Solomon & Lord Drop Anchor (12 page)

“The man should seek redress in a court of
law,” Patterson solemnly declared, answering his own question, as
lawyers are inclined to do. “He should come before a jury of his
peers, citizens of the community. So, my friends and neighbors,
ladies and gentlemen of this jury, it is time to pay the piper
…”

I didn’t think the metaphor held up to
scrutiny, but the jury didn’t seem to notice. The men all nodded,
and number five stopped fluttering her eyelashes and now stared
mournfully at poor, defamed Nick Wolf.

“It is time to assess damages; it is judgment
day, it is time to levy the penalty for these knowing, reckless
lies. And I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, is it too much to ask
that the 
Miami Journal
, that behemoth on the bay, that
monster of malediction, pay ten dollars for each time it lied, yes,
ten dollars for each time it sent its message of malice into our
midst?”

I never did better than Cs in math, but I
know when a lawyer is asking for five million bucks from a jury.
Meaning H. T. Patterson hoped for two million, and I was beginning
to wonder if taking this case to trial was so damn smart after
all.

“A letter of apology, a front-page
retraction, and fifty grand might do it,” I told the publisher six
months earlier in his bayfront office.

Symington Foote bristled. “We don’t pay
extortion. A public official is fair game, and we had a bona fide
tip that Wolf was taking dirty money.”

“From a tipster who refuses to come forward
and a reporter who won’t even reveal his source,” I reminded the
publisher, trying to knock him off the soapbox.

“But we don’t need to prove the story was
true, do we, counselor?”

He had me there. As a public official, Nick
Wolf could win his libel suit only if he proved that the newspaper
knew the story was false or had recklessly disregarded the truth. A
nice concept for judges. For jurors, it’s the same as in most
lawsuits. If they like the plaintiff’s attitude and appearance more
than the defendant’s, the plaintiff wins. Simple as that.

The case had been cleanly tried. A few
histrionics from Patterson, but his tricks were mostly subtle. When
I stood to make an objection, he would move close, letting me tower
above him. He was a bantam rooster in a white linen three-piece
suit, and alongside was a bruiser representing the unrestrained
power of a billion-dollar company.

So here I was about to deliver my closing
argument in the big barn of a courtroom on the sixth floor of the
Dade County Courthouse, an aging tower of gray limestone where
buzzards of the winged variety soar overhead and the seersuckered
birds beat their wings inside. Heavy drapes matted with dust
covered the grimy windows. The walnut paneling had darkened over
the decades, and an obsolete air-conditioning system rumbled
noisily overhead.

Several years ago the electorate was asked to
approve many millions of dollars in bonds for capital projects
around the county. The voters said yea to a new zoo and nay to a
new courthouse, expressing greater regard for the animals of the
jungle than for the animals of Flagler Street. And who could blame
them?

Now I stood and approached the jury box, all
six-two, two-hundred-something pounds of me. I tried not to get too
close, avoiding the jurors’ horizontal space. I shot a glance at
the familiar sign on the wall above the judge’s bench: WE WHO
LABOR HERE ONLY SEEK THE TRUTH. There ought to be a
footnote: 
subject to the truth being misstated by
perjurious witnesses, obfuscated by sleazy lawyers, excluded by
inept judges, and overlooked by lazy jurors
.

Planting myself like an oak in front of the
jury, I surveyed the courtroom. Symington Foote sat at the defense
table next to the chair I had just abandoned. The publisher
fingered his gold cuff links and eyed me skeptically. Behind him in
the row of imitation leather chairs just in front of the bar were
two representatives of the newspaper’s libel insurance company.
Both men wore charcoal-gray three-piece suits. They flew in from
Kansas City for the trial and had that corn-fed, pale-faced,
short-haired, tight-assed look of insurance adjusters everywhere. I
wouldn’t have a drink with either one of them if stroking the
client’s pocketbook wasn’t part of my job. In the front row of the
gallery sat three senior partners of Harman and Fox, awaiting my
performance with anxiety that approached hysteria. They were more
nervous than I was, and I’m prone to both nausea and diarrhea just
before closing argument. Neither Mr. Harman nor Mr. Fox was there,
the former having died of a stroke in a Havana brothel in 1952, the
latter living out his golden years in a Palm Beach estate—Château
Renard—with his sixth wife, a twenty-three-year-old beautician from
Barbados. We were an old-line law firm by Miami standards, our
forebears having represented the railroads, phosphate
manufacturers, citrus growers, and assorted other robber barons and
swindlers from Florida’s checkered past. These days we carried the
banner of the First Amendment, a load lightened considerably by our
enormous retainer and hefty hourly rates.

