Lassiter

by Paul Levine

  He approached me in the locker room, pressing a cold can of Heineken to his forehead where a welt was flaring up. “Buy you dinner, Jake?”

  “Why?”

  “To find out why you’re so pissed at me.”

  “More like disappointed in you.”

  “Let’s talk about it, Jake. C’mon, I’ll treat you to martinis and a porterhouse.”

  “I’ll go if you answer one question for me, Alex. Were you—?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why not wait for the question?”

  “I know what you’re gonna ask. It’s about Ziegler’s party. And the answer’s yes. I was there the night Krista Larkin disappeared.”

  23 Young, Single, and Horny

  I don’t usually order shrimp cocktail when they charge by the piece—eight bucks!—but tonight Castiel was paying, and I didn’t give a shit about the cost. We sat on the front patio of Prime One Twelve, a noisy, trendy hangout for NBA players and others with the Am Ex Centurion card. The restaurant is at the foot of Ocean Drive on South Beach, the epicenter of hedonism run amok. We started with the shrimp and martinis—as cold as liquid nitrogen—with steaks to follow.

  When we sat down, Castiel had said he would tell me everything he knew about Ziegler and Krista Larkin. That he had nothing to hide. “I should have told you straight off, Jake, but I’m embarrassed about some of the shit from my past.” Well, that made two of us.

  “I was at Ziegler’s house,” Castiel said now, “but Krista wasn’t. She never showed up.”

  “To be so sure, you must have known her by sight.”

  “She was around a lot that summer. Charlie’s flavor of the month. Maybe three months.”

  “And this night, who was the lucky girl?”

  “Girls, plural. Half a dozen playthings. Porn starlets. Strippers. Strays. All interchangeable, all forgettable.”

  “Not to their families.”

  “I’m just saying how it was with Ziegler. One second he’s doing a couple actresses in the living room, then three more girls are hopping over the sofa like a hockey team changing lines. The Larkin girl wasn’t one of them.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “What do you think? I was young. Single. Horny.”

  Castiel sipped his martini and told me his story, while flicking that gold cigarette lighter that had belonged to his father. In the early nineties, when he was a young prosecutor, Castiel met Charlie Ziegler, courtesy of Uncle Max.

  Ziegler’s porn business was just taking off. He was renting a waterfront manse on Sunset Island that belonged to a Saudi sheik who came to town to buy diamonds and frolic with young women. Jewelers on Flagler Street provided the gems, Ziegler the women.

  “The house was tricked out like a disco,” Castiel said. “A glitter ball, a D.J., a sound system you could hear in Bimini. The place decorated like a bordello. Gold fixtures in the bathrooms, an infinity pool, marble columns with eagles on top, like some Roman emperor lived there.”

  “The Fuck Palace.” I’d heard Sonia Majeski use the term.

  “Oh, man, The Fuck Palace.” Alex smiled at the memory. “That was the cabana. Silk canopies. Mirrored ceilings and wide-screen porno.”

  “Sounds like you knew the place well.”

  “Like I said before, I was young and single.”

  “And horny,” I reminded him.

  “I forgot about your time in the seminary,” he shot back.

  I sipped at the second martini, sharp as a dagger in the throat. Next to us, a boisterous table of eight sang “Happy Birthday” in Spanish, then Portuguese, and finally Hebrew. They’d gone through four bottles of Cristal at $450 a whack.

  “You know a bunch of the guys who were there that night, right?” I asked.

  “Some of them, sure.”

  “So subpoena them. Put them under oath and see what they know.”

  “You’re talking about important men in this town. They have families now. Hell, some had families then. All of them are gonna have faulty memories.”

  “If you don’t want to mess with those guys, I will. I have some names from Sonia Majeski. You must have others. I’ll jump-start your investigation.”

  “Fishing expedition is more like it.”

  The steaks arrived—porterhouse for me, T-bone for Castiel. Round three of the martinis could not be far behind.

  “Jake, there’s no probable cause that a crime has been committed. You’ve got a runaway girl who probably started a new life, that’s all.”

