Mortal Sin

by Paul Levine

  “Alas?”

  “On finding his body, she kisses him and dies of grief, falling beside her lover.”

  “Is there a moral to this story, Jake?”

  “Sure. Tristan was a true romantic. He yearned for this woman he could not have, except for stolen kisses in brief, secret moments. He lived a life of loneliness without her. No other woman ever measured up to his idealized view of his love goddess. Eventually, the notion that she would not come to his side killed him.”

  “I get it,” Gina said. “You don’t want to be like Tristan, right?”

  “Yeah, and I’d also like to avoid poison spears.”

  “But you do live a lonely life, Jake. You reject other women because you’re waiting for me. You’re living like Tristan, but you don’t have to. You could have me, but you’re afraid to ask.”

  It had gotten dark outside the windows. The neighborhood mockingbird began troo-loop, troo-looping. The fan still made its endless droning circles. “Okay, I’ve spent half my life waiting for you to come back and the other half afraid that you would.”

  She smiled down at me. “How big are your closets, anyway?”

  “Closets?”

  “For my clothes, silly. You wouldn’t believe how much room I need. I’d get rid of most of the gowns, the opening-night outfits. I’d never get you to take me to the opera, anyway, though it might do you some good. I can keep the furs and ski stuff in storage. I’d have to, since it’s always so sticky in here. You’re going to have to get air-conditioning sooner or later. No more of that stuff about how coral-rock walls keep out the heat, and…”

  Some long-forgotten lyrics about letting a woman in your life popped into my head, something about her redecorating your home from the cellar to the dome.

  “…Jake, maybe it’s time to think about moving. There’s a new high rise on Waterway Drive where each apartment has its own elevator.”

  Did she say high riser

  “A condor You want me to go to meetings where they decide how many pounds your poodle can weigh and what time you have to turn off the stereo?”

  “It’s time you became domesticated.”

  “Like you?”

  “Are you being sarcastic?”

  “Does Joe Paterno know football?”

  “Why do you get like this just when we’re getting close?”

  “Because if I don’t, I’ll end up getting stung. Sooner or later, you’ll leave. And if you didn’t, I would. We’re like those little magnetic chips the kids use in science experiments. Once the chips get too close, they peel off in different directions.”

  She rolled out of bed and stood up. “What is it you lawyers say in court? ‘Let the record reflect . .

  “Yeah, what about it?”

  “Well, let the record reflect I offered to stay, to come to you, to be with you, now and forever. Let—”

  “Forever? Gina, with you, forever lasts as long as this season’s hemlines.”

  “See, Jake? You can’t take it. You always thought you wanted me, but I knew that once I was available, you’d run. I’m going to tell you anyway. Let the record reflect that I love you. I always have. And maybe you think it sounds like a soap opera, but that’s the way it is. It’s always been you, Jake.”

  She dressed hurriedly, heading down the stairs carrying her sneakers. “So long, Jake,” she called back, over her shoulder. “Maybe I’ll see you later. And maybe I won’t.”

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  Buzzards’ Peak

  DURING THE NIGHT, THE WIND PICKED UP. Swirling gusts from the northwest, humming and whistling and trilling a wintertime song. The trees moaned in protest. Twigs snapped and were pulled away from their mothers. Lids of garbage cans rolled down Kumquat Street. Green coconuts thumped to the ground and careened like bowling balls against picket fences. In my neighbor’s yard, a gate with a broken latch blew open and banged shut.

  Our second cold front of the season. Arctic air moving down from Canada, a deep freeze in the Midwest. This was the mother of all cold fronts as far as Florida was concerned, dipping far south, freezing the citrus groves hard, bringing snow flurries to Orlando, and giving us a nighttime frost as far south as Key Largo.

  By morning, the wind was due north and holding strong, not even suggesting that it would begin clocking toward the east and warmer air. The sky was a brittle blue and cloudless, and Miamians were agog with the novelty of it all. The graphics guys at the Miami Journal had icicles dripping from the masthead. The weather gal on the morning TV show gave frostbite advice, and a crop specialist fretted about the winter tomato and strawberry crop.

