by Paul Levine
So what’s up, Jake old buddy? You get a call from a lady PI. She pays attention to the dust on your car, and who knows what else? She knows you use a regular investigator but thinks you might switch. Why?
“My work’s about fifty-fifty criminal and civil right now,” she said. “In addition to gathering information, I like to analyze it.”
“Meaning what?”
“I like to know why people do things, not just what they do.” She finished the last of the ropa vieja—”old clothes” in Spanish—took a sip of iced tea, and patted her lips with her napkin. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, because you may think it affects my work. Truth is, I feel compassion. I always see the other side.”
“I have no problem with that. It’s called humanity. I wish the state attorney’s office had some.”
She studied me a moment, her eyes dark and knowing. “Would you like to see my work?”
Wondering if she was flirting or engaged in business development, I smiled my crooked smile and allowed as how I would. I try to be a modern man, treating women equally in the give-and-take of the business world. But I didn’t feel like punching Lourdes Soto on the shoulder and asking, So whadaya think of the Dolphins’ draft?
I try not to regard women as sex objects, but damn it, I can’t forget who they are and what they’ve got, and if one turns out to be beautiful and bright, no matter how professional and courteous the conversation, there’s always the lingering question of whether she or you or both want to frolic naked. Forgive me, but I am still a man.
Lourdes Soto reached under the table and opened an aluminum briefcase. She pulled out a dozen eight-by-ten black-and-whites and spread them on the table. A middle-aged man, his gut hanging over his swim trunks, had his right hand on the bare breast of a superbly endowed young woman. She wore only black bikini bottoms and sunglasses. They were on a beach in chaises.
“She’s his mistress. He’s putting on the Coppertone,” Lourdes said.
“From the looks of her, he’ll use the whole bottle before he gets to her back.”
“He paid eight grand for the her boob job. I got the receipts by impersonating a State Farm auditor.”
“His wife must have loved the photos.”
“Ordered a dozen blown up into posters for the divorce party.”
“Tell me about the surveillance. How’d you do it?”
“A little more complicated than most. The pictures are from the beach behind the Palace Hotel in San Juan.”
“You tracked him all the way to Puerto Rico?”
Again, she reached into her case, this time pulling out a fountain pen. She removed the cap and shook out an inch-long capsule.
“A tracking transmitter,” she said. “I had the wife slip it into his briefcase. The receiver will track up to sixty-five miles. A great help on when you take a wrong turn. First, I tailed him around Miami for a few weeks. I’d call his secretary and pretend to be a bunch of different people. Used the electronic voice changer to become a man with a southern drawl, that sort of thing. It’s amazing how much secretaries will tell you if they think you’re important business associates.”
I signaled the waiter for two cups of café Cubano. “You couldn’t track him to Puerto Rico with that.”
She tried not to chuckle. “I had some help. The wife put a voice-activated recorder on the private line in his study. He talked in code to his girlfriend, but I knew they were headed to the airport, and I just followed.”
“Illegal as hell . . .”
“But extremely effective.”
Still, it gave me pause. Investigators sometimes get in trouble with illegal wiretaps, and when they do, they often flip on the lawyers who hired them.
She gathered up the accoutrements of her cloak-and-dagger life. I watched the fine blue veins on the back of her hands. Nicely tapered fingers with short, clear lacquered nails. She cocked her head at me again. “So Jake, what took you to the justice building this morning?”
“Francisco Crespo, a murder case. Probably a reasonable doubt defense. I need a witness to put somebody else at the scene, maybe find somebody who had a grudge against the victim, some forensic evidence of a third party, too.”
“Is that all? No signed confession from a notorious serial killer?”
I like a woman with a sharp sense of humor. “You’re right. I sometimes ask for too much. Right now, I’d settle for knowing a little more about my client’s employer. Crespo worked for an importer named Matsuo Yagamata. Ever heard of him?”
Her lips played with a smile, then let me have it. “Francisco Crespo used to work for my father. And my father used to be business partners with Matsuo Yagamata.”
Oh.
