Lassiter 06 - Fool Me Twice (11 page)

“
Thank you,” I said,
nodding to Dr. Kornblum for a job well done.

The state had no questions, and my witness
stepped down and took a seat in the front row of the gallery. I
could have called Kip to testify, but after his earlier outburst, I
didn’t think I could trust him. Besides, Kornblum had done the job.
I wouldn’t have to pay him for his services, but I would defend him
gratis on his pending DUI charge.

I told the judge the defense rested, and
that set T. Bone to mashing his knuckles into his forehead.
“Counselor, Ah just don’t follow all that psychological mumbo
jumbo. You’re saying the movies made him do it.”

“
Not exactly, Your Honor.
The deprivation of the movie unleashed his anger at earlier
abandonments.”

“
Well, we can’t have him
painting up the town every time they change the double feature at
the mall, can we?”

It is difficult to respond to a complete non
sequitur, so I didn’t try.

“
Jake,” the judge said, his
face lighting up with an idea, “do you mind if Ah ask the lad a
question?”

I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t the question that
worried me, but the answer. Besides, I wanted to give my closing
argument, telling the judge how graffiti has been around since
ancient Rome. But all I said was, “Go ahead, Your Honor.”

“
Son,” the judge asked,
looking at Kip, “do you remember having done this terrible
act?”

“
I remember every detail,”
Kip said. “The Germans wore gray. You wore blue ...”

“
Your Honor, that’s
from
Casablanca!
”
I bellowed.

“
...and orange,” Kip
continued, looking at the judge’s two-tone robes.

“
Judge Coleridge,” I said,
intending to filibuster, just to keep the kid quiet, “it’s apparent
Dr. Kornblum is correct. The child is bewildered by life and
confused by the movies. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.
He’s—”

“
Clam up, Jake! Now, son,
look me in the eye. Help me out here, ‘cause Ah don’t know what to
do with you. Ah could put you on home detention or in community
control. Ah could put you in the Crossroads program or in intensive
control. Ah could enroll you in the marine institute or maybe the
alternative assistance program. Lord knows, we got more programs
than a dog’s got fleas.”

Kip just stood there, a faint smile on his
face.

“
Son, do you have anything
to say to the court?”

Oh no.

“
Yeah, Judge. Are you
eating a tomato or is that your nose?

The few spectators, mostly distraught
parents, laughed. My eyes pleaded with Kip for a credit line.

“
Charlie McCarthy to W. C.
Fields in
You Can’t Cheat an Honest
Man
,” he said.

“
You see, Your Honor!” I
shouted, stepping in front of Kip, as if to shield him from harm.
“He can’t help it. These words just keep popping out.”

Judge T. Bone Coleridge rolled his eyes
toward the ceiling, then spun around in his high-backed chair. When
he spoke, it was to the wall behind him. “The question for the
court is, should this boy be in Youth Hall, where he can learn some
discipline and maybe get therapy from left-wing, pot-smoking
county-payrolled, thumb-sucking shrinks, or should he be on the
streets?”

“
Someday,” Kip piped up
from behind me, “a real rain will come and wash all this scum off
the streets.”

“
What’d you say?” the judge
demanded, spinning his chair back toward his
supplicants.

“
All the animals come out
at night,” Kip said, a faraway look in his eyes. “Whores, skunk
pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies.”

“
Your Honor,” I leapt in.
“I’m sure there’s an explanation.” I looked at Kip, who rewarded me
with a maniacal grin.

“
DeNiro in
Taxi Driver
,” he
said.

“
Of course it is!” I
shouted triumphantly to the judge, as if Kip had just revealed a
major discovery in theoretical physics.

“
Skunk pussies?” the judge
said, shaking his head.

Thankfully, Kip didn’t elaborate. The judge
asked if I had anything more to present before he announced his
ruling. I declined, and Kip started to say something. I tried to
clamp my hand over his mouth, but he wriggled away from me. “Just
one thing, Judge. My lawyer’s my uncle. He’s my uncle Jake.”

“
What movie’s that from?”
T. Bone Coleridge asked, wearily.

