by Paul Levine
Hothead was right on the money. I first met Francisco Crespo in his mother’s house in Little Havana. He was a skinny Marielito just out of Castro’s prisons who arrived in Miami barefoot and sopping wet. I remember thinking he must have been just off a raft, but it had been a rainy day, and he arrived at the little pink house off Calle Ocho in the back of a pickup truck.
I rented a room from Emilia Crespo in what had been the garage, having arrived in Miami-undrafted and unheralded-after a steady but unspectacular college football career. I wanted to live close to the Orange Bowl, not realizing the team practiced and virtually lived at the other end of town. It didn’t matter. I never figured to make the Dolphins, and when I did, earning the league minimum, and hanging on a few years because of a willingness to sacrifice my body on kickoffs, I stayed put.
Emilia Crespo was a sturdy widow who always seemed to wear an apron. She cooked me picadillo and platanos and taught me a smidgen of Spanish. She also asked me to look after Francisco, who refused to live with her, saying he wanted solitude. He rented a first-floor apartment on Fonseca, just east of Ponce de Leon Boulevard, and kept to himself.
To please her, I got him a job in the locker room, tossing jockstraps and towels into a washing machine with ample quantities of bleach and disinfectant. Just as often, he was brawling. I remember him flailing away at the assistant strength coach-a two-hundred-thirty-five-pound weightlifter-who smacked his lips at Crespo, suggesting he was one of the maricones who recently washed up on the beaches courtesy of the Jimmy Carter flotilla across the straits. The coach slapped Crespo around, then tossed him into the whirlpool.
Crespo was reassigned to the groundskeeping crew. He got in less trouble outdoors and soon knew the vagaries of Kentucky bluegrass, fine fescue, and perennial ryegrass, as well as everything worth knowing about aeration, seeding, sodding, and mulching. Ignoring the automatic sprinkler system, Crespo hosed the field by hand, watering dry spots and patching the divots with patience and care. He seemed to like grass more than people, but then, most people he’d known the last ten years had worn boots and kicked him around.
I kept an eye on Crespo, slipping him some sweat socks when I saw his bare ankles sticking out of secondhand shoes. He returned the favor by giving me mangoes he filched from a South Dade farm. Then I gave him some old jerseys that could be turned into cash at swap meets. He sold Griese’s, Csonka’s, and Warfield’s, but kept mine, hanging it in the front window of his apartment. It was not so valuable as to provoke a burglary or a call from the Smithsonian.
Once, in a close game against the Jets, I was in my usual position on the bench and Crespo was handing out Gatorade and towels.
“ Ves al numero setenta y nueve?” he asked me.
“I been watching him all day. Their weak-side tackle, a Pro Bowler.”
“Why does he rock back on his heels when they’re going to pass the ball?”
“What!”
“When he is crouching down in como se llame…”
“The three-point stance.”
“ Si, he leans forward when they are going to run, and rocks back when they are going to pass.”
“Holy shit, Francisco, you oughta be a coach. We got thirty hours of game films plus Polaroids of every snap of the ball and nobody noticed that.”
He shrugged and ambled down the sideline, carrying a tray of drinks to some guys who deserved them more than I did. “When you fight, must watch your enemigo’s every move,” he called back at me.
Two plays later, we lost a starting outside linebacker to a hip-pointer, and I had a chance to get my uniform dirty. Two sacks and three tackles for losses in the fourth quarter. The only game ball of my career.
The year I retired-which is a nice way of saying I was placed on waivers where twenty-five other teams managed not to notice me-Crespo left, too. I spent the next year engulfed in booze and blondes, and by the time I started night law school, I had lost track of him. I figured he was either in jail or contending for the welterweight championship.
Then, a few years later, Emilia Crespo called me. I was in my last days as a public defender, copping pleas for guys too poor to buy a decent defense. Did I want to stop by for some picadillo con frijoles negros y arroz bianco? Did I ever! The years had added a few white streaks to the black hair pulled straight back, a little heavier maybe, but the apron was crisply starched and her greeting was the same. A hug that could knock the wind out of Dick Butkus. I ate heartily, and she watched in silence, nibbling at a plantain. I sipped a mojito, the rum and soda drink with fresh mint leaves from her garden. I asked Emilia Crespo about Francisco, and her dark eyes filled with pain.
