State vs Lassiter

by Paul Levine

  “Easiest thing for me was to cut Pam in. Hell, I was rolling in cash.”

  He could be telling the truth, I thought. Or this could be his cover-his-ass story for killing Pam to shut her up.

  “My main concern wasn’t Pam,” Novak said. “It was keeping Carlos Castillo happy.”

  “He’s not gonna be happy with me living the good life in Rio.”

  “Like I said, he’d prefer you dead. But I told him that you have this weird sense of honor. If you took the money, you’d honor the deal. No testimony. No cooperation with the state or feds.”

  I thought a moment about Rio. I’d been to Carnaval once. I seemed to remember dancing to a lot of samba music, drinking way too many caipirinhas, and a woman named Gabriela or maybe it was Carolina, or it could have been both. I had the distinct feeling that life on the lam would not be an endless Carnaval. I also thought the plan for delivering me to Brazil might include tossing me out of the plane 30,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. Finally, I thought of my nephew Kip and my Granny. So in the end, there was only one possible decision.

  “Well, you better shoot me, Novak, because I’m not jumping bail and I’m not going to Rio.”

  I heard him sigh. Just as he believed Pam wouldn’t turn him in, I believed he wouldn’t shoot me, at least not in the Justice Building parking lot. When I felt the pressure from the gun barrel drop away, I spun an elbow behind me and caught him flush on the bridge of the nose. He howled, dropped the gun, and both hands went to his face.

  I leapt out of the car, opened the back door, and dragged Novak out. He was bleeding all over his blue shirt and my red velvet pillowed upholstery. Grabbing him by his shirt collars, I slammed him over the trunk of the car.

  “Did you kill her, you son-of-a-bitch?”

  “Nuh, nuh.” Blood leaked into his mouth.

  “Who did?”

  “I always thought it was Crowder. He couldn’t stand life without her.”

  “He’s got an alibi. What about Castillo?”

  He ran his shirt sleeve under his nose to wipe off the blood. “He was fucking her and making money off her. What’s his motive?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I said, “but every hard-on who slept with Pam seemed to have one reason or another to kill her.”

  28

  Me and My Big Mouth

  “…Anything you say or do may be used against you in a court of law.”

  “What happened when you awoke Mr. Lassiter on the beach?” Emilia Vazquez asked.

  “He threatened to break my leg,” the Beach Patrol hunk said.

  “Then what happened?”

  “I informed Mr. Lassiter that he was breaching a city ordinance that forbids overnight camping on the beach.”

  “His reaction?”

  “He was uncooperative. Claimed he wasn’t camping because he wasn’t toasting marshmallows.”

  If you ask me, it was funnier the way I said it. Never let a cop recite your best lines. Lenny Bruce knew this.

  “What happened next?”

  “I instructed Mr. Lassiter to get to his feet, and he told me to…quote…go pound sand…close quote. Then he laughed. He seemed to think that was some sort of joke.”

  “How would you describe Mr. Lassiter’s overall demeanor?”

  “Objection! Calls for a conclusion,” Willow sang out.

  “Sustained. Please re-rephrase Ms. Vazquez.”

  “What was Mr. Lassiter’s appearance?”

  “Disheveled. He was missing one shoe. The tide was coming in and he was getting wet. Shirt was unbuttoned. His eyes were bloodshot, and he stunk of alcohol and sweat.”

  We’d never claimed I’d just stepped out of the pages of GQ.

  “Was he wearing a belt?”

  “No. His pants were drooping, and he was missing a belt.”

  “You told us about the bloodshot eyes? Anything else about Mr. Lassiter’s face?”

  “There was a bloody scratch approximately three inches in length across his left cheek. It appeared fresh.”

  “What happened next, Officer?”

  “I told Mr. Lassiter he’d get run over by the half-track that would be clearing seaweed in a few minutes. Basically, I just wanted to help him.”

  “Move to strike what the witness wanted,” Willow shot back.

