by Paul Levine
Funny, that’s what I said about Winston P. Hopkins in, only in English, Lassiter thought. He felt a kinship with Humberto Hernandez-Zaldivar. “Berto, they’ve sucked the blood out of me, too. Working for bankers turns you into one of them.”
“No, nunca. I know you better than you do. We will talk. We will drink wine and eat, and you will tell me what to do, just as you did in law school.”
“But, Berto, I’m representing the bank against you. I’m supposed to collect money from you.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll work it out.”
The phone clicked dead, and Lassiter rushed into the courtroom, where the judge motioned the lawyers to the bench with an imperious wave of his hand. Then he instructed them to move the case along so he could make the daily double at the dog track, and finally he sniffed the air. “Mr. Lassiter, do I detect the scent of alcohol on your breath?”
Lassiter winked a yes. “If Your Honor’s sense of justice is as keen as his sense of smell, I have no fear of the outcome of the case.”
The judge harrumphed and sent the lawyers back to their tables. Lassiter called Sam Kazdoy to testify. He ran through Kazdoy’s past, his philanthropy, his love of Russian films, and how he brought corned beef and social life to the retirees of South Beach.
“Now, Mr. Kazdoy, you heard Mrs. Pivnick testify this morning?”
“Of course, I heard. You think I’m deaf like her?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“The old bubbe bought a hearing aid, twenty-nine dollars mail order.”
“Objection!” Chareen Bailey was on her feet. “Outside scope of the witness’s knowledge.”
“What’s not to know?” Kazdoy asked. “You could hear Radio Havana on the farshtinkener thing all the way across the street.”
“Overruled,” the judge said.
“Did there come a time when you discussed your deli’s food with Mrs. Pivnick?” Lassiter asked.
“She asked if our chicken was stuffed with matzo meal and prunes, and I said, ‘No, with kasha.’”
“Kasha?” the judge asked.
“Buckwheat,” Kazdoy explained. “Cook it with some chicken soup and egg, you got yourself a nice stuffing.”
Lassiter moved a step closer. “So you simply described your stuffing?”
“Twice, I told her,” Kazdoy said. ” ‘Strictly kasha. Strictly kasha.’ She must have thought — “
“I get it,” Judge Lewis said, making a notation in the court file. “Mr. Lassiter, do you have anything further from this witness?”
“Well, I was going to ask — “
“Because,” the judge continued, “I’m prepared to rule in your favor. But if you want to try and change my mind…”
“The defense rests,” Lassiter said.
“Your Honor, please!” Chareen Bailey called out, leaping from her seat. “What about final argument?”
“Don’t need it. Of course, you’re free to appeal to the District Court.” The judge smiled, a phenomenon as rare as snow in Miami. “After all, I answer to a higher authority.”
CHAPTER 10
Tres Leches
Berto had said eight o’clock at El Novillo, a Nicaraguan steak house on South Dixie Highway. Lassiter arrived at eight-fifteen, knowing that his old friend operated on Latin Standard Time and was always late. The menu was covered with cowhide, the bristly hair still attached, and Lassiter wondered whether to pet it or read it. He ordered a pitcher of sangria and waited. Finally, at ten past nine, Berto arrived, greeted the hostess with a smack on the cheek, and after scanning the room, found Lassiter in a distant corner.
“Hola, chico,” Berto boomed. “Looks like they put the gringo next to the men’s room.”
“Hello, Berto. Long time.” He looked like hell, Lassiter thought. The hair was still black, shiny, and perfectly cut, and the dark tailored business suit was freshly pressed. But the skin had lost its natural ruddiness, the cheeks were puffy, and the smile was forced.
“Jake, you look great, like you could still put the pads on. And you got some suntan for a guy stuck in the courthouse.”
“Windsurfing. Keeps me in shape. Haven’t made a tackle in a thousand years, but there’s a client or two I wouldn’t mind using for a blocking sled.”
Berto’s eyes skimmed the perimeter of the restaurant. One of those cocktail party looks, Lassiter thought at first, Berto checking out the room for more interesting company. But the eyes were jittery, the mouth tight with tension.
