The corner office on the bank tower’s forty-first floor was immaculate — no piles of papers and correspondence, no messy phone messages cluttering the sleek marble desk, no files stacked on the beige carpet. And no smile on the face, much less a pleasant thought behind the bleak visage of Thaddeus G. Whitney, Great Southern Bank’s general counsel. Lassiter looked out the floor-to-ceiling window, warmed by the midday sun. On a clear day you could see across the Gulf Stream to Bimini. Today, it was breezeless and humid, and a haze of auto smog wrapped the high rise in a noxious cocoon.
An unlit cigarette dangled from Whitney’s mouth, a pitiful attempt to toughen his doughy face. “Jake, where the hell you been? Jesus H. Christ, you won’t believe it.”
“What’s the problem, Thad?” Lassiter asked listlessly, his mind elsewhere.
“Problem? Your Commie EEOC is the problem. Some shyster just called me and five minutes later a Miami Herald reporter because a VP in PB terminated an AAT who also happens to be a DBF.”
“Say what? You’ve got an employment complaint, that’s about as much as I picked up.”
“Whatsa matter? You play too much football without a helmet? Without my approval, without any oversight by Legal or Personnel, one of our vice presidents in Personal Banking just fired an administrative assistant trainee.”
“Yeah?”
“The trainee is a black woman who also happens to sit in a wheelchair.”
“A disabled black female,” Lassiter said.
“You got it.”
Lassiter shook his head. “A potential three-bagger. Race, sex, and handicapped discrimination, all in one case.”
Whitney ran a hand through his receding hair, his fingers leaving trails through the colorless strands. He lit the cigarette, which, by now, had gone soggy around the filter. “There’s more. She alleges that Phil Bannister, our veep, used to corner her in the hallway by the lunchroom. Small turning radius, she couldn’t wheel herself away.”
“Keep going,” Lassiter said.
For the first time Lassiter could remember, Whitney looked embarrassed. “He grabbed her boobs. Every day for a month, she’d get stuck there, he’d grab her boobs.”
“Sexual harassment, too, a home run. I’ve never had a case with four employment law violations.”
“To make matters worse, he was groping her during her coffee break.”
“I don’t see what difference that makes.”
“She’s one of your Muslims, was headed to the lunchroom to read her Koran. Bannister told her it was against bank policy to pray during working hours.”
“Apparently it’s okay to cop a feel.”
Whitney shrugged.
“Religious discrimination, too,” Lassiter said, “a five-bagger. Legal history in the making. Thad, you’ll be in all the legal journals. Sixty Minutes will knock on your door. Any idea why your sleazy vice president did it?”
“Bannister’s not real popular with the women,” Whitney said.
“I don’t doubt it.”
“They usually take an instant dislike to him.”
“Probably figure it’ll save time.”
“So he’s got a thing for paraplegics. Doesn’t like women with a moving target. Anyway, when this one wouldn’t put out, he fired her without consulting me. Her lawyer’s a sole practitioner. I need you to tie up the case, get continuances, take interlocutory appeals, paper them to death, whatever it takes.”
Lassiter shook his head. “Not my style.”
“What do you suggest?” Whitney asked, his pale eyes narrowing.
“Settle now. Pay her. Rehire her, give a written apology, fire Bannister, and teach the rest of your officers some simple manners.”
“Fire Phil? You crazy? He’s my golf partner. And spare me the lecture. Bannister could testify the crip came on to him, he felt sorry for her, goes for a charity fuck, she cries wolf.”
“You want me to suborn perjury?”
“I want you to win. That’s what I pay you for.”
“You pay me for my advice in your office and my skill in the courtroom,” Lassiter said without emotion. “I don’t do your dirty work. I don’t lie to the court or let a client do it.”
Whitney’s head snapped back as if he had taken a jab to his chin. “Whose side you on?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“I’d suggest you do your figuring in a hurry,” Whitney said, exhaling foul smoke through his nose.
“Look, Thad, I’ve had a rough week. I’m just trying to make it till tomorrow. I have a client who gets ripped off for a million and a half in negotiable paper, and I think his lady friend was in on it. Then my old trial partner gets his neck wrung and strung up like a twelve-point buck.”
“I heard, actually I read, what’d the paper call him, a ‘socialite’? What a hoot. He’s a socialite like I piss Pouilly-Fuisse.”
Jake Lassiter decided to let that one pass. He couldn’t expect much compassion from Thad Whitney, a guy whose Lincoln Town Car wore the personalized license plate 4-CLOSE. Lassiter had seen the newspaper story, ten graphs under a two-column head, CUBAN SOCIALITE STRANGLED. Nothing about drugs, but most readers assume it anyway. Funny the way headline writers sum it up for you, a life in a word.
Thad Whitney was saying something. What was it? And who cared?
“It is taken care of, right?” Whitney asked.
“What?”
“Hey, Jake, anybody home? You with me, fella?”
“Must have been thinking of something else.”
“So it’s signed, right?”
“What’s that?”
“The deed, for crying out loud! The Cuban’s ranch to the bank, the quitclaim deed you promised me. I trust you got the deed signed before this dastardly crime wiped out one of Miami’s most eminent citizens. I told the Board last week I’d gotten security for the condo loans, they thought I was hot shit, so I owe you one. With him getting snuffed, you and I look like geniuses to get it squared away like that. We’re talking mucho grande bonus for yours truly.”
The heat rose from inside Lassiter, and he waited a moment, hoping it would pass. He tried to think of something else, something besides moving Whitney’s bland little nose in the general direction of one of his bland little ears or maybe opening the door and tossing him into the lobby of the Legal Department, probably getting cheers all around. Lassiter tried to think of clear skies and steady winds and Lila Summers. It almost worked; he almost let it pass. But not quite.
“Yeah, he signed the deed, now I wish he hadn’t, wish I hadn’t made a jerkoff like you look good.”
“Hey, you got some mouth on you.” Whitney got out of his chair and began walking around his office, trying to look tough now, ever the asshole. “You forgetting Great Southern’s good for half a mil a year to Harman and Fox. Your partners would slice you up like snapper fillet if you blew that.”
“Thad, can you get it through your thick head that Berto was my friend and he’s dead?”
“My condolences. But he was a turd. You can polish a turd, drive it around in a limo, dress it up in suits and gold chains, but it’s still a turd.”
Lassiter slowly rose from the chair, his face calm, eyes focused on a distant shore. Whitney saw him coming, got a funny look on his face like he ate something that didn’t agree with him, raised his arms, and stepped backward.
With arms that had fought off bull-necked tight ends, with wrists strengthened from tugging a boom through thirty-knot winds, Lassiter raised Whitney off the floor by his lapels, not looking into that bland face, and Whitney flushed with fear.
Then Lassiter shook him, shook him until Whitney’s head flopped forward and back, shook him till his own shoulders ached, shook him for Berto and for Sam and for Jake himself, shook him to purge whatever poison ate
