by Paul Levine
“I already have one,” I told her.
She knew that.
“I’ve used Ernie Palmer for years.”
She knew that, too.
“What’s your experience in homicide-”
“You just came from the justice building, didn’t you?” she interrupted.
I had, but how did she know?
“I watched you pull into the parking lot coming south on Twelfth Avenue,” she answered without being asked. “If you’d been driving from the courthouse or your office, you would have been headed west on Calle Ocho. There’s also a layer of brown dust on your hood. They’re repairing the trestles on the ramp to the interstate just south of the justice building. I’d say you parked in the shade next to the pilings where the construction is going on.”
Not exactly Sherlock Holmes, maybe, but noticing details makes for a good investigator. “I’m impressed.”
“Women have certain advantages as investigators,” she said. “We take people by surprise.”
No one would think Lourdes Soto was a PI. Not with that rare combination of jet black hair and flawless porcelain skin. It is a stunning combination you find in some of the Cuban women who trace their ancestors to northern Spain. The contrast makes the black velvet eyes even darker, the ivory skin even whiter. She had a prominent, forceful nose that went well with her strong cheekbones. She wore her hair in a short shag, and her makeup was understated, her lips brushed with just a hint of rosy gloss. Pearl earrings gleamed pure white against her dark hair. A trace of perfume, not too sweet, wafted my way. She wore a white knit dress with a fitted waist and padded shoulders. Her body was small and well-proportioned, the outline of her breasts visible beneath the knit dress.
“It’s easier for women to get witnesses to talk,” she continued. “Men especially. They always want to help a lady. One way or another.”
She laughed and dug into her ropa vieja, the stringy Cuban beef in a piquant tomato sauce. She was right. Who needs another lumpy, middle-aged guy in a four-door Ford, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts waiting for the motel room door to open. If you were lucky, he got the 35-millimeter Canon up and focused before the businessman and his secretary were back on the expressway headed downtown.
“Tell me about your work,” I said.
“The usual. Asset reconstruction, missing persons, surveillance, witness interviews, sworn statements in both civil and criminal cases.”
She told me she had started working eleven years ago, right after she graduated from Florida State. Her first job was with a big company, Wackenhut, when n was looking for bilingual women. Then she went with a three-investigator firm in a seedy building with a flashing neon sign and a boss who kept a bottle of bourbon in his desk, just like in the movies. Recently, she opened her own shop, and now she was hustling business from semirespectable lawyers such as myself.
“I thought it would be glamorous,” Lourdes said, “for about twenty minutes. My first job was sorting a guy’s garbage for two months. Every Monday and Thursday at four A.M., I’d be in his driveway, substituting my trash for his.”
“What were you looking for?”
“Proof of assets. He’d gone into bankruptcy to defraud creditors. Buried in the coffee grounds was a magazine for owners of private aircraft. Found a twin-engine Beechcraft under a phony name at Tamiami. Also a property tax bill from North Carolina.
We located a nicely furnished A-frame on the side of a mountain near Boone, plus thirty acres of land just off the Blue Ridge Parkway.”
She smiled and speared a sweet plantain with her fork. “I love the challenge,” she said. “Once I was hired by a gynecologist who knew his partner was stealing but couldn’t prove it and couldn’t figure where the money was going. All he knew was that the books were cooked and his partner was tired all the time. I tailed the guy home from the office. Midnight, sharp, five nights a week, he’d hit the strip joints in Lauderdale, one after another, buying magnums of overpriced champagne, slipping hundred-dollar bills into every G-string in the joint.”
“You’d think a gynecologist would see enough…”
“That’s what I thought, too, but who knows? Anyway, so much for the glamour of my job. After a week chasing the horny doctor, all my clothes smelled like cigarettes, cheap perfume, and stale beer. You’d be surprised how many men offered me money to take off my clothes.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” I said, just as I was expected to do.
