Riptide

by Paul Levine

  “You’re back early,” Cindy said.

  “Settled for one-fifty, sent everybody home.”

  The elevator stopped, and the men in guayaberas got off on seventeen, home of a Panamanian banco with few customers but enormous cash transactions.

  Cindy was thinking it over. “One-fifty, as in a hundred and fifty thousand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jeez, I thought you said her injuries were phonier than Dan Quayle’s smile.”

  “Who?”

  “C’mon, Jake. Why’d you throw in the towel?”

  “Their orthopod was giving her a fifty percent disability of the upper-right extremity, fifteen percent of the body as a whole, and she’s got a whole lot of body. Plus she’s got an MRI printout that looks like the Milky Way and her expert is talking nerve damage. Then, there’s Mister Fraga-Freitas, who’s got his lost consortium claim. Says their sex life headed south, or as he put it, ‘de mal en peor.’”

  “What’s a broken collarbone got to do with sex?”

  “I was dying to ask and hoping the answer had something to do with a trapeze or a chandelier.”

  “So you settled, just like that?”

  “I also had a short trial judge, a short plaintiff’s lawyer, and a short guy on the jury who might have ended up the foreman.”

  “Not your Napoleonic complex theory again. What about your defenses? Remember, she showed up for her depo wearing glasses, but the day of the accident…”

  “Yes, my performance could have rivaled Clarence Darrow’s in the Leopold and Loeb trial. ‘And now, Mrs. Fraga-Freitas, isn’t it true that when you did your half gainer into the soda display, you were not wearing your bifocals?’”

  The elevator stopped at twenty-one, and a cleaning crew got in and rode to twenty-two, where they got off.

  Cindy said, “Well anyway, it was something to try. The MP’s not going to be happy if he thinks you gave the store away.”

  MP being Managing Partner, not Member of Parliament, though maybe it stood for Major Prick, too. “Yeah, Cindy, I know.”

  “I mean, San Pedro’s Supermercado is his client.”

  “Yeah, but who does he turn to when they’re in trouble. Who got them off the hook on health code violations?”

  “I remember,” she said.

  “Cockroaches in the frijoles negros. Story of my life.”

  “Don’t knock it. Your closing argument was great.”

  Lassiter lowered his voice and spoke to an invisible jury. ” ‘So what if there’s a little thorax with the beans, a hairy antenna with the rice. Once you mix in the onions and spices, who can tell?’”

  “Don’t forget the part about insects being considered delicacies in certain parts of the world,” Cindy reminded him.

  The elevator stopped at thirty-two with a soft whoosh, and Lassiter held the door open.

  “I still don’t know why you settled,” Cindy said. “Your experts would contradict hers, plus you had a chance to win on liability.”

  “No way. All the witnesses except Mr. San Pedro agreed the papaya was the color of licorice, meaning it had been on the floor long enough that some produce worker should have cleaned it up, if they all weren’t smoking reefer out on the loading dock.”

  “So you caved in?”

  “I settled. I didn’t want to lose.”

  They walked together in silence along the burgundy-carpeted corridor of Harman & Fox. The walls were tastefully decorated with oil paintings of the British men’s club variety: hunting dogs, whaling ships, and leather riding gear. Lassiter always thought a school of feeding sharks would be more appropriate but the partners’ art subcommittee, which reported to the facilities committee, which in turn reported to the finance committee, never took him seriously.

  Few of the lawyers were in their offices. It was usually that way. Fifty bucks a square foot for a view of the ocean, and hardly anyone was ever there. A few would be in court, a few might be interviewing witnesses, some would be goofing off at the racetrack, but others were just not accounted for, except when they padded their time sheets with the catchall entry for “research.”

  “I didn’t think that’s the way you played the game,” Cindy said finally. “Just trying not to lose.”

  “Maybe you thought wrong, or maybe that was another game. I decided I was saving San Pedro money by settling, and that happens to be my job.”

  “Some job,” Cindy said.

  “It is unnecessary to remind me that playing poker with half-assed lawyers and cantankerous judges is insufficient grounds for sainthood. And speaking of jobs, why aren’t you doing yours?”

