Lassiter 08 - Lassiter (26 page)

The convention center was mobbed. Young guys in University of Miami T-shirts and shorts; bikers with multiple piercings and body art; some old hippies, ash-gray hair tied back in ponytails, some with their old ladies along. Booths ran along narrow aisles, like any trade show. But these were staffed by young women in micro-minis, leather corsets, and all manner of see-through teddies, baby-dolls, and assorted
come fuck me
attire. Under the bright lighting, it was a pretty bizarre sight, even by Miami standards.

I passed the Titty Tattoo booth, the Penile Cosmetic Surgery Center, the Sin Toy Shoppe, and a fetish place called “Fluffy Bunny Whips.” The biggest crowd—a bunch of young guys cheering and high-fiving—gathered around the Anal Ring Toss competition.

A newspaper ad had alerted me that Angel Roxx would be working the Dip-Stick booth. The business had nothing to do with oil changes. Dip-Stick was a patented plastic cylinder about the size of a flashlight with a pink foam top. A slit ran through the foam with puffy lips on each side and a little clitoral button inside, like the prize in a Cracker Jack box. Basically, a portable vagina. Pussy to go.

The sales hook was customization. The foam receptacles were created from molds of various porn stars … including Ms. Angel Roxx.

“Hey, big fellah, how ’bout some MILF pussy?” a woman said, as I approached the booth.

“I beg your pardon?”

The woman wore a peekaboo pink teddy and knee-high, fleece-lined boots. Underneath sheer lingerie, her breasts were a matched set of dirigibles. A muffin top of jelly fat spilled over the elastic top of her thong. She’d had some work done, her nose a thin wafer. Her skin—as tight as the head of a drum—shined with an eerie waxiness, as if buffed by a floor polisher. I pegged her age at somewhere between 40 and hell.

“Anyone ever mention you look a little like Studley Do-Right?” she said.

“All the time. You know the old Studster?”

“Know him? I’ve blown him. We costarred in
Splendor in the Ass
. I was just a kid, and he was on his farewell tour.” She gave a little curtsy. “I’m Cherries Jubilee. I won the Golden Dildo for best girl-on-girl with Bananas Foster back in the eighties.”

“Congrats.”

“Here’s my beav.” She handed me a Dip-Stick, vagina-side up, then stuck her index finger between the foam lips, exposing a bulbous little button. “Have you ever seen anything like that?”

In fact, I hadn’t. “A clit like a cornichon,” I said, agreeably.

“On sale for eighty-nine bucks, and we throw in a tube of lube and batteries for the vibrometer. You can take her for a test drive if you want.”

“Can’t. Got a suspended license. Is Angel Roxx here?”

“She’s in the back, giving hand jobs to guys in uniform.”

I was wearing my old Dolphins jersey but figured that didn’t count.

“Vets in wheelchairs get priority,” Cherries said. “Angel’s the most patriotic porn star I know.”

I waited five minutes until Angel emerged from behind a black velvet curtain. She wore a red, white, and blue bikini with cowboy boots and a matching cowboy hat.

A close-cropped, square-jawed young man in a wheelchair rolled out
just behind her. He wore a U.S. Marines T-shirt, and his body was bulked up, but his legs were twigs poking out of camo shorts.

“Bye, hon,” Angel said, kissing him on the forehead. She saw me standing there and said, “You had your chance, big guy. I don’t give rain checks.”

We sat at a plastic table in the lunchroom, off the main floor of the convention. “Charlie’s been good to me,” she said. “I’m not gonna stab him in the back.”

“Not asking you to. Just trying to find out why he’s gotten friendly with my client.”

“Didn’t know he had. I thought she tried to shoot him.”

“Did you know he visited her in jail?”

“No way! Why would he?”

I shrugged. “My client won’t tell me, and I can’t talk to him.”

“Cool. A mystery.”

Angel seemed to loosen up. Everyone, it seems, loves a good mystery.

“Ziegler ever mention my client’s sister? Krista Larkin, the girl who went missing?”

“Not to me.”

“Any changes in his mood lately?” I asked.

“Charlie’s always been weird. When your client started stalking him, he got freakier than usual.”

“In what way?”

“Nervous. Noises spooked him. Like if he didn’t see you and you said something, he’d jump.”

“Anything else?”

She adjusted the strap on her bikini, and her right boob did a little dance. “He hasn’t been focused on work, I can tell you that.”