Berto caught Jake staring and responded with a prefab smile. “Let’s order! I know you Anglos like the Early Bird Specials, so you must be starving by now.”
“Why don’t you handle it so I don’t embarrass you with my Spanish?”
“Excellent idea.” Motioning toward the waiter, Berto ordered without consulting the cowhide. “Traiganos una orden de chorizos de cerdo, otra de cuajada con tortilla con platanos maduros, dos lomitos a la plancha, termino medio, y una orden de hongos a la vinagreta. We’ll order dessert later. Jake, you want more sangria?”
“No, Berto, I want to talk about the loans.”
“The loans? The loans are the least of my worries, amigo. Stop playing lawyer and listen.” Berto looked around again. The restaurant was filled, some families, mostly Hispanic businessmen. Lassiter guessed that he was the only Anglo other than the man who had followed Berto in the door and now sat at a corner table drinking American coffee.
“Jake, let me tell you what’s happened to me. I didn’t screw around with the bank until I’d already lost the shopping centers. When the economy turned, the bottom fell out of my real estate holdings. The offices, the strip centers, condos… all gone. Plus Magda left me when the money ran out. Back to Daddy in Caracas.”
“I didn’t know…”
“I don’t broadcast it, Jake. But sometimes, you have to swallow your pride. A veces es mejor tragarse el orgullo. It’s no disgrace to be broke, eh?”
Lassiter looked into Berto’s eyes and shared the pain. He wanted to put his arms around his old friend, not prey on the carcass. Berto smiled. “Hey, Jake, it’s not so bad, I’ve still got this.” Berto reached inside his silk shirt and brought out the heavy chain that was his trademark, huge woven links of gold that could have anchored a catamaran in a squall. “Bought it with the profit from my first deal. Told the jeweler I wanted something different. Every Latino in town wears gold chains, verdad? Make it grande, I told him, links as big around as my penes. Jeweler said, ‘Ingots don’t come that big, how about as big around as your thumb?’”
“It’s you,” Lassiter agreed.
“I never take it off, Jake, I’ll die with my gold on.”
Lassiter didn’t like the way Berto said it, the casual mention of death, as if it were the next flight out of town.
They were eating now, Berto picking at his food, Lassiter slicing the marinated steak, dipping it first in the sweet sauce of tomatoes and red peppers, then trying the green sauce of garlic, parsley, and oil. The meat was tender, the sauces tangy, the starchy black beans and rice taking some of the sting out of the spicy dishes.
“What about you, Jake? What’s new in your life?”
“Nothing. I still don’t have a wife, a dog, or a Most Valuable Player award.”
Berto pointed at Jake with a fork filled with peppers and onions. “You have this tendency to reject the mainstream, to scoff at conformity.”
“Really?”
“It’s a contradiction that has always plagued you. A football player with brains and savvy, then a lawyer bursting at the seams of his vest. You frustrate easily and you have a low tolerance for bullshit. You may seem controlled and contained, but you’re always on the verge of just chucking it all away. You don’t always play the game, Jake, and if you’re not careful, you could lose what you’ve built.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“That’s why I can talk. Ever think about your future?”
“As little as possible.”
“Yo
u ever gonna get married?”
“What for?”
Berto laughed. “Great question, Jake! I wish I’d asked myself the same question before I’d done about a thousand things.”
“Such as.”
“En resumidas cuentas,” Berto said, “to make a long story short, when things went bad, I cut some corners to try and make a comeback.”
“You doubled up the loans on the condos, Great Southern and Vista Bank, a neat scam, but fraudulent as hell.”
Berto’s fork struck his plate like a rifle shot. “Forget the loans. Jesus Cristo! The loans are dogshit. I’ll tell you what I did. I got a DC-3. I bought a hundred acres just north of the Trail near Naples. I spent a small fortune clearing, filling, building a runway. You get me?”
“Oh no,” Lassiter said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“That’s right. Only el idiota I hired, he built runways in the Bahamas on coral rock, and he doesn’t figure on the change in the water level in the Glades. So, first flight we got thirty thousand pounds of grass that I paid cash for, but it’s August, and it’s raining so hard the animals are leaving in twos, and there’s a foot of muck on the runway. Pilot tries to set it down, he skids into a hammock, sheers off a wing, fifteen tons of prime weed goes up in flames. Gators got so stoned, they didn’t move for a week.”