  They stopped in front of Lassiter’s office. The door was open, files propped on the desk and credenza inside. The windows faced east squarely over Biscayne Bay, Miami Beach, and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.

  “I needed to get out of the ant farm, find some inspiration,” Cindy answered. “Listen to this.”

  November sky,

  Bums in park,

  Miami.

  Lassiter winced. “Haiku again, another lily pad and teahouse phase?”

  “It’s spiritually uplifting, you should try it.”

  “Sure thing,” Lassiter said. “How’s this?”

  Back to work,

  Type, type, type.

  Cindy.

  “Oh, Jake, there’s more to life than work. Besides, there was another reason I went to the park. I wanted to see the body. A Colombian cowboy got snuffed and dumped in the piss pool.”

  She swung a handful of zebra-striped nails in the general direction of Bayfront Park and the octagonal Claude and Mildred Pepper Fountain. Much to the dismay of the city fathers, the derelicts used the four-million-dollar fountain as a urinal. This was the first time, however, a drug dealer had practiced the dead man’s float there. Usually, when a deal soured, the losing entrepreneur turned up behind the wheel of a Ferrari at the bottom of a West Dade canal, a neat pattern of entry wounds at the base of his skull. No need for lawyers to resolve those disputes. A MAC-10 leaves no grounds for appeal.

  “Sounds gruesome,” Jake Lassiter said.

  “Nah, except he bled all over, and from the top floor, the water looked like a bowl of punch at the junior prom.”

  Lassiter groaned. “Any messages?”

  “Lots of calls. Thad the Cad, some crappy problems at the bank. Then a guy from Hawaii, something about his fee for coming to Miami for the windsurfing race. And Mr. Kazdoy. He wants you to go to the theater tonight.”

  Thaddeus G. Whitney, general counsel of Great Southern Bank, could wait. The bank’s work was fine if you were the kind of guy who liked sneaking tricky acceleration clauses into mortgages and drafting collateral agreements so abstruse most people would sign them just to avoid reading them. Lassiter wasn’t that kind of guy. He would call Keaka Kealia, the Hawaiian who was arriving Tuesday for the Miami-to-Bimini sailboard race. And Lassiter would show up at Kazdoy’s theater on Miami Beach for a lecture on Russian-American relations, an Eisenstein film, and a cup of borscht with the old man after the show.

  First, though, there was work to do, plenty of work for a good lawyer these days. Miami had become a boomtown. The biggest business was importation — an assortment of weeds, powders, and pills — and the town was awash with dirty money. Greedy bankers laundered millions in tens and twenties for one point of the action. Lawyers formed offshore companies to hide drug profits and sometimes wound up offshore themselves, tied to concrete blocks if they were unfortunate enough to be subpoenaed before grand juries. Sleek women sniffed at a tropical high and attached themselves to swarthy men draped with gold.

  To Jake Lassiter, all that was another world. He lived in a tiny house built of coral rock on a lot lush with live oak and red mulberry trees between Poinciana and Kumquat streets in Coconut Grove. He was one of the last Miamians without air-conditioning, preferring a half-dozen paddle fans that stirred the soggy air but did not seal him inside. At night he could hear the cries of herons and terns o
n their way from the Everglades to the beaches, and he could taste the aroma of a dozen mango trees next door.

  Lassiter preferred the beach to nightclubs and cutoff jeans to lawyers’ blue suits. He loved Miami for the water and the solitude he found on a nine-foot sailboard on a twenty-knot day, shredding the breaking waves of the Atlantic. Sailing east, hopping the chop, he would watch the sky meet the ocean at the horizon. The world was limitless, possibilities infinite. But jibe and head west, back to shore, and there in the distance were the glass-and-marble towers of downtown. Inside, plush jail cells twelve-by-twelve. The sun glared against the tiny windows, sharp as a dagger in the eye, and Lassiter imagined ten thousand lawyers, bankers, and accountants pushing their papers from one desk to another and back again, a cycle as endless as the orbit of the circling vultures.

  Jake Lassiter would rather sail east.

  * * *

  Cindy Clark typed the settlement papers in the San Pedro case and returned to her haiku, trying to work “bloody corpse” into a poetic triplet. Jake Lassiter called the Hawaiian and promised that an appearance fee would be delivered before the race. An unusual request, but for Keaka Kealia, the world’s greatest boardsailor, it was worth it.

