Lassiter

by Paul Levine

  “She say where they were going?”

  “California, like all the dreamers. When it was clear I couldn’t stop her, I gave her some cash plus the names of a couple guys in the business in the San Fernando Valley.”

  I couldn’t help but think of myself, giving Krista a few hundred bucks and sending her back to Ziegler. I didn’t like the parallel.

  “I told her to call when she got there,” Ziegler said, draining his sake and looking at me with forlorn eyes. “I never saw Krista or heard from her again. She never contacted my guys out there, either. I checked.”

  I studied him a moment, using my bullshit detector. Figuring Ziegler lied so often, he was world class. “Why didn’t you tell the cops that Krista rode into the sunset with the biker?”

  He refilled my cup with what I calculated to be about $85 worth of sake. “Anytime she wanted, Krista could have caused trouble for me. You’re gonna think I’m a dick for saying this …”

  “Too late.”

  “Last thing I wanted was for the two of them to get picked up somewhere with thirty pounds of crank in Snake’s saddlebags. They’d swing some deal, get immunity for nailing me. Statutory rape. Child porn. Racketeering. To be honest, Lassiter, it was in my interest for the two of them to disappear.”

  The story was plausible, but most good lies are. “This Snake have a real name?”

  “Aldrin, like the astronaut. Can’t remember his first name, but you can check with the Corrections Department. He’s the kind of guy who’s either in prison or in between prisons.”

  Or dead, I thought. Along with whoever is foolish enough to hop on a bike with him and head west.

  “Looking back now, I’ve got a lot of remorse,” Ziegler said, “and I’ve been thinking about how to make it right.”

  “Yeah?”

  “How about if I set up a missing persons fund? I’ll pay your client a hundred grand. She can do whatever she wants with it. Look for Aldrin. Take ads on craigslist. Or go back to Ohio and get on with her life.”

  Buying redemption, I thought, just like his charitable contributions. Or just paying Amy to go away. Either way, he’d be off the hook.

  Ziegler drained the last of the sake from the Yamagata Prefecture. “I’ll cover your legal fees, too. How does thirty grand sound?”

  “Like a bribe, and not a very big one.”

  “C’mon, Lassiter. I’m trying to help you both out.”

  “You just want me off your ass.”

  “You want my honest opinion?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “I don’t know if Snake killed her or she O.D.’d or got hit by a truck outside Amarillo,” Ziegler said. “But if she’d gotten back into the business, I’d have heard about it. If she was broke and in trouble, she would have called me for help. If she was doing okay, at some point, she would have called her sister.”

  “What you’re saying, there’s no use our searching for her.”

  Ziegler looked off into space, and I could swear I saw tears welling. “The more I’ve thought about it, Lassiter, the more certain I’ve become. Krista’s dead. Has to be. But I swear to God I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  I studied him for a long moment. Maybe I’d lost my edge, but the son-of-a-bitch looked for all the world like a man telling the truth.

  32 The Missing Client

  I left Ziegler’s house around midnight. I wanted to tell Amy we had a lead on Snake Aldrin, so I risked waking her, but no answer. We hadn’t spoken since the cops hauled us away from the Grand Jury, and I was worried.

  Where the hell is she?

  The rain had stopped and the asphalt shimmered like polished obsidian in the glow of the streetlights. I banged the front door open and walked into my dark house. I heard snoring from Granny’s bedroom. Csonka lay on the living room tile, under a ceiling fan. He was snoring, too, hind legs twitching. Probably dreaming of chasing a lady bulldog through Bayfront Park.

  A smack-smack-thud was coming from the backyard. I sneaked a peek and saw Kip, hitting the heavy bag. Rapid-fire combinations. Punch-punch-kick. Harder and faster than earlier in the evening. One flurry after another, matchstick arms lathered in sweat. Furious in his intensity. Watching him, I felt waves of heat inside me. I guess that’s what unbridled love feels like.

  I wasn’t about to order him to go to bed. Let him be tired and sore tomorrow. Let him carry some self-confidence to school along with his algebra book.

