by Paul Levine
She loved the way he leapt to her defense, ready to curse out or punch out anyone who threatened her. A few old-fashioned male virtues were still . . . well, virtues.
“Your support means a lot to me,” she said.
“And you’re everything to me, Mel. You know that, right?”
She smiled at him, this protective teddy bear of a man she loved. “Let’s eat dinner, and then show me just what you mean.”
***
After dinner and showers, it was spooning time in the Lassiter bedroom. Jake’s arms were wrapped around Melissa and her curves were tucked into the angles of his body. Whoever invented spooning should get a Nobel Peace Prize, she thought. They gave one to Henry Kissinger, and as far as she knew, he never did anything to make people feel warm and loved.
“Jake the Cuddler,” Melissa had said, the first time they drifted off to sleep this way.
Tonight, Jake was whispering in her ear, her hair tickling his nose, one hand playing gently on the slope of her hip. Usually, the whispers were sweet and romantic, the prelude to friction and heat. Tonight, the talk was more like a summary of the nightly news. Jake told her about Pincher’s theory of the lying postcards, that a crime is whatever the Justice Department says it is. She told Jake she’d booked him on an early morning flight to Los Angeles. He told her how much it hurt that Kip didn’t turn to him when he got in trouble. She told Jake to wear the obscenely expensive sweater to show that he wanted to reestablish his bond with Kip. The symbolism wouldn’t be lost on him.
“I love the way you’re always looking under the hood,” Jake murmured.
“Checking your oil?”
“Analyzing the psychological underpinnings. You’re better at it than I am.”
“We’re a great team.” After a quiet moment, she said, “Why do you suppose you never got hitched?”
“You mean why didn’t I have a starter marriage in my twenties?”
“Or your thirties or forties. And don’t say, ‘Because I never met anyone like you.’”
“That’s a given. But I also looked at my friends and saw marriage as trench warfare, sort of like World War I. Fight like hell to gain ten yards of turf, then retreat to the cold, wet trench. Grab your rifle, stick your head up, take a few wild shots, duck down again. Once in a while, there’s a cease-fire, like the Germans and the Brits at Christmas singing ‘Silent Night’ from one trench to another. The next day, more shooting.”
“Wow, that’s a pessimistic view of marriage, if ever I’ve heard one.”
“But that’s not us. Never will be.”
He hugged her more tightly, the spoons even closer together now.
“I love being in your arms,” she said. “You make me feel safe.”
They were quiet for a long moment. They listened to the paddle fan rotating above the bed. Outside, a nighttime breeze slapped palm fronds against the bedroom window.
“Before I forget,” Jake said, “Paulette thanks you for sending her those studies of adolescents and their immature brains.”
“Happy to do it.”
“Mel, I wouldn’t mind reading the data myself.”
“Hmm, why?” she asked, sleepily.
“If Kip is charged, maybe there’s something in there for me. That he didn’t have criminal intent, it was just a risk-taking adventure.”
She stirred under the sheet. Nothing like a neuroscience issue to awaken her. “If you’re saying that Kip is a thrill junkie, doesn’t his profit motive hurt your case? Seems to me it would hold more weight if Kip hadn’t been paid so handsomely.”
“You’d make a great prosecutor,” Jake whispered in her ear.
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment,” she whispered right back.
“Sure, it is. You’d be the sexiest prosecutor I know. I wouldn’t mind if you locked me up right now. Life without parole.” His lips brushed her neck and she purred. One of his hands cupped one of her breasts and his other hand traced the dip and curve where her hip ski-sloped to her waist.
“Is this foreplay?” she asked, “or are you just proving you’re ambidextrous?”
“Both?” he ventured, cautiously.
“Your flight is at six-forty-five a.m.”
“Which is why my foreplay is double-handed, sort of eight-play.”
“Why didn’t you say so, slugger? You want a bon voyage kiss kiss, pet pet, bam bam?”
“Bam bam . . . bam. Sure.”
