Bum Rap

by Paul Levine

  A: I am afraid. Will you give me agent to come along? Maybe someone who speaks Russian, and we will say he is my cousin.

  Q: Spanish speaking, I’ve got. But not Russian. And it’s really not a good idea to take anyone along. It will raise Gorev’s suspicions.

  A: I am not sure I can do this. I am not a professional actress.

  Q: But Ms. Delova, that’s exactly what you are.

  A: I do not understand.

  Q: How much money do you make at Club Anastasia in one night?

  A: Twenty percent of customer’s tab. On some nights, I make two or three thousand dollars.

  Q: See what I mean?

  A: But those were stupid Americans. Salesmen. Dentists. Ordinary men with credit cards.

  Q: So?

  A: Nicolai Gorev is a killer.

  -6-

  Interred with Their Bones

  If there is a more dispiriting place in Miami than the county jail, I haven’t found it . . . and I’ve spent a lot of time at the morgue. Approaching the jail, you can hear the anguished shouts of inmates on the upper floors, yelling through the barred windows at their wives, girlfriends, and homies below. Inside, you’ve got that institutional smell, as if a harsh cleanser has been laced with urine. Buzzers blare and lights flash. Steel crashes against steel as doors bang shut with the finality of a coffin closing.

  Sitting in the lawyer visitation room at the county jail, I said hello to Victoria Lord and nodded at Steve Solomon. I pulled a legal pad from my briefcase, wrote “State vs. Solomon” on the first page, and gave my new customer a stern look. “First rule. You have to tell me the truth.”

  “Jesus, Lassiter. I’m a professional. You don’t have to tell me that.”

  “So we’re agreed. The straight story.”

  “Hell, yes. Like I tell my clients, ‘Lie to your spouse, your priest, and the IRS, but always tell your lawyer the truth.’ ”

  “Lie to your spouse?” Victoria gave him a pained look.

  “Just an expression, Vic.”

  “Second rule,” I said. “Tell me everything. Even stuff that doesn’t make you look good. Clients sometimes tell little lies they think don’t hurt the case, because they’re embarrassed about something. It always comes back to haunt them.”

  “We’re on the same page, Lassiter. A client who lies to his lawyer is like a husband who cheats on his wife. It seldom happens once.”

  “Why all this talk about cheating on spouses?” Victoria asked.

  Solomon waved off the question with the two-handed football official’s signal: incomplete pass.

  “C’mon, Lassiter. How about I just tell you what happened?” Solomon spoke quickly, keeping his eyes on me. He seemed more willing to talk about murder than infidelity.

  “Third rule,” I said, ignoring his request. “In trial, don’t lean over and whisper in my ear.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “You’ll distract me. Plus I won’t be able to hear the testimony.”

  Solomon let out a long, exasperated breath. “You’ve got two ears.”

  “I had multiple concussions playing ball.”

  “Maybe you played too long without a helmet.”

  “I’ve got tinnitus and some hearing loss.”

  Solomon turned to Victoria. “You brought me a deaf lawyer?”

  “Plus I’m bone tired of clients who try to tell me what to do.”

  “A deaf, punch-drunk, burnout lawyer.”

  “When you want me to ask a question on cross, or you need a recess to take a piss, you’ll write a note on a legal pad in legible block letters.”

  “What is this? Fifth grade?”

  “I’ll read your note and decide what to do.”

  Solomon reached across the table, grabbed my legal pad and pen, and scribbled something. Then he shoved the pad back at me: SCREW YOU, LASSITER!

  “I think you’ve got the hang of it,” I said.

  “Now, are we done with your rules?”

  “We’re not done, but if you want to talk, I’m here to listen.”

  “Great. I’ll speak loudly so you can hear and slowly so you can understand. First, what’s the chance you can get me out on bail?”

  “State Attorney is seeking an indictment for first-degree murder. He usually gets what he wants, so the answer is none.”

  “I’m sorry, Steve,” Victoria said.

  “It’s okay, hon. Been here for contempt. Lots of times, in fact.” He turned to me, smiling. “Does that shock you, Lassiter?”

  “Not that you’ve been held in contempt. Only that you consider it a merit badge.”

