Bum Rap (16 page)

“You’ve been looking for Nadia,” Victoria said. “Why?”

“Obviously not to harm her.”

“It’s not obvious to me,” I said. “She could still come back and rat you out to save her own hide.”

“I want to pay her, not kill her.”

“Hush money?”

“Going away money. For her and her young man.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you know where she is?”

I said yes just as Victoria said no.

Benny laughed, the sound of a small dog yipping. “Now you sound more like a married couple than ever.”

“So who’s telling the truth, Benny?” I asked. “Victoria or me?”

“Ms. Lord, of course. If you knew where Nadia was, you’d be there, not on my pool deck. Mr. Lassiter, you
meshugenah
shyster. You lied to extract more information; then you would have thrown me a bum steer. ‘She’s in San Diego.’ Or whatever popped into your head.”

The old bastard was still sharp
, I thought.
Best to remember that.

“If you find her, tell her I will give her half a million dollars,” Benny said. “No strings attached. She can go to Rio with her man or wherever they want. I don’t care. Just not back here where the feds could grab her. And for you two, a hundred thousand for your honeymoon.”

Victoria started to say something. Undoubtedly, a strong denial of any nuptials. I stifled her with a wave of my hand. “Thank you, Benny. We’ll let you know.”

“Tell her one more thing,” Benny said. “That I think of her every night as I fall asleep. With fondness in my heart.”

-40-

Whore’s Rules

V
ictoria was troubled. There was something about Benny Cohen that raised the hair on the back of her neck. His faux gentlemanly pose. His philosophy of love and loyalty. His personal story with Nadia.

“Are you buying all that lovey-dovey talk?” she asked Lassiter on the ride to his office.

“Obviously you are not.”

“I don’t take at face value the sweet words of old lechers who give diamonds to B-girls in return for sex, then claim to have fallen in love.”

“So you’re prejudiced against old lechers?”

“Plus the guy is a diamond smuggler.”

“That seems more relevant to me on credibility, but call that a guy reaction.”

Victoria stared out the windshield. The sky had turned gunmetal gray once more, but no new thunderstorms. Yet.

Without warning or preamble, Lassiter said, “Why does everybody think we’re a couple?”

Victoria kept her eyes straight ahead. “They don’t. They think
you
think we’re a couple.”

“Not the way I’m hearing it.”

“That was part of Benny’s act. To distract us. He’s a clever old fox.”

“I don’t know, Victoria. Maybe he sensed something between us.”

Not this again
, she thought. “Do I have to call another Code Yellow?”

“I’m not putting the moves on you. I’m just asking. It may help in my future relationships.”

“That’s different.” Victoria thought he sounded sincere and deserved a serious reply. “If you want relationship advice, I can help you. First, you might try dating an appropriate unattached woman.”

“You mean no more fleeing felons?”

“I’m being serious, Jake.”

“As for dating, I thought guys and girls just hung out these days playing video games and getting tattoos.”

“Not guys your age.”

“Ouch! Message received.”

“I’m glad. Some men, you swing a hammer at them, they think you’re into home improvement.”

“But as for that Code Yellow, last time we talked, you’d hoisted the flag for Code Green.”

“Damn it, Jake!” She couldn’t believe he’d gone there. They had both avoided any mention of that embarrassing night. “I gave you major points for being a true gentleman—”

“A real mensch, you mean.”

“But now when you bring it up—”

“By ‘it,’ you mean your shameless come-on?”

“You lose all your points along with your mensch-i-ness.”

That shut him up for a while. They picked up I-95 and headed for the I-395 flyover to the MacArthur. If traffic was light on the Causeway, they’d be in Lassiter’s law office in fifteen minutes.

“Back to your question about Benny’s bona fides
. . .
” Lassiter said.

Victoria was thankful to talk about the case.

“Suppose Benny really was in love with Nadia,” he continued. “Is it credible that he’s offering all that money and wishing her happy times with her true love?”

“You’re a man. What do you think?”

“ ‘All you need is love.’ Maybe that’s right for you and Solomon. Maybe even for me. But Benny’s not like us. He was full of crap about that. Lifetime criminals like Benny and the Gorev brothers are sociopaths. By definition, they don’t feel the give-and-take of human emotions.”

When Victoria didn’t respond, Jake shot a look at her. She was looking in the passenger wing mirror.

“What is it?” he said.

“There’s a gray Range Rover that’s been behind us all the way since Old Cutler.”

