Paul Levine - Riptide

“Maybe on TV,” he continued, “but I can’t do it, and I was studying holes in people when most of you were in knickers. When a bullet enters the body, the skin stretches, then contracts. The hole may be smaller than the bullet by the time you measure the opening.”

This went on for a while, Charlie Riggs prancing about the small stage on his bowed legs, unlocking secrets learned in twenty thousand autopsies in a cold, tiled room smelling of rotting flesh and formaldehyde. Then he tugged off his glasses and propped them on top of his unkempt hair. He leaned back against a high laboratory stool, scratched his bushy beard, and told about the Expressway Body, found a few pieces at a time along 1-95. Everybody had wondered about the green paint on the femur. Not Charlie. He knew that store-bought hacksaw blades typically are splashed with green paint. When a suspect was picked up, Charlie wandered around the man’s garage, pulled a new hacksaw off the wall, and tested the paint. Eureka, a conviction for Murder One.

“But you have to be able to distinguish murder from accidental death,” Charlie told them. “A man comes home from work, finds the house locked and his wife stone-dead on the kitchen floor, her throat slashed. The house shows no sign of forced entry. Nothing missing. No sign of a weapon. A hamburger was burned to a crisp in a pan on the stove. A broken plate lay on the floor, an empty gin bottle on the kitchen table, blood everywhere. What happened?”

“Suicide,” a young man in a lab coat said from the front row.

“No note, no weapon, no history of despondency. Don’t jump to conclusions. What do you do first?”

“Examine the wound,” the man said. “Establish cause of death.”

Charlie Riggs smiled from beneath the bushy beard. “Good. Periculum in mora. There is danger in delay. Her vena cava is empty. She bled out. And suppose you find shards of porcelain in the wound?”

Silence.

Then, from the back of the hall, Lassiter called out, “The plate. You test the plate, Dr. Riggs.”

“Correct.” Riggs squinted in Lassiter’s direction. “Very good for a downtown mouthpiece. And if the porcelain matches?” He looked at his students, waiting for an answer.

“The husband killed his wife with a broken plate?” the Asian woman guessed.

“No, no, no! You still don’t have enough facts. Qui timide rogat docet negare. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. What do you need to know?”

“Her blood alcohol level,” Lassiter piped up.

“Right again, Counselor. And suppose it comes up point-three?”

Lassiter answered, “I’d say the lady drank too much gin before lunch and tripped while carrying a plate to the table. The plate broke and slashed her throat. Death by exsanguination. An accident all around.”

“Correct,” Charlie Riggs proclaimed, happily. “She was a heavy drinker who often passed out in the afternoon. This time it was fatal. Mr. Lassiter, next week, you shall be permitted to do an autopsy if you wish. At least we know you won’t kill the patient.”

Huddled over a plastic table in the medical school cafeteria, Lassiter sipped black coffee and Charlie Riggs chewed on a sandwich.

“You ought to try the choripan tejas especial con queso derretido,” Riggs said, wiping melted cheese from his beard.

“Thanks, Charlie, but in a couple of hours, I’m taking two board sailors out for stone crabs.”

“ Menippe mercenaria, a remarkable animal. Lop off a claw, it grows another one. Would that we could do the same. Now, Jake, why did you want to see me?”

Lassiter finished his coffee and waited for three young residents in green smocks to leave a nearby table. “Two reasons, actually. You remember Berto Zaldivar?”

“Of course. Your trial partner in the days when you defended people with no morals and no money, before you switched to representing corporations with no morals and lots of money.” Charlie gnawed at his sandwich. “Berto was never half the lawyer you were.”

“Yeah, thanks. He’s had some trouble, and I was wondering if you heard about it.”

Charlie Riggs stroked his beard. “Well, for years, I’d see his picture in the social pages, giving money to the Bay of Pigs Brigade, the Mount Sinai Founders Ball, every charity in town. He’d made it, that’s for sure. Then he dropped out of sight. Word was he was dirty, FDLE tried to sting him a few times, didn’t work. Finally, a year or so ago, one of my friends in the State Attorney’s Office, or maybe it was DEA, doesn’t matter which, told me they’d nailed him with a fairly sizable load of marijuana. Enough for minimum mandatory fifteen years plus a two-hundred-thousand-dollar fine under

CHAPTER Eight Ninety-three. So he turned and started working for the narcs as part of a plea bargain. That help any?”

Paul Levine

Riptide

“Some. It basically corroborates Berto’s story, except he says it was his first dirty deed. You hear anything about him being sent to Wyoming as part of the witness protection program?”

“No, but it makes sense. Problem is, the DEA will use him up first. Make him do just one more job, then one more, then another. Somewhere along the line, he’ll either go back into the business or end up in the bay sleeping with whatever fish haven’t died of pollution.”

Lassiter signaled for a refill on the coffee. “I’d like to help him, Charlie, get him safely out of town, a fresh start, but I don’t know how.”

“ Amicus usque ad aras, you’re a friend to the end. But forget it, Jake. Once they’re into dope, they’re gone. Cut him loose.”

“I’m not the cutting loose type.”

“An admirable quality, albeit an anachronistic one. You’re a throwback, Jake. It’s one of the reasons I like you so much. Your ideals are as dated as that… Le Mans, or whatever it is you drive.”

“An Olds 442, Charlie. Four-barrel carburetor, four-speed transmission, dual tail pipes.”

“Precisely! You’re still a cheeseburger and double malted fellow in a world of quiche and white wine. And you still think all your friends wear white hats. Someday you’ll realize that nearly everybody in this town is playing it fast and loose. Bankers who launder drug money, boiler room gold bullion salesmen who cheat widows in Iowa, lawyers who cross the line and become partners with their clients. Everyone’s walking a tightrope, and with just a nudge one way or the other, most tumble into the swamp.”

Lassiter stared into his coffee cup. “Thirty years hanging around cops and corpses has left you a tad cynical.”

“Wake up, Jake. When you read in the paper that a dope kingpin walks because the cops lose the evidence, do you think it’s an accident? In case you didn’t know it, prosecutors tank cases, judges play favorites, and lawyers crawl in bed with their clients. Berto’s descent should not surprise you.”

Lassiter looked away and studied a group of residents — haggard men and women — filing through the cafeteria line. So young. Soon they would be experts at picking lead from gunshot wounds, standard fare in a county where gun control means holding it with two hands. “I’m not surprised by any thing in this town, Charlie. Now, how about helping me with something else. A crime I can’t figure out.”

“Murder?”

“No, a burglary. One-point-six million in negotiable bonds from a client.”

Charlie Riggs snorted. “Burglary. Ugly Anglo-Saxon word. Burgh, ‘house’ laron, ‘theft.’ A penny-ante crime for small minds. All that stuff about mastermind thieves is mostly fiction, you know. There’ve been some pretty glitzy B and Es, but mostly just second-rate smash-and-grab artists.”

“As I recall, there’ve been some pretty good jewel heists.”

“Hollywood,” Riggs scoffed. “Take the Star of India theft from the Museum of Natural History. You know damn well Murph the Surf was just a beach bum from Miami.”