  “A lawyer who’s afraid of jail is like a surgeon who’s afraid of blood.”

  “Glad you’re comfortable here. If we lose, life at Raiford won’t seem so bad.”

  Solomon looked as if he wanted to do to me what the state said he did to the Russian. “Lassiter, you have a remarkable ability not to inspire confidence in a client.”

  “Why don’t you tell me your story and see if you can inspire my belief in your innocence?” I said.

  “Before I do, promise you won’t get on that white horse of yours and start making moral judgments.”

  “I’m a lawyer. I make legal judgments.”

  “Good. Because you’re no more a pillar of the Bar than I am. I remember when you were charged with killing your banker.”

  Yet more proof, I thought, that our past clings to us like mud on rusty cleats. Pamela Baylins was my banker and my lover. Client funds went missing from my trust accounts. She accused me; I accused her. She ended up dead, and I was indicted.

  “Bum rap,” I said.

  “So’s this!” Solomon chewed his lower lip, then turned to Victoria, his dark eyes lighting up. “I get it now. You hired Lassiter because he’s been wrongfully charged, and you think he can relate to me in some band-of-brothers, soldiers-in-the-foxhole way.”

  “I think his unique experiences might be useful,” Victoria said evenly. “I think you two have more in common than either of you may realize.”

  “Doubt it,” I said.

  “Agree with that,” Solomon said.

  “You both piss people off, just in different ways.”

  I shrugged. So did Solomon.

  “If you were criminals—”

  “Which I’m not,” we both sang in unison.

  “Steve would be a smooth-talking con man and Jake would be a strong-arm robber.”

  “What?” I protested. “I’m not smooth talking?”

  “You were both athletes in your younger days,” Victoria said. “Famous locally in odd sorts of ways.”

  Solomon showed a crooked little grin. “You gotta be talking about Wrong Way Lassiter. Scored a touchdown for the other team.”

  “Scored a safety,” I corrected him.

  “It’s the only reason anyone even remembers you played for the Dolphins.”

  “Shakespeare said only our bad deeds live after us,” Victoria, the smart one, said. “The good is oft interred with their bones.”

  “Wrong Way Lassiter,” Solomon repeated, pouring dirt on my bones.

  Life is unfair. In my last season before being cut, I made a hard-as-hell tackle on a kickoff against the Jets. So hard my helmet cracked down the middle and the ball came loose. Somehow, I scooped up the fumble. So far so good, but I’d suffered a concussion on the tackle and was already dizzy. I got turned around and ran to the wrong end zone. Where roughly eleven New York Jets happily landed on me. Two points for the Jets, Dolphins lose by one, and my name lives in infamy.

  I had so far resisted, but now I gave in. “Glad you enjoy that old story so much . . . Last Out Solomon.”

  “I knew you’d bring that up!” he shot back.

  “I used to take my nephew Kip to the UM games on Sunday afternoons. It was years after your time on campus, but everyone still talked about that day in Omaha.”

  “Screw that. I was a damn good college baseball player. Full scholarship.”

&
nbsp; “Solomon, you couldn’t hit your weight and you were damn skinny. In the field—shortstop, as I recall—you were only average.”

  “Yeah? Keep going.”

  “You could run like hell. Amazing speed.”

  “State champion sprinter out of Beach High, thank you very much.”

  “At UM, I remember you scored from first on a single against Florida State.”

  “Did it a couple times. Stole a helluva lot of bases in four years.”

  “And still haven’t returned them, I bet.”

  “So, go ahead, Lassiter. You’re dying to talk about the championship game against Texas.” Solomon closed his eyes and his jaw muscles clenched, a man awaiting the firing squad.

  “Not much to say. Bottom of the ninth, Texas up by a run. You draw a walk, steal second and third.”

  “Go on—you’re loving this.”

  “I admire what you did next.”

  “Bullshit.” Solomon eyed me suspiciously.

  “I mean it.”

  Victoria broke in. “What is it you admire, Jake?”

  “Your partner’s courage. His absolute confidence in himself. I admire what he tried to do, even if it didn’t work out.”

  “I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” Solomon said.

