by Paul Levine
But something kept my ass glued to the chair, my eyes on the screen. The camera cut to a close-up, revealing Krista’s smile to be all artifice, her moans halfhearted. Girl at work. Her job was to make the pig grunt and to feign pleasure herself. This was a transaction. She was paying her rent.
On the screen, Krista was pleading, “Fuck me, Daddy!”
My stomach heaved, and I tasted bile. Was I any better than the bastard screwing her on the screen? Any better than Charlie Ziegler? For one night, at least, I was as sleazy as the pimp and porn king. Only difference, he made a career of it.
I couldn’t take any more. I banged through the door of the booth and stomped to the register where Coleman was ringing up a customer with a stack of DVDs and a plastic tube of lubricant.
“You done already, Jake?”
“Pop it out. Give me the disc.”
Coleman hit the EJECT button on the master player and handed me the disc. I slammed it against the counter, breaking it in two.
“What the hell!” Coleman’s cigarette flew from his mouth. “That’s fifteen bucks.”
I tossed a twenty on the counter and crashed out the front door and into the humid night.
7 The Do-Over
I got into my car, pulled out Amy Larkin’s business card, and punched her cell number into my keypad.
I paused without hitting the CALL button. Elmore stood in the window of his store, watching me. If I dived into the search for Krista Larkin, where would it lead? If Charlie Ziegler was guilty of some terrible crime, just what would my culpability be? Maybe Ziegler pushed her off a cliff, but I’m the guy who drove her up the mountain.
Damn, a mirror can be a lethal weapon, and self-knowledge a poisoned pill. I had been a self-centered and egotistical jock with all the trappings of stunted male adolescence. Back then, I had yet to develop the empathy for others that marks the passage into manhood.
The defense lawyer inside of me said I wasn’t the proximate cause of Krista’s descent. But why the hell hadn’t I sized up the situation, grabbed Ziegler by the lapels of his suede jacket, and tossed him halfway across the street? I could have taken Krista to Social Services or a girlfriend’s place or put her on a plane back home. Instead, I gift-wrapped her and delivered her to Charlie Ziegler.
There’s a difference between criminal guilt and moral culpability. Sure, I was off the hook in any court of law for whatever happened to Krista Larkin. But while I could not be criminally prosecuted, I could suffer self-imposed shame.
I should have helped her.
Could have. Would have. Should have.
But we don’t get do-overs.
Or do we?
I hit the CALL button. “You were wrong,” I told Amy, when she answered.
“About what?”
“You said I wouldn’t call.”
“What do you want, Lassiter?” Her no-nonsense, no-bullshit tone.
“I have a lead on a guy Krista was involved with.”
“Other than you?”
“I told you about that night. Nothing happened.” Trying hard to sound truthful.
“And I told you I didn’t believe you.”
“I’m hoping, in time, you’ll start to trust me.”
“In time? What do you think, we’re going to be friends?”
“Just hear me out.”
“Give me the name you supposedly came up with.”
“I can do more than that. I can help you find out what happened to Krista.”
“Jake Lassiter, help? When I look at you, all I see is that grinning ape in the strip club. A man without a serious thought beyond his next beer and his next lay.”
“I made a mistake. I want to make it right.”
“Get over it. This isn’t about you and your redemption.”
“You’re playing an away game, Amy. This is my town.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I have street savvy. Experience. Contacts.”
“You?”
The concept seemed ludicrous to her.
“The State Attorney is a friend of mine.”
“So what?”
“I can get you official help.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Let’s have dinner and talk about it,” I suggested.
“I’m not hungry.”
“One drink, then.”
“Not thirsty, either.”
“C’mon. Let me lay out a plan. If you don’t like it, I’ll back off. Deal?”
“Give me the name of the man Krista was mixed up with, and I’ll think about it.”
“Nope.”
“You’re a real bastard, Lassiter.”
“Yeah, but I’m your bastard. You might not like me, Amy Larkin. Hell, you might even hate me. But the truth is, you need me.”
She let out a long, whistling sigh and said, “Where do we meet?”
8 The Taste of Wet Steel
Amy Larkin had been sitting on the motel room bed, cleaning a pistol when Lassiter called. Now she hung up the phone and pushed the brush through the barrel of the gun, scrubbing out wet streaks of lead.
Her father’s gun. A Sig Sauer.380 that fit her hand comfortably. She’d never known he owned a weapon until he ended his life just six weeks earlier. One shot to the temple, with this very gun.
It was the beginning of this whirlwind. When she found the photo with her father’s angry scribble on the back. “The Whore of Babylon.”
How Amy hated the self-righteous bastard. He had been so much happier believing sin-not the dysfunctional Larkin family-destroyed Krista. God, how Amy missed her sister. There had been an emptiness inside her from the day Krista left.
Oh, the damage our parents can inflict. When she was still a teenager, Amy’s father had berated her.
“Your sister is Satan’s mistress, and you’re her handmaiden!”
“All I did was kiss the boy, Dad.”
“Why don’t you run away the way Krista did?”
