BUM DEAL: Jake Lassiter Legal Thrillers

by Paul Levine

  Where? Where did Calvert go after spending thirty-one minutes at the strip club?

  That’s what the jurors would want to know. And that’s what I didn’t have.

  In the old days, I would have spread a road map of South Florida across the table. Now I brought Google Maps onto the computer monitor. I zoomed in to Pompano Beach so that the Florida Turnpike was on the western border of my screen and I-95 on the east. It’s a distance of only about two miles. The Titty Trap was near the western boundary, just off the turnpike exchange. What was near there? A mobile home park, a truck stop, a bunch of fast-food restaurants on Hammondville Road. Nothing promising. I zoomed in closer to check out the north-south thoroughfares, Powerline Road and Andrews Avenue. Still, nothing of interest.

  I widened the view on my screen. East of I-95, I spotted a gray space with no apparent buildings and three intersecting streets. No, wait. Those aren’t streets. Runways.

  Pompano Beach Airpark.

  I Googled the place. A tiny, nondescript general aviation airport. Three runways, all under five thousand feet in length. An aircraft control tower operated under contract with the FAA. Meaning there would be records of takeoffs and landings. If Calvert had stuffed the dead body of his petite wife into the luggage, he could easily have dumped her in the ocean.

  Okay, it was just a hunch, but I’ve made my living on hunches. I grabbed my cell phone and dialed a number.

  “Jake, I was just gonna call you,” Detective Barrios said, answering the phone.

  “I have some potentially good news, George.”

  “Me, too. But you first.”

  “There are two acrobatic planes registered in Calvert’s name, right?”

  “Aerobatic planes, to use the correct term. A Marchetti SF.260 trainer and a cute little biplane, an Eagle Talon 1. Both at Tamiami Airport. And neither flown the last six months.”

  “Solomon told me Calvert flies almost every weekend.”

  “Not those planes he doesn’t.”

  “Right. But what else do we know he does on weekends?”

  “Visits the Titty Trap.”

  “Exactly. And guess what? There’s a general aviation airport five miles away. Pompano Beach Airpark.”

  “Like I said, Jake, his two planes are down south at Tamiami Airport.”

  “Yeah, the ones he owns. If he’s leasing a plane, would your records search have turned it up?”

  “Long-term lease, yes. He doesn’t have one.”

  “Maybe he rents each time he flies out of Pompano. Or borrows a friend’s plane. There’s gotta be a third plane, George, and it’s at Pompano Beach Airpark. When can you go up there and flash your badge around?”

  “Tomorrow. I’m at Hartsfield right now, buying a second ticket to Miami.”

  “Why? Did you put on weight?”

  “You can thank me later, smart-ass.”

  I waited a moment, then heard a woman’s voice. “Hello, Mr. Lassiter. This is Ann Cavendish. I’m going to help you put that maniac Clark Calvert behind bars.”

  -45-

  The Sword of Justice

  With the trial looming, it was all coming together. That happens sometimes. Other times you ride into battle on a spavined steed, waving a rusty sword. That’s what I’d expected in the case against Clark Calvert. But the sword in my scabbard seemed to have magically turned into King Arthur’s Excalibur. Powerful and magical, call it the Sword of Justice, if you don’t mind a little hyperbole.

  The morning after returning from Atlanta, Detective Barrios headed to Pompano Beach Airpark. By 11:00 a.m. he’d called with the news I’d been hoping for. Clark Calvert was well known to the guys in the hangars, the maintenance shops, and the tower. He frequently flew a Bellanca Citabria, a little single-engine, two-seat aircraft. The plane was owned by a friend, a Boston physician with a winter home in Palm Beach. The friend allowed Calvert to take out the plane as often as he pleased, and, yes, the guys frequently saw him on weekends, sometimes with his wife, sometimes alone. When they were together, the Calverts flew to Bimini or Nassau for weekends or day trips. Other times, Calvert would just go out for a few hours by himself.

  “On June 3,” Barrios said, “at two sixteen p.m., fifty-two minutes after he left the Titty Trap, Calvert took off for points unknown. He didn’t file a flight plan.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s video of him getting into the cockpit, carrying an oversize duffel,” I said.