  “A runaway girl who’s probably dead is more like it. Last seen headed to your pal’s house.”

  “Even if you could place the girl with Ziegler, so what? He liked her. He screwed her now and then. What’s his motive for killing her?”

  “Maybe she was going to scream ‘statutory rape.’ Maybe she witnessed something she shouldn’t have. Maybe it was an accident. Booze and drugs and a loaded gun.”

  “And maybe you’re gonna score for the wrong team again.”

  “Cheap shot, Alex.”

  “Maybe it’s a metaphor for your life. Scoring a touchdown for the opposition.”

  “Scored a safety,” I corrected him.

  Castiel knew just where to insert the needle. A long-ago game against the Jets in the snow and fog. I made a big hit on the kickoff and knocked the ball loose. Bodies were flying. I got there first and scooped it up, but somehow got turned around. Hey, I was playing with a concussion. I ran to the wrong end zone and cleverly spiked the ball. Two points for the Jets, we lose by one, and the headline on Monday said: “Wrong-Way Lassiter Dooms Fins.”

  Castiel was getting frustrated with me, and it was mutual. I decided to shake, not stir, him. “Why are you protecting Ziegler?”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Friendship or money?”

  He pointed his steak knife at me. “Don’t say anything you can’t back up, friend.”

  “You’re letting a pornographer and an old mobster call the shots. What turned you? The pussy in the old days or the campaign cash now?”

  “Goddammit!” Castiel shoved his plate aside. “Any other lawyer in town talked to me like that, I’d …”

  He let it hang there. Maybe he didn’t know what he would do. He pulled the napkin off his lap and tossed it on the table. He must have lost his appetite.

  “If you want to take me on,” he said, “bring it. I’ll unleash the dogs, and it won’t be a fair fight. You ever have a witness who lies, you ever take a fee from the fruits of a crime, I’ll have your ass. I’ve got two dozen investigators and a sitting Grand Jury. You want to fuck with me, Jake, you better bring an army.”

  Ray Decker sat at an outdoor table at Prime Italian, directly across the street from its sister restaurant, Prime One Twelve. He’d been munching a loaf of garlic bread, sopping in butter, and watching the State Attorney and the shyster put away steaks and martinis. He owed Lassiter big-time for messing him up and driving off in Ziegler’s Lincoln. He pictured himself coming up behind Lassiter and slamming him face-first into his shrimp cocktail.

  Decker had planned on only having a calamari appetizer, but he started salivating while eyeing those assholes across the street, so he ordered a bone-in rib eye, black and blue, for fifty-six bucks. Ziegler would yell about the expense report. Like a lot of rich pricks, Ziegler burned money on stupid shit for himself, while starving the people who worked for him. Decker had once seen his boss order a bottle of Screaming Eagle Cabernet for $4,500, all to impress some ambitious, tit-enhanced reality show hostess wannabe who would have blown him for a glass of Boone’s and a seven-episode gig.

  Decker studied the body language across the street. He considered himself an expert from his days as a detective. People say more with their bodies than with their mouths. There was an ease between Castiel and Lassiter. He expected that. Ziegler had told him the two guys were old friends. That’s what had concerned the boss. Could he trust the State Attorney?

  Decker wasn’t s
o sure. He hated all politicians. His old boss, the county sheriff, had rolled over instead of standing up for him. Thanks to Lassiter and a couple ACLU lawyers, Decker had been bounced from the force. As if exaggerating under oath and some rough stuff while making arrests were cause for firing.

  While chewing his calamari, Decker noticed the change in the body language across the street. Castiel’s shoulders got all stiff. He raised his voice. If it hadn’t been for the traffic on Ocean Drive, Decker probably could have heard him. Decker lifted a small pair of binoculars to his face. He could see the vein in Castiel’s neck throbbing. It got even better when the State Attorney pointed a steak knife at Lassiter, as if he wanted to stab him in the heart. Then Castiel tossed his napkin on the table, like a football ref throwing a penalty flag. He had a few more words with Lassiter, then signaled for the check.

  Ziegler would be pleased. Those two weren’t conspiring against him. Hell, they couldn’t make it through a meal together.

