Bum Rap

by Paul Levine

  Victoria realized she was hungry on the stairs leading to Lassiter’s second-floor office. Maybe that’s because she was inhaling the aroma of a piquant picadillo with garlic, sugar, and raisins coming from the Cuban restaurant on the first floor.

  They settled into chairs on opposite sides of an old oak table in the mini–conference room. Lassiter said, “Let’s sum it up. What we know and what we don’t.”

  “There’s a confrontation in Gorev’s office. Nadia demands her passport and back pay, but she uses some language about federal crimes that makes Gorev suspicious. He threatens her, making reference to a pit six hundred meters deep that we now know is the Mirny diamond mine in Siberia. He also mentions the jeweler, who we now know is Benny Cohen and is Gorev’s boss. Gorev accuses Nadia of telling the government about Aeroflot 100, which presumably is the flight she took to New York.”

  She noticed Lassiter nodding his approval at her summary. They were working well together.

  Lassiter took over from there. “Solomon tells the cops at the scene that Gorev pulled a gun and ordered them to strip to see if either one was wearing a wire. While Gorev is watching Solomon, Nadia slips Benny’s Glock out of her purse and fires the shot that kills Gorev. Then she robs the safe, inexplicably takes Gorev’s gun, and leaves by a back door, locking Solomon inside. Oh, she also tosses the murder weapon to Solomon, who panics and fires two more shots into the door when Gorev’s thugs try to break in. He’s got the murder weapon when the cops arrive.” Lassiter raised his eyebrows. “It is, if I may say so, one of the shittiest stories a client has ever told me.”

  “Then, Steve told us to stop looking for Nadia,” Victoria said. “I couldn’t figure out why, but you did.”

  “Because I don’t look at Solomon through the gauzy, soft focus of love.”

  “You sensed Steve was admitting he lied to the cops. Nadia didn’t shoot Gorev. Steve did. At that time, we were still hoping Steve fired in self-defense because we were relying on his story about Gorev having a gun. Since then, Nadia told me on the phone that Gorev was unarmed. No Stand Your Ground. No self-defense.”

  “Leaving us where, Vic?”

  “Well, you think we’re stuck with the crazy story Steve told the cops.”

  “Any change now, he’d be torn to shreds on cross based on his prior statements.”

  From somewhere outside, a police siren wailed. From downstairs, the aroma of marinated meats and spicy sauces grew stronger. “I still think Steve should tell us the whole truth now,” Victoria said. “Even if it contradicts his first story, and even if it’s painful to me.”

  “Then tell which story at trial? Like I said back in the jail, I don’t have many rules. But I won’t introduce testimony I know to be false. If Solomon tells us he’s the shooter, I can’t let him take the stand to say Nadia pulled the trigger.”

  “I swear, Jake, the way you run roughshod over everything, I can’t believe you’re such a wuss on this.”

  “Even a whore’s got rules. I do a lot of things, but I won’t lick ass.”

  “God, you’re disgusting.”

  “It’s a slippery slope, Victoria. Once you start using perjurious testimony, what’s next? Fabricating phony documents? Destroying evidence?”

  “I can’t believe I’m being lectured on ethics by you.”

  “And I can’t believe you’re fighting me on this, Vic. All I can think is that you’re too close to the case. Your personal stake overwhelms your usual good sense.”

  “You had no problem when I lied to the cops about Elena’s cell phone.”

  “Gray area. But this isn’t.”

  “These lines you draw. So damn arbitrary.”

  “But they’re my lines.”

  Victoria was now, by equal measures, hungry and frustrated. So much for working well together. But then again, she and Steve always squabbled over strategy and ethics. Maybe this give-and-take would lead to the same kind of synergy she had with Steve in court.

  Lassiter said, “There’s also the practical problem that the state has Solomon’s story at the scene on tape, which makes it ten times more powerful. He changes it now—even if the new story is true, which it isn’t—we’re dead when Pincher plays the tape and impeaches him with his own words.”

  “So in Lassiter’s world, it’s ethical to win with perjured testimony as long as your client hasn’t told you it’s perjurious.”

