Lassiter

31 A Question of Redemption

The rain drilled the Eldo’s canvas top with such ferocity I could barely hear “My Hometown,” Springsteen’s ode to a boarded-up burg. I was on my way to Gables Estates to eat sushi with Charlie Ziegler. Given a choice, I prefer chowing down with someone I like. But on this rainy night, I couldn’t pass up Ziegler’s invitation.

I would listen to Charlie Ziegler and maybe drink some sake, too. The windshield wipers on my old bucket of bolts could hardly keep up with the storm. Casuarina Concourse was deluged, the pavement and bay merging into one gray sheet of water. Next door to Ziegler’s manse, a house was under construction, a river of mud flowing from the site into the street. Some older houses in the neighborhood were Southern plantation style, all white pillars, circular driveways, and large porticos. Ziegler’s post-modern, silver-skinned monstrosity was too hip to have a portico, so I got soaked getting from the car to the front door.

“Thanks for coming.” Ziegler guided me inside. “C’mon. Let’s eat while we talk.”

Ziegler appeared relaxed in soft leather loafers without socks, canary blue slacks, and a knit short-sleeve shirt that had an expensive, Italian look. He said his wife was in Paris, a suite at George V, spending all his money and screwing the concierge.

On a monitor set into the wall, a videotape was playing. Four old men in tattered clothes were beating the crap out of one another with broom handles and garbage can lids. The logo on the screen read: “Bumzfight Revenge.” One of Reelz TV’s classy hits.

He led me into the bar, located in the high-ceilinged living room. Not a bar bar. A sushi bar, complete with bamboo mats, lacquered sake cups, and silk paintings of lotus flowers. Behind the bar was an attractive Asian woman in a white smock and red apron.

“Miyoshi’s the best itamae in Miami,” he said.

She nodded at me while slicing tuna with a Masamoto knife sharp enough to shave a cat’s whiskers without causing a meow. “I haven’t killed anyone yet.” She smiled.

“The night is young,” I replied.

I heard the clack of high heels on marble. The six-footer who called herself Angel Roxx walked into the room, tousling her platinum hair, looking as if she just woke up. Black stilettos, a skin-tight mini-skirt, a peekaboo sheer blouse, and nothing else, unless you count the silicone in those cantaloupes.

“Hi, big guy,” she said to me. “Still don’t want to play?”

“I’m off the team,” I said.

“Get dressed and go home,” Ziegler ordered.

“Charlie, it’s a fucking hurricane out there.” Pouting.

“Scram!”

Angel shot him the bird and clacked off.

Ziegler turned to the sushi chef. “Miyoshi, how about offering my guest a special treat?”

The chef grabbed a short knife with a porcelain blade and, with three brisk strokes, sharpened a wooden chopstick to a fine point. She jabbed the chopstick into a small aquarium, aiming for a plug-ugly five-inch-long fish that was minding its own business. She speared the little monster, which glowed red, as if it had just escaped a nuclear power plant.

“Scorpion fish,” Ziegler said, as the chef offered the little wriggler to me.

“No thanks,” I said. Raw is one thing, alive is another.

Ziegler sucked the creature into his mouth, swallowing it in one gulp. He cleared his throat and said, “I like to feel its heartbeat in my gullet on the way down.”

Message received.

You’re an alpha male who drives a Ferrari, fucks porn stars, and eats living creatures. You’ve got testosterone oozing out your pores.

Miyoshi cut slivers of tuna, then eel, then mackerel, before picking up the bamboo mat to make rolls with roe, natto, and the dreaded sea urchin. She had the hands of a concert pianist.

“Do you believe in redemption, Lassiter?” Ziegler asked.

“Depends on the sin.”

Ziegler grunted his agreement and dropped a slice of eel into his maw. “I’m trying to make things right. I’m not proud of the shit I did when I was young.”

Who is? I thought.

He poured sake for both of us, “This is a daiginjo from the Yamagata Prefecture, made from a pure breed of rice. It costs five hundred bucks a bottle.”

As if I give a shit.

“She was really something, wasn’t she, Lassiter?”

“What? Who?”

“Krista!”

“I knew her for about twelve hours.”

“That’s long enough.” He gave me a shit-eating grin. Maybe he wanted to bond over our banging the same girl.

“What’s your point, Ziegler?”

