False Dawn

22

I approached the witness stand and politely asked, “Isn’t it true that you bit into a finger cot, and not a condom, Mrs. Schwartzbaum?”

She pointed toward the defense table. “That’s what they say.”

“You’re not disputing the evidence, are you?”

Sylvia Schwartzbaum was fifty and not all that pleased about it. The frosted hair was lacquered into place, and if she turned too quickly, her immense silver earrings could cause whiplash. “All I know is when I bit into my endive, I chewed something rubbery, and when I spit it out, I thought it was a condom. That’s why I screamed. That’s why I spilled the soup in Harry’s lap, the poor dear.” She paused for effect and looked into the gallery, giving her husband a small, tragic smile. “And that’s why I have a severe case of mental anguish.”

“But now you know it wasn’t a condom, correct?” I was going to hammer away until she admitted it.

“At the time, it felt like a condom, and it looked like a condom.”

I wouldn’t be doing my job, such as it is, if I didn’t ask a follow-up question. “Did it taste like a condom, Mrs. Schwartzbaum?”

She gave me an icy stare. “Not being a pervert, I wouldn’t know about that.” She looked toward Harry, who nodded his approval.

Judge Dixie Lee Boulton leaned forward in her chair and peered at me through her bifocals, which dangled on a chain of imitation pearls. “Mr. Lassiter, I suggest you move it along. I’ve heard just about enough of this line of questioning.”

I hadn’t wanted to defend another restaurant case. Last year I lost the case of the flaming dessert. Bananas flambe cost the plaintiff his expensive toupee and my client, Le Parisian Eaterie, twenty-five grand. But win or lose, a trial lawyer gets typecast. Next, I was hired to defend the Calle Ocho cafeteria where an elderly man slipped and fell on an oil slick of spilled flan. Then I fought off the Consumer Protection Agency for the allegedly kosher Cuban restaurant that served frijoles con puerco.

Now I was dealing with the case of the rubber-in-the-rutabaga, as Marvin the Maven insisted on calling it. Every morning before court, I had to stop in the corridor as Marvin and Max (Just Plain) Seltzer told me fly-in-the-soup jokes, all of which I had heard before.

“Jacob, I got a new waiter joke for you,” Marvin said earlier today. “Direct from the Catskills, which, as you know, are the Jewish Alps. Two ladies are having lunch. The first orders the borscht, but the waiter says, ‘Take my advice, have instead the chicken soup.’ The second lady orders the pea soup, and the waiter says, ‘No, take the barley.’ They do as they’re told, and the first lady compliments him: ‘Best chicken soup I ever had.’ So the second lady asks, ‘Why didn’t you recommend me the chicken soup?’ The waiter says, ‘You didn’t ask for the borscht.’”

Marvin and Max were still laughing as I hauled my trial bag into the courtroom. My partners had insisted I handle the case after I had missed a couple days of work. Been lollygagging long enough, the managing partner said. Taking off without warning, leaving young associates to handle motion calendars and prepare cases for trial. The litany of complaints was piling up. So my punishment was the mental anguish suit of Sylvia Schwartzbaum, plaintiff from hell.

“Your expert witnesses have examined the rubbery object, plaintiff’s exhibit one, have they not?” I asked.

“They better have, after the bill I got.”

“And they told you that the object was not a condom, correct?”

“Objection!” H. T. Patterson was on his feet, poking a finger in my direction. “Hearsay and irrelevant. The report speaks for itself, and it doesn’t matter what my client thinks about it.”

“I think it cost too much money,” Mrs. Schwartzbaum told the judge and jury.

“Your Honor,” I pleaded, “the report’s in evidence. I’m merely eliciting evidence that will establish the plaintiff’s state of mind. It’s relevant to the damage issue.”

Judge Boulton pulled a pencil out of her 1950s bouffant, made a note on a legal pad, and allowed as how the objection was overruled.

I looked at the witness and waited.

Mrs. Schwartzbaum shrugged her shoulders. “Sure, they said it was one of those little whatchamacallits…”

“Finger cots?”

“… so they don’t slice their filthy fingernails into your salad with the cucumbers.”

“And you learned this within days of the incident, did you not?”

“Yeah, so what?” Suspicious now.

“ So, in the restaurant, when you screamed at the top of your lungs that you were going to catch AIDS from…” I riffled through the transcript of the previous day’s proceedings even though I knew the line by heart. “‘… from the grimy Haitian wetback who jerked off in my salad,’ you were obviously mistaken.”

