender, who now was huddled with a young woman prosecutor in a black miniskirt and fishnet stockings.

"Have I got a plea for you?" She winked at the defense lawyer.

It went on like this for a while, arraignments and some guilty pleas, a few cases
nolle prossed
because the state had misplaced files or lost evidence or forgotten to subpoena witnesses or violated the speedy trial rule. With all the traps, with the rules of criminal procedure a minefield for the prosecution, it's a miracle anybody ever gets convicted. Except when they really want you. When they pay attention to you, throw their resources into it, when an Abe Socolow gets a burr under his saddle, makes it personal, then it's different. Then it's all turned around.

The judge kept calling cases, and every few minutes, corrections officers brought a new load of defendants from the holding cell to the jury box. Still no Roger Salisbury.

"Ivory Holloman," the judge sang out. "You're charged with grand theft, auto . . ."

Marvin Pollack, a skinny sixty-year-old defense lawyer with a matted toupee, pushed a young black man in a muscle shirt up against one wall of the courtroom. "Ivory, you got the money?" Pollack asked, patting the man's back pocket and not finding a wallet.

"Tomorrow, Mister Po-lock," Ivory Holloman said, terror in his eyes. If he wanted to, Ivory could pick up Marvin Pollack and use him for a walking stick. Ivory didn't want to. He wanted Marvin Pollack to keep him out of jail.

"Let's see what you got there," Pollack said, jamming his hand inside the man's tight jeans, fishing out some wrinkled currency. "Shit! A fin, nine singles, and a Lotto ticket."

Pollack smoothed the bills, pocketed them, straightened his tie, and prepared to negotiate a fourteen-dollar plea.

"Lazaro Arango, first degree arson . . ."

Abe Socolow strutted into the courtroom followed
by
his entourage. A couple of detectives from Metro, a young woman assistant state attorney, the medical examiner, a paralegal, and two clerks from the prosecutor's office. The state can always outnumber you. The detectives flanked Melanie Corrigan, who looked a trifle uneasy, but in a virgin-white cotton dress, her arrival still cut the decibel level in half as she walked to the first row of the gallery.

Socolow stood motionless and surveyed the courtroom as if counting the heifers on his ranch and coming up one short. Finally he spotted me and nodded formally. His assistant stood a half step behind. She was a good choice for the trial, a fragile blonde, small and pale with translucent skin. Give her a good squeeze and you'd leave bruises, but just what Abe Socolow needed. Sometimes, he comes on too strong. A little righteous indignation is okay for a prosecutor up to the point the jury senses he's mean-spirited and unfair. Then, for reasons psychologists can explain, jurors begin to feel sympathy for the defendant, no matter how heinous the charge. Abe sometimes treads dangerously close to the mark, his motor cranking at the red line.

A moment later, the guards led Salisbury through the holding cell door. His eyes desperately sought me, and I moved next to him.

"We have a couple minutes," I said. "Now, no matter what Melanie or any other witness says, you're not going to testify. This is our chance to find out what they've got, not reveal our case."

Judge Crane saw Socolow in the rear of the courtroom and pulled the freshly minted file of
State v. Salisbury
off the floor. He would call us out of turn, a courtesy to the chief of major crimes, not to me. Still, Socolow had kept his promise.
An
immediate bond hearing, and he hadn't called the papers
or TV
stations. Most prosecutors would salivate over the prospect of seeing their faces in the first block of the six
o
'clock news. Not Honest Abe. He didn't care about public
ity,
and instead of sucking up to the reporters the way most prosecutors did, he avoided them. We had a one-day reprieve
on
publicity.