[Jake Lassiter 03.0] False Dawn

by Paul Levine

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “I’m about to be nominated for the Supreme Court.”

  “You’re about to be charged in the largest art theft in history.”

  The con man’s fastball fooled the batter, who swung late, grounding a soft three-hopper right at me. I swiped at it, but never got the glove down. Sheesh. They teach you how to do that in Little League. I watched the ball roll between my legs and into right field.

  “Fix! Fix!” The second baseman, a three-hundred-pound bookie and bolita operator, was screeching at me.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked Socolow.

  “You and that renegade CIA agent, Foley. I figure he’s the mastermind. Anybody who knows you would realize that. You’re the accessory, and probably an incompetent one. But Foley’s missing, and so are a few billion dollars of arts and antiquities, and you’re here. There’s a team from CIA, Justice, FBI, and State on their way. I’m your baby-sitter, Lassiter.”

  ***

  Traffic was backed up on the way to the Justice Building. This time it wasn’t a shoot-out between drivers bickering over the right-of-way. It wasn’t an octogenarian with cataracts going the wrong way on the interstate. It was a leaky toilet on a jet.

  Two lanes of the expressway exit that spanned the Miami River were closed while workers filled a crater caused by a jet engine that dropped off a 727 during the night. A tractor-trailer carrying twenty thousand pounds of live tropical fish sideswiped the engine, veered to the right, and overturned. The concrete guardrail sliced through the trailer’s roof like a can opener. Which is how thousands of angelfish, sea horses, and parrotfish came to be dumped into the river that pours into the bay, which opens into the Atlantic and theoretically gives the fish a chance to swim back to the Bahamian reefs from which they were so recently kidnapped.

  The fish were happier than the airline P.R. people. They issued press releases explaining that a leaky toilet had caused the lavatory water to escape onto the fuselage of the 727, where it formed a huge blue chunk of ice that broke free and cleanly knocked the tail engine off the plane.

  Traffic eased and then clogged again near Government Center. By order of the city commission, workers were hat-racking the black olive trees that shaded the street. Our local politicians somehow believed that street drug dealers would cease doing business if threatened with sunstroke. Next they’ll try draining the ocean to prevent shark attacks.

  It took Socolow another ten minutes to find a parking spot. The Justice Building was surrounded by Santería worshipers carrying lighted candles and bowls of animal blood. They were apparently displeased with the arrest of one of their priests on animal cruelty charges after he sacrificed a dozen goats and chickens on the median strip of Biscayne Boulevard during rush hour.

  “I used to think New York was weird,” Socolow said, as he nudged the county-owned Plymouth into a compact space six inches from a defense lawyer’s candy-apple red Porsche.

  We took a series of escalators to the seventh floor, passing the usual cast of characters in the circus they call criminal court. Spit-and-polished uniformed cops, unwashed defendants in shackles, their mothers and girlfriends teary-eyed or indignant, harried probation officers, pretty young court reporters, dealmaking prosecutors and public defenders, and the occasional judge, black robes flowing, on the way to or from chambers.

  “I love this place,” Socolow said, almost wistfully. “Jake, I remember when you were an assistant P.D. We had some good times, didn’t we?”

  “You had good times. You had a ninety-five-percent conviction rate.”

  “They were all guilty of something, even if we charged them with something else.”

  “And even if the cops lied in suppression hearings,” I reminded him. “‘Yes, Your Honor, I observed the cocaine in plain view on the dashboard. Yes, Your Honor, the subject consented to a body cavity search.’ C’mon, Abe, it’s just a game you’re very good at.”

  The receptionist behind bullet-proof glass buzzed us into the State Attorney’s office. “You were on the wrong side, Jake. You burned out because you were working for the bad guys.”

  “I burned out because I couldn’t tell the difference.”

  Inside Socolow’s office, we had company. My bearded friend sat in a corner, huddled over a book on forensic odontology. A small, dark, mustachioed man in a white guayabera didn’t stand or offer his one hand. His daughter stood and ran to me. “Jake, are you all right?” Lourdes Soto asked, a tremor in her voice. “I’ve been so worried.”

