to clip coupons. So I clipped enough for the next two years, I don’t know, maybe one-point-five million, maybe a little more. The rest are still attached to the bonds in my box at the bank.”
Lassiter said, “As for the mess, whoever did it either was looking for other valuables or wanted us to think so.”
“Whoever did it should have an onion grow out his belly button,” Violet piped up. “That’s what Mr. K. said.”
“Make him easier to ID,” Lassiter said.
“Cute,” Sergeant Carraway said without smiling. “But I ain’t seen nothing yet to convince me anybody from outside took whatever was in those drawers. Far as I’m concerned, the three of you are as much suspects as some joint-smoking hippies at UM.”
The old man whimpered. The sergeant looked right at Lassiter, testing him, seeing if he could get out of a clinch. The cop’s hands were on his hips now, his belly hanging over his pants, straining the buttons on his regulation blue shirt. Lassiter was wearing his uniform, a charcoal-gray suit, white shirt, and burgundy tie, and it was time to play lawyer games with the bigmouth cop. A simple strategy, act dumb, sucker the cop into dropping his hands, then unload with a hook to the jaw.
“Interesting theory, Sarge. You got a motive for this allegedly fake burglary?”
“Sure, tax evasion. Ever heard of it, Counselor? Your client here reports an imaginary theft. He still has the bond things plus he gets to take a whatchacallit from the IRS.”
Lassiter turned to face the cop straight on. He lowered his voice, a trick used by lawyers and leg breakers alike. The most effective threats are delivered sotto voce. “They call it a casualty or theft loss, and I call your statement slander. You’ve just published the defamatory statement to a third person, Miss Belfrey here, which creates the cause of action and obviates any privilege you might have had to say it directly to Mr. Kazdoy and his counsel. Now, I’m going to let that one slide, but I’ll serve you with process on your favorite barstool the day you open your fat trap to the papers.”
Lassiter paused and let the silence fill the room. Then he picked up the volume just a bit. “And, as long as we’re talking litigation, let’s not forget a civil rights action, depriving Mr. Samuel Kazdoy, one of the city’s most respected philanthropists, of his rights under color of law. Plus intentional infliction of mental distress and a few other things my bright law clerks come up with, and even if I don’t win the suit, there’ll be a helluva fuss, Internal Review investigation, who knows, a lot of trouble for a cop maybe a year or two from pension.”
Officer Jorge Torano stopped his Asian isometrics and let out a whistle that sounded like “oh boy.” The old man sat up straight, something flickering in his eyes. Violet seemed flushed, expectant and alert at the possible clash of stags in the forest. For a moment Sergeant Phil Carraway didn’t move, didn’t say a thing. Then he smiled a sloppy grin and put his hands up, palms forward.
“Okay okay,” Carraway sang out. “Just doing my job, part of the book, making sure it’s not an inside job, don’t get your nose outta joint, you never know, sometimes you come on like that and bam! You get a confession. But Jesus, we got no leads here.”
Lassiter smiled and walked to a neutral corner. The cop was throwing in the towel. Now that the macho bullshit was over, how to get him to solve the crime and get back the coupons?
“You said no signs of forced entry,” Lassiter said. “Who has keys to the front door?”
“Only Mr. K. and little ole me,” Violet said, studying a cuticle on her right pinkie.
“And Miss Belfrey has an alibi,” Sergeant Carraway said with a wink and a leer. Now the cop was Lassiter’s buddy, sharing confidences with him. It took a second but Lassiter figured out the alibi when Violet put an arm around the old man, then gently stroked his neck. It wasn’t a sexual gesture, just a comforting one, but the body language was unmistakable. She may not have gotten into the old man’s cabinet but she’s in his pants, Lassiter thought.
“Mr. Kazdoy said you’d be able to tell us something about these coupons, what a thief would do with them, that sort of thing,” Sergeant Carraway continued, his tone finally respectful and professional. Torano groaned and asked if he could leave, had to work out, and the fat sergeant nodded okay.
