Lassiter

12 The Solid Gold Lighter

“Snuff films are a myth,” Castiel said. “Who fed you this line of crap, anyway?”

“I told you, Alex. My informant is confidential.”

“For a lawyer, you’re a lousy liar.”

“Don’t let that get out, or I’ll lose all my clients.”

Castiel returned to his desk, the power position. I sat humbly in the visitor’s chair, admiring the paneled walls. Castiel didn’t plaster his office with photos of himself shaking hands with every cheap politico in town. No ribbon cuttings. No plaques from the Kiwanis or bouquets from the PTA. For a politician, he was almost a regular guy.

“Face it,” Castiel said. “All you have is suspicion with nothing to back it up.”

“The sleazebag was passing the girl around to his friends and making her do porn. She disappears. I’m suspicious, yeah.”

“Sleazebag? You put labels on people, Jake. You see things in black and white, good and evil.”

“You’re right. I see rapists as evil. I don’t care that Polanski made good movies or that Ziegler made bad ones. I just get pissed when the strong abuse the weak.”

“A word of advice, Jake. Don’t go around town talking trash about Charlie Ziegler. The guy’s got connections.”

“Meaning?”

“He could cut off your court appointments with one phone call, and there’s nothing I could do to help you.”

I had one more card to play, the one I’d carried in my vest for years. “If not for me, Alex, you wouldn’t even be sitting in that fancy chair.”

That seemed to take him aback. “You saying I owe you because you once did a public service?”

“I wore a wire for you because I thought it was the right thing to do. You got elected State Attorney, and I got treated like a leper.”

To this day, I didn’t know if I regretted my actions. I was a newly minted lawyer, learning the ropes in the Public Defender’s Office. One of my first clients had discovered the identity of the confidential informant who had fingered him for robbery and extortion. My guy thought I’d make a good bag man to deliver money to a gangbanger who would kill the informant and the prosecutor, a newbie named Alejandro Castiel.

I had a choice. I could withdraw from the case, but I figured my client would just find somebody else to set up the hit. So I wore a wire and arranged to meet the gangbanger in a Hialeah warehouse.

“Why you asking all these questions?” the guy demanded.

“To make sure we’re on the same page.”

“Just give me the money and get the fuck out.”

“Not a problem.” I handed over a gym bag stuffed with cash. Maybe I was sweating or maybe something in my eyes gave it away.

“You wearing a wire?” the guy said.

“Fuck no.”

“Prove it.” He pulled a 9mm from his waistband.

He was half a foot shorter than me, and standing so close, I could feel his breath. I head-butted him, a quick, vicious shot that broke his nose and spurted blood over me. I stomped on his instep, and he dropped the gun.

A second later, the door burst open. Half a dozen cops flew into the room, followed by Castiel.

Starting with the press conference, Castiel became the hero of the story. I turned out to be the subject of some suspicion. Why, a newspaper reporter wondered, would a career criminal solicit me for a murder scheme, unless I was dirty? I didn’t get the key to the city or even a thank you. Defense lawyers treated me like a pariah, and even penniless jailbirds wouldn’t hire me.

Now Castiel looked troubled. No one ever wants to be reminded of an unpaid debt. “How much is Amy Larkin paying you, Jake?”

“In round numbers, zero.”

“Are you nailing her?”

“Does she look nailable? When you put your hand on her shoulder, I thought she was gonna bite it off.”

“Your stake in this case is bupkis. So why now?”

“Why now, what?”

“All these years, you never mentioned wearing the wire for me. Why you calling in that chit now? What’s so special about this case?”

I’m not one of those sinners who finds relief in confession, so I didn’t go anywhere near the story of my one-night stand with Krista. “If I don’t help Amy Larkin, who will?”

“Not buying it, Jake. You don’t give a hoot about your clients.”

“Bullshit! I sweat blood for every one.”

“You sweat blood to win. It’s about you, pal. Not them.”

That stopped me. After a moment, I said, “Never too late to change.”

“Save it for your next client, because you can’t help Amy Larkin. You can only hurt yourself.”

When people tell me I can’t do something, I generally work harder to prove I can. Everyone told me I couldn’t make the Dolphins as a free agent. But I did, even if I sat so far down Shula’s bench, my ass was in Ocala.

Castiel opened a fancy humidor made of polished cherrywood and pulled out a long, tapered cigar. Then he grabbed a guillotine clipper from his pocket and snipped off the end. We were in a nonsmoking building and the cigar was a Cuban Torpedo, but I decided against making a citizen’s arrest.

He leaned against the credenza and waved the unlit cigar at me. “I’ve known Charlie a long time, and he’s no killer. Trust me on this one, Jake.”

“Great. He can call you as a character witness.”

“Years ago, Charlie dealt in sleaze. But he’s a changed man. You, of all people, should respect that.”

“Me?”

“You were a hell-raiser, and now you’re a defense lawyer, which means you believe in redemption. You’re the guys always begging for second chances.”