“You were there?”
“Hell no, but I had trucks there and runway lights and guys with radios and guns. Everyone on the ground hauled ass. By the time the pilot gets out, he’s gotta walk. Meanwhile the fireball attracted a state trooper who was cruising the Trail. He nails the pilot, who gives me up.”
“I didn’t realize. Didn’t hear anything. You get indicted?”
“No way, Jose. I gave them the source in the islands. I have no priors, and it was my first job, I swear. So now, I’m a federally protected witness.” Berto gestured to the Anglo man sipping coffee. The man nodded, almost imperceptibly. He wore a plaid polyester sports coat, gray slacks, and brown loafers. Lassiter guessed he was about forty, short blond hair turning gray. The man scanned the restaurant with pale eyes, studying everyone who came in the front door and out of the kitchen.
“DEA?” Lassiter asked.
“Yeah. His name’s Franklin, like Ben, only this one doesn’t have a first name. All very hush-hush. They deposed me for a week, and now they’re setting me up with a new place to go, new name, job, everything.”
“Where you going?”
“Not supposed to tell.” Berto looked around again, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Casper, Wyoming.”
“You’re kidding.”
Berto shrugged and signaled the waiter to bring dessert, tres leches for Lassiter, espresso for himself. “Can you imagine me with the cowboys, Jake?” Berto looked down at his plate. He still had the charm that had carried him so far, Lassiter thought, but a hearty greeting and a slap on the back could not disguise his anguish. They were silent. Then Berto worked up the old smile and said, “I’m taking Lee Hu with me to Wyoming.”
“Who?”
“Not who, Hu. Rhymes with stew, which is what she is for Avianca, based in Bogota. She adores me. Only nineteen, about five one. You ever have an Asian girl? All they want to do is please you.”
“That would be different,” Lassiter allowed.
The tres leches was delicious, cake soaked in whole milk, evaporated milk, and condensed milk, covered with white frosting. Lassiter could barely move, and it was time to talk business. “Berto, the bank wants to bring charges against you for fraud and bribing a bank officer. Conrad Ticklin spilled his guts, said you gave him twenty-five grand to approve the loan. It’s a federal crime.”
The espresso cup stopped an inch from Berto’s mouth. His eyes narrowed. “Ticklin’s a candy-ass! He begged me for the money because he was whipsawed by his wife and his girlfriend.”
“Regardless whose idea it was, you bribed him.”
Berto scowled. “Yeah, because I tried to help him out. Ticklin’s pushing forty-five and has all the charm of a warthog, but he’s not as good-looking. He falls ass over elbows for this receptionist at the bank. She’s twenty-one, Cuban Catholic, lives at home, and won’t see him because he’s married. She tells him, ‘No puede estar el polio en el corral y en la cazuela.’ ”
“You can’t have your chicken in the pen…”
“And in the pan,” Berto added. “Or put another way, you can’t have your tres leches and eat it too. So he says he’ll leave his wife, and the blessed virgin rolls over. Course he doesn’t leave his wife. Now the girl is pissed and threatens to tell the wife and the bank, and Ticklin needs money to shut her up.
He gets it from me, she gets a new BMW with a sunroof, Ticklin gets fired anyway, and I’m stuck with a bribery charge.”
“His mistake was saying he’d leave his wife,” Lassiter said. “I’ll never understand why men do that.”
“Jake, your naivete knows no limits. El hombre promete y promete y promete hasta que se la mete. The man promises and promises and promises until he sticks it in.”
Two strolling guitarists and a musician shaking maracas were serenading a middle-aged couple, singing “Besame Mucho,” the love song that pleads for kisses. Franklin, the DEA agent, watched as if the maracas were hand grenades.
“Berto, I’ll try to talk the bank out of going after you, but I’ll need to give them something to keep the grand jury away. Do you have any property you can substitute as collateral for the condos?”