“
None,” I admitted. “It’s
true. Sylvester Houston Conklin is my nephew, my half sister’s
son.”

“
Why’nt you say so, first
thing, Jake?” the judge demanded. “Hell’s bells, where’s that
low-rent shrink of yours?”

“
Right here,” Dr. Kornblum
called out from the gallery, knowing when his number had been
called.

“
Did Ah hear you say
something about this boy needing a strong male figure, someone to
look up to?”

“
Exactly, in lieu of a
father, he needs ...”

I knew where this was going, and so did Kip.
He was grinning, but I wasn’t.

“
Your Honor,” I said, “if
you’re thinking that I—”

“
Don’t tell me what Ah’m
thinking. Ah’ll tell you, Jake. It’s like this. It’s either Youth
Hall or your house. You heard it yourself, from your very own
witness. Ah’m remanding the boy to your custody. You’re blood kin,
after all. You’ll file monthly reports, and if there’s any problem,
you’ll both be back in here.” T. Bone cleared his throat, the sound
of a shovel digging into gravel, and turned to the young miscreant.
“How ‘bout it, son? You want to bunk with your uncle
Jake?”

“
Sure, Judge,” Kip
responded. “It’s like living at the Bates Motel.”

“
Then it’s a done deal.
Now, we’ve got to find a way to keep you out of trouble. You got
any hobbies, besides all that movie watchin’?”

Kip shook his head

“
Well, how would you like
to play some Pee Wee League football? Your uncle can show you a
thing or two.”

No again.

“
What do you want to do,
son?”

“
Make movies,” Kip
said.

T. Bone thought about it a second, then
turned to me. “Buy the boy one of those video cameras, and turn him
loose. In my day, a boy was rotten, we locked him up and strapped
him. Now, we try to let him express himself. Who knows, maybe
this’ll work. Strappin’ never did. Maybe the rapscallion will turn
out to be one of your Hollywood moguls.”

The judge gave himself a satisfied look.
Then he banged his gavel, declared a recess and bolted through the
rear door to his chambers, blue and orange robes flapping behind
him.

Now what? I hadn’t gotten the hang of being
an uncle, and I was going to be a father. I looked down at Kip,
confused and embarrassed. He had heard me try to weasel out of
taking responsibility for him. He was biting his lip.

“
Kip. It’s not that I don’t
want you around. It’s just that—”

“
It’s okay, Uncle Jake.
Never apologize and never explain. It’s a sign of
weakness.”

I didn’t ask, but he told me anyway.

“
John Wayne,” Kip said,
taking my hand and lacing his fingers through mine.

Chapter 8

Motive, Opportunity and
Means

After court, or
après cour
, as one of my
worldly partners insists on saying, I was back in the office, not
answering my mail, when Abe Socolow called on my direct line. He
barked out his usual greeting, which consisted of my last name in
an accusing tone, then told me to get my ass over to Blinky
Baroso’s apartment. I told him I’d do better than that: I’d bring
all of me.

So I abandoned my stacks of opposing
lawyers’ testy correspondence that begged for even more obnoxious
responses. It is a game we play, scrivening abusive letters,
insulting the other’s client in increasingly harsh terms until one
or the other files suit. Once, in a petty dispute over a property
line, H. T. Patterson wrote a twelve-page letter, accusing my
client of everything from deceit, deception, and duplicity to being
on the grassy knoll in Dallas. Pressed for time, I responded
simply, “Fuck you; strong reply to follow.” As Goethe said, or was
it Shula, “When ideas fail, words come in very handy.”

Before leaving, I checked
on Kip who was installed in the conference room, a splendid place
of dark wood, tinted glass and marble, all paid for by grateful, or
at least, intimidated clients. Word had gotten back to me that the
lad had been videotaping all the female employees in the office,
telling them he was the casting director for
Porky’s IV
. No one seemed to mind
until he asked the receptionist to take off her blouse for her
audition. So I grounded him for the day, which he didn’t seem to
mind, inasmuch as television came with the punishment.

