Lassiter

by Paul Levine

  “That would be my guess,” I said, unable to muster anything positive. A young woman missing eighteen years, her car buried. The words “foul play” did not seem quite foul enough to describe what likely happened.

  Now we had evidence of a possible homicide. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed a number. When Castiel answered, I said, “Alex, I think you’re gonna want to open a Grand Jury investigation.”

  I told him what Kip had found and waited for his congratulations.

  “So what do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “Dredge the canal, for starters.”

  “If it’s on Miccosukee land, I’ve got no jurisdiction.”

  “But you can ask the Mics to do it. Call their chief of police.”

  He paused a moment before speaking. “You have no skeleton, right?”

  “That’s why I want you to dredge!”

  “Any forensic evidence found in the car?”

  “No, but they didn’t treat it as a crime scene. It was just another sunken car.”

  “How long after Krista’s disappearance did the car go into the water?”

  “No way to know.”

  “Maybe Krista sold the car and the new owner dumped it there. Or a thief did it. Or a tow truck driver. Whatever, you’ve got no more tonight than you did yesterday.”

  “Goddammit, Alex! Who you working for? The people or Charlie Ziegler?”

  The phone clicked off. Amy must have read it in my face. Before I could say a word, her look changed. In a matter of moments, she had gone from mournful to hopeful to angry.

  “Ziegler owns your friend.” She made it sound like my fault.

  “So it would appear.” It had taken a lot for me to get to that point, but the evidence against Alex just kept piling up.

  “And all your talk was just hot air.”

  “My talk?”

  “ ‘I have street savvy. Experience. Contacts.’ ” Her voice became even more sarcastic. “ ‘The State Attorney is a friend of mine.’ ”

  “Okay, Alex didn’t pan out. But there’s another possibility.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “If Castiel is corrupt, there’s a statewide agency that can help us. Investigating him could be the key to opening an inquiry into Krista’s disappearance.”

  “Sounds like a long shot.”

  “But I’d like to try. It’s the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. I’ll call tomorrow.”

  “I suppose you have contacts there, too.”

  As a practitioner of sarcasm, I hate when it’s used on me. “No, Amy, I don’t have contacts there.”

  “So basically, you’re just throwing darts, hoping something will stick.”

  “There’s also a statewide prosecutor in Tallahassee. He investigates public corruption.”

  “You know the guy?”

  “I’ve met him. We’ve talked.” Technically, that was true. I’d listened to him give a talk at a Miami Beach Bar luncheon, and afterward I’d said, “Nice job,” and he said, “Thanks.”

  “You’ve got nothing. It’s all bullshit.”

  Her tone turning cold again, just as it had been the day we met.

  “C’mon, Amy. Hang with me on this.”

  “I’m wasting my time with you.”

  “Amy, I’m concerned about you,” I said, gently. “Your mood seems to …”

  “What!”

  “Swing. Up, down, then falls off a cliff.”

  “Screw that! Are you my shrink?”

  “You’re under a lot of stress.”

  “Maybe you should have been a shrink. You’re not much of a lawyer.” Her voice as hard as a cinder block.

  I decided to shut up and let her slug me with her words.

  “As a matter of fact, you’re a really lousy lawyer, and I’m firing you.”

  “You can’t stop me from investigating your sister’s disappearance. So let’s chill tonight, and maybe tomorrow you’ll see things differently. Maybe—”

  “I can take care of Ziegler myself.”

  “What does that mean? ‘Take care of.’ ”

  “Just stay out of my way, okay, Lassiter?”

  She hopped off the porch and circled the house to her car, never saying good-bye, good night, or sleep tight.

  26 A Hard Night’s Sleep

  The metronomic swoosh of the bedroom ceiling fan usually puts me to sleep.

  Not tonight.

  I couldn’t get comfortable. Not while on my back with a pillow tucked under a bum knee. Not on my side. Not on my stomach.

  I listened to the wind rustle the palm fronds outside my bedroom window. I listened to a police siren wail away on Douglas Road. I listened to the creaks and moans of the old house.

  I was thinking about Amy.