  “Sustained,” the judge said. “The jury shall disregard the witness’s last sentence.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Mr. Lassiter grabbed me by the ankle and pulled me to the ground. Then I Tasered him.”

  Ouch. I remember that.

  On cross examination, Mr. Beach Patrol denied kicking me in the ribs, a blatant lie, but the only one who could contradict it was the accused murderer without a belt and with a bloody scratch on his face.

  The next witness was Homicide Detective George Barrios, who had testified so many times he was as comfortable on the witness stand as in his Barcalounger at home watching the Miami Heat. Close to 60, bald, alert eyes that had seen it all, he would never lie. The way he put cases together, he didn’t have to.

  “Did you have a conversation with the defendant in the early morning of June 9 of this year?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Where did the conversation take place?”

  “In the Sorrento Penthouse of the Fontainebleau Hotel.”

  “What occasioned this conversation?”

  “The Beach Patrol brought Mr. Lassiter to the hotel from where he’d been passed out on the beach. The strangled body of the decedent Pamela Baylins lay on the living room floor of the suite.”

  “Was Mr. Lassiter under arrest or in custody?”

  “No, he was not. He could have left at any time.”

  In other words it was not necessary to Mirandize me. Not that it would have mattered. Not with my big mouth.

  “Please describe your conversation.”

  “I asked him to fill in gaps in the timeline we were establishing for the movements of Ms. Baylins and him in the last 24 hours. I told him we knew when they checked into the hotel, when they went to dinner and returned. We knew about the argument that began at the restaurant and continued back at the hotel. The argument seemed odd because, as I mentioned to him, we believed from a vaginal exam of the decedent that the couple had sex after checking into the hotel.”

  “What was the defendant’s reaction to your statement?”

  “Mr. Lassiter said, ‘This sex we had. Was it good for me?’”

  Two of the jurors gasped audibly. Like I said, never let a cop repeat your lousy jokes on the witness stand. They only get worse in the re-telling.

  “So Mr. Lassiter made this odd remark while his former lover was lying dead on the floor, strangled?”

  “He did.”

  Judging from their facial expressions, of the twelve jurors, at least eight seemed ready to string me up.

  “What happened next?”

  “I told Mr. Lassiter that the maître d’, the server, and the couple next to them at the restaurant all heard them arguing. As did the taxi driver on the way back to the hotel. I told him that the video camera at the hotel front door picked up the continuation of the argument and that a lip reader could make out Ms. Baylins saying, ‘Screw you, Jake,’ as they walked into the hotel.”

  “What was Mr. Lassiter’s reaction?”

  “He made another joke.”

  The jury was transfixed. Just what was this sick comic coming up with now?

  “Mr. Lassiter said, ‘If I killed every woman who told me the same thing, I’d be in the books with Jack the Ripper.’”

  This time, I counted 10 jurors ready to hit the button that would inject me with potassium chloride. And here was the chicken-shit state, only seeking life in prison without parole.

  Emilia spent the next several minutes ruling out a forcible rape/murder scenario. There were no signs of a struggle, no bruising, and no defensive wounds. Examination of intact sperm cells and the acid phosphatase test allowed the medical examiner’s
office to establish the time of sexual intercourse as 24 to 36 hours prior to death, further ruling out an intruder/rapist.

  Emilia spent the rest of her examination of Detective Barrios showing how damn brilliant he was, tying together all the pieces of evidence that pointed clearly and exclusively at Jacob Lassiter, attorney at law, killer, and wisecracker. I admitted Pam raked her fingernails across my cheek, leaving the bloody scratch. I admitted being drunk. I denied striking Pamela or harming her in any way. I claimed to have left the suite with Pamela very much alive, though I couldn’t place the time.

  “Did Mr. Lassiter seem evasive about when he left the hotel for his walk on the beach?”

  “Objection, leading,” Willow said.

  “Sustained.”

