Solomon & Lord Drop Anchor (9 page)

“I took a pair of tweezers and probed the
bathtub drain,” Charlie Riggs told the jury. He paused. Several
jurors exhaled in unison.

“It was just a hunch. Up came pieces of skin,
and I knew the answer.”

Charlie Riggs smiled a knowing smile and
stroked his beard, everybody’s favorite professor.

“Both had come home drunk, and she passed
out. The boyfriend tried to revive her in the bathtub, but sailing
three sheets to the wind, he turned on the hot water and left her
there. The scalding water burned her to death. When the boyfriend
sobered up, he panicked, so he dried her off, dressed her, put her
on the sofa, and called the police.”

The jury sat entranced. There’s nothing like
tales of death, well told. Riggs testified about matching tire
treads to the marks on a hit-and-run victim’s back, of fitting a
defendant’s teeth to bite marks on a rape-murder victim, of finding
teeth in a drain under a house, the only proof of the
corpus
delicti,
the body of a man dissolved in sulfuric acid by his
roommate.

The litany of crime had its purpose, to shock
the jury with deeds of true miscreants, to deliver a subtle message
that the justice system should prosecute murderers, not decent
surgeons, even if they might make mistakes.
Errare humanum
est.
If that’s what it was, an honest error.

I hadn’t told Charlie Riggs about the
conversation with Susan Corrigan. What would I tell him, that a
dead man’s daughter, poisoned with grief and hate, thinks my client
is a murderer? She had no physical evidence, no proof, no nothing,
except the allegation that Roger Salisbury and Melanie Corrigan
were getting it on. I would talk to Salisbury about it, but not
now.

While Charlie Riggs testified, I watched
Roger. He kept shooting sideways glances at Melanie Corrigan’s
perfect profile. She watched the witness, oblivious to the
attention. She was wearing a simple cotton dress that, to me,
looked about two sizes too large, but I supposed was in style. A
wide belt gathered it at the waist and it ended demurely below the
knee. It was one of those deceiving things women wear, so simple it
disguises the name of an Italian designer and a megabucks price
tag.

I tried to read the look in Roger Salisbury’s
eyes but could not. Was there a chance that it was true? Not just
that he might have been diddling his patient’s wife. I didn’t care
about that. But that he might have killed Corrigan. That it was all
a plot, that the malpractice trial was just a cover, or better yet,
a way to pick up another million. If that’s what it was, there’d be
plenty of chances for Salisbury to tank it. He was scheduled to
testify after Riggs.

I continued my direct examination: “Now Dr.
Riggs, have you had an opportunity to examine the medical records
compiled by the physicians and the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“And based on the records, and your years of
experience, do you have an opinion to a reasonable degree of
medical probability what caused the death of Philip Corrigan?”

“I do.”

The courtroom was silent except for the
omnipresent hum of the air conditioning. Everyone knew the next
question.

“And what was the cause of death?”

“A ruptured aorta. Internal bleeding, which
in turn caused a lowering of blood pressure. In layman’s terms, the
heart, which is the pump in a closed circulatory system, didn’t
have enough fluid to pump, so it stopped.”

“And what, sir, caused the aorta to
rupture?”

“There is no way to answer that with absolute
certainty. We can only exclude certain things.”

“Such as?” Keep the questions short, let the
doctor carry the ball.

“Well, Dr. Salisbury here certainly didn’t do
it with the rongeur. If he had, the rupture would be on the
posterior side of the aorta. But as reported by the surgeon who
tried the emergency repair of the aorta, the rupture is on the
anterior side, the front. Naturally a surgeon making an incision in
a man’s back, working around the spine, is not going to puncture
the front of the aorta, the part that faces the abdomen.”

Dan Cefalo turned ashen. There aren’t many
surprises in trials anymore. Pretrial discovery eliminates most of
that. But Charlie Riggs gave his deposition before studying the
report of the second surgery, the chaotic attempt to close the
bursting aorta a dozen hours after the laminectomy. When he read
the report, bells went off. Nobody else had paid any attention to
where the rupture was, only that it existed.

For the next fifteen minutes, it went on like
that, Charles W. Riggs, M.D., witness emeritus, showing the jury
his plastic model of the spine with the blood vessels attached like
strings of licorice. The report of the thoracic surgeon who tried
unsuccessfully to save Conigan’s life came into evidence, and the
jurors kept looking at Dr. Riggs and nodding.