She ran a hand through the shag hairdo, then told me a few more war stories. She was a neat package of woman in total control. In the guise of friendly patter, she was letting me have her resume one page at a time. I was supposed to be impressed with her competence, and I was. At the same time, there was that faint air of flirtation, the sidelong look, the smile that slid from friendly to provocative without crossing the border of good taste.
So what was going on here, Jake old buddy? You get a call from a lady PI who wants to have lunch and maybe work for you. She paid attention to the dust on your car, and who knows what else. She knew you used a regular investigator but thought you might switch. Why?
“One time,” Lourdes was saying, “I was hired by an older man whose lover was a young man who taught aerobics.”
“Your client thought his boyfriend found someone younger at the gym.”
“Someone prettier. He was convinced the young guy was making it with a woman in one of his classes. So I signed up. Three classes a day for a month. High impact, low impact, step classes. I was in great shape.”
“You still are,” I heard myself say, then took a last slurp of the guava shake.
“The problem is,” she said, “I always start to empathize with the subject of the investigation. I mean, the instructor had a right to his own life, didn’t he?”
“Did he? I mean, with a woman.”
“Two at a time. They used the back of his van in the parking lot. Right after class and without taking showers. Maybe he needed to prove to himself that he was still a man, even if he was bisexual.”
“Most investigators just gather information. You analyze it.”
“I like to know why people do things. The doctor I told you about was just divorced and had some emotional needs that weren’t being fulfilled, so he took a walk on the wild side. Even the man who went bankrupt was responding to financial pressures he didn’t know how to handle.” She finished the last of the ropa vieja — ”old clothes” in Spanish-took a sip of iced tea, and patted her lips with her napkin. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, because you may think it affects my work. It doesn’t, but the truth is, I feel compassion. I always see the other side.”
“I have no problem with that. It’s called humanity. I wish the state attorney’s office had some.”
She studied me a moment, her eyes dark and knowing. “I think you and I will get along well, Jake Lassiter.” Then she looked away, her fine white skin coloring a bit. “Would you like to see my work?”
I smiled my crooked smile and allowed as how I would. Okay, I admit it. I try to be a modern man, treating women equally in the give-and-take of the business world. But I didn’t feel like punching Lourdes Soto on the shoulder and asking, So whadaya think of the Dolphins’ draft? I try not to regard women as sex objects, but damn it, I can’t forget who they are and what they’ve got, and if one turns out to be beautiful and bright and knows how to laugh, no matter how professional and courteous the conversation, there’s always the question lingering just beneath the surface: Is she finally The One?
Lourdes Soto reached under the table and opened an aluminum case. She pulled out a dozen eight-by-ten black-and-whites and spread them on the table. A middle-aged man, his gut hanging over his swim trunks, had his right hand on the bare breast of a superbly endowed young woman. She wore only black bikini bottoms and sunglasses.
“He’s putting on the Coppertone,” Lourdes said.
“From the looks of her, he’ll use the whole bottle before he gets to her back.’’
> “Augmentation mammaplasty. He paid five grand for it. I got the receipts by impersonating a State Farm auditor.’’
“Good work. You shot the photos from above.”
“They were on the beach behind the Palace Hotel in San Juan. From the roof of the hotel, I used a Nikon 8008 with a three-hundred-millimeter autofocus lens at a twenty-two F-stop, two-fifty speed, and your basic Tri-X film.”
“His wife must have loved them.”
“Ordered two dozen different shots, blew them up into posters for the divorce party.”
Lourdes reached into the case again and pulled out a pair of binoculars with a microphone mounted between the barrels. A wire ran from the mike to two earpieces.
“Audio glasses,” she said. “From the top of the hotel, I could hear everything they said at two hundred meters. Got a handle on how much he was spending on the girl, where he was hiding his money, who his shrink was, and wouldn’t his wife just die if she could see him now.”
I shook my head. “Why do you suppose men tell their mistresses so much?”
“Because men are just little boys looking for their mommas.” She cracked a decidedly nonmaternal smile. “Anyway, my client got the kids, the dog, the Dolphins and Heat tickets, the condo in Aspen, plus fifty percent of the business, and permanent alimony.”