  We should have been on the same side. Amy felt guilty about telling her sister that dear old stepmom planned a religious intervention, prompting Krista to run away. I felt guilty for delivering Krista into the lion’s den. Being fired meant little. I needed to find Krista Larkin for myself, as much as for Amy.

  I considered for the hundredth time the actions—or inactions—of Alex Castiel. Why was he protecting a scumbag like Charlie Ziegler? What did he get out of it? I’m not naive. I know how the game is played downtown where power and money form an unholy alliance. But I’ve been pals with Alex a long time and, until now, I’d never seen anything to make me think he was dishonest. Ambitious, yes. Corrupt, no.

  I got out of bed and padded barefoot to the kitchen. I was wearing my nighttime fashion statement, ancient Miami Dolphins boxer shorts, with the logo of Flipper leaping through hoops. I pulled a liter bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the cupboard. Poured three fingers in a glass. Lassiter-size fingers, including two broken knuckles. Skipped the ice.

  Went back to the bedroom, tucked myself in. I heard more nighttime sounds. Crickets or some other clickety-clack insects outside. A car engine on my street. Then I must have dozed off.

  An hour later, or maybe it was five seconds, Csonka started barking. Sometimes he howls at the possum who climbs into my garbage can. Sometimes at the green parrots who escaped from the zoo during a hurricane. And sometimes he turns guard dog. Once, he captured some sky-high tweaker who pried open the jalousie windows of a rear bathroom and foolishly crawled inside. I had to pull the beast off the guy’s butt.

  Now I heard Csonka’s claws scratching at the terrazzo as he scrambled down the corridor to my bedroom. He slid around the corner, propped his forelegs on my bed, wailed, and slobbered on me.

  I got out of bed and followed Csonka down the corridor. I checked Kip’s bedroom first. Sound asleep. I could hear Granny’s snoring from outside her door. After her bedtime coffee cup filled with what she called “rye likker,” the woman could sleep through a squall on a dinghy.

  Outside, a car engine was starting up. I headed for the foyer and found the front door open a foot or so. I grabbed a baseball bat from an umbrella stand and barreled outside. Moonless night. Lights off, the car was already moving toward the intersection of Douglas Road. I couldn’t see the driver. I couldn’t even tell the car’s make or model. It screeched around the corner, heading north toward Dixie Highway, and I stood there in my boxers, holding my baseball bat, watching Csonka take a leak against the chinaberry tree. After a moment, I lowered my shorts and did the same.

  27 No One Breaks Into the Grand Jury

  The next morning, I drove north on Dixie Highway, headed to the office. On the radio, Leonard Cohen was complaining that there “ain’t no cure for love.”

  I’d walked around the street, asking a couple neighbors if they’d seen anyone lurking in the hibiscus hedges during the night. But no one had. So who the hell had it been? A random intruder or someone with a connection to Krista’s case?

  As I pulled onto I-95, I noticed a gray Hummer H2 behind me. Big as a battleship, it would have been hard to miss. I’d already seen it on Sunset Drive earlier this morning when I stopped at a bakery for coffee and a pastelito de
guayaba.

  Was I getting paranoid? First the Escalade owned by a guy in prison. And now this behemoth? Made as much sense as tailing someone in a Rose Bowl float.

  I stayed in the right-hand lane in order to take the exit for the flyover to the MacArthur Causeway. The Hummer was directly behind me.

  I was looking in the rearview mirror, trying to make out the driver’s face, when my cell phone rang.

  “Jake, get your ass over to the Grand Jury chambers now!” Castiel’s voice.

  “You’ve changed your mind? You’re bringing Amy’s case up?”

  “Your crazy client just chained herself to the door. If you don’t get her out of here, I’m gonna have her arrested.”

  I swung left out of the exit lane, barely missing the sand-filled barricades. The Hummer braked but couldn’t make the turn Lost you, pal. Whoever the hell you are.

  Twenty-three citizens, good and true, make up the Grand Jury. They hear evidence presented by the State Attorney and render an indictment if they determine there is probable cause that a suspect committed a crime. It takes fourteen votes to indict, and the jurors usually do whatever the prosecutor tells them to. It’s an old expression, but still true: a Grand Jury will indict a ham sandwich. Not, however, if the State Attorney fails to bring the meat and bread to their chambers.