  “Of such microscopic distinctions our law is made. Now, keep going. What else do we know?”

  “The federal government will give away the store to convict Benny Cohen of something. If Steve lies to make a murder conspiracy case, he’s looking at less than seven years in prison. And Mr. Ethics—that’s you—doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.”

  “Technically, Solomon hasn’t told me the murder-for-hire story is false.”

  She sighed in exasperation. “We know Benny Cohen gave Nadia the murder weapon, but because we can’t believe a word he says, we don’t know if he told her to kill Gorev. We also don’t know if he wants to throw her a wedding shower or kill her.”

  “What else?” Lassiter said.

  “In my one phone conversation with Nadia, she said, and I’m quoting here, ‘I know what your man told the police. It did not happen that way.’ But she never told me precisely what did happen. She admitted she brought the gun but implied that Steve fired it, which is pretty damn confusing. How did the gun get from her purse to Steve’s hands?”

  “So it all comes back to Nadia,” Lassiter said. “The missing brick in our wall.”

  They were both quiet a moment. Then Victoria said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “Let’s hear it, kiddo.”

  Before she could answer, there was a knock at the door. A waitress from Havana Banana downstairs.

  “Lourdes!” Lassiter greeted her. “Please thank Jorge for his kindness.”

  She smiled and served them a steaming platter of lechoncita, shredded roast pork with onions and a mojo sauce. And another platter of chicken tarimango, grilled chicken breasts with mango and a tamarind sauce. The sides were black beans and rice. A flan and a tres leches cake for dessert. Oh, and for starters, four—not two—icy mojitos with white rum and fresh mint leaves.

  Lassiter tipped Lourdes, who retreated down the stairs, and they sipped at the mojitos.

  “You were saying . . .” Lassiter said.

  “You’ve changed your mind. Now you want Nadia.”

  “Just to talk to her. Don’t ask her to come to Miami. First, because it’s too dangerous for her. And second, if Pincher drags her to court and she says what he wants, it’s the nail in the coffin for our case.”

  “When we spoke, she told me not to call her again and hung up on me.”

  “I’m not talking about a phone call. We need a face-to-face with Nadia, and by ‘we,’ I mean you.”

  “You mean just knock on her door and say hello?”

  They started eating. Sharing plates. Just as she did with Steve, Victoria thought. Lassiter’s pork was spicy, her chicken sweet. It was a nice combination. The first mojito had gone down quickly.

  “Can you find her, Vic?”

  “I don’t know. Do you have the discovery I wanted from Anastasia?”

  “Just came in yesterday.” Lassiter pointed to a pile of cardboard boxes in the corner of the little conference room. “Every credit card receipt, charge-back, letters from angry customers, notices from the Better Business Bureau, the zoning department, Noise Abatement Office, and electricity and water bills for the last year.”

  “Have you gone through it?” she asked.

  “Hell, no. You’re second chair. That’s your job.”

  Victoria wondered if that was the reason, or was it because she was a woman and the task was so damn clerical in nature. “Nadia told me she’s staying with her boyfriend. She wouldn’t say where but indicated it was far from Miami. She said he came to a food products convention on the Beach about three months ago. He spent fifty-thr
ee hundred dollars in one night. Nadia got access to the credit card terminal at the club and reversed the charge. If all the records are there, I can find the charge and the credit, and we’ll have the boyfriend’s name, if nothing else.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “And if we find Nadia, just how do I get her to talk to me?”

  “What does she want?”

  Victoria thought about it a moment. It was a complex question but perhaps with a simple answer. “To live in peace and harmony with the man she loves.”

  “What do you want?”

  Victoria smiled just a bit. “The same. With Steve.”

  “What’s keeping Nadia from her goal?”

  “Fear. The feds want to subpoena her. Alex Gorev wants to kill her. Benny . . . well, we don’t know what Benny wants.”

  “What’s keeping you and Solomon apart?”

  “The so-called justice system, as you like to put it.”