“How’d you know he was going to be in San Juan?”
She looked from side to side and leaned closer. The faint perfume was stronger. “I’ll show you,” she whispered. Again, she reached into her case. What other treasures were stored there? She pulled out a fountain pen, removed the cap, and shook out an inch-long capsule.
“A tracking transmitter,” she said. “I had the wife slip it into a pen he always carried with him. The receiver is portable. It’ll track up to sixty-five miles. A great help on surveillance when you take a wrong turn coming through Ponce and into old San Juan. First, I tailed him around Miami for a few weeks. I’d call his secretary and pretend to be a bunch of different people. Used the electronic voice changer to become a man with a southern drawl, that sort of thing. It’s amazing how much secretaries will tell you if they think you’re important business associates.”
I signaled the waiter for two cups of cafe Cubano. “You didn’t track him to Puerto Rico with that.”
She tried not to chuckle. “No, I had some help. The wife put a voice-activated recorder on his private line. He talked in code to his girlfriend, but I knew they were headed to the airport, and I just followed.”
“Illegal as hell…”
“But extremely effective.”
She gathered up the accoutrements of her cloak-and-dagger life. I watched the fine blue veins on the back of her hands. White, tapered fingers with short, clear lacquered nails. She ran a hand through her glossy black hair and cocked her head at me again. She put the binoculars back into their foam-cushioned spot in the aluminum case. “So what took you to the justice building this morning?”
“Francisco Crespo, a murder case. Probably a reasonable doubt defense. I need a witness to put somebody else at the scene, maybe find somebody who had a grudge against the victim.”
“Is that all? No signed confession from a notorious serial killer?”
I like a woman with a sharp sense of humor. Especially when she isn’t afraid to aim it at me. “You’re right,” I conceded. “I sometimes ask for too much. Right now, I’d settle for knowing a little more about my client’s employer. Crespo worked for an importer named Matsuo Yagamata. Ever heard of him?”
Her lips played with a smile, then let me have it. “Francisco Crespo used to work for my father. And my father used to be in business with Matsuo Yagamata.”
Oh.
“You knew I was representing Crespo, didn’t you?”
“A good investigator ought to know what’s going on around town.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? Why the life and times of Lourdes Soto?”
“I wanted you to hire me based on my qualifications, not my contacts.”
The waitress brought the check. I tried to sort it out. Lourdes Soto had information I wanted. Or she could get it. What did I have that she wanted?
“Crespo’s not telling me everything,” I said. “Or he’s telling me too much.”
“What do you mean?”
She was staring intently at me, her body perfectly still. This was happening a little too fast. I wasn’t ready to entrust Francisco Crespo’s future, or lack of it, to a woman I had just met, a woman who encouraged wives to illegally wiretap their husbands, and who probably knew what I ate for dinner last night. Still, I could use her.
“I need to find out everything I can about Yagamata. Why don’t we start with your father? Will you set up a meeting?”
She smiled and nodded. “I guess that means I’m hired.”
Back went the photos and the transmitter pen. As she slipped the pen into its slot, her hand brushed the leather divider of the case, revealing another compartment. It was visible for only a second, but I know a voice-activated tape recorder when I see one. Of course, it could have been turned off. Probably was, right?
“Glad to be on the team,” she said. “Now, tell me everything you know.”
That wouldn’t take long, I figured, watching the little red light pulsate with each word as she snapped the case shut.
5
PREACHING WATER, DRINKING WINE
Usually, I don’t show off.
Some guys blast up to the shore, carve a hard jibe, and shower a rooster tail of spray over a bouquet of bikinis. Sort of a male boardsailor’s adolescent fertility rite. I’m too old for that.
Then there are the ones who rig their boards, slip into harnesses, and tune their sails until the wind dies, never getting their booties wet. Swilling brew all day and talking a good game but never playing it. I like the sport too much for that.
