Lassiter 08 - Lassiter (22 page)

“It’s too dangerous.”

“What’s that mean?”

“If he testified, his life would be in danger.”

“What about
your
life?”

She fingered the opening of her flimsy orange smock. “He wants to help, but I won’t let him.”

“That’s my decision, not yours. Give me his name.”

“I can’t.”

My lower back was throbbing again. “I’m thinking your alibi is bullshit.”

“You just have to trust me, Jake.”

“The hell I do. Lie to your priest or to your lover. But if you lie to me, I can’t help you.”

“I’m not! I wasn’t at Ziegler’s. I didn’t shoot anyone.”

I studied her, looking for the averted gaze, the tightened lips, the nervous twitch. Nothing.

“I’m innocent, Jake. Dammit, isn’t that enough?”

“Innocence is irrelevant! All that matters is evidence. So give me your alibi, or the jury will give you life.”

She took a moment to think it over before saying, “I’m sorry, Jake. You’ll have to win without an alibi.”

I pushed my chair away from the table and got to my feet. “Enjoy your stay, Amy. It’s gonna be a long one.”

The man was simply too large for the chair, Ziegler thought.

Nestor Tejada’s rhino shoulders spilled over the backrest. He propped his feet on the asymmetrical glass table, playing the big
macher
. Just like his late and unlamented boss.

Tejada had barged into the Reelz TV headquarters without an appointment, and Ziegler didn’t know what he wanted.

“So your bottom line is looking up,” Tejada said.

“Meaning what?” Ziegler didn’t like the way it was starting.

“You don’t have to pay Mr. P that fifteen percent anymore.”

Jesus. Perlow afraid of what I’d tell Melody and he’s shooting his mouth off to this frigging gangbanger
.

“So you’ve got extra capital to put into the business,” Tejada continued. “Or extra cash to pull out, depending whether you’re thinking short term or long.”

“Who are you, Warren Buffet?”

“I studied Business Organization.”

“Bullshit.”

“At Okeechobee Correctional. But I learned more from Mr. P than any course.”

Sure you did. Perlow had a PhD in extortion
.

Ziegler telling himself to be careful. He’d learned a long time ago not
to judge a person’s intelligence based on appearances or upbringing. He’d known a couple of scary-smart porn stars in his time.

“I’m just wondering how you’re planning to use that extra dough,” Tejada said.

“Are you shaking me down?”

“I’m here to help you.”

“Screw that. You’re running a protection racket. Jesus, I thought you were out of the Latin Kings.”

“Ain’t like the Rotary Club, Ziegler. It’s blood in, blood out. You cut a throat to get in the door, and you don’t leave till you’re six feet under.”

“Lovely. Just lovely.”

“But I don’t need your money. Mr. P gave me a piece of his gaming business.”

“A piece?”

“My guys service the slots in Indian casinos. I got the company in Mr. P’s will.”

Un-fucking-believable. Max Perlow feeling all fatherly to Alex Castiel was one thing, but adopting this jailbird?

“Now, you wanna hear my idea for a new show?” Tejada said.

Ziegler immediately felt better. He leaned back and exhaled. The guy wanted to pitch him, not strong-arm him.

“Ideas, my friend, are the trash of the business,” he said. “Everyone has an
idea
for a show. The question is, who can take the little feathery notions that make up an idea and spin them into gold?” Repeating what he’d heard some legitimate producer say at a seminar. Stephen J. Cannell. Or Dick Wolf. Or Stephen Bochco. One of the big-timers.

“It’s called, ‘So You Wanna Be a Gangbanger,’ ” Tejada said, unperturbed.

He took a few minutes describing the show. Start with a dozen ghetto teens. They spray graffiti on expressway overpasses, then move on to shoplifting, purse snatching, car theft, maybe dealing some crank on street corners. Drive-by shootings with paintball guns, extra credit if you nail a cop. Real gang members decide who goes to the next level. In the season finale, there’d be an initiation ceremony, laced with sex and violence.

“Not a bad idea,” Ziegler said, when the spiel was over.

Thinking, great fucking idea. The next generation of reality shows.
Edgy, urban, street-wise, it punched all the buttons. Ziegler imagined a franchise of inner-city spinoffs, starting with
Carjack!
which would reward the guy who stole the hottest wheels.

“Not bad?” Tejada said. “That’s it?”

