Mortal Sin

by Paul Levine

  “Jake,” Charlie said, “are you telling me that you love the girl?”

  “I don’t know, Charlie. Maybe it’s just always wanting what I can’t have. Maybe it’s not knowing what I want. There was a time when I could have had her, but I let her go. I didn’t tell her how I…”

  The guard was staring at me. He had turned and now faced me straight on. Then he smiled. “Ay, Counselor, never expected to see you here. Testing your luck at the tables?”

  No, it couldn’t be. But it was.

  “Hello, Guillermo. I didn’t recognize you. How’d you get a permit to carry the piece?”

  “I got no felony convictions that haven’t been overturned on appeal or pardoned. I always get the best lawyers, remember.”

  “Whoever represented you upstate must have known his stuff, or you’d be doing twenty-five years minimum mandatory-at Raiford right now.” Charlie nudged me and cleared his throat. “Doc Riggs, say hello to Guillermo Diaz, a former client.”

  Diaz ignored Charlie and laughed, though nothing seemed particularly funny. “From what I hear, Counselor,” Diaz cackled, “you may do more time in that case than me. I got off clean. Speedy-trial rule.”

  “I didn’t think the dockets were that crowded in Ocala.”

  Diaz laughed again, his belly bouncing. His colleague was tossing the moneybags into the back of the truck. “Didn’t say they were. But what does the state do when its star witness is missing?”

  “Gets a continuance.”

  “Four continuances. You gotta give those shitkickers credit, they kept trying. ‘Yo Honor, we can’t find Mr. Ra-fa-ale Ray-mose anywhere. Jes’ give us another thirty days.’”

  “You do redneck real well,” I allowed.

  “Yeah, well, those country boys continued their asses right into the speedy-trial rule. Case dismissed.” He turned toward Charlie. “Hey, Doc. Some shit-for-brains horse trainer doesn’t knowhow to use a power saw, they charge me with murder.”

  “What happened to the missing witness?” Charlie asked, because I didn’t. But then I already knew.

  Diaz raised the gun and pointed it directly at my head. “Bang, bang,” he said. “And bang.” This was so funny he rumbled up another laugh. “I don’t know. Maybe he committed suicide.”

  The shotgun-toting guard pulled the doors of the truck shut from inside. Diaz lowered his gun and holstered it.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “What’s it look like? Working for Mr. Gondolier. I’m head of security. No more leg breaking. Just making sure there’s no smoking in restricted areas and no wise guys trying to pull a heist.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Ay, why not, Counselor? Don’t you think I can do the job?”

  “Sure you can, Guillermo. A fox can always guard the henhouse.”

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  Hello, Heartbreak

  “WHAT PRICE HAPPINESS?” SHEILA SLUTSKY ASKED, “I INTRODUCE the schlemiel to a beautiful girl. All right, not so beautiful, but she’s got a decent job plus all her own teeth. Not that he’s so wonderful to look at, unless you like hairy ears. Anyway, I introduce them, she marries him, and now the gonif don’t want to pay me. From this, you could die.”

  “Or sue,” I said.

  “Exactly.” Sheila Slutsky smiled and fished a crumpled document out of a purse shaped like a hatbox. I had seen larger women, but none wearing a gold lame jumpsuit with shoulder pads an offensive lineman would envy. Her hair was dyed candy-apple red and swept into what used to be called a beehive. Eyeglasses dangled from her neck on a chain of imitation pearls. She slid the document toward me and tapped her index finger, thumpety-thump, on my desk. “Read the fine print, boychik.”

  Actually, it was bold print, in a box lined with red: “The undersigned contracting party agrees to pay a bonus of $2500.00 to the Matchmaker within twenty days of the marriage of said party to any person introduced, directly or indirectly, to said party by the Matchmaker.”

  “My son-in-law Sheldon wrote that,” Mrs. Slutsky announced. “A lawyer in Jersey. Not a fancy-schmancy office like this…”

  She gestured toward the bayfront window. “But he makes a living, kineahora.”

