Lassiter

23 Young, Single, and Horny

I don’t usually order shrimp cocktail when they charge by the piece-eight bucks! — but tonight Castiel was paying, and I didn’t give a shit about the cost. We sat on the front patio of Prime One Twelve, a noisy, trendy hangout for NBA players and others with the Am Ex Centurion card. The restaurant is at the foot of Ocean Drive on South Beach, the epicenter of hedonism run amok. We started with the shrimp and martinis-as cold as liquid nitrogen-with steaks to follow.

When we sat down, Castiel had said he would tell me everything he knew about Ziegler and Krista Larkin. That he had nothing to hide. “I should have told you straight off, Jake, but I’m embarrassed about some of the shit from my past.” Well, that made two of us.

“I was at Ziegler’s house,” Castiel said now, “but Krista wasn’t. She never showed up.”

“To be so sure, you must have known her by sight.”

“She was around a lot that summer. Charlie’s flavor of the month. Maybe three months.”

“And this night, who was the lucky girl?”

“Girls, plural. Half a dozen playthings. Porn starlets. Strippers. Strays. All interchangeable, all forgettable.”

“Not to their families.”

“I’m just saying how it was with Ziegler. One second he’s doing a couple actresses in the living room, then three more girls are hopping over the sofa like a hockey team changing lines. The Larkin girl wasn’t one of them.”

“What were you doing there?”

“What do you think? I was young. Single. Horny.”

Castiel sipped his martini and told me his story, while flicking that gold cigarette lighter that had belonged to his father. In the early nineties, when he was a young prosecutor, Castiel met Charlie Ziegler, courtesy of Uncle Max.

Ziegler’s porn business was just taking off. He was renting a waterfront manse on Sunset Island that belonged to a Saudi sheik who came to town to buy diamonds and frolic with young women. Jewelers on Flagler Street provided the gems, Ziegler the women.

“The house was tricked out like a disco,” Castiel said. “A glitter ball, a D.J., a sound system you could hear in Bimini. The place decorated like a bordello. Gold fixtures in the bathrooms, an infinity pool, marble columns with eagles on top, like some Roman emperor lived there.”

“The Fuck Palace.” I’d heard Sonia Majeski use the term.

“Oh, man, The Fuck Palace.” Alex smiled at the memory. “That was the cabana. Silk canopies. Mirrored ceilings and wide-screen porno.”

“Sounds like you knew the place well.”

“Like I said before, I was young and single.”

“And horny,” I reminded him.

“I forgot about your time in the seminary,” he shot back.

I sipped at the second martini, sharp as a dagger in the throat. Next to us, a boisterous table of eight sang “Happy Birthday” in Spanish, then Portuguese, and finally Hebrew. They’d gone through four bottles of Cristal at $450 a whack.

“You know a bunch of the guys who were there that night, right?” I asked.

“Some of them, sure.”

“So subpoena them. Put them under oath and see what they know.”

“You’re talking about important men in this town. They have families now. Hell, some had families then. All of them are gonna have faulty memories.”

“If you don’t want to mess with those guys, I will. I have some names from Sonia Majeski. You must have others. I’ll jump-start your investigation.”

“Fishing expedition is more like it.”

The steaks arrived-porterhouse for me, T-bone for Castiel. Round three of the martinis could not be far behind.

“Jake, there’s no probable cause that a crime has been committed. You’ve got a runaway girl who probably started a new life, that’s all.”

“A runaway girl who’s probably dead is more like it. Last seen headed to your pal’s house.”

“Even if you could place the girl with Ziegler, so what? He liked her. He screwed her now and then. What’s his motive for killing her?”

“Maybe she was going to scream ‘statutory rape.’ Maybe she witnessed something she shouldn’t have. Maybe it was an accident. Booze and drugs and a loaded gun.”

“And maybe you’re gonna score for the wrong team again.”

“Cheap shot, Alex.”

“Maybe it’s a metaphor for your life. Scoring a touchdown for the opposition.”