  I tried Amy’s cell early the next morning, but the call went directly to voicemail. I thought about Ziegler’s offer. Would Amy ask my opinion? I didn’t want her to take the money and run. I wanted a stab at finding Snake, now that we had his real name. But was I able to give solid advice? Years ago, I’d failed Krista. Maybe now I was trying too hard to make it up to her sister.

  The spicy aroma of carne asada greeted me as I walked up the stairs to my office. Jorge was already preparing lunch at Havana Banana. I sneaked past Cindy while she was on the phone, arguing with the repairman who could not seem to find parts for my black-and-white Edsel of a photocopy machine.

  Still no return call, so I rang the motel on South Dixie Highway where Amy was staying.

  “Checked out early this morning.” The male desk clerk spoke with a backwoods twang.

  “You sure?” I sensed trouble the way seabirds sense an oncoming storm.

  “Tall, pretty girl. One suitcase. Paid cash.”

  “Did she leave a message for Jake Lassiter?”

  “No messages. No smiles. Bit of a hurry.”

  “No forwarding address?”

  “Ain’t the post office. She was driving a car with Ohio plates, if that helps.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “ ‘Birthplace of Aviation.’ ”

  “What?”

  “On the plates. The Ohio slogan.”

  “Right.”

  “ ‘Open for Business.’ That’s West Virginia.” I heard him chuckle. “I see a lot of states passing through here.”

  The clerk rambled on about the Ocean State, the Elevated State, and the Garden State while I tried to process the information about Amy.

  Where did she go? Why won’t she return my calls?

  “When she paid the bill, did she say anything at all?” I asked.

  “Sure, she asked for directions.”

  “What! Why didn’t you say so?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “Where? Where’d she want to go?”

  “Shooting range. She asked where she could go for target practice.”

  33 Target Practice

  With the top down on my old buggy, tiny black gnats were dying squishy deaths, plastered against my face and ears. I kept the needle at 75, roaring west on Tamiami Trail. I was headed to the Trail Glades Range to catch up with Amy. I considered just why she wanted to take target practice, and every possible scenario ended with Charlie Ziegler facedown in a pool of blood.

  I floored the accelerator, and my old warhorse responded, albeit two seconds after spurs had been applied to horseflesh. I passed squat one-story strip malls, with their discount dentists, pedicurists, and dog kennels. Two egrets flying overhead were reminders that we were in the Everglades, or what used to be the ’Glades, before draining and filling. Now, ticky-tack housing developments moved farther from the city and deeper into the wetlands.

  The air was heavy with moisture, the heat stifling. No hint of the beach breeze just twenty-five miles to the east. Traffic was light. Thanks to the desk clerk, I couldn’t stop looking for out-of-state plates. “Home on the Range” from Kansas, “Live Free or Die” from New Hampshire, “Land of Enchantment” from New Mexico.

  The C.D. player was turned up full blast, Tom Russell singing “Tonight We Ride” over the wail of the wind.

  “We’ll skin ole Pancho Villa, make chaps out of his hide.”

  A tale of good-natured violence, the song speaks longingly of scalping, whoring, rustling, and robbery. Needless to say, it
’s one of my favorites.

  About a mile from the range, I caught sight of an old Chevy Impala with whitewall gangsta tires, Superfly headlights, and a purple, metal-flake paint job. Hard to miss, especially since I’d seen it pull onto the MacArthur Causeway behind me back on South Beach.

  I hit the brakes and slid into a gas station. The Impala sailed past me, and I tore out after it. Within moments, we were both doing 85 on the straight stretch of pavement that heads into the slough and all the way to Naples. I got close enough to make out the Florida plate—Sunshine State—picked up a pen, and scribbled the number on my arm.

  That made three different cars tailing me. The Escalade was owned by a federal inmate. I never got the plate number of the Hummer, and now a souped-up Impala. It made no sense.

  I slowed just before Krome Avenue, the old Eldo kicking up a plume of dust as I skidded into the parking lot of the gun range. The Impala kept going west.