“I don’t know which island the kitchen help comes from, if that’s what you mean,” she said.

“What I mean is you now are secure in the knowledge that you will not contract a disease from eating at Norma’s Natural Food Emporium, correct?”

“I wouldn’t go back there for a million dollars.”

Funny, a million bucks was her settlement demand. I turned to the judge. “Your Honor, the witness is not being responsive.”

Sylvia Schwartzbaum sighed. “That’s what Harry says. Ever since they poisoned me, I’ve not been responsive. Now, we don’t even have relations. It’s his lost-consorting claim.”

“Consortium,’’ her lawyer, H. T. Patterson, piped up.

“In that case, Harry should pay my client,” I stage-whispered a tad too loud.

“Mr. Lassiter!” Judge Boulton was seldom awake long enough to get involved in the proceedings. But now Dixie Lee was steamed, and my old buddy Patterson was not doing me any favors, prancing around, demanding a sidebar where he accused me of multitudinous sins.

“Atrocious and abominable, disgraceful and dastardly,” Patterson began in the singsong he had perfected as a one-time preacher at the Liberty City Baptist Church. “Impudent and insolent, an utterly appalling, barbarous breach of ethics to make such a shameful statement in front of the jury…”

Oh, I don’t know. A couple of them had nodded their heads with appreciation and one laughed out loud.

“Despicable and defamatory, disgusting and detestable, vile and vulgar, repulsive and repugnant.” Patterson was on his toes now, chin thrust forward, strutting his stuff. I knew it was an act, and I would have to wait it out. Patterson did have an unfortunate habit, however, of bouncing close and spraying me with saliva as he worked himself into a frenzy. It reminded me of a recent study, which concluded that male trial lawyers have more testosterone than their brethren who practice real estate, tax, or corporate law. The psychologist learned this by testing saliva, a few globs of which were now affixed to my Italian silk tie. I always thought Patterson’s pugnaciousness had more to do with being five feet five than overdosing on male hormones.

He was still going. “Calumnious and…”

“Contemptuous,” Judge Boulton helped him out. “Twenty-four hours in the county stockade, Mr. Lassiter.”

I like quiet contemplation. A day and night behind bars was neither novel nor particularly unsettling. In a trial a few years ago, a judge ordered me not to ask a cop if he was under investigation by Internal Review. I persisted, and the judge warned me that one more question and he’d send me to a place I’d never been.

“Already been to jail,” I told him.

“Not jail,” the judge said. “Law school.”

I was even held in contempt once for telling a good-natured joke to a judge who had just ruled against me.

“What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of fifty?” I asked.

The judge shrugged.

“Your Honor,” I answered.

I don’t mind some time away from home. I don’t have a dog to walk, a bird to feed, or grass to cut. No feminine companion awaits me at the door, a duck roasting in the oven. The women come and go, and life stays the same though their faces change. There were stewardesses when they were still called that, a real estate broker with a penthouse condo, more than one South Beach model with tales of Milan and Paris and how our humidity is hell on the hair, a nurse who held my hand when I tore ligaments in a knee, a statuesque literature professor from Yugoslavia who could outcuss Granny Lassiter and didn’t disparage Hemingway, a Dolphin cheerleader to whom every new experience was either “far out” or “queer,” and who left me for a commodities broker with a yacht. And there, too, was the sportswriter I let down when she needed me to protect her. Since then, I hadn’t let anybody need me.

I always take a good book and my first baseman’s mitt when I get sent up. I never apologize, post bond, or seek rehearing. I’m not sure why, but it may have something to do with the stubborn streak I inherited from my granny.

The stockade is not so bad, even if the food tends to the starchy side. The prisoners are no more reprehensible than most of my partners and more forthright about their chicanery. There’s a good set of weights and a decent softball field. I like playing first base because there’s plenty of action, and you don’t have far to run.

So now I stood on the field in shorts and sneakers, a Marlins cap and dark shades. I had just fielded a bunt and flipped it home trying to nip a cat burglar on a squeeze play. He had quick feet, and the catcher, a sago palm thief, had bad hands, so the run scored.

“A day late and a dollar short,” someone said behind me.

I turned around to find Abe Socolow. Squinting into the sun, the state attorney wore his customary funeral suit, a cigarette locked in his lips. “Want to take a turn at bat, Abe? We need a designated killjoy.”

“ You need a lawyer.”

“Not me. Done my hard time. Getting out at two o’clock, thirty minutes off for good behavior.”

