by Paul Levine
“She said to thank you for everything.”
“Jeez, Granny. You didn’t tell me that before.”
“So?”
“It sounds like good-bye.”
I tried calling Amy, got her voicemail.
“You gonna mash those taters, or do I have to do everything around here?” Granny said.
I picked up the masher and went to work. I heard the front door open and called out Amy’s name. But it was Kip, shuffling into the kitchen, sniffing around the stove. “Chicken-fried steak again. Jeez.”
“Wash up,” Granny said.
“I’d rather have meat loaf wrapped in bacon.”
“And hush up.” Granny never took backtalk from me and wasn’t going to start with my nephew.
“You make a rhubarb pie, Granny?”
“Didn’t have time, and if you want to know why, ask your jailbird uncle.”
Kip turned to me, and I saw the shiner, a purple welt under his eye.
Shit. Not again.
“Carl Kountz?” I asked him.
“Baseball practice. He clocked me at second base on a force out.”
“Clean play?”
“Not really. He didn’t bother to slide.”
“You have words with him?”
“I told him to lay off, and when the coach wasn’t looking, he hit me again. Hard.”
“Granny, don’t put those beefsteaks in the frying pan just yet,” I said. “Kip and I are gonna hit the bag for a bit.”
It was the third time we’d worked on kickboxing. For a skinny kid, Kip had a snappy left, and his right cross was coming along. I gave him an up-from-under bolo punch because he thought it was fun. Then we worked on front and side kicks. He was a quick learner. Coordinating the punches and kicks into a smooth rhythm would take longer.
Csonka lay in the grass, licking his balls, then watching us a moment, then licking his balls again. Priorities.
I told Kip to speed up his combinations. Sweat dribbled down his face, and the pop-pop of leather against bag became louder, the timing more consistent. We were twenty minutes into it when my cell phone rang. It had to be Amy.
But it wasn’t.
“Lassiter, you like sushi?” Charlie Ziegler said.
“More than chicken-fried steak. Why you asking?”
“I’m inviting you to dinner. The gentlemanly way. No Ray Decker, no armed escort. Just come on over for sake and sushi.”
Thunder boomed to the west, and the first flashes of lightning crackled the night sky. The wind picked up. Kip kept on punching and kicking.
“Why?”
“Castiel told me what happened today outside the Grand Jury. If a reporter had been there, it would be bad publicity for both of us.”
“For you, maybe. A lawyer who goes to jail for his clients is a hot commodity.”
“Don’t be a dick, Lassiter. I’m making peace here.”
“Yeah?”
“I haven’t been totally honest with you.”
Fat, warm raindrops pelted me.
“I want to make this right,” Ziegler said. “I want to tell you everything.”
30 Plan One, the Gun
Wind gusts drove the rain sideways, stinging Amy’s face. She retreated from the pallet of rebar into the unfinished house. From there, she could still keep watch on Charlie Ziegler’s mansion next door. A modernistic three-story structure of interconnected tubes with a metallic skin, the mansion resembled a ship at sea. How many millions did he spend on the place, money grubbed from the oppression of young women? God, how she hated the man.
She had come here as soon as she’d been released from jail. Two nights ago, she had sneaked onto his patio and crept right up to the windows, checking out the security. No cameras, no dogs, no guards. She had peered through the floor-to-ceiling glass of the solarium and watched Ziegler watering his flowers.
Orchids!
Orchids and Ziegler. Like a diamond necklace on a hog.
She pressed her face to the window. She was so close to the man who murdered her sister she could hear him whistling to himself. His day of reckoning was near, she thought. She sneaked back through a row of shrubs, razor-sharp leaves piercing her unitard and drawing blood from her thigh.
Amy knew she had gone off the deep end today. Snapped. She hadn’t planned the stunt at the Grand Jury chambers. The actions just exploded from her without premeditation or planning.
Out of control. So not me.
