Garden of Lies (73 page)

one she had. “Mason. I’m scared. Of this trial coming up. Of getting older. Of ... oh, a lot of

things.”

Mason squeezed her hand. “Join the club, kiddo. Some days I look in the mirror, and who do I

see looking back at me? Ward Cleaver, that’s who. Listen, the day I stop taking at least a few
pro

bono
cases, and buy a condo in Florida, shoot me, will you?”

“I’ll do better,” Rachel said and laughed. “I’ll draft you to work [450] in my clinic. Defending

junkies will seem like a breeze after a couple of weeks.”

Mason smiled. “Deal.”

The waiter was standing there now, ready to take their orders, and Rachel suddenly felt

ravenous. So life did go on. And, damn it, she would too. And if the ocean was getting rough,

well, she’d just have to swim harder, that’s all.

“Oysters,” she told the waiter. “The biggest plate you’ve got.”

Chapter 33

Max slipped in through the double doors at the back of the courtroom as the clerk was taking

jury attendance.

The court was crowded, its long oak benches filled. On the sides people were standing against

the paneled walls, and in the back he saw a few jostling to get a better view. Damn those idiot

reporters, Max thought. Yesterday, the very first day, the case had made page three of the
Post:

DEBUTANTE DOCTOR ACCUSED IN TEEN MOM’S TRAGEDY, with a big photo overlay

of Alma, lying unconscious surrounded by life-support machines, and alongside it, a cameo shot

of her baby.
Saucedo
v.
Rosenthal
was being turned into a circus. This crowd made Max think of

a school of hyenas, grubbing around the remains of an abandoned carcass.

Soon Rose would be in the spotlight. And she’d have to be good, or the media would tear her

to shreds. But what was he getting himself all wrought up for? Rose
was
good. But then so was

Sal Di Fazio, for all his oily histrionics. Max watched him now, pacing back and forth at the front

of the courtroom like an overheated actor, beaming at the crowd as if they’d all bought expensive

tickets to see him.

Max, peering through the crowd, spotted Rose at the defendant’s table, shuffling through her

briefcase. She was wearing a suit he’d never seen before, cobalt blue, with a demure ivory blouse

open at the neck, showing the delectable golden-skinned column of her throat. She bent down just

then to retrieve a paper that had slipped to the floor, her electric dark curls fanning out, obscuring

her face, the pearls he had given her swinging away from her throat, catching the light just so. His

heart did a slow ninety-degree turn.

He thought about the call last week from Gary Enfield in Los Angeles. Gary, telling him about

Bruce Oldsen’s triple bypass and [452] how it had nudged Bruce into early retirement, then

dropping his bomb, asking Max to come and take over the litigation department out there in

Century City.

Max, his mind whirling, had told Gary he’d think it over. Which he’d been doing.

Totting up all the reasons it could never work. Balancing those with all the why nots.

Now, gazing at Rose, he thought,
Haw can I leave you? How can I let go of even the part of

you I have?

First it had been the separation from Mandy he couldn’t bear to think of. But ironically it was

Monkey herself who solved that problem.

“Cool, Dad,” she had said when he broached the subject over a sundae at Rumpelmayer’s.

She’d turned her spoon over, and licked off a blob of fudge sauce. “I could really get into

spending my vacations out there. Wow! California. Cyndi says the guys out there are really boss.

Would we get a house near the beach?”

And so it had been settled, Monkey in tight jeans and Styx sweatshirt, prattling on about boys,

reminding Max that in a few more years she would be eighteen, old enough to live where she

wanted. She might even decide to go to college near him.

But with Rose there’d be no future, no summer vacations, no second chance. Watching her

now he felt helplessly drawn to her. While there was any chance with her at all, how could he

walk away?

Was it four months since he’d moved into the Beekman Place sublet? Four whole months of

sleeping alone, of coming home to an empty apartment. Of fantasizing each morning when he

stumbled into the bathroom, still half-asleep, that he’d find Rose’s stockings drying on the

shower rod. And each night when he unlocked his front door, dreaming that she’d be waiting for

him in the living room, waiting to wrap her arms around him and tell him about something funny

that had happened to her on the way home. Max felt a hollow ache in his gut.