  The jurors gather in the civil courthouse downtown, an eighty-year-old limestone tower shaped like a wedding cake topped by a pyramid. In the winter, turkey buzzards circle the parapet near the peak of the building, inspiring jokes about predators in feathers above and Armani below. A colorful mural of old Florida is painted on the ceiling of the lobby. Who knew that Native American tribes were overjoyed to find Spanish sailors with muskets landing on the beaches?

  I hopped into a balky elevator, surrounded by a passel of lawyers. They were jabbering about prosecutors who cheated, judges who fell asleep, and clients who don’t pay their bills. Lawyers are great whiners.

  I heard the commotion as I stepped into the corridor near the door to the Grand Jury chambers. A woman shouting.

  “The State Attorney is corrupt! Can you hear me in there?”

  A man shouting back, “Quiet down, now!”

  The woman was a frantic Amy Larkin.

  The man was a pissed-off Miami cop.

  Three other cops formed a bulwark between them and the passersby in the corridor. One more guy in uniform and they’d have enough for a basketball team. That’s the thing about cops. They travel in flocks, like the buzzards. On the floor were a pair of busted handcuffs and a three-foot-long bolt cutter. Amy had cuffed herself to the door. The cops had snapped off the cuffs, but now Amy was staging a one woman sit-in.

  “Investigate!” Amy chanted. “Investigate! Investigate!”

  Castiel came up behind me. “You’ve got exactly thirty seconds to get her out of here or she’s going to jail.”

  “Amy, c’mon, let’s go,” I said, shouldering my way through the phalanx of cops. She was sitting cross-legged, arms folded across her chest, her back against the wall. A Gandhi pose, daring the constabulary to pick her up and carry her out.

  “I want to testify. Testify!”

  “I swear I’ll have her Baker-acted,” Castiel said. “Lock her in the loony bin.”

  “Amy, c’mon,” I said. “No one breaks into the Grand Jury.”

  “Where is justice? Where is justice for my sister?”

  “Amy, it’s over,” I said. “You made your point.”

  “Charlie Ziegler killed Krista! If you won’t do something about it, I will.”

  “All right, enough,” the first cop said, taking a step toward her.

  I held up a hand, like a guard at an intersection. “Just a few seconds, okay?”

  He swatted my hand away, and without my telling it to, my arm shot out, and I grabbed his wrist. He didn’t pull away. He just looked at me. Hard. The look seemed to come naturally. He was three inches shorter than me but just as heavy, with a body builder’s torso. A lot of cops are into steroids and HGH, and this guy made Barry Bonds look puny.

  “You don’t lay a hand on a peace officer,” he said.

  I let go of his wrist but stayed put between him and Amy.

  “Peace officer? Who the fuck are you, John Wayne?”

  “And you don’t use profanity in a public building.”

  “Fine. Let’s go outside. But let me get her out of here first.”

  “We’re taking her in. She’s refusing a lawful instruction by a peace officer.”

  Peace officer, again. Going all True Grit on me.

  “I’m only going to ask you once, sir.” His voice cranked up a notch. “Move!”

  “ ‘Move’ is not a question.”

  “Jake, you’re crazier than your client. Do what he says.” Castiel crashing our party.

  “Amy, please come with me or we’re both going to jail,” I said.

  “Miami cops are dirty!” she shouted.

  “That’s it,” the beefy cop said. He pushed me aside, and I pushed him back. Which is when two of his pals slammed me, face-first, against the wall. Another grabbed my right arm and twisted it behind my back. A fourth cop, with nothing else to do, twisted my left arm to meet my right. That sent a lightning bolt through my shoulder. I’d had rotator cuff surgery back in my playing days, and the joint still bothers me when I do something foolish like hail a cab, shoot the bird, or get shackled.

  The cops tried to get their handcuffs off their belts, which resulted in a jangling that resembled a bell choir. That gave me the chance to wrestle one arm free. Hercules unbound, I wheeled around, and the first cop zapped me in the chest with his Taser.

