Lassiter 06 - Fool Me Twice (4 page)

“
You mean me, don’t you?
You think I’m rigid and haughty.”

“
And self-righteous,” I
added, in case she had forgotten.

She seemed to think about it, little
vertical lines creasing her forehead. If she didn’t dislike me so
much, and if I wasn’t such an enlightened man of the nineties, I
would have mentioned just how fetching she looked just now. Okay,
if she didn’t dislike me so much, I would have mentioned it.

“
Maybe I am,” she admitted,
“and maybe those aren’t such bad traits.”

“
I agree. They’re just what
I’d look for in an executioner.”

“
And what about you? What
are your character traits, Jake?”

Her voice was growing softer. Was there a
touch of wistfulness there or was I imagining it?

“
Me? I’m humble, honest,
and congenial, not to mention sexy.

She let the bait drift across the water.
After a moment, she said, “We could have had something, Jake. We
really could have.”

“
If only I’d been
different, right?”

“
That’s your way of
attacking me, isn’t it, Jake. You’re

saying it was wrong of me to try and make
something out of you.

“
No one can make anyone
else anything,” I said. “I can’t make your brother into Albert
Schweitzer, and you can’t make me…whatever it is you wanted me to
be. I can’t live up to your schoolgirl image of me.”

“
Is that what you think it
was?”

“
Yeah. I think if we’d met
when you were older, maybe you would’ve been more realistic, a
little less idealistic.”

“
You never knew how much I
cared for you,” she said, her voice a whisper.

“
I thought I did. I thought
I knew precisely how much.”

“
You’re being sarcastic,
aren’t you? Well, you’re wrong. I loved you once.”

Why did
once
sound so achingly long
ago?

There were a lot of things I wanted to say,
and if I had twenty minutes or so, I could have come up with
something meaningful and sensitive. Instead, I stood up, steady as
a newborn calf on spindly legs. But I had nowhere to go, so I sat
back down again, feeling foolish. I didn’t say a word, and in a
moment, Mickey Cumello, the bartender, asked Ms. Josefina Jovita
Baroso, prosecutor, judge, jury, and woman, if she’d care for a
drink of her own.

“
Absolut Citron on the
rocks, just a splash of soda,” she said.

“
Don’t have the Citron,”
Mickey replied, politely, a clean white towel draped across a
shoulder. He was a bartender of the old school, white shirt, black
bow tie, hair combed straight back. “We have Absolut, and I could
drop a twist into it.”

Jo Jo wrinkled her mouth into a frown. “How
about a San Pellegrino, no ice?”

“
Club soda okay?” Mickey
asked, his eyes shifting to me. We both knew he had San Pellegrino,
but he’s entitled to some fun, too.

She shook her head. “Sodium. No can do.”

Life can be so difficult.

She started to ask about chardonnay by the
glass, and I was still thinking about my possible reply to her
belated professions of ardor, but just then the front door opened,
letting in a blast of sunlight. Ernie Cartwright, the
ninety-year-old bailiff, stood just inside the door, squinting in
the darkness, calling my name.

Chapter 3

Honor Among
Theives

Waiting for a verdict, I try to think of
anything but what is going on inside the jury room. I try to be
philosophical. No use worrying. I’ve done everything I can do to
win; now it’s up to six strangers to tell me whether I’m worth a
damn.

It works, too, until the knock on the door
awakens the bailiff, who summons the judge, who sits forlornly in
his chambers missing half the evening card at the jai alai fronton.
The judge is either reading court files, or more likely, haggling
on the phone with his bookie, mistress, or his cousin, the bail
bondsman who kicks back a percentage of bond premiums.

The judge orders the bailiff to retrieve the
lawyers from the Gaslight Lounge where they are getting shitfaced,
something the judge is precluded from doing either by the Canons of
Judicial Ethics or his duodenal ulcer.

When the bailiff comes calling, I tighten
up. Helpless. In the game I used to play, you chased the
butterflies by hitting someone. I did double duty on kickoff and
receiving teams, so I was assured of physical contact and a grass
stain within the first seven seconds or so.