  Decker sat there a few more minutes. He wanted to see what car Lassiter was driving. The valet brought around a cream-colored Eldorado convertible. Mid-eighties, like some pimp or pusher would drive. It would be an easy car to tail. Not that Ziegler had told him to. This was strictly personal. He owed Lassiter a world of pain and intended to deliver it.

  That thought made Decker even hungrier. He wondered if he should order fried Oreo cookies with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

  24 The Kid Makes a Discovery

  The morning after Castiel picked up the dinner check—and, I hoped, indigestion—I gave two research assignments to my trusty nephew. When I first appointed him my unpaid law clerk, he asked just what lawyers did.

  “We play poker with ideas,” I said, a tad pompously.

  “Cool. Granny said all you did was push paper and tell lies.”

  I had already talked the case through with the boy while teaching him the finer points of a left-right combination on the heavy bag.

  “Find the biker who called himself ‘Snake’ and find Krista Larkin’s missing car,” I told Kip.

  “That’s it? A biker named ‘Snake’? You don’t want me to find Osama bin Laden’s body while I’m at it?”

  “C’mon, Kip. You’re a whiz on the computer. A lot better than me.”

  I dropped him off at the Tuttle-Biscayne computer lab. He promised to work hard, and I promised to teach him how to kick Carl Kountz in the nuts.

  I was stuck in the office the rest of the day. Interviewing new clients, paying bills, handling the routine paperwork that made me wish I’d chosen another career. Shrimping, maybe, like my old man. Or coaching football at a little college in New England.

  I kept replaying my conversation with Alex Castiel. I’d insulted him, and he’d lost his cool and threatened me. Maybe he’d slipped over to the dark side. Or maybe he was just playing it safe like every politico who avoids butting heads with the rich and powerful. And maybe he was right that I was pulling a Vallandigham.

  Clement Vallandigham was a lawyer who—like me—would go to great lengths for his clients. Defending a murder trial in the 1870s, Vallandigham tried to prove that the victim accidentally shot himself when drawing his gun. So the lawyer pulled the gun from his pocket, and bang. Shot himself. Vallandigham died, but on a brighter note, the jury acquitted his client.

  I wasn’t going to stop looking into Krista Larkin’s disappearance, but I would try to avoid shooting myself. Around midday, I called Amy, doubting she would talk to me. We hadn’t spoken since she scored a TKO against me on the beach with a flurry of girlie punches.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the whole truth when we first met,” I said, as soon as she answered.

  “No, my fault,” Amy said. “I shouldn’t have berated you for the way you used to be.”

  “I deserved it.” Competing to see who could bake the biggest humble pie. “The ‘grinning ape,’ you called me.”

  “That was the guy in the picture. If you were still that guy, you wouldn’t be trying to help me.”

  “So, a truce?”

  “Truce.” She chuckled. It was not a sound I was accustomed to hearing from her.

  I invited her to come over for dinner. A family dinner. This time, she said yes.

  In late afternoon, I signed up a new client. A guy charged with siphoning gas from a police cruiser. No, I don’t know why he chose that car. Or why he used a cigarette lighter instead of a flashlight in the darkness. Or how he’ll look once he gets his prosthetic nose.

  After a full day of upholding the Constitution in the ceaseless pursuit of justice, I headed home, listening to Billy Bob Thornton’s Boxmasters offer a deal to girlfriends everywhere: “I’ll give you a ring when you give me my balls back.”

  When I pulled up to the house, Csonka was sitting in the shade of the chinaberry tree, licking the claw of a land crab. He didn’t ask for melted butter or mustard sauce. I smacked the front door open with my shoulder, just like always, and entered the house. I heard feminine voices coming from my kitchen. Okay, one was feminine—Amy Larkin. The other was a whiskey and tobacco contralto.

  “Look what the cat drug in,” Granny greeted me.

  Cat being on her mind, what with another mess of catfish frying in an iron skillet.

  “Glad you could make it,” I said to Amy, who gave me a shy smile. Maybe she was embarrassed by the boxing match on the beach.

