Paul Levine - Riptide

“DEA?” Lassiter asked.

“Yeah. His name’s Franklin, like Ben, only this one doesn’t have a first name. All very hush-hush. They deposed me for a week, and now they’re setting me up with a new place to go, new name, job, everything.”

“Where you going?”

“Not supposed to tell.” Berto looked around again, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Casper, Wyoming.”

“You’re kidding.”

Berto shrugged and signaled the waiter to bring dessert, tres leches for Lassiter, espresso for himself. “Can you imagine me with the cowboys, Jake?” Berto looked down at his plate. He still had the charm that had carried him so far, Lassiter thought, but a hearty greeting and a slap on the back could not disguise his anguish. They were silent. Then Berto worked up the old smile and said, “I’m taking Lee Hu with me to Wyoming.”

“Who?”

“Not who, Hu. Rhymes with stew, which is what she is for Avianca, based in Bogota. She adores me. Only nineteen, about five one. You ever have an Asian girl? All they want to do is please you.”

“That would be different,” Lassiter allowed.

The tres leches was delicious, cake soaked in whole milk, evaporated milk, and condensed milk, covered with white frosting. Lassiter could barely move, and it was time to talk business. “Berto, the bank wants to bring charges against you for fraud and bribing a bank officer. Conrad Ticklin spilled his guts, said you gave him twenty-five grand to approve the loan. It’s a federal crime.”

The espresso cup stopped an inch from Berto’s mouth. His eyes narrowed. “Ticklin’s a candy-ass! He begged me for the money because he was whipsawed by his wife and his girlfriend.”

“Regardless whose idea it was, you bribed him.”

Berto scowled. “Yeah, because I tried to help him out. Ticklin’s pushing forty-five and has all the charm of a warthog, but he’s not as good-looking. He falls ass over elbows for this receptionist at the bank. She’s twenty-one, Cuban Catholic, lives at home, and won’t see him because he’s married. She tells him, ‘No puede estar el polio en el corral y en la cazuela.’ ”

“You can’t have your chicken in the pen…”

“And in the pan,” Berto added. “Or put another way, you can’t have your tres leches and eat it too. So he says he’ll leave his wife, and the blessed virgin rolls over. Course he doesn’t leave his wife. Now the girl is pissed and threatens to tell the wife and the bank, and Ticklin needs money to shut her up.

He gets it from me, she gets a new BMW with a sunroof, Ticklin gets fired anyway, and I’m stuck with a bribery charge.”

“His mistake was saying he’d leave his wife,” Lassiter said. “I’ll never understand why men do that.”

“Jake, your naivete knows no limits. El hombre promete y promete y promete hasta que se la mete. The man promises and promises and promises until he sticks it in.”

Two strolling guitarists and a musician shaking maracas were serenading a middle-aged couple, singing “Besame Mucho,” the love song that pleads for kisses. Franklin, the DEA agent, watched as if the maracas were hand grenades.

“Berto, I’ll try to talk the bank out of going after you, but I’ll need to give them something to keep the grand jury away. Do you have any property you can substitute as collateral for the condos?”

Berto grabbed the napkin from his lap and squeezed it, as if wringing out a dishrag and finding it dry. He dropped the napkin and gestured with both hands to the heavens. “My house has three mortgages, and I took all the equity out of the shopping centers to buy the first haul of grass. The property along the Trail took the last cash, and the feds are going to grab that under the forfeiture law.”

“Is there anything else, race horses, foreign accounts, other properties?”

Berto looked around again. He seemed to think about it, weighed his thoughts, and finally said, “What the hell. There’s one thing. It’s not in my name, so the feds haven’t found it. If they had, it’d be gone too, to the IRS. When things were good, I put some bucks in an offshore corporation, courtesy of the Cayman Islands. It holds clear title to a three-hundred-acre ranch outside Ocala. Gotta be worth two million plus, and it’s not doing me any good. If I touch it the feds will hit me with obstruction or perjury.”

Bingo. Another chance to be a hero for the bank, Most Valuable Mouthpiece award. Not much of a thrill, not like breaking into the starting lineup against the Jets because of an injury to the strong side linebacker, but it would have to do. “That’s it, Berto. It’s clean. Your offshore company can deed the property to Great Southern and you’ll get a release on the loans. Will you do it?”

Berto sipped at his espresso and said, “For you, Jake, I’ll do it.”

“And I’ll make sure the bank forgets all about bribery charges. The bank will get close to fifty cents on the dollar which is fine for a bad loan. Vista Bank gets the condos, and you’re off to Wyoming.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Jake Lassiter wondered what it was like, one day the world tasting of champagne, the next day of ashes. Berto had seemed so strong, so much in control. But inside he was still a twelve-year-old kid floating on a raft across the Florida Straits. He was burned out now, caught in a maelstrom beyond his control — the deals, the drugs, the women, the money.

Always the money. The gods tempt us, Lassiter thought. They offer us riches and sweet smelling women, tres leches, each milk sweeter than the one before. But you cannot beat the gods. The grander house, the bigger deal, only mean more borrowed time, more risk. When you build your life on a house of cards, you never know when the joker will turn up. When you wheel and deal and borrow and spend, when your balance sheet is based on forecasts and projections, wishes and dreams, it is only a matter of time. One day, the mortgage comes due, and it all falls down. It only takes a missed step, a tax return that catches the computer’s eye, an oil shortage or an oil glut, a weakness for drink or drugs or soft skin.

We are so frail. The gods build us up, then wait. The fall from grace is a spectator sport, and those too meek to take the risks watch from afar and cluck their tongues knowingly.

“I wish I could turn back the clock for you,” Lassiter said finally.

“I have no regrets. It was a hell of a ride while it lasted.”

“Can you stay out of trouble?”

Berto gestured toward the federal agent. “If Franklin can get me through the week. I have to do a little favor for the DEA, part of my deal. I’m helping set up some doper from out west.”

Lassiter frowned. “Sounds dangerous.”

“Don’t worry, amigo. I’ll be in and out. The bust won’t come down until they bring the stuff in from the Bahamas, and I’ll be long gone by then.”

They looked into each other’s eyes, old friends grown apart with the years, drawn together for a moment by a flicker from the past.

“Take care of yourself, old buddy,” Lassiter said softly.

“I always do,” Berto replied with a laugh devoid of joy.

What would she be like, Jake Lassiter wondered. Until now, Lila Summers had been a two-dimensional vision, a color photograph in a magazine, leaning back from the boom, leg muscles taut, turquoise swimsuit cut high over rounded hip, wild mane of hair frozen in the wind. In a photograph there are neither flaws nor words of rebuke, just timeless youth and beauty and joy.

She was not hard to spot. Every man on Concourse D either stopped dead in his tracks or suffered whiplash from a quick turn as she passed. Lila Summers was breathtaking in a white cotton sweatsuit — deep suntan set off by the snowy fabric — her thick hair butterscotched by the sun, bright hazel eyes flecked with green sparkles. She had a body that could be sensed even through the loose outfit, full breasts and strong legs. California-born and Hawaii-raised, she was tall and walked with a long stride. She carried a pink sail bag weighted down with her gear, but her sturdy arms and shoulders showed no strain. There was no mistaking that she was both an athlete and a woman, a perfect picture come to life.