“Krista went straight to the top of the Lolita series, making serious bank. She was a natural in front of the camera. Totally comfortable from day one. Smart. Intuitive. If you showed her a position once, she could do it. Standing bridesmaid, dirty doggie, wheelbarrow, even triple penetrations. She could do them all. Even liked most of them.”

“That’s bullshit. I watched one of your videos. Krista looked lobotomized.”

“Bad day, is all. Trust me on this. She was into it. She could have been bigger than Jenna Jameson.”

I figured he was rationalizing. Reducing his own guilt by rewriting history. “I didn’t come here to discuss Krista’s acting skills. Just tell me what happened that night.”

He sipped the sake and said, “Miyoshi, why don’t you take a break?”

When she had left the room, Ziegler continued. “A couple months before she went missing, Krista started hanging out with a biker who called himself ‘Snake.’ ”

I already knew that from Sonia Majeski, but I kept quiet to see where Ziegler was going.

“Bastard got her hooked on crystal meth. Her first bump, that was it. I tried to keep her away from the guy, but he must have seemed exciting to her, while I was …”

“Old?”

“Yeah, to a seventeen-year-old, I was.”

“You’re saying she was with Snake the night she disappeared.”

“Like I told you before, she was on the set that day. While we were talking, Snake came by on his Harley. He’d been slamming crank. The cops had a warrant for him. Some probation violation. He said he had to leave town.”

“Krista left with him? That’s your story?”

“I told her not to go. Yelled at her, maybe even grabbed her a little too hard. Told her Snake would sell her for a handful of bennies or drive off a bridge somewhere. She wouldn’t listen.”

“She say where they were going?”

“California, like all the dreamers. When it was clear I couldn’t stop her, I gave her some cash plus the names of a couple guys in the business in the San Fernando Valley.”

I couldn’t help but think of myself, giving Krista a few hundred bucks and sending her back to Ziegler. I didn’t like the parallel.

“I told her to call when she got there,” Ziegler said, draining his sake and looking at me with forlorn eyes. “I never saw Krista or heard from her again. She never contacted my guys out there, either. I checked.”

I studied him a moment, using my bullshit detector. Figuring Ziegler lied so often, he was world class. “Why didn’t you tell the cops that Krista rode into the sunset with the biker?”

He refilled my cup with what I calculated to be about $85 worth of sake. “Anytime she wanted, Krista could have caused trouble for me. You’re gonna think I’m a dick for saying this …”

“Too late.”

“Last thing I wanted was for the two of them to get picked up somewhere with thirty pounds of crank in Snake’s saddlebags. They’d swing some deal, get immunity for nailing me. Statutory rape. Child porn. Racketeering. To be honest, Lassiter, it was in my interest for the two of them to disappear.”

The story was plausible, but most good lies are. “This Snake have a real name?”

“Aldrin, like the astronaut. Can’t remember his first name, but you can check with the Corrections Department. He’s the kind of guy who’s either in prison or in between prisons.”

Or dead, I thought. Along with whoever is foolish enough to hop on a bike with him and head west.

“Looking back now, I’ve got a lot of remorse,” Ziegler said, “and I’ve been thinking about how to make it right.”

“Yeah?”

“How about if I set up a missing persons fund? I’ll pay your client a hundred grand. She can do whatever she wants with it. Look for Aldrin. Take ads on craigslist. Or go back to Ohio and get on with her life.”

Buying redemption, I thought, just like his charitable contributions. Or just paying Amy to go away. Either way, he’d be off the hook.

Ziegler drained the last of the sake from the Yamagata Prefecture. “I’ll cover your legal fees, too. How does thirty grand sound?”

“Like a bribe, and not a very big one.”

“C’mon, Lassiter. I’m trying to help you both out.”

“You just want me off your ass.”

“You want my honest opinion?”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“I don’t know if Snake killed her or she O.D.’d or got hit by a truck outside Amarillo,” Ziegler said. “But if she’d gotten back into the business, I’d have heard about it. If she was broke and in trouble, she would have called me for help. If she was doing okay, at some point, she would have called her sister.”

“What you’re saying, there’s no use our searching for her.”

Ziegler looked off into space, and I could swear I saw tears welling. “The more I’ve thought about it, Lassiter, the more certain I’ve become. Krista’s dead. Has to be. But I swear to God I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

I studied him for a long moment. Maybe I’d lost my edge, but the son-of-a-bitch looked for all the world like a man telling the truth.