  Still in his chair, Severo Soto muttered something in Spanish. From his position in the corner, Doc Charlie Riggs never acknowledged me. Eyes still on his book, he allowed as how he’s seeing fewer cafe coronaries, restaurant patrons choking to death on chunks of meat, now that people are eating more fish and pasta.

  I took Lourdes in my arms and looked into her moist dark eyes. She smelled of a rich perfume. “I’d be better if the governments of two countries plus the state of Florida didn’t want to prosecute me for crimes I didn’t do.”

  “What you did,” Severo Soto said, “was hacer el tonto. You played the fool.”

  “Papi, please!” Lourdes unwrapped herself from me and sat down again.

  “But it is true,” her father said. “I know that, you know that, and Doctor Socolow knows that, verdad?”

  Abe Socolow seemed to like being given the Spanish title of respect. He nodded graciously in Soto’s direction, then turned to me. “Jake, I’ve known you a long time. You’re a little rough around the edges, and your sense of ethics is flexible, to say the least.” He looked at Soto. “Jake here once robbed a grave to get evidence, and he’s been known to taunt a witness into a fistfight just to prove a propensity for violence.”

  “I was younger, then,” I said, sheepishly.

  “Errare humanum est,” Charlie Riggs added, without looking up.

  Why didn’t anyone speak English to me anymore? I plopped into a chair between Lourdes and her father. Socolow sat down behind his green metal state-issue desk. “The point is that you’re unorthodox, and you play by your own rules, but I believe your story. You’re not a thief. Of course, the feds don’t know that, and here’s the way it’s coming down. Foley is off somewhere arranging for private sales of the best stuff you guys ripped off from an ex-KGB man.”

  “Hold on! I didn’t rip off anything. Foley recovered the art from Kharchenko, who—”

  “Hold on, Jake, you’ve got everything fouled up.” Abe Socolow tapped a cigarette out of a pack on his desk. He took his time lighting it, his body language telling me to calm down, this would take a while. “In the beginning, Foley and Yagamata were doing exactly what our government ordered. Tracking down the art thefts, hushing them up, getting the stuff back. Then somebody decides the thefts have political value, so the CIA starts getting the goods on the old hard-liners who are taking bribes. It was a hell of a sting that led to the failed coup. Later, under the reformers, our two governments were supposed to—”

  “Trade art for wheat,” I interrupted.

  “Huh?”

  Now it was my turn to show off. “The CIA was helping the Russians by selling the art and turning the proceeds into food for the people. Yagamata got greedy and started selling the art and keeping the money after splitting it with Kharchenko and his pals. Foley stopped them and got everything back.”

  “That’s what Foley told you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you believed him?”

  Oh, shit.

  Socolow sighed. “I guess Foley didn’t tell you the Russian reformers vetoed all that art-for-wheat business.”

  “What!”

  “It was on the drawing board, all right, but Yeltsin rejected it, said they’d tough it out without selling off their national treasures. Yagamata goes bat shit. He knows the nuts and bolts of how to get the stuff out of the country from his experiences with the hard-liners in the bad old days. He’d had a taste of it, and it’s all there waiting to be taken.
He just couldn’t resist. When the stuff keeps disappearing, the Russians squawk to the CIA, which now has to reverse its policy. The smart guys at Langley figure it was a mistake to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. They’ve got to restore the status quo. Foley draws the assignment, and it takes him about thirty seconds to figure who’s behind it, so his job is to bring down Yagamata and get back the stuff. Instead, he beards Yagamata with a scam that the government will pay him for his cooperation, kills Kharchenko, and takes off with the art.”

  “But Foley said—”

  “Listen up, Jake.” Again, Socolow turned toward Soto and nodded with deference. “Señor Soto has been associated with the CIA since before the Bay of Pigs, and was there to keep an eye on Yagamata under the guise of providing shipping. When Yagamata started dealing for himself, Señor Soto alerted Langley, which told him to keep quiet and find out everything he could. Then all hell broke loose. These two Russian brothers—”

  “Vladimir and Nikolai,” I said.

