Lassiter 08 - Lassiter (23 page)

Or was it far less complicated? Had my client simply taken a shot at Ziegler and hit the wrong guy? Had she used me to find the guy who killed Krista, not for a trial, but for an execution? Which still didn’t answer the question of why Ziegler came visiting.

Something else. My previously high-strung, nerves-rubbed-raw client was oddly at peace, just a week before she was to be tried for murder. On the other side, Alex Castiel was so cocky of a conviction he didn’t even offer a plea.

Forty minutes after taking Lucinda’s call, I was sitting across from Amy in the glass-walled lawyer’s room at the women’s jail. She seemed intent on making me an even less effective trial lawyer than I already was.

“I can’t tell you why Ziegler was here.”

“Sure you can. What did you talk about?”

“I’m sorry, Jake.”

“Is it dangerous for Ziegler, too? Like your bullshit alibi witness? Mr. X?”

“I just can’t.”

“You want to know my theory? You and Ziegler killed Perlow together.”

“Why would we do that?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

“I didn’t shoot Perlow. I swear it.”

“You know what? I don’t care. I quit. I’m firing myself.”

“You can’t, Jake. I checked. No judge will let you out right before trial. Besides, you don’t quit on people.”

“Says who?”

“You.”

Great. Just great. I was going to trial not believing my client, and that wasn’t the worst of it. I knew land mines were buried in the sand, but the only way to find them was to run blindly ahead, awaiting the roar.

Castiel was not happy with his star witness. “You look like shit, Charlie.”

“Lemme alone, Alex.”

“You having trouble sleeping?”

“Not bad enough to call Michael Jackson’s doctor … yet.”

They were on Ziegler’s pool deck just after sunset. A warm breeze tickled the fronds of the tiki hut bar. Castiel had stopped by to check on his photographers and graphic artists. They were doing their last round of photos and illustrations for the state’s trial exhibits. Castiel believed in entertaining the jurors. He knew that people retain information more readily when it’s presented visually. His trials were renowned for their compelling slide shows, computer graphics, and animations. All to keep the jurors alert and involved.

Castiel wanted to do another session of trial prep, but the tequila snifter in Ziegler’s hand and the two bottles of Clase Azul on the table ruled that out.

“With the trial coming up, you really ought to watch your drinking, Charlie.”

“You do the watching, Alex. You were always good at that.”

Uncle Max had been right all along, Castiel thought.

“Use Ziegler for your own purposes, but don’t get too close to the man. His life is like Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Castiel looked at the man now, sprawled on a chaise, hairy belly sticking out from under a Hawaiian shirt. His face was stubbled with gray whiskers and he smelled like dried sweat and booze. Trial was starting next week and Ziegler would have to pull his shit together before Lassiter cross-examined him.

Castiel knew better than to underestimate his old buddy. Lassiter ate prosecutors for lunch and crapped out cops before the afternoon recess. Cross-exam was his forte. He didn’t adhere to any of the accepted styles taught in legal seminars. Lassiter once told him over drinks that he viewed the courtroom as a saloon in an old Western. He liked to burst through the swinging doors, knock over a poker table, pistol whip a gunfighter, toss a big lug through a window, and flip a chair into the mirror above the bar.

“And that, Alex, is just when I say ‘good morning.’ ”

In the Larkin murder trial, Lassiter didn’t have much to work with, but Castiel knew that’s when he was at his best. Give Lassiter an easy case, and he gets bored. He becomes just another lawyer asking the witness, “What happened next?” Give him a sure loser and he’ll latch onto an opposing witness like an alligator and take the guy’s leg off at the knee.

All of which made Castiel nervous about Ziegler.

How will Charlie hold up?

Lassiter needed to raise reasonable doubt by suggesting there was an unknown assassin hiding in the bushes that night. To do that, Lassiter would try to prove that Ziegler was a sleaze and Perlow a mobster. He wanted to link the worlds of pornography and organized crime and suggest that there were lots of potential killers who might have fired that shot through the window at either man.

“Where were you this weekend, Charlie?”

“Bahamas. Want to see my passport?”

“You take Lola?”

“She’s in L.A. getting work done. Bigger boobs or smaller thighs, can’t remember which.”

“Your girlfriend, then.”