  “You had the pitcher rattled after those stolen bases. So you took that big lead. I figure you were angling for a wild pitch so you could score. Or hoping the pitcher would try to pick you off, and he’d throw the ball into the dugout.”

  Solomon’s voice was barely a whisper. “He caught me leaning the wrong way and picked me off. Game over.”

  “You were leaning the wrong way because the pitcher never stepped toward third. His motion was toward home plate, but he threw to the third baseman. It was a balk that wasn’t called. You were robbed.”

  Solomon beamed at me. For a moment, I could see the charm that had knocked Victoria off her feet.

  “Right on the money, Lassiter. I don’t like to whine about the balk that wasn’t called because it sounds like I’m making excuses.”

  “I admire that, too.”

  “No matter what I say, no matter the truth, I’ll still be Last Out Solomon.”

  “There’s a lesson in this,” I said.

  “That you can’t trust umpires?”

  “Actually, that’s not far off. The ump was too chickenshit to call the balk in a championship game. Just like some judges are afraid to take a case from the jury and grant a judgment of acquittal, no matter how pathetic the state’s evidence.”

  “I get you, Lassiter. Society’s rules don’t always work. They’re limited by human frailty.”

  “Exactly. Take the justice system. Lousy judges. Lazy lawyers. Sleeping jurors. Sometimes the innocent go to jail and the guilty go free.”

  “I’m with you on this, Lassiter.” He sounded positively delighted. “Your job is to do everything you can to win, even if you have to break some dishes . . . or some ethical rules.”

  “Only the small ones,” I said. “I won’t bribe a cop or lie to a judge, and I don’t use perjured testimony.”

  “You won’t need to, Counselor.”

  “Okay, then. Tell me what happened that morning at Club Anastasia.”

  For the next several minutes, Solomon described how a Russian Bar girl named Nadia Delova came to his office, asking for help in getting back pay and her passport from Nicolai Gorev. Victoria kept nodding, an indication she’d already heard the story, and nothing jumped out at her that contradicted his earlier version. Then Solomon got to the juicy part.

  -7-

  Club Anastasia

  Nadia knocks on the door in the corridor behind the bar and says something in Russian Solomon does not understand. There is movement from inside, the sound of a bolt sliding, and the door opens.

  Nicolai Gorev lets them into his office, then rebolts the door. “So, gerla, who is this?”

  Solomon extends a hand, which Gorev doesn’t take. “Steve Solomon. I’m a lawyer.”

  Gorev scowls. He is a heavyset man in a black suit with a bloodred silk shirt open at the neck. Black curly hair on his chest, a shaved head. Diamond rings on each pinky, a diamond-encrusted watch, and two diamond earrings. Diamonds seem to be the order of the day.

  “We don’t need no stinking lawyer.” Gorev plops into a cushy chair behind a cluttered desk. Red velvet drapes cover the rear wall, except for an open space that holds a kitschy black velvet painting of Lenin’s tomb. Solomon and Nadia take seats in front of the desk.

  “Nice artwork,” Solomon says, gesturing toward the velvet painting.

  “Is joke, idiot!” Pronouncing it ee-dee-oat! “I hate Lenin. And Stalin. Putin is okay. Knows how to make a buck.”

  “Nicolai’s personal heroes are both Americans,” Nadia said.

  Gorev nodded. “Donald Trump and Bernie Madoff. True capitalists!”

  A speaker plays a distinctive jazz tune. It only takes a few seconds of the sax for Solomon to recognize Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five.” Somehow, the song seems out of place here.

  “Solomon is very big man in Miami,” Nadia says. “On the television.”

  “Who gives a dump? Why are you here, gerla?”

  “I want my passport and my back pay.”

  “Why? You are not going back to Russia.”

  “I am leaving club. Getting married.”

  Gorev’s laugh sounds like a bulldog sneezing. He even slobbers a little. “Who is the lucky son of bitch?”

  “Not your business.”

  Wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his suit coat, Gorev turns to Solomon. “You, lawyer. Are you marrying my best B-girl?”

  “No. I have a girlfriend.”

  “So? Maybe you keep girlfriend as mistress.” Gorev laughs again, this time without the moisture.

