by Paul Levine
“What?”
“I knew a couple girls who worked in one of Ziegler’s clubs. They were always stoned, so you can’t believe half of what they said. But one of them told me something really scary.”
“Yeah?”
“That Ziegler was making snuff films in Mexico. Whenever one of the girls gave him a problem, he’d say, ‘How’d you like your next movie to be your last?’ Or ‘You’re worth more to me dead.’ Creepy stuff like that.”
“Did she see any of the films herself?”
“No, she was just repeating what she’d heard.”
“Hearsay on hearsay.”
“I know, Jake. But that day I went to Ziegler’s office, looking for Krista, they told me he was out of the country.”
“So?”
“They said he was in Mexico.”
6 She Likes It Rough
“Sure, I remember Charlie’s Girlz,” Coleman said. “Thin story lines but decent production values. All hard core. A lot of S and M.”
“I don’t suppose you have any of their videos.”
“ ‘Videos?’ No. Everything’s been transferred to DVD.” Coleman sucked on a Lucky Strike and gestured toward a back aisle. “Check between Hustler and Vivid in the last row.”
A former client, Elmore Coleman was manning the cash register at a XXX-video store on South Dixie Highway. He was a small-time grifter in his fifties with grayish skin, a snow-white ponytail, and nicotine-stained fingernails. A couple years ago, he’d been caught at the airport soliciting cash for tsunami relief, but the only tidal wave was the whiskey he’d consumed with the money he’d collected. I walked him out of the courtroom with a nice fat Not Guilty. Then, a few weeks later, he was busted for selling counterfeit Girl Scout cookies. I lost that case, and Coleman served eight months before getting early release, courtesy of jail overcrowding. That’s when he landed the job at the video store, thanks to his only lawful skill, an encyclopedic knowledge of pornography.
“The Charlie’s Girlz brand had its run in the early nineties,” Coleman told me. “Won a couple AVNs for its Bound and Gagged series. They’re the Oscars of porn.”
I thanked him and moseyed toward the aisle he’d pointed out. It was just after six P.M., and there were three or four guys in the place. All well groomed and normal-looking, deeply engrossed in examining DVD covers.
I scanned the covers of the Charlie’s Girlz videos, searching for Krista Larkin. The photos were a succession of boobs and butts and a few bald crotches. The head shots started to look alike. Young blondes with fake eyelashes, phony smiles, and invented names. Cherry Cola. Lolita Lick. Jenny Talia. Many titles were highly descriptive: Three Guys and a Girl. Some sounded like instruction manuals: How to Fuck on a Jungle Gym. And others were just lousy puns: Remembrance of Times Gone Bi.
I found the “Bound and Gagged” series and thumbed through the stack of DVDs. It only took a minute before I found Krista—all auburn hair and freckles—on the cover of She Likes It Rough. Bent over a wooden stool, she wore a black leather bustier that propped up her small breasts, and her bare butt was being paddled by an unseen man.
Coleman inserted the DVD into a master player behind his counter, and I settled into a booth in the back. The plot, such as it was, combined incest with sadomasochism. Krista was a schoolgirl in a plaid mini-skirt, bunny barrettes in her hair. She’d been cutting class, a handy excuse for her father—potbellied and balding—to paddle her. The plot turned to irony here. Krista was supposed to like the paddling. The pinker her butt shone, the more she licked her lips and begged for another whack. But her eyes were dead, her mind elsewhere. “Harder, Daddy!” sounded hollow and false.
The air was bad in the enclosed booth, and I felt hot and itchy, as if spiders were crawling up my pants legs. When Krista straddled the lard butt and rode him, cowgirl style, a memory came back to me. That night long ago, I’d seen the same shimmy of her hips. Were there sparks in her eyes then, or the same cold flatness I saw now?
My stomach was starting to feel queasy, and I wanted to get the hell out of there. I had what I needed. “Charlie Ziegler” was the guy’s name. Krista had been one of “Charlie’s Girlz.” I could turn this over to Amy Larkin and weasel my way off her Most Wanted list. Go back to my life of work and play and play some more. Focus on the present, not the past. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?
