Lassiter

We had about two minutes before court would reconvene. For weeks, I’d been pressuring her to tell me what Ziegler had said during his jailhouse visit. This do the right thing bit was the first crack in her can’t tell you armor. I decided to stay quiet a moment. In court, it’s a trick I use to keep a witness talking. Give the room a moment of silence that demands to be filled. I looked into Amy’s green eyes and waited.

“Charlie’s different than I expected.”

“Yeah?”

C’mon, Amy. Talk to me.

“He asked for my forgiveness.”

“For what?”

“For taking advantage of Krista all those years ago. For my being in the situation I’m in now. He blames himself and he’s looking for redemption.”

Ziegler had talked to me about redemption, too. But talk’s cheap, and the man was a born bullshit artist.

“He had tears in his eyes,” she continued, “and seemed truly repentant.”

What’s next? I wondered. Amy and Ziegler as Facebook friends?

She grabbed one of my hands and clutched it in both of hers. “Charlie told me that after all this time, he’s almost certain Krista is dead.”

“Sounds like he might feel guilty about that.”

“I think so, too. But not in the way you mean.”

“How, then?”

“Looking at him, listening to him, I don’t think Charlie had anything to do with Krista’s death. In a strange way, that brought me peace.”

She managed a small, soft smile. Placid and accepting. I tried to measure her sincerity. It’s what I do for a living, but if I had to deal with Amy every day, I’d go broke. From day one, the woman has been a mystery.

“I don’t want you at peace, Amy.”

“Why?”

“To help me at trial, I need you alert and wired. Not in some Zen state. Not the president of the Charlie Ziegler Fan Club.”

“I can only be who I am, Jake.”

Just who the hell that was, I still didn’t know.

56 The Portable Vagina

Kip promised to clean his room, do all his homework a week in advance, and never talk back for the rest of his life … if only I would take him to the erotica convention.

I turned the kid down.

“C’mon, Uncle Jake. Why should you have all the fun?”

“I’m gonna interview Angel Roxx. It’s strictly business.”

I knew Angel had a special relationship with Charlie Ziegler. She’s who he sent to my house that first night, and she was at his place when he invited me over for sushi and tough-guy talk. Now I wanted to see what the porn actress knew about her boss’s relationship with my client.

“You took me to the gun and knife show,” Kip said, pouting. “You let me watch Reservoir Dogs on DVD.”

“So?”

“Violence is okay for kids, but sex isn’t? That what you’re saying, Uncle Jake?”

Where in the world did he learn the art of cross-examination?

“I make the rules, Kip. Deal with it.”

“That’s so arbitrary!”

“So’s life. Deal with that, too.”

I try to be a good surrogate dad. I really do. But sometimes Kip can be a real pest. How do parents handle it? The ones with three or four kids, always yapping, always wanting something. Where does that patience come from? Only this morning, I got a phone call from Commodore Perkins at school. My latest request for a continuance was denied. I’d have to show up for Kip’s official disciplinary hearing next week.

“Jeez, I did all that work for you and this is how you treat me,” my nephew whined.

“You researched a porn star. It wasn’t like digging ditches.”

Kip spent last night happily downloading material from Angel’s fan sites. He also printed out several photo sets. Some were highly educational. 101 Positions to Try at Home illustrated the difference between reverse cowgirl and rodeo, something that had always puzzled me.

I skimmed Kip’s research and learned that Angel grew up in horse country in Central Florida. “I was just another little cocksucker from Ocala who decided to get paid for it,” she was quoted as saying. “Charlie Ziegler discovered me. One day I was doing Stable Girls in Heat, and the next I was a legit personality on reality TV. I even have health insurance!”

The convention center was mobbed. Young guys in University of Miami T-shirts and shorts; bikers with multiple piercings and body art; some old hippies, ash-gray hair tied back in ponytails, some with their old ladies along. Booths ran along narrow aisles, like any trade show. But these were staffed by young women in micro-minis, leather corsets, and all manner of see-through teddies, baby-dolls, and assorted come fuck me attire. Under the bright lighting, it was a pretty bizarre sight, even by Miami standards.

I passed the Titty Tattoo booth, the Penile Cosmetic Surgery Center, the Sin Toy Shoppe, and a fetish place called “Fluffy Bunny Whips.” The biggest crowd-a bunch of young guys cheering and high-fiving-gathered around the Anal Ring Toss competition.

A newspaper ad had alerted me that Angel Roxx would be working the Dip-Stick booth. The business had nothing to do with oil changes. Dip-Stick was a patented plastic cylinder about the size of a flashlight with a pink foam top. A slit ran through the foam with puffy lips on each side and a little clitoral button inside, like the prize in a Cracker Jack box. Basically, a portable vagina. Pussy to go.

The sales hook was customization. The foam receptacles were created from molds of various porn stars … including Ms. Angel Roxx.

“Hey, big fellah, how ’bout some MILF pussy?” a woman said, as I approached the booth.

“I beg your pardon?”

The woman wore a peekaboo pink teddy and knee-high, fleece-lined boots. Underneath sheer lingerie, her breasts were a matched set of dirigibles. A muffin top of jelly fat spilled over the elastic top of her thong. She’d had some work done, her nose a thin wafer. Her skin-as tight as the head of a drum-shined with an eerie waxiness, as if buffed by a floor polisher. I pegged her age at somewhere between 40 and hell.

“Anyone ever mention you look a little like Studley Do-Right?” she said.

“All the time. You know the old Studster?”

“Know him? I’ve blown him. We costarred in Splendor in the Ass. I was just a kid, and he was on his farewell tour.” She gave a little curtsy. “I’m Cherries Jubilee. I won the Golden Dildo for best girl-on-girl with Bananas Foster back in the eighties.”

“Congrats.”

“Here’s my beav.” She handed me a Dip-Stick, vagina-side up, then stuck her index finger between the foam lips, exposing a bulbous little button. “Have you ever seen anything like that?”

In fact, I hadn’t. “A clit like a cornichon,” I said, agreeably.

“On sale for eighty-nine bucks, and we throw in a tube of lube and batteries for the vibrometer. You can take her for a test drive if you want.”

“Can’t. Got a suspended license. Is Angel Roxx here?”

“She’s in the back, giving hand jobs to guys in uniform.”