Riptide

by Paul Levine

  “Sure did,” Lassiter said. “He told me to retire.”

  * * *

  Isidor Pickelner scratched at his beard and waited for the next question.

  “What is your official capacity, Mr. Pickelner?” Chareen Bailey asked.

  “Officially, I’m the Kosher Food Inspector for the City of Miami Beach. Unofficially, I’m Izzy.”

  Chareen Bailey leveled her gaze at the witness to tell him this was serious business. “Are you a rabbi?”

  “No, ma’am. I’m a shochet. I slaughter animals according to the Jewish dietary laws as laid down in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. And I investigate all establishments in Miami Beach that hold themselves out to be kosher.”

  “What do your duties entail?”

  “Ascertaining the ingredients and the method of preparation of foods served in restaurants and delicatessens. Only those four-footed animals that chew their cud and have cloven hooves are kosher. So, a cow is kosher, a pig is not. Creatures that crawl such as lizards or snakes are forbidden. Fish must have both scales and fins, so shellfish is taboo.”

  “No stone crabs?” Judge Lewis mused.

  “Afraid not, Your Honor,” Pickelner replied.

  “Did you have an occasion to investigate the food served at Kazdoy’s All-Nite Deli?” Ms. Bailey asked.

  Did he ever. Pickelner claimed the sausage was made of pork!

  “Trayf, Your Honor. Unclean! Kielbasa sausage posing as kosher knockwurst. An abomination under the religious laws and false advertising under state laws.”

  Ms. Bailey allowed as how she had no further questions, and the judge suggested it was a good time for lunch.

  * * *

  The courthouse wits could not restrain themselves as they stopped at Lassiter and Kazdoy’s table at the Quarterdeck Lounge.

  “Hey, Jake, that Reuben’s not kosher,” announced Marvin the Maven. “No mixing meat and cheese.”

  “How Trout the beer?” Lassiter asked.

  “No problem.”

  A few ex-clients wandered over. Luis “Blinky” Baroso, a con man and lobster pot poacher stopped by to say hello. He was being arraigned in federal court for stealing rare ostrich eggs. Stuart Bornstein was eating grilled grouper at the next table. He once tried to cash in on the fast-food craze but went bankrupt when no one would buy into his franchise for Escargot-to-Go. Mike DuBelko was perched on a barstool and saluted Jake with his old-fashioned glass. He owned a service station and was still on probation for pilfering freon from his customers’ cars while he changed their oil. At twenty bucks a pound, the freon was more profitable than tune-ups.

  Sam Kazdoy frowned when Lassiter ordered a second sixteen-ounce Grolsch. “What now, I got a shikker for a lawyer?”

  “Don’t worry, Sam. I can hold it. Let’s talk about the case.”

  “Why get fartootst? What does God care what we eat? What matters is how we treat each other. Which reminds me, have you found the gonifs who robbed me blind?”

  “Not yet, Sam. With your bonds, the bank, and the windsurfing race, I’m spinning in circles right now. That’s why I needed your kosher kielbasa case like I needed a …”

  “A second hole in your bagel,” Kazdoy said.

  * * *

  Judge Lewis was waiting impatiently in the courtroom, but Jake Lassiter was on the pay phone in the corridor.

  “Es negocio o es placer?” Berto asked him. “Business or pleasure, Jake?”

  “Business. I’m representing Great Southern Bank.”

  Silence. Then a hearty laugh. “Jake, I’m glad it’s you, mi amigo. I thought it would be one of those bloodless WASPs downtown, those pasty faces, sin alma ni corazon.”

  Funny, that’s what I said about Winston P. Hopkins in, only in English, Lassiter thought. He felt a kinship with Humberto Hernandez-Zaldivar. “Berto, they’ve sucked the blood out of me, too. Working for bankers turns you into one of them.”

  “No, nunca. I know you better than you do. We will talk. We will drink wine and eat, and you will tell me what to do, just as you did in law school.”

  “But, Berto, I’m representing the bank against you. I’m supposed to collect money from you.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll work it out.”

  The phone clicked dead, and Lassiter rushed into the courtroom, where the judge motioned the lawyers to the bench with an imperious wave of his hand. Then he instructed them to move the case along so he could make the daily double at the dog track, and finally he sniffed the air. “Mr. Lassiter, do I detect the scent of alcohol on your breath?”

