Lassiter

“You’re right. I see rapists as evil. I don’t care that Polanski made good movies or that Ziegler made bad ones. I just get pissed when the strong abuse the weak.”

“A word of advice, Jake. Don’t go around town talking trash about Charlie Ziegler. The guy’s got connections.”

“Meaning?”

“He could cut off your court appointments with one phone call, and there’s nothing I could do to help you.”

I had one more card to play, the one I’d carried in my vest for years. “If not for me, Alex, you wouldn’t even be sitting in that fancy chair.”

That seemed to take him aback. “You saying I owe you because you once did a public service?”

“I wore a wire for you because I thought it was the right thing to do. You got elected State Attorney, and I got treated like a leper.”

To this day, I didn’t know if I regretted my actions. I was a newly minted lawyer, learning the ropes in the Public Defender’s Office. One of my first clients had discovered the identity of the confidential informant who had fingered him for robbery and extortion. My guy thought I’d make a good bag man to deliver money to a gangbanger who would kill the informant and the prosecutor, a newbie named Alejandro Castiel.

I had a choice. I could withdraw from the case, but I figured my client would just find somebody else to set up the hit. So I wore a wire and arranged to meet the gangbanger in a Hialeah warehouse.

“Why you asking all these questions?” the guy demanded.

“To make sure we’re on the same page.”

“Just give me the money and get the fuck out.”

“Not a problem.” I handed over a gym bag stuffed with cash. Maybe I was sweating or maybe something in my eyes gave it away.

“You wearing a wire?” the guy said.

“Fuck no.”

“Prove it.” He pulled a 9mm from his waistband.

He was half a foot shorter than me, and standing so close, I could feel his breath. I head-butted him, a quick, vicious shot that broke his nose and spurted blood over me. I stomped on his instep, and he dropped the gun.

A second later, the door burst open. Half a dozen cops flew into the room, followed by Castiel.

Starting with the press conference, Castiel became the hero of the story. I turned out to be the subject of some suspicion. Why, a newspaper reporter wondered, would a career criminal solicit me for a murder scheme, unless I was dirty? I didn’t get the key to the city or even a thank you. Defense lawyers treated me like a pariah, and even penniless jailbirds wouldn’t hire me.

Now Castiel looked troubled. No one ever wants to be reminded of an unpaid debt. “How much is Amy Larkin paying you, Jake?”

“In round numbers, zero.”

“Are you nailing her?”

“Does she look nailable? When you put your hand on her shoulder, I thought she was gonna bite it off.”

“Your stake in this case is bupkis. So why now?”

“Why now, what?”

“All these years, you never mentioned wearing the wire for me. Why you calling in that chit now? What’s so special about this case?”

I’m not one of those sinners who finds relief in confession, so I didn’t go anywhere near the story of my one- night stand with Krista. “If I don’t help Amy Larkin, who will?”

“Not buying it, Jake. You don’t give a hoot about your clients.”

“Bullshit! I sweat blood for every one.”

“You sweat blood to win. It’s about you, pal. Not them.”

That stopped me. After a moment, I said, “Never too late to change.”

“Save it for your next client, because you can’t help Amy Larkin. You can only hurt yourself.”

When people tell me I can’t do something, I generally work harder to prove I can. Everyone told me I couldn’t make the Dolphins as a free agent. But I did, even if I sat so far down Shula’s bench, my ass was in Ocala.

Castiel opened a fancy humidor made of polished cherrywood and pulled out a long, tapered cigar. Then he grabbed a guillotine clipper from his pocket and snipped off the end. We were in a nonsmoking building and the cigar was a Cuban Torpedo, but I decided against making a citizen’s arrest.

He leaned against the credenza and waved the unlit cigar at me. “I’ve known Charlie a long time, and he’s no killer. Trust me on this one, Jake.”

“Great. He can call you as a character witness.”

“Years ago, Charlie dealt in sleaze. But he’s a changed man. You, of all people, should respect that.”

“Me?”

“You were a hell-raiser, and now you’re a defense lawyer, which means you believe in redemption. You’re the guys always begging for second chances.”

Castiel pulled a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and flipped it open. It was gold in color and looked expensive. He lit the long, illegal cigar, sucked on it, and exhaled a fine cloud of tangy smoke.

“Life is not always black and white, Jake. Mostly, it’s colored in shades of gray.”

“That’s deep, Alex.”

“The duality of man. There’s good and evil in all of us.”

“Very deep, indeed.” What is it about men and cigars? A guy lights up and starts spouting two-bit philosophy.

Castiel grabbed a weathered black-and-white photo in a gilt frame from his credenza. A faded, vintage look. Two men standing in front of a roulette wheel, lots of classy folk dressed to the nines, as they would have said back then. A beautiful red-haired woman stood between the men. She wore a slinky cocktail dress with a flower pinned behind one ear. “That’s my father on the left and my mother in the middle.”

“And Meyer Lansky on the right,” I tossed in. “The Riviera Hotel in Havana in the fifties. I remember your stories, Alex.”

Bernard Castiel, Alex’s father, was a handsome man in an old-fashioned way. Thick through the chest in his double-breasted suit, dark hair brilliantined straight back. Rosa Castiel had wild, flashing eyes and looked ready to mambo. She was taller than the man on her left, Meyer Lansky, the mobster. Finely tailored gray suit, thin face, wary eyes.

For as long as I’ve known him, Castiel has had a curious level of pride about his family’s less-than-savory past.

“Can you imagine those times, Jake?” Castiel once told me. “Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and Bugsy Siegel all in Cuba at the same time, three guys who grew up together on the Lower East Side. It’d be like Mays, Mantle, and Aaron all playing on the same team.”

There was always a lilt of excitement in Castiel’s voice talking about those days. Tales of high-stakes gambling, dangerous men, and exotic women. In the late 1950s, Bernard Castiel was security chief at Lansky’s Riviera casino. His most important task was delivering bundles of cash to President Fulgencio Batista. More mundane chores involved chopping off the hands of casino employees caught skimming. Or so Alex once told me with notes of contentment.

Castiel held up his cigarette lighter. “This belonged to my father. Solid gold.”

He tossed it to me. Heavy as a hand grenade. I ran a finger around a raised ridge of gold in the shape of a crocodile with a diamond for an eye. The ridge was the outline of the island of Cuba. The diamond was Havana.

“Lansky must have been paying well,” I said, tossing the lighter back.

“Bernard didn’t buy it. President Batista gave it to him as a fortieth birthday present. Can you imagine its value to me?”

As much as a John Dillinger’s Tommy gun to his heirs, I thought. But what I said was, “A lot, Alex. I know your family lost everything to Castro. And I know how your father lost his life.”