  I scanned the rest of the contract. Meyer Feinstein, D.D.S., with an office address in Lauderhill, paid a registration fee of a hundred dollars plus an additional fifty dollars for every woman introduced to him by Sheila Slutsky. In the event of marriage, according to the red-boxed clause, Meyer owed another twenty-five-hundred dollars.

  “What’s the problem?” I asked. “Why won’t he pay?”

  “Feh! So it’s my fault she ran off?”

  “Who, the bride?”

  “With the Porsche yet.”

  “What? She stole his car?”

  “Of course not. He gave it to her as a wedding present. Three days later, she was fed up with his mishegoss, tying her up with dental floss, who ever heard of such a thing, so she ran off. But they’re married, right? If that farshtinkener son-in-law of mine had written the contract like I said, I would’ve been paid at the wedding.”

  Just then, Cindy buzzed me on the intercom. She reminded me that clients were lining up in the waiting room. There was a young man from Hialeah who wanted to sue the striptease joint for his injuries in an oil-wrestling bout with Brenda the Battling Banshee.

  Mrs. Slutsky was still talking, mostly to herself. “Such a nebbish, that dentist.”

  Cindy was telling me that Alex Soto was waiting, too, arrested again for the Spanish lotto con. He buys lottery tickets, choosing the number that won the week before. By carefully changing the date, he’s left with what looks like a $7-million ticket. Then, claiming he’s an illegal alien—the only part of the scam that’s true—Soto convinces the mark to cash the ticket for him, asking for ten thousand dollars as good-faith money.

  “Okay,” I told Cindy. “No time to go out today. Better order me a cheeseburger and a shake.”

  Cindy made a sound like a cow in distress.

  “Is the whole world crazy or what?” Mrs. Slutsky asked.

  Summer had turned to fall, though you couldn’t tell the difference. It still rained every afternoon, steam rising from the streets after each thunderstorm. Fall became winter, and still it stayed warm. Christmas Day was 83 and muggy, with just the slightest breath of a breeze. The first cold front passed through on New Year’s Eve, and the natives welcomed it. Our tropical winter is ordinarily dry and pleasant, daytime temperatures in the 70s, the sky an azure blue. It is not a time to be locked inside conference rooms, studying documents and taking depositions, but H.T. Patterson was pushing the Tupton case to an early trial. We completed discovery in January, announced ready for trial at a calendar call on Valentine’s Day, and were scheduled to begin picking a jury the first Monday in March. Now I was trying to clean off my desk and clear out my mind prior to the battle.

  I was reading the morning paper and chomping a burger at my desk when Cindy walked in again. She’d recently gone blond, and I hadn’t gotten used to it. She’d straightened her hair, too, and wore it in bangs in front and long down the sides. Sort of a sixties’ look that made me think of Peter, Paul, and Mary, or at least of Mary. Today she wore a blue denim jacket with silver piping and matching jeans. Her earrings were Plexiglas squares. Embedded in each one was a condom still in its wrapper. A woman’s group sold the earrings at fund-raisers as a visual reminder of safe sex. In case of need, the Plexiglas opened and the condom popped out.

  My secretary may have looked ditzy to the world, but not to me. Everyone underestimated her. Cindy chewed gum, typed fast, and cracked wise, and I don’t know what I’d do without her.

  Today Cindy was busy organizing files for the upcoming trial. I was gobbling some french fries while reading the local section of the paper. Another judge was indicted for taking kickbacks from lawyers appointed to represent indigent defendants. As a bonus, the judge ate on the lawyer’s tab at a fa
ncy Italian restaurant in Coconut Grove. Fried calamari was the judge’s entree of choice, which prompted local columnist Carl Hiaasen to wonder if there were a squid pro quo.

  I put down the paper and gestured to Cindy with my burger. “Want a bite?”

  She made a face. “You know I’m a vegan.”

  “I thought you were from Sacramento, not Vegas.”

  “A vegan, silly. A vegetarian who doesn’t eat animal products or use them in any way. No meat, milk, or fish. No wool, leather, or furs. No products that are the result of animal experiments.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” I told her, wiping a glob of oil from my chin.

  Cindy looked as if she might blow lunch, if she ever had any. “The other day I was at the deli, and a man was eating a tongue sandwich. Can you imagine, eating an animal’s tongue?”