  She sat at the kitchen counter. No makeup I could detect, with that frosting of freckles across her nose. She wore a turquoise tank top and jeans, her hair tied back with a simple band.

  I told her about last night’s dinner with Castiel and his angry threats.

  She wrinkled her forehead and thought about it. “If the State Attorney won’t help, what about the U.S. Attorney?”

  “No jurisdiction without a federal crime.”

  “The local police, then?”

  “I can try. But the missing persons investigation was closed a long time ago.”

  “What about taking what we have to the Grand Jury.”

  “Great idea, but we’re just private citizens. Only the State Attorney can do that.”

  “And he wants to protect Ziegler, not prosecute him.”

  I didn’t debate the point.

  “You won’t give up, will you?” Amy asked, real concern in her voice.

  “Jake never gives up,” Granny volunteered, dropping balls of jalapeño-spiked cornmeal into a pot of oil. Deep-fried hush puppies. The required side dish to fried catfish, a meal she insisted on cooking at least three times a week. “Nobody scares him, neither.”

  Not true. A lot of people scare me. I just swallow the fear, and I don’t back down. As a result, I break a lot of dishes in the china shop.

  “I won’t give up,” I promised, “and we’ll find the truth.”

  That brought a warm smile from Amy, a look I hadn’t often seen.

  Granny shooed us out of the kitchen, so I took Amy to the backyard, where the sticky sweet aroma of mango trees hung in the air. Just as we settled onto the porch swing, the screen door opened and Kip joined us. Even though it was well past dark, he wore sunglasses, his hair spiked with gel. This week’s look.

  “Kip, this is Amy,” I said.

  He gave her a bashful look.

  Amy smiled and said, “Your uncle is helping me.”

  “I’m helping, too,” Kip said.

  “How’s that coming along?” I asked.

  “I tried to find the biker guy, Snake, but there’s like hundreds of guys with that nickname who’ve been in and out of prisons.”

  “Thank you for trying,” Amy said.

  “No problem.” He stared at the tops of his bare feet.

  “What else, Kip?” I knew that look.

  “I found some other stuff, but I don’t think it’s good. In fact, I think it’s really bad.”

  “What’s that?” Amy asked, her body suddenly rigid.

  “Your sister’s car. I found it at the bottom of a canal.”


  25 Mood Swings

  Kip was doing the talking; Amy and I, the listening. Granny stayed in the kitchen, sprinkling cinnamon on her famous sweet potato pie.

  “Right after your sister went missing,” Kip said, looking at Amy, “the cops checked other departments for abandoned cars. Didn’t find anything.”

  Amy clutched her left wrist with her right hand, her body rigid.

  “It’s a lot easier to now,” Kip continued. “Recovered-car databases are all on the Internet, and that’s how I found it. Six years ago, during a drought, an airboat hit a chunk of metal in a canal. It was the roof of a car. Take a look, Uncle Jake.”

  He handed over a thick document with the logo of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. “Consolidated Report: Abandoned Motor Vehicles, 2000–2005.” I thumbed through the pages until I came to an item Kip had underlined. The canal was in the Everglades about fifty miles due west of Miami, just before Tamiami Trail angles north into the Big Cypress National Preserve. Miccosukee Reservation land.

  The canal ran along a dirt road that dead-ended at a levee. Anyone driving along there was either seriously lost or didn’t want to be found. The car was pulled from the water by Miccosukee police, who inventoried it. No bodies, no bones. No suitcases or personal effects. The license plate was missing, but the vehicle identification number was intact. It matched a 1988 Honda registered to Krista Larkin, which is how Kip had cross-referenced it.

  It was one of a few thousand cars pulled from Florida waterways each year. Some people find it cheaper to dump a car than have it towed away. The Miccosukee police didn’t make a big deal about the Honda, which ended its life in a landfill after being dragged from the water.

  Amy wrapped her arms around the boy and squeezed hard. Her body trembled, or maybe both their bodies did. She turned to me. “Krista’s car with no license plate. As if someone wanted to hide any trace of her.”