BUM DEAL: Jake Lassiter Legal Thrillers

by Paul Levine

  Judge Erwin Gridley had scheduled the trial for next week. I’d been working with Detective Barrios, getting my witnesses prepared, but we were in no better shape than the day the indictment was returned.

  Tonight Melissa had stopped by, bringing takeout from Havana Harry’s. Fried yucca with mojo sauce, tostones laced with pork and onions, topped by queso fresco, and chicken vaca frita that we shared. I provided the tequila. The good stuff, Don Julio 1942. It’s pricey, but life is too short for liquor that singes the throat.

  Melissa had an early meeting at the hospital tomorrow, so she didn’t sleep over. I dozed off in my recliner around 11:00 p.m. and was awakened by a piercing headache a few hours later. I staggered into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of some exotic pain reliever Melissa had prescribed. I washed down three pills with the last few drops of Don Julio from the tall triangular bottle.

  That’s when I heard the noise.

  From the porch at the rear of the house.

  A scraping sound, as if someone had bumped into a chair in the dark. Or maybe it was just the neighborhood possum rooting around, looking for leftover potato chips and beef jerky. I hadn’t turned on the lights, so whoever was out there—man or possum—couldn’t see me in the darkened kitchen.

  I stayed still and quiet. There was no sound other than the buzz of nighttime insects. Then a faraway barking dog.

  Then footsteps. An unmistakable sound on the wooden floorboards of the porch. The AC kicked on then and drowned out the sounds.

  I padded barefoot to the foyer closet, pulled out my black-barreled baseball bat made of hard maple. The Barry Bonds model. Hey, if it was good enough to hit seventy-three home runs in a year, it ought to be able to crack the skull of a trespasser, burglar, or whatever night-crawling lowlife was on my property.

  I slipped out a side door that was shielded from the porch by a row of purple bougainvillea. Holding the bat in my right hand, I brushed back the thorny vines with my left hand as I made my way around the corner of the house.

  I saw a figure silhouetted by the mercury vapor lamp that sits on the property line. The figure was on my back porch, leaning over. I couldn’t make out whether it was a man or woman, large or small. Just then my right foot caught on the garden hose, and I tumbled facedown into the dirt. My bat went flying, and I let out a whoomph as I landed.

  Footsteps again, the figure dashing off the porch and across the yard. When I looked up, it was gone.

  A moment later, I found something.

  An eight-by-eleven manila envelope on the porch, propped up against the door to the kitchen. My visitor wasn’t a burglar. He or she was making a delivery, but of what?

  I carried the envelope back into the house and turned on the kitchen lights. The envelope was blank. I opened the clasp and looked inside. A single sheet of white paper. A name was typed on the page.

  Ann Cavendish.

  And a phone number with a 404 area code, which I knew to be Atlanta. And one typewritten sentence.

  She would love to talk to you about Clark Calvert.

  I looked into the darkness toward the rear of my lot, where the figure had disappeared. Keep going two blocks and you’d practically be in Solomon and Lord’s front yard.

  Steve Solomon.

  You crazy bastard! Risking your license! And tempting me into the valley of the shadow of disbarment.

  I figured that Ann Cavendish of Atlanta was the nurse Solomon already told me about, a woman Calvert choked into unconsciousness back in Boston. Or if not her, another woman with a similar tale. It made sense. Sofia would not have been the first. A man doesn’t wait till his forties to start getting kinky.

  Calvert likely had been getting his jollies in that dangerous game for a long time. And sure, I’d love to have a couple of other witnesses. I’d love to establish the choking as “pattern evidence.” If he did such a thing in the past, chances are he did it now as well. That’s the theory that allows into evidence what lawyers call “prior bad acts.”

  But as much as I’d like to find Ann Cavendish of Atlanta, I couldn’t do it.

  I’ll steer clear of that ethical minefield. Won’t I?

  I thought about it some more.

  Was there a way I could take advantage of the information without violating my oath? Okay, let’s be honest. I couldn’t, though I might find a way I could rationalize. Might as well be frank about it. Knowledge of self is acquired through a shattered mirror, certain features obscured. A searing thought, then. Was Pincher right?