“She was knitting a quilt for the church.”

Over by the solarium window, the techs were packing their metal boxes. Job done. Castiel waved to them, and the photographer responded
with a thumbs-up sign. If he could just get through the trial without Ziegler cracking, the saga of Krista Larkin could be put to rest forever. Ziegler was always the weak link. A sieve when it came to keeping secrets. Max had said that eighteen years ago when all three of their lives became inextricably entwined.

Castiel turned toward the channel where some kids in a Boston Whaler were heading toward the bay, the boat’s wake slapping the seawall. “I had lunch with Archbishop Gilchrist yesterday. He told me you’re gonna fund a facility for teenage runaways.”

“That’s right.”

“Thirty-six beds. Counselors, social workers, teachers. The Archbishop couldn’t stop talking about it.”

“Yeah, so what?”

Castiel turned back to Ziegler. “Jesus, Charlie. Why not just put a sign on it, ‘Krista Larkin Memorial Foundation’? What’s next, throwing roses in the ocean on the girl’s birthday?”

“Got nothing to do with her. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.”

Castiel got in Ziegler’s face, inhaled his sour breath. “Max told me you were acting squirrelly ever since the sister came to town.”

Ziegler’s eyes seemed to clear and he looked straight at Castiel. “What if the Larkin woman isn’t the shooter?”

Castiel felt his breath slip out. “Of course she’s the shooter. The forensics nailed her, and you I.D.’d her.”

“C’mon, Alex. You know I didn’t see who did it. I said what you wanted, what I had to say to get the woman out of our lives. It didn’t seem so bad when I thought she was guilty.”

“She
is
guilty!”

“What if she’s not? What if I send away an innocent woman?”

“That’s your fucked-up guilt over Krista talking. Don’t start trying to do the right thing, Charlie. It’s not in your nature.”

Ziegler straightened in the chaise, pulled his shirt down over his bulging gut. “Breeze is kicking up.”

“So what?”

“You ever wonder where the wind starts? That air you feel on your face
right now, did it come out of the Caribbean or somewhere farther away? How old is it?”

“How old’s the wind? That what you’re asking?”

“Is it the same air Columbus felt when he crossed the Atlantic? Was it the hot, desert air Moses felt crossing the desert?”

“Moses? Columbus? What the fuck are you talking about, Charlie?”

“I’ve been thinking about the origins of things, Alex. You ever do that?”

“I’m thinking about the end of things, Charlie. Now, you better hold it together, or you’ll lose everything.”

My nephew is a damn smart kid. Hey, someone in the family had to be. But he doesn’t bat a thousand. For weeks, he’d been surfing the Net, armed with the last name “Aldrin,” looking for a man they called “Snake.” Coming up empty.

Still, the kid persisted. Each morning, he Googled and Lexis-Nexised and scoured the Web. He dug into arrest records and Corrections Department files. Nothing. Until yesterday, when he found the man.

In church.

Or rather, in a newspaper advertisement for services at All Angels Recovery Church in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. The reverend’s name was George Henry Aldrin. A self-described ex-addict, ex-biker, ex-con. Current lay minister at All Angels and, incidentally, owner of Foot Longs, a sub shop on Commercial Boulevard in West Broward.

The day before jury selection was to begin, I took the turnpike north and found Foot Longs in a strip mall just west of University Drive in Lauderhill. A U-shaped counter, four tables inside, another four outside. A high school kid was mopping the floor, smearing mayonnaise from one tile to another. A large, bearded man in an apron was at the cash register, counting one-dollar bills. He wore a small, gold cross around his neck, and his thin gray hair was pulled straight back and tied into a ponytail. A round helipad of a bald spot crowned his head. A worn copy of the New Testament
poked out of a pocket of his apron and, true to his name, the tattoo of a cobra crawled up his arm.

Aldrin might have once been handsome and rugged. Now his eyes were rheumy, and his skin was as gray as a mullet’s belly. I guessed his weight as just south of three hundred pounds.

“George Aldrin?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I’m Jake Lassiter.”

The name didn’t cause him to either salute or reach for a shotgun. “It’s good to meet you, Jake Lassiter,” he said evenly. “What kind of sandwich can we fix you today?”

“I’m looking for Krista Larkin.”

“Sweet Jesus,” he said, looking skyward.

