Bum Rap (9 page)

“And you’re not about to change the system. Is that your point?”

“Not tonight. I’m too damn tired.”

“Then good luck, Jake. And
vaya con Dios
. To you and your client.”

“That’s the other thing, George. Solomon didn’t hire me to do justice. He hired me to win.”

-19-

The Other B-Girl

F
iv
e minutes after the cops dropped me at my car, I headed north on Alton Road, pulling into an all-night gas station. Traffic in the southbound lane was gridlocked all the way from Fifth Street to Lincoln Road, thanks to the DUI checkpoint on
the MacArthur Causeway and the construction on Alton. The city had torn up the street to install a water drainage system. It was about time. When a full moon coincides with high tide, the stores haul out the sandbags, and you could surf down the street. G
lobal warming and rising seas are causing Miami Beach—equal parts mangrove, barrier island, sandbar, and man-made fill—t
o sink into the ocean.

Horns were blaring and drivers—drunk and sober—were pissed off. Some stood outside their cars, yelling at each other or just cursing at nothing in particular.

I parked next to the air hose machine and kept the car running, just for the AC. I grabbed my cell from the glove compartment and called the number on the Club Anastasia napkin.

“Allo?”

“It’s Lassiter. Can you talk?”

“Da.”

“You’re the blonde, right?”

“Elena Turcina. Friend of Nadia.”

“You know where she is, don’t you?”

“
Da.
She is a good person. Sweet. Maybe too—what is the word?—naive.”

“Will you tell me where she is?”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“I have a feeling she’s in big trouble with the federal government.”

“She told me that, yes.”

“I know people in the US Attorney’s office. I can help.”

That was at least half true. I knew people. But I left out the part that the US Attorney, his assistants, and his investigators pretty much hated me. The FBI and US Marshals Service weren’t crazy about me, either. That’s what happens when you win a case or two in federal court. The feds are zealots, and they’re not happy winning 97 percent of their trials. So, if you happen to nail them with an illegal search and seizure and get the evidence suppressed, they treat you like a public enemy. I know one guy in the Justice Department who, if he could, would order a drone strike on my little coral rock house just as I walked outside to get the morning paper.

Sure, I would help Nadia, if I could. But what I really wanted was for her to help Solomon.

“I will meet you in one hour,” Elena said.

“Where?”

“Not on the Beach. Do you know the Russian Orthodox Church?”

I’d been thinking an all-night diner, but church was fine.

“I can find it.”

“Saint Vladimir’s. Just off Flagler Street. There we can talk.”

“One hour,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

Yes!
This was the best news since I’d agreed to represent Solomon. Nadia held the key to his acquittal. Elena had access to the key. I was going to church and m
aybe I’d even say a little prayer and a “thank you” to the Big Guy.

I pulled out of the gas station and headed north on Alton. Smart guys stuck on the other side of the street were pulling U-turns and heading for the Venetian Causeway, which crosses several man-made islands on the way to the mainland. The Venetian is pocked with dangerous potholes, but when it’s not closed for repairs, it will bring you out on Fifteenth Street next to what used to be the
Miami Herald
. That bayside building—like so much in Miami—has recently been torn down. The newspaper, to the extent it continues to exist, is now located somewhere on the edge of the Everglades.

Problem was, the backup on the MacArthur caused the Venetian to be clogged, too, so I headed farther north on Alton, passing the golf course and hanging a left onto the Julia Tuttle Causeway. I noticed a gray Range Rover behi
nd me. There’d been one two pumps over at the gas station. It probably meant nothing—a lot of Range Rovers in Miami—but I kept an eye on my rearview mirror.

Traffic was blessedly clear on the Julia Tuttle. Sailing over Biscayne Bay, I dialed a number on my cell that I now knew by heart. I was calling Victoria Lord.

-20-

Lassiter, Solomon & Lord

V
ictoria simply could not fall asleep.

She’d been lying there all night. Fearful. For Jake.

He was out there somewhere in the dark, trying to scam the Bar girls, who were maybe the best scammers on the planet. Likely, he would come up empty. Or he could somehow make things worse. She was worried about the case but even more worried about Jake. What would happen to him if he got inside Club Anastasia and started shooting off his big mouth?

Jake had a ton of confidence in himself, but she wondered if he fully appreciated just how dangerous Russian mobsters were. Obviously, Steve hadn’t.

I was right when I said the two of them didn’t know how alike they are.

Maybe when this was over, if it ended well, the three of them could hang out together. Get grilled snapper sandwiches at Scotty’s Landing on the bay before they tore the old fish joint down to build another shopping center. Maybe even team up to try a case together, if it was big enough and the money wasn’t too thin. Wouldn’t that be something?

Lassiter, Solomon & Lord.

Wouldn’t look bad on a shingle, either. Steve would have to get used to second billing, but Jake had seniority.