But something kept my ass glued to the chair, my eyes on the screen. The camera cut to a close-up, revealing Krista’s smile to be all artifice, her moans halfhearted. Girl at work. Her job was to make the pig grunt and to feign pleasure herself. This was a transaction. She was paying her rent.
On the screen, Krista was pleading, “Fuck me, Daddy!”
My stomach heaved, and I tasted bile. Was I any better than the bastard screwing her on the screen? Any better than Charlie Ziegler? For one night, at least, I was as sleazy as the pimp and porn king. Only difference, he made a career of it.
I couldn’t take any more. I banged through the door of the booth and stomped to the register where Coleman was ringing up a customer with a stack of DVDs and a plastic tube of lubricant.
“You done already, Jake?”
“Pop it out. Give me the disc.”
Coleman hit the EJECT button on the master player and handed me the disc. I slammed it against the counter, breaking it in two.
“What the hell!” Coleman’s cigarette flew from his mouth. “That’s fifteen bucks.”
I tossed a twenty on the counter and crashed out the front door and into the humid night.
7 The Do-Over
I got into my car, pulled out Amy Larkin’s business card, and punched her cell number into my keypad.
I paused without hitting the CALL button. Elmore stood in the window of his store, watching me. If I dived into the search for Krista Larkin, where would it lead? If Charlie Ziegler was guilty of some terrible crime, just what would my culpability be? Maybe Ziegler pushed her off a cliff, but I’m the guy who drove her up the mountain.
Damn, a mirror can be a lethal weapon, and self-knowledge a poisoned pill. I had been a self-centered and egotistical jock with all the trappings of stunted male adolescence. Back then, I had yet to develop the empathy for others that marks the passage into manhood.
The defense lawyer inside of me said I wasn’t the proximate cause of Krista’s descent. But why the hell hadn’t I sized up the situation, grabbed Ziegler by the lapels of his suede jacket, and tossed him halfway across the street? I could have taken Krista to Social Services or a girlfriend’s place or put her on a plane back home. Instead, I gift-wrapped her and delivered her to Charlie Ziegler.
There’s a difference between criminal guilt and moral culpability. Sure, I was off the hook in any court of law for whatever happened to Krista Larkin. But while I could not be criminally prosecuted, I could suffer self-imposed shame.
I should have helped her.
Could have. Would have. Should have.
But we don’t get do-overs.
Or do we?
I hit the CALL button. “You were wrong,” I told Amy, when she answered.
“About what?”
“You said I wouldn’t call.”
“What do you want, Lassiter?” Her no-nonsense, no-bullshit tone.
“I have a lead on a guy Krista was involved with.”
“Other than you?”
“I told you about that night. Nothing happened.” Trying hard to sound truthful.
“And I told you I didn’t believe you.”
“I’m hoping, in time, you’ll start to trust me.”
“In time? What do you think, we’re going to be friends?”
“Just hear me out.”
“Give me the name you supposedly came up with.”
“I can do more than that. I can help you find out what happened to Krista.”
“Jake Lassiter, help? When I look at you, all I see is that grinning ape in the strip club. A man without a serious thought beyond his next beer an
d his next lay.”
“I made a mistake. I want to make it right.”
“Get over it. This isn’t about you and your redemption.”
“You’re playing an away game, Amy. This is my town.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I have street savvy. Experience. Contacts.”
“You?”
The concept seemed ludicrous to her.
“The State Attorney is a friend of mine.”
“So what?”
“I can get you official help.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Let’s have dinner and talk about it,” I suggested.
“I’m not hungry.”
“One drink, then.”
“Not thirsty, either.”
“C’mon. Let me lay out a plan. If you don’t like it, I’ll back off. Deal?”
“Give me the name of the man Krista was mixed up with, and I’ll think about it.”
“Nope.”
“You’re a real bastard, Lassiter.”