  My knees turned to jelly, but I didn’t fall. The second blast made me claw the air, searching for something to grab on to. I hit the floor, my legs splayed, my feet twitching. My ears were humming with static, so I barely heard Castiel. “Wrong way, Lassiter. Wrong way, again.”

  28 The Pork Barn

  Charlie Ziegler did not want to be on a porn set. He’d made his movies, done his blow, banged his girls, and was smart enough to bail out when amateur video hit the market, and every kid with a Wal-Mart camera and an uninhibited girlfriend became a porn director. Doubly smart, because he sold the production end of the business for a bundle, while hanging on to the library and the low-overhead, high-profit distribution network.

  Today, Ziegler drove to a dingy warehouse in the crotch of pavement where the turnpike met I-95. Once it had been his production office and soundstage. Today he came to see Leonard “Lens” Newsome, the finest porn cinematographer who ever lived. The man could make a pop shot—spouting beads of jism—look like the Trevi Fountain.

  Lens had called last night.

  “Some old shit’s hit the fan, Charlie, and I don’t wanna talk about it on the phone.”

  Which is what brought Ziegler to the pork barn on a stormy afternoon when he should have been casting Texaz Hold ’Em & Strip ’Em, a TV game show based on strip poker.

  Much was still familiar. The crew dragging equipment carts, wheels clacking across concrete slabs. The smell of sawdust and fresh paint. Cables snaking along the floor, lights blazing, a makeshift dressing room with lighted mirrors, the girls pasting on their eyelashes. A metallic, air-conditioned chill in the air, goose bumps everywhere, nipples poking through flimsy lingerie.

  Some things had changed, Ziegler knew. OSHA inspections, condoms, accounting departments with payroll deductions for taxes. Taxes! The party had become a business.

  The crew looked younger, but maybe he had gotten older. Unshaven kids, earbuds plugged into their iPods, zoning out on the latest shit music.

  Today’s set was a bedroom—big surprise—propped up on a platform of two-by-fours. Klieg lights were just clicking off, a sizzle in the air. Leonard Newsome bent over awkwardly and struggled getting down from the platform. A touch of arthritis, maybe. His beard had gone silver, his thin hair tied back in a ponytail.

  Time, Ziegler thought, is a ball-b
usting mistress who will bend your body and break your will.

  “Lens, how they hanging?”

  “Lemme buy you some coffee, Charlie.” Newsome directed him to what passed for a craft service table. A sheet of plywood balanced on two sawhorses. A stained coffeemaker and a basket of pretzels. Two actresses in thongs and open bathrobes were sipping coffee and whining about an actor with a bent penis.

  “Like it wants to sneak around the corner, but I don’t have a corner.”

  “I know him,” the other one said. “They call him ‘Roto Rooter.’ ”

  “Girls, why doncha go out for a smoke?” Leonard told them.

  “Smoke? Do I look like I’d put a cigarette in my mouth?”

  Lens rolled his eyes but kept quiet. The girls took off, shooting dirty looks at the men.

  “What’s up, Lens?” Ziegler poured himself some coffee that could flush a clogged drain.

  “A woman showed up at my condo yesterday asking about a girl from the old days.”

  “Amy Larkin, looking for her sister?”

  Lens nodded. “I was playing pinochle in the card room. I don’t even know how she found me.”

  “The woman’s an insurance investigator, Lens. She’s not stupid.”

  “No shit. She asked what I remembered about Krista.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “Told her, too many years. Too many girls.”

  “Thanks, Lens.”

  “Hell, it’s damn near true. I hardly remember any of them unless they gave me a dose.”

  “What else she want to know?”

  “That’s where it got hairy. Wondered if you ever shot snuff films.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Told her, hell, no, not your style. Asked if I ever went to your house for parties, and I said sure. Asked who else was there, and I said I’m just a photographer. I don’t see anything that’s not in the lens.”

  “That end it?”

  “She wanted to look at all the old films and videos, track down actors who worked with her sister. I told her there were a couple thousand titles and no one ever used their real names. It’d be like looking for a pubic hair in a haystack.”