I was trying to hold the runner on the base and banter with Socolow at the same time. Complicating the task was my awareness of the runner’s vocation as a pickpocket. I didn’t like him behind me.

“We gotta talk.” Socolow dropped his cigarette and ground it into the base path. He looked out of place on a ballfield. In fact, he looked out of place anywhere but under the sickly fluorescent lighting of the Justice Building. He belonged there with the vaguely institutional smell, the incessant din of official commotion. He brought order to a disordered world, and did it as if he alone had the power. Sweat beaded on his high forehead, and in the sunlight, I could see his dark hair was thinning on top. “I got a call from Washington this morning. Someone asking a lot of questions about you.”

The pitcher, a con man who had perfected the pigeon drop and the week-late lottery scam, used a windmill windup, then threw a change-up. The batter was so far in front of the pitch he twisted himself into a pretzel on his follow-through.

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “I’m about to be nominated for the Supreme Court.”

“You’re about to be charged in the largest art theft in history.”

The con man’s fastball fooled the batter, who swung late, grounding a soft three-hopper right at me. I swiped at it, but never got the glove down. Sheesh. They teach you how to do that in Little League. I watched the ball roll between my legs and into right field.

“Fix! Fix!” The second baseman, a three-hundred-pound bookie and bolita operator, was screeching at me.

“What are you talking about?” I asked Socolow.

“You and that renegade CIA agent, Foley. I figure he’s the mastermind. Anybody who knows you would realize that. You’re the accessory, and probably an incompetent one. But Foley’s missing, and so are a few billion dollars of arts and antiquities, and you’re here. There’s a team from CIA, Justice, FBI, and State on their way. I’m your baby-sitter, Lassiter.”

T raffic was backed up on the way to the Justice Building. This time it wasn’t a shoot-out between drivers bickering over the right-of-way. It wasn’t an octogenarian with cataracts going the wrong way on the interstate. It was a leaky toilet on a jet.

Two lanes of the expressway exit that spanned the Miami River were closed while workers filled a crater caused by a jet engine that dropped off a 727 during the night. A tractor-trailer carrying twenty thousand pounds of live tropical fish sideswiped the engine, veered to the right, and overturned. The concrete guardrail sliced through the trailer’s roof like a can opener. Which is how thousands of angelfish, sea horses, and parrotfish came to be dumped into the river that pours into the bay, which opens into the Atlantic and theoretically gives the fish a chance to swim back to the Bahamian reefs from which they were so recently kidnapped.

The fish were happier than the airline P.R. people. They issued press releases explaining that a leaky toilet had caused the lavatory water to escape onto the fuselage of the 727, where it formed a huge blue chunk of ice that broke free and cleanly knocked the tail engine off the plane.

Traffic eased and then clogged again near Government Center. By order of the city commission, workers were hat-racking the black olive trees that shaded the street. Our local politicians somehow believed that street drug dealers would cease doing business if threatened with sunstroke. Next they’ll try draining the ocean to prevent shark attacks.

It took Socolow another ten minutes to find a parking spot. The Justice Building was surrounded by Santerfa worshipers carrying lighted candles and bowls of animal blood. They were apparently displeased with the arrest of one of their priests on animal cruelty charges after he sacrificed a dozen goats and chickens on the median strip of Biscayne Boulevard during rush hour.

“I used to think New York was weird,” Socolow said, as he nudged the county-owned Plymouth into a compact space six inches from a defense lawyer’s candy-apple red Porsche.

We took a series of escalators to the seventh floor, passing the usual cast of characters in the circus they call criminal court. Spit-and-polished uniformed cops, unwashed defendants in shackles, their mothers and girlfriends teary-eyed or indignant, harried probation officers, pretty young court reporters, dealmaking prosecutors and public defenders, and the occasional judge, black robes flowing, on the way to or from chambers.

“I love this place,” Socolow said, almost wistfully. “Jake, I remember when you were an assistant P.D. We had some good times, didn’t we?”

“ You had good times. You had a ninety-five-percent conviction rate.”

“They were all guilty of something, even if we charged them with something else.”

“And even if the cops lied in suppression hearings,” I reminded him. “‘Yes, Your Honor, I observed the cocaine in plain view on the dashboard. Yes, Your Honor, the subject consented to a body cavity search.’ C’mon, Abe, it’s just a game you’re very good at.”

The receptionist behind bullet-proof glass buzzed us into the State Attorney’s office. “You were on the wrong side, Jake. You burned out because you were working for the bad guys.”

“I burned out because I couldn’t tell the difference.”

