Lassiter didn’t like the way Berto said it, the casual mention of death, as if it were the next flight out of town.
They were eating now, Berto picking at his food, Lassiter slicing the marinated steak, dipping it first in the sweet sauce of tomatoes and red peppers, then trying the green sauce of garlic, parsley, and oil. The meat was tender, the sauces tangy, the starchy black beans and rice taking some of the sting out of the spicy dishes.
“What about you, Jake? What’s new in your life?”
“Nothing. I still don’t have a wife, a dog, or a Most Valuable Player award.”
Berto pointed at Jake with a fork filled with peppers and onions. “You have this tendency to reject the mainstream, to scoff at conformity.”
“Really?”
“It’s a contradiction that has always plagued you. A football player with brains and savvy, then a lawyer bursting at the seams of his vest. You frustrate easily and you have a low tolerance for bullshit. You may seem controlled and contained, but you’re always on the verge of just chucking it all away. You don’t always play the game, Jake, and if you’re not careful, you could lose what you’ve built.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“That’s why I can talk. Ever think about your future?”
“As little as possible.”
“You ever gonna get married?”
“What for?”
Berto laughed. “Great question, Jake! I wish I’d asked myself the same question before I’d done about a thousand things.”
“Such as.”
“En resumidas cuentas,” Berto said, “to make a long story short, when things went bad, I cut some corners to try and make a comeback.”
“You doubled up the loans on the condos, Great Southern and Vista Bank, a neat scam, but fraudulent as hell.”
Berto’s fork struck his plate like a rifle shot. “Forget the loans. Jesus Cristo! The loans are dogshit. I’ll tell you what I did. I got a DC-3. I bought a hundred acres just north of the Trail near Naples. I spent a small fortune clearing, filling, building a runway. You get me?”
“Oh no,” Lassiter said, shaking his head in disbelief.
“That’s right. Only el idiota I hired, he built runways in the Bahamas on coral rock, and he doesn’t figure on the change in the water level in the Glades. So, first flight we got thirty thousand pounds of grass that I paid cash for, but it’s August, and it’s raining so hard the animals are leaving in twos, and there’s a foot of muck on the runway. Pilot tries to set it down, he skids into a hammock, sheers off a wing, fifteen tons of prime weed goes up in flames. Gators got so stoned, they didn’t move for a week.”
“You were there?”
“Hell no, but I had trucks there and runway lights and guys with radios and guns. Everyone on the ground hauled ass. By the time the pilot gets out, he’s gotta walk. Meanwhile the fireball attracted a state trooper who was cruising the Trail. He nails the pilot, who gives me up.”
“I didn’t realize. Didn’t hear anything. You get indicted?”
“No way, Jose. I gave them the source in the islands. I have no priors, and it was my first job, I swear. So now, I’m a federally protected witness.” Berto gestured to the Anglo man sipping coffee. The man nodded, almost imperceptibly. He wore a plaid polyester sports coat, gray slacks, and brown loafers. Lassiter guessed he was about forty, short blond hair turning gray. The man scanned the restaurant with pale eyes, studying everyone who came in the front door and out of the kitchen.
“DEA?” Lassiter asked.
“Yeah. His name’s Franklin, like Ben, only this one doesn’t have a first name. All very hush-hush. They deposed me for a week, and now they’re setting me up with a new place to go, new name, job, everything.”
“Where you going?”
“Not supposed to tell.” Berto looked around again, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Casper, Wyoming.”
“You’re kidding.”
Berto shrugged and signaled the waiter to bring dessert, tres leches for Lassiter, espresso for himself. “Can you imagine me with the cowboys, Jake?” Berto looked down at his plate. He still had the charm that had carried him so far, Lassiter thought, but a hearty greeting and a slap on the back could not disguise his anguish. They were silent. Then Berto worked up the old smile and said, “I’m taking Lee Hu with me to Wyoming.”
“Who?”
“Not who, Hu. Rhymes with stew, which is what she is for Avianca, based in Bogota. She adores me. Only nineteen, about five one. You ever have an Asian girl? All they want to do is please you.”
“That would be different,” Lassiter allowed.
The tres leches was delicious, cake soaked in whole milk, evaporated milk, and condensed milk, covered with white frosting. Lassiter could barely move, and it was time to talk business. “Berto, the bank wants to bring charges against you for fraud and bribing a bank officer. Conrad Ticklin spilled his guts, said you gave him twenty-five grand to approve the loan. It’s a federal crime.”
The espresso cup stopped an inch from Berto’s mouth. His eyes narrowed. “Ticklin’s a candy-ass! He begged me for the money because he was whipsawed by his wife and his girlfriend.”
“Regardless whose idea it was, you bribed him.”
Berto scowled. “Yeah, because I tried to help him out. Ticklin’s pushing forty-five and has all the charm of a warthog, but he’s not as good-looking. He falls ass over elbows for this receptionist at the bank. She’s twenty-one, Cuban Catholic, lives at home, and won’t see him because he’s married. She tells him, ‘No puede estar el polio en el corral y en la cazuela.’ ”
“You can’t have your chicken in the pen…”
“And in the pan,” Berto added. “Or put another way, you can’t have your tres leches and eat it too. So he says he’ll leave his wife, and the blessed virgin rolls over. Course he doesn’t leave his wife. Now the girl is pissed and threatens to tell the wife and the bank, and Ticklin needs money to shut her up.
He gets it from me, she gets a new BMW with a sunroof, Ticklin gets fired anyway, and I’m stuck with a bribery charge.”
“His mistake was saying he’d leave his wife,” Lassiter said. “I’ll never understand why men do that.”
“Jake, your naivete knows no limits. El hombre promete y promete y promete hasta que se la mete. The man promises and promises and promises until he sticks it in.”
Two strolling guitarists and a musician shaking maracas were serenading a middle-aged couple, singing “Besame Mucho,” the love song that pleads for kisses. Franklin, the DEA agent, watched as if the maracas were hand grenades.
“Berto, I’ll try to talk the bank out of going after you, but I’ll need to give them something to keep the grand jury away. Do you have any property you can substitute as collateral for the condos?”
Berto grabbed the napkin from his lap and squeezed it, as if wringing out a dishrag and finding it dry. He dropped the napkin and gestured with both hands to the heavens. “My house has three mortgages, and I took all the equity out of the shopping centers to buy the first haul of grass. The property along the Trail took the last cash, and the feds are going to grab that under the forfeiture law.”
“Is there anything else, race horses, foreign accounts, other properties?”
Berto looked around again. He seemed to think about it, weighed his thoughts, and finally said, “What the hell. There’s one thing. It’s not in my name, so the feds haven’t found it. If they had, it’d be gone too, to the IRS. When things were good, I put some bucks in an offshore corporation, courtesy of the Cayman Islands. It holds clear title to a three-hundred-acre ranch outside Ocala. Gotta be worth two million plus, and it’s not doing me any good. If I touch it the feds will hit me with obstruction or perjury.”
Bingo. Another chance to be a hero for the bank, Most Valuable Mouthpiece award. Not much of a thrill, not like breaking into the starting lineup against the Jets because of an injury to the strong side linebacker, but it would have to do. “That’s it, Berto. It’s clean. Your offshore company can deed the property to Great Southern and you’ll get a release on the loans. Will you do it?”