She turned to face him, their noses inches apart. Who would kiss whom first? She elected to be the one. Long and slow. Then he kissed back, and in a few moments, the bed creaked from below and there was heaving and sighing above.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Hubris of the Young
I put on jeans, running shoes, and that thin, soft, rust-colored sweater Kip had given me. Melissa insisted on driving me to the airport. Just another one of her gestures of care and affection, tenderness and love. It was beyond the call of duty, leaving the house at 4:45 a.m. But here she was, sans makeup, that sprinkle of freckles making her look like a college coed.
We were stopped at the traffic light at Douglas and U.S.1 when I said, “Let me tell you about the trouble Kip got into when he was at Penn.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Yes, I do. No secrets.”
“You promised Kip.”
“You can better advise me if you know his past, so I’m changing the rules.”
When the light turned green and we headed north on Douglas, I told Melissa the story.
“Kip’s smarts came back to haunt him,” I explained. “His test scores placed him in upper-level math courses. In his second semester, he’s hanging out with upperclassmen in something called nonlinear dynamics. He’s a whiz, and they like him. Maybe he’s their kid mascot. They’re all poker players and they teach him Texas Hold ’Em. He’s fascinated, learns the ratio method and percentage method of figuring pot odds. First, he plays video poker to sharpen his skills, and, as you’d expect, he’s damn good. Then he starts playing with his new pals for low stakes.”
“I think I see where this is going,” Melissa said, as we passed Calle Ocho in the predawn traffic. “He gets addicted to poker and flunks out.”
“He didn’t have time to get addicted. This was a one-shot deal. A trip to Atlantic City to hit the casinos.”
“Don’t you have to be 21 to get into a casino?”
“Hang on, Mel. I’m getting to that. At the last minute, this kid Taylor backs out because he’s got to study. He and Kip have the same color hair and look enough alike that . . .”
“Taylor gives Kip his driver’s license.”
“And his American Express Centurion card.”
“The black titanium card? A college kid?”
“His old man runs a hedge fund. They have a mansion in Greenwich plus a two-story penthouse on Central Park South. Anyway, Taylor was staking Kip, who had maybe sixty bucks in cash. He told Kip they’d split the winnings.”
“What if Kip lost?”
We passed the darkened Mel Reese golf course. Just a few blocks from the airport now.
“Kip says they never even considered the possibility of losing.”
“The hubris of the young,” Melissa said, nailing it, as usual.
“So, this car full of guys drives to the Jersey shore. And now Kip’s not playing against college kids. Some are professionals. This is their full-time job, and they know the math as well as Kip does. They also know poker psychology, which requires assessing your opponents. That comes from experience that Kip doesn’t have. Maybe worse, he’s also playing against the bus crowd, rank amateurs who know nothing. They bet when they shouldn’t and pull cards out of their ass when they should have folded on Fourth Street.”
“So how much did Kip lose?”
Melissa parked the car in front of the first set of doors at the American Airlines terminal. A hotel van pulled alongside and discharged its sleepy passengers.
“Oh, he won. At first. Say
s he was up about thirty-seven thousand dollars.”
“Wow. But he didn’t quit while he was ahead, did he?” She lowered her forehead and pretended to pound it onto the steering wheel, a universal gesture of “Oh shit!”
“Right. Now, it’s about three a.m., and he’s on a losing streak. So he uses that credit card, buys stacks of hundred-dollar chips. Bets too much on bad hands and too little on good ones, bluffs big while sweating big, chases lost money, and, of course, when he has a dead solid perfect hand, he loses on a bad beat.”
“Is that where the other player gets lucky?”
“Makes a ridiculous bet and wins. Long story short, Kip loses an all-in pot while he’s holding four sixes because some yahoo who’s holding a pair of queens gets kissed by stardust when the other two regal ladies turn up on Fourth and Fifth Street. The odds of any hand beating four sixes, according to Kip, are one in one-hundred-seven-thousand. To do it like that, it just doesn’t happen.”