“Yeah, but I’m your bastard. You might not like me, Amy Larkin. Hell, you might even hate me. But the truth is, you need me.”
She let out a long, whistling sigh and said, “Where do we meet?”
8 The Taste of Wet Steel
Amy Larkin had been sitting on the motel room bed, cleaning a pistol when Lassiter called. Now she hung up the phone and pushed the brush through the barrel of the gun, scrubbing out wet streaks of lead.
Her father’s gun. A Sig Sauer .380 that fit her hand comfortably. She’d never known he owned a weapon until he ended his life just six weeks earlier. One shot to the temple, with this very gun.
It was the beginning of this whirlwind. When she found the photo with her father’s angry scribble on the back. “The Whore of Babylon.”
How Amy hated the self-righteous bastard. He had been so much happier believing sin—not the dysfunctional Larkin family—destroyed Krista. God, how Amy missed her sister. There had been an emptiness inside her from the day Krista left.
Oh, the damage our parents can inflict. When she was still a teenager, Amy’s father had berated her.
“Your sister is Satan’s mistress, and you’re her handmaiden!”
“All I did was kiss the boy, Dad.”
“Why don’t you run away the way Krista did?”
No, she wouldn’t do that. There was a better way to put distance between herself and her screwed-up family. As a child, she kept her parents hidden from her friends. Mom praying in tongues, Dad withdrawn into his silent world. Amy threw herself into schoolwork. She studied hard, paid her own way through Ohio State, and became a solid citizen with a 9-to-5 job and a 401k.
Whatever neuroses had been implanted at home, she’d buried inside. The anxiety, the sense of dread, all sealed tight beneath her polished exterior.
Why, then, was she unable to shake her mother’s teachings? Why, when all logic told her that her mother’s faith stemmed from ancient superstitions—not the word of God—did she still pray for the divine healing promised by the Holy Ghost? The contradictions chiseled away at her.
She jammed the brush through the barrel of the Sig Sauer, her thoughts turning to Lassiter. In just a few hours, he claimed to have found a lead.
“A guy Krista was involved with,” was the way he put it.
Was he telling the truth? Or was he just coming up with a sideshow, some distraction to protect himself or someone else? An old teammate, maybe.
At first, she had thought Lassiter was just another man-beast, like so many she had known. Hiding their fangs behind toothy grins, oiling their way into women’s beds.
Losers.
Users.
Abusers.
She had no proof that he had harmed Krista. But her instincts told her he had lied about that night at the strip club. He knew more about Krista than he was telling. Could he have killed her?
She squeezed her eyes shut, imagined herself pistol-whipping Lassiter, demanding the truth, threatening to blow his brains out. Would he talk? Revenge fantasies, her shrink had told her, were unhealthy. Yeah, well so is losing your sister.
Amy placed a white patch on the end of the push rod, dipped it in solvent, and cleaned the barrel of powder residue. She imagined it was the very residue of the bullet that entered her father’s brain. Next, she dripped oil on a clean cloth and wiped down the gun, inhaling the wet steel smell that somehow reminded her of the taste of gin.
She would meet with Lassiter. Could he really get the State Attorney to help? And if he did, would that be proof that Lassiter wasn’t involved in Krista’s disappearance?
“The State Attorney is a friend of mine.”
A cover-up. A conspiracy. Not out of the question. A network of old pals who looked out for one another, covered one anothers’ asses.
An official investigation was something she hadn’t expected. She doubted, after all this time, that the authorities would be interested. She considered for a moment the implications if Lassiter was on the up-and-up. If the State Attorney opened an honest inquiry, could he discover what happened to Krista? Could he gather enough evidence for a prosecution?
A trial was not what she had been planning. That was a secret she would have to keep from Lassiter. She had not come to Miami to prosecute the man who murdered her sister. She had come here to kill him.
