Lassiter 03 - False Dawn by Paul Levine Read Free Book Online Page A

Maven was fanning himself with his straw hat: “That ain’t no spring chicken.”
    “The term ‘tenderloin’ came from the pork industry,” the professor droned on, oblivious to the odor, “then was borrowed by the turkey growers, and finally was adopted by the chicken industry, but it was Chicken Prince that gave the word ‘tender’ its specific commercial meaning …”
    The professor gestured with his knife, accidentally sideswiping the deboning cone, sliding it over the rail and into the jury box. What was left of the chicken dropped straight into the crotch of the queasy accountant. All except for the liver, which squirted into the lap of the Coral Gables housewife, and the gizzard and heart, which plopped with a satisfying
splat
onto the stenographer’s open-toed sandals.
    “Oh, duck feathers and flapdoodle,” said the Purdue professor. “Should have brought a wog.”
    “Haven’t heard that word since
Lawrence of Arabia
,” whispered Marvin the Maven.
    “Larry Oravian?” asked Saul the Tailor, leaning forward, head cocked toward the witness stand.
    “A wahg?” the stenographer dutifully asked, wiggling her bare toes free of the glop.
    “W-O-G,” the witness explained. “Without giblets.”
    The professor bent down and picked up the gizzard, which the stenographer had kicked in the general direction of the bailiff. Sniffing it, his mind seemed to wander. “Wonderful digestive tool, the gastric mill.”
    The accountant did it first, upchucking in the front row of the jury box. As he gagged, the housewife covered her mouth, then let go, too. I had never seen anything like it. A chain reaction, four of the six losing their lunch right after the other.
    “What
mishegoss
,” Marvin the Maven said, picking up his hat. “C’mon, Saul, there’s a sexual harassment trial gonna start down the hall.’’
    T he day of the arraignment and not even a paragraph about
State of Florida
v.
Francisco Crespo
. Fine with me. I’ve never tried my cases in the newspaper. The press always convicts.
    The lack of publicity wasn’t surprising. That morning’s
Miami
Journal
featured a quarter-page map of the county showing where each of last year’s 441 homicides occurred, according to zip codes. In some cities, folks buy their homes depending on the quality of the school district. In Greater Miami, cautious citizens check the neighborhood’s body count. Best I could figure, 33039 was the safest zip code. Not one homicide all year. Unfortunately, that’s Homestead Air Force Base, and I’m not real good at saluting, so I continue to live in the little coral-rock cottage tucked alongside chinaberry and live oak trees between Poinciana and Kumquat in Coconut Grove. It’s quiet except for an occasional police siren, and my pillbox of a house could withstand a hurricane and has. It weathered the storms of ’26 and ’50 and only lost a couple of shutters to Hurricane Andrew, which leveled the air force base in ’92.
    So it would be just another item on the clerk’s computer printout when Francisco Crespo stood to enter a plea. By local standards, a warehouse brawl—even a homicidal brawl—was barely newsworthy, though in the warped world of the news media, another case was. I was eating my morning papaya with a slice of lime when I saw the
Journal’s
headline: JURORS BARF; JUDGE BARKS . Oh, the courthouse gang would have fun with me over that one.
    A fine layer of dew covered the old canvas top of the convertible. Only April, but the humidity was picking up already. I headed to the criminal justice building, happy to stay out of the downtown civil courthouse. On the exit ramp of the Don Shula Expressway, a few blocks from the sheriff’s department, a black Porsche Testarossa with dark tinted windows downshifted and powered past me on the right berm. Ordinarily, in that situation, I hit the horn, shout, and make a few gestures that would make John McEnroe blush. But the bumper sticker on the Porsche said,