  “You are dirty. You’re just too damn sanctimonious to admit it.”

  Aw, to hell with it, Ray.

  I would create a buffer between Ann Cavendish and me. Put one curve in the road between Solomon’s grievously unethical act and my mildly shady one.

  I wouldn’t call Ann Cavendish. Detective Barrios would do it for me.

  -42-

  Tar and Feathers

  I heard a woman’s scream.

  Only it wasn’t a woman. It was a peacock that must have weighed fifty pounds. A male. It flapped its wings and half jumped, half flew from my backyard to the lowest edge of my roof, where it spread its tail and shook its six-foot-long iridescent feathers.

  It screamed again, and I saw two female peacocks in the yard below. Aha. Mating season. In my youth, I, too, was guilty of show-off behavior to garner female attention. Lacking iridescent feathers, I once leapt from a fifth-floor hotel balcony into a swimming pool, missing the concrete deck by perhaps six inches.

  I didn’t have to look up at the male peacock. I was above him, tiptoeing up the hitch of the roof, trying not to break the barrel tiles under my size-thirteen-and-a-half, triple-E feet. Trying also not to slip down the steep slope, crash through the chinaberry bush, and break my neck.

  My recent dizzy spells made roof work an iffy proposition, especially with the tiles still wet from a morning storm, as I worked my way across the ridge toward the chimney. Yeah, my old coral-rock bungalow has a fireplace, which is as useful hereabouts as a snowplow.

  My roof’s been leaking after heavy rains. From experience, I know it’s the metal flashing around the base of the chimney, which is why I was tiptoeing across the roof tiles, carrying a bucket of hot tar and a small mop. The physical labor also took my mind away from the Calvert case. Melissa had prescribed an honest day’s work as therapy, though she meant sweeping the driveway and porch, not dancing across the roof.

  My cell phone rang. I wouldn’t have answered, but with the trial looming, you just never know when you’ll get an important call.

  “Mr. Lassiter, this is Samuel Merrick Buchanan,” said the caller in a booming voice.

  “I didn’t sleep with your client’s wife,” I replied.

  “Ha! Good one. But not the first time I’ve heard it.”

  Sam Buchanan was Miami’s leading divorce lawyer. When representing the husband, he was legendary for smearing the wife’s name. When representing the wife, he usually found hidden piles of the husband’s money.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Buchanan?”

  “You’re prosecuting the case against Dr. Clark Calvert.”

  I sat down on the ridge at the highest point of the roof, keeping the can of tar steady with one hand. “I’m gonna take a wild guess here. Did Sofia Calvert retain you for a divorce before she disappeared?”

  “I’ve been struggling with what I can ethically tell you. As you know, the attorney-client privilege survives death.”

  “It’s been a long time since I barely passed the bar exam, but the fact that Sofia Calvert retained you is not privileged, while what she said to you is. You could testify that you are a divorce lawyer and she hired you. The jury could reach its own conclusions.”

  He exhaled a sigh and said, “Do you believe my testimony, circumscribed as it may be, will be useful to the prosecution?”

  Sweat was coursing down my face, down my back, down my arms, down my legs. Between the heat of the Miami sun and the steaming bucket of tar, it was quite p
ossible I would just melt into a puddle of liquid protoplasm.

  “We’d need to prove Calvert knew she hired you,” I said. “If he did, it’s evidence of motive. If he didn’t know, it’s just prejudicial testimony without probative value.”

  “Put me on your witness list. I’ll do the best I can.”

  “Thanks for making the call.”

  “I feel terrible about that poor woman. Maybe if I’d pushed her to file and move out, this never would have happened.”

  “Not your fault, Mr. Buchanan.”

  “I’ll help the prosecution as much as I can, but it’s a sticky situation.”

  Like hot tar on a Miami roof, I thought.

