JL04 - Mortal Sin by Paul Levine Read Free Book Online

the ecological destruction that he had quit. Tupton didn’t say anything about the men who had been killed, but the loss of fish and birds really seemed to frost his buns. He went back to school, picked up a master’s degree, and became involved in environmental protection, first with the government, later with the Everglades Society.
    The interviewer asked about the history of the Everglades, and Tupton used its Indian name,
Pa-hay-okee
, grassy water, a reference to the tooth-edged saw grass in the shallow, vast stream. He talked about the diversity of the Glades, the shallow sloughs and gator holes, shell-filled beaches and tangled mangroves. He decried development, claiming it had caused the drought, turning parts of the Glades into a prairie. He talked about the ecosystems, pine rock-lands, mangrove swamps, hardwood hammocks, bay heads, and cypress heads. He bemoaned the sugarcane fields, sucking up nutrients from the saw-grass peat that accumulated over thousands of years. He criticized the man-made irrigation channels that artificially restrict the natural cycle of dry winters and flooded summers.
    On the screen, a file videotape showed a variety of animals in their natural habitat, and Tupton gave a voice-over narration in a calm, measured voice. He described the endangered species in the Glades, and we looked at crocodiles and turtles, manatees and panthers, a bald eagle, a wood stork, a pair of snail kites, and a peregrine falcon.
    “We must keep ever vigilant,” Peter Tupton said. He radiated sincerity, seriousness of purpose. “When there are threats to the environment, we must respond with protests, lawsuits, political pressure, every tool at our disposal.”
    The interviewer asked, “Aren’t people much more aware of the environment these days?”
    Tupton nodded. “Twenty-five years ago, some so-called regional planners proposed building a huge jetport in the Big Cypress Swamp smack in the Glades. They publicly announced that entire cities would be built around the jetport, as if that was something to be proud of. Before anyone knew what was going on, they dredged and even built a trial runway. That’s how close it came before the public rose up and shut it all down. Now there’s a local developer who wants to build a town out there.”
    Next to me H.T. Patterson chuckled. I listened some more.
    In the space of thirty minutes, interspersed with public-service spots and commercials for every Jim Nabors record ever made, Tupton told everything I wanted to know about the Everglades, and then some. I concluded that the judge would allow the tape into evidence and that the jury would like Peter Tupton.
    Maybe not
like
so much as respect. Patterson knew what he was doing. Wrongful-death cases with a surviving widow involve two kinds of plaintiffs. The regular guy—
No, ladies and gentlemen of the
jury, this was not a special man. This was not an extraordinary man. ‘This man was not an Eagle Scout or a high public official. He packed bags at the Piggly Wiggly, but he was someone special to his wife, because this was the one man in the world who had fallen in love with her, who had spent his life with her, who had shared her joys and her sorrows all these many years…
    That kind of case was tough enough to defend, but Patterson was going after something else. The special person—
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this was a special man, a man who made a difference in our lives. While we went about our daily chores, oblivious to our surroundings, he was there fighting the good fight to assure we have water to drink, to bathe our children, to wash our cars. He fought to make sure our grandchildren can enjoy the majesty of the southern bald eagle. This was a man who was our keeper of the lighthouse. He kept a watch out for us all. He was a special man…
    Oh, my, how H.T. Patterson could play this one.
    Now, barely ten minutes into the deposition, we were hung up on the issue of the plaintiff’s right to details of