When Lassiter seemed to be making progress, she’d put away the pistol. She had let him try to work the system. But the State Attorney, supposedly his friend, was in Charlie Ziegler’s pocket. Sure, Lassiter had fought for her and had been Tasered, cuffed, and arrested for his effort. He’d proved his valor but also his weakness. He was outmanned and outgunned. Ziegler was too well connected.
And he’s guilty! Why else would he be going to these lengths to stop us?
Lassiter had been leaving messages all afternoon on her cell. A new strategy, something about a statewide police agency. She should give him one more chance. If he failed-finally and unequivocally-she could always go back to Plan One.
The gun.
The Sig Sauer lay waiting, deep in her suitcase, back at the motel. She had fantasized about walking straight up to Ziegler and jamming the barrel into his forehead. Turn his skull into splinters, his brain into mush. Then maybe-she wasn’t sure yet-taking a second shot, into her own temple.
Yes, Dr. Blasingame, I do have suicidal ideations.
A lightning bolt crackled the sky and hit the bay, the boom echoing across the open water. She was soaked through to the skin, but not cold. The rain was warm as blood. She dug into her straw bag, found a pack of Winstons and lit up. Smoking again. What would her shrink say?
“You have an addictive personality, Amy.”
Yeah, just like Krista. Addicted to drugs and danger.
“At some level, you blame your sister for your own troubles,” Dr. Blasingame had told her. “But you love her and that causes dissonance.”
The shrink said she suffered from post-traumatic embitterment disorder with paranoid tendencies. It was similar to a stress disorder, but instead of fears and anxiety, she burned with anger and hatred.
“You’re seething with thoughts of revenge, Amy.”
So? Someone kills your sister, embitterment and revenge sound pretty damn rational.
Another lightning bolt struck, this one over land. The thunderclap shook the unfinished walls. She heard car tires squishing on the street, saw the glow of headlights cutting through the rain. There had been no traffic for the last half hour, except a big gray Hummer. A mammoth gas-guzzler, but maybe perfect for a night like this. The Hummer had gone around the block twice, then disappeared. She squinted through the rain and saw this was a different car, slowing as it approached Ziegler’s house. For a moment, it looked like Lassiter’s ridiculous old Cadillac convertible.
The car pulled into Ziegler’s driveway.
No, it can’t be!
Amy crept up to the construction fence to get a better look, the rain soaking her. She watched the driver get out of the cream-colored Eldorado, his face lit by a street lamp.
Jake Lassiter.
She watched as he walked to the front door and rang the bell.
How can this be happening?
The door opened, and she saw the silhouette of Ziegler’s blocky torso. Lassiter went inside and the door closed.
She felt sick to her stomach. Anger tightened every muscle.
Jake, you bastard! You lying bastard!
Ziegler and Perlow. Castiel and Lassiter. All of them against her!
She clawed at the chain-link fence with both hands, wishing she had not left her father’s pistol in the motel room.
31 A Question of Redemption
The rain drilled the Eldo’s canvas top with such ferocity I could barely hear “My Hometown,” Springsteen’s ode to a boarded-up burg. I was on my way to Gables Estates to eat sushi with Charlie Ziegler. Given a
choice, I prefer chowing down with someone I like. But on this rainy night, I couldn’t pass up Ziegler’s invitation.
I would listen to Charlie Ziegler and maybe drink some sake, too. The windshield wipers on my old bucket of bolts could hardly keep up with the storm. Casuarina Concourse was deluged, the pavement and bay merging into one gray sheet of water. Next door to Ziegler’s manse, a house was under construction, a river of mud flowing from the site into the street. Some older houses in the neighborhood were Southern plantation style, all white pillars, circular driveways, and large porticos. Ziegler’s post-modern, silver-skinned monstrosity was too hip to have a portico, so I got soaked getting from the car to the front door.
“Thanks for coming.” Ziegler guided me inside. “C’mon. Let’s eat while we talk.”
Ziegler appeared relaxed in soft leather loafers without socks, canary blue slacks, and a knit short-sleeve shirt that had an expensive, Italian look. He said his wife was in Paris, a suite at George V, spending all his money and screwing the concierge.