  From his high-rise perch, phone cradled on shoulder, Jake Lassiter reached for his binoculars. He watched the surf break on the reef at Virginia Beach on nearby Key Biscayne. He envisioned Keaka Kealia, six thousand miles away where Pacific waves slapped the north shore of Maui. Lassiter wished he were there with the sailors and surfers whose lives mocked his own. He envied their endless summer, conjuring images of sails crackling in steady trade winds, warm nights grilling mahimahi on the beach by torchlight, surrounded by women with bronzed bodies and sun-kissed hair.

  The call completed, Lassiter dropped the San Pedro file on the floor next to a bulging folder of antitrust pleadings. He sidestepped half a dozen mortgage foreclosures and made his way to the marble windowsill three hundred fifty feet above Biscayne Bay.

  “Maui,” Jake Lassiter said wistfully, kicking off his black leather wing tips and squinting into the brightness of the bay.

  CHAPTER 4

  Soda Jerk

  First Violet Belfrey vowed she wouldn’t spend a dime, wouldn’t even cash in the bonds. But why not go to the bank and find out what gives? The bank vice president fiddled with his mustache and whistled when he saw her, whistled twice when he saw the bonds, grabbing them, instead of her, with clammy hands. He told her to unload them now and talked about interest rates and issue par versus nominal par and a bunch of other things that didn’t make any sense except that she could turn the birds into cash.

  “Just a slight discount below face value,” he said, twisting his mustache.

  No harm in that, Violet thought, walking out of there with fifty-one thousand seven hundred dollars in cash, the banker following her out the door, extolling the virtues of a tax-exempt municipal bond mutual fund.

  “We’re not the Rocker-fellers,” she told him. “The Belfreys always hold our own money, and mine’s going right into the shoe box with Grandma Mabel’s zirconium ring.” Violet neglected to say that tax-free investments were meaningless in a family where no one had ever signed a 1040, and few could have, even if they’d wanted to.

  The money all might have gone into the shoe box, too, just as she planned, had the bus not passed Potamkin Lincoln-Mercury on the way back to her place. The midnight blue Town Car, five eagles on the wing.

  Violet Belfrey never cared much about jewelry, never had the bucks to care much about it. But a watch, that’s practical, can tell time and show people you’re classy all at once. The gold Rolex from Mayor’s on Miracle Mile, two more eagles aloft.

  Gambling was for suckers but a weekend in Nassau with Harry Marlin, her man, well, that was a vacation and a well-deserved one. The blackjack table, another bird uncaged.

  It seemed like a lot of money at first, but if you wanted to get your white ass out of town, buy a place in the Carolina mountains, the score would have to be bigger. Hell, only walking around money left, and wouldn’t be any sugar daddy there to sink your teeth into.

  Of course Harry was asking questions, wanting to know where she got the money. At first she said her aunt Emma died, and Harry cracked wise about Violet’s family, saying it was even money her aunt was her sister.

  “That ain’t funny,” she said.

  “Okay, just don’t pull my chain. Your aunt had to leave the house to take a pee, so don’t tell me she saved the money in a cookie jar, or that your uncle Clem struck oil in the pea patch like the Beverly friggin’ Hillbillies.”

  He kept pestering, pecking away at her, and finally she told him. Harry listened, eyes wide, and asked her to repeat the part about the combination lock and the file cabinet.

  “Gray metal drawers,” she said, “a hollow wood door to the office.”

  “Uh-huh,” Harry Marlin nodded, smiling his gold-capped grin. “Security guards, burglar alarm?”

  “Nope.”

  “Uh-huh,” he repeated.

  “Don’t be gittin’ no ideas,” Violet told him. “If those bonds disappear, who’d he suspect? Him and me’s the only ones ever in the office, and ah’ll bet dollars to doughnuts he never told nobody else about ‘em.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. What makes you think you’re the first one ever took off her clothes for him?”

  She laughed and brushed a fall of platinum hair from her eyes. “He might’ve dipped his wick in Loretta Lynn for all I care, but he’s tighter than my granddaddy’s hatband. He wouldn’t pay for it, I can tell you that.”