  In my Coconut Grove neighborhood of small, older houses, a different smell was in the air. The fragrance of hibiscus was replaced by the smoke from fireplaces. Inside, my old coral-rock house was warm and comfy; only a layer of frost on the windows revealed just how cold it was. I dug out my wool suit, the conservative gray herringbone, and polished my black wing tips. I chose a white shirt and a gray tie with a rose-colored pattern.

  I made a breakfast of shredded wheat with slices of yellow star fruit, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and a cup of coffee, black. I skimmed the headlines in the Journal—more Rolex robbers mugging drivers at gas stations for their watches, the head of Planned Parenthood quitting because she became unexpectedly pregnant—then grabbed my bag and took off.

  The upholstery in my antiquated chariot was cold and stiff, cracking when I sat down. The engine coughed and hacked and sputtered and said to hell with it a couple of times until I coaxed her into life. I let the old gal warm up, whispering sweet nothings about a new wax job while the defroster blew noxious air at the windshield. The clutch rebelled when I put her in gear and tried to bounce my left knee into my jaw.

  With the frost melting and the engine backing off, I took my usual shortcut through the south Grove, from Poinciana up Douglas, passing Royal Palm, Palmetto, Avocado, and Loquat, hanging a right on Thomas by the old Negro Cemetery, then scooting over to Hibiscus, and north a block to Grand. Morning rush hour was building with rich white folks from Old Cutler Drive, Cocoplum, and Gables Estates cutting through the black Grove to get downtown, so I swung left on Matilda, and then right on Oak, which becomes Tigertail, and takes me right to the entrance of I-95 just north of Seventeenth Avenue. Of course, I could have headed north on U.S. I to get to the same place, but I never take the straight path when a serpentine route will get me there thirty seconds faster. Besides, I was running late, and Abe Socolow hates to be kept waiting.

  There are three courthouses in Miami, to the utter confusion of citizens called to jury duty. Our town is the venue of choice for international drug dealers, as well as a convenient place to bring to trial various savings-and-loan scoundrels and notorious presidents of banana republics. This prompted the federal government to add a bunch of judges and build a new courthouse connected to the FDR-era post office that housed the old one. Sometimes, prospective jurors summoned to hear fender benders in state court inexplicably end up there. Baffled, they watch busloads of shackled Latino cocaine cowboys hustled into the building for their arraignments, the good citizens wondering if they’ve been transported to some Central American principality.

  For big trials, the feds still use the old Central Courtroom, a spacious two-story affair with coffered ceilings, dark wainscoting, red velvet draperies, and a hand-carved witness box. On the wall, dating from the early forties, is a twenty-six-foot-long pastel mural depicting our state’s past. Indians, fishermen, farm laborers, beauty queens, fruit growers—a joyous rainbow of different-colored Floridians living and working together. Like many of the symbols foisted on us by government, the mural is a pleasant deception.

  Twenty-five blocks away, in the civic center complex, an above-ground walkway connects the county jail to the Justice Building, a misnomer to be sure. Inside, state judges process an endless stream of traffic, misdemeanor, and felony cases, shoveling defendants into and out of our overcrowded prisons. The build
ing houses a slice of Miami’s underbelly, hustlers and losers, drifters and grifters. The voices inside speak in a polyglot of languages from the Caribbean, Central and South America. The corridors teem with store robbers, home burglars, small-time crack dealers, wife-beaters, drunk drivers, and an occasional murderer.

  The state attorney’s office is in the building, and usually Abe Socolow can be found there, either trying capital cases or conferring with his major-crimes prosecutors. But for reasons related to history and custom, the grand jury meets downtown in the civil courthouse. It is there that evidence of corruption is heard, prosecutors unveiling their major investigations for twenty-three citizens chosen to determine who shall be indicted.