With those thoughts, she drifted off to sleep. Dreaming. A sweet, sexy dream. A Caribbean island, hotel room on the beach, windows open, breeze swirling diaphanous curtains across the bed. Locked in passionate, rhythmic lovemaking with Steve. Her breaths coming faster, harder, feeling that hot stirring below.

The ringing phone jolted her awake with a startling revelation.

The dream!

It wasn’t Steve. It was Jake.

Lassiter! Oh God.

Well, it meant nothing, she told herself. Just the brain playing nighttime tricks.

The LED lights on the night stand clock read 4:12 a.m.

The phone was still ringing. When she finally answered, she heard Lassiter’s voice, a bit slurred, “Howdy, pardner.”

“Jake, where are you? What’s happened?”

“I’m on the Tuttle, headed toward the mainland. Do you know how beautiful the city looks at night?”

“Jesus, have you been drinking?”

“All those buildings on the bay, the lights twinkling like Christmas trees. And the downtown office skyscrapers. I wouldn’t want to work there, but there’s something so peaceful at night.”

“How
much
have you been drinking?”

“There’s no traffic. I’ll be at your place in fifteen minutes.”

“Why?”

“Are you dressed?”

“It’s four in the morning! I’m in my Victoria’s Secrets.”

“Make that ten minutes.”

“C’mon, Jake. What’s happened?”

“I need a woman.”

“Go home!”

“No, not for that. Well, for that, too. But I need help with one of the B-girls, and you’ve got that feminine thing.”

“What thing?”

“You know. That empathy shit.”

“And you have such a way with words.”

“Elena. That’s the B-girl. She doesn’t entirely trust me, so we’ll tag team her. Good cop, bad cop. You’re the good cop, by the way.”

“No kidding.”

“Okay, I’m almost at the I-95 flyover, and I’m cruising. I love the night, don’t you?”

“I can’t wait to hear about yours.”

“Gotta warn you, I don’t look tip-top.”

“Why? What happened?”

“When I broke this guy’s nose, his blood spurted all over my suit. Shirt, too. My shoulder’s throbbing, both forearms ache, my knuckles are flaring up, and I might have tweaked an ankle rolling down a set of stairs.”

“Oh, Jesus. Should you go to the hospital?”

“No way! I never felt better. I can sense it when a case turns, Victoria. I can feel it. The blood pumps a little faster and there’s a buzz in the air.”

Must have been a hell of a night
, she thought. Something had lit a fire under Lassiter. She remembered their first phone call when he was drowning in angst about all the injustice and all the losing. Now, at four o’clock in the morning, he was invigorated.

“Gotta get dressed now, Jake.”

“Say, that Victoria’s Secret you’re wearing. We talking a baby doll or teddy, maybe something see-through?”

“I’ll have coffee brewing, Jake.”

-21-

Saint Vladimir

W
h
en I headed south on I-95, I could no longer see the gray Range Rover in the rearview mirror, so I put it out of my mind. A few minutes later, Victoria met me at the front door of her house—the Solomon-Lo
rd house—a cup of black coffee in her hand. She was wearing jeans, rope sandals, and a denim shirt tied at the waist, exposing just a flash of bare, flat midriff.

She took one look at me and nearly fainted. “Oh, my God, Jake.”

“You ought to see the other guy. Three guys, actually. Plus two women, which explains the scratches on my face.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to see a doctor?”

“Honestly, it’s no worse than playing the Oakland Raiders. They used to bite and claw a lot. Spit, too.”

She looked at me with concern. “You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.”

“Huh?”

“Ibsen.
An Enemy of the People.
”

“Right.”

“You don’t know much about theater, do you?”

“Not true. At Penn State, I played Big Jule in a student production of
Guys and Dolls
.”

“The large, dim-witted gangster?”

“They needed someone who could lift Nathan Detroit off the stage with one hand.” I lowered my voice into my big-oaf baritone. “I used to be bad when I was a kid, but since then, I’ve gone straight. Thirty-three arrests and no convictions.”

I took a slug of the coffee, and Victoria said, “Now tell me about your night.”

I gave Victoria a quick summary, making myself sound more heroic and less clumsy than I had actually been. I told her that “Benny” and “the jeweler” were the same guy, but I still didn’t know what that meant or his connection to the shooting. Basically, we needed Elena to answer our questions. Especially the big one: where’s Nadia?

Ten minutes later, we were cruising north on an empty LeJeune Road. I turned down the volume on the country station, quieting Johnny Cash, who was claiming he walked the line. A left turn on Flagler Street, then a quick right turn on Forty-Sixth Avenue and we were there. Saint Vladimir Russian Orthodox Church. We parked the Eldo, then walked underneath a wooden archway with three blue onion domes on top. The church was a modest one-story building with six golden crosses on a pair of red wooden doors topped by a stained glass window. I tried one of the doors. Open.