  “So you and Nadia have a lot in common. And while you’re talking, figure out if there’s anything she can say that’s helpful to us or can lead us to something helpful. Because if not, Solomon is gonna take that plea. He’ll set up Benny Cohen on a phony murder charge and take his own felony conviction. He’ll be disbarred, and even though he’ll serve less than seven years, he’ll come out a different man. It’ll be like he’s been in a coma all those years and never fully recovered. Neither his life nor yours will ever be the same.”

  Lassiter had drained his first mojito and took a long pull on the second one. “And goddamn it, Victoria, I will do everything in my power to keep that from happening. If there’s any way to win this case, we’re gonna do it. Together. And you two can have that peaceful life.”

  Victoria’s eyes welled with tears. Despite their bickering, she felt a growing bond with Lassiter. A swirl of emotions she would not express because he would misinterpret them. She was deeply in love with Steve. At the same time, she felt a stirring warmth for Lassiter, a good man, sturdy as an oak. If not for her love for Steve, this was a man she could . . .

  No, I will not go there.

  She reached across the desk and took Lassiter’s hand, giving it a long, fond squeeze.

  He took a fork to the tres leches cake, smiled, and said, “Code Yellow, kiddo.”

  -41-

  Pretzel Man

  I was impressed with how quickly Victoria worked.

  One hour and twenty minutes to find the charge and reversal slips that revealed the man’s name.

  Gerald Hostetler.

  One day in April, he charged $5,328 on his MasterCard at Club Anastasia. Forty-two hours later, someone with the initials “N. D.” reversed the charge from the club’s credit card terminal. It had to be him. And her.

  Victoria clicked onto Google for the rest. A lightning-fast search revealed that during the same week in April, a snack foods convention took place at the Eden Roc. One of the speakers, Gerald Hostetler, addressed the crowd on “Branding Unique Snacks in the Twenty-First Century.” The convention website listed Hostetler as president of Hostetler Pretzels and Chips. There was a headshot of a man about thirty-five years old in a white apron, holding a tray of beer pretzels. He had blond hair that was just starting to retreat, giving him a high forehead, and a smile that said he loved his work.

  The Hostetler Pretzels and Chips website listed the address of a plant in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Victoria found Gerald Hostetler’s home address on a pay site, along with the information that he’d never been charged with a crime, had never been married, and had graduated from East Stroudsburg University, where he’d lettered in track all four years. At the time, he held the school record in the ten thousand meters.

  That interested me. Distance runners are their own breed. Skinny. Self-sufficient. Patient. Able to endure and conquer pain. Often loners, which may explain Hostetler’s apparent lack of a wife or girlfriend when he met Nadia. I had no such excuse.

  Victoria found the website for the local newspaper, the Lancaster New Era. In the archives was a feature story on Hostetler and his business. Seems he employed three-dozen women to hand-roll each pretzel. Time-consuming and expensive, but that’s the way his great-great-grandfather, a German immigrant, made the pretzels in the late 1800s. Gerald Hostetler was a man of tradition and old values. I figured I might like the guy.

  Google Maps had a fine photo of Hostetler’s home, not far from the Susquehanna River. The house was built of stone and might have been a hundred years old or more. Maybe it was his great-great-grandfather’s. Family ties. I liked that, too. The house had a trimmed lawn and rose beds in the front yard. Lush pine trees towered like sentinels at the property line, and a single fir tree thirty feet tall stood near the brick path that led to the front door. I would bet a hundred bucks that Hostetler decorated the fir tree each Christmas. And another hundred bucks that he was as solid as that house.

  With the Internet, this was just so damn easy. About eleven minutes for everything, once we had his name. Just amazing. When I started practicing law—not long after the days of rotary phones and IBM Selectrics—it would take a PI a week with boots on the ground to get the information we had gathered.

  Victoria was scouring the American Airlines website. “There’s a nine fifty p.m. flight to Philadelphia,” she said. “I’ll stay in a hotel near the airport and drive to Lancaster in the morning.”

  “Assuming you find Nadia there, your meeting will require some delicacy,” I said.

  “Oh, my God. Instructions from the bull in the china shop about delicacy.”

