"You can't represent her! You're a witness."
"Me and a hundred others, plus a security videotape that caught the whole thing. I already talked to Socolow. He said he'd rather have me as an opposing lawyer than a witness."
"If I were you, I wouldn't take that as a compliment."
"Socolow's been wrong before. Besides, Ms. Christina Bernhardt asked me to represent her."
"What'd you do, slip your card into her bra when she was passed out?"
"Wasn't wearing a bra, Charlie. Panties, either."
"Good heavens!"
"It's a model thing. Interferes with the smooth flow of fabric on skin."
Charlie Riggs looked at me skeptically. "Just when did you become an expert on models?"
"Rusty MacLean taught me a few things. Actually, he's the one who retained me. He's her agent, promises to pay the tab."
"Better get a hefty retainer from that weasel," Charlie advised, "or you'll never see a dollar."
"Hey, Rusty's an old friend. He introduced me to every after-hours watering hole in the AFC East and many of the women therein."
"Even in Buffalo?"
"Especially in Buffalo. What else is there to do?"
Charlie harrumphed his displeasure. "I never trusted a receiver who didn't like going over the middle."
Like coaches and generals, Doc Charlie Riggs had remarkable tolerance for other people's pain.
"Charlie, believe me, no one likes going over the middle. It's a concussion zone."
It's true, of course. No one wants to run full speed into Dick Butkus, Jack Lambert, or even little old me, Jake Lassiter, linebacker with a tender heart and a forearm smash like a crowbar to the throat.
"It's not just that he short-armed it," Charlie said. "It's that he never gave a hundred percent. With you, Jake, it was different. You had no business being out there. You just gave it everything and overachieved."
"It was either that or drive a beer truck," I said. In those days, I hadn't thought about law school, still confining myself to honest work. But Charlie Riggs was right about one thing. Rusty had talent he never used.
Rusty MacLean was a natural. A four-sport star at a Chicago high school, he was an All-American at Notre Dame and a first-round draft choice with the Dolphins. I was a solid, if unspectacular, linebacker at Coral Shores High School in the Florida Keys, a walk-on at Penn State, and a free agent with the Dolphins. I hung on as a pro because of a willingness to punish myself-and occasionally an opponent-on kickoff teams. I played linebacker only when injuries to the starters were so severe that Don Shula thought about calling Julio Iglesias to fill in.
Rusty could do anything-pole-vault, high-jump, play tennis with either hand. The first time he touched a golf club, he shot a 79. But he hated practice and loved parties. Blown knee ligaments ended his career when he didn't have the discipline to suffer through a year of painful rehabilitation. My career ended differently. I fought back after knee surgery, numerous fractures, and separated shoulders, but was simply beaten out by better, younger players. I enrolled in night law school because it left days free for windsurfing.
Charlie grumbled something else about my old teammate, then went back to the autopsy report, pausing once to tap tobacco into his pipe and then light it. I stood up and paced, stopping in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the bay, Key Biscayne, and the ocean beyond. From the thirty-second floor, I could make out tiny triangles of colorful sails on the waters just off Virginia Key. Windsurfers luxuriating in a fifteen-knot easterly. Beats murder and mayhem any day.
"What about it, Charlie? Will you testify that the heart attack was an intervening cause?"
"But it wasn't!" he thundered. "The shooting was the proximate cause of the coronary."
"Not so fast," I cautioned. "At his age, with the condition of his arteries, Harry Bernhardt could have had a coronary at any time, right?"
"But he didn't have it any time. He went into cardiac arrest three and a half hours after your client-if that's what she is- plugged him, her own father, for God's sake."
"How about just helping me out at the bond hearing, Charlie? Maybe give a little song-and-dance to get her out of the can."
Charlie raised his bushy eyebrows at me. "Are you suborning perjury?"
"No, I was just saying-"
"That I lie at the bond hearing, as if that would be a lesser evil than at the trial." His look was a dagger. "Jake, an oath is an oath."
I remembered what a writer once said about another lawyer, the disgraced and now deceased Roy Cohn: "He only lies under oath." Well, why not? That's when it counts.
" Veritas simplex oratio est," Charlie said. "The language of truth is simple. But lies, prevarications, calumnies, they'll catch you in their web."
I hate arguing with Charlie Riggs because he's always right, and he keeps me semihonest with his damned Yankee rectitude. "The grand jury meets tomorrow," I said. "I was hoping to talk Abe Socolow into a plea to a lesser-"
"Jake, how long have you known Abe?"
"Since he was prosecuting shoplifters and I was a rookie learning how to obfuscate the facts, confuse the jury, and obstruct justice."
"You mean when you were in the PD's office."
"That's what I said."
"So you've known Abe your entire career."
"Such as it is."
Doc Riggs cocked his head to one side and gave me his disappointed-mentor look.
"Okay, Charlie, I know what you're saying. Abe's a hard ass, and I should know it. I just thought we had a special case here. A woman with no prior record who's no threat to the community…"
"Right. She's got no other fathers to kill."
"Charlie, all those years working for the state have warped your sense of fairness. You've become a real shill for the prosecution."
"A shill?" He growled and jabbed his pipe at me. "I'm just objective, and you're not."
"Of course not!" Now it was my turn to raise my voice. "I'm Christina Bernhardt's lawyer, her shield against the powerful forces of the state or anyone else who would do her harm."
"So what is it you want? Probation, counseling, community service?"
My shrug asked, Why not?
"Face it, Jake. You've got yourself a murder trial, and a loser at that."
"Don't underestimate me, Charlie."
"I never have. I just think that sometimes you don't know when you're in the concussion zone."
I was chomping a cheeseburger at my desk when Cindy, my secretary, walked in, made a face, and twirled a finger through her burnt-orange curls. "If the nitrites and benzopyrene don't give you cancer, the pesticides and heavy metals will."
"What?" A drop of grease splattered a slip-and-fall file that was open in front of me.
"That disgusting fat-laden animal flesh you're eating will kill you. The excess protein will cause kidney failure, and the antibiotics actually lower your resistance to infection."
"Bon appetit," I said, hoisting my dripping burger toward her.
"Do you know that the production of animal foods consumes twenty percent of our energy supply? Do you know that seventy-five percent of our water is devoted to raising animals for food?"
"And worth every drop." I belched. "Where do you get these numbers, anyway?"
"The Vegan Society," she said, plopping down in one of the two matching client chairs, the oak armrests stained by years of sweaty palms.
Oh, the vegans. No animal products whatsoever, including dairy, eggs, and honey. I pictured a bunch of skinny busybodies, eating their tofu and raising hell with your basic steak-and-lobster guys such as my very own carnivorous self.
"What do you have for me?" I asked.
She consulted her pad. "Roberto Condom is in the waiting room," she said, stifling a laugh. "With all the legal work you do for him, you'd think he'd ask for a name change, too."