by Paul Levine
“You said no signs of forced entry,” Lassiter said. “Who has keys to the front door?”
“Only Mr. K. and little ole me,” Violet said, studying a cuticle on her right pinkie.
“And Miss Belfrey has an alibi,” Sergeant Carraway said with a wink and a leer. Now the cop was Lassiter’s buddy, sharing confidences with him. It took a second but Lassiter figured out the alibi when Violet put an arm around the old man, then gently stroked his neck. It wasn’t a sexual gesture, just a comforting one, but the body language was unmistakable. She may not have gotten into the old man’s cabinet but she’s in his pants, Lassiter thought.
“Mr. Kazdoy said you’d be able to tell us something about these coupons, what a thief would do with them, that sort of thing,” Sergeant Carraway continued, his tone finally respectful and professional. Torano groaned and asked if he could leave, had to work out, and the fat sergeant nodded okay.
“Where do you want me to start?” Lassiter asked.
The sergeant pulled out a vinyl-covered notebook. “Well, what the fuck are these things anyhow?” That was as good a place as any, so Jake Lassiter told him to think of Mr. Kazdoy as a lender who gives five thousand dollars to, say, the city of Jacksonville to help build a sewage plant and the city agrees to repay him over twenty years at 8 percent interest, four hundred dollars a year, payable two hundred bucks a pop, every December 1 and June 1, then at the end of twenty years, he gets back the five grand. In the meantime, he pays no taxes on the interest payments.
“I built a box factory in Jacksonville once,” Kazdoy said to no one in particular. “Cost me nine million in 1958, would be worth forty million today, but I don’t own it.”
Lassiter looked toward his client, hoping the old man wasn’t losing his marbles along with the bonds. Then he turned back to the sergeant and explained that to get your two hundred bucks, you have to turn in a coupon at a bank. “A bond payable over twenty years will have forty coupons. What the burglars took would have been … what, Sam … six or seven thousand coupons?”
“Never liked Jacksonville,” Kazdoy said. “More anti-Semites than Warsaw.” The old man wasn’t going to be much help.
Lassiter said, “A securities newsletter will alert all the local banks. But the coupons will more likely turn up out of the country, maybe in the islands at some doper bank good at money laundering. Problem is, these are negotiable securities, anybody can cash them.”
Violet Belfrey was trying hard not to show that she was paying attention, but if she kept filing her nails, she’d soon draw blood.
“If real pros masterminded this,” Lassiter concluded, “they already have a buyer, maybe in the Bahamas or Switzerland, or someone in organized crime, so they wholesale them for fifty cents on the dollar, let somebody else worry about dropping them at banks all over the country or all over the world.”
Now Samuel Kazdoy was coming alive. “Jacob, you get them back for me, boychik, one half is yours.”
The old man pulled himself off the sofa, struggled for a moment to gain his balance, and then stepped between Lassiter and the sergeant. He turned around, asserting control as he must have done in conference rooms for more than half a century. The events of the day still hung on his shoulders, but a brightness returned to his eyes.
“One half, Jacob. You got a good kop on your shoulders, I always said that. You can do it. Just like you got those momzers in Hollywood off my back. Just like you saved my driver’s license when the sons of bitches in Tallahassee said I was too old. You’re my friend, Jacob. You break bread with me and drink borscht with me, now find the bonds for me. If you can keep your mind off the shiksas for a while, you’ll figure it out.”
Carraway snapped his notebook shut. “Should have figured. We do the work, the lawyer gets the money.”
Kazdoy turned his attention to the sergeant. “Mis-ter Policeman, who do you think you are, some Cossack, you come in here and threaten me like there’s gonna be a pogrom. I been a friend of the mayor since he was a little pisher. You don’t want to help, he’s gonna hear about it.”
Sergeant Carraway swallowed hard and swung his bulk toward the broken door. “Fine with me. I gotta open a case number, but nothing says I gotta be a hero. Lassiter, call me when you got something to say.”
The sergeant left without promising to call for lunch. Lassiter looked around the office for another few minutes, then said his good-byes and headed down the stairs and out the fire door, opening it slowly, studying the latch. Nothing to see. He ran his hand over the mechanism, the little bolt that locks from the outside but slides open when the bar is pressed from inside.