***
A uniformed airport cop, a broad-shouldered woman in her thirties wearing a shiny black duty belt, rapped on the driver’s window and motioned for Melissa to move the car. Melissa lowered the window and said, “Just another minute, officer.”
“One minute, you got,” she said, and walked on.
“How much did Kip lose?” Melissa asked.
“All told, one hundred twenty-nine thousand, four hundred ninety-eight dollars.”
She gasped. “On a credit card?”
“The Centurion card has no limit. But when it hit a hundred grand, Taylor’s father gets a fraud alert that wakes him up. He calls Taylor, who panics and says he must have lost the card. Taylor frantically calls Kip and tells him what happened, and if anyone asks, he’s gotta say he borrowed the card without permission because if he tells the truth, his old man will pull him out of school and make him sell commodities, which is akin to capital punishment in that zip code. Meanwhile, the old man calls the casino, which was named in the fraud alert. Casino security and two local cops grab Kip, who says he’s using the card without Taylor’s knowledge.”
“Admitting he committed a crime.”
“Grand larceny, identity theft, unauthorized use of a credit card, and forgery.”
“Oh my God.”
The airport cop appeared at the window again and yelled, “Move it,” even though there were plenty of open spots in front of the terminal.
I grabbed my carry-on and opened the passenger door, buying another few seconds. “I got him into pre-trial intervention as a first-time offender, but he had to plead nolo to one count. It all goes away, record expunged, if he completes probation. But a person on probation is like a gymnast on the balance beam. You don’t have to fall off to lose points. A wobble from the straight and narrow and you go to jail.”
“Last warning!” the cop yelled.
“One second, please,” I pled, one foot on the pavement, the rest of me still inside the car. I turned to Melissa. “Maybe I didn’t do enough for him after all this happened. Maybe I didn’t make it clear that he had to be ultra-cautious, instead of so damn reckless.” I exhaled a long sigh. “There’s no probation this time. There’s only prison.”
“Thanks for telling me all this,” Melissa said. “It means a lot to me.”
“No more secrets,” I promised.
“You’re the best, Jake. You’re real in every sense of the word.”
“And we’re closer every day. Pulling together for a common purpose.”
She rewarded me with a warm smile. “Good luck with Kip and remember this. He may have lost his way, but he’s not a lost cause.”
We kissed, and I stepped out of the car.
“Hold it right there, sir,” the cop said, sternly.
I looked at my watch. Not late, yet. “What have I done, Officer?”
“Place your bag on the sidewalk and your hands at your side where I can see them.”
Melissa had driven away, unaware that I was being rousted. The cop approached me warily.
“If you’re gonna strip-search me,” I said, “I gotta warn you. I’m ticklish.”
“That’s a handsome sweater, sir.”
“Thank you. It’s vicuña.”
“Is it now?”
“Unless that’s an endangered species, in which case it’s polyester. Look, it’s a Loro Piana, if that means anything.”
“Oh, it does. We have a problem with counterfeit Loro Piana sweaters. Customs confiscated half a dozen containers last week.”
“You’re not going to take my sweater, are you?”
“Do you have a receipt?”
“It was a gift.”
“Uh-huh. Keep your hands at your side and bend forward so I can reach the label.”
“Is that really necessary? I have a plane to catch.”
“I’m not asking again.” She fingered the call button on the radio mic clipped to her chest, as if she might seek reinforcements, a SWAT team, maybe.
I did as I was told. She pulled up the neck of the sweater and examined the label. “One hundred percent vicuña,” she said. “With the tilde over the ‘n.’ The knock-offs omit the tilde.” She let go and smoothed the fabric. “You’re good to go, sir.”
“Thank you, Officer.”
“Have a safe trip.”
I grabbed my bag and nodded my thanks.
