by Paul Levine
He paused a moment then said with a note of regret: “I shall miss my trips there. I could spend a month just touring the Hermitage and never grow tired.”
“Then you decided to bring it all here,” Foley said.
“Yes, I think I did, without quite knowing it.” Yagamata stopped in front of a small painting propped against a metal rack. A woman in a red-and-blue robe stared with adoration at a naked baby in her arms. “Da Vinci’s Madontia with Child, one of his early works. Do you sense that the perspective is off, the child far too large?”
Foley grunted. He seemed to be taking inventory. Yagamata moved on, and we followed him through the cavernous room. On the floor, jewelry filled a huge, dark pot. Emerald bracelets, diamond pins, gold cuff links and chains, pearl buttons, ruby brooches jumbled together. “What is more valuable,” Yagamata asked himself, “all these trinkets or Tamburlaine’s bronze cauldron which holds them?”
Yagamata stooped to study the writing on a box. “Tauride Venus, Russia’s first classical statue. A gift from the Pope to Peter the Great. The Hermitage alone has twelve thousand sculptures and a million coins. Do you know I still get lost there? I never enter the buildings without a compass. Foley, even if we tried, none of us could live long enough to steal it all.”
Nearby were half a dozen other sculptures not yet boxed.
Yagamata ran his hand over the smooth white stone of one, a man and woman embracing. “Rodin’s Romeo and Juliet. Frankly, I prefer his Cupid and Psyche. Ah, there it is.”
He walked past the statues and picked up a solid gold dinner plate from a long table. The plate was on a stack with perhaps twenty others. Boxes of gleaming flatware sat under the table. “From the banquet hall at Petrodvorets, the White Dining Room. Gold dinnerware to serve four hundred.”
Stacked on a wooden platform was a variety of jewelry. Lockets of enamel and gold, a clock of different colored golds, a desk set of rock crystal. Small animals carved from agate, others shaped from nephrite and silver. Pendants and necklaces, rings, and pins, filling boxes three feet deep.
And then the eggs.
Inside a glass egg, a rider on a horse. Yagamata saw my expression. “Fabergé’s Alexander the Third Equestrian Egg,” he said. “Nice, but compare it to the Fifteenth Anniversary Egg made the next year to celebrate Nicholas’s accession. Here’s the Madonna-Lily Egg and the Winter Egg, which everyone thought was lost during the Revolution. Good Lord, Foley, have you ever seen such beauty?”
Foley was still measuring the room with his eyes. “Eight trailers should do it. Maybe nine. C’mon, let’s go. This ain’t a museum tour.”
***
The trucks were from a rental company, arranged for by Foley. I asked him why he didn’t use the U.S. Marshal’s Service, but he waved me off. The workers belonged to Yagamata. Some Russians, some Cubans, they were tight-lipped, dull-eyed, sullen-faced men who moved as if they were paid by the hour. There was little bantering, and the only bellyaching I heard was when Yagamata ordered one man to put out his cigarette.
The packing took most of the day and into the night. When it was done, the cartons filled eight trailers and part of a ninth. I stood there watching everything boarded and boxed, thinking about the nobility who commissioned the priceless cache, and about the peasants on whose backs the nobility walked. I wondered about the fate of these inanimate objects, given more value than that of human life. How many peasants died so the Romanovs could enjoy their gilded eggs and diamond-crusted snuff boxes? How many more would die even now to protect the art, or to steal it?
I thought of Smorodinsky, Crespo, and Eva-Lisa. And Kharchenko. He was dead, too. I took part, at least by omission. I was—how would Abe Socolow characterize it?—a coconspirator. I had stood silently and watched Foley kill the man, brutally and efficiently. I could have stopped him, but I didn’t.
Didn’t even try.
And now I thought about it. I wasn’t repulsed by the horror of it. I was fascinated by the cool, competent administration of pain by someone good at the job. It occurred to me then that Foley enjoyed the task. His creased face became flushed, his eyes hot behind the glasses. Yagamata had turned away from the coldblooded torture and murder, trying to lose himself in the artwork hanging on the gallery wall. But I watched, my pulse quickening, and now I knew that, like Foley, I enjoyed it, too.
