Paul Levine - False Dawn

There weren’t any reporters in the courtroom when I pleaded my friend Francisco Crespo not guilty to second-degree murder. That’s right. The plea is “not guilty.” A defendant doesn’t have to be “innocent.” That’s for the gods to decide. A jury only determines whether the state meets its burden of proving guilt to the exclusion of a reasonable doubt. If the state fails, the defendant is adjudged “not guilty,” even though the jurors may believe the guy is a slimeball who hasn’t been “innocent” since kindergarten.

I did the usual: waived reading of the criminal information, demanded trial by jury, and requested all the discovery materials in the state’s possession. I also asked the state not to inadvertently lose evidence favorable to the defense, which prompted the prosecutor to ask if I thought he was unethical or incompetent, and I simply said “yes.”

The judge set the trial for June. Stone crabs would be out of season, and rich Miamians would be headed out of state. The jury panel would be comprised of folks angry at the heat, the mosquitoes, and the person responsible for their involuntary civic duties, one Francisco Crespo.

I didn’t tell Crespo any of this. We had only a moment together. He stood next to me, looking deceptively puny in an oversize pale yellow guayabera. I asked him if there was anything else he wanted to tell me, and he shook his head. I told him I wanted to talk about Matsuo Yagamata, and he gave me a sad smile that said no. He asked me to tell his mother that he was okay, and then he left the courtroom, free on bond, trusting me with his life.

I slipped from the courthouse nearly unnoticed. The only people who needled me about the mistrial were two bailiffs who flapped their wings, a probation officer who clucked an excellent cock-a-doodle-do, and an ex-client, shackled at the ankles, who told me not to chicken out.

L ourdes Soto tilted her head and gave me a mischievous smile. I figured it might have been my twinkly eyes or suave manner.

Then I caught sight of myself in the mirrored wall of the Versailles, a Cuban restaurant with a French name. I saw the same thing she did: an overgrown boy with a splendid guava milkshake mustache. Resisting the urge to use my shirtsleeve, I wiped my mouth with a napkin, swallowed a mouthful of my sandwich-sliced pork, turkey, and cheese with a pickle on crunchy Cuban bread-and got down to business. I’ve got nothing against angel hair pasta with olive oil, pine nuts, and sun-dried tomatoes. Nothing except the downtown yuppies who populate the trendy restaurants. Same thing with French water and German cars. Fine products. It’s just the assholes who use them as status symbols that get me down. So I prefer lunch in Little Havana, which I suggested when Lourdes Soto called me and asked if I could use a good investigator.

“I already have one,” I told her.

She knew that.

“I’ve used Ernie Palmer for years.”

She knew that, too.

“What’s your experience in homicide-”

“You just came from the justice building, didn’t you?” she interrupted.

I had, but how did she know?

“I watched you pull into the parking lot coming south on Twelfth Avenue,” she answered without being asked. “If you’d been driving from the courthouse or your office, you would have been headed west on Calle Ocho. There’s also a layer of brown dust on your hood. They’re repairing the trestles on the ramp to the interstate just south of the justice building. I’d say you parked in the shade next to the pilings where the construction is going on.”

Not exactly Sherlock Holmes, maybe, but noticing details makes for a good investigator. “I’m impressed.”

“Women have certain advantages as investigators,” she said. “We take people by surprise.”

No one would think Lourdes Soto was a PI. Not with that rare combination of jet black hair and flawless porcelain skin. It is a stunning combination you find in some of the Cuban women who trace their ancestors to northern Spain. The contrast makes the black velvet eyes even darker, the ivory skin even whiter. She had a prominent, forceful nose that went well with her strong cheekbones. She wore her hair in a short shag, and her makeup was understated, her lips brushed with just a hint of rosy gloss. Pearl earrings gleamed pure white against her dark hair. A trace of perfume, not too sweet, wafted my way. She wore a white knit dress with a fitted waist and padded shoulders. Her body was small and well-proportioned, the outline of her breasts visible beneath the knit dress.

“It’s easier for women to get witnesses to talk,” she continued. “Men especially. They always want to help a lady. One way or another.”

She laughed and dug into her ropa vieja, the stringy Cuban beef in a piquant tomato sauce. She was right. Who needs another lumpy, middle-aged guy in a four-door Ford, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts waiting for the motel room door to open. If you were lucky, he got the 35-millimeter Canon up and focused before the businessman and his secretary were back on the expressway headed downtown.

“Tell me about your work,” I said.

“The usual. Asset reconstruction, missing persons, surveillance, witness interviews, sworn statements in both civil and criminal cases.”

She told me she had started working eleven years ago, right after she graduated from Florida State. Her first job was with a big company, Wackenhut, when n was looking for bilingual women. Then she went with a three-investigator firm in a seedy building with a flashing neon sign and a boss who kept a bottle of bourbon in his desk, just like in the movies. Recently, she opened her own shop, and now she was hustling business from semirespectable lawyers such as myself.

“I thought it would be glamorous,” Lourdes said, “for about twenty minutes. My first job was sorting a guy’s garbage for two months. Every Monday and Thursday at four A.M., I’d be in his driveway, substituting my trash for his.”

“What were you looking for?”

“Proof of assets. He’d gone into bankruptcy to defraud creditors. Buried in the coffee grounds was a magazine for owners of private aircraft. Found a twin-engine Beechcraft under a phony name at Tamiami. Also a property tax bill from North Carolina.

We located a nicely furnished A-frame on the side of a mountain near Boone, plus thirty acres of land just off the Blue Ridge Parkway.”

She smiled and speared a sweet plantain with her fork. “I love the challenge,” she said. “Once I was hired by a gynecologist who knew his partner was stealing but couldn’t prove it and couldn’t figure where the money was going. All he knew was that the books were cooked and his partner was tired all the time. I tailed the guy home from the office. Midnight, sharp, five nights a week, he’d hit the strip joints in Lauderdale, one after another, buying magnums of overpriced champagne, slipping hundred-dollar bills into every G-string in the joint.”

“You’d think a gynecologist would see enough…”

“That’s what I thought, too, but who knows? Anyway, so much for the glamour of my job. After a week chasing the horny doctor, all my clothes smelled like cigarettes, cheap perfume, and stale beer. You’d be surprised how many men offered me money to take off my clothes.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” I said, just as I was expected to do.

She ran a hand through the shag hairdo, then told me a few more war stories. She was a neat package of woman in total control. In the guise of friendly patter, she was letting me have her resume one page at a time. I was supposed to be impressed with her competence, and I was. At the same time, there was that faint air of flirtation, the sidelong look, the smile that slid from friendly to provocative without crossing the border of good taste.