No, she wouldn’t do that. There was a better way to put distance between herself and her screwed-up family. As a child, she kept her parents hidden from her friends. Mom praying in tongues, Dad withdrawn into his silent world. Amy threw herself into schoolwork. She studied hard, paid her own way through Ohio State, and became a solid citizen with a 9-to-5 job and a 401k.
Whatever neuroses had been implanted at home, she’d buried inside. The anxiety, the sense of dread, all sealed tight beneath her polished exterior.
Why, then, was she unable to shake her mother’s teachings? Why, when all logic told her that her mother’s faith stemmed from ancient superstitions-not the word of God-did she still pray for the divine healing promised by the Holy Ghost? The contradictions chiseled away at her.
She jammed the brush through the barrel of the Sig Sauer, her thoughts turning to Lassiter. In just a few hours, he claimed to have found a lead.
“A guy Krista was involved with,” was the way he put it.
Was he telling the truth? Or was he just coming up with a sideshow, some distraction to protect himself or someone else? An old teammate, maybe.
At first, she had thought Lassiter was just another man-beast, like so many she had known. Hiding their fangs behind toothy grins, oiling their way into women’s beds.
Losers.
Users.
Abusers.
She had no proof that he had harmed Krista. But her instincts told her he had lied about that night at the strip club. He knew more about Krista than he was telling. Could he have killed her?
She squeezed her eyes shut, imagined herself pistol-whipping Lassiter, demanding the truth, threatening to blow his brains out. Would he talk? Revenge fantasies, her shrink had told her, were unhealthy. Yeah, well so is losing your sister.
Amy placed a white patch on the end of the push rod, dipped it in solvent, and cleaned the barrel of powder residue. She imagined it was the very residue of the bullet that entered her father’s brain. Next, she dripped oil on a cle
an cloth and wiped down the gun, inhaling the wet steel smell that somehow reminded her of the taste of gin.
She would meet with Lassiter. Could he really get the State Attorney to help? And if he did, would that be proof that Lassiter wasn’t involved in Krista’s disappearance?
“The State Attorney is a friend of mine.”
A cover-up. A conspiracy. Not out of the question. A network of old pals who looked out for one another, covered one anothers’ asses.
An official investigation was something she hadn’t expected. She doubted, after all this time, that the authorities would be interested. She considered for a moment the implications if Lassiter was on the up-and-up. If the State Attorney opened an honest inquiry, could he discover what happened to Krista? Could he gather enough evidence for a prosecution?
A trial was not what she had been planning. That was a secret she would have to keep from Lassiter. She had not come to Miami to prosecute the man who murdered her sister. She had come here to kill him.
9 Never Lost, Just Hard to Find
Twenty minutes after leaving the video store, I parked in front of City Hall, a waterfront art deco building that in the 1930s had been the terminal for Pan Am’s seaplanes. I took a shortcut through the adjacent boatyard, dodging several oily puddles at the entrance to Scotty’s Landing, a ramshackle fish joint next to the marina. A few yards away, sailboats were docked, halyards pinging in the wind. A three-quarters moon hung over the bay.
I spotted Amy at a redwood picnic table, closest to the water.
“Thanks for meeting me.” I slid onto the bench across from her.
“Who’s the guy you found?” Small talk was not in the lady’s repertoire.
I told her about Charles Ziegler and Charlie’s Girlz and the porn video I watched. A shudder went through Amy’s body, and I gave her a moment to compose herself.
Then I told her Krista was last seen heading to a party at Ziegler’s house. I didn’t mention that I’d met the guy for about a minute, because that would have meant coming clean about my one-nighter with Krista. Amy had no need for the information, and I had no desire to take any more crap from her.
“Let me tell you my plan,” I said.
“Thanks, but I don’t need your plan. I’ll confront Ziegler myself.”
“No, you won’t. He’s a big deal in this town. He’ll have lawyers, layers of people to get through. Besides, we’ve got nothing on him. There were lots of men at his parties. We may have only one chance to talk to Ziegler, and we need to do our homework first.”
She nailed me with a cold, hard, insurance investigator’s look. “Just what homework do we need to do?”
“We should pay a visit to Alex Castiel, the State Attorney.”
“The guy you claim is a friend.”
“We play basketball in the lawyers’ league.”
“That’s it? You dribble to each other?”
I didn’t explain that “dribble to each other” made no sense, basketball-wise. “Castiel has a staff of investigators,” I said. “He works with cops. He can subpoena witnesses.”
“Just how good of friends are you?” Suspicion laced her voice, or maybe that was her normal tone.
“A long time ago, I did a big favor for him.”
“What kind of favor?”
“The secret kind. What I’m saying, he owes me.”
It was true. I’d been carrying the guy’s IOU for a long time, never intending to use it. But then, I’d never been accused of making a teenage girl vanish before.
“So if you’re ready to work together,” I said, “I have a bunch of questions about Krista that will help me get started.”
Amy studied me, her eyes seeming to search for deception. I looked past her to an older couple pushing a cart of groceries along the pier. Tanned the color of a richly brewed tea, the couple was headed toward a Kaufman, a deep-water cruiser with a striking name on its transom, Never Lost, Just Hard to Find. I imagined them sailing around the world, but maybe that was my dream, not theirs.