  I parked next to a black sedan and vaulted out of my car without opening the door, just the way Magnum, P.I., used to do. I could hear the pop-pop of small-arms fire, a dozen different calibers, loud enough to simulate combat.

  Once inside the clubhouse, I scanned the outdoor range through a large window. There were only a handful of shooters.

  Amy Larkin stood at a shooting station, staring at a target that had been set about twenty-five feet away. She held a small gun in a two-handed grip, knees slightly bent, ear protectors in place. She fired. Waited. Fired again. From this distance, I couldn’t tell if she’d punched a bull’s-eye or winged an egret flying over the slough. She was taking her time. Five or six seconds between shots.

  “You the husband?”

  I turned. The man had a graying brush cut and a big body. His polo shirt’s logo said, “Range Master.”

  “Come again?”

  “Calamity Jane out there.” The man pointed at Amy, who reset her feet and fired another shot.

  “No. Why?”

  “Boyfriend, then?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  The guy folded his arms across his chest. I figured him for an ex-cop who missed the work. “When a woman looks like she’s been crying all night and starts taking target practice first thing in the morning, it usually means she caught her man cheating. If he shows up, well, that’s when I intervene.”

  “I’m her lawyer.”

  He studied me a second, and I must have passed his cop’s lie-detector test. “Tell her not to try and shoot anyone. She can’t hit shit, anyway.”

  I looked up and saw Amy zipping her gun into a nylon pouch. In a moment, she was headed along the path to the parking lot. I headed out to meet her.

  When I approached, she was standing behind my Eldo ragtop, staring at my personalized license plate: JUSTICE?

  Yeah. With a question mark. I’m not nearly as sure of things as I used to be.

  “Amy, what’s going on?”

  She turned to face me. “Are you asking as my lawyer or Ziegler’s?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Where were you last night?”

  Sounding like the cheated-on spouse the range master imagined. “At Charlie Ziegler’s, but I think you know that. Were you following me or spying on him?”

  “How much did Ziegler pay you to sell me out?”

  “He offered thirty thousand.”

  “Cheap,” she said.

  “That’s what I thought.” I told her the rest. One hundred thousand dollars if she wanted to close up shop and go home.

  “What’s he paying you under the table to get me to go along?” Her eyes had gone cold.

  “Nothing. And you can have my thirty thousand, too.”

  “How can I believe you when you’re working for Ziegler now?”

  “I went there to learn whatever I could. For you. He denied killing Krista and made the offer.”

  “And now he’s waiting for my answer?”

  I nodded.

  She whipped out the gun, a little Sig Sauer. “Tell him this.” She steadied the pistol with both hands, then popped a shot into the meat of my car’s left front tire. Maybe she was a shitty shot on the range, but from three feet, she was deadly. The tire wheezed in pain.

  “I’ll bet you have a spare,” she said.

  “I do.”

  Her arm jumping a bit, she put a shell into the right front tire, the gunshot lost in the echo of a hundred other rounds. My wounded Eldo now looking like Ben-Hur’s chariot.

  “Amy, please put the gun down.”

  She aimed at my gut, a wider target than those steel-belted radials.

  “I don’t know why I trusted you,” she said. “I should have gone after Ziegler straight off.”

  “Don’t do this. I’ve got half a dozen new ideas I haven’t even discussed with you.” In fact, I had one, but half a dozen seemed more promising.

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I’ve got Snake’s real name. It’s Aldrin. He could be the key to—”

  “Too late, Jake. I’m done.” She started backing up toward her car.

  “The second you’re out of sight, I’ll call the cops.”

  “I’ll bet you would. You wore a wire and ratted out a client once, didn’t you?”

  “What about your religious beliefs? ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ”

  “Maybe I’m wrong and you’re right. The universe is chaos. There’s no all-seeing God to reward the just and punish the wicked.”

  Why’d she listen to me about that? Nobody listens to me.

  “Let’s go talk to someone, Amy. A counselor, maybe.”

