Lassiter

by Paul Levine

  “Let me know when you find it.”

  He flicked the lighter, watched the orange flame, then snapped the top shut. “I’d be amenable to Manslaughter, seven to ten years.”

  That caught me by surprise. I wondered what happened to: “I’m taking her down, and I don’t give a shit if I take you down with her.”

  “Strange, you making this offer right before Charlie Ziegler is gonna testify.”

  “Got nothing to do with him.”

  “Sure it does. He’s out of control.”

  “I met with him last night. He’s strong and steady. Sticking to his testimony.”

  “That could have been the Châteauneuf-du-Pape talking.” I was showing off, letting him know I wasn’t clueless about his dinner date.

  From the door behind the bench, the bailiff poked his head into the courtroom, checked us out, and said, “Mr. Castiel, if you’re gonna smoke that thing, I’ll get the air freshener.”

  “It’s okay, Oscar.” Castiel slipped the cigar back into his pocket. The bailiff left and Castiel turned back to me. “Charlie feels remorse for whatever happened to Krista Larkin. Amy showing up brought it all back to him. Messed him up.”

  “Why not just admit it, Alex? You don’t trust Ziegler. You’re scared shitless of what he’s gonna say.”

  “The matching bullets are enough for conviction. I don’t need Charlie.”

  “Fine. Don’t call him.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, old buddy?”

  “You bet. In closing argument, I’d remind the jury that you promised an eyewitness. Or maybe I’ll call Ziegler on my case. Helluva chess match, Alex.”

  “What about it, Jake? Will you recommend your client take the plea?”

  “Amy swears she didn’t shoot Perlow. Whenever I can avoid it, I try not to send innocent people to prison.”

  Castiel sighed and looked genuinely sad for his old buddy, namely me. “So many bad choices.”

  “Maybe, but they’re my choices.”

  “You’re gonna lose, and Larkin’s gonna get new lawyers. They’ll file an appeal claiming ineffective assistance of counsel, and you’ll be in the papers.”

  “My clients don’t read the papers.”

  Another click of the lighter, the flame dancing. Castiel’s pyromaniacal habit was getting on my nerves. “Just looking out for you, Jake. Didn’t expect you to listen.”

  “You’re saying I should learn from Perlow? First, save myself.”

  “It’s not bad advice. Uncle Max started telling me that when I was nine years old. Lansky had been telling him that for thirty years.”

  I pondered his words. The me-first philosophy had been passed from gangster to gangster to prosecutor. Nothing out of line about that in Castiel’s world. He’s the one who believed that life is a constant struggle of the valiant side versus the dark side. Ever since that first day in his office, I’d been wondering which team was winning in the battle for Castiel’s soul.

  60 Living a Lie

  Castiel wished me bad luck and left. In a few minutes, the courtroom would be open for business. Nothing good would happen this afternoon. It seldom does on the state’s side of the case. One of Ziegler’s employees would take the stand. She was yet another “stalking witness,” having seen Amy lurking in his office building lobby a few days before the shooting. Then a lab tech would testify that shoeprints in the mud of a construction site next to Ziegler’s house matched the running shoes found in Amy’s motel room. Finally, a cop would tell the jury about Amy’s stunt outside the Grand Jury chambers. The maraschino cherry on top of that sundae would be her threat: “Charlie Ziegler killed Krista! If you won’t do something about it, I will.” Like I said, not a great day for the defense.

  Tomorrow, the courthouse would be dark. Budget woes stopping the wheels of justice two days each month. The following day, Charlie Ziegler would say his piece. When he finished, the case would either be won or lost.

  I started cleaning up the defense table, returning useless papers to their folders. That’s when I spotted Castiel’s solid gold cigarette lighter. He’d left it on the defense table. I flipped it open. Inside was an inscription:

  “Para el Judio Maravilloso, del Mulato Lindo.”

  “To the marvelous Jew, from the pretty mulatto.”

  The pretty mulatto was General Fulgencio Batista, a nickname he’d acquired in his playboy youth. The marvelous Jew was Lansky.

  Castiel had lied to me.