Inside Socolow’s office, we had company. My bearded friend sat in a corner, huddled over a book on forensic odontology. A small, dark, mustachioed man in a white guayabera didn’t stand or offer his one hand. His daughter stood and ran to me. “Jake, are you all right?” Lourdes Soto asked, a tremor in her voice. “I’ve been so worried.”

Still in his chair, Severo Soto muttered something in Spanish. From his position in the corner, Doc Charlie Riggs never acknowledged me. Eyes still on his book, he allowed as how he’s seeing fewer cafe coronaries, restaurant patrons choking to death on chunks of meat, now that people are eating more fish and pasta.

I took Lourdes in my arms and looked into her moist dark eyes. She smelled of a rich perfume. “I’d be better if the governments of two countries plus the state of Florida didn’t want to prosecute me for crimes I didn’t do.”

“What you did,” Severo Soto said, “was hacer el tonto. You played the fool.”

“Papi, please!” Lourdes unwrapped herself from me and sat down again.

“But it is true,” her father said. “I know that, you know that, and Doctor Socolow knows that, verdad?”

Abe Socolow seemed to like being given the Spanish title of respect. He nodded graciously in Soto’s direction, then turned to me. “Jake, I’ve known you a long time. You’re a little rough around the edges, and your sense of ethics is flexible, to say the least.” He looked at Soto. “Jake here once robbed a grave to get evidence, and he’s been known to taunt a witness into a fistfight just to prove a propensity for violence.”

“I was younger, then,” I said, sheepishly.

“ Errare humanum est,” Charlie Riggs added, without looking up.

Why didn’t anyone speak English to me anymore? I plop ped into a chair between Lourdes and her father. Socolow sat down behind his green metal state-issue desk. “The point is that you’re unorthodox, and you play by your own rules, but I believe your story. You’re not a thief. Of course, the feds don’t know that, and here’s the way it’s coming down. Foley is off somewhere arranging for private sales of the best stuff you guys ripped off from an ex-KGB man.”

“Hold on! I didn’t rip off anything. Foley recovered the art from Kharchenko, who-”

“Hold on, Jake, you’ve got everything fouled up.” Abe Socolow tapped a cigarette out of a pack on his desk. He took his time lighting it, his body language telling me to calm down, this would take a while. “In the beginning, Foley and Yagamata were doing exactly what our government ordered. Tracking down the art thefts, hushing them up, getting the stuff back. Then somebody decides the thefts have political value, so the CIA starts getting the goods on the old hard-liners who are taking bribes. It was a hell of a sting that led to the failed coup. Later, under the reformers, our two governments were supposed to-”

“Trade art for wheat,” I interrupted.

“Huh?”

Now it was my turn to show off. “The CIA was helping the Russians by selling the art and turning the proceeds into food for the people. Yagamata got greedy and started selling the art and keeping the money after splitting it with Kharchenko and his pals. Foley stopped them and got everything back.”

“That’s what Foley told you.”

“Yeah.”

“And you believed him?”

Oh, shit.

Socolow sighed. “I guess Foley didn’t tell you the Russian reformers vetoed all that art-for-wheat business.”

“What!”

“It was on the drawing board, all right, but Yeltsin rejected it, said they’d tough it out without selling off their national treasures. Yagamata goes bat shit. He knows the nuts and bolts of how to get the stuff out of the country from his experiences with the hard-liners in the bad old days. He’d had a taste of it, and it’s all there waiting to be taken. He just couldn’t resist. When the stuff keeps disappearing, the Russians squawk to the CIA, which now has to reverse its policy. The smart guys at Langley figure it was a mistake to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. They’ve got to restore the status quo. Foley draws the assignment, and it takes him about thirty seconds to figure who’s behind it, so his job is to bring down Yagamata and get back the stuff. Instead, he beards Yagamata with a scam that the government will pay him for his cooperation, kills Kharchenko, and takes off with the art.”

“But Foley said-”

“Listen up, Jake.” Again, Socolow turned toward Soto and nodded with deference. “Senor Soto has been associated with the CIA since before the Bay of Pigs, and was there to keep an eye on Yagamata under the guise of providing shipping. When Yagamata started dealing for himself, Senor Soto alerted Langley, which told him to keep quiet and find out everything he could. Then all hell broke loose. These two Russian brothers-”

“Vladimir and Nikolai,” I said.

“Yeah. They figured out what was going on, too, that Yagamata was stealing every ashtray in the country. Vladimir worked for Yagamata, so he was easy enough to dispose of. They used Kharchenko to knock off Crespo because Crespo knew who killed Vladimir and was starting to crack. Kharchenko also killed a Finnish agent-”

“Eva-Lisa Haavikko. She was slaughtered in a sauna. I was there.”

