False Dawn

9

A tractor-trailer had collided with a bus on Tamiami Trail, snarling traffic on the way back into the city. A light rain was falling, and it was growing dark. An ambulance sat on the soggy berm alongside the canal where the bus was jammed nose-first into the shallow water, its rear wheels angled into the air. Raindrops slithered down my windshield, glowing blood red with each revolution of the ambulance’s flashing light. From the east, I could hear a siren drawing closer. I know a personal injury lawyer who loves the sound. Whenever he hears an ambulance, he turns to his partner and says, “They’re playing our song.” The same lawyer branched out into divorce work and had a new business card printed: “Broken bones and broken hearts.” And my brethren at the bar wonder why they’re considered bottom-feeding gutter rats.

Eventually, the traffic cleared, and I headed into town, passing Sweetwater, home to several thousand Nicaraguan refugees, heading into Little Havana, then south on Ponce de Leon, through the Gables, and into Coconut Grove. My head was clanging by the time I downshifted into second and pulled onto Kumquat Street. The neighborhood was quiet, except for the buzz and crackle of insects and the warbling of a mockingbird in the marlberry bush in my front yard. By this time of night, most birds were nuzzling their mates and telling whoppers about the fat, juicy night crawler that got away. But here was my mocker chirping midnight melodies. He sang his own song, then a few he picked up during the day from a yellow-billed cuckoo, and if I could whistle “Raindrops Are Falling on My Head,” he’d give that a try, too.

Mimus polyglottos, Charlie Riggs calls my feathery friend. Mimic of many tongues. I like him because he’s a tough bird who chases away crows and cats and even an occasional German shepherd. Charlie says he’s a bachelor, just like me. They’re the only birds who sing at night, crooning their own Personals ad. High-flying male mocker with stunning white wing patches seeks sleek mate for dining, gliding, and more. So far old Mimus hadn’t had much luck. He was still serenading the crickets, but then, who was I to gloat?

My neighborhood is what the guidebooks would call eclectic, if they called it anything, which they don’t. To me, it’s just weird. Not fancy enough for the creme de la crumbs, real estate developers and drug dealers, it is home to a collection of what I call soloists, men and women who reject marital and suburban bliss.

In the blank marked “occupation” on the census form, my neighbors are all “other.” Geoffrey, who lives in the stucco house behind the poinciana trees, is a free-lance cameraman who works the wee hours and peddles videos of late-night car crashes and drug busts to the local TV stations. On the other side of the limeberry shrubs, Mako is esconced in a wooden tree house reachable only by rope ladder. He trades custom-made hammocks for Florida crawfish with Homer Thigpen, a lobster pot poacher down the street. Phoebe with the bright red hair hosts swingers parties complete with nude diving contests in her swimming pool. And Robert and Robert-art gallery owners-keep to themselves behind the hibiscus hedge. All of which makes me the most bourgeois of the bunch.

My parking spot in the gravel under a chinaberry tree was occupied by a red BMW convertible. On my front porch, a lady in a red leather mini and white silk blouse sat in Granny Lassiter’s cherrywood rocker. Granny used to rock while sipping from a Mason jar filled with liquid propane she called home brew. Now the Lady in Red sat there holding a supermarket bag. A loaf of Cuban bread stuck out the top. You hungry? Lourdes Soto asked.

In the glow of a three-quarter moon enhanced by the misty light of the mercury vapor anticrime lights, Lourdes appeared as an apparition, her creamy complexion in soft focus. Her slight smile had the peacefulness of a Madonna, and for a moment I thought maybe I’d been hit harder than I realized. When I got close enough for her to see my face, she let out a low whistle. A fine and dandy lady whistle. “Is this what you downtown lawyers do on weekends? Flex that Y-chromosome, burn off some testosterone?”

“I was working.”

She sniffed at the air and didn’t smell frangipani. “You sure you weren’t runner-up in a beer-guzzling contest?” She showed me a wide smile, giving me a good look at scarlet lips and white teeth. “Maybe I should put something on those scrapes,” she said.

I gestured toward the groceries. “After you cook some dinner.”

“ Cook? What do you think, I came here to make paella and boniatos? I’m not one of those traditional Cuban girls, convent schooling, black beans and rice with Mami, waiting for the men to come home. That went out with chaperones. We’re having sandwiches, Jake.”

“Okay, okay. Sandwiches are fine.”

I put a shoulder against the humidity-swollen front door and gave a good shove. It groaned open and I chivalrously allowed Lourdes to enter my palace. She surveyed the surroundings and remained graciously silent. In decorating, I have spared great expense.