Berto grabbed the napkin from his lap and squeezed it, as if wringing out a dishrag and finding it dry. He dropped the napkin and gestured with both hands to the heavens. “My house has three mortgages, and I took all the equity out of the shopping centers to buy the first haul of grass. The property along the Trail took the last cash, and the feds are going to grab that under the forfeiture law.”
“Is there anything else, race horses, foreign accounts, other properties?”
Berto looked around again. He seemed to think about it, weighed his thoughts, and finally said, “What the hell. There’s one thing. It’s not in my name, so the feds haven’t found it. If they had, it’d be gone too, to the IRS. When things were good, I put some bucks in an offshore corporation, courtesy of the Cayman Islands. It holds clear title to a three-hundred-acre ranch outside Ocala. Gotta be worth two million plus, and it’s not doing me any good. If I touch it the feds will hit me with obstruction or perjury.”
Bingo. Another chance to be a hero for the bank, Most Valuable Mouthpiece award. Not much of a thrill, not like breaking into the starting lineup against the Jets because of an injury to the strong side linebacker, but it would have to do. “That’s it, Berto. It’s clean. Your offshore company can deed the property to Great Southern and you’ll get a release on the loans. Will you do it?”
Berto sipped at his espresso and said, “For you, Jake, I’ll do it.”
“And I’ll make sure the bank forgets all about bribery charges. The bank will get close to fifty cents on the dollar which is fine for a bad loan. Vista Bank gets the condos, and you’re off to Wyoming.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Jake Lassiter wondered what it was like, one day the world tasting of champagne, the next day of ashes. Berto had seemed so strong, so much in control. But inside he was still a twelve-year-old kid floating on a raft across the Florida Straits. He was burned out now, caught in a maelstrom beyond his control — the deals, the drugs, the women, the money.
Always the money. The gods tempt us, Lassiter thought. They offer us riches and sweet smelling women, tres leches, each milk sweeter than the one before. But you cannot beat the gods. The grander house, the bigger deal, only mean more borrowed time, more risk. When you build your life on a house of cards, you never know when the joker will turn up. When you wheel and deal and borrow and spend, when your balance sheet is based on forecasts and projections, wishes and dreams, it is only a matter of time. One day, the mortgage comes due, and it all falls down. It only takes a missed step,
a tax return that catches the computer’s eye, an oil shortage or an oil glut, a weakness for drink or drugs or soft skin.
We are so frail. The gods build us up, then wait. The fall from grace is a spectator sport, and those too meek to take the risks watch from afar and cluck their tongues knowingly.
“I wish I could turn back the clock for you,” Lassiter said finally.
“I have no regrets. It was a hell of a ride while it lasted.”
“Can you stay out of trouble?”
Berto gestured toward the federal agent. “If Franklin can get me through the week. I have to do a little favor for the DEA, part of my deal. I’m helping set up some doper from out west.”
Lassiter frowned. “Sounds dangerous.”
“Don’t worry, amigo. I’ll be in and out. The bust won’t come down until they bring the stuff in from the Bahamas, and I’ll be long gone by then.”
They looked into each other’s eyes, old friends grown apart with the years, drawn together for a moment by a flicker from the past.
“Take care of yourself, old buddy,” Lassiter said softly.
“I always do,” Berto replied with a laugh devoid of joy.
CHAPTER 11
A Day at the Beach
What would she be like, Jake Lassiter wondered. Until now, Lila Summers had been a two-dimensional vision, a color photograph in a magazine, leaning back from the boom, leg muscles taut, turquoise swimsuit cut high over rounded hip, wild mane of hair frozen in the wind. In a photograph there are neither flaws nor words of rebuke, just timeless youth and beauty and joy.
She was not hard to spot. Every man on Concourse D either stopped dead in his tracks or suffered whiplash from a quick turn as she passed. Lila Summers was breathtaking in a white cotton sweatsuit — deep suntan set off by the snowy fabric — her thick hair butterscotched by the sun, bright hazel eyes flecked with green sparkles. She had a body that could be sensed even through the loose outfit, full breasts and strong legs. California-born and Hawaii-raised, she was tall and walked with a long stride. She carried a pink sail bag weighted down with her gear, but her sturdy arms and shoulders showed no strain. There was no mistaking that she was both an athlete and a woman, a perfect picture come to life.