“Do you have any idea what happened to her?”

He shook his head, sadly. “She disappeared, when was it …?”

“Eighteen years ago.”

“Another lifetime. Lassiter, you said?”

“Right.”

Now a glint of recognition in those moist eyes. “The football player?”

I nodded.

“The night Krista stabbed that jerk.
You
were there.”

“Yeah.”

“Krista told me all about you.”

Oh, shit
.

I expected the worst, but then he said, “She liked you.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Why? ’Cause you tossed her out of your place the next morning?” He said it matter-of-factly, no note of judgment in his voice.

“Because I didn’t help her. I …”

“Soiled her.”

I nodded. Not the word I would have used, but yeah.

“One of many, Lassiter. Yours truly included. Have you repented?”

“Not in the way you mean. But I’m trying to do the right thing now.”

“Godspeed, then.” He turned to the kid with the mop. “Yo, Javier. Take a break. But no smoking weed.”

The kid shrugged and left. “Rehab,” Aldrin said. “I’m his mentor.”

He flipped the
Closed
sign around on the glass door, looked through the window at the parking lot, and motioned for me to sit at one of the small tables.

When we were seated, he said, “Who knows you found me?”

“Why do you ask?”

“There are a couple guys from my past who I’d just as soon never see again.”

I hazarded a guess. “Charlie Ziegler and Max Perlow.”

He nodded.

Obviously, Aldrin spent more time reading the Bible than the newspapers. I told him Perlow was dead. Gave him the shorthand version, including Amy going to trial for murder.

“I don’t countenance the slaying of a fellow man,” he said, “but I shed no tears for him.”

After a respectful moment of silence—about two seconds, I said, “My gut tells me Ziegler is responsible for Krista’s disappearance, but I can’t prove it.”

“Ziegler never wiped his butt without Perlow’s okay.”

“Meaning what?”

“I supplied Ziegler with coke and meth. Which made Perlow crazy. He thought Ziegler talked too much when he was fried.”

“Was he right?”

“A hundred percent. Krista was always telling me shit those two were doing. The girl knew too much, and Perlow realized it.”

“You saying Perlow might have had Krista killed?”

He shrugged. “The man was ruthless, I can tell you that.”

All this time, I’d been thinking Perlow was only protecting his business partner Ziegler from prison and his beloved Alex from bad press.

“What’s Ziegler say happened?” Aldrin asked.

I told him about my conversation that rainy night in Gables Estates. Ziegler claiming that the reverend, in his Snake days, had shown up on the set, scared about getting picked up on a probation violation. That he left town with Krista on the back of his Harley.

“Peckerwood’s telling half the truth,” Aldrin said. “I saw them both that day, but not at the set. At the party.”

“Krista was there?”

“Just arrived. It was early.”

I sat back in my chair and let out a breath. Aldrin was the first eyewitness to place Krista at Ziegler’s house the night she disappeared. Meaning everyone else had lied. Castiel. Perlow. Ziegler. Whatever happened to Krista, they were all in it together.

“I was delivering some very fine Colombian blow to Ziegler,” he said.

“Tell me everything you remember.”

“Not much to tell. I was only there four or five minutes. Told Krista I was headed west. Asked her to go along, but she chose to stay with her sugar daddy.”

“I thought she wanted out of that life.”

“Maybe she did, but coast to coast on a Harley must not have sounded like a step up.”

He was silent a moment, maybe considering the role he’d played in Krista Larkin’s short life. “She woulda left Ziegler for you, Lassiter.”

“I only knew her for about twelve hours.”

“Yet look at the impact she made. All these years later, you’re looking for her. Trying to make amends would be my guess.”

“Maybe.”

“Then take it from me, Lassiter. Fucking things up only takes a few minutes. Making things right, now, that’s a lifetime job.”

The courtroom was quiet. I sat at the defense table, sifting through my files. Castiel was perched a few feet away at the prosecution table. Opponents awaiting kickoff, or in this case, waiting for the judge on the first day of jury selection.

“I used to be in the papers a bit.”

That’s what Max Perlow told me the day I met him in Charlie Ziegler’s office. So I’d asked my trusty law clerk—Kip by name—to get me everything he could on Perlow. I was relying on the classic SODDI defense.