“How do you mean?”

“We were supposed to shoot a pilot for my new show,
Who Wantz to Do a Porn Star?
Charlie never hired the director, never did location scouting. Time came and went. No show.”

Men streamed by the lunch area, carrying souvenir T-shirts, bumper
stickers, and mouse pads, some affixed with photos of their favorite porn stars.

“Does Ziegler ever talk to you about what’s bothering him?”

“Not to me.”

“Not even in intimate moments?”

She laughed. “I’m not fucking Charlie.”

“When I saw you at his house that night, I just assumed …”

“Charlie likes having girls around. But he doesn’t do them. I doubt he even does his wife. He only does his girlfriend.”

“Melody Sanders.”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“It’s my job, and every once in a while I do it. What’s Melody like?”

“Never met her. But she must be something.”

“Why?”

“Charlie
listens
to her. I’ve overheard him on the phone. He talks business.”

“And this surprised you?”

“Yeah, I figured he’d be shouting at her, ‘I’ll be over for my blow job at seven,’ but it’s not like that. His voice gets all quiet and he reads her the overnight ratings and asks her advice, which he doesn’t do with anybody, even his corporate officers.” Angel checked her watch and rubbed her hands together, maybe to warm them up. “If you want to know what makes Charlie tick, ask Melody. I’m betting she knows him better than anyone in the world.”

It was Monday morning, the start of another week of trial. I planned on a breakfast of toasted Bimini bread, Cuban coffee, and Haitian fried bananas. Hey, it’s Miami. We’re not a cornflakes town.

Althea’s Taco Truck is my office when I’m in trial. It’s parked each day in front of the Justice Building, so it’s equally convenient for cops, defense lawyers, and home invasion robbers. The owner/driver/cook is Althea Rollins, a Sequoia-size woman in her late sixties who’s partial to Caribbean and Hispanic food.

A dozen years ago, one of her sons was picked up for supplying half the senior class at Killian High with weed. I got the kid into pre-trial intervention and the arrest was expunged. He straightened out, went to college, then pharmacy school, and now he’s dispensing legal drugs at a chain store in South Miami.

I have long relied on Althea for advice, insight, and breakfast. She provides another valuable service, too. She eavesdrops on prosecutors and jurors as they have lunch, then spills the frijoles to me. Folks say the darnedest things in front of her.

“Nothing so invisible as a black woman in an apron,” Althea told me once, after she revealed the state’s strategy in a money-laundering case.

After meeting with Angel Roxx on Saturday morning, I had driven to Lighthouse Point, hoping to drop in, unannounced, on Melody Sanders. I
was unannounced all right. The condo was empty. She’d moved and left no forwarding address with the management office.

I told Pepito Dominguez to tail Ziegler so he could lead us to wherever Melody was now hanging her negligee. This morning, he was supposed to meet me with a progress report.

As I walked up to the truck, I saw two men leaving. One was Nestor Tejada, no mistaking the shaved head with the crown tattoo on the back of his skull. He wore a gray suit that bunched up at his bricklayer’s shoulders. The other man was older, an Anglo with gray hair in a tailored, pinstriped suit. He carried a soft leather briefcase the color of butter. My insightful powers of reasoning told me the guy was a lawyer.

“Hey, Jakey!” Althea greeted me. “Coffee or pineapple nog.”

“Coffee, thanks. Say, do you know those two guys who just left here?”

“Gangbanger and a fancy mouthpiece,” Althea said.

“I never saw the lawyer before. You?”

She shook her head. “Polished fingernails. And did you see his eyeglasses?”

I shook my head. “Too far away.”

“Expensive. Gold frames with a turquoise inlay.”

Althea would make an excellent crime-scene witness.

If neither one of us recognized the lawyer, he was either an out-of-towner or a downtowner. I didn’t care so much who he was as
why
he was here.

Nestor Tejada had about ten minutes of noncontroversial testimony to deliver. No reason he should need a lawyer in the gallery.

“What were the guys talking about?” I asked.

“My Cuban coffee. Hispanic guy said it tasted like motor oil.”

“He’s an asshole. Anything else?”

“They were talking real low. Either that, or my hearing’s going straight to Hades.”