On a monitor set into the wall, a videotape was playing. Four old men in tattered clothes were beating the crap out of one another with broom handles and garbage can lids. The logo on the screen read: “Bumzfight Revenge.” One of Reelz TV’s classy hits.
He led me into the bar, located in the high-ceilinged living room. Not a bar bar. A sushi bar, complete with bamboo mats, lacquered sake cups, and silk paintings of lotus flowers. Behind the bar was an attractive Asian woman in a white smock and red apron.
“Miyoshi’s the best itamae in Miami,” he said.
She nodded at me while slicing tuna with a Masamoto knife sharp enough to shave a cat’s whiskers without causing a meow. “I haven’t killed anyone yet.” She smiled.
“The night is young,” I replied.
I heard the clack of high heels on marble. The six-footer who called herself Angel Roxx walked into the room, tousling her platinum hair, looking as if she just woke up. Black stilettos, a skin-tight mini-skirt, a peekaboo sheer blouse, and nothing else, unless you count the silicone in those cantaloupes.
“Hi, big guy,” she said to me. “Still don’t want to play?”
“I’m off the team,” I said.
“Get dressed and go home,” Ziegler ordered.
“Charlie, it’s a fucking hurricane out there.” Pouting.
“Scram!”
Angel shot him the bird and clacked off.
Ziegler turned to the sushi chef. “Miyoshi, how about offering my guest a special treat?”
The chef grabbed a short knife with a porcelain blade and, with three brisk strokes, sharpened a wooden chopstick to a fine point. She jabbed the chopstick into a small aquarium, aiming for a plug-ugly five-inch-long fish that was minding its own business. She speared the little monster, which glowed red, as if it had just escaped a nuclear power plant.
“Scorpion fish,” Ziegler said, as the chef offered the little wriggler to me.
“No thanks,” I said. Raw is one thing, alive is another.
Ziegler sucked the creature into his mouth, swallowing it in one gulp. He cleared his throat and said, “I like to feel its heartbeat in my gullet on the way down.”
Message received.
You’re an alpha male who drives a Ferrari, fucks porn stars, and eats living creatures. You’ve got testosterone oozing out your pores.
Miyoshi cut slivers of tuna, then eel, then mackerel, before picking up the bamboo mat to make rolls with roe, natto, and the dreaded sea urchin. She had the hands of a concert pianist.
“Do you believe in redemption, Lassiter?” Ziegler asked.
“Depends on the sin.”
Ziegler grunted his agreement and dropped a slice of eel into his maw. “I’m trying to make things right. I’m not proud of the shit I did when I was young.”
Who is? I thought.
He poured sake for both of us, “This is a daiginjo from the Yamagata Prefecture, made from a pure breed of rice. It costs five hundred bucks a bottle.”
As if I give a shit.
“She was really something, wasn’t she, Lassiter?”
“What? Who?”
“Krista!”
“I knew her for about twelve hours.”
“That’s long enough.” He gave me a shit-eating grin. Maybe he wanted to bond over our banging the same girl.
“What’s your point, Ziegler?”
“Krista went straight to the top of the Lolita series, making serious bank. She was a natural in front of the camera. Totally comfortable from day one. Smart. Intuitive. If you showed her a position once, she could do it. Standing bridesmaid, dirty doggie, wheelbarrow, even triple penetrations. She could do them all. Even liked most of them.”
“That’s bullshit. I watched one of your videos. Krista looked lobotomized.”
“Bad day, is all. Trust me on this. She was into it. She could have been bigger than Jenna Jameson.”
I figured he was rationalizing. Reducing his own guilt by rewriting history. “I didn’t come here to discuss Krista’s acting skills. Just tell me what happened that night.”
He sipped the sake and said, “Miyoshi, why don’t you take a break?”
When she had left the room, Ziegler continued. “A couple months before she went missing, Krista started hanging out with a biker who called himself ‘Snake.’ ”
I already knew that from Sonia Majeski, but I kept quiet to see where Ziegler was going.
“Bastard got her hooked on crystal meth. Her first bump, that was it. I tried to keep her away from the guy, but he must have seemed exciting to her, while I was …”
“Old?”
