Lassiter 03 - False Dawn (19 page)

She huffed off, clutching a book to her breasts, and Charlie puffed on, oblivious, still thinking about homicidal apes and the brevity of life, I supposed.

“Hey, Charlie. We can’t solve mankind’s problems. Let’s just figure out who murdered Francisco Crespo.”

The old wizard’s eyes cleared. “
Cui bono
? Who stands to gain?”

“Somebody who couldn’t let him reveal who ran that forklift through Smorodinsky, and why.”

“And what is there that links Crespo and Smorodinsky?”

I walked through it. “Both men worked for Yagamata, a guy who likes Russia and collects priceless art. Crespo attacked Smorodinsky, but somebody else finished him off. Somebody killed Crespo using a fairly ridiculous Russian method of silencing the gunshot. A lady P.I. with black hair and molten eyes offers her help and her body without the usual preliminaries …”

Charlie raised his bushy eyebrows. “
Mores
,” he sighed, shaking his head.

I’m not the kind of guy to kiss and tell, but in retrospect the loving of Lourdes seemed more business than pleasure. “The P.I.’s father is Severo Soto, who also employed Crespo and happens to be a Russia-hater. So Crespo is linked to both Yagamata and Soto.”

Charlie beamed. When a student passes his oral exams, the teacher is pleased. “What conclusions have you reached?”

“None yet. You’re the one who taught me not to jump too fast. The wise man keeps his trap shut, et cetera, et cetera.”

He nodded happily, and I kept thumbing through the book of French paintings when I stopped at two naked men on a lawn. The same green, the same muscular build with few facial characteristics. The men were rolling balls across the grass. “Charlie, there’s something about this one. It’s the same artist, I’m sure.”

“
A Game of Bowls
by Henri Matisse,” he said. “Part of the French collection at the Hermitage.”

I scanned the next few pages. Some nudes, a red room, a blue tablecloth, a bouquet of bright flowers. All by Matisse. And then there it was. The man, oversize hands extended, reaching toward the naked woman who tried, futilely, to crawl away.

“
Satyr and Nymph
,” Charlie Riggs said, studying the page.

“Russia and Cuba,” I told him.

C
harlie ordered his hog snapper broiled and well done. I chose yellowtail sautéed with a mess of onions and green peppers. We were at Tugboat Willie’s on the Rickenbacker Causeway, halfway between the city and Key Biscayne. The fish was fresh, the beer cold, and a breeze riffled the palm trees as we sat on the front porch, the sun a forest fire setting in the west.

“We could tell Socolow,” I suggested weakly, hoping Charlie would veto the idea.

“Tell him what?”

“What we know from our research.”

“Which is what?”

I had drained my first beer and was working on the second. “The artwork, Charlie. Matsuo Yagamata shows off a gold choo-choo train inside an egg that’s supposed to be in a Moscow museum. It’s probably worth more than two million, based on the sale of the Pine Cone Egg for a million eight at Christie’s in Geneva a couple of years ago, and the train is funkier. Then there’s Severo Soto, one of our town’s most famed anticommunists. He keeps a priceless painting by Matisse in his study. Only problem, the painting is owned by the Russians and, last time anyone checked, it was in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. Francisco Crespo, whose idea of jewelry is a Timex watch, dies holding a miniature gold rabbit, which you say was made by the same artist who made Yagamata’s egg—”

“Carl Fabergé.”

“And was worn as a pendant by an empress …”

I reached for one of the books Charlie had checked out of the library. He had marked the page. There was a photo of a small gold bunny holding an egg made of flecked aventurine. It was an Easter gift to Empress Alexandra in 1913. I was convinced that Crespo was not the empress’s distant cousin to whom the bunny would have passed.

“So what does it all mean to you?” Charlie asked patiently.

“It’s confusing. All this Russia stuff. Two men dead. Famous art popping up all over. I don’t know. It doesn’t add up.”

Charlie sipped at a glass of wine. For the occasion, he had chosen something white, light, and French, believing, I supposed, that Matisse had joined us at the table. Between sips, he dug into his dried-out fish and asked, “Who’s in charge of the Crespo investigation?”

“Socolow. You know that.”

“Then, who was the gentleman in the trailer to whom Socolow showed such deference?”

I love Charlie, but he can be a pain. Never comes right out and tells you anything. Always a bunch of questions, dragging it out of you. “I don’t know. He gave me his card.” I fumbled inside my wallet and found it. “Foley. He’s from out of town.”