Inside, in the dim light, a single woman kneeled in front of a pew. Elena still had on her electric-blue minidress, and her blonde hair was a rat’s nest. Victoria and I walked in quietly and sat in a pew directly across the aisle from her. Elena cast a quick glance our way, then continued praying. Maybe she was praying for Nadia, maybe she was asking forgiveness for stealing my watch, or maybe she had just lured us here so Alex Gorev could leap out of the shadows and chop us to ribbons with an AK-47.

After a moment, Elena crossed herself three times, slid gracefully onto the pew, and turned toward us. “Saint Vladimir was the first Christian ruler of Russia. Did you know that?”

I allowed as how I did not.

“A thousand years ago. Before then, all pagans. Now . . . pagans again.” She looked at Victoria. “Who is the woman?”

“I’m Victoria Lord. Steve Solomon, the man accused of killing Nicolai Gorev, is my partner. Law partner and life partner.”

I didn’t care for that “life partner” bit. “Boyfriend” would have been better, but I didn’t have a vote on the matter.

E
lena turned to me. “You told Alex you were lawyer for Solomon.”

“It’s true.”

“He looked you up after you left with the police. Jake Lassiter.”

I nodded.

“He would like to kill you. And Nadia.”

“That’s why we’re here. To help her.”

“No, you are here to help Solomon.”

“We can do both,” Victoria said.

“Elena, we all know the trouble Nadia is in,” I said. “Alex Gorev isn’t the only one after her. So are the feds. She blew up their investigation of his brother, and they’d like to bury her so deep in a federal prison, she won’t see the light of day, much less a courtroom where she can talk.”

I wasn’t at all sure that’s what the feds would do, but it sounded pretty threatening.

“Can they do that, in this land of the free?”

“These days, they can do pretty much anything. Someone in the Justice Department screwed the pooch and they gotta keep it quiet.”

“Someone had sex with a dog?”

“In a manner of speaking. The way I figure it, they offered Nadia immunity for whatever they had on her. But she’s blown the deal and fled, so she still has the federal charges. Plus the state of Florida is looking for her as a material witness in the Gorev shooting and who knows for what else? Then there’s the grand larceny charge on Miami Beach for stealing a watch, which I take it is sort of a hobby with you girls.”

“Yours was big fake! I checked it.”

“Sorry.”

“Makes me think you are big fake, too.”

“Finally, we’ve got Benny the Jeweler,” I said, testing the waters.

“What about him?”

“What’s his last name?”

She shrugged her bare shoulders. “Only Benny the Jeweler. He shows up once in a while at the club, pinches the girls, and goes into Nicolai’s office to talk business. Or he did. I haven’t seen him since the shooting.”

“Benny has hired some half-assed investigator to find Nadia,” I said. “The guy tried to bribe me into giving her up. I’m pretty sure Benny wants to do her harm.”

Elena shook her head, her blonde mess of hair untangling. Looking at Victoria, she said, “Your friend is a good fighter but very stupid.”

“Like so many men,” Victoria said.

“
Da!
Exactly.” Elena slid to the end of the pew and extended an arm, showing off the lacquered fingernails of her left hand. She had rings on every finger except her thumb. She wiggled her pinky and said, “This one.”

Victoria smiled. “It’s real. A princess-cut diamond. I’d say about three carats, maybe more.”

“Three point five! From Benny, who taught me the four Cs. Carat. Clarity. Color. Cut. Very fine diamond. Nearly flawless. He gave one to Nadia that’s even larger. She wears as pendant.”

“Do all the girls get a diamond from Benny?”

“All the girls get one. But the girls Benny really likes get the best ones,” Elena said proudly.

“Why?” I asked. “Why the expensive presents for everybody?”

“You don’t know, do you, lawyer?”

“How would I?”

“How do you intend to protect Nadia? You think Benny wants to harm her? He loves her. Not man–woman love. But like a father.”

This wasn’t going well. I had lost control of the conversation and the situation. “Look, Elena, I may not know all the details, but I know Nadia is in trouble. You know where she is. If anything happens to her, that’s on you. Her blood will be on your hands.”

Elena’s eyes went cold, and her angelic features hardened. I had gone too far. She turned toward Victoria. “How do you work with such a man? He is, what is the word? Rude?”

“And boorish,” Victoria agreed.

“
Da.
Very good sound. Boor-ish. I will use it with the bouncer who always grabs my tits. ‘Sergei, you are rude and boor-ish.’ ”

They both laughed. Either at me or Sergei, or both.

“Lawyer, go have smoke. Me and Victoria talk.”

I shrugged, got up, and walked out the big red doors. I have enough bad habits, but smoking isn’t one of them. I sat down on a bench in the church courtyard and waited, glad I had brought Victoria along.