  “A shrink, you mean. Isn’t that what your friend Castiel threatened? Commit me to the loony bin. Are you all in this together?”

  Her gun hand was trembling, her index finger still on the trigger. I measured the distance between us, figured two steps, then a leap to reach her.

  “Try it, I’ll shoot you in the face,” she said, reading my mind.

  With that, she fired a third shot, puncturing the right rear tire. The tire wheezed like a lung shot through-and-through, and I stayed frozen in place.

  34 Ratting Out the Client

  I watched Amy drive off in her Toyota with Ohio plates. Birthplace of Aviation, indeed.

  I wanted to call 9-1-1.

  But do I say she’s armed and dangerous?

  No way I could ask a cop to stop her without warning about her gun. But what then? A jittery cop, an unstable woman with a gun. Disaster.

  The sun pounding me with waves of tropical heat, I took out my cell and dialed a number.

  “You got an answer to my offer?” Ziegler said, when he came on the line.

  “Yeah. Amy would rather empty a clip into your gut than take your money.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “She’s got a gun, Ziegler, and she might be headed your way. But I’m telling you right now, if you or Decker or anyone else harms her, I’m coming after you.”

  “Are you insane? She takes a pop at me, I got a right to take her out.”

  “Lots of things you can do short of that. Lock down your building. Block her car when she pulls into your garage. Or if she gets into the building, seal the elevator.”

  “This is what I get for trying to work with you? You fucked up big-time.”

  And here I thought I’d get a big thanks for warning him. There was a pause on the line before Ziegler said, “Where are you? What’s all that noise?”

  “The gun range on the Trail.”

  “Get your ass over here and keep your lunatic client away from me.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got flat tires. Plural.”

  “That happens to you a lot, doesn’t it, jerkoff?”

  He hung up on me and I quickly dialed Castiel’s private number.

  The State Attorney calmly told me he would get Coral Gables P.D. to send a team to Ziegler’s building. There’d be a hostage negotiator, someone to talk to Amy. No trigger-happy rookies. I thanked him, and he said he would also dispatch
a county truck to tow my car. I thanked him again.

  Then he told me off. “Dammit, Jake, I warned you. If anyone gets hurt, I’ll hold you responsible.”

  This time, I didn’t thank him. “You’ve got it ass-backwards, Alex. I handed you evidence, but you wouldn’t do a thing. You wouldn’t even ask the Miccosukee cops to dredge the canal. Amy smells cover-up, and so do I.”

  “Let it go, Jake. For fuck’s sake, let it go.”

  “To hell with that. I’m calling Tallahassee. Let the A.G. investigate Ziegler and look up your butt while he’s at it.”

  “Take your best shot, pal.”

  The phone clicked off and I stood there in the damp midday heat, cursing at my old friend. A mosquito buzzed around my neck, and I swatted the little bastard, squashing him, and leaving a speck of blood in the palm of my hand.

  I slid back into my wounded car and pulled up the top to get out of the sun. The tow truck should be here soon. I keyed the ignition and turned on the A/C. Thank God for air-conditioning. If not for the know-how of Mr. Willis Carrier—a native of Buffalo!—South Florida would be unlivable. On the C.D. player, Bob Dylan delivered the problematic news that “beyond here lies nothin’,” advising folks there’s no reward in the Great Beyond.

  After twenty minutes, I dozed off. I don’t know how long I was out because the next thing I remember, the driver’s door flew open.

  I toppled half out of the Eldo. The other half was helped—none too gently—by Ray Decker.

  “Hello, dickwad,” he greeted me.

  He hoisted me to my feet and I saw the blur of a fist a millisecond before it hit my jaw. I crumpled against the side of my car and slid to the ground. I could no longer hear the gunfire. Instead, the bells of Notre Dame Cathedral began peeling.

  “Asshole!” Decker, standing over me.

  I was neither brave enough nor stupid enough to try to stand while comets blazed across a night sky. Instead, I curled into the fetal position, sucked in air, and tried to clear my head.

  Decker kicked me in the back. “That’s for fucking up Charlie’s car.”