Hullo! A tiny piece of silver duct tape, like you use to patch a torn sail, and the rest of the latch faintly sticky, like it was covered with the same tape but was torn off in a hurry. Okay, a guy doesn’t wait in a rest room all night, somebody tapes a door open for him. Just like Watergate — why not — most of those characters live in Miami anyway.
He stepped into the alley. No one had stolen his car, a canary yellow 1968 Olds 442, or sliced the canvas top in search of a tape player to exchange for a day’s ration of crack. Not that a slash and grabber would have found anything to sell. The car had no tape player, no CD, no cellular phone, and the radio was the original equipment: AM only.
The late-afternoon ocean breeze whipped discarded popcorn boxes against the building’s foundation and rattled the top of an aluminum garbage can. The temperature was dropping, and it was growing dark. Sliding into the bucket seat of the old beauty, Lassiter turned on the headlights. Then he got out, knelt into a catcher’s position and looked around. Crushed soda cans, candy wrappers, old newspapers. Street crud, nothing more. A mercury vapor light clicked on two buildings away, bathing the alley in a sickly green light. Then, something glared back from the pavement.
What the hell! He picked it up carefully, touching only the sides. A photograph, Violet Belfrey’s sharp face and round breasts. The photo was clean, everything else in the alley covered with grime. Couldn’t have been there long. If Carraway could see over his belly, maybe he would have found it.
Now what does Violet have to do with this? She was in the theater last night and could have taped the door. Lassiter leaned against his old convertible and thought about it. He felt a chill. It didn’t make any sense. Violet didn’t have to tape the door. She could have given anyone a key. Unless someone didn’t want to be seen walking through the front door after midnight. But the picture? Who would be so stupid as to leave a picture of one of the culprits at the crime scene, unless it was supposed to be found. Someone could be framing her, but who and why? He would give the picture to Carraway as a peace offering. If they didn’t drool over it first, the lab boys could dust it for latents.
Across the alley, an old woman wearing a tattered sweater used a cane to poke around in a dumpster behind a Burger King. Lassiter walked toward her, reached in his wallet for a ten-dollar bill and offered it, but she swatted at him with the cane. He got back into the car, turned the ignition, and listened to 455 cubic inches of rebuilt V-8 growl to life. He was low on gas — at eight miles a gallon, Arab sheikhs should send thank-you cards — and wondered if any stations in South Beach still carried high-test with lead. He flicked on the radio. The talk show host was bellowing at a caller, simultaneously questioning his patriotism, intelligence, and sexual preference. He turned off the radio and ran through all the facts, finishing with one that hit him square in the face. On December 1 — less than two weeks — the first coupons would become due. He would have to work fast, and it could all be for nothing. Even now the coupons could be in New York or La Paz or Grand Cayman.
* * *
But the coupons were not nearly so far away. They were in a cardboard box that once held Coca-Cola syrup in the storeroom of the Lincoln Road Grill three blocks west of the theater. And there, too, was Harry Marlin, a guy whose prayers would be answered if he could only figure out one thing — how to turn paper into gold.
CHAPTER
9
The Case of the Kosher Kielbasa
The phone message from Great Southern Bank said “Urgent,” but that did not necessarily imply a threat to the ozone layer, or even a mildly interesting problem. Thaddeus G. Whitney, the bank’s general counsel, might have called because a computer glitch foreclosed the wrong mortgage. Or another customer could have dropped a safe-deposit box on a big toe, or a trusted bookkeeper might have run off to Acapulco with the Christmas Club fund.
Jake Lassiter put the phone message to one side and returned his other calls. He told Bernard/Bernice he would consider suing his/her insurance company for declining payment for a sex change operation on the grounds it was cosmetic surgery. He tried to calm down the mother whose infant was put on the X-ray machine’s conveyor belt at the airport by security guards because the baby was considered carry-on luggage. He listened patiently to the Hialeah man who insisted the First Amendment prevented the zoning board from removing La Virgen de la Caridad from his front yard, despite the fact the statue was forty feet high, contained blinking lights, and played music that kept the neighbors awake.