Much like a railroad, a newspaper is a
glorious client because of the destruction it can inflict.
Newspaper trucks crush pedestrians in the early-morning darkness;
obsolete presses mangle workmen’s limbs; and the news accounts
themselves—the paper’s very raison d’être, as H. T. Patterson had
just put it in a lyrical moment—can poison as surely as the
deadliest drug. All of it, fodder for the law firm. So the gallery
was also filled with an impressive collection of downtown hired
guns squirming in their seats with the fond hope that the jury
would tack seven digits onto the verdict form and leave 
The
Miami Journal
 looking for new counsel. When I analyzed it,
my only true friend inside the hall of alleged justice was Marvin
the Maven, and he couldn’t help me now.

I began the usual way, thanking the jurors,
stopping just short of slobbering my gratitude for their rapt
attention. I didn’t point out that number two had slept through the
second day and that number six was more interested in what he dug
out of his nose than the exhibits marked into evidence. Then after
the brief commercial for the flag, the judge, and our gosh-darned
best-in-the-world legal system, I paused to let them know that the
important stuff was coming right up. Summoning the deep voice
calculated to keep them still, I began explaining constitutional
niceties as six men and women stared back at me with suspicion and
enmity.

“Yes, it is true that
the 
Journal
 did not offer testimony by the main
source of its story. And it is true that there can be many
explanations for the receipt of cash contributions and many reasons
why State Attorney Wolf chose to drop charges against three men
considered major drug dealers by the DEA. But Judge Witherspoon
will instruct you on the law of libel and the burden of the
plaintiff in such a case. And he will tell you that the law gives
the 
Journal
 the right to be wrong …”

I caught a glimpse of Nick Wolf, giving me
that tough-guy smile. He was a smart enough lawyer in his own right
to know I had no ammunition and was floundering.

“And as for damages,” I told the jury, “you
have just heard some outrageous sums thrown about by Mr. Patterson.
In this very courtroom, at that very plaintiff’s table, there have
sat persons horribly maimed and disfigured, there have sat others
defrauded of huge sums of money, but look at the plaintiff here
…”

They did, and he looked back with his
politician’s grin. Nick Wolf filled his chair and then some. All
chest and shoulders. One of those guys who worked slinging bags of
cement or chopping trees as a kid, and with the good genes, the
bulk stayed hard and his rahma-bull neck would strain against shirt
collars for the rest of his life. On television, with the camera
focused on a head shot, all you remembered was that neck.

“Has he been physically injured? No. Has he
lost a dime because of this story? No. Has he even lost a moment’s
sleep? No. So even if you find the 
Journal
 liable
…”

H. T. Patterson still had rebuttal, and I
wondered if he would use the line from Ecclesiastes about a man’s
good name being more valuable than precious ointment or the one
from 
Othello
 about reputation as the immortal part
of self.

He used them both.

Then threw in one from 
Richard
II
 I’d never heard.

* * *

“You could have advised us to settle,”
Symington Foote said, standing on the courthouse steps, squinting
into the low, vicious late-afternoon sun.

Funny, I thought I had.

“Three hundred twenty-two thousand,” I said.
“Could have been worse.”

“Where the hell did that number come from?
Where do these jurors get their—”

“Probably a quotient verdict. Someone wanted
to give him a million, someone else only a hundred thousand. They
put the numbers on slips of paper, add ’em up, and divide by six.
They’re not supposed to do it, but it happens.”

Foote sniffed the air, didn’t like what he
smelled, and snorted. “Maybe it’s time for a hard look at the jury
system. I’ll talk to the editorial writers in the morning.”

He stomped off without telling me how much he
looked forward to using my services in the future.

I was late for dinner with Doc Riggs. But I
hadn’t expected to make it at all. With a jury out, you never
know.