  “Ha. You don’t ask for much. No security cameras where the Citabria was parked. He touched down again at Pompano at five forty-seven p.m.”

  “Three and a half hours. Divide it in two for the outbound and the return. He could have covered a lot of ground, or water, before dumping the body.”

  “I figure he chose the Gulf Stream,” Barrios said. “If the cargo didn’t sink, the bones might wash up on a beach in Greenland.”

  “You peek into the cockpit?”

  “Nothing in plain view to report. Would love to have the techs up here tomorrow with their tweezers and flashlights and luminol.”

  “The search-warrant application will be awaiting your signature when you get your butt back here.”

  “Ann Cavendish there?”

  “I told her to get some sun at the hotel pool and a good lunch, courtesy of the state of Florida, and I’d see her this afternoon with you.”

  “You’re making me feel indispensable, Lassiter.”

  “It’s you and me, buddy. We took this stinking pile of roadkill and turned it into a murder case. No body. No forensics. Squeaky-clean defendant with no priors. Shaky motive. Purely circumstantial case with lousy circumstances. And look where we are.”

  “Yeah?”

  “If Ann Cavendish pans out, we’re gonna win, George!”

  -46-

  Dream Witness

  Ann Cavendish strolled into my office after lunch, along with Detective Barrios. While I asked questions, he would evaluate her answers and compare them to what she’d told him the day before. It’s useful to tag-team witnesses.

  She was a striking thirty-six-year-old with a torrent of dark hair falling over her shoulders in waves. I had thought she was the nurse from Mass General, the woman who complained to the hospital that Calvert had choked her into unconsciousness during otherwise consensual sex. But that was someone else, meaning there was yet another woman out there. At least one, possibly more—an enticing fact.

  Before I could focus on that, I needed to turn my attention, full bore, to Ann Cavendish, who had been a surgical-instrument sales rep in Boston when Calvert practiced medicine there a dozen years ago.

  As I listened to her heartfelt tale, well told, I began to think I had the dream witness.

  “I’m a midwestern girl,” she began. “Iowa.”

  She told me she’d been a local beauty queen runner-up and quickly realized that would get her nowhere. She had a two-year degree from a community college but couldn’t get a decent-paying job. Moved to Chicago and did some catalog modeling, then latched on to a position as a sales-rep trainee for a manufacturer of surgical instruments. Those companies liked hot young women, going back to the days when the vast majority of surgeons were men. She’d graduated to full-fledged sales rep in the company’s Boston headquarters just before she met Calvert.

  She called on him at his medical office, pitching hip-replacement gear. He asked her out. First date, no problem. He was a gentleman. Charming, erudite, thoughtful. Interested in her. Lots of questions about her background. Second date, no problems, either. Dinner, a long walk, and a pleasant demur to his suggestion she come up to his penthouse condo and enjoy the view. She had figured the view he meant was his bedroom ceiling, and she still had some of her midwestern innocence.

  Third date, she agreed to go to his place for a drink. Nothing more. Okay, some kiss-kiss, but no bang-bang. She remembered being on the sofa as they kissed, fully clothed. He clasped a strong hand around her neck. It barely hurt. She didn’t choke. She wasn’t gasping for breath. He
must have been applying pressure to her carotid artery, she later figured. She awoke in his bed. He was atop her and inside her. She tried pushing him off, but he continued thrusting until he ejaculated.

  Furious and humiliated, she gathered her clothing, dressed, and fled. He called her several times, but she refused to answer. She would spot his car outside her apartment, a chilling sight. She had no close friends in Boston. No support group. She didn’t report Calvert to the police. Didn’t tell anyone. Alone and afraid and ashamed, her life crumbled. She would burst into tears during a sales call. Within weeks, she was fired.

  She fell into a deep depression but never sought therapy. She decided to start over, prompting the move to Atlanta. First thing she did was change her name. The lawful way, with a petition to the local court. She knew it sounded a bit paranoid, but she was afraid of Calvert locating her. She rebuilt her life, and currently worked as a freelance sales rep, handling surgical instruments.