  “I’ve tried it. Not bad with mustard.”

  Cindy winced. “I can’t imagine eating something that comes out of an animal’s mouth.”

  “How ‘bout some eggs?” I asked her.

  “You are so gross. But if you want to keep loading yourself with nitrites and benzopyrene, pesticides and heavy metals, just keep snarfing your hamburgers.”

  I grunted my intention of doing just that.

  “Speaking of poison,” she said with a sly smile, “guess who’s in the waiting room.”

  I was slurping my chocolate shake, so Cindy answered her own question. “Missus Florio.”

  Oh, her.

  Cindy eyed me, looking for a reaction. When I gave her my poker face, she asked, “Why can’t she make an appointment like everyone else, or does she have special privileges?”

  “She has the past.”

  “If I were you, jefe, I’d keep it that way.”

  Gina wore a black cotton jersey dress with bare shoulders. There is something about an ivory-skinned blonde in black, a promise of heaven, a threat of hell. The dress was held together by a row of black buttons from the neck to the hem, which nearly reached her ankles. It would have been a demure look if she bothered to button up from mid-thigh down.

  She waltzed around my office, inspecting the surroundings as if she’d never been there before. She picked up a deflated football with the score of a long-forgotten game painted on the side. She replaced the ball, studied a team photo from my college days, and remarked that I looked dorky with a mustache. She thumbed through an open volume of Southern Reporter, 2nd Series, skimming past a case where a prisoner sued the state for the right to be served decaffeinated coffee because real java made him jumpy. She looked out the window where an easterly was kicking up whitecaps on the bay. Then she turned and stood still, staring at the Dictaphone on my desk as if it were an object of beauty and wonder.

  Something was bothering her, but what?

  I hadn’t hugged her, or kissed her, or shaken her delicate hand. Hell, I hadn’t even stood up when she came in.

  “We have to talk,” she said finally.

  Have to.

  Which means the subject is painful. Okay, that could be a lot of things. She could confess that Nicky killed Peter Tupton. Or maybe she wanted to admit the affair with Rick Gondolier. Come clean with old Jake. He would understand. Maybe she…

  “We can’t see each other anymore,” Gina blurted out.

  I blinked. Then I shrugged. It was intended to say, So what? Inside, my stomach felt like the elevator suddenly dropped twenty floors.

  She turned away and looked out the window again. Along the shoreline at Bayside, flags stiffened in the breeze. Across Government Cut, one of the cruise ships was easing out of the port, tugboats front and rear. “I guess it doesn’t matter to you that much,” she said.

  “It stopped mattering a long time ago.” I stared at her back, admiring the fine lines of her neck. She was facing east, toward Bimini. Good. My face might have given it away. For a lawyer, I am a lousy liar.

  “That makes it easier. But, still, I’m sorry.”

  “Okay, if that’s it, I’ve got work to do. Hey, you could have called or mailed it in.”

  She turned, walked toward my desk, and sat down in a client’s straight-back chair, crossing her long legs. She fumbled in her purse for something. The purse was smooth leather, small and black. It probably cost a thousand bucks at a Coconut Grove boutique. She withdrew a pink envelope and handed it to me. “I wrote you a letter, but…”

  I turned it over in my hand, a dainty pink envelope carrying the scent of her perfume, bringing back a thousand memories. I resisted the urge to close my eyes and press the envelope to my nose. My name was written on the front in red ink. Girlish script. Straight up-and-down letters. The letter J looked like two fat balloons, one on top of the other. A “Dear Jake” letter.

  I opened it and withdrew a neatly folded piece of pink stationery. A rose on top and the initials GMF. It struck me that I didn’t know her middle name. Of course, even if I did, it could have changed over the years.

  It wasn’t a “Dear Jake” letter after all. More like “Dearest Jake,” written in the same up-and-down handwriting with very round O’s and curlicues on the G’s.

  Dearest Jake,

  You are so very special and have been for so very long, and that only makes this more difficult. I know how you feel about me, even though you really don’t say it. I have hurt you in the past, and I should not keep coming back to you. I care for you and hope for the best for you, but I will never leave Nicky. He loves me and is good to me, and I want to be just as good to him. So finally, dearest Jake, it is over.

