Paul Levine - Flesh and bones

"If you're convicted, it's three first-degree felonies," I said, "and they'll have you under the habitual offender law. Life in prison."

" Carajo! "

"My sentiments exactly."

"It's 'cause I'm Cuban, isn't it, Jake? I'm an oppressed minority."

"Sorry, Roberto. In Miami, you're the majority."

We were sitting a tiny lawyers' visiting room in the Dade County Jail. I had elbowed my way past throngs of relatives on the sidewalk, a polyglot of mothers, wives, girlfriends, and screaming babies. Overhead, men leaned out through barred windows, their women yelling up at them, screaming they'd like to suck them or shoot them, howling about unpaid rent, forgotten birthdays, and a variety of domestic ills not usually aired at mega-decibels on public streets.

From inside the visitors' room, I could her men shouting and steel doors clanging. I am always claustrophobic inside a jail, even when I have a pass that gets me out the door. With the incessant racket and the metallic disinfectant smell, I imagine myself crunched inside a fifty-five-gallon barrel as someone bangs on the lid with a baseball bat.

"Maybe you can give the judge a little present," Roberto said.

"I don't bribe judges."

"Not a bribe. I got a friend who'll send him a human skull with red and black beads and fourteen pennies. Give the judge leprosy."

"C'mon, Roberto. You should have more faith in your lawyer."

"I'll put my faith in brujeria and palo mayombe."

"The judge could come down with Ebola virus, but you'd still be in the can. Let me work on it, okay?"

"Yeah, but it ain't fair. First of all, they got nothing on me. Nada. Maybe trespassing, which is what, a misdemeanor? How they gonna prove I took the mangoes? Maybe they fell into my truck. Maybe it's not even a crime to pick the fruit of the earth, which belongs to all of God's creatures, right?"

I just love it when clients devise my strategy.

"They wouldn't prosecute a possum for stealing mangoes, would they, Jake?"

"No, they'd shoot it, which is what Guy Bernhardt wanted to do to you."

"That puerco! Stealing from Guy Bernhardt ain't stealing at all," Roberto said.

From somewhere above us, one inmate yelled at another to turn down his radio. "What do you mean by that?"

"The hijo de puta steals water from half the farmers in South Dade. My cousin Xavier has thirty acres two miles from the Bernhardt farm, and his wells have gone dry."

"Bernhardt told me about the battle over water down there."

"Bet he didn't tell you everything."

"It's an old story, Roberto. The rich get richer. The poor die of thirst."

"Yeah, but did you know Bernhardt dumps most of the water he's pumping?"

"What do you mean?"

"His irrigation ditches flow into a canal that goes straight into Biscayne Bay. When his trees have had enough, Bernhardt's wells keep pumping, but he dumps the water. I seen it with my own eyes. Three nights in a row, before we did the mango heist, I cased the place, crawled all over that property on my belly. Water was five feet deep in the irrigation ditch, flowing like a river, due east."

"That doesn't make any sense. He sells the water. Why waste it?"

"How should I know?"

Outside the room a buzz, and a security door clicked open, then clanged shut. "You're pulling a scam on me, aren't you, Roberto? You're cooking up some defense. You weren't out there to steal mangoes. You were working undercover for the Water Management District."

"Jake, mi amigo, you gotta believe me." Sounding hurt, which a con man can do to make you feel guilty for mistrusting him. "Guy Bernhardt's dumping water into the bay. I swear it. Have you ever known me to lie?"

"Only under oath," I said, thinking of Roy Cohn.

"Well, I'm telling you I seen it with my own eyes."

But why? I kept wondering. I thought about it but didn't come up with any bright ideas. Mango-loving, sister-helping, trigger-happy Guy Bernhardt was getting more mysterious by the moment.

"So, like I was saying, Jake. They shouldn't arrest me for stealing mangoes from that cabron. They should-"

"I know. I know, Roberto. They should give you a medal."

"What can I do for you, Mr. Lassiter?" she asked.

"You can call me Jake."

"Fine, and you can call me Dr. Santiago." She belted out a hearty laugh. "Actually, you can call me Millie."

Dr. Milagros Santiago was a heavyset woman in her fifties, with glasses perched on top of her forehead. Her office was on the second floor of a three-story stucco building on Coral Way, a crowded street lined with banyan trees and small shops. It was a hot June day, but inside, the air conditioning was booming full blast. A rubber tree sat in one corner of the room, looking forlorn and in need of therapy. The wallpaper was beige grass cloth. A couch and matching chairs were in muted, soothing earth tones.

"Charlie Riggs told me you might help me with a case," I said.

" Mi querido hombre! Are you Charlie's friend?"

"He's like a father to me."

"What a dear man. We worked together on psychological profiles of serial killers when I was with the Behavioral Science Unit."

"Charlie didn't tell me you were an FBI agent."

"I wasn't. I had a fellowship, wrote a bunch of papers nobody read. I spent three years listening to death row inmates describe their sexual fantasies, then opted for a change of venue."

"Private practice," I said.

"Yeah. Now, I listen to housewives tell me how they dream Clint Eastwood will park his pickup truck in front of their house and pick flowers for them."

She slid the glasses down from her forehead and studied me a moment. Then she stood up and walked to a counter where an espresso machine was humming. She turned a lever, and thick black liquid fizzed into two thimble-sized containers. "If I give my patients a full cup," she said, "they talk so fast I can't take notes."

She handed me the steaming rocket fuel, which, for reasons my Cuban friends cannot fathom, I drink without sugar. "I saw a shrink a couple of times," I said.

"Good for you. Some men would never do that, or admit it if they had."

"I'd just been cut by the Dolphins, sacked by a girlfriend, and rejected by three law schools."

"Your life seemed to be at its nadir, and I suspect your self-esteem had taken a tumble."

"You would think so, but I went to the shrink to find out why I didn't seem to care. I spent all my time partying and windsurfing and hanging out. Drinking too much, sleeping too late, and settling into an unmotivated life of unrelenting fun. I was a rebel without a clue, and I needed to find out why."

She seemed to think it over while she sipped at the syrupy drink. "Your indifference may have been a defense mechanism to failure. You really did care, but you couldn't admit to yourself that you did."

"Yep. And once I figured that out, I set some goals and changed my life."

"And you've stayed off the couch ever since."

"No. Once, a few years ago, a woman died. A woman I cared about. I thought I could have saved her, should have saved her, so I had some things to work out."

"Did you?"

"No. I still feel guilty, and I have still have nightmares. So I'm batting five hundred with your profession."

"Better than most. What can I do for you, Jake?"

"Charlie says you've done some research on repressed memory."

" Ay! Don't tell me you have a client who wants to sue a parent for sexual abuse twenty years go."

"I wish she'd taken that route," I said, then sipped at the espresso. I told her everything I knew, starting with the night at the club, Chrissy's gunning down her lather, the recitation of her memories, and Dr. Schein's notes and tape recordings, including the gap I couldn't explain. When I was done, I pulled copies of Schein's file out of my briefcase and gave them to her.