  “Did Mr. Lassiter’s vagueness about when he left the hotel mean anything to you, as an experienced homicide detective?”

  “Objection, calls for speculation.”

  “Overruled. You may answer, Detective.”

  “Mr. Lassiter being a lawyer and all, it just seemed to me he wasn’t going to say when he left the hotel until the medical examiner established time of death.”

  Ouch. Double ouch because it was true.

  “Did Mr. Lassiter say why he left the suite?”

  “He said he’d been drinking a lot and wanted to clear his head. Indicated it was Pamela’s idea.”

  True. I said it and I’d meant it. Too bad it wasn’t a great alibi. Who goes walking on the beach alone in the middle of the night, then falls asleep inches from the shoreline?

  Barrios did not break a sweat on Willow’s cross exam. Sure, he admitted, Mr. Lassiter said his poor attempts at humor were his way of dealing with grief. No one on the jury seemed to empathize with my method of mourning.

  “Isn’t it true that your entire case against Mr. Lassiter is circumstantial?”

  It’s a question a lot of defense lawyers ask. Television shows seem to have given circumstantial evidence a bad name. In truth, a strong circumstantial case, backed by forensics, is often stronger than eyewitness testimony, which can so often be shaken in cross examination.

  “That’s true, Ms. Marsh,” Barrios said, confidently. “But in this case, the circumstances are strong, corroborated, and without contradiction. It’s as strong a circumstantial case as I’ve seen in 30 years on the job”

  29

  The Non-Denial Denial

  Life is so damn unfair.

  Eddie Novak and Carlos Castillo were crooks and, to a lesser degree, so was Mitch Crowder.

  Pam didn’t catch me stealing from the trust account; I caught her. Pam was cheating on me, not the other way around, and if I had caught her, I wouldn’t have killed her. I would have broken up with her.

  But here I was, in the dock for murder.

  The horror du jour was Barry Samchick, a guy who wanted to help me but was scared to death of Carlos Castillo. When Samchick walked into the courtroom, he avoided making eye contact with me. Always a bad sign. His hearing had improved but his mood hadn’t. Affixed with hearing aids, he answered Emilia Vazquez’s questions a little louder than necessary.

  Yes, he was a C.P.A. who had done my books for the past eleven years. Both my firm’s operating accounts and trust accounts were under his purview. He explained that operating accounts were my money and trust accounts were funds being held for clients. Those sums could include settlements of cases not ready to be disbursed, deposits for costs, and the biggie: huge amounts flowing in and out due to the buying and selling of commercial and residential real estate.

  No, Samchick could not make transfers from any of the accounts. All checks had to be signed by Jake Lassiter, and all electronic transfers could be made only by someone with the password, that someone again being solely the defendant. Yes, that’s the man sitting at the defense table in the dark suit with his shirt a little too small for his neck. Only Jake Lassiter had the password.

  “On Saturday June 8 of this year, did you have occasion to speak to the defendant?”

  “I called him on his cell phone in the evening.”

  “A business call?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Even though it was a Saturday night.”

  “It was important.”

  “Why was that, Mr. Samchick?”

  “I’d been working that day on Jake’s accounts and noticed discrepancies in the trust accounts. I called him around nine o’clock. He was at a restaurant with Ms. Baylins.”

  “What was the defendant’s reaction to your revelations?”

  “He professed to be shocked.”

  I didn’t like the way he said “professed.” As if I were acting.

  Whose side are you on, Barry?

  “Did you also write the defendant an email that night?”

  “Yes. An hour or so later, after I had a chance to review the records in more detail, I sent him an email delineating which accounts had unexplained transfers.”

  “Was money missing?”

  “Technically, there were no shortfalls. Money was transferred out of the trust accounts to banks in the Caymans where it was deposited into literally dozens of Novak Global accounts. The funds were then transferred to other banks. Bermuda. Isle of Man. Singapore. Colombia. Eventually, the original amounts taken from the Lassiter trust accounts flowed back to them, most often from third-party banks.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “Very difficult to trace.”

