Paul Levine - Lassiter

Now Castiel looked troubled. No one ever wants to be reminded of an unpaid debt. “How much is Amy Larkin paying you, Jake?”

“In round numbers, zero.”

“Are you nailing her?”

“Does she look nailable? When you put your hand on her shoulder, I thought she was gonna bite it off.”

“Your stake in this case is bupkis . So why now?”

“Why now, what?”

“All these years, you never mentioned wearing the wire for me. Why you calling in that chit now? What’s so special about this case?”

I’m not one of those sinners who finds relief in confession, so I didn’t go anywhere near the story of my one-night stand with Krista. “If I don’t help Amy Larkin, who will?”

“Not buying it, Jake. You don’t give a hoot about your clients.”

“Bullshit! I sweat blood for every one.”

“You sweat blood to win . It’s about you, pal. Not them.”

That stopped me. After a moment, I said, “Never too late to change.”

“Save it for your next client, because you can’t help Amy Larkin. You can only hurt yourself.”

When people tell me I can’t do something, I generally work harder to prove I can. Everyone told me I couldn’t make the Dolphins as a free agent. But I did, even if I sat so far down Shula’s bench, my ass was in Ocala.

Castiel opened a fancy humidor made of polished cherrywood and pulled out a long, tapered cigar. Then he grabbed a guillotine clipper from his pocket and snipped off the end. We were in a nonsmoking building and the cigar was a Cuban Torpedo, but I decided against making a citizen’s arrest.

He leaned against the credenza and waved the unlit cigar at me. “I’ve known Charlie a long time, and he’s no killer. Trust me on this one, Jake.”

“Great. He can call you as a character witness.”

“Years ago, Charlie dealt in sleaze. But he’s a changed man. You, of all people, should respect that.”

“Me?”

“You were a hell-raiser, and now you’re a defense lawyer, which means you believe in redemption. You’re the guys always begging for second chances.”

Castiel pulled a cigarette lighter out of his pocket and flipped it open. It was gold in color and looked expensive. He lit the long, illegal cigar, sucked on it, and exhaled a fine cloud of tangy smoke.

“Life is not always black and white, Jake. Mostly, it’s colored in shades of gray.”

“That’s deep, Alex.”

“The duality of man. There’s good and evil in all of us.”

“Very deep, indeed.” What is it about men and cigars? A guy lights up and starts spouting two-bit philosophy.

Castiel grabbed a weathered black-and-white photo in a gilt frame from his credenza. A faded, vintage look. Two men standing in front of a roulette wheel, lots of classy folk dressed to the nines, as they would have said back then. A beautiful red-haired woman stood between the men. She wore a slinky cocktail dress with a flower pinned behind one ear. “That’s my father on the left and my mother in the middle.”

“And Meyer Lansky on the right,” I tossed in. “The Riviera Hotel in Havana in the fifties. I remember your stories, Alex.”

Bernard Castiel, Alex’s father, was a handsome man in an old-fashioned way. Thick through the chest in his double-breasted suit, dark hair brilliantined straight back. Rosa Castiel had wild, flashing eyes and looked ready to mambo. She was taller than the man on her left, Meyer Lansky, the mobster. Finely tailored gray suit, thin face, wary eyes.

For as long as I’ve known him, Castiel has had a curious level of pride about his family’s less-than-savory past.

“Can you imagine those times, Jake?” Castiel once told me. “Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and Bugsy Siegel all in Cuba at the same time, three guys who grew up together on the Lower East Side. It’d be like Mays, Mantle, and Aaron all playing on the same team.”

There was always a lilt of excitement in Castiel’s voice talking about those days. Tales of high-stakes gambling, dangerous men, and exotic women. In the late 1950s, Bernard Castiel was security chief at Lansky’s Riviera casino. His most important task was delivering bundles of cash to President Fulgencio Batista. More mundane chores involved chopping off the hands of casino employees caught skimming. Or so Alex once told me with notes of contentment.

Castiel held up his cigarette lighter. “This belonged to my father. Solid gold.”

He tossed it to me. Heavy as a hand grenade. I ran a finger around a raised ridge of gold in the shape of a crocodile with a diamond for an eye. The ridge was the outline of the island of Cuba. The diamond was Havana.

“Lansky must have been paying well,” I said, tossing the lighter back.

“Bernard didn’t buy it. President Batista gave it to him as a fortieth birthday present. Can you imagine its value to me?”

As much as a John Dillinger’s Tommy gun to his heirs, I thought. But what I said was, “A lot, Alex. I know your family lost everything to Castro. And I know how your father lost his life.”

The story was part of the Castiel mythology, and it helped propel Alex into public office. In January 1959, Castro’s ragtag army was running amok through Havana. Looting, burning, killing. Bernard Castiel came across three rebels dragging a woman from a home in the ritzy Miramar section, beating her and stripping off her clothes. Castiel knocked one man unconscious and was pulling a second rebel off the woman when he was bayoneted in the back. He bled to death in the gutter, an early victim of Castro’s butchery. Rosa was pregnant with Alex. Within two years, she would die of breast cancer, and Alex became an orphan.

“So, tell me, Jake. How do the scales tip? Does mi padre ’s work for Lansky make him evil? What was he, hero or gangster?”

“He died heroically. That’s good enough for me.”

“But a hero can’t be all good,” Castiel prodded me. “And a gangster can’t be all bad.”

“I get it. Ziegler is okay because he gives money to good causes, not the least of which is the re-election of Alejandro Castiel.”

He ground his teeth and his jaw muscles danced. “We’re done here, Jake. Just do your client a favor and tell her to go back home to Indiana.”

“Ohio.”

“Marry the clerk at the John Deere store. Have a couple kids. Overcook burgers in the backyard.”

“Don’t be a patronizing jerk.”

He shook his head sadly and pointed his cigar toward the door. “I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, see you.”

I walked out without another word, feeling cruddy. Guys can argue, maybe even take a swing at each other, and get over it. But this felt different. Like I was losing a friend.

Outside the door was the desk of his executive assistant, an efficient, older woman who began stuffing envelopes in her boss’s first campaign and now held the keys to the palace gate.

“Charlene, which way to the rest room?”

“You know very well where it is, Mr. Lassiter. Down the hall to the left.”

“I’ll be quick.”

She gave me a look that said, “Like I give a hoot?”

“We’re doing a conference call in a minute,” I said, matter-of-factly. Lies are best told with no gestures, little expression, and few effects. “With Charlie Ziegler.”

Charlene wrinkled her forehead, punched a button, and an LCD display lit up. “You might want to hurry up,” she said. “Mr. Castiel is already on with Mr. Ziegler.”

Which is just what I feared. The door had barely closed behind me, and my old buddy was giving aid and comfort-and information-to the enemy. Now my job was to figure out why.

Charles W. Ziegler, proud owner of the third largest house on Casuarina Concourse in Gables Estates, was pissed off. Ten minutes ago, his wife, Lola, had told him he might think about cutting back on the cheesecake. Not in those words.