“I don’t know what that asesino, Castro, did to him in prison, but he has never been the same. Angry all the time. Violento. It is as if my son cares about nothing.”
“He cares about you. And so do I. What can I do?”
Her answer was a tender plea. “Will you be his friend?”
“I tried in the old days. He isn’t easy to get close to.”
“Will you try again, Jake? For me?”
She knew I would. In my life, I have Granny Lassiter, who raised me, Charlie Riggs, who taught me, and Emilia Crespo, who put a roof over my head and meat on my bones. There was something else, too, a path of obligation that ran straight from Jake Lassiter, ex-football player, to Francisco Crespo, ex-preso politico, and it was something neither of us would ever tell his mother.
Two days later, I tracked Crespo down at the jai alai fronton where he sat in the back row, his feet draped over the seat in front of him, a program balled up in one hand. He was alone and seemed to like it that way. I sat to one side, watching him through the first three games, listening to the plonk of the pelota against the front wall. Nobody talked to him, and he reciprocated. Finally, I went up and said hello, how about a drink and a sandwich later. He said, fine, but if he was pleased to see me, it didn’t show.
“What are you up to?” I asked him that evening, over a beer at a Calle Ocho taberna.
“This and that.”
I took a sip of a Brooklyn Lager, a rare find in these parts. Burnt amber color, a taste of toasted malt, it goes well with spicy Spanish food. “Do you need work?”
“No.”
“Money?”
“No.”
“Anything?”
“No.”
This wasn’t going anywhere. Maybe I wasn’t any good at reaching out. Maybe he thought I was there only because his mother asked me to be. Or maybe it was just hard for him to accept friendship, especially friendship sparked by obligation. My attempts at gratitude had always been awkward, his responses perfunctory.
“Francisco, you’re making this difficult for me. I owe you. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”
He dismissed the notion with a shrug. “It has been many years.”
“Some things don’t go away, even when you want them to. Particularly when you want them to. I still dream about it, nightmares really.”
“Dreams are dreams,” he said. “Life is life.”
I wanted to reach out to him, give him a brotherly hug, but I didn’t. He wouldn’t have wanted me to. Or was that just my excuse? Maybe I’d been stiff-arming him because he reminded me of that night and my eternal obligation. “It’s our secret, Francisco, something only the two of us share.”
He finished his beer. His expression hadn’t changed. “ Dos minutos. That’s all it was out of your life and mine.”
“That’s a lot,” I said, “if it lets someone keep on living.”
“You think about it too much.”
“Don’t you… don’t you ever wake up, remembering?”
“My nightmares are different,” Francisco Crespo said.
We finished our beer and polished off a couple of Cuban sandwiches with black bean soup on the side. I promised to stay in touch the same way Hollywood producers promise to call for lunch. He gave me his phone number, and I tucked it in my pocket, then taped it on the refrigerator door. Whe
n I finally tried to reach him, the phone had been disconnected. I could have called his mother. I could have tracked him down. I could have done a lot of things. But I didn’t. Then came the call from the county jail; Crespo was booked on a second-degree murder charge.
I left my Olds 442 convertible, vintage 1968, in the parking lot, and walked along the river, a narrow, oil-slicked snake of a waterway that runs from just north of the airport to Biscayne Bay near the downtown commercial district. Half a mile away, the air horn on the Flagler Street drawbridge was tooting the alarm, the tender preparing to raise the span. I remembered a humid night on the MacArthur Causeway, the dark vision of death haunting me still. I shook off the cobwebs and stared at a Panamanian freighter loaded with bicycles and truck tires heading toward the bay. The bikes-nearly all stolen-would be headed for Haiti, where a battered old Schwinn can bring fifty bucks. Freighters routinely use the river to haul illicit cargo, but that’s nothing new. During Prohibition, rumrunners from the Bahamas found their way up the Miami River with their contraband.
