me.
“What are you talking about?” I asked Socolow.
“You and that renegade CIA agent, Foley. I figure he’s the mastermind. Anybody who knows you would realize that. You’re the accessory, and probably an incompetent one. But Foley’s missing, and so are a few billion dollars of arts and antiquities, and you’re here. There’s a team from CIA, Justice, FBI, and State on their way. I’m your baby-sitter, Lassiter.”
T raffic was backed up on the way to the Justice Building. This time it wasn’t a shoot-out between drivers bickering over the right-of-way. It wasn’t an octogenarian with cataracts going the wrong way on the interstate. It was a leaky toilet on a jet.
Two lanes of the expressway exit that spanned the Miami River were closed while workers filled a crater caused by a jet engine that dropped off a 727 during the night. A tractor-trailer carrying twenty thousand pounds of live tropical fish sideswiped the engine, veered to the right, and overturned. The concrete guardrail sliced through the trailer’s roof like a can opener. Which is how thousands of angelfish, sea horses, and parrotfish came to be dumped into the river that pours into the bay, which opens into the Atlantic and theoretically gives the fish a chance to swim back to the Bahamian reefs from which they were so recently kidnapped.
The fish were happier than the airline P.R. people. They issued press releases explaining that a leaky toilet had caused the lavatory water to escape onto the fuselage of the 727, where it formed a huge blue chunk of ice that broke free and cleanly knocked the tail engine off the plane.
Traffic eased and then clogged again near Government Center. By order of the city commission, workers were hat-racking the black olive trees that shaded the street. Our local politicians somehow believed that street drug dealers would cease doing business if threatened with sunstroke. Next they’ll try draining the ocean to prevent shark attacks.
It took Socolow another ten minutes to find a parking spot. The Justice Building was surrounded by Santerfa worshipers carrying lighted candles and bowls of animal blood. They were apparently displeased with the arrest of one of their priests on animal cruelty charges after he sacrificed a dozen goats and chickens on the median strip of Biscayne Boulevard during rush hour.
“I used to think New York was weird,” Socolow said, as he nudged the county-owned Plymouth into a compact space six inches from a defense lawyer’s candy-apple red Porsche.
We took a series of escalators to the seventh floor, passing the usual cast of characters in the circus they call criminal court. Spit-and-polished uniformed cops, unwashed defendants in shackles, their mothers and girlfriends teary-eyed or indignant, harried probation officers, pretty young court reporters, dealmaking prosecutors and public defenders, and the occasional judge, black robes flowing, on the way to or from chambers.
“I love this place,” Socolow said, almost wistfully. “Jake, I remember when you were an assistant P.D. We had some good times, didn’t we?”
“ You had good times. You had a ninety-five-percent conviction rate.”
“They were all guilty of something, even if we charged them with something else.”
“And even if the cops lied in suppression hearings,” I reminded him. “‘Yes, Your Honor, I observed the cocaine in plain view on the dashboard. Yes, Your Honor, the subject consented to a body cavity search.’ C’mon, Abe, it’s just a game you’re very good at.”
The receptionist behind bullet-proof glass buzzed us into the State Attorney’s office. “You were on the wrong side, Jake. You burned out because you were working for the bad guys.”
“I burned out because I couldn’t tell the difference.”
Inside Socolow’s office, we had company. My bearded friend sat in a corner, huddled over a book on forensic odontology. A small, dark, mustachioed man in a white guayabera didn’t stand or offer his one hand. His daughter stood and ran to me. “Jake, are you all right?” Lourdes Soto asked, a tremor in her voice. “I’ve been so worried.”
Still in his chair, Severo Soto muttered something in Spanish. From his position in the corner, Doc Charlie Riggs never acknowledged me. Eyes still on his book, he allowed as how he’s seeing fewer cafe coronaries, restaurant patrons choking to death on chunks of meat, now that people are eating more fish and pasta.
I took Lourdes in my arms and looked into her moist dark eyes. She smelled of a rich perfume. “I’d be better if the governments of two countries plus the state of Florida didn’t want to prosecute me for crimes I didn’t do.”
“What you did,” Severo Soto said, “was hacer el tonto. You played the fool.”
“Papi, please!” Lourdes unwrapped herself from me and sat down again.
“But it is true,” her father said. “I know that, you know that, and Doctor Socolow knows that, verdad?”
Abe Socolow seemed to like being given the Spanish title of respect. He nodded graciously in Soto’s direction, then turned to me. “Jake, I’ve known you a long time. You’re a little rough around the edges, and your sense of ethics is flexible, to say the least.” He looked at Soto. “Jake here once robbed a grave to get evidence, and he’s been known to taunt a witness into a fistfight just to prove a propensity for violence.”
“I was younger, then,” I said, sheepishly.
“ Errare humanum est,” Charlie Riggs added, without looking up.
Why didn’t anyone speak English to me anymore? I plop ped into a chair between Lourdes and her father. Socolow sat down behind his green metal state-issue desk. “The point is that you’re unorthodox, and you play by your own rules, but I believe your story. You’re not a thief. Of course, the feds don’t know that, and here’s the way it’s coming down. Foley is off somewhere arranging for private sales of the best stuff you guys ripped off from an ex-KGB man.”
“Hold on! I didn’t rip off anything. Foley recovered the art from Kharchenko, who-”
“Hold on, Jake, you’ve got everything fouled up.” Abe Socolow tapped a cigarette out of a pack on his desk. He took his time lighting it, his body language telling me to calm down, this would take a while. “In the beginning, Foley and Yagamata were doing exactly what our government ordered. Tracking down the art thefts, hushing them up, getting the stuff back. Then somebody decides the thefts have political value, so the CIA starts getting the goods on the old hard-liners who are taking bribes. It was a hell of a sting that led to the failed coup. Later, under the reformers, our two governments were supposed to-”
“Trade art for wheat,” I interrupted.
“Huh?”
Now it was my turn to show off. “The CIA was helping the Russians by selling the art and turning the proceeds into food for the people. Yagamata got greedy and started selling the art and keeping the money after splitting it with Kharchenko and his pals. Foley stopped them and got everything back.”
“That’s what Foley told you.”
“Yeah.”
“And you believed him?”
Oh, shit.
Socolow sighed. “I guess Foley didn’t tell you the Russian reformers vetoed all that art-for-wheat business.”
“What!”
“It was on the drawing board, all right, but Yeltsin rejected it, said they’d tough it out without selling off their national treasures. Yagamata goes bat shit. He knows the nuts and bolts of how to get the stuff out of the country from his experiences with the hard-liners in the bad old days. He’d had a taste of it, and it’s all there waiting to be taken. He just couldn’t resist. When the stuff keeps disappearing, the Russians squawk to the CIA, which now has to reverse its policy. The smart guys at Langley figure it was a mistake to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. They’ve got to restore the status quo. Foley draws the assignment, and it takes him about thirty seconds to figure who’s behind it, so his job is to bring down Yagamata and get back the stuff. Instead, he beards Yagamata with a scam that the government will pay him for his cooperation, kills Kharchenko, and takes off with the art.”
“But Foley said-”
“Listen up, Jake.” Again, Socolow turned toward Soto and nodded with deference. “Senor Soto has been associated with the CIA since before the Bay of Pigs, and was there to keep an eye on Yagamata under the guise of providing shipping. When Yagamata started dealing for himself, Senor Soto alerted Langley, which told him to keep quiet and find out everything he could. Then all hell broke loose. These two Russian brothers-”
