by Paul Levine
“We have a computerized irrigation system that turns on when the ground is dry,” Ringle said, “but Orlando insists on manually hosing the plants. He knows each bush individually and the moisture sensors do not. He pays such close attention that he knows every bud, every leaf, and every thorn. Do you follow me, Jake?”
“I think in your little fairy tale, Kip’s a rose bush, you’re the smart gardener, and I’m the guy who hauls manure. You think you’re a better judge of Kip’s needs.”
“It is possible, is it not?”
“Please guys, don’t fight,” Kip pleaded. “It doesn’t help anything.”
Another easy smile from Ringle. “Quite so. Kip, please tell your uncle about your business. It’s quite brilliant, albeit a bit complicated.”
“I’ll try to keep up,” I said.
Kip shrugged his narrow shoulders and said, “I’ve devised two plans. One is to take the tests as an imposter, and the other is to monitor the tests as a proctor. For the first one, I make phony drivers’ licenses and assume the identity of the student. That only works with the guys. For the girls, I bribe proctors to get in the door. That’s only in a few cities, but I’m working on several more for next year.”
It’s way worse than I had thought, and my fears were bad enough.
Kip went into detail, and I caught most of what he said, though my eyes were squinted shut against the tinnitus that had taken on the timbre of pealing church bells. He told me that Q.E.D. paid a psychologist to write letters claiming that little Johnny and Susie had learning disabilities and needed extra time for their exams. That got them special rooms where Kip did his proctoring, correcting wrong answers and nailing the appropriate scores.
“That’s the fun part,” he said. “I do a side deal with the parents. They ask for a specific score, say 1490. If I come within five points, I get a $20,000 bonus. If I nail it, $30,000. It’s like playing eGames again. Explosions. Battle music. The risk of annihilation. It’s a rush.”
A game? The kid thinks he’s playing a game!
I turned to Ringle. “Kip told me you had an opinion of counsel saying this is legal.”
“That’s true. Los Angeles counsel, a deep-carpet firm. Expensive as hell.”
“I need to see the opinion.”
“Nothing to see. I had lunch with a senior partner at Sachs & Copeland and over appetizers at the Grill on the Alley, he told me that not every piece of fruit in the shade of the tree is a rotten apple.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Ringle’s bullshit was getting on my nerves, and I now figured the Ph.D. after his name stood for Piled Higher and Deeper.
“Not everything an overzealous prosecutor considers shady is necessarily a crime,” Ringle said.
“That’s not an opinion of counsel. That’s a lawyer’s small talk while sipping vichyssoise.”
“It was tuna tartare, and if I may say so, Arthur Sachs is a much more distinguished lawyer than you. I take his word for it.”
“An opinion of a counsel is a written document that lays out the facts, the law, and objective conclusions, and in very limited circumstances, it can be a defense to a crime if you’ve relied on it in good faith. And in my undistinguished opinion, what you got along with your tuna tartare was a pile of bullshit.”
Ringle turned his attention back from his rose garden to the thorn in his side. Me, standing next to him at the railing. “Jake, you have a certain amount of street smarts, I’ll grant you that.”
“So what?”
“Are you comfortable in a courtroom?”
“Court is like the hammock in my backyard, except I fall asleep less often.”
“When a trial turns against you, are you strong in the face of adversity?”
“I don’t piss my pants when a judge holds me in contempt, if that’s what you mean.”
“I can always use a lawyer like you. How does a retainer of $200,000 sound?”
“Like a handsome bribe. Why would you need me?”
“Perhaps I never will. That’s the purpose of a retainer is it not?”
“That, or to create attorney-client privilege for the conversation we just had, so I can’t repeat it. And . . .”
It hit me then, a wicked punch to the gut that nearly took my breath away. How had I not seen it before? Was I already brain-dead, as Shari Ringle said?
“And what, Jake?” Ringle’s expression was as composed as if sitting cross-legged in his yoga class. “Please continue.”