A few years ago, the city padres decided to clean up the polluted channel and decrepit surroundings where even the hookers can’t be trusted: they’re transvestites. The city planned a Riverfest extravaganza, which was going fine until a sewer line broke, spoiling the fun because it’s tough to enjoy your lobster and paella when the afternoon breeze is ripe with the stench of raw sewage. Now, rustbuckets from a dozen Central American countries were tied up, their crews idling on the shore or heading to roughneck bars along Flagler Street. The ships are essential to Miami’s commerce, hauling drugs and illegal aliens in, carting stolen cars and bicycles out.
I stopped at an outdoor fish market, bought a pint of cold conch salad, spicy with peppers and onions, and admired the fresh stone crab claws. The stoners were arranged in iced boxes, according to size-medium, large, and jumbo. In a triumph of marketing, even the smallest claw was labeled “medium.” Apparently, “small” claws would have as much consumer appeal as “petite” condoms.
My canary yellow convertible was still there when I walked back to the warehouse, beating the odds in a county where a hundred cars are stolen every day. I haven’t gone for any of the new devices so popular hereabouts: the LoJack transmitter to help the cops find your missing car; the Hook Crook Cane to lock the steering wheel; the electronic starter disabler and computer chip car key. If somebody really wants your car, they’re going to get it, and love her as I do, the old 442 is still just a chunk of metal.
The radio was untouched, too, probably because it’s older than most car thieves. It has no CD, no tape deck, not even an FM band. It does pick up Radio Havana, though, plus a big band station near the top of the AM dial. Some Filipino seamen were in the lot, but no one showed any interest in my antique, except a white ibis who was probably lost. The snowy bird was pecking at my tires with its long orange beak. Maybe I’d run over a juicy grasshopper.
I got in the car and drove five minutes to the Gaslight Lounge downtown. Once inside, I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, then made my way to the bar. The conch salad had made me thirsty; the case of State v. Crespo required an expert consultation. I had come to the right place for both.
The Gaslight is fine for a beer and a bacon cheeseburger, onion rings on the side. The red imitation-leather banquettes and matching bar stools are right out of the Fifties, and so is the clientele. Usually I drink Grolsch. For my money, the Dutch brewmasters are the best. But everyone has his own tastes, and if the yuppies want to buy watery Mexican beer because the longnecked bottles are trendy, let them. If they impress each other with a pricey Swedish vodka that is indistinguishable from half a dozen other brands, that’s fine, too. I stay out of the Misty Fern, and they stay out of the Gaslight, a place with no hanging plants, no pickled-wood latticework, and no nachos with salsa. Just a long, scarred teak bar with a brass foot rail, smoked mirrors, and barely enough light to read your check without striking a match.
For some reason, I didn’t feel like a beer, so I pointed to a bottle on the mirrored shelf, and Mickey Cumello poured two and a half ounces of Plymouth gin into a mixing glass without using the jigger to measure. Why should he? Does Pavarotti need sheet music?
Usually, I only drink gin after being drop-kicked by a judge, a jury, or a lady friend. Come to think of it, I’ve had more than my share of martinis lately.
Mickey gently dropped in four ice cubes-the large square ones, so they won’t melt the instant they hit the alcohol-and dribbled a splash or two of dry vermouth into the mixture. He stirred with a glass swizzle, but not out of fear of bruising the gin. Drinks don’t bruise; only drinkers do, but shaking clouds a martini. Finally, he strained the drink into a chilled glass, sliced a sliver of lemon peel, and lit a match. He squeezed the rind above the burning match until oil dropped into the flame, shooting off little sparks, which settled into the martini, giving it a hint of burnt lemon.
Mickey Cumello is a bartender from the old school. No ponytail, earring, or track shoes. His gray hair was combed straight back, revealing a handsome widow’s peak. He always wore a short-sleeve white shirt, charcoal gray pants, and polished black leather shoes, and he never spoke unless spoken to. In the dim light, he looked forty-five and had for twenty years.
I sipped at the cool poison and let it slide down the throat. “Mickey, you know every client I ever had is a liar.”