  “All I’m saying. Nadia may not have told Pretzel Man anything. Benny the Jeweler. The Gorev shooting. The federal investigation. Peel her away from him before you get into anything substantive. And then approach everything very gingerly.”

  “Jake, do you remember why you sent me to talk to Elena, instead of your trying to do it?”

  “I think I said something about you being good at feminine things.”

  “That ‘empathy shit,’ you called it.”

  “Not as articulate as I would like, but you got the point.”

  “Just trust me, okay?”

  I drove Victoria to the Solomon-Lord house on Kumquat and waited twenty minutes while she packed a carry-on. Then we headed north on LeJeune toward the airport. In front of me was a Jeep with a sailboard on top and the red-and-white “diver down” decal pasted on the body, just above the license plate. In case we didn’t already get the point, there were two bumper stickers: “Divers Do it Deeper” and “Have You Gone Down Lately?”

  Actually, no.

  Still, that was a lot less offensive than the old bumper sticker from the Cocaine Cowboys days: “Honk if You’ve Never Seen an Uzi Fired through a Car Window.”

  No thanks.

  I looked in the rearview mirror and that’s when I saw the gray Range Rover two cars behind me. Damn.

  “I’m not letting you out in front of American,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m thinking Bahamas Air.”

  “That’s Concourse H. I’d have to walk all the way back to D.”

  “I want to throw off Manuel Dominguez. He’s following us.”

  She sneaked a peek in her wing mirror. “The Range Rover?”

  “Yeah. If he gets out and tries to follow you, I’ll intercept him and you’ll have plenty of time to lose him.”

  “Be careful, Jake. And be quick. Or they’ll tow away this old piece of junk.”

  I pulled the Eldo behind a limo at Concourse H. The Range Rover stopped three cars behind. For a reason I cannot explain, I leaned over and gave Victoria a peck on the cheek. A husband sending his wife off on a business trip, maybe.

  She touched my cheek with one hand and gave me a gentle pat. Then she leapt out of the car, grabbed her carry-on from the backseat, and hurried inside. In the rearview, I spotted Dominguez in army fatigue pants and camo Windbreaker scoot out the passenger door of the Range Rover.

  I turned off the engine
and swung out of the car. Dominguez was already through the sliding glass doors when the parking cop yelled at me, “Hey, fellow. No unattended vehicles. You’ll be towed.”

  “My wife forgot her driver’s license,” I shouted. “Back in a jiffy.”

  Yeah, I said “jiffy.” It seemed the word an old married guy would use.

  The cop didn’t say go and he didn’t say no. In a second, I was inside the terminal.

  I caught up with Dominguez at Concourse E. He was fifteen paces behind high-stepping Victoria when I grabbed him from behind by the hood of his camo Windbreaker.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “Whoa! The hell?”

  I yanked hard, spun him around, and pushed him into a store that sells coconut-covered chocolate patties and dried mango slices dipped in sugar. Except for four years at Penn State—or was it five?—I have lived in South Florida all my life and have never, ever seen a Miamian eat chocolate coconut patties. The airport stores also used to sell miniature orange trees that people would take home to die on their Manhattan balconies, but I haven’t seen those mutant plants in a while.

  “Jake! It’s you!” Dominguez gasped when he turned around to face me.

  “Whadaya doing, Manuel?”

  “Flying to Nassau. Hitting the casinos.”

  “You passed the Bahamas Air concourse. I’ll walk you back to the TSA line.”

  “Not necessary, pal.” He shot a look in the direction Victoria had walked, but from inside the store, neither of us could see her.

  “C’mon. I’d love to see what the metal detector finds.”

  “I’m not carrying. Jeez, Jake. I’m a convicted felon. I can’t get the permit.”

  I slammed my right forearm under his chin and pinned his neck against the wall. A gurgling sound came from his throat, and his face turned red. Over at the cash register, the cashier reached for her telephone. Not much time. I ran my left hand up and under his Windbreaker. Leather holster. Metal gun.

  “You want to talk to me, Manuel? Or should I call a cop? You’re carrying a concealed weapon. In an airport, no less. Not to mention you’re violating the probation I got you.”