  “So how come he gave you fifty-five large just for showing your tits?”

  “Whatsa matter?” Violet asked. “Doncha believe me? Or ain’t my tits worth that much?”

  “They’re million-dollar hooters, Vi, but that’s not the point. It’s just weird, he could get a hooker with a tongue like a lizard for a hundred bucks, but he pays you fifty-five K just to pose.”

  “Maybe he’s in love with me. Ever think of that?”

  He hadn’t before, but he did now. After a moment, he said, “So why don’t you do something about it? Shit, all that money for posing. What would he pay for a blowjob?”

  “Why doncha make him an offer and see?” Violet said, her eyes narrowing. Not that she hadn’t thought of sucking some life into the old man, but hearing Harry suggest it, like he was running the show, burned in her gut. Sam Kazdoy was her private fishing hole, and she didn’t need any advice on how to bait the hook.

  Ever since he had given her the bonds, Violet had been even more helpful at the theater, offering to run errands, and the old man seemed happy enough to have her around. Ey, bubeleh, get me a coffee, black, and a bagel with a shmeer. And she did, stepping into the dark office and hanging around, but there was no talk of breasts or bonds. Relying on a lifetime of experience with men, Violet would bide her time. Let him make the first move.

  “Harry Marlin, you listen and you listen good,” she ordered “If ah’m going to get the rest of those bonds, ah’ll do it my way and in my own time.”

  * * *

  Violet Belfrey had a daily routine. Her job was to be the first one at the theater, pick up the mail, turn on the lights and air-conditioning, and make sure the old rummy of a projectionist showed up in condition to load the reels in the right order. She also checked the door to the mezzanine office, just as she had every day since the old man had introduced her to winged eagles with dollar signs. The door was always locked, a cheap Schlage with a skinny bolt, and when she leaned against it, she heard the groan of metal against wood.

  On the way to the theater, Violet stopped at the Lincoln Road Grill, a place never mistaken for the Poodle Lounge at the Fontainebleau. She swiveled in and hugged the pudgy counterman from behind, grinding her pubic bone into his butt as he squashed hamburger patties on the grill.

  “Seeyuh right after the show,” she said.

  “I’ll be here,” Harry Marlin replied, winking at a
customer and wiping his hands on a dirty white apron. He was proud that this savvy blonde had fallen for him. Besides being the best lay he ever had, she was a great listener. Harry needed that because he was a great talker. His monologues could last hours. Schemes and scams, deals with guys whose offices were the trunks of cars, always a big plan for easy money. In fact, Harry Marlin was a loser. When he gambled, he lost. When he sold drugs at his lunch counter, he was paid with counterfeit currency. When he fell for one of his waitresses, she cleaned out the cash register and beat it to Jamaica with a local wise guy who made porno films.

  Harry had bounced through a series of restaurant jobs in Detroit and when he moved to Miami Beach fifteen years ago, he took over the lease on the Lincoln Road Grill, a run-down luncheonette. The food was greasy, but he had fresh copies of the Daily Racing Form on the counter for his best customers, the bleary-eyed bettors from the dog and horse tracks and the jai alai frontons. And a motley congregation it was — gamblers, aging dancers from the Beach Burlesque, lobster-pot poachers plus assorted retirees, none of whom seemed to mind the stale doughnuts and metallic coffee.

  Harry Marlin made it through each day because he had a dream. He would get out of Miami Beach, would say adios to making chili burgers for the menacing teenagers who skulked through the neighborhood. He would read The Wall Street Journal each morning and call his broker each afternoon. He would leave behind the wacko bag ladies who had buried their husbands in Cleveland and Newark, and the bearded rabbinical students who ordered seltzer and made faces at anyone eating the chili. Someday … when he scored.

  Harry wore an unbuttoned white guayabera, the loose linen shirt with four pockets, which he thought made him look professional, a pharmacist maybe. He was forty-three and camouflaged a growing bald spot with back-to-front and side-to-middle brushstrokes. He was short, olive-skinned, and paunchy, with shoulders like a wire coat hanger, but he had a smile born of innocence and the heart of a wide-eyed grifter who could not help but believe that his next scheme was laced with gold.