  He lowered his voice as if someone might be listening. “Between us, Mr. Lassiter, Sofia was terrified of her husband. I doubt you can get this into evidence, but as she walked out my office door, she said, ‘Sam, if I ever go missing, don’t even bother looking for me. I’ll be dead and buried, and Clark will have made certain no one will ever find me.’”

  It didn’t surprise me but still landed with a wallop. Sofia was a woman living in fear. I had empathy for her and needed the jurors to feel the same way. Unfortunately, the Rules of Evidence—from doctor-patient privilege to attorney-client privilege to hearsay rules—conspired to keep the jury in the dark.

  “She told her tennis pro virtually the same thing,” I said.

  He wished me luck. I thanked him again, then made my way gingerly to the corner of the roof where the chimney sat astride the ridge. I couldn’t tell exactly where the flashing was leaking, so I decided to do a big, sloppy job that would be certain to cover the spot and likely a good number of tiles, too. I dipped the fiberglass mop into the hot tar and lathered it on.

  My cell rang again. Leaning on the mop, I checked the display. Detective George Barrios.

  “I found Ann Cavendish,” he said when I answered.

  “Yeah?”

  “She was stunned when I asked about Calvert. She said, and I quote, ‘I don’t want to talk about that man. I don’t want to see that man. And please don’t call me again.’ Then she hung up and wouldn’t answer when I redialed.”

  “And what did you gather from that?”

  “She’s scared witless. Of Calvert, not me.”

  “You have her address?”

  “Suburb of Atlanta.”

  “You’re gonna have to knock on her door, George.”

  “No kidding. You oughta be a cop. Where do you think I am right now?”

  As if on cue, I heard the voice on the loudspeaker. The Delta flight to Atlanta was ready for boarding.

  -43-

  Dirty Money

  The first goal in trying any case—civil or criminal—is not to make an ass of yourself. The second is to win. The goals are related, of course. It’s difficult, though not impossible, to win even if you knock over the courtroom spittoon. That’s what happened to the legendary Texas mouthpiece Racehorse Haynes in his very first trial as a greenhorn lawyer. He nervously got to his feet and knocked over the spittoon where lawyers spat out their chewing tobacco. And, yes, he won, maybe having gained sympathy from the jury for his klutziness.

  We don’t chew or spit in court anymore, though we surely blow smoke, so I would have to come up with another way to warm jurors’ hearts.

  It was early evening, and I was in my temporary office—courtesy of the state of Florida—the Calvert file fanned out in front of me on the war-room table. Detective Barrios had not called me back, and I fought the urge to pester him. If he had anything positive, he would call.

  The receptionist at the front desk buzzed me. There were two, though only one at this hour. They sat behind bulletproof glass because not all visitors to the State Attorney’s office were saints and heavenly angels.

  “Señor Pepe Suarez to see you,” the receptionist said in heavily accented English.

  A moment later, Suarez threw open the door to the conference room, not bothering to thank the security guard who had escorted him in. He slammed the door and tossed a document on the table.

  “Your friends served me with this shit,” he said, meaning Solomon and Lord.

  I examined the document. A subpoena duces tecum requiring Suarez to appear at trial and bring documents related to a trust he had formed for Sofia.

  “I assume you didn’t know this was coming, Lassiter.” He made it sound like an allegation.

  “What’s this about a trust?”

  “A father creates a trust for his daughter. What business is that of the lawyers defending the man who killed the poor girl?”

  Translation. Suarez doesn’t want to talk about the trust.

  I asked him to sit down and offered coffee, which he declined. Suarez plopped into a chair and put his cordovan loafers on my conference table. He wore no socks and bird’s-egg-blue slacks. He patted his sport coat just above his heart and didn’t find what he was looking for, which I assumed was a cigar.

  “Tell me about the trust,” I said.

  It took about ten minutes of bobbing and weaving, but I got the story out of him. He had created a spendthrift trust for Sofia when she was still a teenager. At twenty-one, she got a small portion, another at twenty-five. At thirty, she would get everything. And her thirtieth birthday, it turns out, was this month.

  “How much money is in the trust?” I asked.

  “That’s where it gets muddy.”