  The lighter was a gift to Meyer Lansky, not to Bernard Castiel, Alex’s father.

  It made sense. Batista, the Cuban strongman, would be more likely to honor Lansky, the casino owner who split profits with him, than Lansky’s hired help, the guy who delivered the cash. But why would Alex lie about it? And how did he end up with Lansky’s cigarette lighter?

  I remembered something Castiel told me. Lansky promised him a hundred bucks if he proved he was a brave little boy.

  “He told me to carve my name under the judge’s bench.”

  I pictured nine-year-old Alex Castiel, his face scrunched in concentration, both hands on the Swiss Army knife, gouging at the wood, making his mark, a sacred secret between himself and the most notorious gangster of his time. But was it true?

  I scurried to the front of the courtroom, hopped the three steps to the judge’s elevated throne, and pulled back her chair. I ducked under the bench and flicked on the lighter so I could see. I brushed away cobwebs and swept dust off the wood.

  There it was, in the corner, carved with a surprisingly steady hand. As I read the name, I felt my stomach heave as if an elevator plunged several floors. A sense of embarrassment, too, as if I were a Peeping Tom.

  I looked hard at the letters etched into the mahogany, believing that some of my questions about Alex Castiel had just been answered. Then I ran a finger across the torn wood and said the name aloud: “Alex Lansky.”

  61 Family Ties

  I headed out the courtroom door and down the corridor. Castiel was huddling with a homicide cop near the elevator. He looked up and I tossed the lighter to him. He nabbed it in one hand, then caught the look on my face. He shook hands with the cop, then joined me in an alcove where the phone booths used to be located in the days before cellular.

  “After all these years, Alex, finally I understand you.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I always thought we had something in common. I lost my father very young. You never knew yours. Everything I know I learned from my granny, who’s not really my grandmother. You got your lessons from your uncle Max, who’s not really your uncle.”

  “So?”

  “You weren’t a fatherless, penniless little boy who grew up seeking justice. You had a Mafia scholarship from the day you were born.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Meyer Lansky is your father, and when he wasn’t being chased around the world by the feds, he was mentoring you. When he was gone, Max Perlow pinch hit for him. Perlow set you up with people who could get you elected. He wanted you to do for him what Batista did for Lansky. Or maybe he had bigger dreams.”

  Castiel shot me a wry smile. “All this figuring, Jake. It’s above your pay grade.”

  “I keep thinking about that photo in your office.”

  “Careful, Jake …”

  “Your mother standing between Bernard and Lansky. She was a beautiful woman who gets hit with this double tragedy. All hell breaks loose with Castro taking Havana, and then Bernard is killed. She must have been devastated. But there’s Meyer Lansky, rich and powerful, with a finely tailored shoulder to cry on. Who can blame her for falling for the guy? Unless …”

  Something was nagging at me, an itch in the back of my brain. In the corridor, the bailiff was leading the jurors back into the courtroom. We had just a couple minutes.

  “Unless that story about Bernard’s heroic death was total bull,” I said.

  “You gonna crap on his memory, too?”

  “What
do you care? He’s not your father. Maybe your mother was already having an affair with Lansky, and Bernard found out. In some Jewbano rage, he confronted Lansky. Threatened him. Whatever he did got him killed. I’m betting Lansky ordered it and Perlow carried it out.”

  “The Havana Post said Bernard was bayoneted by the rebels. I have the clipping.”

  “Batista propaganda. If I’m right, your mother continued her affair with Lansky and got pregnant. Or she was already pregnant when Bernard was killed. Either way, that’s when you come into the picture. Castro confiscates the Riviera. Lansky gets out of Dodge, and Perlow puts you on a Pedro Pan flight to Miami. Your mother is supposed to join you, but she’s dying of cancer. Lansky was married and had kids of his own. He also didn’t want you carrying the weight of his name. Helluva lot better to be Alex Castiel, son of a supposed martyr, than Lansky’s kid. So Perlow arranges for a sham adoption with a nice family in Coral Gables, all the while keeping your real father, Lansky, behind the scenes.”