  Lassiter winked a yes. “If Your Honor’s sense of justice is as keen as his sense of smell, I have no fear of the outcome of the case.”

  The judge harrumphed and sent the lawyers back to their tables. Lassiter called Sam Kazdoy to testify. He ran through Kazdoy’s past, his philanthropy, his love of Russian films, and how he brought corned beef and social life to the retirees of South Beach.

  “Now, Mr. Kazdoy, you heard Mrs. Pivnick testify this morning?”

  “Of course, I heard. You think I’m deaf like her?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “The old bubbe bought a hearing aid, twenty-nine dollars mail order.”

  “Objection!” Chareen Bailey was on her feet. “Outside scope of the witness’s knowledge.”

  “What’s not to know?” Kazdoy asked. “You could hear Radio Havana on the farshtinkener thing all the way across the street.”

  “Overruled,” the judge said.

  “Did there come a time when you discussed your deli’s food with Mrs. Pivnick?” Lassiter asked.

  “She asked if our chicken was stuffed with matzo meal and prunes, and I said, ‘No, with kasha.’”

  “Kasha?” the judge asked.

  “Buckwheat,” Kazdoy explained. “Cook it with some chicken soup and egg, you got yourself a nice stuffing.”

  Lassiter moved a step closer. “So you simply described your stuffing?”

  “Twice, I told her,” Kazdoy said. ” ‘Strictly kasha. Strictly kasha.’ She must have thought — “

  “I get it,” Judge Lewis said, making a notation in the court file. “Mr. Lassiter, do you have anything further from this witness?”

  “Well, I was going to ask — “

  “Because,” the judge continued, “I’m prepared to rule in your favor. But if you want to try and change my mind …”

  “The defense rests,” Lassiter said.

  “Your Honor, please!” Chareen Bailey called out, leaping from her seat. “What about final argument?”

  “Don’t need it. Of course, you’re free to appeal to the District Court.” The judge smiled, a phenomenon as rare as snow in Miami. “After all, I answer to a higher authority.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Tres Leches

  Berto had said eight o’clock at El Novillo, a Nicaraguan steak house on South Dixie Highway. Lassiter arrived at eight-fifteen, knowing that his old friend operated on Latin Standard Time and was always late. The menu was covered with cowhide, the bristly hair still attached, and Lassiter wondered whether to pet it or read it. He ordered a pitcher of sangria and waited. Finally, at ten past nine, Berto arrived, greeted the hostess with a smack on the cheek, and after scanning the room, found Lassiter in a distant corner.

  “Hola, chico,” Berto boomed. “Looks like they put the gringo next to the men’s room.”

  “Hello, Berto. Long time.” He looked like hell, Lassiter thought. The hair was still black, shiny, and perfectly cut, and the dark tailored business suit was freshly pressed. But the skin had lost its natural ruddiness, the cheeks were puffy, and the smile was forced.

  “Jake, you look great, like you could still put the pads on. And you got some suntan for a guy stuck in the courthouse.”

  “Windsurfing. Keeps me in shape. Haven’t made a tackle in a thousand years, but there’s a client or two I wouldn’t mind using for a blocking sled.”

  Berto’s eyes skimmed the perimeter of the resta
urant. One of those cocktail party looks, Lassiter thought at first, Berto checking out the room for more interesting company. But the eyes were jittery, the mouth tight with tension.

  Berto caught Jake staring and responded with a prefab smile. “Let’s order! I know you Anglos like the Early Bird Specials, so you must be starving by now.”

  “Why don’t you handle it so I don’t embarrass you with my Spanish?”

  “Excellent idea.” Motioning toward the waiter, Berto ordered without consulting the cowhide. “Traiganos una orden de chorizos de cerdo, otra de cuajada con tortilla con plátanos maduros, dos lomitos a la plancha, término medio, y una orden de hongos a la vinagreta. We’ll order dessert later. Jake, you want more sangria?”

  “No, Berto, I want to talk about the loans.”

  “The loans? The loans are the least of my worries, amigo. Stop playing lawyer and listen.” Berto looked around again. The restaurant was filled, some families, mostly Hispanic businessmen. Lassiter guessed that he was the only Anglo other than the man who had followed Berto in the door and now sat at a corner table drinking American coffee.