  “Yeah. They figured out what was going on, too, that Yagamata was stealing every ashtray in the country. Vladimir worked for Yagamata, so he was easy enough to dispose of. They used Kharchenko to knock off Crespo because Crespo knew who killed Vladimir and was starting to crack. Kharchenko also killed a Finnish agent—”

  “Eva-Lisa Haavikko. She was slaughtered in a sauna. I was there.”

  “Eva-Lisa?” Lourdes repeated, her eyebrows raised. “In a sauna?”

  “She was a Suopo operative who helped out when they were using the art to set up the hard-liners,” Socolow said. “When Yagamata kept up the flow of goods after CIA policy changed, she tried to back out. But her employer had changed without her knowing it. Yagamata wasn’t working for the CIA anymore, and what used to be the KGB, the new Russian Agency for Federal Security, tossed Kharchenko out on his ear. Her new bosses were international outlaws even nastier than the folks in Langley and Moscow, and it got her killed.” Socolow shot a sour look at me. “Meanwhile, CIA figures out what Foley is up to and gets Señor Soto involved to try and recover the art from Yagamata. But it was too late once you and Foley pulled off the heist.”

  My head was spinning. Just like the old days. I never could tell the good guys from the bad.

  “So, Jakie, to put it bluntly, you screwed up. You went on the road and suited up for the wrong team. You turned over the goods to the wrong side. In short, you’re Wrong-Way Lassiter again.”

  I hate it when somebody calls me that. One lousy play a thousand years ago and they never forget. We were leading the dog-ass New York Jets by ten with a minute to go, and I was doing my best to get some grass stains on my jersey when the ball squirted out of the pile and took a neat end-over-end bounce right into my hands. Okay, so I got turned around—it could happen to anybody—and tore off in the wrong direction. The only touchdown of my NFL demi career, and it had to be for the guys in green-and-white. We still won the game by three points, but most of my drinking buddies had taken the Dolphins minus five, which was all I heard at the Gaslight Lounge for the next few weeks. It was my most embarrassing moment on the playing field, unless you count the time I blocked a punt—our punt—with my backside, but that’s another story.

  “Where’s Foley now?” I asked.

  “CIA figures he’s looking for experts to attest to the loot’s authenticity. As you can imagine, he doesn’t have documentation, and if you’re going to ask ten million dollars for a painting, you gotta have some proof. The art world is filled with some incredibly good fakes.”

  That brought Charlie Riggs out of his book. “Jake, you’re probably familiar with the Greek Kouros purchased by the Getty Museum.”

  “Intimately,” I muttered. I was still trying to figure out who was on whose side.

  Charlie waggled a cold pipe at me. “A marble statue of a young boy. The museum spent nine million dollars for it almost a decade ago, and despite the most sophisticated tests—electron microscopy, thermoluminescence, and carbon-14 dating—nobody knows if that statue was carved twenty-five hundred years ago on the island of Thasos, or fifty years ago in some forger’s basement in Turkey.”

  “Anyway,” Socolow said, sounding bored, “even without Yagamata, Foley will probably try to make the first deals with Japanese billionaires for selected pieces in the five-to twenty-million-dollar range. Japan’s where all the money is. Plus they have a delightful law that gives clear title to the buyer of stolen art unless the lawful owner puts him on notice of the theft within two years. So, all the guy has to do is keep his egg or painting or whatever under wraps for a couple of years, then haul it out at a birthday party or the opening of a new Lexus dealership.”

  “What are you guys doing about Foley?” I asked. “Why aren’t you after him?”

  Socolow smiled, if that’s what you call it when a barracuda spots a guppy. “That’s where you come in.”

  “I don’t know where he is,” I said quickly, “and I don’t know where the art is. Your buddies from Washington can beat me with rubber hoses, and I still won’t know.”

  “With your head, Jake, they’d use lead pipes. We know where he is, and he’s got the loot with him. We need you to deal with him.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “You’re the only one we know who can get close to Foley.”

  “Close to him! He used me. Like Señor Soto said, he played me for a fool. I led him to Kharchenko. He had me believing I was following orders from the President.”