  “I admire your courage,” I told her.

  “It’s not easy. I never wanted to hear Clark Calvert’s name again. But the way I was raised, we help our neighbors. If Calvert goes free, he’ll just prey on another woman, and another one after that. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t step up.”

  I called a taxi for Ann and sent her back to the hotel with instructions to charge a mammoth steak-and-martini dinner to my temporary employer. Then I did my postmortem with Detective Barrios.

  “She’s credible, Jake,” the homicide detective said. “Told the same story to me yesterday, but not word for word. No sign of rehearsal or coaching.”

  “I wish she’d reported the rape to the police. Or to a friend or a therapist. Anyone.”

  “You play the cards you’re dealt, partner.”

  “How much of her story could you confirm?”

  “The name change, for starters. I’ve copied the courthouse file. In Boston, she was Jane Smith. Really. She said that Ann Cavendish sounded more exotic, and her name was always so plain. Her apartment is filled with those charts you see in doctors’ offices. Spinal column, that sort of thing. Plus, several briefcases that look like your trial bags, but inside are surgical tools. Forceps, retractors, drill bits, bone clamps, knee and hip joints.”

  Something was bothering me, but what?

  Barrios was an intuitive detective, as the best ones are. He studied me a moment. “What’s eating you, Jake?”

  “She changed her name so Calvert couldn’t find her.”

  “Yeah?”

  “If Calvert came clean with Solomon and Lord, he would have said, ‘There’s a woman out there somewhere who might say nasty things about me. Her name’s Jane Smith. But the note Solomon left outside my house said, ‘Ann Cavendish.’”

  “What do you figure, Jake?”

  “Only two possibilities. Either Calvert tracked her down under her new name, which is pretty creepy. Or it wasn’t Solomon who gave me the name.”

  -47-

  Pedantic Semantics

  I filed my “Amended Witness List,” adding Ann Cavendish, and had a messenger hand-deliver a copy to Solomon and Lord at their home at precisely 7:00 p.m.

  I waited for the inevitable call.

  Which came at 7:06 p.m.

  I was sitting on my back porch in a weathered Adirondack chair, listening to the peacocks screech and the crickets chirp and the Metrorail train toot its horn. Did I mention that I was sipping Jack Daniel’s?

  “What’s this bullshit, Jake?” Solomon yelled into the phone.

  “To what particular bullshit do you refer?” I inquired politely.

  “Too late to add a witness, buddy.”

  Are you putting on an act, buddy?

  That’s what I couldn’t figure out. If Solomon was the one who gave me Ann Cavendish’s name, then he couldn’t be surprised that I added her to the witness list. He would expect her to testify, would want her to testify, would want Calvert to be convicted. At the same time, he had to put up a front for Victoria, had to profess shock at this turn of developments.

  “Steve, old chum, are you perchance talking about Ann Cavendish of Atlanta, Georgia? The Peachtree State.”

  “Who is she, Jake?” Victoria’s voice. They were on a speaker.

  “I expect you’ll learn when you take her depo. But in the spirit of collegiality, let’s just say she’s another woman whose neck found itself in your client’s unyielding grip. In fact, he raped her.”

  “Bull feathers! It never happened.”

  “Did you just say ‘bull feathers’?”

  “Besides, it’s too late to add a witness. I’ll move to strike her from your list.”

  In the background, I heard Solomon say, “We’ll move to strike her.”

  “Consider this newly discovered evidence,” I said, “permitting her addition to the cast of the show. I’ll produce her for depo tomorrow if you’d like. There’s no prejudice to the defense.”

  I heard whispering at the other end of the line. Then Victoria’s voice. “We just spoke to our client. He’s never heard of Ann Cavendish.”

  Now it was my turn to whisper. To myself.

  Yet another ethical dilemma. If Calvert is telling Solomon and Lord the truth, it’s because he only knew the woman as Jane Smith of Boston. I could tell my friends this, but frankly, I’m under no legal obligation to spill my guts. At the same time, how could Solomon be the source if Calvert didn’t know the woman as Ann Cavendish?