Lourdes didn’t blink an eye at the coffee table made of a sailboard propped on concrete blocks. She didn’t fuss at two weeks of newspapers spread across sofa and floor. She ignored a rusty scuba tank, a wetsuit that had dripped itself dry into a potted geranium, now comatose with saltwater poisoning, and she didn’t comment on my architectural skill at building a giant house of cards out of empty cartons of home delivery pizza.

I flicked on the lamp with the translucent rotating Dolphins helmet for a shade. She looked at me in the orange-and-turquoise light and gently touched my forehead with what I took for sisterly concern. “You have any hydrogen peroxide?”

“You gonna nurse me, or you planning to burn this place to the ground?”

“Forget it. Your head is so hard, a few dents and scrapes won’t do any damage.” She put a hand on my shoulder and steered me toward the stairs. “Why don’t you shower? I may tidy up a bit.”

“You sure? I don’t want you to violate some feminist manifesto.”

“Don’t be a jerk. Go!” She ran a hand through my beer-sticky hair, then paused, a puzzled look crossing her face. “Is it my imagination or is that a peanut in your ear?”

I showered and slipped into blue nylon running shorts. The occasion didn’t seem formal, so I skipped the shirt, socks, and shoes. I found her in the kitchen. The living room had been rearranged, dusted, and sorted out. “What I assumed to be garbage, I stacked in the corner by the door,” she said. “The cans and bottles are in separate bags, the newspapers tied in bundles for recycling.”

“Thanks. Those sneakers with the missing tongue and flapping soles were my favorites, but I can live without them. And that’s quarter-inch outhaul line around the papers.”

The coffee cups and cereal bowls that had filled the sink were now in the dishwasher, which had come out of retirement and was happily chugging away. The countertops had been wiped clean, and the floor mopped. And I always thought the kitchen tile was gray.

I gave her a look. “What was that speech about not being the domestic type?”

“You exceeded even my limits of tolerance.”

“I guess the place could use a woman’s touch.”

“Or even a human touch,” she said.

She rooted around in a drawer and came up with a hammer, a screwdriver, some matches, a deck of playing cards, and some plastic gizmos that were once attached to some appliance or another. “Don’t you have any flatware, or do you just use your hands?”

“The flatware,” I informed her, “is with the al fresco utensils.” I opened a drawer filled with paper plates, paper cups, and plastic forks, spoons, and knives.

“Environmentally unsound,” she said.

“I reuse the forks and spoons,” I replied, defending myself against charges of pillaging the earth.

“I can see that.” She was inspecting a fork for toxic scum. After some sudsing and rinsing, she made sandwiches of roast turkey, cream cheese, and strawberry jam on Cuban bread. I watched her slender hands moving quickly. I watched the muscles in the calves of her legs as she moved across the small kitchen. I watched myself watch her and wondered what was going on.

“You know Cubans have a weakness for sweets.” She added an extra dollop of jam to her bread. “This one’s yours.” She slid a plate across the counter to me. It contained a thick sandwich, a garnish of fresh pineapple, and a pile of banana chips. “Beer?” she asked.

“No, thanks. I filled my quota today. Besides, the combination…”

She shrugged, opened the fridge, and found some milk that didn’t predate the Carter Administration. We ate standing up at the counter, looking at each other, contemplating the situation. At least that’s what I was doing. What was going on here? After a moment of silence, I said, “We sure needed the rain, huh?”

She looked at me as if I were a complete fool, which of course I was. There is that peculiar mating dance for the species that doesn’t sing songs or lock antlers to win its mate. We paw the earth and shuffle and smile and chat about everything and nothing and send out little coded signals. I decided to dispense with the meteorological insights. She touched her ebony hair and smoothed it back over an ear. She cocked her head and looked at me from under dark eyelashes. I responded by taking a bite of my sweet turkey sandwich and leaving a glob of cream cheese stuck in the corner of my mouth. When it comes to savoir faire, I come up a little short.

“Let me,” Lourdes said, with a come-hither look. She moved close enough for us to breathe each other’s air, and she scraped up the cream cheese with the ruby red fingernail of a pinky. Then she stuck the fingernail in my mouth. And then the whole finger. When the finger came out, her tongue went in. We stood there, kissing soft and slow, pressed against each other, my hands running from her shoulders to her buttocks. She arched herself into me, running the tips of her nails across my bare back, full lips caressing mine. I cupped my hands under her leather-clad bottom and lifted her off the floor, bringing her to my height. She wrapped her legs around me, and we stood there, motionless except for the grinding of loins.

“The bedroom’s upstairs,” I whispered.

“Here’s fine,” she said.