Now, there was no one to hit. I once let a
witness slug me in court, just to prove his dangerous propensity
and help my client, a doctor accused of killing his patient with a
deadly drug. The best I could do now was to whack Blinky across the
back and tell him to look innocent when the jury filed in.

Riding up to the fourth floor, Blinky Baroso
was silent and seemed a shade paler than an hour earlier. We were
joined in the elevator by Blinky’s one-woman fan club. Nobody
invited her along; she was just there.

H. T. Patterson was already in the
courtroom, pacing in front of the bench, hands clasped behind his
back. He stood all of five six, and that’s including three-inch
heels on his ostrich skin cowboy boots. I admired Patterson’s
style, white linen suit and all, but I’ve always thought the dress
code for lawyers should require sharkskin suits and rattlesnake
boots.

“
Good luck, Jacob, and may
Providence smile on you and all who are dear to you,” Patterson
intoned. Before attending law school, Patterson had been a preacher
at the Liberty City Baptist Church, and the singsong of his
holy-rolling sermons stayed with him.

“
I’m not sure about
Providence,” I replied, “but I’ll take a smile from number
five.”

“
Ah, the lady bus driver.
You seated her because she’s African American, and you still adhere
to the old saw about minorities distrusting authority.”

“
Right.”

“
You left her on, despite
the fact that she seemed to have an attitude.”

“
Right again. What are you
trying to tell me?”

“
Only this, Jake. Throw out
the book. Go with your instincts. She’s a woman who’s driven a
million miles for Metro, and her hemorrhoids are flaring
up.”

“
Hemorrhoids?”

“
Did you not notice the
pillow she carries with her each day?”

I hadn’t.

“
She works overtime to
support her children. She has to deal on a daily basis with rude,
tired, angry people who have lost their cars and maybe their homes.
So we come into court with a pretty white boy who’s never done an
honest day’s work and a fat con man who’d steal cookies from the
Girl Scouts, and you expect her to be sympathetic. Black jurors
will cut you a break if they think the cops did wrong, which is
always the presumption in the ‘hood, but you got to remember this.
Your black juror isn’t from the streets. She’s a registered voter
or she wouldn’t have been called, and when you bring in some
slippery white boys, you got trouble.”

“
So why’d you leave her
on?” I asked.

“‘
Cause, Jake, my boy, in
case you haven’t noticed, while I may be as bald as a cue ball, I’m
as black as the eight ball. I was hoping for some home cookin’ from
number five.”

“
And . . .”

“
And she scowled at me
worse than at you. We both botched it with Mrs. Cherelle
Washington. We bobbled, blundered, and bungled. We fumbled,
faltered, and floundered. We looked deep inside ourselves and
failed to see the light.”

“
Maybe we’ll get lucky. You
do believe in luck, don’t you Henry Thackery?”

“
Of course. How else can
one explain his enemy’s successes?”

I thought I’d heard that somewhere before
and probably had. Lawyers are noted plagiarists.

***

Our respective clients sat at opposite ends
of the defense table, and I joined H. T. Patterson pacing in front
of the bench. The clients watched us, probably wondering why H.T.
and I acted as if we were on trial. I’m not sure why, but that’s
the way it is.

“
Good luck, Kyle,” Blinky
said, caught up in the spirit of the moment. Foxhole buddies, at
least for now.

Josefina Baroso sat in the front row of the
otherwise deserted gallery. Her legs were crossed, her fine chin
tilted upward, an enigmatic smile playing at her lips. I resented
her regal presence. If this were ancient Rome, and we were
gladiators, she would be casting thumbs down as a spear pressed
against her brother’s throat.

Abe Socolow walked calmly down the aisle,
whispered something to Queen Josefina, and took his place at the
prosecution table. He was one of these guys who never sweated. His
shirt always stayed tucked into his pants, and his shoes never lost
their shine. I was dying to get him in a headlock and give him a
noogie.

The back door banged open, and Judge Gold
trundled in, his black robes flapping behind him. The clerk was in
her place, and the stenographer sat hunched over her keyboard,
stretching her neck. “Bring in the jury,” the judge ordered the
bailiff.

