I was wearing my old Dolphins jersey but figured that didn’t count.
“Vets in wheelchairs get priority,” Cherries said. “Angel’s the most patriotic porn star I know.”
I waited five minutes until Angel emerged from behind a black velvet curtain. She wore a red, white, and blue bikini with cowboy boots and a matching cowboy hat.
A close-cropped, square-jawed young man in a wheelchair rolled out just behind her. He wore a U.S. Marines T-shirt, and his body was bulked up, but his legs were twigs poking out of camo shorts.
“Bye, hon,” Angel said, kissing him on the forehead. She saw me standing there and said, “You had your chance, big guy. I don’t give rain checks.”
We sat at a plastic table in the lunchroom, off the main floor of the convention. “Charlie’s been good to me,” she said. “I’m not gonna stab him in the back.”
“Not asking you to. Just trying to find out why he’s gotten friendly with my client.”
“Didn’t know he had. I thought she tried to shoot him.”
“Did you know he visited her in jail?”
“No way! Why would he?”
I shrugged. “My client won’t tell me, and I can’t talk to him.”
“Cool. A mystery.”
Angel seemed to loosen up. Everyone, it seems, loves a good mystery.
“Ziegler ever mention my client’s sister? Krista Larkin, the girl who went missing?”
“Not to me.”
“Any changes in his mood lately?” I asked.
“Charlie’s always been weird. When your client started stalking him, he got freakier than usual.”
“In what way?”
“Nervous. Noises spooked him. Like if he didn’t see you and you said something, he’d jump.”
“Anything else?”
She adjusted the strap on her bikini, and her right boob did a little dance. “He hasn’t been focused on work, I can tell you that.”
“How do you mean?”
“We were supposed to shoot a pilot for my new show,
Men streamed by the lunch area, carrying souvenir T-shirts, bumper stickers, and mouse pads, some affixed with photos of their favorite porn stars.
“Does Ziegler ever talk to you about what’s bothering him?”
“Not to me.”
“Not even in intimate moments?”
She laughed. “I’m not fucking Charlie.”
“When I saw you at his house that night, I just assumed …”
“Charlie likes having girls around. But he doesn’t do them. I doubt he even does his wife. He only does his girlfriend.”
“Melody Sanders.”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“It’s my job, and every once in a while I do it. What’s Melody like?”
“Never met her. But she must be something.”
“Why?”
“Charlie
“And this surprised you?”
“Yeah, I figured he’d be shouting at her, ‘I’ll be over for my blow job at seven,’ but it’s not like that. His voice gets all quiet and he reads her the overnight ratings and asks her advice, which he doesn’t do with anybody, even his corporate officers.” Angel checked her watch and rubbed her hands together, maybe to warm them up. “If you want to know what makes Charlie tick, ask Melody. I’m betting she knows him better than anyone in the world.”
57 Too Many Questions
It was Monday morning, the start of another week of trial. I planned on a breakfast of toasted Bimini bread, Cuban coffee, and Haitian fried bananas. Hey, it’s Miami. We’re not a cornflakes town.
Althea’s Taco Truck is my office when I’m in trial. It’s parked each day in front of the Justice Building, so it’s equally convenient for cops, defense lawyers, and home invasion robbers. The owner/driver/cook is Althea Rollins, a Sequoia-size woman in her late sixties who’s partial to Caribbean and Hispanic food.
A dozen years ago, one of her sons was picked up for supplying half the senior class at Killian High with weed. I got the kid into pre-trial intervention and the arrest was expunged. He straightened out, went to college, then pharmacy school, and now he’s dispensing legal drugs at a chain store in South Miami.
I have long relied on Althea for advice, insight, and breakfast. She provides another valuable service, too. She eavesdrops on prosecutors and jurors as they have lunch, then spills the frijoles to me. Folks say the darnedest things in front of her.
“Nothing so invisible as a black woman in an apron,” Althea told me once, after she revealed the state’s strategy in a money-laundering case.
After meeting with Angel Roxx on Saturday morning, I had driven to Lighthouse Point, hoping to drop in, unannounced, on Melody Sanders. I was unannounced all right. The condo was empty. She’d moved and left no forwarding address with the management office.
I told Pepito Dominguez to tail Ziegler so he could lead us to wherever Melody was now hanging her negligee. This morning, he was supposed to meet me with a progress report.
As I walked up to the truck, I saw two men leaving. One was Nestor Tejada, no mistaking the shaved head with the crown tattoo on the back of his skull. He wore a gray suit that bunched up at his bricklayer’s shoulders. The other man was older, an Anglo with gray hair in a tailored, pinstriped suit. He carried a soft leather briefcase the color of butter. My insightful powers of reasoning told me the guy was a lawyer.
“Hey, Jakey!” Althea greeted me. “Coffee or pineapple nog.”
“Coffee, thanks. Say, do you know those two guys who just left here?”
“Gangbanger and a fancy mouthpiece,” Althea said.
“I never saw the lawyer before. You?”
She shook her head. “Polished fingernails. And did you see his eyeglasses?”
I shook my head. “Too far away.”
“Expensive. Gold frames with a turquoise inlay.”
Althea would make an excellent crime-scene witness.
If neither one of us recognized the lawyer, he was either an out-of-towner or a downtowner. I didn’t care so much who he was as
Nestor Tejada had about ten minutes of noncontroversial testimony to deliver. No reason he should need a lawyer in the gallery.
“What were the guys talking about?” I asked.
“My Cuban coffee. Hispanic guy said it tasted like motor oil.”
“He’s an asshole. Anything else?”
“They were talking real low. Either that, or my hearing’s going straight to Hades.”
Just then, Pepito walked up in that easygoing gait that said he had a lot of time to get wherever he was going. He ordered a
“Did you find Melody Sanders?” I asked.