Ziegler felt in command. He loved being pitched because it gave him a chance to bust men’s balls and break women’s hearts. “It’s okay. Like it, don’t love it. Either way, it’s really generic, not specific at all.”

“You shitting me,
cabron
?” Tejada said.

“Problem is, I don’t see where you fit in.”

“I’d be the whadayacallit, the executive producer,” Tejada said.

Ziegler wondered if the bastard read
Variety
at Okeechobee Correctional. “You gotta be kidding. You want to be the showrunner?”

“The top dude, yeah.”

“You need experience. Credits in the biz.”

“I got credits on the street.”

“Thing is, I could hire any ex-con as a consultant for five hundred bucks a week and all the Colt 45 he can drink.”

Tejada straightened in his chair, deltoids flexing. “You’re a bigger asshole than Mr. P thought.”

Ziegler placed his thumb on a red button below his desk. “I got a guy in the next office named Ray Decker. He’s an ex-cop and he’s licensed to carry a concealed firearm. If you try any shit, he’ll come in here and put a bullet in your thick fucking skull.”

Feeling unbeatable.

“Mr. P taught me that violence is only a last resort,” Tejada said, placidly. “Instead of hitting a man, just find his weakest spot and press gently. If he doesn’t respond, press a little harder.”

Ziegler knew he was leaping at the bait, but he didn’t care. Perlow was dead and he was in charge. “So, Nestor, what’s my weakest spot?”

“I saw you kill Mr. P.”

The words spoken softly, almost apologetically.

Ziegler tried not to blink, failed. Felt something thud inside his skull, hoped he wasn’t having a stroke. “The fuck you talking about?”

“I was sitting in Mr. P’s Bentley, windows down, when I heard the gunshot. I ran around the back of the house and saw you through the glass stomping on the old man’s chest.”

Ziegler remembered the moment, the blood pumping, Max wheezing. Now he felt as if his own aorta might burst. “Why didn’t you stop me?”

“I thought about it. Almost did it. That old Jew was good to me.”

“Screw that! You wanted the slots business! You wanted him to die!”

“Yeah, maybe. But I’m not the one who killed him. You are.”

Ziegler swallowed hard. “About the show …”

“Yeah?”

“A man of your experience, I could see as co–exec producer. It’s one notch from the top. Let someone else do the heavy lifting.”

Tejada nodded. “As long as it pays, I don’t give a shit about the title.”

“Smart,” Ziegler agreed.

“How does fifty grand an episode sound?”

Like highway robbery, Ziegler thought.

“Like a good deal, all around,” he said.

“My name is Jake Lassiter. Before we go on the record in
State v. Larkin
, let me say that if I ever catch you within a hundred yards of my nephew, I’ll kick the living piss out of you.”

Nestor Tejada kept his cool and turned to Castiel. “Can he talk that way to me?”

“Technically, no. But you’ll get used to it.”

“Do you want me to take this down?” the court stenographer asked, fingers curled over her keyboard.

“Not yet,” I told her.

We were in a Justice Building conference room, and I was supposed to be taking Tejada’s pre-trial deposition, not threatening him.

“Wasn’t my idea, Lassiter,” Tejada said. “Mr. P wanted me to scare the kid to get at you.”

“Why don’t you try to scare me, tough guy?”

“Jake, you made your point,” Castiel said.

“It’s okay,” Tejada said. “I apologize to the man. We shouldn’t mess with family.” He turned to me. “We cool?”

“We’re cool, dickwad. Now state your name for the record.”

His testimony was less interesting than the preliminaries. He’d been sitting in front of Ziegler’s house in Perlow’s car. Heard a gunshot, ran to the back of the house, didn’t see the shooter.

Discovery was moving along smoothly. I had waived preliminary hearing and accepted the state’s discovery without whining about documents being withheld. I made no combative motions and quickly prepared for trial.

Most defense lawyers love delay. With enough time, the state’s case can fall apart. Witnesses die or forget or change their minds. Evidence is lost or mishandled. The prosecutor gets a better job and dumps the case onto the desk of some overworked kid.

I am not like most defense lawyers. I like to move for a speedy trial. My theory is that the state has harder work to do. It must gather evidence, prepare its witnesses, do the lab tests, and prepare a logical case where A leads to B and B leads to C, and “C” stands for “conviction.” The state needs boxes and files and color-coded notebooks. The state has the burden of proof, and I have the burden of staying awake. I can defend a case with a blank yellow pad and my slashing cross-examination.