“Manuel Dominguez. Benny Cohen isn’t done with us yet.”

Victoria realized she was hungry on the stairs leading to Lassiter’s s
econd-floor office. Maybe that’s because she was inhaling the aroma of a piquant picadillo with garlic, sugar, and raisins coming from the Cuban restaurant on the first floor.

They settled into chairs on opposite sides of an old oak table in the mini–conference room. Lassiter said, “Let’s sum it up. What we know and what we don’t.”

“There’s a confrontation in Gorev’s office. Nadia demands her passport and back pay, but she uses some language about federal crimes that makes Gorev suspicious. He threatens her, making reference to a pit six hundred meters deep that we now know is the Mirny diamond mine in Siberia. He also mentions the jeweler, who we now know is Benny Cohen and is Gorev’s boss. Gorev accuses Nadia of telling the government about Aeroflot 100, which presumably is the flight she took to New York.”

She noticed Lassiter nodding his approval at her summary. They were working well together.

Lassiter took over from there. “Solomon tells the cops at the scene that Gorev pulled a gun and ordered them to strip to see if either one was wearing a wire. While Gorev is watching Solomon, Nadia slips Benny’s Glock out of her purse and fires the shot that kills Gorev. Then she robs the safe, inexplicably takes Gorev’s gun, and leaves by a back door, locking Solomon inside. Oh, she also tosses the murder weapon to Solomon, who panics and fires two more shots into the door when Gorev’s thugs try to break in. He’s got the murder weapon when the cops arrive.” Lassiter raised his eyebrows. “It is, if I may say so, one of the shittiest stories a client has ever told me.”

“Then, Steve told us to stop looking for Nadia,” Victoria said. “I couldn’t figure out why, but you did.”

“Because I don’t look at Solomon through the gauzy, soft focus of love.”

“You sensed Steve was admitting he lied to the cops. Nadia didn’t shoot Gorev. Steve did. At that time, we were still hoping Steve fired in self-defense because we were relying on his story about Gorev having a gun. Since then, Nadia told me on the phone that Gorev was unarmed. No Stand Your Ground. No self-defense.”

“Leaving us where, Vic?”

“Well, you think we’re stuck with the crazy story Steve told the cops.”

“Any change now, he’d be torn to shreds on cross based on his prior statements.”

From somewhere outside, a police siren wailed. From downstairs, the aroma of marinated meats and spicy sauces grew stronger. “I still think Steve should tell us the whole truth now,” Victoria said. “Even if it contradicts his first story, and even if it’s painful to me.”

“Then tell which story at trial? Like I said back in the jail, I don’t have many rules. But I won’t introduce testimony I know to be false. If Solomon tells us he’s the shooter, I can’t let him take the stand to say Nadia pulled the trigger.”

“I swear, Jake, the way you run roughshod over everything, I can’t believe you’re such a wuss on this.”

“Even a whore’s got rules. I do a lot of things, but I won’t lick ass.”

“God, you’re disgusting.”

“It’s a slippery slope, Victoria. Once you start using perjurious testimony, what’s next? Fabricating phony documents? Destroying evidence?”

“I can’t believe I’m being lectured on ethics by you.”

“And I can’t believe you’re fighting me on this, Vic. All I can think is that you’re too close to the case. Your personal stake overwhelms your usual good sense.”

“You had no problem when I lied to the cops about Elena’s cell phone.”

“Gray area. But this isn’t.”

“These lines you draw. So damn arbitrary.”

“But they’re
my
lines.”

Victoria was now, by equal measures, hungry and frustrated. So much for working well together. But then again, she and Steve always squabbled over strategy and ethics. Maybe this give-and-take would lead to the same kind of synergy she had with Steve in court.

Lassiter said, “There’s also the practical problem that the state has Solomon’s story at the scene on tape, which makes it ten times more powerful. He changes it now—even if the new story is true, which it isn’t—we’re dead when Pincher plays the tape and impeaches him with his own words.”

“So in Lassiter’s world, it’s ethical to win with perjured testimony as long as your client hasn’t told you it’s perjurious.”

“Of such microscopic distinctions our law is made. Now, keep going. What else do we know?”

“The federal government will give away the store to convict Benny Cohen of something. If Steve lies to make a murder conspiracy case, he’s looking at less than seven years in prison. And Mr. Ethics—that’s you—doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.”

“Technically, Solomon hasn’t told me the murder-for-hire story is false.”