  Castiel was quiet a moment, then spoke softly. “If I had a time machine, I’d go to Havana, hang out with Meyer at the Riviera.”

  I understood. If I could travel through space and time, I’d go shrimping with my old man. Spend as much time with him as I could.

  “I’m not ashamed of being Meyer’s son,” Castiel said. “I loved the man, and he loved me. I like to think he’d be proud of me.”

  That hit me hard, and I wondered just what Castiel would do to earn that love and respect. And looking back, what had he already done?

  62 Lawyers, Guns, and Money

  The next morning, I was cruising north on I-95. No court today. I had twenty-four hours until Charlie Ziegler appeared as a witness for the prosecution. I still wasn’t sure what he would say when Castiel asked the magic question: “Can you identify the shooter?”

  Traffic slowed near 125th Street, where a refrigerated truck had overturned, spilling several tons of Florida lobsters onto the pavement. The critters scrambled across the expressway into the high-occupancy lane. Unless they’d purchased SunPasses, they’d likely get tickets.

  Cars crunched the crustaceans. A few drivers hopped out, trying to corral their supper. I swerved through the traffic and made it to a warehouse district near the Broward County line. Last night, as I was eating Granny’s deep-fried frogs legs, Pepito Dominguez had called. He’d been tailing Ziegler. The idea had been to find Melody Sanders, but Ziegler had a different destination. His old porn production facility, now owned by Rodney Gifford.

  Pepito told me that Ziegler and Gifford drove to Morton’s in North Miami Beach where they ate steaks and drank martinis, Ziegler picking up the tab. My semi-pro P.I. took a table nearby but couldn’t hear their conversation. That didn’t keep him from ordering double-rib lamb chops and faxing me the bill. At the end of the meal, Ziegler and Gifford hugged. Pepito couldn’t be sure but he thought he saw tears in Ziegler’s eyes.

  What the hell was that about?

  Today’s job was to find out. I guided the old Eldo into the parking lot beneath the sign that said, Gifford Worldwide Productions. On the radio, Warren Zevon was gambling in Havana, where he had gotten into trouble. The solution seemed to be “lawyers, guns, and money,” which in my experience often make things worse. With that thought, I killed the ignition and headed inside.

  A heavily tattooed young man with a pimpled butt was having sex with a life-size silicone doll named Candy. I knew her name because young Olivier kept grunting “Fucking you good Candy; fucking you good, Candy,” as if reviewing his own performance. Candy kept quiet, except for an occasional silicone squeak.

  “In the second act, the doll comes to life and kills him,” a production assistant told me.

  They were shooting Killer Candy 8, a video about homicidal love dolls. The tattooed guy made some disturbing guttural sounds of distress, like a boar in cardiac arrest, then spritzed his money shot all over Candy’s 38-DDD boobs. Rodney Gifford yelled, “Cut,” called for the Windex guy, and gave cast and crew a ten-minute break.

  I walked up to Gifford as he was thumbing through a script. He was a trim, khakied man in his fifties. Khaki slacks, khaki safari vest, khaki chest hair.

  “I’m Jake Lassiter. Can we talk?”

  “How big’s your dick?”

  “What?”

  “Does it take two hands to handle your whopper?”

  “You start all conversations this way?”

  “You’re here for the casting, right? White Men Can’t Hump.”

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  “No shit. You look a little like Studley Do-Right. Guy had a helluva wad.”

  “I’ve got some questions about Charlie Ziegler.”

  “You got a subpoena?”

  “Nope.”

  “So why should I talk to you?”

  “Why wouldn’t you? Do you have something to hide?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Gifford rasped a smoker’s laugh and squinted at me through eyes the color of snot. “C’mon, Studley. You got ten minutes, not a second more, unless I find you fabulously entertaining.”

  We walked up a set of steel stairs to his office, a cluttered rat’s nest just off a catwalk, overlooking the production set. He offered me lukewarm coffee and a chair with torn, upholstered arms. I took the chair, declined the coffee, and asked why Ziegler came to see him yesterday.