  I was intrigued by muddy. Like plumbers, lawyers make our living wading hip-deep in other people’s filthy water.

  “The trust documents allow me to put money in and withdraw it at my discretion, as long as I have Sofia’s written consent,” he said. “In reality, while some of the money is Sofia’s, or will be when she turns thirty, a majority is mine. That’s not what’s shown on the books, of course.”

  “What kind of a trust is that?”

  “Cayman Islands. That’s where the assets are held. Cayman laws apply.”

  “How much are we talking about?”

  “Sofia’s portion is worth roughly six million. But on the books, the Cayman bank would show assets of roughly forty million. The difference is my money.”

  It took me only a second to figure out the scam. “Thirty-four million bucks you’ve hidden from the IRS. Dirty money that you launder through the trust. Now you want to quietly get it out before it goes through Sofia’s estate and the tax man wants most of it.”

  “What’s that got to do with Calvert’s trial? Why should I have to show the trust documents in open court?”

  Through the sealed windows, I could hear a police siren. We were, after all, a stone’s throw from the jail and some dicey neighborhoods.

  “What happens if Sofia dies before her thirtieth birthday?” I asked.

  “The trust assets would go to her children, if she had any…”

  “Which she doesn’t.”

  “In that case, everything reverts to me.”

  “That’s what I thought. Did you ask Sofia’s permission to remove your money from the trust before her birthday?”

  He didn’t answer, which was answer enough. He’d asked; she’d said no.

  Finally, he said, “She wouldn’t talk to me about it, so I had Wetherall lean on her. That was a mistake. Scared her. Clarified things for her, she said. That’s the word she used the last time we spoke. Wetherall came on too strong. Told her if she showed up at that bank in the Caymans, she’d better look both ways down the street because he’d be there. Sofia accused me of threatening her life, said I’d stop at nothing to get the money back. But that’s not true, Lassiter! Jesus, she’s my daughter. But do you see the dilemma? She’s ripping me off.”

  “When did your relationship with your daughter go south?” I asked.

  “When do you think? When she married that bastard! All of a sudden, I was a polluter. A robber baron. An abuser of migrant workers. Jesus, Lassiter. We’d been close, and he turned her against me.”

  “If we looked at Sofia’s phone records, how many tim
es would we find she called you in the last few years?”

  “Practically none.”

  “How many holidays have you shared?”

  “Same answer.”

  “Making it easy to prove the two of you are estranged.”

  “What’s all that have to do with the trial?”

  I knew the answer would outrage him. Sometimes, the trick to keep people from yelling is to speak softly yourself.

  “You’re a straw man,” I whispered.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Something I taught Solomon and Lord. When you’re defending a homicide case, look for a straw man. Someone else with a motive to kill the victim.”

  “What! Kill my daughter? Are you insane?”

  “Here’s what they can prove. You cheat on your taxes. You have no relationship with your daughter, and she refused to give you the money you skimmed from your business. If she’s dead, you get all that money and hers, too. The defense will contend that you have a motive to kill your estranged daughter, and that raises a reasonable doubt that Calvert killed her.”

  “Bastards! Sons of bitches! Motherfuckers! You can’t let them do that to me.”

  “Actually, Mr. Suarez, I can’t stop them.”

  -44-

  The Third Plane

  After Suarez stormed out of the conference room promising to call Ray Pincher at home and nail my hide to the barn door, I got back to work. I shuffled my witness files, trying to arrange my order of proof. Detective Barrios would be an early witness, perhaps right after the paramedics who responded to the 9-1-1 call the first time Calvert choked Sofia into unconsciousness.

  Barrios would relate Calvert’s story of how he spent the day on Miami Beach, looking for Sofia. Then, boom, Corky from the Titty Trap and his video recordings would prove Calvert was a liar. Liar does not necessarily equal murderer, but it’s the first building block on the path toward conviction.

  I needed to plant in the jurors’ minds the idea that Calvert was getting a lap dance while his wife’s limbs were going into rigor mortis in the trunk of the Ferrari. But Sofia’s body would only be there if he was going to dispose of it somewhere.