I spotted Charlie’s unkempt hair and bushy
beard, now streaked with gray. He wore a khaki bush jacket and sat
at his usual table on the front porch of Tugboat Willie’s, a
weather-beaten joint located behind the Marine Stadium on the
causeway, halfway between the mainland and Key Biscayne. Charlie
had been coming to the old restaurant since his early days as
county medical examiner. It was one of the few places where neither
the management nor patrons seemed to mind the whiff of
formaldehyde. Sometimes Charlie caught his own fish and asked the
cook to make it any old way as long as it was fried. Sometimes he
ordered from the menu. Willie’s is a great place as long as the
wind isn’t out of the northeast. The restaurant sits just southwest
of the city sewage plant at Virginia Key. On a tropical island
filled with cypress hammocks and white herons—one of the few
bayfront spots not auctioned off to rapacious developers—Miami
chose to dump its bodily wastes.

The evening was warm and muggy; not a breath
of air stirred the queen palms in front of the ramshackle
restaurant. Toward the mainland, low feathery clouds reflected an
orange glow, not from the setting sun, but from the anticrime
mercury-vapor lights of Liberty City.

Charlie was already digging into his fried
snapper when I climbed the steps to the porch. Next to him was a
woman with long auburn hair and fine porcelain skin. She wore a
tailored blue suit that meant business and, best I could tell, no
makeup. She didn’t need any. In the gauzy light of dusk she glowed
with a look that Hollywood cinematographers crave for the starlet
of the year. Her cheekbones were finely carved and high, the eyes
green, wide set, and confident.

I slid into an empty chair next to the woman
and tried to use my wit. “Charlie, I can’t leave you alone for one
evening without your smooth-talking some sweet young woman …”

Then I gave her my best crinkly-eyed,
pearly-toothed smile out of a face tanned from many indolent
afternoons riding the small waves on a sailboard not far from where
we sat. I am broad of shoulder, sandy of hair, and crooked of grin,
but the lady’s eyes darted to me and back to Charlie without
tarrying.

“I don’t mean to argue with you, Dr. Riggs,”
she said in a clipped British accent that sounded like royalty,
“but most of these so-called killer profiles are so much rubbish.
Just the modern version of detecting criminals by the shape of
their noses or the size of their ears.”

Charlie’s fork froze in mid-bite. “But even
you have identified characteristics. In your book—”

“Yes, yes. But they’re of little import. What
is consequential is that these men are incapable of forming normal
relationships. They do not see themselves as separate human beings
or recognize the separate humanity of any other being, and we don’t
know why. To a Hillside Strangler or a Yorkshire Ripper, a human
being is no more animate than a block of wood. We’ll never make any
progress until we understand what made them that way.”

I nodded my agreement, hoping Charlie would
bring me up to date, or at least introduce me. But the old billy
goat was having too good a time to notice.

“This is the classic distinction between our
disciplines,” Charlie said, sipping a glass of Saint-Veran white
burgundy, while I sat, parched, irked, and apparently invisible.
“The medical examiner searches for the clues
of 
who
 did the crime and 
how
. The
forensic psychiatrist yearns for the 
why
.”

“And the lawyer says the devil or his mother
or irresistible impulse made the rascal do it,” I offered.

Charlie noticed me then. “Oh, my manners! Dr.
Metcalf, this is Jacob Lassiter, a dear friend of mine. When I was
the county ME, Jake was a young public defender, and how he made my
life miserable. Now he’s a successful civil lawyer, eh, Jake?”

“Some days. How do you do, Dr. Metcalf.”

She nodded and seemed to appraise me with
green eyes spiked with flint. The eyes lingered, decided I was an
interesting specimen but hardly worth an afternoon tea, and
returned to Charlie. I gave Doc my pleading, hang-dog look, which
he recognized as acute deprivation of female companionship.

“Jake was quite creative when he was a PD,”
Charlie said. His eyes twinkled behind thick glasses held together
with a bent fishhook where they had lost a screw. “He’d be
defending a Murder One and ask me on cross in very serious tones,
‘Isn’t the fact that the decedent fell from a tenth-floor balcony
consistent with suicide?’”