  “Then Calvert has nothing to worry about,” I said. “Where do you want to depose her, your place or mine?”

  “That won’t be necessary, Jake,” Victoria said.

  Hmm. Not like her. Ms. Preparation. She never liked to wing it in court.

  “Victoria, you’re puzzling me.”

  “Good.”

  “Either you’re supremely confident—”

  “Aren’t you the one who taught me never to show fear to the opposition?”

  “Hey, Vic! That was me!” Solomon protesting in his whiny voice.

  “Or you have something up your sleeve,” I continued.

  “We’ll file a motion to strike your new witness. Both on grounds of timeliness and admissibility. Even if true, she’s talking about an unrelated event that’s not relevant to whether Clark killed Sofia.”

  “Prior bad acts. Pattern evidence. Such a murky area of the law, don’t you think?”

  “Not in this case.”

  “The court has wide discretion,” I said. “In Bill Cosby’s first trial in Pennsylvania, the judge only allowed one of the other alleged victims to testify. I thought that was a little stingy, don’t you?”

  “You won’t even get one.”

  I cleared my throat and spoke in stentorian tones. “Florida Statute Section ninety-point-four-zero-four, subsection two. Other crimes, wrongs, and acts.”

  “Since when do you read the law books?” Solomon challenged me.

  “Today, five o’clock.”

  “I know the statute by heart,” Victoria said.

  “Of course you do, dear.”

  “Don’t call my fiancée ‘dear,’” Solomon ordered.

  “You’re right, pal. I apologize. That was a semisexist statement, only spoken under the influence of my second whiskey. Or perhaps my third.”

  “You’ve been drinking too much, Jake.”

  “Bull feathers! I’m as healthy as the next guy, as long as the next guy is sitting on a bar stool.”

  Victoria said, “The statute is clear. The state can’t introduce evidence of other wrongful acts to demonstrate bad character or a propensity to commit a similar act.”

  “Oh, fussy, fussy, fussy, Victoria.”

  “What!”

  “Your semantics are so pedantic.”

  “I’m simply telling you the clear meaning of the statute.”

  “You’ve just gone from Miss Congeniality to Miss Technicality.”

  Solomon said, “He’s just pulling your chain, Vic.”

  “I know that, but, Jake
, must you be so insufferable?”

  “It’s called lawyering, sweet cheeks.”

  “What!” Solomon exploded. “What did you just call my fiancée?”

  “You’ve gone too far, Jake,” Victoria said. “Really. Shame on you.”

  What had I done? The words just came out. No premeditation. No control. Melissa had told me that loss of inhibition was a symptom of traumatic brain injury.

  “I’m sorry, Victoria,” I said. “Blame my frontal lobes. Or maybe the NFL for not outlawing spearing until my playing days were done. To tell you the truth, I haven’t been myself lately.”

  “That concerns me, Jake.”

  “Me, too,” Solomon chimed in.

  “No sympathy, please. That would just make it worse. But honestly, it’s all pretty confusing. I just don’t know what’s happening to me.”

  -48-

  Natural-Born Persecutor

  I awoke with a headache that might be called a migraine, unless there’s another name for the feeling of two steak knives jammed into your temples. I couldn’t eat my breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast because chewing exacerbated the pain. Melissa, who had spent the night, played helpful nurse and made a smoothie of fresh papaya, mango, strawberries, and yogurt. I had breakfast through a straw.

  Melissa also gave me an unmarked bottle of pills. “Only take these in dire circumstances,” she whispered, as if the DEA might be listening.

  I massaged my forehead with my knuckles. “These days, all my circumstances are pretty damn dire.”

  “Really, Jake, the pills are the last resort. Only take them if you’d rather jump off a bridge than take another breath. And only one a day. Don’t double up, no matter how bad the pain. Let me know at once if you have side effects.”

  “Such as?”

  “The pills will lower your blood pressure. Some people become dizzy and faint. So never drive after taking the medication. And don’t go to court. You could end up speaking gibberish.”