It was time to slam the door. “If Dr.
Salisbury did not puncture the aorta with the rongeur, could not
have, as you have testified, what might have caused it to
rupture?”

“We call it spontaneous aortic aneurysm. Of
course, that’s the effect, not the cause. The causes are many.
Various illnesses or severe trauma to the abdomen can cause the
aorta to burst. Arteriosclerosis can weaken the aorta and make it
susceptible to aneurysm. So can high blood pressure. It could be a
breakdown that medicine simply can’t explain, as they said in the
Middle Ages,
ex visitatione divina
.”

I smiled at Dr. Riggs. He smiled back at me.
The jury smiled at both of us. One big happy family.

I was nearly through but had one more little
surprise for Dan Cefalo. A nail in the coffin. I handed Riggs
Plaintiff’s Exhibit Three, a composite of Philip Corrigan’s medical
history. “Dr. Riggs, did Philip Corrigan have any prior medical
abnormalities?”

Charlie Riggs scanned the document but
already knew the answer from our preparation sessions. “Yes, he was
previously diagnosed by a cardiologist as having some degree of
arteriosclerosis.”

“And the effect of such a disease?”

“Weakening of the arteries, susceptibility to
aneurysm. Men in their fifties or beyond commonly show signs of
arterial disease. Blame the typical American diet of saturated
fats, too much beef and butter. In that condition, Mr. Corrigan
could have had an artery blow out at any time.”

“At any time,” I repeated, just in case they
missed it.

“Yes, without a trauma, just watching TV,
eating dinner, any time.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” I nodded toward the
witness stand in deference to the wisdom that had filled the
courtroom. Then I turned toward Dan Cefalo, and with the placid
assurance of a man who has seen the future and owns a fine chunk of
it, I gently advised him, “Your witness, Counselor.”

Cefalo stood up and his suitcoat fell open,
revealing a dark stain of red ink under his shirt pocket, the trail
of an uncapped marking pen. Or a self-inflicted wound.

His cross-examination fell flat. He scored a
meaningless point getting Riggs to admit that he was not an
orthopedic surgeon and had never performed a laminectomy. “But I’ve
done thousands of autopsies, and that’s how you determine cause of
death,” Riggs quickly added.

“You testified that trauma could cause the
rupture, did you not?” Cefalo asked.

“Yes, I can’t tell you how many drivers I saw
in the morgue in the days before seat belts. In a collision, the
steering wheel can hit the chest and abdomen with such force as to
rupture the aorta. That, of course, is trauma from the front.”

“But a misguided rongeur could produce the
kind of trauma to rupture the aorta?”

Hit me again, Cefalo seemed to plead.

“It could, but not in the front of the blood
vessel when the surgeon is coming in from the back,” Riggs
said.

Cefalo wouldn’t call it quits. “The thoracic
surgeon was working under conditions of extreme emergency trying to
do the repair, was he not?”

“I assume so,” Riggs said.

“And in such conditions, he could have made a
mistake as to the location of the rupture, could he not?”

Riggs smiled a gentle, fatherly smile. “Every
piece of evidence ever adduced in a courtroom could be the product
of a mistake. Your witnesses could all be wrong. Mr. Lassiter’s
witnesses could all be wrong. But it’s all we’ve got, and there’s
nothing to indicate the rupture was anywhere but where the chest
buster—excuse me, the thoracic surgeon—said, the anterior of die
aorta.”

Fine. Outstanding. I couldn’t have said it
better myself. Cefalo sat down without laying a glove on him. It
was after one o’clock and we had not yet recessed for lunch. Judge
Leonard was fidgeting.

“Noting the lateness of the hour, perhaps
this is an opportune time to adjourn for the day,” the judge said.
Translation:
There’s a stakes race at Hialeah and I’ve got a tip
from a jockey who hasn’t paid alimony since his divorce fell into
my division last year.
“Hearing no objection, court stands
adjourned until nine-thirty tomorrow morning.”

Roger Salisbury was beaming. He didn’t look
like a man who wanted to lose. It had been a fine morning of
lawyering, and I was feeling pretty full of myself. In the back of
the courtroom I caught a glimpse of Susan Corrigan wearing a Super
Bowl XVI nylon jacket over a T-shirt. She eyed me as if I’d just
spit in church.

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.

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.”