“Where do you want me to start?” Lassiter asked.
The sergeant pulled out a vinyl-covered notebook. “Well, what the fuck are these things anyhow?” That was as good a place as any, so Jake Lassiter told him to think of Mr. Kazdoy as a lender who gives five thousand dollars to, say, the city of Jacksonville to help build a sewage plant and the city agrees to repay him over twenty years at 8 percent interest, four hundred dollars a year, payable two hundred bucks a pop, every December 1 and June 1, then at the end of twenty years, he gets back the five grand. In the meantime, he pays no taxes on the interest payments.
“I built a box factory in Jacksonville once,” Kazdoy said to no one in particular. “Cost me nine million in 1958, would be worth forty million today, but I don’t own it.”
Lassiter looked toward his client, hoping the old man wasn’t losing his marbles along with the bonds. Then he turned back to the sergeant and explained that to get your two hundred bucks, you have to turn in a coupon at a bank. “A bond payable over twenty years will have forty coupons. What the burglars took would have been… what, Sam
… six or seven thousand coupons?”
“Never liked Jacksonville,” Kazdoy said. “More anti-Semites than Warsaw.” The old man wasn’t going to be much help.
Lassiter said, “A securities newsletter will alert all the local banks. But the coupons will more likely turn up out of the country, maybe in the islands at some doper bank good at money laundering. Problem is, these are negotiable securities, anybody can cash them.”
Violet Belfrey was trying hard not to show that she was paying attention, but if she kept filing her nails, she’d soon draw blood.
“If real pros masterminded this,” Lassiter concluded, “they already have a buyer, maybe in the Bahamas or Switzerland, or someone in organized crime, so they wholesale them for fifty cents on the dollar, let somebody else worry about dropping them at banks all over the country or all over the world.”
Now Samuel Kazdoy was coming alive. “Jacob, you get them back for me, boychik, one half is yours.”
The old man pulled himself off the sofa, struggled for a moment to gain his balance, and then stepped between Lassiter and the sergeant. He turned around, asserting control as he must have done in conference rooms for more than half a century. The events of the day still hung on his shoulders, but a brightness returned to his eyes.
“One half, Jacob. You got a good kop on your shoulders, I always said that. You can do it. Just like you got those momzers in Hollywood off my back. Just like you saved my driver’s license when the sons of bitches in Tallahassee said I was too old. You’re my friend, Jacob. You break bread with me and drink borscht with me, now find the bonds for me. If you can keep your mind off the shiksas for a while, you’ll figure it out.”
Carraway snapped his notebook shut. “Should have figured. We do the work, the lawyer gets the money.”
Kazdoy turned his attention to the sergeant. “Mis-ter Policeman, who do you think you are, some Cossack, you come in here and threaten me like there’s gonna be a pogrom. I been a friend of the mayor since he was a little pisher. You don’t want to help, he’s gonna hear about it.”
Sergeant Carraway swallowed hard and swung his bulk toward the broken door. “Fine with me. I gotta open a case number, but nothing says I gotta be a hero. Lassiter, call me when you got something to say.”
The sergeant left without promising to call for lunch. Lassiter looked around the office for another few minutes, then said his good-byes and headed down the stairs and out the fire door, opening it slowly, studying the latch. Nothing to see. He ran his hand over the mechanism, the little bolt that locks from the outside but slides open when the bar is pressed from inside.
Hullo! A tiny piece of silver duct tape, like you use to patch a torn sail, and the rest of the latch faintly sticky, like it was covered with the same tape but was torn off in a hurry. Okay, a guy doesn’t wait in a rest room all night, somebody tapes a door open for him. Just like Watergate — why not — most of those characters live in Miami anyway.
He stepped into the alley. No one had stolen his car, a canary yellow 1968 Olds 442, or sliced the canvas top in search of a tape player to exchange for a day’s ration of crack. Not that a slash and grabber would have found anything to sell. The car had no tape player, no CD, no cellular phone, and the radio was the original equipment: AM