  “Jake, let me tell you what’s happened to me. I didn’t screw around with the bank until I’d already lost the shopping centers. When the economy turned, the bottom fell out of my real estate holdings. The offices, the strip centers, condos … all gone. Plus Magda left me when the money ran out. Back to Daddy in Caracas.”

  “I didn’t know …”

  “I don’t broadcast it, Jake. But sometimes, you have to swallow your pride. A veces es mejor tragarse el orgullo. It’s no disgrace to be broke, eh?”

  Lassiter looked into Berto’s eyes and shared the pain. He wanted to put his arms around his old friend, not prey on the carcass. Berto smiled. “Hey, Jake, it’s not so bad, I’ve still got this.” Berto reached inside his silk shirt and brought out the heavy chain that was his trademark, huge woven links of gold that could have anchored a catamaran in a squall. “Bought it with the profit from my first deal. Told the jeweler I wanted something different. Every Latino in town wears gold chains, verdad? Make it grande, I told him, links as big around as my penes. Jeweler said, ‘Ingots don’t come that big, how about as big around as your thumb?’”

  “It’s you,” Lassiter agreed.

  “I never take it off, Jake, I’ll die with my gold on.”

  Lassiter didn’t like the way Berto said it, the casual mention of death, as if it were the next flight out of town.

  They were eating now, Berto picking at his food, Lassiter slicing the marinated steak, dipping it first in the sweet sauce of tomatoes and red peppers, then trying the green sauce of garlic, parsley, and oil. The meat was tender, the sauces tangy, the starchy black beans and rice taking some of the sting out of the spicy dishes.

  “What about you, Jake? What’s new in your life?”

  “Nothing. I still don’t have a wife, a dog, or a Most Valuable Player award.”

  Berto pointed at Jake with a fork filled with peppers and onions. “You have this tendency to reject the mainstream, to scoff at conformity.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s a contradiction that has always plagued you. A football player with brains and savvy, then a lawyer bursting at the seams of his vest. You frustrate easily and you have a low tolerance for bullshit. You may seem controlled and contained, but you’re always on the verge of just chucking it all away. You don’t always play the game, Jake, and if you’re not careful, you could lose what you’ve built.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  “That’s why I can talk. Ever think about your future?”

  “As little as possible.”

  “You ever gonna get married?”

  “What for?”

  Berto laughed. “Great question, Jake! I wish I’d asked myself the same question before I’d done about a thousand things.”

  “Such as.”

  “En resumidas cuentas,” Berto said, “to make a long story short, when things went bad, I cut some corners to try and make a comeback.”

  “You doubled up the loans on the condos, Great Southern and Vista Bank, a neat scam, but fraudulent as hell.”

  Berto’s fork struck his plate like a rifle shot. “Forget the loans. Jesus Cristo! The loans are dogshit. I’ll tell you what I did. I got a DC-3. I bought a hundred acres just north of the Trail near Naples. I spent a small fortune clearing, filling, building a runway. You get me?”

  “Oh no,” Lassiter said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “That’s right. Only el idiota I hired, he built runways in the Bahamas on coral rock, and he doesn’t figure on the change in the water level in the Glades. So, first flight we got thirty thousand pounds of grass that I paid cash for, but it’s August, and it’s raining so hard the animals are leaving in twos, and there’s a foot of muck on the runway. Pilot tries to set it down, he skids into a hammock, sheers off a wing, fifteen tons of prime weed goes up in flames. Gators got so stoned, they didn’t move for a week.”

  “You were there?”

  “Hell no, but I had trucks there and runway lights and guys with radios and guns. Everyone on the ground hauled ass. By the time the pilot gets out, he’s gotta walk. Meanwhile the fireball attracted a state trooper who was cruising the Trail. He nails the pilot, who gives me up.”

  “I didn’t realize. Didn’t hear anything. You get indicted?”

  “No way, Jose. I gave them the source in the islands. I have no priors, and it was my first job, I swear. So now, I’m a federally protected witness.” Berto gestured to the Anglo man sipping coffee. The man nodded, almost imperceptibly. He wore a plaid polyester sports coat, gray slacks, and brown loafers. Lassiter guessed he was about forty, short blond hair turning gray. The man scanned the restaurant with pale eyes, studying everyone who came in the front door and out of the kitchen.

