Paul Levine - Lassiter

“I hope you’re not on steroids. I hate when guys have shriveled balls.”

I put the pieces together. Earlier today, Alex Castiel had refused to investigate Ziegler and warned me to back off. Ziegler could be bad for my career, though Castiel failed to mention the guy could be good for my sex life. Either way, the State Attorney had called Ziegler and told him about me.

“Help me out here, Angel. If Ziegler wants to see me …”

“Why not just call you?”

“Yeah.”

“Charlie’s gotta be different. Gotta do things big. The grand gesture, he calls it.”

“I still don’t get it.”

She pursed her lips, which seemed to gorge cute little lines in her forehead. Deep thinking mode. “Charlie needs to impress people. And to be liked. So, when you see me at your door, you’re supposed to think, A present for me? What a guy!”

Actually, I was thinking, Charlie Ziegler, what a jerk, but I followed the logic.

“Anyway, that’s the sweet Charlie,” she continued. “The good Charlie.”

“But there’s another one?”

“You kidding? Lots more. Mean Charlie. Potty-mouth Charlie. Smack-you-around Charlie. You ought to see him when his face turns all red. Jeez!”

“I’m gonna go see Ziegler,” I told her, “but not tomorrow.”

“Why not?”

“Other plans.”

Actually, I had other people to see first. Sonia Majeski had called an hour ago. She’d talked to a couple of stripper friends from the old days. They’d put together a list of five men who used to drift in and out of Ziegler’s party circuit. No way to tell if any had been there the night Krista disappeared, but I would sure as hell ask. I also had a ton of questions for them about Ziegler.

Sure, I wanted to talk to him personally, but I might only have one shot at him, and I wanted to be ready. Young lawyers make the mistake of rushing to depose the main witness on the opponent’s side of a case. They should be talking to everyone else first. Build your dossier before you put your antagonist under oath. By the time you say, “State your name for the record,” you’d better know more about the son-of-a-bitch than his own saintly mother.

“We could still have some fun tonight,” Angel offered.

“Yeah?”

“I can do you while you watch one of my flicks. It’s a parallel universe thing.”

I was tempted. How could I not be? I was single and unattached, and here was Angel, hot and willing, and with no demands that I be attuned to her needs or go shopping at Pottery Barn during the NFL playoffs. In another time, I would have been incapable of saying no. These days, I require some semblance of an emotional connection.

“Thanks,” I said. “But I gave up one-night stands a long time ago.”

“I could come back tomorrow night, too.”

“Sorry. Doesn’t work for me.”

She crunched up her forehead again, as if presented with an especially tough algebra question. “No one’s ever turned down my b.j. before.”

“If it’s any consolation, it’s my first time, too.”

There was the sound of bare feet padding across the Mexican tile. Kip, all sleepy-eyed, appeared from the corridor wearing his Miami Marlins pajama bottoms.

“I thought I heard voices,” he said, eyeing my guest, or rather the twin globes rising from her tube top.

“Kip, this is Angel Roxx,” I said.

“I know! A Tale of Two Titties. ”

The air was soggy as a steam bath as I started my morning run. The violet morning glories in my neighbor’s yard were yawning open for the day, just like me. The grass wet with morning dew, the sweet tang of jasmine in the air. No breeze, the palm fronds hanging as limp as laundry on the line.

It’s not a fancy neighborhood of mini-manses and well-tended lawns. More like a tropical jungle, small houses on crowded lots overgrown with ragged ficus hedges and creeping bougainvillea.

I wore an old pair of Penn State shorts and a T-shirt with the slogan “A Friend Will Help You Move, but a Real Friend Will Help You Move a Body.” I’d only recently started carrying an iPod and wearing headphones. Off-season training would have been a lot easier if we’d had them in the old days. Still, there was a tradeoff. I missed the slap of shoes on asphalt and the call of the wild parrots in the neighborhood.

I slogged along, sweat streaming down my chest. Loquat to Solana to Poinciana, then south on LeJeune toward the Gables Waterway. A black-and-white wood stork strutted across the street, apparently lost. I wanted to point it toward Biscayne Bay. In my earphones, I heard Joe Nichols worrying that his lady was going out for the evening, and “tequila makes her clothes fall off.”

Traffic was already building, and car fumes had overwhelmed the jasmine. I hung a right on Barbarossa, planning to cut over to Riviera and then north toward Dixie Highway. A pair of land crabs the size of catchers’ mitts scuttled across the pavement, headed toward the waterway.

A black Lincoln followed me through the turn, then slowed to keep pace. I tried to see through the tinted windows but could not, the morning sun shooting daggers into my eyes. I picked up my speed, and so did the Lincoln. I slowed, and the car edged closer, until it was directly alongside me.

I stopped short, and the car braked. The passenger door opened, and a man in khaki pants and blue blazer hopped out. Nimble for a big galoot. Gray-blond crew cut, Marine neck, maybe fifty or so.

Ray Decker. Jesus!

“Where you going, turd face?” Decker said. He came onto the sidewalk and stood in my path, just out of arm’s reach.

Turd face? And they say our era lacks sophisticated wit .

“Nice to see you, Ray. When’d you get out of jail?”

“Never been in jail, shyster.”

“Another failure of our justice system. When will it ever end?”

He glared at me. The look of a man who wanted to step on a cockroach but didn’t want to soil his shoe.

Decker had been a detective in the Sheriff’s Department. In a marijuana case-possession with intent to distribute-I’d sweated him for five hours on cross-exam to show he lied on his affidavit. A judge dismissed another of his cases when I proved Decker repeatedly smacked my client in the testicles with a phone book while interrogating him. I didn’t personally get Decker tossed from the force, but I didn’t help him win any commendations, either.

The driver’s door opened and another man stepped out, staring at me over the roof of the car. African-American, early thirties, smaller but with the broad, sloping shoulders of a body builder. Identical blazer and pants. There is no good reason to wear a jacket in the Miami summer unless you’re hiding a shoulder holster.

“You got a license for that thing, Decker?”

“CWP signed by the State Attorney himself.” He patted his jacket over the bulge. “I’m head of security for Ziegler Enterprises, and my boss wants to see you.”

“Last night a woman delivered the same message. Offered a blow job. Same deal, Decker?”

The driver chuckled and Decker’s face heated up. “Get in the car, asshole.”

“Answer one question first. When Shorty isn’t chauffeuring your fat ass, do you drive a red Escalade with spinners and lake pipes?”

“You think I’m a Liberty City pimp?”

“Nah. They have to be good at math.”

“That’s enough, dickhead. Get in.”

“Changed my mind. If Ziegler wants to see me, he can make an appointment.”

I turned away as if to resume plodding down Barbarossa Avenue. Decker’s gun was holstered on his left shoulder. Meaning he was right-handed. I figured he would take one step and reach for me with that right hand.