9 Never Lost, Just Hard to Find
Twenty minutes after leaving the video store, I parked in front of City Hall, a waterfront art deco building that in the 1930s had been the terminal for Pan Am’s seaplanes. I took a shortcut through the adjacent boatyard, dodging several oily puddles at the entrance to Scotty’s Landing, a ramshackle fish joint next to the marina. A few yards away, sailboats were docked, halyards pinging in the wind. A three-quarters moon hung over the bay.
I spotted Amy at a redwood picnic table, closest to the water.
“Thanks for meeting me.” I slid onto the bench across from her.
“Who’s the guy you found?” Small talk was not in the lady’s repertoire.
I told her about Charles Ziegler and Charlie’s Girlz and the porn video I watched. A shudder went through Amy’s body, and I gave her a moment to compose herself.
Then I told her Krista was last seen heading to a party at Ziegler’s house. I didn’t mention that I’d met the guy for about a minute, because that would have meant coming clean about my one-nighter with Krista. Amy had no need for the information, and I had no desire to take any more crap from her.
“Let me tell you my plan,” I said.
“Thanks, but I don’t need your plan. I’ll confront Ziegler myself.”
“No, you won’t. He’s a big deal in this town. He’ll have lawyers, layers of people to get through. Besides, we’ve got nothing on him. There were lots of men at his parties. We may have only one chance to talk to Ziegler, and we need to do our homework first.”
She nailed me with a cold, hard, insurance investigator’s look. “Just what homework do we need to do?”
“We should pay a visit to Alex Castiel, the State Attorney.”
“The guy you claim is a friend.”
“We play basketball in the lawyers’ league.”
“That’s it? You dribble to each other?”
I didn’t explain that “dribble to each other” made no sense, basketball-wise. “Castiel has a staff of investigators,” I said. “He works with cops. He can subpoena witnesses.”
“Just how good of friends are you?” Suspicion laced her voice, or maybe that was her normal tone.
“A long time ago, I did a big favor for him.”
“What kind of favor?”
“The secret kind. What I’m saying, he owes me.”
It was true. I’d been carrying the guy’s IOU for a long time, never intending to use it. But then, I’d never been accused of making a teenage girl vanish before.
“So if you’re ready to work together,” I said, “I have a bunch of questions about Kr
ista that will help me get started.”
Amy studied me, her eyes seeming to search for deception. I looked past her to an older couple pushing a cart of groceries along the pier. Tanned the color of a richly brewed tea, the couple was headed toward a Kaufman, a deep-water cruiser with a striking name on its transom, Never Lost, Just Hard to Find. I imagined them sailing around the world, but maybe that was my dream, not theirs.
“So how about it?” I prodded her. “Are we a team?”
“Do you win most of your cases, Lassiter?”
“Not even half. But damn few of my customers are innocent.”
“Customers …?”
“All I ask is a check that doesn’t bounce and a story that doesn’t make the judge burst out laughing.”
“Nice.”
“Hey, they don’t call us ‘sharks’ for our ability to swim.”
I figured she’d never buy it if I pretended to be Atticus Finch.
“Do you have any siblings, Lassiter?”
“A sister. Half sister, really. My mom had her out of wedlock after my father was killed down in the Keys. Why do you ask?”
“Krista’s my half sister, too. We have the same father.”
We were both quiet a moment, absorbing that small bit of commonality.
“Do you love her?” Amy asked. “Do you love your sister.”
Another weird question but I went along. “Janet’s a crack whore and a worse mother than Octomom, but yeah, I guess I love her.”
“If someone killed her, what would you do?”
“I’d go after him. Hard.”
Her eyes warmed up just a bit. It was the answer she wanted to hear. Better yet, it was true. “What do you need to know about Krista?”
That seemed to be her way of welcoming me aboard.
“Everything. About her, about you. About the Larkins of Toledo, Ohio.”
Amy looked off toward the bay, her sunset eyes seeming to reflect the moonlight. She told me about their father, Frank Larkin. After divorcing Krista’s mother, he married again, and his new wife gave birth to Amy. The two girls were close, even with the six-year age difference. Amy idolized her older sister. Krista was popular, smart, pretty. A cheerleader, but a secret one.