Charlie raised his chin, scratched his beard, and peered at me through the bottoms of his bifocals. I answered the question that wasn’t asked. “You’re right. We ought to find out who he is.”

Tugboat Willie’s is not the kind of place to whip out a cellular phone at your table. It would interfere with the banjo music and peg you as an insufferable yuppie. I got up from the table, skillfully avoided two stray cats that hang around the porch, and made my way to the pay phone by the kitchen. I was greeted by steamy garlic smells and the clatter of pans. I studied the card again. Printed, not embossed. Black ink on white paper. Nothing fancy:

ROBERT T. FOLEY (703) 482-1100

It was after six o’clock. If it was an office, I might get the answering service. I dialed the number, putting the charge on a credit card. Where the hell was 703 anyway?

“Good evening,” the sweet-voiced lady said. “Central Intelligence Agency.”

I
spent all day Monday interviewing new clients, but my heart wasn’t in it. Some lawyers are great at bringing in business. Schmoozers and self-promoters, they are our rainmakers. They have an ability to terrify and mollify clients in the same conversation. First, in somber tones, they magnify the gravity of the harm if expert legal counsel is not immediately retained in this most complex and perilous of legal matters. Then they confidently explain how Harman & Fox recently extricated another wretched soul from a similar predicament, and for a small fortune, could work the miracle once again.

A good lawyer is part con man, part priest—promising riches, threatening hell. The rainmakers are the best paid among us and have coined a remarkably candid phrase:
We eat what we kill.
Hey, they don’t call us sharks for our ability to swim.

Bringing in business is not my strong suit. I have a small network of jailbirds, hospital interns, and bail bondsmen who send cases my way, but generally, I work for the firm’s clients. Like Atlantic Seaboard Warehouse and the legal problems therein. This morning, though, I was making a halfhearted attempt to build my own practice. Joaquin Evangelista, an ex-client who took a fall for grand larceny—parrot theft—had referred a young couple to me about a civil suit. A nice favor from a guy who was doing time, but Joaquin didn’t blame me for losing the case.

After putting my virtuous client on the stand to swear that he’d never seen any cockamamie cockatoo, the prosecutor brought the bird into the courtroom for rebuttal. “Hello, Joaquin Evangelista,” the feathered witness announced brightly.

Today I was staring out the window at a foamy three-foot chop curling across the reef at Virginia Key and pretending to take notes as Sheldon and Marilyn Berger told me they wanted to sue their rabbi. Sheldon owned a pet store, which probably explained how he knew Evangelista, who called himself an aviary consultant, rather than a bird thief. Sheldon was in his early thirties and had dark hair in that trendy short, brush look. He wore cordovan loafers with no socks, white slacks, a polo shirt, and a blue sport coat. Marilyn Berger, his bride of seven weeks, had streaked blond hair done in the wrinkled look. She let a cigarette dangle from the corner of her mouth, but she didn’t remind me of Lauren Bacall. I watched the cigarette flap up and down as she told me the story. As I listened, I drew two stick figures, a man and a woman, on my yellow pad.

“The
schlepp
was an hour and a quarter late for the wedding,” Marilyn explained. “It was 5000 embarrassing. I mean all our friends were just wondering, like was Shelly getting cold feet.”

“I was getting drunk,” Sheldon said with a sly smile.

“So were half the guests,” his bride chimed in. “Daddy calculated that, at the prices the country club charged, the rabbi cost us an extra five hundred twelve dollars in liquor.”

“Plus the band’s overtime,” Sheldon reminded her.

“Of course, darling.” She patted his arm as you might a puppy. “The band had to stay an hour longer. Another three fifty.”

I drew a picture of a Beretta nine-millimeter semiautomatic. “Why was the rabbi late?”

Marilyn leaned forward in her chair as if to share a secret. “He says we told him two o’clock, but I know we said one, because I told Sheldon to tell him one. If you ask me, the rabbi had another wedding at one. He just stacked us up, like the gynecologist.”

I managed to draw fifteen miniature bullets streaking from the gun barrel toward the man and woman. “Anything else?” I asked. “Any other damages besides the liquor bill and the band?”

Marilyn looked at Sheldon and exhaled a gray stream of smoke into his face. “Well, of course, it gave me a case of stress and severe mental anguish,” she said.

