Paul Levine - Lassiter

“I keep thinking about that photo in your office.”

“Careful, Jake …”

“Your mother standing between Bernard and Lansky. She was a beautiful woman who gets hit with this double tragedy. All hell breaks loose with Castro taking Havana, and then Bernard is killed. She must have been devastated. But there’s Meyer Lansky, rich and powerful, with a finely tailored shoulder to cry on. Who can blame her for falling for the guy? Unless …”

Something was nagging at me, an itch in the back of my brain. In the corridor, the bailiff was leading the jurors back into the courtroom. We had just a couple minutes.

“Unless that story about Bernard’s heroic death was total bull,” I said.

“You gonna crap on his memory, too?”

“What do you care? He’s not your father. Maybe your mother was already having an affair with Lansky, and Bernard found out. In some Jewbano rage, he confronted Lansky. Threatened him. Whatever he did got him killed. I’m betting Lansky ordered it and Perlow carried it out.”

“The Havana Post said Bernard was bayoneted by the rebels. I have the clipping.”

“Batista propaganda. If I’m right, your mother continued her affair with Lansky and got pregnant. Or she was already pregnant when Bernard was killed. Either way, that’s when you come into the picture. Castro confiscates the Riviera. Lansky gets out of Dodge, and Perlow puts you on a Pedro Pan flight to Miami. Your mother is supposed to join you, but she’s dying of cancer. Lansky was married and had kids of his own. He also didn’t want you carrying the weight of his name. Helluva lot better to be Alex Castiel, son of a supposed martyr, than Lansky’s kid. So Perlow arranges for a sham adoption with a nice family in Coral Gables, all the while keeping your real father, Lansky, behind the scenes.”

Castiel was quiet a moment, then spoke softly. “If I had a time machine, I’d go to Havana, hang out with Meyer at the Riviera.”

I understood. If I could travel through space and time, I’d go shrimping with my old man. Spend as much time with him as I could.

“I’m not ashamed of being Meyer’s son,” Castiel said. “I loved the man, and he loved me. I like to think he’d be proud of me.”

That hit me hard, and I wondered just what Castiel would do to earn that love and respect. And looking back, what had he already done?

The next morning, I was cruising north on I-95. No court today. I had twenty-four hours until Charlie Ziegler appeared as a witness for the prosecution. I still wasn’t sure what he would say when Castiel asked the magic question: “Can you identify the shooter?”

Traffic slowed near 125th Street, where a refrigerated truck had overturned, spilling several tons of Florida lobsters onto the pavement. The critters scrambled across the expressway into the high-occupancy lane. Unless they’d purchased SunPasses, they’d likely get tickets.

Cars crunched the crustaceans. A few drivers hopped out, trying to corral their supper. I swerved through the traffic and made it to a warehouse district near the Broward County line. Last night, as I was eating Granny’s deep-fried frogs legs, Pepito Dominguez had called. He’d been tailing Ziegler. The idea had been to find Melody Sanders, but Ziegler had a different destination. His old porn production facility, now owned by Rodney Gifford.

Pepito told me that Ziegler and Gifford drove to Morton’s in North Miami Beach where they ate steaks and drank martinis, Ziegler picking up the tab. My semi-pro P.I. took a table nearby but couldn’t hear their conversation. That didn’t keep him from ordering double-rib lamb chops and faxing me the bill. At the end of the meal, Ziegler and Gifford hugged. Pepito couldn’t be sure but he thought he saw tears in Ziegler’s eyes.

What the hell was that about?

Today’s job was to find out. I guided the old Eldo into the parking lot beneath the sign that said, Gifford Worldwide Productions . On the radio, Warren Zevon was gambling in Havana, where he had gotten into trouble. The solution seemed to be “lawyers, guns, and money,” which in my experience often make things worse. With that thought, I killed the ignition and headed inside.

A heavily tattooed young man with a pimpled butt was having sex with a life-size silicone doll named Candy. I knew her name because young Olivier kept grunting “Fucking you good Candy; fucking you good, Candy,” as if reviewing his own performance. Candy kept quiet, except for an occasional silicone squeak.

“In the second act, the doll comes to life and kills him,” a production assistant told me.

They were shooting Killer Candy 8 , a video about homicidal love dolls. The tattooed guy made some disturbing guttural sounds of distress, like a boar in cardiac arrest, then spritzed his money shot all over Candy’s 38-DDD boobs. Rodney Gifford yelled, “Cut,” called for the Windex guy, and gave cast and crew a ten-minute break.

I walked up to Gifford as he was thumbing through a script. He was a trim, khakied man in his fifties. Khaki slacks, khaki safari vest, khaki chest hair.

“I’m Jake Lassiter. Can we talk?”

“How big’s your dick?”

“What?”

“Does it take two hands to handle your whopper?”

“You start all conversations this way?”

“You’re here for the casting, right? White Men Can’t Hump. ”

“I’m a lawyer.”

“No shit. You look a little like Studley Do-Right. Guy had a helluva wad.”

“I’ve got some questions about Charlie Ziegler.”

“You got a subpoena?”

“Nope.”

“So why should I talk to you?”

“Why wouldn’t you? Do you have something to hide?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” Gifford rasped a smoker’s laugh and squinted at me through eyes the color of snot. “C’mon, Studley. You got ten minutes, not a second more, unless I find you fabulously entertaining.”

We walked up a set of steel stairs to his office, a cluttered rat’s nest just off a catwalk, overlooking the production set. He offered me lukewarm coffee and a chair with torn, upholstered arms. I took the chair, declined the coffee, and asked why Ziegler came to see him yesterday.

“None of your business, Stud-bug.” He drummed his manicured fingernails on his desk. On the wall were a pair of movie posters. Don’t Ask, Do Tell showed women in military uniforms, tunics open, breasts exposed. Saving Ryan’s Privates showed men in unzipped combat fatigues. Apparently, Gifford also made patriotic films.

“The way I hear it, Ziegler screwed you on the sale of the business,” I said.

“Old news.”

“Stole your girlfriend and married her.”

“Lola? His loss, not mine. Monogamy is overrated, don’t you think?”

“Not compared to celibacy.”

“Touche,” he said, waving an index finger like a saber.

“Then yesterday, you and Ziegler are seen eating steaks and hugging.”

“Charlie’s going through some changes, okay? Trust me, it has nothing to do with your case.”

“Ziegler expressing remorse for his past, is that it?”

I was just repeating what Castiel had said yesterday. Ziegler, too, had used the word the night I ate sushi at his house. “Looking back now, I’ve got a lot of remorse.”

“Any law against being sorry for the shit you did?” Gifford asked.

I hope not, thinking of myself .

“If the shit includes murder,” I said, “that’s pretty much against the law.”

“Ziegler’s a prick. But he’s not a killer. If you must know, yesterday he apologized for screwing me over. He’s sorry, sorry, sorry.”

Ziegler apologized to Gifford, and to Amy at their jailhouse visit. He was on an apology tour. I tried another angle.