  “What did this lead you to conclude?”

  “The accounts were being skimmed, the proceeds invested and laundered, the profits retained, and the principal returned.”

  “And how did you discover this?”

  “On one occasion, too much money was returned to a client’s account, most likely by accident. When I looked behind the transaction, I found hundreds of others, in and out of the accounts, though in perfect balance.”

  So far, no lies. I was thankful for that.

  “Did you receive a reply from the defendant to your email?”

  “Not directly. The next morning, Mr. Lassiter called me from his car, saying he had to see me.”

  “What can you recall about that phone conversation?”

  “Oh, I recall it pretty much verbatim.”

  And he did. Telling Emilia, the jury, the judge, and the whole damn world exactly what we said to each other as I was barreling down I-95 the morning Pam was killed:

  “I don’t think you’re a thief, Jake.”

  “Thanks, Barry.”

  “But murder? That I can see you doing.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You have a temper.”

  “The hell I do!”

  Samchick was going out of his way to bury me. Whatever happened to the safe, reliable help-your-buddy phrase: “I don’t remember?” Best I could figure, Samchick was scared shitless of offending one Carlos Castillo, whose name he was loathe to mention. Those trust account funds that had played international traveler – all Castillo’s money – not that you would know it from Samchick’s testimony.

  “When is the next time you saw the defendant?” Emilia Vazquez asked.

  “Later that day we met and discussed the accounts.”

  “Did Mr. Lassiter give you an explanation for the discrepancies?”

  “Actually, he asked how this could have happened. I told him only he could have done it because these were all electronic transfers accomplished with a password only he was privy to.”

  No, dammit, Barry. You never told me that.

  As I recall, Samchick had agreed with me that Pamela had somehow gotten my password. But today, my bean counter had the heart of a chicken.

  “What was the defendant’s reaction to your statement?”

  “Anger. He said Pamela must have done it, and that they quarreled violently about it. She accused him of skimming the accounts and he accused her of the same.”

  “Quarreled violently,” Emilia repeated. “Did the defendant use that word?”

&
nbsp; “He showed me a fresh scratch on his face and said Pamela had basically attacked him in a rage.”

  Righteous indignation, the jury doubtless thought.

  “Did he deny killing her?”

  “Well, that’s the funny thing.”

  Oh shit, Barry, now what?

  “Funny?” Emilia asked, eyebrows raised.

  “I asked him if he killed her and he said, ‘You know better than to ask a damn fool question like that.’”

  Several jurors shook their heads. In anger? Disbelief? Who knows what?

  Samchick wasn’t lying. That’s exactly what I had said. I had meant it as a denial, sort of saying – Are you kidding?” – but out of context, it came off as slippery, as a way of saying You don’t want to know the answer. A non-denial denial.

  “Your witness,” Emilia said to Willow with a wicked smile.

  I heard Willow sigh before she said to the judge, “May we have one moment, Your Honor?”

  “Of course.”

  Willow leaned in close and whispered. “I’m going to let him go.”

  “What? The bastard just buried me. He’s been threatened by Castillo. He knows in his heart that Pam got the password somehow.”

  “And you think he’ll admit that when I have no way to rebut. I can call him as an adverse witness on our side of the case, after we’ve had time to put some things together.”

  “No way!” I was a little too loud, and the jurors strained to hear my privileged, sacrosanct, and pissed-off conversation. “We can’t let the jury go home with this as the last thing they hear today.”

  “Jake, try being a client and not the lawyer, okay? I’m not ready to cross him.”

  “You should be!”

  Willow gave me a withering look and got to her feet. “Your Honor at this time, we have no questions, subject to our right to call Mr. Samchick–”

  “Now!” I planted both hands on the defense table and rose to my feet. “We’ll cross Mr. Samchick now, and by ‘we,’ I mean me. I’ll be handling the cross, Your Honor.”