judgment in his voice.
“Because I didn’t help her. I …”
“Soiled her.”
I nodded. Not the word I would have used, but yeah.
“One of many, Lassiter. Yours truly included. Have you repented?”
“Not in the way you mean. But I’m trying to do the right thing now.”
“Godspeed, then.” He turned to the kid with the mop. “Yo, Javier. Take a break. But no smoking weed.”
The kid shrugged and left. “Rehab,” Aldrin said. “I’m his mentor.”
He flipped the
When we were seated, he said, “Who knows you found me?”
“Why do you ask?”
“There are a couple guys from my past who I’d just as soon never see again.”
I hazarded a guess. “Charlie Ziegler and Max Perlow.”
He nodded.
Obviously, Aldrin spent more time reading the Bible than the newspapers. I told him Perlow was dead. Gave him the shorthand version, including Amy going to trial for murder.
“I don’t countenance the slaying of a fellow man,” he said, “but I shed no tears for him.”
After a respectful moment of silence-about two seconds, I said, “My gut tells me Ziegler is responsible for Krista’s disappearance, but I can’t prove it.”
“Ziegler never wiped his butt without Perlow’s okay.”
“Meaning what?”
“I supplied Ziegler with coke and meth. Which made Perlow crazy. He thought Ziegler talked too much when he was fried.”
“Was he right?”
“A hundred percent. Krista was always telling me shit those two were doing. The girl knew too much, and Perlow realized it.”
“You saying Perlow might have had Krista killed?”
He shrugged. “The man was ruthless, I can tell you that.”
All this time, I’d been thinking Perlow was only protecting his business partner Ziegler from prison and his beloved Alex from bad press.
“What’s Ziegler say happened?” Aldrin asked.
I told him about my conversation that rainy night in Gables Estates. Ziegler claiming that the reverend, in his Snake days, had shown up on the set, scared about getting picked up on a probation violation. That he left town with Krista on the back of his Harley.
“Peckerwood’s telling half the truth,” Aldrin said. “I saw them both that day, but not at the set. At the party.”
“Krista was there?”
“Just arrived. It was early.”
I sat back in my chair and let out a breath. Aldrin was the first eyewitness to place Krista at Ziegler’s house the night she disappeared. Meaning everyone else had lied. Castiel. Perlow. Ziegler. Whatever happened to Krista, they were all in it together.
“I was delivering some very fine Colombian blow to Ziegler,” he said.
“Tell me everything you remember.”
“Not much to tell. I was only there four or five minutes. Told Krista I was headed west. Asked her to go along, but she chose to stay with her sugar daddy.”
“I thought she wanted out of that life.”
“Maybe she did, but coast to coast on a Harley must not have sounded like a step up.”
He was silent a moment, maybe considering the role he’d played in Krista Larkin’s short life. “She woulda left Ziegler for you, Lassiter.”
“I only knew her for about twelve hours.”
“Yet look at the impact she made. All these years later, you’re looking for her. Trying to make amends would be my guess.”
“Maybe.”
“Then take it from me, Lassiter. Fucking things up only takes a few minutes. Making things right, now, that’s a lifetime job.”
52 The Boy Under the Bench
The courtroom was quiet. I sat at the defense table, sifting through my files. Castiel was perched a few feet away at the prosecution table. Opponents awaiting kickoff, or in this case, waiting for the judge on the first day of jury selection.
That’s what Max Perlow told me the day I met him in Charlie Ziegler’s office. So I’d asked my trusty law clerk-Kip by name-to get me everything he could on Perlow. I was relying on the classic SODDI defense.
An unknown rival who waited for his chance to take out Max Perlow. One of a veritable army of assassins who had it in for the old gangster. As part of my due diligence, I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see if there might be a shred of truth to my theory. At the same time, I wondered if that enemy might be sitting next to me. Did Amy find something I’d missed? Evidence that Perlow killed Krista, as Aldrin suggested. In which case, Amy wasn’t such a bad pistol shot, after all.
Kip is an industrious kid. He found lots of references to Perlow in the
When Lansky sought Israeli citizenship in the 1970s, one of the affidavits attesting to his sterling character was signed by Max Perlow, described as a “consultant in the hotel and entertainment industry.”
There was virtually nothing in the clippings that bolstered my theory of a man with enemies. At least not now. Except for a few real estate notices-buying and selling condos and vacant lots-Perlow hadn’t been mentioned in the papers in the last twenty years. Most of his known associates were long dead.
One clipping, though, fell into the category of irony or coincidence, or whatever the hell it is when the world spins thousands of times and returns to the same exact place.
“Alex, take a look at this,” I said, holding the
Castiel glanced toward the gallery, where eighty potential jurors waited, most willing to commit perjury to avoid spending three weeks locked in a room with total strangers, some of whom fail to bathe regularly.
“What is it?” Castiel wore his expression of prosecutorial solemnity. He didn’t want to walk to my table. That would send the impression to jurors that we were equals. And he wouldn’t ever want me to saunter over to his table and drape my arm around his shoulder. That would convey the notion that this was just a game, that the lawyers would go through their paces, feigning anger at each other, then spend the evenings drinking and carousing. In truth, there’s less of that these days, which I think is a pity.
“Take a look. It won’t bite.” I held the clipping at arm’s length so he wouldn’t be infected by defense lawyer cooties.
It was a news story from April 1970. Lansky, sixty-eight years old at the time, had been charged with illegal possession of barbiturates-ulcer medication-for which he had no prescription. If there’s a drug charge that’s the