He hunched his bushy eyebrows but didn’t say a thing. Maybe he felt the same way about his customers. “They either lie to the jury or to me, or both,” I continued.
Mickey allowed me a small smile while he polished an old-fashioned glass that was dry and spotless.
“But they always swear they weren’t there, or the other guy started it, or the full moon made them do it.”
A man in a dark suit sat down a polite three bar stools away and, without being asked, Mickey hit a long-handled tap and drew a glass of Canadian ale. Just as silently, he resumed his position in front of me.
“But until now, I never had a client claim he iced a guy when it’s clear somebody else did it. Now why would he do that?”
Mickey wiped his hands on the towel and neatly folded it on a drying rack. “That’s easy, Jake. To protect someone else.”
“Right, but why?”
A swarthy man in a white guayabera slid onto the bar stool next to me. Mickey turned his body to shield our conversation. Is there such a thing as the bartender-client privilege?
“Because whatever he’s involved in, Jake, is a lot bigger than he is.”
My look told him to continue. He said, “And whatever a judge could do to him…”
“Twenty-five years to life.”
“… is nothing compared to what’ll happen if he spills what he knows. So, not to tell you your business, but if I were you, I wouldn’t be so anxious to hear this guy’s story.”
I drained the rest of the martini, tasting the sharpness of the gin against the smokiness of the burnt lemon. “Since when are you concerned about the health of my clients?”
Mickey Cumello shook his head. “Not his health, Jake. Yours.”
2
THE CHICKEN AND THE EGG
The psychologist said I stood too close to the jury during opening statement. My client said I was too loud. The judge said I was argumentative. And Marvin the Maven wasn’t talking to me.
Everyone’s a critic.
“Be aware of horizontal space zones,” Dr. Lester (Call Me Les) Weiner warned. “You’re using social zones when the courtroom demands public zones.”
I used to know a thing or two about end zones, but this was new to me.
Dr. Weiner toyed with the top button on his black Italian silk shirt. He wore no tie, and the sleeves were pushed up on his baggy sportcoat, a look favored by Miami Vice wannabes. The pleated pants were also black and had room for another Les inside. His dark hair was moussed and slicked straight back, and he studied me from behind dark-tinted aviator glasses. The general impression was Darth Vader
with a Ph. D. “Jake, you’re still a stranger to the jury, so keep a horizontal zone of at least eight feet. By closing argument, if you establish rapport, you may move up to the rail.”
Marvin the Maven sat in the front row of the gallery pretending not to listen. Even at age seventy-six, there was nothing wrong with his hearing. He had said barely a word since learning I’d hired a psychologist to help with jury selection and trial tactics. For years, Marvin had the job, his only degree a lifetime of experience selling shoes, his expert’s fee a cup of tea and a bagel with a schmear. Now, feeling abandoned, he threatened to spend the rest of the week watching the ticker at the Miami Beach Merrill Lynch office, tracking the path of his fifty shares of AT amp;T.
I was sitting at the defense table, half listening to the witness, half listening to Dr. Weiner, who kept reminding me of my many deficiencies. “Your directional gestures are also too strong. And your height power is menacing this early in the trial, especially when you encroach on the neutral zone.”
Five-yard penalty, I figured.
“Did you notice the jurors crossing their arms and turning to the side as you violated their space bubble?” he asked.
“I thought it might have been the anchovies on the Caesar salad,” I said.
The psychologist crossed his arms, and I wondered if it was something I said. Dr. Lester Weiner was deeply tanned, excessively self-confident, and for three hundred dollars an hour could tell you whether a woman will vote for the plaintiff by examining her makeup. A few blocks from the courthouse at Miami Marina, he kept a thirty-eight-foot Bertram-the Pleasure Principle — docked at what he called his Freudian slip.
“Perhaps a woman lawyer could approach the rail during opening statement,” Dr. Weiner whispered, not letting it go. He was chewing on his lower lip, and his pencil had bite marks, but I refrained from asking whether he was bottle-fed as an infant. “It is easier for women to gain rapport, but a man of your size, well…”
He let it hang there, sort of telling me that I was a bull in the china shop. As if I didn’t know.