And it was. I stepped out of my shorts. She wriggled out of her mini and pulled the white silk blouse over her head. Underneath she wore lacy white panties and matching bra. From somewhere she produced a foil-wrapped condom. She opened the foil with her teeth, smoothing the condom on me with steady fingers. She slipped out of the panties and bra with no help from me and was left in her red stiletto high heels. The shoes stayed on as I lifted her again, feeling her moist heat pressed against me. My hands flowed over her, from the shoulders through the smooth valley of her back to the silken skin where her hips flared into that wondrous sweep of womanhood.

“I want you,” she breathed into my ear.

“Whatever the lady wants.”

Our engines hummed along, the fires building. She raised her breasts to my mouth, cradling them in each hand. Her nipples were taut and erect, startling in their darkness against the creaminess of her skin. I lifted her buttocks higher and pressed into her. As she took me into her sweet soft vise, her body stiffened and her eyes widened, nearly fearful. Then she exhaled a slow warm breath, closed her eyes and locked onto me. There was a perfect meshing of gears, temperature rising, cadence matching. When my pace increased, hers matched stride. When my breathing deepened, hers followed. Our tempo built to a crescendo, she dug her nails into my back, wailed some entreaty in Spanish I had never heard, threw her head back, and tightened her grip while spasms shook us both.

“Good Lord,” I said, at last.

“ Ay, Dios mio,” she breathed in my ear.

Later, upstairs in the bed under the paddle fan, her head cradled in the crook of my right arm, she said, “I nearly forgot why I came to see you.”

“It wasn’t to cook-sorry-make sandwiches?”

“No.”

“Or to clean my kitchen?”

“Hardly.”

“Or to fix my clock?”

“That just happened. Yo no planee.”

Uh-huh.

“Want to talk about it?” I asked. Lately, I’ve become sensitive to a woman’s needs. I’m not sure why, but it seems only fair. My rules are simple: I say what I feel, and I never pretend, mislead, or say I love you unless I mean it, so the words have seldom been heard. After an encounter, I try to talk, and not about the recent narrowing of the goalposts in college football. Some years ago, in the dentist’s office, I picked up one of those women’s magazines with a bosomy woman in a low-cut dress on the cover. I took a quiz on my lovemaking skills and made Dean’s List in technical proficiency but flunked the part about postcoital cuddling and conversation. So I read some of the other stuff, too, about connection and communication. Now, I’ve picked up the buzzwords about how men and women misunderstand each other. Men speak the language of power and independence; women speak of closeness and intimacy. Men report what they do; women reveal their feelings. So here I was, a former varsity member of the AFC Eastern Division All-Star Party team, master of the one-night stand, lying entangled with Lourdes Soto with lots of me touching lots of her, trying to make sense of it all.

“Talk about it?” she responded.

“Like what just happened. What it means.”

She chuckled into my ear. “You mean, will I call you tomorrow?”

She was mocking me, just like Mimus polyglottos.

“I was just surprised, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting this.”

“So you want to analyze it?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. I just thought that, as a woman, you might want to talk…”

“Hey, big guy, just lean back and enjoy it.”

She was tracing figure eights on my chest with her manicured nails. And then the eights moved south to my stomach. And then lower still. Soon her lips took over the movements. I gave up and did what I was told to do.

I have some news for you about the Crespo case,” Lourdes Soto said, her head resting on my chest.

“No business now. Let’s enjoy the moment.”

“ Good news.”

“Whatever it is can wait.”

“Okay, but I’ve got sworn statements from two witnesses that the Russian threatened Crespo on several occasions and once attacked him with a knife.”

“What? Who?” I sat up so quickly Lourdes nearly slid off the bed.

“Tomas Rivera and Lazaro Soler. They’re on your witness list.”

“Sure they are. I listed everybody who worked for Atlantic Seaboard, just to cover all the bases. But I’ve interviewed them, and they didn’t see, hear, or know anything.”

Lourdes propped herself on an elbow and ran a fingernail across my thigh. “Maybe you didn’t smile when you asked the questions.”

I wanted to believe her. And when we want to believe, we sometimes do. But Francisco Crespo never told me about being attacked. “Crespo told me he owed Smorodinsky some money, and they argued about it, but he said nothing about a knife.”

“I’ll give you the written statements. The Russian tried to slice Crespo’s throat with a survival knife. You know, like Rambo used. Three rows of saw teeth, a hollow handle, and a spear point. Took Soler and Rivera to stop him, had to threaten him with a gun. Of course, you’ll need their live testimony, and they’re willing to come forward.”

Three rows of saw teeth. The best lies are crammed with details, like the redheaded Anglo with the American flag tattoo I’d invented ten years before. “The police didn’t find a knife, not at the scene or in Smorodinsky’s belongings.”

“They didn’t report any,” she corrected me. “A knife like that, maybe a cop slipped off with it. Maybe another worker did.” She pushed me back into the pillows. “It happens.”