Then Jake Lassiter returned Thad Whitney’s phone call.
“Shit’s hit the fan,” Whitney said, each word a little puff, as if the breath were being squeezed out of him. The bank lawyer had a habit of speaking in scatalogical cliches. “You know Humberto Hernandez-Zaldivar, one of your basic Cube developers, gets rich on borrowed money?”
“Take it easy, Thad. I’ve known Berto since law school. We tried cases together in the PD’s office, and I consider him a friend.”
“Well, start considering him an asshole. I’ll make this brief, so listen up. A few years ago, when all the South Americans were bringing their cash into town, your buddy Berto buys thirty-eight oceanfront condos thanks to an overly generous loan officer I’ll tell you about later. When currency controls shut off the pesos and bolivars, the condo market dried up, and I he stopped making payments. Bottom line, with acceleration, > unpaid interest, penalties and fees, your buddy’s about four-point-six million in the hole. Pretty big bucks for a kid floated up from Havana on an inner tube.”
“A raft made of tires,” Lassiter corrected him. “He was twelve. His mother died in the Straits.”
“My condolences,” Whitney said coldly, “but frankly, I’m more concerned with our P and L statement for the current fiscal. We may have to call in the regulators, and you know how that frosts my buns.”
Lassiter pictured the bank lawyer at the other end of the line. A bland, forgettable face topped by pale wispy hair that threatened to blow away in the first easterly. Slinging the corporate jargon, feet propped on a marble desk, fouling the air with smoke rings and ill humor.
“Just call the loans and sue to foreclose,” Lassiter suggested, contemplating the ethics of punching out a client. “The condos give you the security.”
“They would, except your old classmate flipped Conrad Ticklin, one of our loan officers. Turned him over for a lousy twenty-five in cash plus an empty condo to play hide-the-weenie with a receptionist from installment loans. Ticklin approves about a hundred and twenty percent financing, and the Cube takes home close to half a mil, over and above the mortgages.”
“Bad news, Thad, but the apartments still secure most of the debt.”
“You’d think so,” Whitney said, “except the bastard slipped in another lien before ours. Closed four million in loans with Vista Bank the day before he closed with us. Theirs are all recorded first. We’re the bare-assed second mortgagee on thirty-eight empty, unsold condos. Get it? We’re sucking hind tit to the tune of four-point-six-million clams.”
Lassiter smiled, taking surreptitious pleasure at the bank’s predicament. “That’s really a shame, Thad.”
“A shame? It’s a fucking crime. C’mon, Lassiter. Let’s see some of that toughness, pro football star, rah, rah, rah and all that shit.”
“Second string, Thad. Story of my life. A step too slow.”
“You’re telling me. Can you sue the wetback by Thursday?”
Jake Lassiter would have liked to put Thad Whitney in the middle of the nutcracker drill, a pair of linemen tattooing his flabby ass with their cleats.
“You there, Jake? How long will it take to draft a complaint, then set up a meeting with the U.S. Attorney so we can prosecute for fraud?”
“I could sue Berto tomorrow. But I’ve got a better idea. Let me take him to dinner tonight.”
“What the hell for? You hard up for black beans and rice?”
Jake Lassiter paused and held the phone away from his face, putting distance between Thad Whitney and himself. It wasn’t far enough. He thought about all the things he’d rather be doing than dealing with the repulsive bank lawyer who was good for forty grand a month in billings. He thought about telling Whitney to take the bad loans and shove them where the sun don’t shine. He thought about hanging up and heading for the beach. And he thought, too, how hard it would be to start a third career. After a moment, he simply said, “If we sue, we’ve got to join Vista Bank as a defendant. They’ll counterclaim and wipe you out with their first mortgage. This has to be finessed. Let me talk to Berto, and I might be able to help you both out.” Lassiter looked at his watch. “Yikes! I gotta get to court.”
* * *
“So, is this your biggest case, or what?” Sam Kazdoy asked in a whisper that could be heard throughout the courtroom.
Jake Lassiter leaned close to him at the defense table. “I had another false advertising case even bigger, defending Busty Storm when she was appearing at the Organ Grinder. The state claimed there was no way her bosom measured one hundred and twenty-seven. But I won.”
