Lassiter

57 Too Many Questions

It was Monday morning, the start of another week of trial. I planned on a breakfast of toasted Bimini bread, Cuban coffee, and Haitian fried bananas. Hey, it’s Miami. We’re not a cornflakes town.

Althea’s Taco Truck is my office when I’m in trial. It’s parked each day in front of the Justice Building, so it’s equally convenient for cops, defense lawyers, and home invasion robbers. The owner/driver/cook is Althea Rollins, a Sequoia-size woman in her late sixties who’s partial to Caribbean and Hispanic food.

A dozen years ago, one of her sons was picked up for supplying half the senior class at Killian High with weed. I got the kid into pre-trial intervention and the arrest was expunged. He straightened out, went to college, then pharmacy school, and now he’s dispensing legal drugs at a chain store in South Miami.

I have long relied on Althea for advice, insight, and breakfast. She provides another valuable service, too. She eavesdrops on prosecutors and jurors as they have lunch, then spills the frijoles to me. Folks say the darnedest things in front of her.

“Nothing so invisible as a black woman in an apron,” Althea told me once, after she revealed the state’s strategy in a money-laundering case.

After meeting with Angel Roxx on Saturday morning, I had driven to Lighthouse Point, hoping to drop in, unannounced, on Melody Sanders. I was unannounced all right. The condo was empty. She’d moved and left no forwarding address with the management office.

I told Pepito Dominguez to tail Ziegler so he could lead us to wherever Melody was now hanging her negligee. This morning, he was supposed to meet me with a progress report.

As I walked up to the truck, I saw two men leaving. One was Nestor Tejada, no mistaking the shaved head with the crown tattoo on the back of his skull. He wore a gray suit that bunched up at his bricklayer’s shoulders. The other man was older, an Anglo with gray hair in a tailored, pinstriped suit. He carried a soft leather briefcase the color of butter. My insightful powers of reasoning told me the guy was a lawyer.

“Hey, Jakey!” Althea greeted me. “Coffee or pineapple nog.”

“Coffee, thanks. Say, do you know those two guys who just left here?”

“Gangbanger and a fancy mouthpiece,” Althea said.

“I never saw the lawyer before. You?”

She shook her head. “Polished fingernails. And did you see his eyeglasses?”

I shook my head. “Too far away.”

“Expensive. Gold frames with a turquoise inlay.”

Althea would make an excellent crime-scene witness.

If neither one of us recognized the lawyer, he was either an out-of-towner or a downtowner. I didn’t care so much who he was as why he was here.

Nestor Tejada had about ten minutes of noncontroversial testimony to deliver. No reason he should need a lawyer in the gallery.

“What were the guys talking about?” I asked.

“My Cuban coffee. Hispanic guy said it tasted like motor oil.”

“He’s an asshole. Anything else?”

“They were talking real low. Either that, or my hearing’s going straight to Hades.”

Just then, Pepito walked up in that easygoing gait that said he had a lot of time to get wherever he was going. He ordered a coco frio. Althea lopped off the top of a coconut with a machete, stuck a straw in the hole and handed it to him.

“Did you find Melody Sanders?” I asked.

Instead of answering, Pepito handed me a wad of crumpled American Express receipts.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“My expenses.”

I looked at the first one. Il Gabbiano, a ritzy restaurant downtown. “Two hundred thirty-six dollars! What the hell.”

“You told me to follow Charlie Ziegler. He had dinner.”

“If he goes into a rest room, that doesn’t mean you have to take a piss.” I glanced at the restaurant receipt. “You ate veal stuffed with foie gras? Wait a second. There are two entrees here.”

“I had the filet mignon. My girlfriend, Raquel, had the veal.”

I felt the first hints of indigestion and I hadn’t even eaten Althea’s fried plantains simmered in wine.

“Don’t worry. You’re getting your money’s worth, boss,” Pepito said.

“So you found Melody?”

The kid pulled a little notebook out of his cargo shorts and flipped a few pages. “Ziegler had the mista salad and veal piccata.”

“Why didn’t you give me his check? It would have been cheaper.”

“And Alex Castiel ordered a bottle of red wine. Chateauneuf-du-Pape.”

Castiel. That stopped me, but just for a second. Nothing wrong with the State Attorney dining with his chief witness. Had there been, they wouldn’t have met in public.

“What were they talking about?” I asked.

“How should I know?”

“You could read the wine label, but you couldn’t get close enough to listen?”

“The State Attorney toasted him with the wine. Then, at the end, they shook hands. One of those four-handed deals, you know, hands on top of each other’s.”

“Then what? Please tell me you followed Ziegler to Melody’s.”

“First, Ziegler got his car from the valet. While he’s waiting, he’s talking on the cell phone, and I’m standing right behind him.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s talking real sweet, ‘honey’ this and ‘honey’ that.”

“Jeez, Pepito, cut to it.”

“He says, ‘Honey, I’ll be there in ten minutes.’ So I figure, she lives close.”

“Good figuring. Keep going.”

“Then his Ferrari came up. He got into the car and I had to run to get mine from a meter on Biscayne Boulevard.”

“So you followed him to Melody’s place?”

“I tried. I was four cars behind him when we got to the Brickell Avenue drawbridge. He went across as the yellow light was flashing. The arm came down right in front of me. So I got hung up and lost him there.”

“Shit.”

“I’m sorry, jefe.”

“It’s okay, Pepito. You did great. Sometimes I’m too hard on you.”

I checked my watch. Five minutes to get to court. So much happening. Tejada had a lawyer for reasons unknown. Ziegler and Castiel were best buds. Somewhere out there, presumably ten minutes from downtown, sat Melody Sanders, keeper of Ziegler’s secrets. Then there was Amy Larkin, my tight-lipped client. Where was she the night of the murder? Who was she with? What’s going on between Ziegler and her?

Some days, I feel in control of my life and my surroundings. But today I felt I was the butt of some cosmic joke in the legal universe. If a meteorite sped across the vastness of space and entered our atmosphere, I had no doubt it would make a beeline straight for my head.