  “DEA?” Lassiter asked.

  “Yeah. His name’s Franklin, like Ben, only this one doesn’t have a first name. All very hush-hush. They deposed me for a week, and now they’re setting me up with a new place to go, new name, job, everything.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Not supposed to tell.” Berto looked around again, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Casper, Wyoming.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Berto shrugged and signaled the waiter to bring dessert, tres leches for Lassiter, espresso for himself. “Can you imagine me with the cowboys, Jake?” Berto looked down at his plate. He still had the charm that had carried him so far, Lassiter thought, but a hearty greeting and a slap on the back could not disguise his anguish. They were silent. Then Berto worked up the old smile and said, “I’m taking Lee Hu with me to Wyoming.”

  “Who?”

  “Not who, Hu. Rhymes with stew, which is what she is for Avianca, based in Bogota. She adores me. Only nineteen, about five one. You ever have an Asian girl? All they want to do is please you.”

  “That would be different,” Lassiter allowed.

  The tres leches was delicious, cake soaked in whole milk, evaporated milk, and condensed milk, covered with white frosting. Lassiter could barely move, and it was time to talk business. “Berto, the bank wants to bring charges against you for fraud and bribing a bank officer. Conrad Ticklin spilled his guts, said you gave him twenty-five grand to approve the loan. It’s a federal crime.”

  The espresso cup stopped an inch from Berto’s mouth. His eyes narrowed. “Ticklin’s a candy-ass! He begged me for the money because he was whipsawed by his wife and his girlfriend.”

  “Regardless whose idea it was, you bribed him.”

  Berto scowled. “Yeah, because I tried to help him out. Ticklin’s pushing forty-five and has all the charm of a warthog, but he’s not as good-looking. He falls ass over elbows for this receptionist at the bank. She’s twenty-one, Cuban Catholic, lives at home, and won’t see him because he’s married. She tells him, ‘No puede estar el polio en el corral y en la cazuela.’”

  “You can’t have your chic
ken in the pen …”

  “And in the pan,” Berto added. “Or put another way, you can’t have your tres leches and eat it too. So he says he’ll leave his wife, and the blessed virgin rolls over. Course he doesn’t leave his wife. Now the girl is pissed and threatens to tell the wife and the bank, and Ticklin needs money to shut her up.

  He gets it from me, she gets a new BMW with a sunroof, Ticklin gets fired anyway, and I’m stuck with a bribery charge.”

  “His mistake was saying he’d leave his wife,” Lassiter said. “I’ll never understand why men do that.”

  “Jake, your naïveté knows no limits. El hombre promete y promete y promete hasta que se la mete. The man promises and promises and promises until he sticks it in.”

  Two strolling guitarists and a musician shaking maracas were serenading a middle-aged couple, singing “Besame Mucho,” the love song that pleads for kisses. Franklin, the DEA agent, watched as if the maracas were hand grenades.

  “Berto, I’ll try to talk the bank out of going after you, but I’ll need to give them something to keep the grand jury away. Do you have any property you can substitute as collateral for the condos?”

  Berto grabbed the napkin from his lap and squeezed it, as if wringing out a dishrag and finding it dry. He dropped the napkin and gestured with both hands to the heavens. “My house has three mortgages, and I took all the equity out of the shopping centers to buy the first haul of grass. The property along the Trail took the last cash, and the feds are going to grab that under the forfeiture law.”

  “Is there anything else, race horses, foreign accounts, other properties?”

  Berto looked around again. He seemed to think about it, weighed his thoughts, and finally said, “What the hell. There’s one thing. It’s not in my name, so the feds haven’t found it. If they had, it’d be gone too, to the IRS. When things were good, I put some bucks in an offshore corporation, courtesy of the Cayman Islands. It holds clear title to a three-hundred-acre ranch outside Ocala. Gotta be worth two million plus, and it’s not doing me any good. If I touch it the feds will hit me with obstruction or perjury.”

  Bingo. Another chance to be a hero for the bank, Most Valuable Mouthpiece award. Not much of a thrill, not like breaking into the starting lineup against the Jets because of an injury to the strong side linebacker, but it would have to do. “That’s it, Berto. It’s clean. Your offshore company can deed the property to Great Southern and you’ll get a release on the loans. Will you do it?”