by Paul Levine
Wetherall puffed on his own cigar and blew smoke in my direction. I felt a headache brewing, pressure building behind my eyes like steam in a boiler.
“When you cross-examined me,” Wetherall said, “you got real close to the witness stand. The judge warned you a couple times to step back, but you kept inching up, raising your voice. You were waving my personnel file at me. Had a couple demerits in there for excessive force. You taunted me. Shouted at me. Your spittle hit me in the face.”
They ought to teach it in law school. If you want the spit to fly, drink two glasses of water, use a lot of s words, and get close to your target.
“I wanted you to lose it, Wetherall, to come off the witness stand and take a swing at me.”
“If I’d done it, you would have regretted that decision, friend.”
“I was in dire need of a mistrial, so yeah, I would have given you a free one.”
“See what I told you, Pepe?” Pincher said. “Lassiter will take a punch for a client.”
Poor Ray sounded desperate to please his major donor and majordomo. I felt sorry for Pincher, so I didn’t point out that the people of Florida were my clients, not filthy-rich Pepe Suarez.
“The judge called Lassiter up to the bench,” Wetherall continued, enjoying the limelight. “Chewed his ass out. You remember, Counselor?”
“Nope.”
That was a lie. I’ve flirted with contempt and danced with disbarment so many times I’ve forgotten most of them, but the judge’s angry whispers that day came back to me.
“Mr. Lassiter, I don’t know how they practice law down in Sin City, but in Orange County, lawyers don’t spit on witnesses.”
“Respectfully, Your Honor, if I could, I’d piss on this guy just to extinguish the steaming turds coming out of his mouth.”
“Five hundred bucks for your vulgarity, Mr. Lassiter. You can pay the court clerk at the recess. No credit cards.”
“Wetherall, correct me if I’m wrong,” I said. “Didn’t you get booted off the force?”
“That’s enough, you two,” Suarez said. “Lassiter, JT’s my chief of security now. When my son-of-a-bitch son-in-law called to say Sofia was missing, JT set up surveillance teams and other stuff you don’t need to know about.”
“Wiretapping,” I guessed. “Ray must have told you he didn’t have probable cause to get a warrant, so you had Claude do it the old-fashioned way.”
“Claude?” Suarez said. “You mean JT.”
“Sorry, I was thinking of Claude Mulvihill in Chinatown. Noah Cross’s big, stupid hired goon. Only difference I see, Claude wore cheap suits and smoked cheap stogies.”
“Screw you, Lassiter,” Wetherall said.
“But you didn’t turn up anything, did you, Claude? If you had, your boss would have told Ray, who would have told me, and we’d be off to the races. You risked blowing the entire case with illegal wiretaps and got nothing out of it.” I turned to Suarez. “Now you want this slug to run a ‘street operation’? What the hell does that mean?”
Pincher got up from his desk and walked past a wall festooned with plaques and photos attesting to his civic greatness. “I’m gonna take a piss. Why don’t the three of you hash this out?”
Oh, thanks a lot, Ray. Keeping your dainty hands clean as the shit piles up in the barnyard.
Suarez watched smoke swirl to the ceiling and waited for the door to close behind Pincher. “Lassiter, I didn’t always own fifty thousand acres of sugarcane. Didn’t always wear Italian suits. See this?” He pointed to the scar on his face. “Got this back in high school. Know how?”
“You got fresh with your prom date, and she let you have it with her fingernails.”
His eyes hardened. “Haitian kid, migrant worker. I was chopping alongside him in the cane field. He was quicker with a machete than I was. At first, that is…”
He let it hang there, waiting for me to ask what happened next. Screw him.
“Are you following me, Lassiter?”
“Before you get carried away with this working-class-hero crap,” I said, “wasn’t this your old man’s sugar plantation?”
“So what? Can you figure out what I did to the Haitian kid?”
I didn’t like Suarez’s tone. I didn’t like his attitude. In fact, there was nothing I liked about him.