You try to read their faces. If they won’t
look you in the eye, they’ve gone against you. That’s what old
lawyers will tell you over a dry martini at the Gaslight. As with
most courtroom wisdom about verdicts, they’re right fifty percent
of the time.

These jurors were all over the place. A
couple studied their shoes. A couple were clutching their thin
sweaters, protection against the spastic air-conditioning that
could drip warm water one moment and freeze sides of beef the next.
Mrs. Cherelle Washington shot a look at Socolow, then me, then
stopped her gaze on H. T. Patterson. She seemed angry with all of
us.

“
Who do you think’s the
foreman?” Blinky asked.

“
The shark hunter,” I
guessed, straining unsuccessfully to see who was holding the two
sheets of paper on which was written the fate of Messrs. Baroso and
Hornback.

“
Has the jury reached its
verdicts?” Judge Gold asked, in properly senatorial
tones.

Mrs. Washington stood up.

Oh shit.

“
We have, Your Honor,” she
said, holding out the verdict forms to the wheezing bailiff, who
carried them to Rosa Suarez, the clerk.

“
Thank you, Madam
Foreperson,” the judge said. He studied the forms and seemed to
grimace, but it could have been stomach gas. “The clerk will
publish the verdicts,” he announced, handing the forms to Rosa
Suarez, who stood with an air of self-importance.

Rosa Suarez’s uncle was a county
commissioner, and her entire family—mother, father, three brothers,
and a sister— held county jobs. If you needed a gator removed from
a backyard canal or a new water meter on your house, chances are a
Suarez would sign the paperwork. Rosa Suarez touched a hand to a
silver barrette pinning back her dark hair and began reading in a
bored voice: “In the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, in and for Dade
County, Florida, Criminal Division, Case Number Ninety-four,
Thirteen, Twenty-one, State of Florida versus Louis Xavier Baroso,
we, the jury, find the defendant, Louis Xavier Baroso, not guilty
on all counts. So say we all.”

All right! That jolt of exhilaration, the
momentary joy of victory. It always fades so quickly, I wanted to
savor it.

Next to me, Blinky sighed and grabbed my
hand with a sweaty, hearty shake. Rosa Suarez cleared her throat:
“In the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, in and for Dade County, Florida,
Criminal Division, Case Number Ninety-four, Thirteen, Twenty-two,
State of Florida versus Kyle Lynn Hornback, we, the jury, find the
defendant Kyle Lynn Hornback not guilty on counts one, three, and
four ...”

Uh-oh.

“
...and guilty on count
two, fraud, in violation of Section 817.29 of the Florida statutes.
So say we all.”

Hornback’s hand slammed the defense table.
“What the fuck!”

Socolow shook his head. He wanted Baroso;
Hornback was just along for the ride.

I thumbed through the indictment, trying to
figure it out. Not guilty of grand larceny, not guilty of
racketeering, not guilty of a scheme to defraud, but guilty of
common law gross fraud. It’s an 1868 law that prohibits “cheating”
and sits in the musty tomes next to the statute that forbids
cutting off the head of sheep before they’re dressed. Just goes to
show why prosecutors charge everything in the book. Throw enough
mud on the wall, some will stick.

H. T. Patterson didn’t flinch. “Your Honor,
we ask that the jury be polled.”

“
Very well,” Judge Gold
said, nodding judiciously, and turning toward the jury box. “The
clerk has just read your verdict in which you have found Mr.
Hornback guilty of gross fraud as alleged in count two of the
indictment. Is that your verdict, so say you all?”

“
You all,” chimed the
tattoo artist and the body piercer in perfect harmony.

The judge rolled his eyes to the heavens.
“Maybe we better do this individually.”

It took another couple of minutes, but each
juror affirmed the verdict. The judge finished by thanking the
jurors for their patience and wisdom, then handed out certificates
attesting to the splendid performance of their civic duties. He
told Blinky he was a free man and postponed sentencing for
Hornback, pending a presentence investigation of his background.
Over Socolow’s objections, he allowed Hornback to remain free on
bond until the sentencing date. The jurors filed out of the
courtroom, and the judge ducked out the back door. The stenographer
folded up her machine, cracked her knuckles, and left. The clerk
gathered up loose papers, stuffed them in a file, and followed.