  The county courthouse dates from the 1920s. It is a limestone tower, a wedding cake of rectangular floors growing smaller from bottom to top. Back before there was a Justice Building, both criminal and civil cases were heard in the county courthouse. The jail was at the top, then the highest point in the city. The state attorney still maintains a small office in what used to be the jail, and it is there that Abe Socolow spends much of his time when the grand jury is in session.

  Socolow’s office is small but has the illusion of size because of windows where bars used to be on three sides, windows twenty-six floors above Flagler Street. A parapet with gargoyles surrounds the windows, and in a surreal fusion of life and art, black vultures perch there. The vultures arrive each winter and depart each spring, just like the tourists. And every year, the jokes downtown are the same.

  I see the courthouse buzzards are out in force today.

  The birds?

  No, the lawyers.

  A lone receptionist, unsmiling and bored, sat at a desk in the anteroom on the top floor. If I brightened her day, she did her best to hide it. She eyed my oversize duffel bag, buzzed her boss, then waved me in.

  Abe Socolow sat behind his battleship-gray desk made of the finest alloys the state could buy secondhand. The desk was covered with files. Each file had a colorful sticker identifying the case by number. Socolow didn’t stand up, shake my hand, or whistle “Dixie.”

  “I’ve been expecting you, Jake.”

  Now what did that mean? Of course he’d been expecting me. I’d called him. Or did Nicky Florio call him too? Maybe I was paranoid, but was Socolow giving me an odd look? Sizing me up, like he’d never seen me before. Gee, I’d been there when he won his first capital case. I’d been too close, in fact, sitting first chair at the defense table.

  “Welcome to buzzards’ peak,” he greeted me. His voice grated, always had, the sound of metal shearing metal. He shot a look toward the windows. Outside, three vultures were balanced on the parapet, watching half a dozen buddies soar in the thermal air currents around the building. The black birds had white down-turned beaks and bald, scaly red heads like wild turkeys. A couple of the bigger fellows had six-foot wingspans. “Sit down, Jake. That’s quite a load you’re toting.”

  Was that a smile or a sneer?

  Socolow’s suit was the same color as the vultures’ feathers but didn’t fit as well. He always looked skinny in his full-cut Brooks Brothers attire. His shirt was white, the tie black with the usual pattern of silver handcuffs. Until recently, he wore rimless eyeglasses. A campaign consultant must have suggested contacts, and now I noticed the dark pouches the glasses had kept hidden. His dark thinning hair revealed a high, furrowed forehead. He was tall and narrow, with slightly hunched shoulders. Not a photogenic politician, just a hardworking career prosecutor who finally got a shot at the brass ring when his boss took a spill.

  I slung the duffel bag to the floor and sat down in a state-issued lumbar-busting chair. “I wanted to thank you for stopping by during the Tupton trial.”

  “Nicky asked me to do it, so I showed the colors. A little moral support for a friend.”

  Nicky. Friend. I measured his words and mannerisms.

  “I didn’t realize the two of you were close.”

  “Never were, but you knowhow it is in politics, strange bedfellows and all that. The reality is you can’t run for office without a sizable war chest. Do you know what thirty-second TV spots cost in Miami these days?”

  “Must be difficult,” I said, “with the thousand-dollar limit on campaign contributions.”

  “The law’s supposed to prevent undue influence, right, but what’s the effect of it? Only the wealthy or those with established political machines can run. Look, if a guy’s worth ten million dollars, he can spend two of it on his campaign, and it’s perfectly legal. But if I have two friends who want to give me a million each to run, I’m violating the law.”

  “Life’s unfair,” I agreed.

  “Everybody knows the campaign laws are bullshit. There hasn’t been a candidate the last twenty years who hasn’t taken unreported cash, services, whatever. It’s a fact of life.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to say it. I had wanted him to make it easier for me, and he had, but still, I couldn’t get the words out.

  “You all right, Jake?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “I don’t know. You look a little tired, run-down maybe. Been working too hard?”

  “Maybe. Doing a lot of work for Florio Enterprises,” I said.

  Hint, hint. C’mon, Abe, ask for the money.

  “That’s what I hear,” he said.