  “You do not know the man I am marrying,” Nadia says.

  “Of course not because there is no such man. You just want to quit.”

  As he listens to them argue, Solomon nods in tune to the drum solo.

  “You know this music?” Gorev asks.

  “Everyone knows ‘Take Five.’ ”

  “And the five-four meter? Do you know where Brubeck learned it?”

  Solomon shakes his head.

  “From street musicians in Turkey. Americans are very smart that way. You call it American jazz, but you steal from your black slaves and from Eurasians and everyone you can.”

  Solomon shrugs. “I just like the music.”

  “But this is why I love America. World’s greatest thieves!” He turns to Nadia. “Are you going to work for that bastard Bebchuk in Brooklyn?”

  “I am not going to work. My husband will support me.”

  “Such bullshit.”

  Just as the repetitious two-chord piano vamp beats into Solomon’s brain, he puts on his lawyer’s voice and says, “Mr. Gorev, you are wrongfully holding my client’s passport. We could get a writ of replevin to force you to return it. Then there is the matter of withheld wages.”

  “I wipe my ass with your writ.” He turns back to Nadia. “Tell me, you little shlyukha, what is going on?”

  “I’m not a whore, you svoloch bastard!”

  “Tell that to the police in Riga. You just weren’t very good at it.”

  “I leave because I will not be part of your wire fraud and money laundering anymore. Or the racketeering.”

  Gorev freezes. “Where did you learn these words?”

  “Nowhere.” Panic crosses her face.

  “You, lawyer! Did you teach this stupid girl those words?”

  “If I did, I wouldn’t tell you. And don’t talk to her like that.”

  “Or what? You will sue me.” Gorev opens a desk drawer and comes out with a Beretta semiautomatic. Aiming at Nadia, he says, “Take off your dress.”

  “I have taken off my clothes for you for the last time.”

  “I am not going to screw you. I am looking for wire.”

  “I would never—”
r />   “Are you working for the government or for the jeweler?”

  “I work for you only.”

  Gorev swings the Beretta toward Solomon. “What about you, lawyer? Are you wearing a wire?”

  “I never work for the government. And I have no idea who the jeweler is.”

  “Nadia, my little Nadia. Why make me do this?” Gorev sounds truly sad, as if he has to put down a beloved old dog.

  “I will go. Forget everything.”

  She starts to stand, but Gorev shouts, “Nyet! Sit!”

  She sinks back into the chair.

  “Do you know my brother Alex used to fly helicopters in the army?” Gorev says.

  “Of course. It is all Alex talks about. That and the hockey.”

  “Alex loved dropping captured Chechens out of the helicopter and watching them hit. Splat! He was very happy when I asked him to help me with a girl who betrayed me in Russia. He took her up in a helicopter and dropped her into a giant pit. Six hundred meters deep. Nadia, you know the place. The jeweler knows the place. But Alex was so disappointed. The fall was so far and the pit so deep, he could not see her hit the ground.”

  “Just so we’re clear,” Solomon says. “You have committed a variety of felonies under Florida law. Reckless display of a firearm. Assault. Terroristic threats.”

  Gorev makes a snorting sound and dismisses Solomon with a wave of the gun. “Gerla, you have been talking to government.”

  “No. I swear.”

  “Did they ask you about Aeroflot 100?”

  “They ask nothing. I say nothing. I know nothing.”

  “If either of you is wearing a wire, I will kill you both,” Gorev says matter-of-factly. He points the gun at Solomon. “I have a feeling it is you. Lawyer, your clothes.”

  “I have nothing to hide.”

  Solomon starts unbuttoning his shirt. He senses movement in Nadia’s chair. Forces himself not to look in her direction. Keeps a steady gaze on Gorev, but still, from the corner of his eye, he sees:

  Nadia reaching into her purse.

  Pulling out a handgun!

  Gorev sees or senses something. He swings the gun back toward Nadia.

  Half a second late.

  The gunshot hits him squarely in the forehead, snapping his head back, and then forward again. He topples face-first onto his desk, blood oozing from his ears and over those diamond earrings. Steve is frozen in his chair.