Castiel pulled a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and flipped it open. It was gold in color and looked expensive. He lit the long, illegal cigar, sucked on it, and exhaled a fine cloud of tangy smoke.

“Life is not always black and white, Jake. Mostly, it’s colored in shades of gray.”

“That’s deep, Alex.”

“The duality of man. There’s good and evil in all of us.”

“Very deep, indeed.” What is it about men and cigars? A guy lights up and starts spouting two-bit philosophy.

Castiel grabbed a weathered black-and-white photo in a gilt frame from his credenza. A faded, vintage look. Two men standing in front of a roulette wheel, lots of classy folk dressed to the nines, as they would have said back then. A beautiful red-haired woman stood between the men. She wore a slinky cocktail dress with a flower pinned behind one ear. “That’s my father on the left and my mother in the middle.”

“And Meyer Lansky on the right,” I tossed in. “The Riviera Hotel in Havana in the fifties. I remember your stories, Alex.”

Bernard Castiel, Alex’s father, was a handsome man in an old-fashioned way. Thick through the chest in his double-breasted suit, dark hair brilliantined straight back. Rosa Castiel had wild, flashing eyes and looked ready to mambo. She was taller than the man on her left, Meyer Lansky, the mobster. Finely tailored gray suit, thin face, wary eyes.

For as long as I’ve known him, Castiel has had a curious level of pride about his family’s less-than-savory past.

“Can you imagine those times, Jake?” Castiel once told me. “Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and Bugsy Siegel all in Cuba at the same time, three guys who grew up together on the Lower East Side. It’d be like Mays, Mantle, and Aaron all playing on the same team.”

There was always a lilt of excitement in Castiel’s voice talking about those days. Tales of high-stakes gambling, dangerous men, and exotic women. In the late 1950s, Bernard Castiel was security chief at Lansky’s Riviera casino. His most important task was delivering bundles of cash to President Fulgencio Batista. More mundane chores involved chopping off the hands of casino employees caught skimming. Or so Alex once told me with notes of contentment.

Castiel held up his cigarette lighter. “This belonged to my father. Solid gold.”

He tossed it to me. Heavy as a hand grenade. I ran a finger around a raised ridge of gold in the shape of a crocodile with a diamond for an eye. The ridge was the outline of the island of Cuba. The diamond was Havana.

“Lansky must have been paying well,” I said, tossing the lighter back.

“Bernard didn’t buy it. President Batista gave it to him as a fortieth birthday present. Can you imagine its value to me?”

As much as a John Dillinger’s Tommy gun to his heirs, I thought. But what I said was, “A lot, Alex. I know your family lost everything to Castro. And I know how your father lost his life.”

The story was part of the Castiel mythology, and it helped propel Alex into public office. In January 1959, Castro’s ragtag army was running amok through Havana. Looting, burning, killing. Bernard Castiel came across three rebels dragging a woman from a home in the ritzy Miramar section, beating her and stripping off her clothes. Castiel knocked one man unconscious and was pulling a second rebel off the woman when he was bayoneted in the back. He bled to death in the gutter, an early victim of Castro’s butchery. Rosa was pregnant with Alex. Within two years, she would die of breast cancer, and Alex became an orphan.

“So, tell me, Jake. How do the scales tip? Does mi padre’s work for Lansky make him evil? What was he, hero or gangster?”

“He died heroically. That’s good enough for me.”

“But a hero can’t be all good,” Castiel prodded me. “And a gangster can’t be all bad.”

“I get it. Ziegler is okay because he gives money to good causes, not the least of which is the re-election of Alejandro Castiel.”

He ground his teeth and his jaw muscles danced. “We’re done here, Jake. Just do your client a favor and tell her to go back home to Indiana.”

“Ohio.”

“Marry the clerk at the John Deere store. Have a couple kids. Overcook burgers in the backyard.”

“Don’t be a patronizing jerk.”

He shook his head sadly and pointed his cigar toward the door. “I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, see you.”

I walked out without another word, feeling cruddy. Guys can argue, maybe even take a swing at each other, and get over it. But this felt different. Like I was losing a friend.

Outside the door was the desk of his executive assistant, an efficient, older woman who began stuffing envelopes in her boss’s first campaign and now held the keys to the palace gate.

“Charlene, which way to the rest room?”

“You know very well where it is, Mr. Lassiter. Down the hall to the left.”

“I’ll be quick.”

She gave me a look that said, “Like I give a hoot?”

“We’re doing a conference call in a minute,” I said, matter-of-factly. Lies are best told with no gestures, little expression, and few effects. “With Charlie Ziegler.”

Charlene wrinkled her forehead, punched a button, and an LCD display lit up. “You might want to hurry up,” she said. “Mr. Castiel is already on with Mr. Ziegler.”

Which is just what I feared. The door had barely closed behind me, and my old buddy was giving aid and comfort-and information-to the enemy. Now my job was to figure out why.