“And when Kip is indicted, I’d be conflicted out of representing him because I’d be your lawyer!” I turned and jabbed Ringle’s chest with an index finger. “You son of a bitch! The feds nailed you, didn’t they?”
His face was placid, a toothy smile in place. “What in heaven’s name are you talking about, Jake?”
“What is it? Income tax evasion? Mail fraud? Racketeering?” I could feel my face heating up, could hear my voice booming.
“Jake, you’re acting weird,” Kip said.
“Don’t you see it, kiddo? He’s flipped. On you!”
Ringle didn’t flinch. His voice remained hardly more than a whisper. “Jake, consider your own analogy about the Mafia don. The feds didn’t get John Gotti to flip on his capos. It was the other way around. They wanted Kip to get to me, not vice versa.”
“They tried that and left empty-handed. What a stand-up guy, you said. But when Kip turned them down, the feds got the goods on you without his help. You’re saving your own worthless hide by selling out my nephew.”
From somewhere on the property, a leaf blower whined. I strained to hear Ringle, sotto voce, over my tinnitus and the lawn machinery.
“I would never do that,” he said. “Though, to be sure, the only conduct that could arguably be considered criminal was committed by Kip. That’s what my lawyer told me over dessert. Irish coffee and fudge brownie pie. Did I not mention that?”
That struck my ear like an off-key piano chord. So contradictory and so artificial, discordant and jarring. Something Ringle wanted on the record to exonerate himself and implicate Kip. My addled brain played back the conversation of the last several minutes.
“You’ll have to ask Kip. He’s President of Personalized Test Enhancement, Incorporated.”
And . . .
“It’s his baby from A to Z. Frankly, I’d never even thought of it. No, Kip’s the brains of the operation, the mastermind.”
And then Kip’s admissions . . .
“I’ve devised two plans. One is to take the tests as an imposter . . .”
And . . .
“I make phony drivers’ licenses and assume the identity of student . . .
And . . .
I bribe proctors to get in the door . . .”
It was all there. How did I miss it? Are my brain synapses firing blanks?
I stuck my face close to Ringle’s, nose to nose. “You worthless piece of slimy whale shit! You’re wearing a wire right now! You’re teasing a confession out of my nephew!”
“Absurd.”
I grabbed each end of his red scarf and yanked hard, tightening the silk into a ligature. He brought both hands to his neck and pulled at my fingers, but he wasn’t strong enough. I yanked harder and from behind me, heard Kip shriek, a not-very-manly cry. When Ringle’s eyes began to bulge and he started making gurgling sounds, I let go. He coughed and hacked, and I grabbed the collar of his hoodie, lifted him off his feet, and shook him like a sack of potatoes. I yanked downward, and my big mitts ripped the cashmere down the front, the fabric hissing like an angry cat. I pulled the shredded hoodie over his head, then frisked him, patting his armpits, turning him around, checking his back, then yanking down his jeans.
“You’ve gone insane!” Ringle sputtered, helpless in my grip.
“Jesus, Jake! Stop!” Poor Kip, eyes wide, jaw slack, maybe on the verge of tears.
Ringle tried to wriggle free, so I braced my right forearm against his Adam’s apple. With my left hand, I patted his groin, found no e
xtra parts, then checked his butt. No mic, no transmitter, no recording device.
Shit.
I heard footsteps behind me. I turned in time to see Lance, his suit coat unbuttoned, coattails flapping as he ran toward me. I released Ringle, spread my legs to shoulder width, and bent my knees, bouncing on my toes, ready to ward off any blow and deliver my own.
When he was six feet away, Lance launched himself, spun in the air, a wondrous 180 degrees, and executed a picture-perfect flying back kick.
Damn, I hate karate.
Maybe ten years ago, I could have sidestepped in time. But on this day, his speed and timing and momentum were too fast for me. His front foot landed like a cannon blast high on my chest. It knocked me backward into the railing. I bounced off in time to see Lance land, cat-like, on his feet and throw a straight right fist that caught me on the jaw. I tumbled over the railing, flailing, plunging into a bush of apricot-colored mini roses. I neither smelled the flowers’ sweetness nor felt their thorns, and I was unconscious before I hit the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The House of Wisdom Has Bugs
My dream was a casserole, a mishmash of mismatched ingredients.