“I’m a pretty smart guy, Pepe,” I said. “I passed the bar exam on my fourth try. If a team gains three yards on first and ten, I know it’s now second and seven. So, yeah, I think I know what you did to the Haitian kid. But I figure it took you and three or four of your father’s hired hands.”
“Fertilizer, Lassiter. I helped the Haitian kid reach his highest and best use. Fertilizing the sugarcane.”
“Is that supposed to make me think you’re a tough guy?”
“I don’t give a shit what you think. If you don’t indict the bastard by tomorrow, JT is taking over.”
“Great. I can’t wait to hear his opening statement.”
“He’s gonna roust Calvert by any means necessary.” Suarez turned toward Wetherall. “JT, I don’t care if you use a cattle prod to his scrotum or a baseball bat to his knees. But you get him to talk.”
“Why the fancy choreography?” I asked. “You obviously told Pincher this before he excused himself to go to the ladies’ room. Why am I even here?”
“To let you know what you’re dealing with, Lassiter. My level of commitment.”
“This isn’t gonna end well. Not well at all.”
“I’m not a thug, Lassiter. I’m a businessman and a father. I don’t want any innocent people getting hurt.”
“What innocent people?”
“I know you’re friends with the lawyers representing Calvert. They’ve been spending a lot of time with him, day and night. Especially the woman lawyer.”
I pointed an index finger at him. “Are you threatening them? Because if Claude here pulls any shit, I’ll kick his worthless ass and then come straight for you.”
“Calm down. Just tell your friends it might be smart not to hang around Calvert so much.”
“How the hell am I gonna do that without telling them what I know?”
“You said you’re a smart guy. Figure it out.”
-33-
The Essence of Partnership and Love
Victoria Lord…
Victoria had just hung up the phone and was staring out the window at the bay and Key Biscayne in the distance. A dozen sailboats were puffing along on the downwind leg of a race, their multicolored spinnakers ballooning in the steady easterly breeze.
The fledgling law firm of Solomon & Lord had recently rented a small but luxurious office on the eighteenth floor of a Brickell Avenue high-rise. The view was spectacular, the rent crushing. It had been Steve’s idea, of course.
“Gotta spend dough to make dough, Vic.”
Victoria didn’t think their clients cared about the provenance of the glass sculptures in the waiting room or the Brazilian teak on the walls. As the only one of the partners who could balance a checkbook, she was burdened with juggling accounts and paying bills. Making the monthly nut was her worry, not Steve’s.
The six-figure retainer from Clark Calvert had put them in the black for this month and possibly the entire summer, but when you’re humping a major homicide case, you’re not out hustling for others. No time for lawyer lunches with colleagues who are likely to refer clients. That’s why winning the Calvert case was so important. Beating the state in murder trials, that’s how you build reputations.
For the good of Solomon & Lord, it was necessary that Clark be charged. This caused Victoria cognitive dissonance. She wanted Clark to be a free man, but she also wanted her little law firm to be a success, and the two goals were not entirely consistent… unless Clark was charged and acquitted in a highly publicized trial.
While she was mulling these conflicting thoughts and watching the sailboats carve their way across the turquoise water, her partner and fiancé barreled into her office.
No knock-knock.
No “Am I interrupting you?”
Just Full-Speed Steve, a thousand-horsepower boat swamping the sailing craft in his wake.
“Hey, Vic, your door’s closed,” he said.
“Was closed.”
“Were you on the phone?”
His way of asking, “Who were you talking to?”
“Yes, I was,” she said. “It’s a highly useful instrument of communication.”
Make him squirm; force him to be direct.
“With Calvert?” he asked.
“Sit down. We need to talk.”
Steve plopped down into a client chair, a modern Ligne Roset imported from France. The chair had a heavy-duty lumbar support and a heavier-duty price tag. Steve’s idea, of course.
“Shit, who’d he kill now?” he asked.
She considered how to disclose what she knew. Clark’s case had altered the way they communicated. Their discussions—both personal and professional—had always been free and open. She had held nothing back and believed the same of Steve.
