Instead of answering, Pepito handed me a wad of crumpled American Express receipts.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“My expenses.”
I looked at the first one. Il Gabbiano, a ritzy restaurant downtown. “Two hundred thirty-six dollars! What the hell.”
“You told me to follow Charlie Ziegler. He had dinner.”
“If he goes into a rest room, that doesn’t mean you have to take a piss.” I glanced at the restaurant receipt. “You ate veal stuffed with foie gras? Wait a second. There are two entrees here.”
“I had the filet mignon. My girlfriend, Raquel, had the veal.”
I felt the first hints of indigestion and I hadn’t even eaten Althea’s fried plantains simmered in wine.
“Don’t worry. You’re getting your money’s worth, boss,” Pepito said.
“So you found Melody?”
The kid pulled a little notebook out of his cargo shorts and flipped a few pages. “Ziegler had the mista salad and veal piccata.”
“Why didn’t you give me his check? It would have been cheaper.”
“And Alex Castiel ordered a bottle of red wine. Chateauneuf-du-Pape.”
Castiel. That stopped me, but just for a second. Nothing wrong with the State Attorney dining with his chief witness. Had there been, they wouldn’t have met in public.
“What were they talking about?” I asked.
“How should I know?”
“You could read the wine label, but you couldn’t get close enough to listen?”
“The State Attorney toasted him with the wine. Then, at the end, they shook hands. One of those four- handed deals, you know, hands on top of each other’s.”
“Then what? Please tell me you followed Ziegler to Melody’s.”
“First, Ziegler got his car from the valet. While he’s waiting, he’s talking on the cell phone, and I’m standing right behind him.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s talking real sweet, ‘honey’ this and ‘honey’ that.”
“Jeez, Pepito, cut to it.”
“He says, ‘Honey, I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ So I figure, she lives close.”
“Good figuring. Keep going.”
“Then his Ferrari came up. He got into the car and I had to run to get mine from a meter on Biscayne Boulevard.”
“So you followed him to Melody’s place?”
“I tried. I was four cars behind him when we got to the Brickell Avenue drawbridge. He went across as the yellow light was flashing. The arm came down right in front of me. So I got hung up and lost him there.”
“Shit.”
“I’m sorry,
“It’s okay, Pepito. You did great. Sometimes I’m too hard on you.”
I checked my watch. Five minutes to get to court. So much happening. Tejada had a lawyer for reasons unknown. Ziegler and Castiel were best buds. Somewhere out there, presumably ten minutes from downtown, sat Melody Sanders, keeper of Ziegler’s secrets. Then there was Amy Larkin, my tight-lipped client. Where was she the night of the murder? Who was she with? What’s going on between Ziegler and her?
Some days, I feel in control of my life and my surroundings. But today I felt I was the butt of some cosmic joke in the legal universe. If a meteorite sped across the vastness of space and entered our atmosphere, I had no doubt it would make a beeline straight for my head.
58 The Rat
The man with polished fingernails and the turquoise glasses sat in the back row of the gallery. I gave him a little lawyer nod, but he didn’t acknowledge me. I kept my eyes on Tejada during his direct exam and caught him flashing looks to the guy, as if seeking approval.
When Castiel informed me that the witness was mine, I patted Amy Larkin on the shoulder, stood up, smiled pleasantly at the jury, and said, “Good morning, Mr. Tejada.”
“Yeah. Morning.”
He looked sullen. Fine with me. Jurors like their witnesses to be neighborly and good-humored, not cheerless and sour.
Tejada had walked through Castiel’s direct exam, the State Attorney his usual brisk and efficient self. Now I had a clear-cut task. I wanted to point a finger at this jailbird, and while I was at it, smear Ziegler, too.
“Let me get a few things straight, Mr. Tejada. When you heard the gunshots, you raced around the house to the pool deck and straight to the solarium, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you know to run there?”
“That’s where the shots seemed to come from.”
“Seemed to? Do you have experience with gunshots?”
He gave a little smirk. “Some.”
“You’re not on the Olympic biathlon team by any chance, are you?”
“Nope.”
“And you’re not a veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan, are you?”
“No.”
“Ever serve in uniform? Other than in prison?”
“Objection!” Castiel fired it off so quickly, he didn’t even have time to stand.
“Mr. Lassiter, you will stow the sarcasm in your rucksack,” Judge Melvia Duckworth said, employing a term she must have used in court-martials back in JAG.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said, in the time-honored tradition of accepting criticism with dignity and respect.
On direct exam, Castiel smartly brought out that Tejada had several criminal convictions. Under the rules of evidence, I then couldn’t ask anything about his crimes.
“Mr. Tejada. When you reached the pool deck, the first thing you saw was a broken window in the solarium. Is that correct?”
“Yeah. Like I already said to the prosecutor.”
“And when you looked inside, you saw Charles Ziegler bent over the body of Max Perlow?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you see my client anywhere?” I nodded toward Amy, sitting placidly at the defense table, a nonhomicidal look on her angelic face.
“No.”
“If she shot Mr. Perlow, how do you suppose she got away?”
“Objection!” Castiel bounced to his feet like a fighter coming off the corner stool. “Calls for a conclusion.”
“Sustained,” Judge Duckworth said.
“Let me ask it this way. Mr. Ziegler’s house sits right on the water, correct?”
“Yeah. The pool deck runs to the seawall.”
“Did you see anyone fleeing by boat?”
“No.”
“When you were running from the north side of the house, did you see anyone running toward the south?”
“Nope.”