“And may I say, sir, the sweater looks very nice on you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Public Shame
A young woman with two-tone lacquered fingernails checked me in at the American Airlines counter. She allowed as how my rust-colored sweater matched my eyes, which I took to mean they were bloodshot. The gate agent, a portly man, said he wished he could wear a sweater like that, but he didn’t have the shoulders and his paunch would only be accentuated. And the flight attendant stationed at the doorway of the Boeing 777 asked if the sweater was cashmere, but I set her straight about those wild vicuñas and their tildes in the Andes.
I had paid full fare for business class in the wide-body jet because coach seats cause my back to go into spasms. With the full recliner, I dozed off and on during the flight. Each time I awoke, Kip was on my mind.
Just when did I lose him? When did he go from basking in the warmth of my care to running from it?
Melissa had repeatedly told me this was all part of the normal process of the child becoming an adult. “All parents lose their children when they cease being children,” she said. But criminal charges in New Jersey and now possible federal charges at home are not normal. And Kip’s emphasis on money, on acquisitiveness, well, that was foreign to me.
I wasn’t an angel growing up, wild and rowdy in the Florida Keys. Fueled by cheap beer and raging testosterone, I’d crept onto docks after midnight to take boats for joyrides. I’d dived for spiny lobster in other people’s traps and gotten into fistfights with punks from Homestead High.
At Penn State, I was into football, girls, and classes . . . in that order. I joined a student thespian group and played Big Jule in “Guys & Dolls,” my performance marred by bruising Nathan Detroit’s vocal cords when lifting him from the stage with one hand.
Somehow, I got through my youth relatively unscathed. Why hadn’t Kip?
***
At LAX, I rented a Mercedes SUV and was speeding down a steep hill on the 101 just outside Camarillo when my cell rang.
“Got a minute, Jake? Erwin Gridley here. I want to run something by you.”
“What’s that, Judge?”
“Bert Kincaid and his wandering pecker.”
“Judge, you know we can’t talk about the case without Bert’s presence.”
“Jeez, when did you start crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s?”
“Not sure. Maybe when I got a job with the Florida Bar.”
The judge’s laugh seemed to scoff at me. “Funny you should mention that. I was researching what punishment to dole out to Bert, and what do I come across? The Florida Bar vs. Jacob Lassiter.”
&n
bsp; “Yes, sir. Long time ago, the Bar hauled my ass to Tallahassee for a public reprimand in front of the state Supreme Court.”
“You punched out a client. Kincaid diddled a few. Seems to me your violation is greater, which is why I’m considering the lesser punishment of a private reprimand.”
“Double secret probation? A don’t-do-it-again letter? The Bar can’t agree to that.”
I was on flat land now, broad expanses of lettuce fields on both sides of the freeway, arms of irrigation devices rotating like airplane propellers, shooting mist into the air.
“You’re pretty high and mighty for a guy who’s lucky to still have his license.”
“Mine was a heat-of-anger deal. Not premeditated and it only happened once.”
All true. I had just won a date-rape case because I’d gotten a bottle of roofies suppressed on an illegal search. My client joked about putting me on retainer for next time, now that he had his get-out-of-jail card. I broke his jaw with one punch. Then I went on a three-day bender and nearly quit the practice. After that, when people asked my occupation, I’d say I worked in the so-called justice system.
“Bert Kincaid repeatedly abused the attorney-client relationship,” I said. “A confidential, private reprimand won’t stop him.”
Traffic backed up heading into Oxnard. I merged into the fast lane, which, at the moment, was going twenty miles an hour.
“Tell me about it, Jake. What was it like, standing in front of the Supremes, getting a tongue-lashing in open court?”
“The biggest humiliation of my life.”
“Convince me then. Can public shame change a man?”
The judge was asking about me and, of course, about Kincaid, but I was thinking about Kip. When he was arrested in Atlantic City, I protected him from public shame. Swept it under the rug. Got the file sealed, and, until today, I’d never told a soul. If I’d been more forthcoming, if I’d dealt with his conduct openly, if I’d gotten him into therapy, could I have kept him from a far more serious run-in with the law?
