Lassiter

9 Never Lost, Just Hard to Find

Twenty minutes after leaving the video store, I parked in front of City Hall, a waterfront art deco building that in the 1930s had been the terminal for Pan Am’s seaplanes. I took a shortcut through the adjacent boatyard, dodging several oily puddles at the entrance to Scotty’s Landing, a ramshackle fish joint next to the marina. A few yards away, sailboats were docked, halyards pinging in the wind. A three-quarters moon hung over the bay.

I spotted Amy at a redwood picnic table, closest to the water.

“Thanks for meeting me.” I slid onto the bench across from her.

“Who’s the guy you found?” Small talk was not in the lady’s repertoire.

I told her about Charles Ziegler and Charlie’s Girlz and the porn video I watched. A shudder went through Amy’s body, and I gave her a moment to compose herself.

Then I told her Krista was last seen heading to a party at Ziegler’s house. I didn’t mention that I’d met the guy for about a minute, because that would have meant coming clean about my one-nighter with Krista. Amy had no need for the information, and I had no desire to take any more crap from her.

“Let me tell you my plan,” I said.

“Thanks, but I don’t need your plan. I’ll confront Ziegler myself.”

“No, you won’t. He’s a big deal in this town. He’ll have lawyers, layers of people to get through. Besides, we’ve got nothing on him. There were lots of men at his parties. We may have only one chance to talk to Ziegler, and we need to do our homework first.”

She nailed me with a cold, hard, insurance investigator’s look. “Just what homework do we need to do?”

“We should pay a visit to Alex Castiel, the State Attorney.”

“The guy you claim is a friend.”

“We play basketball in the lawyers’ league.”

“That’s it? You dribble to each other?”

I didn’t explain that “dribble to each other” made no sense, basketball-wise. “Castiel has a staff of investigators,” I said. “He works with cops. He can subpoena witnesses.”

“Just how good of friends are you?” Suspicion laced her voice, or maybe that was her normal tone.

“A long time ago, I did a big favor for him.”

“What kind of favor?”

“The secret kind. What I’m saying, he owes me.”

It was true. I’d been carrying the guy’s IOU for a long time, never intending to use it. But then, I’d never been accused of making a teenage girl vanish before.

“So if you’re ready to work together,” I said, “I have a bunch of questions about Krista that will help me get started.”

Amy studied me, her eyes seeming to search for deception. I looked past her to an older couple pushing a cart of groceries along the pier. Tanned the color of a richly brewed tea, the couple was headed toward a Kaufman, a deep-water cruiser with a striking name on its transom, Never Lost, Just Hard to Find. I imagined them sailing around the world, but maybe that was my dream, not theirs.

“So how about it?” I prodded her. “Are we a team?”

“Do you win most of your cases, Lassiter?”

“Not even half. But damn few of my customers are innocent.”

“Customers …?”

“All I ask is a check that doesn’t bounce and a story that doesn’t make the judge burst out laughing.”

“Nice.”

“Hey, they don’t call us ‘sharks’ for our ability to swim.”

I figured she’d never buy it if I pretended to be Atticus Finch.

“Do you have any siblings, Lassiter?”

“A sister. Half sister, really. My mom had her out of wedlock after my father was killed down in the Keys. Why do you ask?”

“Krista’s my half sister, too. We have the same father.”

We were both quiet a moment, absorbing that small bit of commonality.

“Do you love her?” Amy asked. “Do you love your sister.”

Another weird question but I went along. “Janet’s a crack whore and a worse mother than Octomom, but yeah, I guess I love her.”

“If someone killed her, what would you do?”

“I’d go after him. Hard.”

Her eyes warmed up just a bit. It was the answer she wanted to hear. Better yet, it was true. “What do you need to know about Krista?”

That seemed to be her way of welcoming me aboard.

“Everything. About her, about you. About the Larkins of Toledo, Ohio.”

Amy looked off toward the bay, her sunset eyes seeming to reflect the moonlight. She told me about their father, Frank Larkin. After divorcing Krista’s mother, he married again, and his new wife gave birth to Amy. The two girls were close, even with the six-year age difference. Amy idolized her older sister. Krista was popular, smart, pretty. A cheerleader, but a secret one.

“Krista hid her uniform in her locker at school. She told Mom she was at Bible study group when they practiced or had games.”

Krista’s double life, it seemed, had started early.

“Why’d she run away?” I asked.

“Do you believe Jesus is the son of God?”

The question came so far out of left field it was beyond the bleachers. A waiter came over, giving me time to formulate an answer while I ordered a beer, smoked fish dip, conch fritters, and jalapeno poppers. Amy opted for white wine.

“I believe if there’s an all-seeing God, he must have his eyes closed. The universe is chaos. The Big Bang banged. Little molecules grew into big molecules, and after a thousand millennia, something slithered out of the swamp and turned into the bloodthirsty animal we call man.”

She looked as if I’d dropped my pants at Sunday vespers.

“No disrespect intended,” I added.

“How do you live your life with such feelings?”

“I try to do the least damage possible to people and God’s green earth.”

“God’s green earth?”

“I’m hedging my bets.”

Amy fiddled with her napkin. “Mom was a Higher Life Pentecostal. Dad sort of went along, but he drew the line at speaking in tongues. Krista refused to go to church. Her way of rebelling against my mom, her stepmom. Krista taunted her. Smoked and drank and ran around with boys. One night, I overheard Mom on the phone, talking to someone about an intervention. Kidnapping Krista, taking her someplace where the church would program her.”

It wasn’t hard to figure out what happened next. “You told Krista your mom was gonna snatch her.”

She nodded. “The next morning Krista was gone. Never even said good-bye.”

Headed to South Beach to be a supermodel, I guessed. Glamour and fame just a Greyhound ride away.

“If I’d kept my mouth shut, Krista never would have left.” Amy choked on her words. It was the first emotion, other than anger, I’d seen cross her face.

“You did what any sister would do.”

As she made an effort not to sob, I listened to the groan of hulls against pilings, giving her a moment to mourn all over again. It only took a moment, and she composed herself.

“If Krista didn’t say good-bye, how’d you know she came down here?” I asked.

“She called me after a week, said she was sleeping on the beach. She’d met an older guy who said she could make some money modeling, maybe get into the movies.”

“I don’t suppose she mentioned a name.”

Amy shook her head. “No, but now I guess it was Charlie Ziegler.”

“What did you tell your parents?”

“Nothing. Krista made me promise not to. A few months went by, and someone called Dad. He wouldn’t say who.”

Sonia Majeski, I knew.

“Dad just went to the airport, and when he came home, he said Krista had died in a boating accident in Florida, and her body was never found. He said we needed to get on with our lives.”

“When did you realize your father was lying?”

“Not until he died six weeks ago. I came across his journals and the photo from the strip club. Krista was dead to him, so he decided she had to be dead to me, too.”

That explained why it took Amy all these years to begin looking for her sister. I processed that and tried to figure just what it must have been like for an eleven-year-old girl growing up in that house. Thinking maybe I should cut Amy a break, given what she’d been through.

“Tomorrow, we’ll pay a visit to the State Attorney,” I told her. “Things are gonna start rolling.”

“You haven’t mentioned a fee. How much will this cost me?”

“Nothing. Not a dime. This one’s not about money.”