But now…
Steve had been acting so squirrelly. Jealous of a man who was no threat to him, causing her to parcel out information, to withhold or delay until she figured how to package the news. This was no way to defend a case… or nourish a relationship.
Now she just blurted it out. “Clark lied to the police about his whereabouts on the day Sofia went missing.”
“What!”
“He didn’t drive up and down Collins Avenue checking her favorite places all day.”
“Where was he, digging a grave in the Everglades?”
She ignored the crack. “A strip club in Pompano Beach. Getting a lap dance, to be more specific.”
She expected another cheap shot, but instead Steve silently stood and walked to the window. He faced the racing sailboats in the bay, but his gaze seemed to reach to the distant horizon. “When did he tell you this?”
She could lie and say just now. But one would lead to another, and somewhere along the trail of interlocking fabrications, the chain would break. “The day of Jake’s interview.”
He turned from the window to face her. “Afterward?”
She shook her head. “Before. When you walked to the front of the house to bring Jake to the patio.”
“The same time he told you about his choking the nurse. Unbelievable!”
“I’m sorry, Steve.”
He sat on the edge of her desk, his face halfway between shock and anger. “Let me guess. He asked you whether to repeat the lie to Jake. And instead of huddling with me to reach a joint decision—a partnership decision—you told him to lie. Again!”
“I told him to keep his story consistent with what he told the police.”
“And you kept me in the dark. About this and the nurse.”
“I made a mistake. Two mistakes.”
“This is so unlike you, Vic. Calvert’s messed with your head.”
“That was him on the phone just now. Jake found the strip club. Knows when Clark got there and when he left. Knows who he talked to and who gave him a lap dance.”
Steve processed the information. He was good at this, she knew, staying calm under pressure. When he spoke, there was wonder in his voice. “Of all the strip joints in all the world, Jake finds the stripper who was twerking on our client the day his wife disappeared.”
“He’ll run with it,” Victoria said. “I don’t know where it will take him, but he’ll make his point in a dramatic way.”
“Dog with a bone. How’d Calvert find out Jake knows?”
“The stripper called him. Apparently, he’s a regular and a big tipper.”
“Why’d he lie to the cops in the first place?”
“He was embarrassed. His wife goes missing, and instead of looking for her, he’s getting a lap dance.”
“It could have been explained. She’d only been gone a few hours. No reason to believe she’d been snatched or was in any danger. But once he lied to the cops…”
“He was stuck with the story.”
This is more like it, she thought. Finishing each other’s sentences, humming along in sync. Relationships are hard and need constant work, but they’re not impossible.
“Let’s put ourselves in Jake’s shoes,” Steve said. “If he knows Calvert was at the strip club, what’s his next question?”
“Where’d you go from there, Doctor? Where were you until you got home that night?”
“Exactly. What’s the answer?”
“Clark won’t tell me.”
“What! Tell him he has to tell us or we can’t defend him properly.”
“I’ve told him, Steve. He simply refuses to tell me where he went.”
“You know what that means? He’s guilty.”
“Not necessarily.”
“How do you figure?”
She looked into the eyes of the man she loved. He was clueless. Maybe that made her love him even more. “Clark knows you hate him.”
“I don’t—”
She held up a hand to shush him. “He doesn’t trust you to keep his confidence. I told him that you would never betray him, but he claims to have a sixth sense about these things.”
Steve kept quiet, and she continued. “If Jake could prove where he went and what he did, Clark says he’d be convicted, even though he’s innocent.”
“With all due respect to our saintly client, that sounds like a crock of shit.”
“Either way, it’s the crock we’re stuck with.”
Looking troubled, Steve said, “I have a confession, Vic.”
“Yeah?”
“I do hate Calvert.”
“I know.”
“But I’d never betray him.”
She studied his eyes, which blinked twice. Meaning what? Nothing, she thought. And hoped.
“I know that, Steve. The man I love could never do such a thing.”