She sighed in exasperation. “We know Benny Cohen gave Nadia the murder weapon, but because we can’t believe a word he says, we don’t know if he told her to
kill Gorev. We also don’t know if he wants to throw her a wedding shower or kill her.”

“What else?” Lassiter said.

“In my one phone conversation with Nadia, she said, and I’m quoting here, ‘I know what your man told the police. It did not happen that way.’ But she never told me precisely what did happen. She admitted she brought the gun but implied that Steve fired it, which is pretty damn confusing. How did the gun get from her purse to Steve’s hands?”

“So it all comes back to Nadia,” Lassiter said. “The missing brick in our wall.”

They were both quiet a moment. Then Victoria said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

“Let’s hear it, kiddo.”

Before she could answer, there was a knock at the door. A waitress from Havana Banana downstairs.

“Lourdes!” Lassiter greeted her. “Please thank Jorge for his kindness.”

She smiled and served them a steaming platter of lechoncita, shredded roast pork with onions and a mojo sauce. And another platter of chicken tarimango, grilled chicken breasts with mango and a tamarind sauce. The sides were black beans and rice. A flan and a tres leches cake for dessert. Oh, and for starters, four—not two—icy mojitos with white rum and fresh mint leaves.

Lassiter tipped Lourdes, who retreated down the stairs, and they sipped at the mojitos.

“You were saying . . .” Lassiter said.

“You’ve changed your mind. Now you want Nadia.”

“Just to talk to her. Don’t ask her to come to Miami. First, because it’s too dangerous for her. And second, if Pincher drags her to court and she says what he wants, it’s the nail in the coffin for our case.”

“When we spoke, she told me not to call her again and hung up on me.”

“I’m not talking about a phone call. We need a face-to-face with Nadia, and by ‘we,’ I mean you.”

“You mean just knock on her door and say hello?”

They started eating. Sharing plates. Just as she did with Steve, Victoria thought. Lassiter’s pork was spicy, her chicken sweet. It was a nice combination. The first mojito had gone down quickly.

“Can you find her, Vic?”

“I don’t know. Do you have the discovery I wanted from Anastasia?”

“Just came in yesterday.” Lassiter pointed to a pile of cardboard boxes in the corner of the little conference room. “Every credit card receipt, charge-back, letters from angry customers, notices from the Better Business Bureau, the zoning department, Noise Abatement Office, and electricity and water bills for the last year.”

“Have you gone through it?” she asked.

“Hell, no. You’re second chair. That’s your job.”

Victoria wondered if that was the reason, or was it because she was a woman and the task was so damn clerical in nature. “Nadia told me she’s staying with her boyfriend. She wouldn’t say where but indicated it was far from Miami. She said he came to a food products convention on the Beach about three months ago. He spent fifty-three hundred dollars in one night. Nadia got access to the credit card terminal at the club and reversed the charge. If all the records are there, I can find the charge and the credit, and we’ll have the boyfriend’s name, if nothing else.”

“That’s a start.”

“And if we find Nadia, just how do I get her to talk to me?”

“What does she want?”

Victoria thought about it a moment. It was a complex question but perhaps with a simple answer. “To live in peace and harmony with the man she loves.”

“What do you want?”

Victoria smiled just a bit. “The same. With Steve.”

“What’s keeping Nadia from her goal?”

“Fear. The feds want to subpoena her. Alex Gorev wants to kill her. Benny . . . well, we don’t know what Benny wants.”

“What’s keeping you and Solomon apart?”

“The so-called justice system, as you like to put it.”

“So you and Nadia have a lot in common. And while you’re talking, figure out if there’s anything she can say that’s helpful to us or can lead us to something helpful. Because if not, Solomon is gonna take that plea. He’ll set up Benny Cohen on a phony murder charge and take his own felony conviction. He’ll be disbarred, and even though he’ll serve less than seven years, he’ll come out a different man. It’ll be like he’s been in a coma all those years and never fully recovered. Neither his life nor yours will ever be the same.”

Lassiter had drained his first mojito and took a long pull on the second one. “And goddamn it, Victoria, I will do everything in my power to keep that from happening. If there’s any way to win this case, we’re gonna do it. Together. And you two can have that peaceful life.”

Victoria’s eyes welled with tears. Despite their bickering, she felt a growing bond with Lassiter. A swirl of emotions she would not express because he would misinterpret them. She was deeply in love with Steve. At the same time, she felt a stirring warmth for Lassiter, a good man, sturdy as an oak. If not for her love for Steve, this was a man she could . . .