“Eva-Lisa?” Lourdes repeated, her eyebrows raised. “In a sauna?”

“She was a Suopo operative who helped out when they were using the art to set up the hard-liners,” Socolow said. “When Yagamata kept up the flow of goods after CIA policy changed, she tried to back out. But her employer had changed without her knowing it. Yagamata wasn’t working for the CIA anymore, and what used to be the KGB, the new Russian Agency for Federal Security, tossed Kharchenko out on his ear. Her new bosses were international outlaws even nastier than the folks in Langley and Moscow, and it got her killed.” Socolow shot a sour look at me. “Meanwhile, CIA figures out what Foley is up to and gets Senor Soto involved to try and recover the art from Yagamata. But it was too late once you and Foley pulled off the heist.”

My head was spinning. Just like the old days. I never could tell the good guys from the bad.

“So, Jakie, to put it bluntly, you fucked up. You went on the road and suited up for the wrong team. You turned over the goods to the wrong side. In short, you’re Wrong-Way Lassiter again.”

I hate it when somebody calls me that. One lousy play a thousand years ago and they never forget. We were leading the dog-ass New York Jets by ten with a minute to go, and I was doing my best to get some grass stains on my jersey when the ball squirted out of the pile and took a neat end-over-end bounce right into my hands. Okay, so I got turned around-it could happen to anybody-and tore off in the wrong direction. The only touchdown of my NFL demicareer, and it had to be for the guys in green-and-white. We still won the game by three points, but most of my drinking buddies had taken the Dolphins minus five, which was all I heard at the Gaslight Lounge for the next few weeks. It was my most embarrassing moment on the playing field, unless you count the time I blocked a punt- our punt-with my backside, but that’s another story.

“Where’s Foley now?” I asked.

“CIA figures he’s looking for experts to attest to the loot’s authenticity. As you can imagine, he doesn’t have documentation, and if you’re going to ask ten million dollars for a painting, you gotta have some proof. The art world is filled with some incredibly good fakes.”

That brought Charlie Riggs out of his book. “Jake, you’re probably familiar with the Greek Kouros purchased by the Getty Museum.”

“Intimately,” I muttered. I was still trying to figure out who was on whose side.

Charlie waggled a cold pipe at me. “A marble statue of a young boy. The museum spent nine million dollars for it almost a decade ago, and despite the most sophisticated tests-electron microscopy, thermoluminescence, and carbon-14 dating-nobody knows if that statue was carved twenty-five hundred years ago on the island of Thasos, or fifty years ago in some forger’s basement in Turkey.”

“Anyway,” Socolow said, sounding bored, “even without Yagamata, Foley will probably try to make the first deals with Japanese billionaires for selected pieces in the five-to twenty-million-dollar range. Japan’s where all the money is. Plus they have a delightful law that gives clear title to the buyer of stolen art unless the lawful owner puts him on notice of the theft within two years. So, all the guy has to do is keep his egg or painting or whatever under wraps for a couple of years, then haul it out at a birthday party or the opening of a new Lexus dealership.”

“What are you guys doing about Foley?” I asked. “Why aren’t you after him?”

Socolow smiled, if that’s what you call it when a barracuda spots a guppy. “That’s where you come in.”

“I don’t know where he is,” I said quickly, “and I don’t know where the art is. Your buddies from Washington can beat me with rubber hoses, and I still won’t know.”

“With your head, Jake, they’d use lead pipes. We know where he is, and he’s got the loot with him. We need you to deal with him.”

“Me? Why me?”

“You’re the only one we know who can get close to Foley.”

“Close to him! He used me. Like Senor Soto said, he played me for a fool. I led him to Kharchenko. He had me believing I was following orders from the President.”

Soto stirred in his chair, then stood up. The movement made his empty sleeve billow. “Foley should have killed you but he did not. He knew you would be taken into custody here and interrogated, that you would likely reveal everything that happened, but he wanted you around for some purpose.”

“What purpose?”

Socolow lit another cigarette. “Even the boys in Washington couldn’t figure that one out, until Foley called.”

“Called?”

“Yeah, called. Like on the phone.”

“Why?”

Again, he showed his predator’s smile. “C’mon, Jake, think about it. It’s what we used to call dropping the dime, or these days should we say, the quarter? Foley wants to cut a deal. He wants you to be his lawyer.”