-34-
Ethics 101
Jake Lassiter…
I was supposed to be in my astronaut’s bed, inhaling 100 percent pure oxygen and curing my traumatic brain disease, if any there be. Oh, it’s not really an astronaut’s bed. It just looks like one of those glass-topped, torpedo-shaped compartments in sci-fi films, the ones where astronauts travel for eighty years and wake up feeling spry and not even needing mouthwash. It’s a pressurized hyperbaric oxygen chamber where I inhale pure oxy for two hours three times a week. It cuts into a guy’s schedule.
Today I was missing my appointment because of a pressing personal matter: I wouldn’t participate in thuggery or the flat-out perversion of the judicial process. When I left Pincher’s lair, feeling as if I needed a shower to wash off the scum, I called Judge Melvia Duckworth’s chambers. Her Honor had left for the day. She had an 8:00 a.m. motion calendar tomorrow and a specially set hearing at ten. She could squeeze me in at eleven thirty. I would be there to turn in my sword, which is to say, tender my resignation and get her official blessing for my return to civilian life.
Next, as my old Caddy crossed the 12th Avenue bridge over the Miami River, I dialed Pincher’s cell. As the phone rang, I caught sight of Marlins Park, where it sits like a tombstone on the site of the late and lamented Orange Bowl.
“I assume you’ve finished powdering your nose, Ray,” I said when he answered.
“Jesus, Jake, you make my job a helluva lot harder than it should be.”
“Always about you, isn’t it? How can we get Sugar Ray to the governor’s mansion without passing ‘Go,’ or rather, without landing in jail?”
“I thought you’d be more of a team player.”
“And I thought you’d recused yourself! Why are you butting in?”
“Because you’re puttering around, and an important citizen’s daughter is dead.”
“Appointing me was a charade to give you political cover. I’m quitting. Consider this my courtesy of giving you a heads-up. Get some other sucker to stand by and watch Pepe Suarez and his thug run the sho
w.”
“C’mon, Jake. I’ve got a better idea.”
“Better than Suarez’s thug kidnapping and torturing Clark Calvert?”
“That would be a mistake, I grant you. But there’s a way to head it off. A preemptive legal strike to head off an illegal one.”
Waiting for Pincher’s brilliant idea, I passed Calle Ocho, only three blocks from Azucar, the Cuban ice-cream shop. I usually stop for a double scoop of El Mani Loco, crazy peanut, and Platano Maduro, sweet plantain, but right now, I was more in a Tennessee-whiskey mood.
“Grand jury convenes in the morning,” Pincher said. “They’re investigating elder abuse at nursing homes, but they’d be happy to shift gears to a juicy homicide. Bring in Dr. Freudenstein. He’ll come without a subpoena. Hell, he’ll camp out tonight for the chance to talk. With no one to cross-examine him, and with what you already have—Calvert’s lie, his wife’s fear of him—you can get an indictment. If Calvert’s in the can, Pepe will step back.”
“You’re thinking tactically, Ray. I’m thinking strategically. How do you suggest I get Freudenstein’s testimony into evidence at trial?”
“Jeez, show some cojones. Where’s the old Jake? What did you used to say? ‘Buckle your chin strap. Law is a contact sport.’”
“A sport with rules, Ray. I can’t be a party to Suarez’s thuggery, to illegal wiretaps, and to forced confessions. I can’t use inadmissible evidence in front of the grand jury and just hope for the best at trial.”
“Don’t lecture me on ethics, Jake. You’re the guy who considers the canons mere suggestions.”
“I may violate a rule now and then, but only little ones.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You don’t mind getting your hands dirty as long as the stains come out. But you know what? You don’t get to pick which rules you consider worthy of your fealty. The stains don’t come out. You are dirty. You’re just too damn sanctimonious to admit it.”
The phone line clicked, and he was gone. That left me heading toward Coconut Grove without ice cream or whiskey or salvation. I considered the tongue-lashing I had just taken. Had I been fooling myself? Is there a bright, clearly defined ethical line separating black from white? Was it foolish of me to stake my claim in the gray?