My secretary, Cindy, and two young female
paralegals were making a fuss over my ward, who sat in one of the
leather swivel chairs, sneakers propped on the marble slab of a
conference table, watching a black-and-white movie on the TV
tastefully recessed into a teak wall unit. The women were feeding
him doughnuts and sodas from the office kitchen and cooing about
his blond hair and blue eyes.

“
This nephew of yours is
the sweetest little thing,” said Cindy, who, like her boss, will do
anything to avoid sitting at her desk. “He’s going to be a real
lady killer.”

“
James Cagney, 1933,” the
kid said, his mouth covered with powdered sugar.

“
Huh?” Cindy looked
confused. It was not an entirely unfamiliar expression. She’d been
my secretary back in the P.D.’s office and was a tad unconventional
for a downtown law firm with offices thirty-two stories above
Biscayne Bay. She wore miniskirts and orange lipstick and had
three-inch fingernails painted different colors with sparkles
embedded in the polish. Her typing sounded like a chef chopping
vegetables at a Japanese steak house.

“
Look, Cindy, I gotta go.
If it’s not too much trouble, how ‘bout typing some pleadings this
afternoon? I’ll be back later for
Little
Lord Fauntleroy
.”

“
Freddie Bartholomew,” Kip
said, without taking his eyes from the set. “Ricky Schroder in the
TV remake.”

***

The Olds was right where I left it, which is
always a fifty-fifty proposition in a county where a hundred cars
are stolen each day. Some are stripped for parts, some are taken by
freighter for sale in the islands, and some turn up, repainted, as
local taxicabs. I had parked next to a powder blue SL 300, the
Mercedes convertible. My lead gas—guzzling monster made the little
German car look feminine and petite.

I eased out of the parking garage and onto
Biscayne Boulevard. It’s our showcase downtown street, running
along the bay. There’s a wide median with towering palm trees where
hookers, muggers, and transvestites gather, though they’re
generally shooed out of there just before the Orange Bowl Parade.
The boulevard intersects with Flagler Street, which runs due west
past the county courthouse and provides an entertaining walk among
street peddlers, panhandlers, and tourists chattering in a dozen
languages, none of them English.

Today, I had a short drive
north past Bayfront Park, where the multimillion-dollar Claude and
Mildred Pepper Fountain sits idle and dry because the city can’t
pay for the electricity to run it. Just past the park is Bayside,
an outdoor mall of T-shirt shops and rum-punch booths. On the west
side of the boulevard used to be the Coppertone sign with the dog
pulling down the little girl’s swimsuit. It’s gone, now, along with
the old library they knocked down to redo the park. Gone too are
the Columbus and McAllister hotels that were bought by some Saudis,
then flattened, and a few other local institutions,
including The Miami News
,
Eastern Airlines, and Pan Am. Things change, but seldom for the
better.

In four minutes I was on the Venetian
Causeway, the bridge across the man-made islands to Miami Beach.
Blinky lived on the first island past the tollgate in one of those
step-back high rises that looks like a pre-Columbian pyramid. I had
been there before, but never with a police escort. Two uniformed
Miami cops were in the lobby. Another stood by the elevator and
pushed number ten for me. Yet another opened the door to the
apartment and ushered me inside.

The apartment was done in white and black.
White walls with postmodern paintings, white marble floor, black
furniture. Blinky was smart enough not to decorate it himself, or
it would have tended toward heavy red velvet.

Abe Socolow and his buddy, the Anglo
homicide detective, were sitting on a black leather sofa in the
living room. Through an open sliding glass door, I saw a woman
standing on the balcony, her back to me. I recognized the long,
dark hair and angular frame of Josefina Jovita Baroso.

No one was talking. They had been here for a
while. It gave off the feel of a homicide scene, and I was sure I’d
be ushered into another room for a gander at Blinky’s body. The
air-conditioning was turned up high, and I shivered in my
seersucker suit. Cops sometimes try to chill down homicide scenes.
They’re not immune to the smells any more than the rest of us. But
I didn’t detect the sticky-sweet scent of fresh blood or the rot of
decaying flesh, and Blinky, I remembered, kept his thermostat at
sixty, lest he sweat through his silk undershorts.