“Scored a safety,” I corrected him.

Castiel knew just where to insert the needle. A long-ago game against the Jets in the snow and fog. I made a big hit on the kickoff and knocked the ball loose. Bodies were flying. I got there first and scooped it up, but somehow got turned around. Hey, I was playing with a concussion. I ran to the wrong end zone and cleverly spiked the ball. Two points for the Jets, we lose by one, and the headline on Monday said: “Wrong-Way Lassiter Dooms Fins.”

Castiel was getting frustrated with me, and it was mutual. I decided to shake, not stir, him. “Why are you protecting Ziegler?”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Friendship or money?”

He pointed his steak knife at me. “Don’t say anything you can’t back up, friend.”

“You’re letting a pornographer and an old mobster call the shots. What turned you? The pussy in the old days or the campaign cash now?”

“Goddammit!” Castiel shoved his plate aside. “Any other lawyer in town talked to me like that, I’d …”

He let it hang there. Maybe he didn’t know what he would do. He pulled the napkin off his lap and tossed it on the table. He must have lost his appetite.

“If you want to take me on,” he said, “bring it. I’ll unleash the dogs, and it won’t be a fair fight. You ever have a witness who lies, you ever take a fee from the fruits of a crime, I’ll have your ass. I’ve got two dozen investigators and a sitting Grand Jury. You want to fuck with me, Jake, you better bring an army.”

Ray Decker sat at an outdoor table at Prime Italian, directly across the street from its sister restaurant, Prime One Twelve. He’d been munching a loaf of garlic bread, sopping in butter, and watching the State Attorney and the shyster put away steaks and martinis. He owed Lassiter big-time for messing him up and driving off in Ziegler’s Lincoln. He pictured himself coming up behind Lassiter and slamming him face-first into his shrimp cocktail.

Decker had planned on only having a calamari appetizer, but he started salivating while eyeing those assholes across the street, so he ordered a bone-in rib eye, black and blue, for fifty-six bucks. Ziegler would yell about the expense report. Like a lot of rich pricks, Ziegler burned money on stupid shit for himself, while starving the people who worked for him. Decker had once seen his boss order a bottle of Screaming Eagle Cabernet for $4,500, all to impress some ambitious, tit-enhanced reality show hostess wannabe who would have blown him for a glass of Boone’s and a seven-episode gig.

Decker studied the body language across the street. He considered himself an expert from his days as a detective. People say more with their bodies than with their mouths. There was an ease between Castiel and Lassiter. He expected that. Ziegler had told him the two guys were old friends. That’s what had concerned the boss. Could he trust the State Attorney?

Decker wasn’t so sure. He hated all politicians. His old boss, the county sheriff, had rolled over instead of standing up for him. Thanks to Lassiter and a couple ACLU lawyers, Decker had been bounced from the force. As if exaggerating under oath and some rough stuff while making arrests were cause for firing.

While chewing his calamari, Decker noticed the change in the body language across the street. Castiel’s shoulders got all stiff. He raised his voice. If it hadn’t been for the traffic on Ocean Drive, Decker probably could have heard him. Decker lifted a small pair of binoculars to his face. He could see the vein in Castiel’s neck throbbing. It got even better when the State Attorney pointed a steak knife at Lassiter, as if he wanted to stab him in the heart. Then Castiel tossed his napkin on the table, like a football ref throwing a penalty flag. He had a few more words with Lassiter, then signaled for the check.

Ziegler would be pleased. Those two weren’t conspiring against him. Hell, they couldn’t make it through a meal together.

Decker sat there a few more minutes. He wanted to see what car Lassiter was driving. The valet brought around a cream-colored Eldorado convertible. Mid-eighties, like some pimp or pusher would drive. It would be an easy car to tail. Not that Ziegler had told him to. This was strictly personal. He owed Lassiter a world of pain and intended to deliver it.

That thought made Decker even hungrier. He wondered if he should order fried Oreo cookies with vanilla ice cream for dessert.