I just rig and go. On an April day, a steady northeasterly wind of twenty knots, the temperature a perfect eighty-one degrees, I was chop-hopping the green squirrelly waters off South Beach. Puffy white clouds scudded across the sky, darkening the water with their fleeting shadows. The windows of the high-rise condos winked at me in the morning sun. Okay, so it’s not like windsurfing at Sprecklesville Beach in the shadow of Haleakala, the great Maui volcano. No ten-thousand-foot peak hidden in the mist. But it’s the best we can do in these parts. Four feet of chop for jumping, a steady wind for speed, and if you are so inclined, a beach full of tourist gals from every corner of these here United States, not to mention a wide collection of Central and South American chicas plus some Germans and Danes thrown in on a package tour.
I was so inclined.
My board was a nine-and-a-half-foot custom-made sliver of fiberglass with a five-point-four-meter square of orange Mylar for a sail. I was bouncing over the chop, leaning back into the harness, guiding the boom with a light touch, and generally luxuriating in the beauty of the day.
And showing off. Near the shoreline, beginners climbed onto clunky floaters in the frothy surf, unsteady as rookie riders at a dude ranch. Just why do they call this horse Dynamite? Windsurfing is a sport with a steep learning curve, and the first few tries can be frustrating. Watching an experienced boardsailor tear through a series of bottom turns and slashbacks on the offshore waves can be inspiring to the newcomer, or so I rationalized my blatant showboating. On occasion, I could even be persuaded to teach a grateful beach bunny how to tie a bowline or a Prusik hitch knot, all in the spirit of sportsmanship, of course.
Approaching the shoreline at warp speed, I leaned a heavy foot on the rail, and the board carved into the wind. I let go of the boom and dragged my aft hand in the water, a flare jibe. In theory, the hand acts as a daggerboard and pulls the board through the turn. In reality, it’s a grandstanding technique equivalent to a hot-rodder fishtailing on the asphalt. Hey, look at me! I finished the jibe, flipped the boom, then shot back out over the chop, the wind snapping my sail and whistling a tune like a flute through th
e holes in the mast extension. I squinted into the sun, jibed again, and rode heavy rollers into the shallow water near the Fifth Street beach. I shot past startled swimmers, a couple of teenage sailors in a Sunfish, and some novice boardsailors. Nearing the shore, I pulled the foot of the sail over my head as the leech swung through the eye of the wind-a flashy duck jibe-and just as the board should have started on a new tack, the tail sunk and the bow shot up like a leaping marlin. I toppled backward into five feet of surf. Served me right.
Shaking water out of my eyes and sand out of my trunks, I recognized the sound of sail crackling in the wind, somewhere behind me, moving closer. It is equivalent to hearing a trucker’s horn when you are on a bicycle. I turned just in time to have a mast topple onto me, whacking my right shoulder, and I went under again. This time, I had company.
She was a tall, sunburned blonde, who hadn’t seen thirty. She wore a white one-piece Lycra suit, and when she crawled back onto the board, I could see telltale scraped shins. Her hair was plastered to her skull, and she breathed heavily through pouting lips. If anyone had ever taught her to boardsail, they hadn’t taught her right.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, clinging to the board, which teetered in the surf. “This is so much harder than it looks.”
“First time,” I guessed.
“No. Yes. I mean, in the ocean. I’ve sailed on Lake Minnewaska. But this…” She gestured at the rollers.
“Lake Minnie…”
“In Minnesota.”
She had a faint singsong accent. Swedish maybe. “It’s a different sport in the waves,” I agreed. “Try again. I’ll give you some pointers.”
Jacob Lassiter, Esq., to the rescue. Accused murderers and sopping wet damsels, walk right in. She looked at me the way they do when sizing you up. Deciding whether you’re Tom Cruise or Charles Manson. I crinkled my best beach smile at her and must not have looked too lethal, because she allowed as how my assistance would be peachy, got to her feet, grabbed the uphaul, and pulled, straining to get the sail out of the water. She had some fine ripples in her triceps, but the mast stayed put, weighted down by what must have seemed like a ton of water burying the sail. Beneath the white Lycra, her nipples were perking up.