“You knew I was representing Crespo, didn’t you?”
“A good investigator ought to know what’s going on around town.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? Why the life and times of Lourdes Soto?”
“I wanted you to hire me based on my qualifications, not my contacts.”
I tried to sort it out. Lourdes Soto had information I wanted. Or she could get it.
What did I have that she wanted?
Lourdes was staring intently at me, her body perfectly still. This was happening a little too fast. I wasn’t ready to entrust Francisco Crespo’s future, or lack of it, to a woman I had just met, a woman who encouraged wives to illegally wiretap their husbands, and who probably knew what I ate for dinner last night. Still, I could use her, albeit carefully.
“What did my client do for your father?”
“Perhaps Papi should tell you that.”
“And what business was your father doing with Yagamata?”
“Again, Papi would be better equipped to answer.”
“So if I’m reading this right, you’ve just made yourself indispensable.”
She smiled. “I guess that means I’m hired.”
Back into the briefcase went the photos and the transmitter pen. As she slipped the pen into its slot, her hand brushed the leather divider of the case, revealing another compartment. It was visible for only a second, but I know a voice-activated tape recorder when I see one. Of course, it could have been turned off. Probably was, right?
“Glad to be on the team,” she said. “Now, tell me about your case.”
I needed to figure out just how much to tell and how much to leave out. “Let’s see where to begin.” I watched her snap the case shut, the little red light pulsating with each word I spoke.
6
PREACHING WATER, DRINKING WINE
Usually, I don’t show off.
Some guys blast up to the shore, carve a hard jibe, and shower a rooster tail of spray over a bouquet of bikinis. Sort of a male boardsailor’s adolescent fertility rite. I’m too old for that.
Then there are the guys who rig their boards, slip into harnesses, and tune their sails until the wind dies, never getting their booties wet. Swilling brew all day and talking a good game but never playing it. I like the sport too much for that.
I just rig and go. On an April day, a steady northeasterly of twenty knots, the temperature a perfect eighty-one degrees, I was chop-hopping the green squirrelly waters off South Beach. Puffy white clouds scudded across the sky, darkening the water with their fleeting shadows. The windows of the high-rise condos winked at me in the morning sun.
Okay, so it’s not like windsurfing at Sprecklesville Beach in the shadow of Haleakala, the great Maui volcano. No ten-thousand-foot peak hidden in the mist. But it’s the best we can do in these parts. Four feet of chop for jumping, a steady wind for speed, and if you are so inclined, a beach full of tourist gals from every corner of the country, not to mention a wide collection of Central and South American chicas plus some Germans and Danes thrown in on a package tour.
I was so inclined.
My board was a nine-and-a-half-foot custom-made sliver of fiberglass with a five-point-four-meter orange Mylar sail. I was bouncing over the chop, leaning back into the harness,
guiding the boom with a light touch, and generally luxuriating in the beauty of the day.
And showing off. Near the shoreline, beginners climbed onto clunky floaters in the frothy surf, unsteady as rookie riders at a dude ranch.
Windsurfing is a sport with a steep learning curve, and the first few tries can be frustrating. Watching an experienced boardsailor tear through a series of bottom turns and slashbacks on the offshore waves can be inspiring to the newcomer, or so I rationalized my blatant showboating. On occasion, I could even be persuaded to teach a grateful beach bunny how to tie a bowline or a Prusik hitch knot, all in the spirit of sportsmanship, of course.
Approaching the shoreline at warp speed, I leaned a heavy foot on the rail, and the board carved into the wind. I let go of the boom and dragged my aft hand in the water, a flare jibe. In theory, the hand acts as a daggerboard and pulls the board through the turn. In reality, it’s a grandstanding technique equivalent to a hot-rodder fishtailing on the asphalt.
Hey, look at me! I completed the jibe, flipped the boom, then shot back out over the chop, the wind snapping my sail and whistling a tune through the holes in the mast extension. I squinted into the sun, jibed again, and rode heavy rollers into the shallow water near the Fifth Street beach.