Kip was yelling at me. Angry. I couldn’t hear the words.
A woman was laughing at me. Who could that be? She might have been naked. Women in my dreams tend to be.
I heard music and singing. “We’re ever true to you, dear old white and blue.”
Wait. That’s the Penn State fight song, about a hundred years old, pretty much the way I felt. It was my cell phone ringing. I fumbled through a tangle of sheets and found the damn thing.
I tried to say “hello,” but mostly I just coughed and cleared my throat of phlegm.
“Jake, is that you?” Melissa’s voice.
“I think so.”
“Where are you?”
I considered the altogether reasonable question as I looked around the room. The ocean was visible outside a window, and the room seemed to sway. “I think I’m on a boat.”
“Really? Pleasure cruise?”
From outside, I heard the unmistakable clamor of a railroad train along with its piercing whistle. It might have been my imagination, but the room seemed to shudder.
“Hold on, Melissa. It’s possible I’m in a sleeper car on a train.”
I examined the nightstand, which had promotional material for the Miramar Resort. An aerial shot showed railroad tracks running just behind oceanfront bungalows. “I think I’m in a hotel that costs two grand a night and has a locomotive running through the lobby.”
“I hope your Mastercard isn’t maxed out.”
My head was beginning to clear and, oddly enough, didn’t hurt, though the decibel range of my tinnitus neared triple digits. “Max Ringle promised to pay the hotel tab, but that was before I ripped his clothes off and choked him with his stupid scarf.”
“Sounds like an adventure. Did you have fun last night?”
“Not so much. Why?”
“Check your email.”
It took me a moment because an iPhone is not designed for an oversize thumb, especially one that got jammed in another guy’s face mask and fractured at the first knuckle. In a moment, I managed to pull up an email that had been sent from my iPhone to both Melissa and me. The subject line read “Wrong-Way Lassiter.” There was no text in the body. Only a photo.
Yours truly in bed. Eyes closed. Mouth open. Face scratched raw.
Oh, I failed to mention something. In the photo, my head rested comfortably between two bare breasts. Not large breasts. Not small breasts. Just a dandy matching pair of perky breasts that showed suntan lines stopping slightly above and below the nipples. The kind of tan a woman would get if she’s wearing a bikini. The woman’s face was not visible.
Applying the powers of reasoning that made Sherlock Holmes legendary, I said, “I think that’s Shari Ringle, daughter of Max, object of Kip’s affections, and a proud U.S.C. Trojan who hates school.”
“I was glad to get the picture. When you didn’t call, I thought you’d been kidnapped, and first thing in the morning, here’s proof of life, though not much life.”
“Look, I know that you know that I wouldn’t . . .”
“Oh, stop, Jake. Of course I know. Your loyalty is your primary personality trait.”
“Really?”
“Part of your charm is you don’t realize that what you do naturally, without even thinking, is so honorable. And that starts with your loyalty to friends, to family, to me.”
“Tell that to Kip.”
“He knows it. Deep inside, he knows.” She was quiet for a moment. “Where is he now?
“I assume with his new mentor, a guy so twisted he could stand in the shadow of a corkscrew. And Kip doesn’t see it. The kid may be brilliant, but he has no street smarts. That’s what I failed to teach him.”
“C’mon, Jake. You don’t teach street smarts. You learn them in the streets. Give him time.”
“He doesn’t have time. There’s a freight train coming, and he’s tied to the tracks.” Doubtless, I was thinking about this posh hotel with its choo-choo trains.
“Tell me about yesterday.”
I told her everything, from the gin rickeys to Ringle’s perfidy, to getting kicked by a mule and plummeting ass-over-elbows into thorny rose bushes. And while I had no memory of it, I assumed that Lance the karate champ had trundled me down the hill to the hotel for my snooze and photo shoot.
“So, you strip searched your host but didn’t find a wire.” She had just a touch of disapproval in her voice.