I pushed the thought aside and remembered how it all began. Francisco Crespo. My debt was not repaid, never would be. But someday I would tell Emilia Crespo that the man who murdered her son was dead, and had died hard. What did it say about my character that the thought gave me a warm glow of pleasure?
Knowledge of self is a precious commodity, dearer than the finest gemstone. The mirror I held before me now was not laced with gold filigree. It was cold and flat and bared every shadow on my soul.
No, Foley, I didn’t stop you. I merely watched in feigned horror, and now I have only one regret. I wish I had killed the bastard myself.
***
It was after midnight when Foley and I got into the cab of the lead truck with a driver who had not recently encountered deodorant soap. Foley was flipping through a folder of papers, reviewing the inventory, smiling to himself. The driver had a hard time clanking from first gear into second, but he finally got it after several Spanish curses and a tug-of-war with the shift. We rolled off into the night to points unknown.
I was just about to ask Foley where we were headed when he told the driver to pull over and pointed toward a Plymouth sedan sitting at the curb near the intersection of LeJeune Road and the Airport Expressway. The driver tugged at the wheel, the truck’s brakes squealing in protest.
“The keys are under the mat,” Foley said. “You’re outta here.”
I started to protest, but he hushed me. “It’s gonna get dangerous from here on out.”
“Really, what’s it been up to now, a day at the beach?”
“Lassiter, you’ve done a good job, better than I would have thought. But you’ve already seen and heard too much. You don’t have security clearance for this. Leave the rest to the Company. Go back to your torts and contracts.”
“Where are you going?”
He put a finger to his lips. “State secret. Hey, almost forgot. Yagamata wanted you to have this.” He reached into his coat pocket and handed me something metallic. I held it up to the light of an oncoming car.
“Opera glasses,” I said. They were heavy. I looked closer. Solid yellow gold with what looked like white gold lacework.
“Belonged to Czar Nick. Matsuo thinks they’ll help you see the truth. Go ahead. Take a look.”
When I hesitated, he laughed. “Go on. It doesn’t give you a black eye, and there aren’t any girly pictures inside.”
I held up the solid gold binoculars and looked at the waiting car in the glare of our headlights. Nothing but a blur. “I can’t see a thing. They don’t work.”
“How about that?” Foley said. “Isn’t that just like old Mother Russia?”
23
WRONG-WAY LASSITER
I approached the witness stand and politely asked, “Isn’t it true that you bit into a finger cot, and not a condom, Mrs. Schwartzbaum?”
She pointed toward the defense table. “That’s what they say.”
“Wasn’t the item you bit into a rubber protective shield for a cook’s fingers?”
“How should I know? What do I look like, Julia Child?”
Sylvia Schwartzbaum was sixty and not all that pleased about it. The frosted hair was lacquered into place, and if she turned too quickly, her immense silver earrings could cause whiplash. “All I know is when I bit into my endive, I chewed something rubbery, and when I spit it out, I thought it was a condom. That’s why I screamed. That’s why I spilled the soup in Harry’s lap, the poor dear.” She paused for effect and looked into the gallery, giving her husband a small, tragic smile. “And that’s why I have a severe case of mental anguish.”
“But now you know it wasn’t a condom,
correct?” I was going to hammer away until she admitted it.
“At the time, it felt like a condom, and it looked like a condom.”
I wouldn’t be doing my job, such as it is, if I didn’t ask a follow-up question. “Did it taste like a condom, Mrs. Schwartzbaum?”
She gave me an icy stare. “Not being a pervert, I wouldn’t know about that.” She looked toward Harry, who nodded his approval.
Judge Dixie Lee Boulton leaned forward in her chair and peered at me through her bifocals, which dangled on a chain of imitation pearls. “Mr. Lassiter, I suggest you move it along. I’ve heard just about enough of this line of questioning.”