I shot past startled swimmers, a couple of teenage sailors in a Sunfish, and some novice boardsailors. Nearing the shore, I pulled the foot of the sail over my head as the leech swung through the eye of the wind—a flashy duck jibe—and just as the board should have started on a new tack, the tail sunk and the bow shot up like a leaping marlin. I toppled backward into five feet of surf. Served me right.
Shaking water out of my eyes and sand out of my trunks, I recognized the sound of sail crackling in the wind, somewhere behind me, moving closer. It is equivalent to hearing a trucker’s horn when you are on a bicycle. I turned just in time to have a mast topple onto me, whacking my right shoulder, and I went under again. This time, I had company.
She was a tall, sunburned blonde, who hadn’t seen thirty. She wore a white one-piece Lycra suit, and when she crawled back onto the board, I could see telltale scraped shins. Her hair was plastered to her skull, and she breathed heavily through pouting lips. If anyone had ever taught her to boardsail, they hadn’t taught her right.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, clinging to the board, which teetered in the surf. “This is so much harder than it looks.”
“First time,” I guessed.
“No. Yes. I mean, in the ocean. I’ve sailed on Lake Minnewaska. But this …” She gestured at the rollers.
“Lake Minnie . . .”
“In Minnesota.”
She had a faint singsong accent. Swedish maybe. “It’s a different sport in the waves,” I agreed. “Try again. I’ll give you some pointers.”
Jacob Lassiter, Esq., to the rescue. Accused murderers and sopping wet damsels, walk right in.
She looked at me the way they do when sizing you up. Deciding whether you’re Tom Cruise or Charles Manson. I crinkled my best beach smile at her and must not have looked too lethal, because she allowed as how my assistance would be peachy, got to her feet, grabbed the uphaul, and pulled, straining to get the sail out of the water. She had some fine ripples in her triceps, but the mast stayed put, weighted down by what must have seemed like a ton of water burying the sail.
“Heavy son of a bitch,” she muttered.
At first I thought she meant me.
I like a woman who curses. Makes me think she’ll be honest in personal relationships. It’s stupid, I know, like believing a guy who doesn’t look you in the eyes is shifty, when he may just be bashful.
“Damn right,” I said, adapting my lingo, chameleon like, to my companion. “Try leaning back. Let your legs do the work. Don’t be afraid. You won’t fall, just keep hold of the uphaul.”
Beginners have this fear of toppling over backward, so they stand straight up and do all the pulling with their arms. Gradually, she leaned back and got the tip of the mast out of the water, and the rest followed. She grabbed the boom, raked it in, and headed the twelve-foot board out through the surf.
She yelled something that sounded like “whoopee,” and looked back at me over her shoulder through her wet hair flying, brave enough now to loosen up a little. “Sail with me!”
I ducked under my boom and lay in the water on my back. I propped my feet on the board, and tilted the mast into the wind. When I felt a gust, I lifted the boom gently and let the sail pick me up as it filled with air. I slid my feet into the straps, tugged the boom toward me, and followed my Minnesota friend. I pumped the sail twice and whizzed alongside her.
“Thanks for showing me the ropes,” she called out. “I’m Jillian. Will you let me take you to my hotel for lunch?”
I couldn’t think why not. “Sure. I’m Jake. Let’s get past the surf line. I’ll show you some tricks they don’t know in Duluth. When we get in, I’ll give you some salve for those scrapes.”
Doctor Lassiter at your service; we make beach calls.
She smiled and kept sailing. I stayed upwind and behind her, watching her calf muscles undulate through the window on my sail. “Watch out for those jet skis,” I yelled, pointing in the general direction of Bimini. Three hundred yards away, two machines euphemistically called “personal watercraft” were chawing away, fouling the breeze with their noxious noise. Nearby, a sleek yacht was anchored, pitching gently in the offshore waves.
