Paul Levine: Lassiter

“Strip, Lassiter,” Krista said.

“Do as she says,” Ziegler ordered, “or I’ll put the next one in your thick skull.”

“Don’t think so,” I said. “It’s not in you, Ziegler.”

Krista walked over and faced me squarely, standing so close I could feel her breath. Her jaw was set, her greenish eyes colder than ice. I could see the power of the woman’s will. Doctors say broken bones heal even stronger. The woman before me had been forged, like molten steel, from her own crushed bones. She looked at me, not with hatred, but with fearless determination.

“Start with your shirt,” she said.

It was time to act. It would take only a second for me to grab her by the shoulders, toss her into Ziegler, and make my way to the door.

We were standing so close I never saw her good leg jerk upward.

She kneed me in the groin.

A solid hit. The pain pitched me sideways. I gasped for breath, my eyes tearing. Amy joined the fray. She caught me alongside an ear with a karate kick and I staggered sideways. Women nowadays, with their pilates and kickboxing and martial arts, are all aggression and attitude.

A second kick caught me just above the knee, and I toppled to the floor.

Amy hopped onto my back, raked her fingernails across my forehead, then reached under my shirt and grabbed for the wire. Her fleecy robe had come open, and underneath, she was naked and still wet from the pool. I turned and grabbed at her, but it was like trying to catch a fish in my bare hands. She kept wriggling and I couldn’t get a grip.

“You bastard!” she shouted at eardrum-breaking decibels.

I struggled to my feet and tried to shake her off. She bit my right ear. Chomped down hard and drew blood. I was already bleeding from the gouges in my forehead. Krista grabbed the front of my shirt and yanked, popping most of the buttons. Then she reached into my pants, searching for the recorder, finding something else.

“Ouch!” I yelled, twisting away.

Ziegler vaulted from behind his desk, screaming, “I’ll shoot you, I’ll shoot you!”

Amy was still riding my back, the shell to my tortoise. “I’ve got it!” she shouted.

Her hand came out with the battery pack that had been taped to the small of my back. The recorder was still on my thigh. I shook from side to side, like a wet dog, and she flew off me.

“I’ll shoot!” Ziegler repeated, in case I’d forgotten.

Blood flowed into my eyes from my forehead, and I could barely see. I wheeled toward Krista and saw the blur of movement. The People’s Porn statuette, coming at my head. Krista with a death grip on the naked woman’s torso. I raised an arm and caught the blow, the statuette breaking in two at the woman’s hips. An electric jolt, a stinger, shot through my shoulder.

Krista tried to slash me with the jagged bottom half of the statuette. I slid to one side, dodging her. She came at me again, but I grabbed the collar of her robe and tossed her to the floor. “Shoot him!” she yelled.

Amy came at me, arms flailing. I caught her wrist in one paw and twisted until she cried, “Ow,” then spun her into the credenza.

Ziegler moved between the door and me, holding the gun in two hands.

“I’m out of here, Ziegler.”

“Give it up and I’ll let you go.”

“You’ll let me go now.”

I took two steps toward him and he raised the gun to chest level. “Don’t make me.”

“Kill him!” Krista screamed, from the floor.

“I’ll do it. I swear I will!” Ziegler’s arms trembled.

“You’re a better man than that, Charlie. That’s the damn irony. Compared to these two, you’re the Humanitarian of the Year.”

I wrenched the gun from his hand. A Sig Sauer.380.

Amy’s gun? The murder weapon? I’d bet on it .

The next morning, my forehead was stitched, my knee wrapped, and my ear bandaged. Other than a crushing headache, I felt damn good.

As I swung the old Eldo into the Justice Building lot, I listened to Johnny Cash sing about that old “ring of fire.”

“And it burns, burns, burns …”

The acting State Attorney was a silver-haired woman in her fifties named Cheryl Halpern. A lifer in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, she ran the Public Corruption Unit and had earned a reputation as a smart, tough prosecutor. Today, having been convinced by the Governor to give up her federal paycheck, she sat in Alex Castiel’s old high-back leather chair.

She hadn’t had time to either unpack her boxes or move Castiel’s possessions out. The photograph of Bernard Castiel, Meyer Lansky, and Rosa Castiel looked at us from the credenza.

Seated next to me were Castiel and his lawyer, a silver-haired Brooks Brothers mouthpiece from Palm Beach. His wingtips were highly polished, and he eyed me with outright hostility. He didn’t offer his name and I didn’t take it.

I had asked for the meeting, so State Attorney Halpern told me to say my piece. I spent ten minutes telling them everything I knew. I handed over the Sig Sauer, which I’d put in a kitchen plastic bag and labeled, as if I were a crime-scene tech. Then I asked if they’d like to hear the audiotape.

“You wore a wire?” Cheryl Halpern said. “Again?”

I shrugged. I’ve lived in South Florida practically my entire life, yet was known for only two things. I’d once toted a football to the wrong end zone, and I’d once blown the whistle on my own client. Okay, make that twice.

As I played the tape, Mr. Palm Beach stopped giving me the evil eye and began bobbing his head, as if keeping time to a pleasant tune. When I clicked off the recorder, Ms. Halpern said, “Illuminating.” She also had a reputation for brevity.

“Thank you, Jake,” Castiel said. “Thank you.”

“Didn’t do it for you,” I said, not looking at him.

“It seems clear that there’s no case to take to the Grand Jury concerning Mr. Castiel,” Mr. Palm Beach said. “I’d suggest the state build its case against Krista Larkin.”

“She’s already lawyered up,” the new State Attorney said. “Kevin Moore called me this morning.”

“Did he sniff around about a plea?” I said.

“Hardly. He says you’re wrong about the phone calls and you’ve got the wrong shooter.”

“Yeah?”

“Moore says Krista never left her apartment that night. She had some wine, turned off the phone, and went to bed early, which is why Ziegler’s first call went to voicemail. Then he called her cell phone, which the lawyer claims Amy answered while driving Krista’s car.”

Uh-oh . I saw where this was going.

“I don’t get it,” Mr. Palm Beach said. He might charge six hundred bucks an hour but still was a step too slow.

“The old switcheroo, the fumblerooski,” I interjected.

“How’s that?”

“They’re saying that Amy was driving back from Ziegler’s house, where she’d just shot Perlow. Amy . Not Krista. And because the case has already been dismissed with prejudice against Amy …”

“Double jeopardy!” Mr. Palm Beach brayed, as if he had known it all along. “Double jeopardy bars a second prosecution against Amy.”

“Not that we would charge her,” Halpern said, “if Krista is the shooter, and this is just a ruse.”

“The perfect defense,” Mr. Palm Beach said, a bit wistfully. “Blame the murder on a person who can’t be tried.”

Castiel leaned forward in his chair and wagged a finger at his replacement. “You can’t let them get away with it. If I were still State Attorney-”

“You’re not , Mr. Castiel,” Halpern said, “and with good reason.”

Mr. Palm Beach put a gentle hand on Castiel’s arm and turned to the new State Attorney. “No need to be testy with my client, Ms. Halpern.”