Paul Levine - Lassiter

“A few days before Perlow was shot,” I said, “my client came around and asked you some questions.”

“Lovely woman-but so filled with anger.”

“You lied to her. You said Krista wasn’t at the party, but I have a witness who places her there.”

“I told your client I saw Ziegler with three or four girls, and Krista wasn’t one of them. That’s as far as I went.”

“You chose your words carefully.”

“As I do my lovers.” His smile showed me two rows of ultra-white crowns.

“Tell me who Krista was with,” I ordered.

“Why should I?”

I bounded out of my chair, grabbed the collar of his safari jacket, and jerked him to his feet. “Because I’ll toss you through the wall and off that catwalk.”

“You wouldn’t.”

I lifted him off his feet. “You better hope you land on silicone tits instead of a concrete floor.”

“Why not spank me instead?”

I wheeled him into the wall so hard, the poster of Booby Trap XXIII crashed to the floor. “Bumper cars!” he yelled.

It occurred to me that he was enjoying this.

“Spanky, spanky, spanky!” he said.

“I don’t spank. I punch.”

I wrapped my hand around his throat. “What’d you see that night at Ziegler’s?”

A croaking sound came from Gifford’s throat and his eyes bulged.

“Tell me!” I said, loosening my grip just a bit.

“A man asked for some ludes. Krista was with him, half-zonked already.”

“Who was he?”

“I gave him a handful of pills, and he carried her to the Fuck Palace.”

“Who? Give me a name.”

“He’s scary. Scarier than you.”

I grabbed a handful of mousse-slicked hair and yanked him away from the wall. Headlocked his skull with my right arm, then pasted my big left mitt over his mouth and nose, pinching his nostrils shut. I waited until he started bucking. “Who was he! Who took Krista to the Fuck Palace?”

His cheeks were turning crimson. Then I let go with my left hand and let him suck in a breath.

“More,” he begged me. “More, sir.”

“I don’t have time for this shit.” I propped him up with my left arm and threw a short, right hook into his gut. Solid, but not a pile driver calculated to make him expel his breakfast onto my shoes.

His knees buckled and he dropped to all fours. He looked up with dancing eyes, a horse awaiting a rider. “The man …” He gasped. “The man with Krista was Alex Castiel.”

Granny was frying a big-mouthed, pink hog snapper, head and all, in her largest cast-iron pan. Kip was in the kitchen, grating cabbage for cole slaw.

“What’s with the sunburn, kiddo? Did you play hooky today?”

“You used to cut school to work in a bar.”

“Who told you that?”

“I’m standing on the Fifth Amendment,” Granny said, flipping the fat fish with a spatula. “Snapper was running off the reef, so we took the dinghy out.”

“Kip, until we get past your disciplinary hearing, you can’t cut school,” I said.

“We’re past it, Uncle Jake.”

My look shot him a question, and Kip explained. The Commodore had called him into the office. The esteemed State Attorney and distinguished alumnus Alejandro Castiel had placed a call. Vouched for Kip. Charges dismissed.

“That really pisses me off,” I said.

“Why, Uncle Jake? We won.”

“I don’t want to owe Castiel any favors.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have to do something really shitty to him.”

This time, his look asked the question.

“I have to destroy him.”

The next morning, I drove north on 27th Avenue and passed under the Dolphin Expressway, headed toward the Justice Building. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss were pounding out “Gone, Gone, Gone,” and the world was tilted crazily on its axis.

“Because you done me wrong.”

At precisely ten A.M., the bailiff escorted Charlie Ziegler from the corridor to the witness stand. The saddlebags under Ziegler’s eyes seemed puffier today, and a mini-bandage on his chin looked like the aftermath of a shaving accident. Sleepless night? Shaky hands?

He avoided my gaze on his walk past the bar. I wasn’t offended. He didn’t look at Alex Castiel, either. But he shot a glance at the jury.

Next to me, Amy Larkin seemed composed, her hands folded primly in her lap. I had never encountered a defendant so damned placid when facing life without parole.

Castiel took his star witness around the track slowly at first, establishing his background in the “adult entertainment industry,” so that my cross-exam would not come as a dirty little surprise to the jury.

Then Castiel moved to the stalking and the threats. Yes, Ziegler had observed the defendant on a neighbor’s property, watching him. Yes, he had seen her in the lobby of his office building. “Loitering and surveilling,” in Castiel’s words.

“Do you recall an occasion on which you received a phone call from Mr. Lassiter concerning his client?” Castiel asked.

“If you’re talking about the incident at the gun range, yes, I do,” Ziegler said.

“What occasioned that conversation?”

“I had made a proposal to Mr. Lassiter to set up a fund to search for Ms. Larkin’s sister.”

Sounding noble, indeed .

“So you thought that’s what he was calling about?”

“Yes, but he said-”

“Objection, hearsay,” I called out.

“May we approach?” Castiel said.

Judge Melvia Duckworth waved us forward, and we trekked to the bench for a sidebar, out of earshot of the jury. “Your question clearly appears to call for a hearsay answer, Mr. Castiel.”

“I’d submit that Mr. Lassiter’s response was an ‘excited utterance’ and therefore an exception to the hearsay rule.”

“Let’s hear a proffer,” the judge ordered.

“Mr. Lassiter replied that Ms. Larkin would rather, quote, ‘empty a clip into your gut than take your money,’ close quote,” Castiel recited.

The judge raised her eyebrows and turned to me.

“I wasn’t excited,” I said.

“Your Honor,” Castiel hopped in, “the defendant had just shot out all the tires on Mr. Lassiter’s car.”

“Three tires,” I corrected him.

“Mr. Lassiter immediately called Mr. Ziegler to warn him that Amy Larkin was armed and coming after him. The evidence code defines an ‘excited utterance’ as one immediately following a startling event in which the declarant is under stress and is excited. Clearly, this falls under the rule.”

“I wasn’t excited,” I repeated, drily. “I was calm and rational. As I recall, I was thinking about whether I should buy four new tires and not just three. It seemed a prudent thing to do, given balancing and rotation and tread wear.”

“Objection overruled,” the judge declared.

We resumed our places, and Ziegler repeated my regrettable words: “Mr. Lassiter said, ‘She’s got a gun, and she’s headed your way.’ Or something to that effect.”

The jurors’ eyes switched from the witness to my client. Grave looks. I didn’t like that. Not one bit.

Castiel moved to the night of the shooting. An assistant handled the projection gear, showing the solarium, the broken window, and what would be the grand finale, the body of Max Perlow. Castiel methodically paced Ziegler through the moments leading up to the murder. A noise outside. The two men walk into the solarium. Perlow waddles up to the window, approaches the glass, and ka-boom, ka-boom . Then the money question.

“Did you, Mr. Ziegler, see who fired the gunshots?”

The jurors leaned forward in their chairs. I clenched a pencil.