“How?” Kazdoy asked.
“Centimeters, Sam. Centimeters.”
Their discussion was halted by a stern look from the judge, and Lassiter returned his semi-attention to the witness stand t where Mrs. Sadie Pivnick was swearing to tell the truth, the I whole truth, and nothing but the truth, just like Abe, may his soul rest in peace, always told her.
The prosecutor, Chareen Bailey, a statuesque African-American woman a year out of law school, went through the preliminaries, eliciting name, address, and background, getting warmed up. Mrs. Pivnick sat there stiffly, eyeing the microphone suspiciously, her dyed hair the color of a copper penny. After establishing that her witness was a regular patron of Kazdoy’s All-Nite Deli, Chareen Bailey got down to business.
“Did there come a time, ma’am, when you had a conversation with Mr. Kazdoy about the food in his deli?”
“We talked, sure.”
“And when you talked, did Mr. Kazdoy characterize the food he served?”
“Objection!” Lassiter sang out. He stood, more to stretch his legs than to make a legal point. “No predicate laid as to time or place.”
Judge Morgan Lewis craned his neck to see over the bench and glanced at his watch. “Overruled. Let’s just move it along, Ms. Bailey.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” the prosecutor said, bowing slightly. They’re still polite when they’re green. She turned to the witness. “You may answer the question, Mrs. Pivnick.”
“Vad question? Who can remember a question when the three of you keep kibitzing?”
The prosecutor gave her a strained smile. “We’ll try it again. Did there come a time when you had a conversation with Mr. Kazdoy in which he characterized the food served in his delicatessen vis a vis the Jewish dietary laws?”
“Vad she say about Visa?” Sadie Pivnick asked, turning to the judge. “My late Abe always insisted I pay cash.”
The judge looked down from his perch and smiled tolerantly. “The food, Mrs. Pivnick. Did you ever discuss the food?”
“Oy, the food! The stuffed derma gave me the heartburn. I wouldn’t feed it to a dog.”
At the defense table, Sam Kazdoy tugged at Lassiter’s sleeve. “She’s one to talk, that old kvetcherkeh. She put so much chicken fat in her chopped liver, Abe keeled over when he was still a boychik.”
“That’s a shame,” Lassiter whispered.
“He wasn’t a day over eighty,” Kazdoy said, shaking his head sadly.
Chareen Bailey cleared her throat and moved a step closer to the witness stand. “Mrs. Pivnick, what did Mr. Kazdoy say to you as to whether his food was kosher?”
“Ay, that’s what you want to know.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So why beat around the bush?”
“Mrs. Pivnick, in the courtroom, the lawyer asks the questions, and the witness answers,” Chareen Bailey said. “Do you understand?”
“What’s not to understand?”
Judge Morgan Lewis sighed and rolled his eyes. “Mrs. Pivnick, just tell us what Mr. Kazdoy said to you.”
“All right, already. I asked him about the food, and he said, ‘Strictly kosher.’ Twice he said it. ‘Strictly kosher.’”
Mrs. Pivnick smiled triumphantly at having done her civic duty. Ms. Bailey sat down, and the judge politely asked whether Mr. Lassiter wished to inquire.
Lassiter stood and smiled at the witness, then turned his back. “How is your hearing, Mrs. Pivnick?”
“Vad you say?”
Lassiter wheeled around toward the bench. “No further questions, Your Honor.”
As soon as Lassiter was in his chair, Sam Kazdoy poked him in the ribs. “That’s it? Perry Mason wouldn’t sit down so quick unless it was time for a commercial.”
“Trust me, Sam.”
“But I never said such a thing. She’s meshugge.”
“She’s a sympathetic witness, and I don’t want to embarrass her. We’ll win or lose on your testimony.”
The old man looked at him skeptically.
“Sam, please trust me. You’re like family to me, and I’d do anything for you.”
“You mean that?” Sam Kazdoy said, his eyes going misty.
“Yeah, I do. And I haven’t said anything like that since I told Coach Shula I’d do whatever was best for the team.”
“He must have liked that.”