Other women? He thought of the last time, a few weeks ago, the pretty little blonde who

managed the Lawyers Association on Vesey Street. A disaster. He hadn’t been able to get it up.

Finally, out of pity probably, she had taken him in her mouth. Afterwards, when she’d gone into

her bathroom to wash him out, he’d lain there [453] on her waterbed and cried. He had felt

disgusted with himself, sick with missing Rose.

Come on, stop this,
he commanded himself.
You’re a big boy.

He forced himself to pay attention to the trial, to turn his gaze on Rose’s client. The doctor was

holding herself very straight, hands clasped in front of her. Her butterscotch-brown hair, ending

above the small of her back,’ shone as if it had been brushed one hundred strokes. It was held

back on either side with a tortoise-shell comb. She wore a simple, well-cut suit of sand-colored

linen, with a peach silk blouse. No makeup except for the palest pink lipstick. She looked young

and small and frightened, despite the firm set of her chin and the steely expression of

determination in her eyes.

Strike one,
Max thought, growing worried. That jury wants Marcus Welby, someone they

wouldn’t hesitate to trust if right there in the jury box they should happen to have a heart attack.

Not a wisp of a girl who scarcely looks old enough to have graduated from medical school.

At the plaintiff’s table sat a woman who could only have been Alma Saucedo’s mother. Forty

or so, overweight, wearing a cheap flowered dress that was pulled tightly across her plump back,

showing the indented outline of her bra. An enormous black patent-leather handbag perched in

her lap, her hands nervously twisting and untwisting its frayed straps.

Strike two,
Max groaned inwardly.

The clerk, in a loud monotone, announced, “Court is in session. Continued trial,
Saucedo
v.

Rosenthal.”
The jury filed into the box. “Let the record indicate all jurors are present and all

attorneys are present.”

The hum of voices, the shuffling of shoes on the wooden floor, the rustle of coats being

removed gradually died away. Only the soft hissing of the old-fashioned steam radiators, and the

creaking of footsteps in the hallway outside could still be heard.

“Good morning, ladies, gentlemen,” greeted Judge Weintraub from the bench. A fair man, if a

bit long in the tooth. Almost completely bald. Bad heart. He’d be retiring soon. “Mr. Di Fazio?”

Di Fazio, who had taken the chair beside his client, now jerked to his feet—like a marionette,

Max thought.

“Your Honor,” Di Fazio intoned in a voice tinged with a bit [454] of the Bronx, “I would like

to call to the stand Dr. David Sloane.”

Max followed the collective gaze of the courtroom, watching as a tall, good-looking man rose

from a bench near the front and strode to the stand. He wore a smartly tailored navy pinstriped

suit—cut in the new Edwardian style—and a broad tie. His sideburns were long, widening into a

fashionable wedge, but perfectly barbered. Max suspected the guy drove a Corvette, and listened

to Mantovani on a tape deck. But, Jesus, he looked impressive: just the kind of doctor you’d want

for your heart attack ... or to give testimony in a malpractice suit. As long as he was on your side,

of course.

“Good
morning,
Dr. Sloane.” Di Fazio twinkled. As if it weren’t thirty degrees and raining like

hell outside. The worst November Max could recall in an age.

“Good morning,” Sloane lobbed back pleasantly.

“Doctor, are you a physician duly licensed to practice medicine in New York?”

“I am.”

“Would you give your educational background toward becoming a doctor?”

“I attended and graduated from Princeton, did graduate work in microbiology at Johns

Hopkins, then studied medicine at Columbia, The College of Physicians and Surgeons. I interned

at Good Shepherd in Brooklyn, and I was selected there to be Chief Resident in Obstetrics and

Gynecology.”

Di Fazio leaned up against the witness stand, one hand shoved in his front pocket, as if he and

Sloane were two old pals shooting the shit across the backyard fence.