  “None of your business, Stud-bug.” He drummed his manicured fingernails on his desk. On the wall were a pair of movie posters. Don’t Ask, Do Tell showed women in military uniforms, tunics open, breasts exposed. Saving Ryan’s Privates showed men in unzipped combat fatigues. Apparently, Gifford also made patriotic films.

  “The way I hear it, Ziegler screwed you on the sale of the business,” I said.

  “Old news.”

  “Stole your girlfriend and married her.”

  “Lola? His loss, not mine. Monogamy is overrated, don’t you think?”

  “Not compared to celibacy.”

  “Touché,” he said, waving an index finger like a saber.

  “Then yesterday, you and Ziegler are seen eating steaks and hugging.”

  “Charlie’s going through some changes, okay? Trust me, it has nothing to do with your case.”

  “Ziegler expressing remorse for his past, is that it?”

  I was just repeating what Castiel had said yesterday. Ziegler, too, had used the word the night I ate sushi at his house. “Looking back now, I’ve got a lot of remorse.”

  “Any law against being sorry for the shit you did?” Gifford asked.

  I hope not, thinking of myself.

  “If the shit includes murder,” I said, “that’s pretty much against the law.”

  “Ziegler’s a prick. But he’s not a killer. If you must know, yesterday he apologized for screwing me over. He’s sorry, sorry, sorry.”

  Ziegler apologized to Gifford, and to Amy at their jailhouse visit. He was on an apology tour. I tried another angle.

  “A few days before Perlow was shot,” I said, “my client came around and asked you some questions.”

  “Lovely woman—but so filled with anger.”

  “You lied to her. You said Krista wasn’t at the party, but I have a witness who places her there.”

  “I told your client I saw Ziegler with three or four girls, and Krista wasn’t one of them. That’s as far as I went.”

  “You chose your words carefully.”

  “As I do my lovers.” His smile showed me two rows of ultra-white crowns.

  “Tell me who Krista was with,” I ordered.

  “Why should I?”

  I bounded out of my chair, grabbed the collar of his safari jacket, and jerked him to his feet. “Because I’ll toss you through the wall and off that catwalk.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  I lifted him off his feet. “You better hope you land on silicone tits instead of a concrete floor.”

  “Why not spank me instead?”

  I wheeled him into the wal
l so hard, the poster of Booby Trap XXIII crashed to the floor. “Bumper cars!” he yelled.

  It occurred to me that he was enjoying this.

  “Spanky, spanky, spanky!” he said.

  “I don’t spank. I punch.”

  I wrapped my hand around his throat. “What’d you see that night at Ziegler’s?”

  A croaking sound came from Gifford’s throat and his eyes bulged.

  “Tell me!” I said, loosening my grip just a bit.

  “A man asked for some ludes. Krista was with him, half-zonked already.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I gave him a handful of pills, and he carried her to the Fuck Palace.”

  “Who? Give me a name.”

  “He’s scary. Scarier than you.”

  I grabbed a handful of mousse-slicked hair and yanked him away from the wall. Headlocked his skull with my right arm, then pasted my big left mitt over his mouth and nose, pinching his nostrils shut. I waited until he started bucking. “Who was he! Who took Krista to the Fuck Palace?”

  His cheeks were turning crimson. Then I let go with my left hand and let him suck in a breath.

  “More,” he begged me. “More, sir.”

  “I don’t have time for this shit.” I propped him up with my left arm and threw a short, right hook into his gut. Solid, but not a pile driver calculated to make him expel his breakfast onto my shoes.

  His knees buckled and he dropped to all fours. He looked up with dancing eyes, a horse awaiting a rider. “The man …” He gasped. “The man with Krista was Alex Castiel.”

  63 Playing Hooky

  Granny was frying a big-mouthed, pink hog snapper, head and all, in her largest cast-iron pan. Kip was in the kitchen, grating cabbage for cole slaw.

  “What’s with the sunburn, kiddo? Did you play hooky today?”

  “You used to cut school to work in a bar.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “I’m standing on the Fifth Amendment,” Granny said, flipping the fat fish with a spatula. “Snapper was running off the reef, so we took the dinghy out.”