“Of course,” I said sympathetically.

Marilyn leaned toward me again. “I’ve read that stress can cause everything from wrinkles to bad breath.”

“You don’t have wrinkles,” I said.

Sheldon was fidgeting, crossing and uncrossing his legs. “It practically ruined the honeymoon.”

“Cancun,” Marilyn said.

I scribbled some more, drawing sombreros on each of the bullet-riddled stick figures. “Did you get off?” I asked Marilyn.

“What?”

“Your wedding night? Didja come?”

The color drained from her face. Her mouth dropped open. The cigarette stuck to her lower lip. Bright red lipstick covered the top of the filter.

“I see this as a lost consortium case,” I announced gravely. “Now, if you couldn’t get off on your wedding night, or if Shelly here was so bummed out he couldn’t get it up, I see some big bucks.”

Sheldon grabbed both of his wife’s hands. “Honey, that’s what it might have been… .” She dipped a shoulder and shook him off like O. J. Simpson shedding a tackier.

“We’ll get the best expert witnesses,” I continued. “Now if we’re talking the whole honeymoon, or better yet, continuing to this very day, we’ll get you into therapy, counseling, sex surrogates.”

“Sex surrogates?” Marilyn Berger cried out, crushing her cigarette in a Miami Dolphins commemorative plate, circa 1973.

“Sex surrogates,” Sheldon repeated, hitting a high note, nodding in my direction. Here was a man who understood the legal process.

“You didn’t videotape, by any chance?” I asked.

“The ceremony?” Marilyn asked, still dazed.

“No, the honeymoon, if you get my drift. A lot of newlyweds these days get a camcorder as a gift and find a real quick use for it. But not too quick, eh, Shelly?”

Marilyn Berger was straightening her dress and shooting sideways glances at her husband. “Darling, I think we should leave now.”

He seemed to want to discuss the case further, but he stood up a split second after his bride.

“Sheldon,” I said, pointing at him, “you might want to keep a bedroom scorecard if you’re serious about this.”

“Scorecard?”

“Balls, strikes, errors, that sort of thing.”

“Sheldon!”
she commanded, and he followed her out the door.

I
could have used the work, but I prefer cases that I believe in. Best is to have a client you like, a cause that is just, and a check that doesn’t bounce. Two out of three and you’re ahead of the game. There are a lot of frivolous suits these days, and I didn’t need to add to the bunch. I used to think that the courthouse was the little guy’s haven, the place where the multinational corporation stood on the same footing with Joe the shrimp fisherman. In the past, lawsuits have righted some wrongs. Product safety, civil rights, and consumer protection cases have all expanded individuals’ rights. But the pendulum has swung the other way. An inmate who killed five people including his two children sued the state for denying him rehabilitation after lightning knocked out the satellite dish that carried public television. He claimed the programs on commercial channels were too violent. Then there was the man who sued his father for failing to attend his grandson’s communion. He asked for one hundred million dollars for anxiety and depression. Parents whose seventh-grader came in second in a school spelling bee sued, claiming she had correctly spelled horsy, or is it horsey? And, in the time-is-of-the-essence department, concertgoers sued Latin heartthrob Julio Iglesias, claiming he was two hours late taking the stage. Maybe Julio and the rabbi were having drinks together.

The courts are not equipped to handle all of society’s problems. They have enough trouble with a simple breach of contract to sell a hundred widgets from the Acme Corporation to the Zebra Company. So when I have a choice, I try not to add to the mountain of silly suits. Besides, today, I had a dinner date.

I
was dipping the crunchy Italian bread into the olive oil when he sat down, drew a vinyl notepad and a ballpoint pen from his suit pocket, and started talking.

“Do you have it with you?” Robert T. Foley asked.

“The antipasto is very nice,” I answered. “I’m particularly fond of the cold eggplant.”

“Where is the rabbit?”

“The veal porcini, too, and the pasta is very good. But no rabbit on the menu.”

“Don’t jerk me around, Lassiter. Where is it?”

I laughed and took a bite of the oiled bread. Foley removed his wire-framed glasses and cleaned them on the napkin. He was still wearing the gray suit, or its twin brother. Maybe they’re standard issue for federal agencies. He was in his late forties and looked in shape, a lean body and a creased, outdoorsy face. He stared hard at me. “The rabbit,” he repeated.