  “Yeah, a lot of work for Florio Enterprises,” I repeated.

  He leaned forward over his desk, and on cue, I leaned forward in my chair. I thought he was going to whisper something, but his voice was still the familiar rasp, loud and irritating. “How long have we known each other, Jake?”

  “Long time. I’d just sneaked through night law school, barely passed the Bar, and the P.D.’s Office gave me a job because they needed some heft on the touch football team. You were young, but already a hotshot.”

  “You remember the first case we had against each other?”

  “State v. Fonseca. What’d you charge him with, extortion or obstruction of justice?”

  “Both. You were highly creative. Of course, you had to be. Here’s your client facing trial in a fencing scam, and he mails a five-pound cow’s tongue to the informant.”

  “He was accused of mailing it.”

  Socolow’s laugh was a horse’s whinny. “Yeah, after we learned his brother-in-law owns a wholesale meat business…”

  “Which you got into evidence.”

  “…along with the fact that the tongue arrives at the informant’s house in an L.L. Bean carton that was originally addressed to your client.”

  “He’d ordered some waders for trout fishing,” I explained.

  “You remember your closing argument?”

  In a moment, it came back to me, and I raised my voice in lawyerly indignation. “‘No one is that stupid! Obviously, my client has been framed. An enemy may well have gone through his garbage, retrieved the incriminating carton, and sent the meat.’”

  “That was it,” Socolow said, “the last-ditch effort of a desperate lawyer.”

  “What else could I do? I was just trying to stir up some reasonable doubt.”

  “You must have done it, because Fonseca walked.”

  “I remember. He sent me a smoked turkey that Christmas.”

  Socolow nearly smiled. It didn’t seem to break his face. We shared a quiet moment of unspoken reminiscence. Finally, Socolow said, “We’re just dancing around it here, aren’t we, Jake?”

  “Like Fred and Ginger,” I agreed.

  “So, you have something for me, or not?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Outside the south window, two vultures soared high in the up-drafts, huge wings spread wide, then came to rest on the little balcony that surrounded the top floor. The birds seemed to like Socolow’s office. Maybe it was the view. Maybe it was the company.

  “I’m waiting, Jake.”

  “Like having sex the first time, I know what goes where, I’m just not sure about the preliminaries.”

&
nbsp; Socolow leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. “Let me help you out. You don’t have to kiss me first.”

  “Okay, Abe. I’ve got something for you. Something from Nicky Florio, but I guess you know that.”

  “Prom Nicky? Why did I think it was from you, personally?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “And this something, I take it, is in the canvas bag at your feet, the one which conspicuously says in large print that it’s the property of the Miami Dolphins.”

  “That’s it.”

  “And whatever is in this bag, Jake, is it a gift?”

  “A gift?”

  “Yes, what is the purpose of your delivering this rather dilapidated old bag and its contents?”

  “To help you in the campaign, of course. To put your face on billboards and buy TV spots where you promise to execute murderers within thirty days of trial, or even before trial, if opinion polls favor it.”

  “Ah yes.” Abe nodded, contentedly. “Are there any strings attached?”

  “I didn’t think we would get into that.”

  Socolow rapped his fingers on his metallic desk, rat-a-tat-tat. Why did it sound like the drum roll of a funeral dirge? Again, he looked out the windows, then back to me. He was watching a lone black bird, its wings swept back, as it circled the courthouse. “A Cuban fortune-teller once told me that the vultures are the souls of lawyers doing endless penance.”

  “Doubt it. Lawyers never repent.”

  He turned back to me. “You and I share the same cynicism, Jake.”

  There was a thought behind those dark eyes, but what was it? “The birds have their own predators. When threatened, do you know what a vulture does?”

  “Gets a lawyer bird to write a nasty letter,” I guessed.

  “Vomits on its enemy and spoils its appetite.”

  “Same thing,” I said.

  Socolow studied me a moment before speaking. A wind gust rattled the window on the north side. “To accept this token of your client’s friendship, I must know if a quid pro quo is expected.”