Lassiter

Maybe it was an accident. Booze and drugs and a loaded gun.”

“And maybe you’re gonna score for the wrong team again.”

“Cheap shot, Alex.”

“Maybe it’s a metaphor for your life. Scoring a touchdown for the opposition.”

“Scored a safety,” I corrected him.

Castiel knew just where to insert the needle. A long-ago game against the Jets in the snow and fog. I made a big hit on the kickoff and knocked the ball loose. Bodies were flying. I got there first and scooped it up, but somehow got turned around. Hey, I was playing with a concussion. I ran to the wrong end zone and cleverly spiked the ball. Two points for the Jets, we lose by one, and the headline on Monday said: “Wrong-Way Lassiter Dooms Fins.”

Castiel was getting frustrated with me, and it was mutual. I decided to shake, not stir, him. “Why are you protecting Ziegler?”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Friendship or money?”

He pointed his steak knife at me. “Don’t say anything you can’t back up, friend.”

“You’re letting a pornographer and an old mobster call the shots. What turned you? The pussy in the old days or the campaign cash now?”

“Goddammit!” Castiel shoved his plate aside. “Any other lawyer in town talked to me like that, I’d …”

He let it hang there. Maybe he didn’t know what he would do. He pulled the napkin off his lap and tossed it on the table. He must have lost his appetite.

“If you want to take me on,” he said, “bring it. I’ll unleash the dogs, and it won’t be a fair fight. You ever have a witness who lies, you ever take a fee from the fruits of a crime, I’ll have your ass. I’ve got two dozen investigators and a sitting Grand Jury. You want to fuck with me, Jake, you better bring an army.”

Ray Decker sat at an outdoor table at Prime Italian, directly across the street from its sister restaurant, Prime One Twelve. He’d been munching a loaf of garlic bread, sopping in butter, and watching the State Attorney and the shyster put away steaks and martinis. He owed Lassiter big-time for messing him up and driving off in Ziegler’s Lincoln. He pictured himself coming up behind Lassiter and slamming him face-first into his shrimp cocktail.

Decker had planned on only having a calamari appetizer, but he started salivating while eyeing those assholes across the street, so he ordered a bone-in rib eye, black and blue, for fifty-six bucks. Ziegler would yell about the expense report. Like a lot of rich pricks, Ziegler burned money on stupid shit for himself, while starving the people who worked for him. Decker had once seen his boss order a bottle of Screaming Eagle Cabernet for $4,500, all to impress some ambitious, tit-enhanced reality show hostess wannabe who would have blown him for a glass of Boone’s and a seven-episode gig.

Decker studied the body language across the street. He considered himself an expert from his days as a detective. People say more with their bodies than with their mouths. There was an ease between Castiel and Lassiter. He expected that. Ziegler had told him the two guys were old friends. That’s what had concerned the boss. Could he trust the State Attorney?

Decker wasn’t so sure. He hated all politicians. His old boss, the county sheriff, had rolled over instead of standing up for him. Thanks to Lassiter and a couple ACLU lawyers, Decker had been bounced from the force. As if exaggerating under oath and some rough stuff while making arrests were cause for firing.

While chewing his calamari, Decker noticed the change in the body language across the street. Castiel’s shoulders got all stiff. He raised his voice. If it hadn’t been for the traffic on Ocean Drive, Decker probably could have heard him. Decker lifted a small pair of binoculars to his face. He could see the vein in Castiel’s neck throbbing. It got even better when the State Attorney pointed a steak knife at Lassiter, as if he wanted to stab him in the heart. Then Castiel tossed his napkin on the table, like a football ref throwing a penalty flag. He had a few more words with Lassiter, then signaled for the check.

Ziegler would be pleased. Those two weren’t conspiring against him. Hell, they couldn’t make it through a meal together.

Decker sat there a few more minutes. He wanted to see what car Lassiter was driving. The valet brought around a cream-colored Eldorado convertible. Mid-eighties, like some pimp or pusher would drive. It would be an easy car to tail. Not that Ziegler had told him to. This was strictly personal. He owed Lassiter a world of pain and intended to deliver it.

That thought made Decker even hungrier. He wondered if he should order fried Oreo cookies with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

24 The Kid Makes a Discovery

The morning after Castiel picked up the dinner check-and, I hoped, indigestion-I gave two research assignments to my trusty nephew. When I first appointed him my unpaid law clerk, he asked just what lawyers did.

“We play poker with ideas,” I said, a tad pompously.

“Cool. Granny said all you did was push paper and tell lies.”

I had already talked the case through with the boy while teaching him the finer points of a left-right combination on the heavy bag.

“Find the biker who called himself ‘Snake’ and find Krista Larkin’s missing car,” I told Kip.

“That’s it? A biker named ‘Snake’? You don’t want me to find Osama bin Laden’s body while I’m at it?”

“C’mon, Kip. You’re a whiz on the computer. A lot better than me.”

I dropped him off at the Tuttle-Biscayne computer lab. He promised to work hard, and I promised to teach him how to kick Carl Kountz in the nuts.

I was stuck in the office the rest of the day. Interviewing new clients, paying bills, handling the routine paperwork that made me wish I’d chosen another career. Shrimping, maybe, like my old man. Or coaching football at a little college in New England.

I kept replaying my conversation with Alex Castiel. I’d insulted him, and he’d lost his cool and threatened me. Maybe he’d slipped over to the dark side. Or maybe he was just playing it safe like every politico who avoids butting heads with the rich and powerful. And maybe he was right that I was pulling a Vallandigham.

Clement Vallandigham was a lawyer who-like me-would go to great lengths for his clients. Defending a murder trial in the 1870s, Vallandigham tried to prove that the victim accidentally shot himself when drawing his gun. So the lawyer pulled the gun from his pocket, and bang. Shot himself. Vallandigham died, but on a brighter note, the jury acquitted his client.

I wasn’t going to stop looking into Krista Larkin’s disappearance, but I would try to avoid shooting myself. Around midday, I called Amy, doubting she would talk to me. We hadn’t spoken since she scored a TKO against me on the beach with a flurry of girlie punches.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the whole truth when we first met,” I said, as soon as she answered.

“No, my fault,” Amy said. “I shouldn’t have berated you for the way you used to be.”

“I deserved it.” Competing to see who could bake the biggest humble pie. “The ‘grinning ape,’ you called me.”

“That was the guy in the picture. If you were still that guy, you wouldn’t be trying to help me.”

“So, a truce?”

“Truce.” She chuckled. It was not a sound I was accustomed to hearing from her.

I invited her to come over for dinner. A family dinner. This time, she said yes.

In late afternoon, I signed up a new client. A guy charged with siphoning gas from a police cruiser. No, I don’t know why he chose that car. Or why he used a cigarette lighter instead of a flashlight in the darkness. Or how he’ll look once he gets his prosthetic nose.

After a full day of upholding the Constitution in the ceaseless pursuit of justice, I headed home, listening to