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'etre, 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 Fox 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 Fox, 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 Fox 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 Brahma-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.
CHAPTER 2
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. Maxson, 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?"