I told Roger Salisbury I’d treat him to stone crabs, home fries, and cold beer for lunch. Time for a mini-celebration, lime, too, for some questions I needed to ask.
6
We walked from the dim light and dank air of the old courtroom into the sunshine of December in Miami. A glorious day: Not even the buzzards endlessly circling the wedding cake tiers of the courthouse could darken my mood. Souls of lawyers doing penance, a Cuban spiritualist told me. The huge black birds were as much a part of wintertime Miami as sunburned tourists, drug deals, and crooked cops. The buzzards congregated around the courthouse and on the upper ledges of the Southeast Financial Center, where for fifty dollars a square foot, the lawyers, accountants, and bankers expected a better view than birdshit two feet deep. Building management installed sonar devices that supposedly made unfriendly bird sounds. Instead of being frightened, the buzzards were turned on; they tried mating with the sonar boxes.
The doctor gave me a second look when he got into my canary yellow Olds 442 convertible, vintage 1968. At home was my old Jeep, but it was rusted out from windsurfing gear, and my clients deserve the best. Having already passed through my respectable sedan phase when I temporarily decided to grow up, I had regressed to a simpler time of big engines and Beach Boys’ songs.
We drove to a seafood restaurant in a new shopping arcade that the developer spent a bundle making look like an Italian villa, circa the Renaissance. It’s full of boutiques instead of stores, places with two names that always start with Le, and women who’ll spend a fortune for clothes so they’ll look good shopping for more clothes. Notwithstanding the glitz of the surroundings, there’s a decent fish house tucked away in back.
“The tide turned today, didn’t it?” Salisbury asked.
“Right. We pulled even, which means we’re actually ahead. The plaintiff has the burden of proof. Riggs negated Watkins’s testimony about the rongeur. Back to square one. They’ll have to call Watkins again on rebuttal and attack Riggs. They’re stuck. They can’t bring in a new expert now. Our strategy is to lay low. We don’t want to get fancy, just hold our position.”
“What about my testimony?”
“You’ll do fine. What you say isn’t as important as how you look, how the jury perceives you. If you’re a nice guy and it’s a close battle of the experts, they’ll cut you a break. If you’re arrogant and a prick, they’ll cut off your nuts and hand them to the widow.”
He thought that over and I looked around for some service. We’d been there ten minutes before the waiter shuffled over to take our order. The kid needed a shave and was missing one earring, or is that the way they wear them?
“Whatcha want?” he asked, displaying the personality of a mollusk and half the energy. Service in restaurants now rivals that at gas stations for indifference and sloth.
I ordered for both of us. “Two portions of jumbo stoners, two Caesar salads, and two beers.” Best to keep it simple.
“Kinda beers?” the waiter said. I figured him for a speech communications major at the UM.
“Grolsch. Sixteen-ouncers if you have them.”
“Dunno. Got Bud, Miller, Coors Light, maybe.”
“Any beer’s okay with me,” Salisbury said. Not hard to please. A lot of doctors are that way. They get used to hospital cafeteria food and pretty soon everything tastes alike. Not me. I’ll start drinking American beer when it gets as good as its TV commercials.
The waiter shrugged and disappeared, probably to replenish his chemical stimulants. I was about to extol the glories of the Dutch brewmasters when Roger Salisbury asked, “Do you think I killed him, committed malpractice I mean?”
He wanted me to respect him. With most clients, winning is enough.
“Hey Roger, I checked around town. The med school has nice things to say about you. You’ve never been sued before, which in this town is an upset. Don’t let my general cynicism get you down.”
“Just so you believe me.”
He had thrown me off stride. I wanted to ask questions, not answer them. “Roger, you know how important it is to tell your lawyer everything?”
“Sure thing. Soul mates.”
“Right. Before you testify tomorrow, is there anything you want to tell me? Anything you left out?”
He cradled his chin in his hand. Something flickered behind his eyes but he blinked it away. “No, don’t think so. I told you all about the surgery. No signs of an aneurysm, no drop in blood pressure. I didn’t slip with the rongeur. I didn’t do it.”
“I know. Besides that. Anything personal with you and the Corrigans?”
“Like what?”
Oh shit. He wasn’t going to help me out. Sometimes the best way to get through the chop is to trim the sail tight and just go. “Like were you screwing Melanie Corrigan?” At the next table, a couple of spiffed-up fiftyish women with fancy shopping bags exchanged disapproving whispers.
“At what point in time?” Roger asked.
My client, and he talks like Richard Nixon.
“Hey Roger, this is your lawyer here, not a grand jury.” The waiter skulked by, his thumbs buried deep in the Caesar salad bowls. He wiped one hand on his apron, sucked some salad dressing off a thumb and brought us the beer, an anonymous American brand, devoid of calories, color, and taste. At least it was cold.
Roger took a small sip, a thinking-time sip, and said, “We were involved, sure.”
“So why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it has nothing to do with the case.”
My voice cranked up a few decibels. “How about letting me decide that? If it comes out, Cefalo would claim you had a motive for being a little careless, or worse, having criminal intent.”
“I thought of that,” he said casually, “but Melanie could never use that. It would hurt her case, wouldn’t it, the unfaithful wife trying to profit from her husband’s death.”
“That’s not the way it would play. You’d be the smooth seducer, or a madman obsessed with her, chopping up the husband so she’d be all yours.”
Salisbury’s fork stopped in mid-air. A look of concern crossed his face, but when he caught me studying him, he chased it away with a laugh. “A madman maybe,” he said, smiling, “but when it comes to seduction, she’s in a league by herself. Besides, I knew her before Corrigan did, and well… there’s stuff you lawyers would call extenuating circumstances.”
“I’m waiting.”
“I’m not sure it’s any of your business.”
I drained my homogenized beer and tried to signal the brain-dead waiter to bring another. He looked right through me.
“Right now, my business is you, everything about you and the Corrigans,” I said, waiting for him to fill me in.
Nothing.
The stone crabs arrived. Fresh, no black mottled spots, the meat tearing cleanly out of the shell, the mustard sauce tangy. I yelled for the second beer, and the waiter brought iced tea. It tasted like the beer.
I dug into the crabs two at a time, but Salisbury must have lost his appetite. He fidgeted in his chair and his eyes darted from side to side. Finally, he looked me straight on, took a breath and let it go. “Okay, here it is. I met Melanie eight or nine years ago. I was just finishing my residency, hadn’t spent much time with women. You know how it is, premed in college, you bust your balls, then med school, internship, residency. Never any money or time. She was just a kid, mixed up, kind of an exotic dancer, but just for a while.”
“Yeah, after that she probably was Deb of the Year.”
“She wasn’t bad or anything. Called herself Autumn Rain. Just used her body to make a buck. So I sort of fell for her. I started my practice, bought her a car, gave her things. It didn’t last long. I found out other guys were doing the same. One guy paid for her apartment, another guy her clothes, another her trips.”
“Sold shares in herself like IBM.”
“Some guys can handle that. I couldn’t. So I took off.” He looked away. This wasn’t a story he broadcast around town.