“Yeah, to a seventeen-year-old, I was.”
“You’re saying she was with Snake the night she disappeared.”
“Like I told you before, she was on the set that day. While we were talking, Snake came by on his Harley. He’d been slamming crank. The cops had a warrant for him. Some probation violation. He said he had to leave town.”
“Krista left with him? That’s your story?”
“I told her not to go. Yelled at her, maybe even grabbed her a little too hard. Told her Snake would sell her for a handful of bennies or drive off a bridge somewhere. She wouldn’t listen.”
“She say where they were going?”
“California, like all the dreamers. When it was clear I couldn’t stop her, I gave her some cash plus the names of a couple guys in the business in the San Fernando Valley.”
I couldn’t help but think of myself, giving Krista a few hundred bucks and sending her back to Ziegler. I didn’t like the parallel.
“I told her to call when she got there,” Ziegler said, draining his sake and looking at me with forlorn eyes. “I never saw Krista or heard from her again. She never contacted my guys out there, either. I checked.”
I studied him a moment, using my bullshit detector. Figuring Ziegler lied so often, he was world class. “Why didn’t you tell the cops that Krista rode into the sunset with the biker?”
He refilled my cup with what I calculated to be about $85 worth of sake. “Anytime she wanted, Krista could have caused trouble for me. You’re gonna think I’m a dick for saying this …”
“Too late.”
“Last thing I wanted was for the two of them to get picked up somewhere with thirty pounds of crank in Snake’s saddlebags. They’d swing some deal, get immunity for nailing me. Statutory rape. Child porn. Racketeering. To be honest, Lassiter, it was in my interest for the two of them to disappear.”
The story was plausible, but most good lies are. “This Snake have a real name?”
“Aldrin, like the astronaut. Can’t remember his first name, but you can check with the Corrections Department. He’s the kind of guy who’s either in prison or in between prisons.”
Or dead, I thought. Along with whoever is foolish enough to hop on a bike with him and head west.
“Looking back now, I’ve got a lot of remorse,” Ziegler said, “and I’ve been thinking abo
ut how to make it right.”
“Yeah?”
“How about if I set up a missing persons fund? I’ll pay your client a hundred grand. She can do whatever she wants with it. Look for Aldrin. Take ads on craigslist. Or go back to Ohio and get on with her life.”
Buying redemption, I thought, just like his charitable contributions. Or just paying Amy to go away. Either way, he’d be off the hook.
Ziegler drained the last of the sake from the Yamagata Prefecture. “I’ll cover your legal fees, too. How does thirty grand sound?”
“Like a bribe, and not a very big one.”
“C’mon, Lassiter. I’m trying to help you both out.”
“You just want me off your ass.”
“You want my honest opinion?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
“I don’t know if Snake killed her or she O.D.’d or got hit by a truck outside Amarillo,” Ziegler said. “But if she’d gotten back into the business, I’d have heard about it. If she was broke and in trouble, she would have called me for help. If she was doing okay, at some point, she would have called her sister.”
“What you’re saying, there’s no use our searching for her.”
Ziegler looked off into space, and I could swear I saw tears welling. “The more I’ve thought about it, Lassiter, the more certain I’ve become. Krista’s dead. Has to be. But I swear to God I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
I studied him for a long moment. Maybe I’d lost my edge, but the son-of-a-bitch looked for all the world like a man telling the truth.
32 The Missing Client
I left Ziegler’s house around midnight. I wanted to tell Amy we had a lead on Snake Aldrin, so I risked waking her, but no answer. We hadn’t spoken since the cops hauled us away from the Grand Jury, and I was worried.
Where the hell is she?
The rain had stopped and the asphalt shimmered like polished obsidian in the glow of the streetlights. I banged the front door open and walked into my dark house. I heard snoring from Granny’s bedroom. Csonka lay on the living room tile, under a ceiling fan. He was snoring, too, hind legs twitching. Probably dreaming of chasing a lady bulldog through Bayfront Park.