In the legal world, the prosecutor is a carpenter, pounding his nails with a steady hand, building a house out of sturdy beams, while the defense lawyer is a vandal with a can of gasoline and a Zippo lighter. Sometimes you don’t even need the pyromania. Just huff and puff and the state’s shaky house will crumble.

Castiel’s case, however, was built of sturdy stuff, starting with a truckload of physical evidence. Fingerprints on the window, a solid match with Amy. A speck of fabric in the bushes, positive link to Amy’s unitard. We had answers for both pieces of evidence, though extremely risky ones. Amy would have to take the stand and admit she trespassed on Ziegler’s property several days before the shooting. She’d crept up to the solarium window through those thorny bushes, and that’s when the fabric and prints were left behind.

We’d be conceding that Amy had a maniacal obsession with Ziegler. She blamed him for her sister’s disappearance. She stalked him from next door, sneaked onto his property, and peeped at him through the windows. How much more difficult is it to believe that she came back another time, gun in hand?

Our case had other problems, too. Even if I cast doubt on the forensic evidence, I had no answer for the ballistics. The bullet pulled from Perlow was fired from the same weapon that Amy used to mortally wound my
tires. Her uncorroborated story that the gun had been stolen two nights before the shooting was so lame, it ought to be taken out, blindfolded, and shot.

Then the biggest problem of all. Charlie Ziegler. On deposition, he had testified that he saw the shooter through the window. Amy Larkin. He would repeat the story at trial. If I couldn’t prove he was either lying or mistaken, we would lose. To destroy Ziegler’s testimony, I needed evidence that Amy could not have been at his house that night. A rock solid alibi.

Whenever I visited Amy in the jail, she was clutching a Bible. She had retreated to her upbringing. Scriptures and prayers. She also clung to her story that she didn’t shoot Perlow. Couldn’t have. She was with a man somewhere else the night of the shooting.

Where?

Can’t tell you
.

Who?

Same thing
.

Who do you suppose shot Perlow?

No idea
.

How do you expect me to win?

Divine Providence
.

I told her that, in my experience, God helps those who help themselves.

As the trial date approached, I considered the situation and came to a few, well-thought-out conclusions. It was pretty simple, really. I had a client I didn’t trust and a case I couldn’t win.

Lucinda Bailey loves fine wine. At Christmas, I buy Lucinda a case of Syrah from the Eberle Winery in California. All year long, she keeps me informed of the comings and goings at the county’s penal institutions.

Lucinda runs Information Technology for the jail system, and she’d been calling me every morning for the last nine weeks. I had asked her to keep tabs on Amy. If my client really had been with a man the night Perlow was shot, I figured that guy might visit her in jail. But each day, Lucinda had the same news—no visitors the previous day. Until this morning.

I was in the office. I had no customers, so I was studying the pre-season college football betting lines. Alabama was the favorite to win its second straight national championship. But pre-season wagers are sucker bets. Too many variables. A twelve-game season, plus a conference championship game, plus the BCS title game, if the Crimson Tide got that far. I’d wait until September, place a sentimental bet on Penn State, and start studying the point spreads week to week.

Lucinda Bailey’s call interrupted my dreams of greenbacks. “Your client had a male visitor at 8:05
A.M
. yesterday. Stayed for thirty-seven minutes.”

“Finally! What’s his name?” I was prepared for a guy named John Doe with phony I.D. and a Groucho Marx nose and glasses.

“Charles Ziegler, Anglo male, lives on Casuarina Concourse in Gables Estates.”

What the hell!

The man Amy supposedly intended to kill comes visiting. Bizarre. He couldn’t be her alibi witness. He was two feet away when Perlow took a slug in the chest, and he claimed Amy was the shooter. So what was he doing there? What hadn’t my client told me?

I headed for the jail. Driving across the causeway, I ran through what I knew and what I didn’t know, the latter outweighing the former. I had stirred up the waters surrounding Krista Larkin’s disappearance. Castiel, Ziegler, and Perlow all went to battle stations. Perlow threatened my life, but he’s the one who ended up dead. What secret was I close to discovering? If I could figure that out, I would know who killed Perlow.