“I wasn’t thinking clearly. Now I see it. He didn’t have to wear a wire. It’s his house. Casa de la Sabuduría.”
“House of Wisdom? Oh, brother.”
“Ringle wasn’t wearing a wire under his cashmere hoodie because he let the FBI bug his house.”
“You’re sure?”
I propped myself onto one elbow but wasn’t quite able to get out of bed. “I’m betting the terrace has three mics and two cameras. Everything Kip said was recorded and filmed. And believe me, he made admissions against interest that any judge would let into evidence.”
“And you know the place was wired, how?”
“I just know it! Ringle was playing for an audience, and that means the FBI and Justice department prosecutors. Kip’s going to get indicted, and the government is going to play the tape, and . . .”
“And . . . ?”
“There’s no way I can win the case.”
I fell back onto the bed, still feeling last night’s gin and maybe the kick, too. Melissa was quiet a moment, and I knew she was trying to figure a way to say something I wouldn’t like, but in a manner that was caring and loving.
“Jake, you know that one symptom of C.T.E. is paranoia, right?”
“Right. And irritability. That’s a big one.”
“I just wonder,” she said, softly and sweetly, “if given a framework of several possible explanations, your mind is pushing you to go for the most hurtful and injurious. Kip develops a closeness with his boss, and you feel abandoned and betrayed. The man’s business is under investigation, and you leap to the conclusion that Kip is a target. Then, based on your assessment of the way Ringle spoke, you’re certain he knew he was being recorded, but it turns out he wasn’t wearing a wire. Finally, you believe the government wants Ringle, the boss, to testify against Kip, his employee, when logic and experience dictate that the opposite would be true.”
“Dammit, Mel!” I boomed through the phone, proving my point about irritability. “You weren’t there! And frankly, you don’t have the background for this. I don’t tell you how to test neurons or whatever the hell it is. And you can’t tell me how to read a room, how to tell when someone is lying or posturing or setting me up. I’ve cross examined Hall of Fame liars for so long I can smell the stink of perjury from across the room, and yesterday it smelled like Max Ringle’s roses.”
“Well there,” she said, just as sw
eetly and softly, “someone woke up on the wrong side of a couple tits this morning.”
I let out a long, sad regretful sigh. “I’m sorry. That was . . . I don’t know . . . really shitty of me. I’m not sure why I said that.”
“Apology accepted. Now what?”
So quick to forgive, I thought. There I was, taking out my frustration and anger on the one person in the world who gave me unconditional love. Maybe it was the brain damage, or maybe that was a handy excuse, and I was just a total asshole. I remembered Granny’s advice to Melissa: “You’re way too good for the rapscallion, and I oughta know. I raised him from a pup.”
I reached for the pitcher of water on the nightstand. That’s when I saw the handwritten note on hotel stationery. It was on the floor next to the bed.
Jake,
Stay out of my life.
Kip.
I read the note to Melissa, my eyes filling with tears, my throat constricted as if being strangled. I could barely get the words out. “It’s over, Mel. Kip’s gone.”
“You’re caught in the moment, Jake, and can’t see beyond it. Kip’s not gone. Not forever, anyway. But if your instincts are right about the trouble he’s in, he needs you more than ever, both as his parent and as his defender, and there’s no one on earth who can do either one as well as you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
An Ear to the Keyhole
An hour later, disregarding Kip’s instructions, I called the 805 number that appeared on my cell when he reached me on the 101. Once, twice, three times. Voice mail, each time. No return calls.
Later that day, numbed by the sense of loss, fearful of Kip’s uncertain future, I drove to LAX and caught the redeye back to Miami. I rolled into the house just as Melissa was leaving for the hospital. Before heading out the door, she examined a bruise the color of a ripe eggplant on my chest where Lance had mule-kicked me. She gently rubbed some cannabis balm on the bruise. I don’t know if the fragrant ointment helped the healing process, but it felt good to be touched. Melissa’s fingers lingered on my skin. She understood my pain was more than skin-deep.