“So how about it?” I prodded her. “Are we a team?”
“Do you win most of your cases, Lassiter?”
“Not even half. But damn few of my customers are innocent.”
“Customers …?”
“All I ask is a check that doesn’t bounce and a story that doesn’t make the judge burst out laughing.”
“Nice.”
“Hey, they don’t call us ‘sharks’ for our ability to swim.”
I figured she’d never buy it if I pretended to be Atticus Finch.
“Do you have any siblings, Lassiter?”
“A sister. Half sister, really. My mom had her out of wedlock after my father was killed down in the Keys. Why do you ask?”
“Krista’s my half sister, too. We have the same father.”
We were both quiet a moment, absorbing that small bit of commonality.
“Do you love her?” Amy asked. “Do you love your sister.”
Another weird question but I went along. “Janet’s a crack whore and a worse mother than Octomom, but yeah, I guess I love her.”
“If someone killed her, what would you do?”
“I’d go after him. Hard.”
Her eyes warmed up just a bit. It was the answer she wanted to hear. Better yet, it was true. “What do you need to know about Krista?”
That seemed to be her way of welcoming me aboard.
“Everything. About her, about you. About the Larkins of Toledo, Ohio.”
Amy looked off toward the bay, her sunset eyes seeming to reflect the moonlight. She told me about their father, Frank Larkin. After divorcing Krista’s mother, he married again, and his new wife gave birth to Amy. The two girls were close, even with the six-year age difference. Amy idolized her older sister. Krista was popular, smart, pretty. A cheerleader, but a secret one.
“Krista hid her uniform in her locker at school. She told Mom she was at Bible study group when they practiced or had games.”
Krista’s double life, it seemed, had started early.
“Why’d she run away?” I asked.
“Do you believe Jesus is the son of God?”
The question came so far out of left field it was beyond the bleachers. A waiter came over, giving me time to formulate an answer while I ordered a beer, smoked fish dip, conch fritters, and jalapeno poppers. Amy opted for white wine.
“I believe if there’s an all-seeing God, he must have his eyes closed. The universe is chaos. The Big Bang banged. Little molecules grew into big molecules, and after a thousand millennia, something slithered out of the swamp and turned into the bloodthirsty animal we call man.”
She looked as if I’d dropped my pants at Sunday vespers.
“No disrespect intended,” I added.
“How do you live your life with such feelings?”
“I try to do the least damage possible to people and God’s green earth.”
“God’s green earth?”
“I’m hedging my bets.”
Amy fiddled with her napkin. “Mom was a Higher Life Pentecostal. Dad sort of went along, but he drew the line at speaking in tongues. Krista refused to go to church. Her way of rebelling against my mom, her stepmom. Krista taunted her. Smoked and drank and ran around with boys. One night, I overheard Mom on the phone, talking to someone about an intervention. Kidnapping Krista, taking her someplace where the church would program her.”
It wasn’t hard to figure out what happened next. “You told Krista your mom was gonna snatch her.”
She nodded. “The next morning Krista was gone. Never even said good-bye.”
Headed to South Beach to be a supermodel, I guessed. Glamour and fame just a Greyhound ride away.
“If I’d kept my mouth shut, Krista never would have left.” Amy choked on her words. It was the first emotion, other than anger, I’d seen cross her face.
“You did what any sister would do.”
As she made an effort not to sob, I listened to the gro
an of hulls against pilings, giving her a moment to mourn all over again. It only took a moment, and she composed herself.
“If Krista didn’t say good-bye, how’d you know she came down here?” I asked.
“She called me after a week, said she was sleeping on the beach. She’d met an older guy who said she could make some money modeling, maybe get into the movies.”
“I don’t suppose she mentioned a name.”
Amy shook her head. “No, but now I guess it was Charlie Ziegler.”
“What did you tell your parents?”
“Nothing. Krista made me promise not to. A few months went by, and someone called Dad. He wouldn’t say who.”
Sonia Majeski, I knew.
“Dad just went to the airport, and when he came home, he said Krista had died in a boating accident in Florida, and her body was never found. He said we needed to get on with our lives.”
“When did you realize your father was lying?”
“Not until he died six weeks ago. I came across his journals and the photo from the strip club. Krista was dead to him, so he decided she had to be dead to me, too.”
That explained why it took Amy all these years to begin looking for her sister. I processed that and tried to figure just what it must have been like for an eleven-year-old girl growing up in that house. Thinking maybe I should cut Amy a break, given what she’d been through.
“Tomorrow, we’ll pay a visit to the State Attorney,” I told her. “Things are gonna start rolling.”
“You haven’t mentioned a fee. How much will this cost me?”
“Nothing. Not a dime. This one’s not about money.”
10 We, the Jury
The next morning, I was late for our meeting with State Attorney Castiel. Unavoidably detained, as they say. The jury had reached a verdict in Pepito Dominguez’s DUI trial. So now I stood in Judge Philbrick’s courtroom, arms folded across my chest, waiting for the clerk to announce the verdict.
A shitty little misdemeanor, the equivalent of powder-puff football in a tackle league. Still, my heart pounded.