  Soto stirred in his chair, then stood up. The movement made his empty sleeve billow. “Foley should have killed you but he did not. He knew you would be taken into custody here and interrogated, that you would likely reveal everything that happened, but he wanted you around for some purpose.”

  “What purpose?”

  Socolow lit another cigarette. “Even the boys in Washington couldn’t figure that one out, until Foley called.”

  “Called?”

  “Yeah, called. Like on the phone.”

  “Why?”

  Again, he showed his predator’s smile. “C’mon, Jake, think about it. It’s what we used to call dropping the dime, or these days should we say, the quarter? Foley wants to cut a deal. He wants you to be his lawyer.”

  24

  SUN, RUM, AND SEX

  Who besides the government buys Detroit’s full-size, four-door sedans with blackwalls? That’s what I wondered as we rolled out of the Justice Building parking lot, neatly avoiding a demonstration by Liberty City residents against the Palestinian owners of the area’s convenience stores. A federal marshal drove the first car, a navy-blue Plymouth. His passenger was an FBI agent with round glasses and an advanced degree in art history. We were next in line, Socolow driving his county-owned car, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. I rode shotgun; Lourdes Soto and her father sat in back. Behind us, another federal marshal drove a CIA agent, an assistant to an undersecretary from the State Department, and someone from the Justice Department who wouldn’t give his name and said he wasn’t really here.

  Your tax dollars at work.

  I don’t know why we needed a caravan. Best I could figure, no one would assassinate me on the Dolphin Expressway. The only threat came from a skinny, barefoot guy who cursed in Creole when Socolow wouldn’t let him clean our windshield at a traffic light on LeJeune Road. As we turned into the airport, I couldn’t help asking, “Anybody want to tell me where we’re going?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough, Jakie,” Socolow said.

  Ah, a quiz. They told me to pick up my passport along with my duffel bag, so I already knew we weren’t going to Disney World. “They speak English there?”

  “About as much as on Flagler Street downtown.” Socolow kept his eyes on the road.

  “In that case, I’ll need an interpreter.”

  From the back seat, Lourdes said, “That’s why I’m along, Jake.”

  Okay, a Spanish-speaking country. If it had been ancient Rome, Charlie Riggs would h
ave drawn the assignment. “Never been to Costa Rica,” I ventured. “Hear the fishing’s great.”

  Socolow cranked down his window—no power accessories for the cost-conscious agencies—and flipped his cigarette butt onto the asphalt. “You’re the one who’s fishing, Jake.”

  “So tell me, already. You can’t just shanghai me.”

  “You tell me, Jake. Where would you go if you had a few billion dollars’ worth of stolen goods to sell, and you knew that every civilized country in the world would imprison you or extradite you?”

  “I don’t know. Some outlaw nation. Libya, maybe.”

  “Qaddafi may not take kindly to an ex-CIA agent, even for a hundred-million-dollar tip. And Allied jets might find you with a smart bomb.”

  “North Korea?”

  The first car pulled off the outgoing-flights road and stopped in front of a chain-link fence. The driver showed identification to a uniformed guard, who swung open a gate and let our parade of Plymouths onto the tarmac.

  “Too cold. Besides, if Moscow has any influence left in Pyongyang, you might lose your little cache of goodies as well as your head. Think about it, Jake. Somewhere neither the Russkies nor the Yanks can reach.”

  “Brooklyn,” I said.

  The lead car stopped in front of a DC-9 that was being refueled. Vista Air was painted on the fuselage. It meant nothing to “Señor Lassiter,” Soto said from behind me, “on the Malecon, there is a billboard which says, ‘Esta tierra es cien por ciento Cubana.’”

  Now what was he talking about?

  Soto went on: “It is a lie, of course. It would be more correct to say that the land is one hundred percent Fidel. He no longer has the Russians to prop him up. Cuba is in the period of Zero Option, complete self-sufficiency. And the country cannot do it. Other than the diplotienda stores for foreigners, there is no clothing to buy, little food to eat. They ration bread, eighty grams a person a day. Even eggs, ironically called salvadores, saviors, are scarce. Castro, too, is like an egg.” He turned toward his daughter. “Cómo se llama el cuento infantile?”