What loggers are to forests, what sheep are to grass, that’s what jet skis are to a fine patch of turquoise water. It’s not the machine, of course, loud and irksome as it is. The yahoos who ride them, water bullies, are the problem. They ignore the rules of right-of-way, cut off sailboats, terrorize swimmers, scare the fish, and toss beer bottles into the surf. Down in Islamorada recently, a fisherman plugged a jet skier with a .22 rifle when the punk wouldn’t heed his warnings to keep a distance. Only a flesh wound in the leg. Most of the locals wish the fisherman was a better shot.
These two surf jockeys were headed right for us on their black-and-white monsters, churning up the water, jumping each other’s wake, and generally destroying the tranquility of a place where the only sound is the smooth slash of water and the tune of the wind. We stayed on our tack, a close reach to the northeast. The onshore wind swept the gaseous stink across the waves. The two intruders slowed about thirty yards away. Two swarthy men, early twenties. Both wiry, both looking at me, instead of Jillian, which any red-blooded guy would do. One of them said something to the other. I heard the name, “Hector,” but with the sound of the damned engines and the whistling wind, I couldn’t make anything else out.
Then, louder. “Ay, you! Big guy. Follow us.”
I shook my head, dumbfounded.
“C’mon, lawyer. Somebody wants to see you.”
I luffed the sail and slowed, but at two hundred thirty-something pounds, I can’t stop. If I do, the board will sink. “No thanks, have a lunch date.”
Jillian sailed by and was looking back over her shoulder. Probably thinking about all the Miami horror stories she must have heard. It’s one thing to be caught in the crossfire of a Colombian cowboy drug war at a shopping mall. Or to wander into a Santería ceremony sacrificing live goats to the god Yemayá. But to witness a boardsailor’s kidnapping might be a new one for the folks in mid-America.
Their engines were idling, and the incoming tide brought them closer. Both had tattoos on their upper arms. The talker had a neatly trimmed mustache. “C’mon, Hector. We’ll tow him.”
They revved up and followed me, Hector zooming close, reaching for the bowline that sweeps back into the water as you move forward. I pumped the sail and caught a gust that took me out of his reach. Except for a couple of space-age trimarans, a fiberglass board with a sail is the fastest wind-driven craft in existence. The America’s Cup yachts? Spare me. The fastest boards can triple their speeds. But a sail is not an engine. I depend on nature: wind and water. Those damn motorcycles on water generate four hund
red fifty pounds of thrust from a jet nozzle.
I heard the machines growling behind me, louder now. In a smooth patch of water, I carved a fine jibe, and headed the other way. They just leaned into the turn like bikers, and followed me. In a moment, they had me sandwiched. Hector reached for the bowline again, and I whipped the boom toward him with my aft hand. The outhaul tip caught him on the side of the head and nearly toppled him from his steed. His curses were drowned out by the engines.
The other one sped up and shot across open water ahead of me. Then he turned and idled, blocking my path. I could have jibed again and headed back toward Hector, who was bleeding just above the ear. Or I could imitate some of the wind fanatics from Maui and the Columbia River Gorge, gymnast-sized guys who fly over objects in their path. A decent-sized roller was coming, just between us. I had the board for it, but not the body. At my weight, you don’t jump waves so much as hippity-hop them. Still, I tried to unweight, lifting my feet against the footstraps just as the wave hoisted me, pumping the sail hard.
I got airborne, all right, but only about two feet. I heard him scream, saw him duck, felt the pointy nose of the board strike metal, capsizing the craft and tossing him overboard. I ended up in the water, my board splintered. As I treaded water, Jillian sailed close.
“You were right,” she said, splashing by me. “I’ve never seen anything like this in Minnesota.”
***
Would you care for lunch?” Matsuo Yagamata asked, gesturing toward a buffet table spread with cold seafood that somebody had forgotten to cook.
My social life was improving: two invitations in one day.
Yagamata didn’t wait for me. He lowered himself into an orange deck chair with a canvas back, while a lean Asian man in white served him raw octopus from an ice-filled platter. We were anchored a mile offshore, the bow pointing northeast, and we had a splendid view of the Art Deco hotels of South Beach. That had been his sleek yacht I had seen from the shoreline.