Just then, Pepito walked up in that easygoing gait that said he had a lot of time to get wherever he was going. He ordered a
coco frio
. Althea lopped off the top of a coconut with a machete, stuck a straw in the hole and handed it to him.

“Did you find Melody Sanders?” I asked.

Instead of answering, Pepito handed me a wad of crumpled American Express receipts.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“My expenses.”

I looked at the first one. Il Gabbiano, a ritzy restaurant downtown. “Two hundred thirty-six dollars! What the hell.”

“You told me to follow Charlie Ziegler. He had dinner.”

“If he goes into a rest room, that doesn’t mean you have to take a piss.” I glanced at the restaurant receipt. “You ate veal stuffed with foie gras? Wait a second. There are two entrées here.”

“I had the filet mignon. My girlfriend, Raquel, had the veal.”

I felt the first hints of indigestion and I hadn’t even eaten Althea’s fried plantains simmered in wine.

“Don’t worry. You’re getting your money’s worth, boss,” Pepito said.

“So you found Melody?”

The kid pulled a little notebook out of his cargo shorts and flipped a few pages. “Ziegler had the mista salad and veal piccata.”

“Why didn’t you give me his check? It would have been cheaper.”

“And Alex Castiel ordered a bottle of red wine. Châteauneuf-du-Pape.”

Castiel. That stopped me, but just for a second. Nothing wrong with the State Attorney dining with his chief witness. Had there been, they wouldn’t have met in public.

“What were they talking about?” I asked.

“How should I know?”

“You could read the wine label, but you couldn’t get close enough to listen?”

“The State Attorney toasted him with the wine. Then, at the end, they shook hands. One of those four-handed deals, you know, hands on top of each other’s.”

“Then what? Please tell me you followed Ziegler to Melody’s.”

“First, Ziegler got his car from the valet. While he’s waiting, he’s talking on the cell phone, and I’m standing right behind him.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s talking real sweet, ‘honey’ this and ‘honey’ that.”

“Jeez, Pepito, cut to it.”

“He says, ‘Honey, I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ So I figure, she lives close.”

“Good figuring. Keep going.”

“Then his Ferrari came up. He got into the car and I had to run to get mine from a meter on Biscayne Boulevard.”

“So you followed him to Melody’s place?”

“I tried. I was four cars behind him when we got to the Brickell Avenue drawbridge. He went across as the yellow light was flashing. The arm came down right in front of me. So I got hung up and lost him there.”

“Shit.”

“I’m sorry,
jefe
.”

“It’s okay, Pepito. You did great. Sometimes I’m too hard on you.”

I checked my watch. Five minutes to get to court. So much happening. Tejada had a lawyer for reasons unknown. Ziegler and Castiel were best buds. Somewhere out there, presumably ten minutes from downtown, sat Melody Sanders, keeper of Ziegler’s secrets. Then there was Amy Larkin, my tight-lipped client. Where was she the night of the murder? Who was she with? What’s going on between Ziegler and her?

Some days, I feel in control of my life and my surroundings. But today I felt I was the butt of some cosmic joke in the legal universe. If a meteorite sped across the vastness of space and entered our atmosphere, I had no doubt it would make a beeline straight for my head.

The man with polished fingernails and the turquoise glasses sat in the back row of the gallery. I gave him a little lawyer nod, but he didn’t acknowledge me. I kept my eyes on Tejada during his direct exam and caught him flashing looks to the guy, as if seeking approval.

When Castiel informed me that the witness was mine, I patted Amy Larkin on the shoulder, stood up, smiled pleasantly at the jury, and said, “Good morning, Mr. Tejada.”

“Yeah. Morning.”

He looked sullen. Fine with me. Jurors like their witnesses to be neighborly and good-humored, not cheerless and sour.

Tejada had walked through Castiel’s direct exam, the State Attorney his usual brisk and efficient self. Now I had a clear-cut task. I wanted to point a finger at this jailbird, and while I was at it, smear Ziegler, too.

“Let me get a few things straight, Mr. Tejada. When you heard the gunshots, you raced around the house to the pool deck and straight to the solarium, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you know to run there?”

“That’s where the shots seemed to come from.”

“Seemed to? Do you have experience with gunshots?”

He gave a little smirk. “Some.”

“You’re not on the Olympic biathlon team by any chance, are you?”

“Nope.”

“And you’re not a veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan, are you?”

“No.”

“Ever serve in uniform? Other than in prison?”