I hadn’t wanted to defend another restaurant case. Last year I lost the case of the flaming dessert. Bananas flambé cost the plaintiff his expensive toupee and my client, Le Parisian Eaterie, twenty-five grand. But win or lose, a trial lawyer gets typecast. Next, I was hired to defend the Calle Ocho cafeteria where an elderly man slipped and fell on an oil slick of spilled flan. Then I fought off the Consumer Protection Agency for the allegedly kosher Cuban restaurant that served frijoles con puerco.
Now I was dealing with the case of the rubber-in-the-rutabaga, as Marvin the Maven insisted on calling it. Every morning before court, I had to stop in the corridor as Marvin and Max (Just Plain) Seltzer told me fly-in-the-soup jokes, all of which I had heard before.
“Jacob, I got a new waiter joke for you,” Marvin said earlier today. “Direct from the Catskills, which, as you know, are the Jewish Alps. Two ladies are having lunch. The first orders the borscht, but the waiter says, ‘Take my advice, have instead the chicken soup.’ The second lady orders the pea soup, and the waiter says, ‘No, take the barley.’ They do as they’re told, and the first lady compliments him: ‘Best chicken soup I ever had.’ So the second lady asks, ‘Why didn’t you recommend me the chicken soup?’ The waiter says, ‘You didn’t ask for the borscht.’”
Marvin and Max were still laughing as I hauled my trial bag into the courtroom. My partners had insisted I handle the case after I had missed a couple days of work. Been lollygagging long enough, the managing partner said. Taking off without warning, leaving young associates to handle motion calendars and prepare cases for trial. The litany of complaints was piling up. So my punishment was the mental anguish suit of Sylvia Schwartzbaum, plaintiff from hell.
“Your expert witnesses have examined the rubbery object, plaintiff’s exhibit one, have they not?” I asked.
“They better have, after the bill I got.”
“And they told you that the object was not a condom, correct?”
“Objection!” H. T. Patterson was on his feet, poking a finger in my direction. “Hearsay and irrelevant. The report speaks for itself, and it doesn’t matter what my client thinks about it.”
“I think it cost too much money,” Mrs. Schwartzbaum told the judge and jury.
“Your Honor,” I pleaded, “the report’s in evidence. I’m merely eliciting evidence that will establish the plaintiff’s state of mind. It’s relevant to the damage issue.”
Judge Boulton pulled a pencil out of her 1950s bouffant, made a note on a legal pad, and allowed as how the objection was overruled.
I looked at the witness and waited.
Mrs. Schwartzbaum shrugged her shoulders. “Sure, they said it was one of those little whatchamacallits …”
“Finger cots?”
“. . . so they don’t slice their filthy fingernails into your salad with the cucumbers.”
“And you learned this within days of the incident, did you not?”
“Yeah, so what?” Suspicious now.
“So, in the restaurant, when you screamed at the top of your lungs that you were going to catch AIDS from . . .” I riffled through the transcript of the previous day’s proceedings even though I knew the line by heart. “‘. . . from the grimy Haitian wetback who jerked off in my salad,’ you were obviously mistaken.”
“I don’t know which island the kitchen help comes from, if that’s what you mean,” she said.
“What I mean is you now are secure in the knowledge that you will not contract a disease from eating at Norma’s Natural Food Emporium, correct?”
“I wouldn’t go back there for a million dollars.”
Funny, a million bucks was her settlement demand. I turned to the judge. “Your Honor, the witness is not being responsive.”
Sylvia Schwartzbaum sighed. “That’s what Harry says. Ever since they poisoned me, I’ve not been responsive. Now, we don’t even have relations. It’s his lost-consorting claim.”
“Consortium,” her lawyer, H. T. Patterson, piped up.
“In that case, Harry should pay my client,” I stage-whispered a tad too loud.
“Mr. Lassiter!” Judge Boulton was seldom awake long enough to get involved in the proceedings. But now Dixie Lee was steamed, and my old buddy Patterson was not doing me any favors, prancing around, demanding a sidebar where he accused me of multitudinous sins.
“Atrocious and abominable, disgraceful and dastardly,” Patterson began in the singsong he had perfected as a one-time preacher at the Liberty City Baptist Church. “Impudent and insolent, an utterly appalling, barbarous breach of ethics to make such a shameful statement in front of the jury . . .”