  With deep affection, Gina

  Good-bye lover. Hello heartbreak.

  I wondered if Rick Gondolier received a similar letter. And maybe a third and fourth guy, too. If Gina had a word processor, she could avoid writer’s cramp. But something wasn’t making sense. “I didn’t ask you to leave Nicky.”

  “I know you, Jake. You always hoped—”

  “Ah, you’re a mind reader now, in addition to your other talents, most of which are accomplished on your back.” I don’t know why I said that. Petty. Stupid. Cruel.

  If my words had stung, Gina didn’t show it. She just studied me, her deep blue eyes betraying no emotion. “Go ahead and insult me, Jake, if it makes you feel better.”

  “Hey, what’s the big deal? Easy come, easy go. Hey, it’s like you always said to me: ‘Maybe I’ll see you later, and maybe I won’t.’”

  “Jake, why can’t you grow up and express your feelings?”

  “What feelings? Look, all of this was your idea. You’re the one who always got the ball rolling. You’re the one who showed up at my house, or here, or at the beach. My only mistake was not kicking you out of bed.”

  She reached into the black leather purse and grabbed a pack of Winstons. She tapped out one cigarette and placed it between her pursed lips. If she was waiting for me to light it, she had a long wait. She reached back into the purse, found a gold lighter, struck it, and craned her long neck as she inhaled. “Don’t be like that, Jake. It always happens.”

  “Always? With all men? Or always with me?”

  She exhaled a long plume of smoke that drifted to the ceiling. “With you, Jake. You either retreat into a shell or strike out. Show no pain, isn’t that your motto?”

  “Play with pain is the way the coach always put it.”

  “It would be better to acknowledge the pain, talk about it, deal with it.”

  “Now you’re a therapist, too.”

  “I’ve been there, Jake. I’ve been hurt, and I’ve dealt with it.”

  “Forget it. I’m a big boy. I can take a hit.”

  Sure I can. I’m a former varsity member of the AFC Eastern Division All-Star Party Team. In the old days, I led the league in broken curfews and broken hearts. I could find an after-hours club in Buffalo during a power outage in December. Buffalo! But I retired. The stewardesses, secretaries, and models have come and gone. An endless variety of sameness. Names, faces, legs, all merge into a creamy blur. The same id
le chatter, the same sweet deceptions, the same empty morning-afters.

  “Do you understand why I’m doing this?” she asked me.

  “Maybe you feel guilty, and you’ve decided to stay home afternoons and bake apple pies. Maybe you’re joining a convent.” I put an edge on my voice. “Maybe you found someone else.”

  Now I studied her.

  “There’s no one else, Jake.”

  She lies so much better than I do. Maybe all those marriages were good training.

  “I’m doing it for Nicky,” she said softly, “but I’m doing it for you, too.”

  “Gee, thanks, and on behalf of Nicky, double thanks.”

  What was in those eyes now? A touch of sadness. “This is better for you, Jake. Why do you suppose you’ve never gotten married, never even lived with anyone?”

  “I lived with you, or you lived with me. Three months my last year in the league. You’d been evicted from your apartment for playing The Who at two hundred decibels.”

  “Okay, other than me, you’ve never lived with anyone. And when you and I are involved, you don’t see anyone else, do you?”

  “No. I’m not ambidextrous. I can’t handle two women at once.”

  She smiled a sweet, soft smile. “You’ve been waiting for me all these years, and I’ve been letting you do it, encouraging you by coming back again and again.”

  “There are lots of women in my life,” I said defensively.

  “I know,” Gina said, “but why isn’t there one?”

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  The Gods Make Their Own Rules

  “NOW, MRS. MORALES, DO YOU AGREE THAT A HOST HAS A DUTY to protect his guests from harm?”

  Gloria Morales eyed H.T. Patterson with suspicion. She was a stocky forty-one-year-old airline reservations clerk with two children in public school and a husband who repaired copying machines. Jurors didn’t come any more typical than this. “If the judge says so, sure,” she answered warily.