Outside, the rain had stopped, but the mockingbird was still singing up a storm. He sounded like a bobwhite. My windows are open because I choose not to have central air. I don’t want to live in a hermetically sealed tomb. I like the breeze and the smell of mango trees and the sounds of burglars in the bushes. I listened to the mocker and the rhythm of the paddle fan, whompety-whomping its endless circles. “If the two guys saw the attack,” I said, after a moment, “we can get that into evidence, but I don’t know about the threats. All hearsay, unless they’re considered res gestae or excited utterances. How long before-”

“Three days. The Russian attacked him April thirteen. Then on the sixteenth, it happened again. Only no Soler and Rivera to stop it or witness it.”

It was neat. All wrapped up like a Christmas package and delivered by one of Santa’s elves. A naked elf who at this moment was resting her right breast on my forearm. A smart guy would shut up and take it all. He would conveniently forget that his own client admits attacking the Russian without provocation.

“I was going to keep Crespo off the stand and try it as a reasonable doubt case. Plant the seed that maybe somebody else came along and killed the guy. Now you’re telling me the Russian attacked Crespo. Now, it’s self-defense.”

“Looks that way.”

The bird quieted down. From across the hibiscus hedge, I heard a radio with a late-night talk show, Larry King interviewing a Hollywood starlet whose book discussed the sexual equipment of numerous leading men. Larry announced that Ross Pero t was the next guest, but I didn’t think the two segments were related.

“It’ll work,” I said, “if Crespo corroborates it.”

“I think you’ll find he will.”

“What do you know that I don’t but should?”

“Trust me.”

How do you tell a naked lady you wouldn’t trust her to change a ten into two fives?

You lie.

“I trust you all right, Lourdes, but I don’t trust Yagamata. Somebody besides me is handling Crespo’s defense, and it’s got to be him. Yagamata’s sending in the plays. I’m just supposed to call the numbers.”

“What if he is? If he found the witnesses and told them to talk to me, why not-”

“ Found? Paid is more like it. Let your star witnesses take a polygraph. If they pass, I’ll use them.”

She slid a hand up my leg, cupping it against the part of me that has a mind of its own.

“Why do that? Why look for reasons not to win?”

“It’s one of my many flaws. I want to win, but I want to win fair and square.”

“If you don’t know whether or not they’re lying, it’s not unethical to put them on the stand, is it?”

“No. It’s up to the jury to decide.”

“And if you know they’re lying…”

“I can’t use them.”

“So, forget the polygraph. Just let the jury decide. You have an obligation to your client.”

More than she knew. A two-generation obligation. Emilia Crespo had been there for me and only asked one thing in return. Protect my son. Francisco Crespo had put his life on the line for me. Now I was being handed a way to make the first installment on my debt to both of them.

So easy.

Kill two burdens with one stone.

Maybe three. Yagamata would be happy, too. I’d made such a fuss about defending Crespo and not rolling over that Yagamata came up with a way to get him off. It’s called suborning perjury. Maybe there’d be a bonus for my crafty work.

So why didn’t I just take the ball and run with it?

Because I have an obligation to me, too. Sometimes I just need to know. I need to know the truth. It isn’t supposed to be part of my job, and usually it’s better not to know. But it just doesn’t work for me. I wanted to know who killed Smorodinsky.

Why was Crespo willing to take a fall? And what was Yagamata covering up? There were just too many questions and too few answers.

“I can’t do it, Lourdes.”

“Why on earth not?” There was genuine astonishment in her voice.

“It’s hard to explain. I just live by a code that isn’t written down anywhere but tells me to do what I think is right. I make compromises like everybody else, and I sometimes break the rules, but usually only the little ones. I try to go through life doing the least damage possible. I drop quarters into tin cups and feed stray cats. I don’t lie to the court or let witnesses do it. It may sound old-fashioned, but I don’t cheat to win. As for Francisco Crespo, I’m not going to tank the case, and I’m not going to win it with perjured testimony, either.”

No one applauded, and best I could tell, no bands struck up the national anthem. So I shut up and waited for my bedmate to show me her beatific smile, draw me to her bosom, and tell me how proud she was of my moral fiber.

Lourdes sat up and seemed to be looking for her clothes. The last I had seen them, they were scattered on the kitchen floor. She stood and turned away, leaving me watching the smooth, naked expanse of her flank. “You’re just an overgrown Boy Scout, aren’t you?”

I didn’t answer and she continued, a tinge of sadness in her voice. “You want a merit badge and a pat on the back. You want to be told just how wonderful and decent you are. Okay, here it is. You’re honest and noble and virtuous. You have principles and scruples and morals. You’re all that and more.”

“More?”

Her bare feet were already padding down the stairs as she called to me over her shoulder. “You’re also a goddamn fool.”