“And are you a member of any specialty societies, Doctor?”

“Yes. I’m a diplomate of the American College of Surgeons, a member of the American

College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a member of the International College of Surgeons, a

member of the New York Gynecological Society.”

Too smug. Good. The jury will pick up on that,
Max thought.

“And are you now affiliated with a hospital in the metropolitan area?” Di Fazio questioned.

“Yes, I am. I’m Chief of Obstetrics at St. Bartholomew’s.”

“And how long have you held that position, Doctor?”

“Six months. Before that I was on staff at Presbyterian.”

[455] “Do you recall a patient who was admitted to St. Bartholomew’s on July fifteenth of this

year, a young woman named Alma Saucedo?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Very well.” He frowned slightly.

“Doctor, we heard testimony yesterday from Emma Dupre, who was the charge nurse on duty

the night Miss Saucedo was admitted.” Di Fazio ambled over to his table, and fished a document

from his open briefcase. “Now, I’d like to hand to you Alma’s hospital record, initialed by Mrs.

Dupre, which is Plaintiff’s Exhibit Number Two in evidence. Have you seen this before, Dr.

Sloane?”

“Indeed I have.” He glanced over it, and returned it to the attorney. His every motion and

gesture looked plainly as if they’d all been rehearsed. “Those are my notations at the bottom of

the first page. I examined Miss Saucedo on the evening of July sixteenth.”

“Can you tell us what you found when you examined the patient, Doctor?”

David Sloane appeared to be thinking, head bowed slightly, his long graceful hands clasped

lightly in his lap, almost as if he were praying.

When he lifted his head finally, his green eyes troubled but clear, the effect on the crowd was

electric. Murmurs rose, bodies leaned forward, expectant. Now, at last, after three days of dry

testimony, they were going to get the real soap opera.

“Miss Saucedo,” he said finally, “was in her eighth month of pregnancy. I found her to be

hypertense, and showing severe signs of edema—that is, her retention of bodily fluids was very

high. In other words, highly toxic.”

“So, in your opinion, she presented a risk?”

“Toxemia isn’t unusual in pregnant women, especially in the final months. But yes, left

untreated, it can lead to dangerous complications for both mother and child.”

“Did you prescribe anything for the patient?”

“No.”

“Oh? Can you tell us why not, Doctor?”

“She wasn’t my patient. The attending physician in this case was Dr. Rosenthal.” David

leveled his cool gaze at Rachel.

Max could have sworn, even from this distance, he saw her shudder. The color drained from

her face, the skin under her huge blue eyes seeming to take on a faint, violet tinge.

[456] His gaze cut away to Rose. She sat very erect, chin up, shoulders thrown back, ready for

battle. Good girl.

Di Fazio was grinning. A man clearly unused to smiling, his thick lips stretching to cover bad

teeth.

“But you
did
have an opinion concerning the treatment being given to Miss Saucedo, did you

not?”

“Yes.”

“And what was your opinion at the time, Doctor? Did you agree with Dr. Rosenthal’s diagnosis

in this case?”

“No. I did not. Not then, and not now.”

Max saw Rachel’s body jerk a little, as if she’d been slapped; She turned to Rose, shaking her

head, mouthing a silent no.

“Oh? And did you share this opinion with her at the time?”

“I did. In fact, we discussed it at some length. I recommended to her that she do a caesarean

section without delay. I felt the risk of premature delivery to the child was outweighed by an even

greater risk to the mother. I quite distinctly remember warning Dr. Rosenthal that Miss Saucedo

was in danger of an embolism ... or worse.”

Max glanced over at the jurors. This was something new. Something damning. There was a

moment of deep silence punctuated only by a few rattling coughs and the hissing of the radiator.

Rachel seemed to sway slightly in her chair, as if she might faint, and suddenly a man seated

directly behind her was on his feet, moving around to her side. A man in a tweed jacket with

elbow patches. Tall, angular, loose-limbed, he seemed not so much to rise as unfold. Max thought

of a young Gary Cooper.