Oh, I don’t know. A couple of them had nodded their heads with appreciation and one laughed out loud.
“Despicable and defamatory, disgusting and detestable, vile and vulgar, repulsive and repugnant.” Patterson was on his toes now, chin thrust forward, strutting his stuff. I knew it was an act, and I would have to wait it out. Patterson did have an unfortunate habit, however , of bouncing close and spraying me with saliva as he worked himself into a frenzy. It reminded me of a recent study, which concluded that male trial lawyers have more testosterone than their brethren who practice real estate, tax, or corporate law. The psychologist learned this by testing saliva, a few globs of which were now affixed to my Italian silk tie. I always thought Patterson’s pugnaciousness had more to do with being five feet five than overdosing on male hormones.
He was still going. “Calumnious and . . .”
“Contemptuous,” Judge Boulton helped him out. “Twenty-four hours in the county stockade, Mr. Lassiter.”
***
I like quiet contemplation. A day and night behind bars was neither novel nor particularly unsettling. In a trial a few years ago, a judge ordered me not to ask a cop if he was under investigation by Internal Review. I persisted, and the judge warned me that one more question and he’d send me to a place I’d never been.
“Already been to jail,” I told him.
“Not jail,” the judge said. “Law school.”
I was even held in contempt once for telling a good-natured joke to a judge who had just ruled against me.
“What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of fifty?” I asked.
The judge shrugged.
“Your Honor,” I answered.
I don’t mind some time away from home. I don’t have a dog to walk, a bird to feed, or grass to cut. No feminine companion awaits me at the door, a duck roasting in the oven. The women come and go, and life stays the same though their faces change. There were stewardesses when they were still called that, a real estate broker with a penthouse condo, more than one South Beach model with tales of Milan and Paris and how our humidity is hell on the hair, a nurse who held my hand when I tore ligaments in a knee, a statuesque literature professor from Yugoslavia who could outcuss Granny Lassiter and didn’t disparage Hemingway, a Dolphin cheerleader to whom every new experience was either “far out” or “queer,” and who left me for a commodities broker with a yacht. And there, too, was the sportswriter I let down when she needed me to protect her. Since then, I hadn’t let anybody need me.
I always take a good book and my first baseman’s mitt when I get sent up. I never apologize, post bond, or seek rehearing. I’m not sure why, but it may have something to do with the stubborn streak I inherited from my granny.
The stockade is not so bad, even if the food tends to the starchy side. The prisoners are no more reprehensible than most of my partners and more forthright about their chicanery. There’s a good set of weights and a decent softball field. I like playing first base because there’s plenty of action, and you don’t have far to run.
So now I stood on the field in shorts and sneakers, a Marlins cap and dark shades. I had just fielded a bunt and flipped it home trying to nip a cat burglar on a squeeze play. He had quick feet, and the catcher, a sago palm thief, had bad hands, so the run scored.
“A day late and a dollar short,” someone said behind me.
I turned around to find Abe Socolow. Squinting into the sun, the state attorney wore his customary funeral suit, a cigarette locked in his lips. “Want to take a turn at bat, Abe? We need a designated killjoy.”
“You need a lawyer.”
“Not me. Done my hard time. Getting out at two o’clock, thirty minutes off for good behavior.”
I was trying to hold the runner on the base and banter with Socolow at the same time. Complicating the task was my awareness of the runner’s vocation as a pickpocket. I didn’t like him behind me.
“We gotta talk.” Socolow dropped his cigarette and ground it into the base path. He looked out of place on a ballfield. In fact, he looked out of place anywhere but under the sickly fluorescent lighting of the Justice Building. He belonged there with the vaguely institutional smell, the incessant din of official commotion. He brought order to a disordered world, and did it as if he alone had the power. Sweat beaded on his high forehead, and in the sunlight, I could see his dark hair was thinning on top. “I got a call from Washington this morning. Someone asking a lot of questions about you.”
The pitcher, a con man who had perfected the pigeon drop and the week-late lottery scam, used a windmill windup, then threw a change-up. The batter was so far in front of the pitch he twisted himself into a pretzel on his follow-through.