Paul Levine - False Dawn

Foley was still measuring the room with his eyes. “Eight trailers should do it. Maybe nine. C’mon, let’s go. This ain’t a museum tour.”

T he trucks were from a rental company, arranged for by Foley. I asked him why he didn’t use the U.S. Marshal’s Service, but he waved me off. The workers belonged to Yagamata. Some Russians, some Cubans, they were tight-lipped, dull-eyed, sullen-faced men who moved as if they were paid by the hour. There was little bantering, and the only bellyaching I heard was when Yagamata ordered one man to put out his cigarette.

The packing took most of the day and into the night. When it was done, the cartons filled eight trailers and part of a ninth. I stood there watching everything boarded and boxed, thinking about the nobility who commissioned the priceless cache, and about the peasants on whose backs the nobility walked. I wondered about the fate of these inanimate objects, given more value than that of human life. How many peasants died so the Romanovs could enjoy their gilded eggs and diamond-crusted snuff boxes? How many more would die even now to protect the art, or to steal it?

I thought of Smorodinsky, Crespo, and Eva-Lisa. And Kharchenko. He was dead, too. I took part, at least by omission. I was-how would Abe Socolow characterize it? — a coconspirator. I had stood silently and watched Foley kill the man, brutally and efficiently. I could have stopped him, but I didn’t.

Didn’t even try.

And now I thought about it. I wasn’t repulsed by the horror of it. I was fascinated by the cool, competent administration of pain by someone good at the job. It occurred to me then that Foley enjoyed the task. His creased face became flushed, his eyes hot behind the glasses. Yagamata had turned away from the coldblooded torture and murder, trying to lose himself in the artwork hanging on the gallery wall. But I watched, my pulse quickening, and now I knew that, like Foley, I enjoyed it, too.

I pushed the thought aside and remembered how it all began. Francisco Crespo. My debt was not repaid, never would be. But someday I would tell Emilia Crespo that the man who murdered her son was dead, and had died hard. What did it say about my character that the thought gave me a warm glow of pleasure?

Knowledge of self is a precious commodity, dearer than the finest gemstone. The mirror I held before me now was not laced with gold filigree. It was cold and flat and bared every shadow on my soul.

No, Foley, I didn’t stop you. I merely watched in feigned horror, and now I have only one regret. I wish I had killed the bastard myself.

I t was after midnight when Foley and I got into the cab of the lead truck with a driver who had not recently encountered deodorant soap. Foley was flipping through a folder of papers, reviewing the inventory, smiling to himself. The driver had a hard time clanking from first gear into second, but he finally got it after several Spanish curses and a tug-of-war with the shift. We rolled off into the night to points unknown.

I was just about to ask Foley where we were headed when he told the driver to pull over and pointed toward a Plymouth sedan sitting at the curb near the intersection of LeJeune Road and the Airport Expressway. The driver tugged at the wheel, the truck’s brakes squealing in protest.

“The keys are under the mat,” Foley said. “You’re outta here.”

I started to protest, but he hushed me. “It’s gonna get dangerous from here on out.”

“Really, what’s it been up to now, a day at the beach?”

“Lassiter, you’ve done a good job, better than I would have thought. But you’ve already seen and heard too much. You don’t have security clearance for this. Leave the rest to the Company. Go back to your torts and contracts.”

“Where are you going?”

He put a finger to his lips. “State secret. Hey, almost forgot. Yagamata wanted you to have this.” He reached into his coat pocket and handed me something metallic. I held it up to the light of an oncoming car.

“Opera glasses,” I said. They were heavy. I looked closer. Solid yellow gold with what looked like white gold lacework.

“Belonged to Czar Nick. Matsuo thinks they’ll help you see the truth. Go ahead. Take a look.”

When I hesitated, he laughed. “Go on. It doesn’t give you a black eye, and there aren’t any girly pictures inside.”

I held up the solid gold binoculars and looked at the waiting car in the glare of our headlights. Nothing but a blur. “I can’t see a thing. They don’t work.”

“How about that?” Foley said. “Isn’t that just like old Mother Russia?”

I approached the witness stand and politely asked, “Isn’t it true that you bit into a finger cot, and not a condom, Mrs. Schwartzbaum?”

She pointed toward the defense table. “That’s what they say.”

“You’re not disputing the evidence, are you?”

Sylvia Schwartzbaum was fifty and not all that pleased about it. The frosted hair was lacquered into place, and if she turned too quickly, her immense silver earrings could cause whiplash. “All I know is when I bit into my endive, I chewed something rubbery, and when I spit it out, I thought it was a condom. That’s why I screamed. That’s why I spilled the soup in Harry’s lap, the poor dear.” She paused for effect and looked into the gallery, giving her husband a small, tragic smile. “And that’s why I have a severe case of mental anguish.”

“But now you know it wasn’t a condom, correct?” I was going to hammer away until she admitted it.

“At the time, it felt like a condom, and it looked like a condom.”

I wouldn’t be doing my job, such as it is, if I didn’t ask a follow-up question. “Did it taste like a condom, Mrs. Schwartzbaum?”

She gave me an icy stare. “Not being a pervert, I wouldn’t know about that.” She looked toward Harry, who nodded his approval.

Judge Dixie Lee Boulton leaned forward in her chair and peered at me through her bifocals, which dangled on a chain of imitation pearls. “Mr. Lassiter, I suggest you move it along. I’ve heard just about enough of this line of questioning.”

I hadn’t wanted to defend another restaurant case. Last year I lost the case of the flaming dessert. Bananas flambe cost the plaintiff his expensive toupee and my client, Le Parisian Eaterie, twenty-five grand. But win or lose, a trial lawyer gets typecast. Next, I was hired to defend the Calle Ocho cafeteria where an elderly man slipped and fell on an oil slick of spilled flan. Then I fought off the Consumer Protection Agency for the allegedly kosher Cuban restaurant that served frijoles con puerco.

Now I was dealing with the case of the rubber-in-the-rutabaga, as Marvin the Maven insisted on calling it. Every morning before court, I had to stop in the corridor as Marvin and Max (Just Plain) Seltzer told me fly-in-the-soup jokes, all of which I had heard before.

“Jacob, I got a new waiter joke for you,” Marvin said earlier today. “Direct from the Catskills, which, as you know, are the Jewish Alps. Two ladies are having lunch. The first orders the borscht, but the waiter says, ‘Take my advice, have instead the chicken soup.’ The second lady orders the pea soup, and the waiter says, ‘No, take the barley.’ They do as they’re told, and the first lady compliments him: ‘Best chicken soup I ever had.’ So the second lady asks, ‘Why didn’t you recommend me the chicken soup?’ The waiter says, ‘You didn’t ask for the borscht.’”

Marvin and Max were still laughing as I hauled my trial bag into the courtroom. My partners had insisted I handle the case after I had missed a couple days of work. Been lollygagging long enough, the managing partner said. Taking off without warning, leaving young associates to handle motion calendars and prepare cases for trial. The litany of complaints was piling up. So my punishment was the mental anguish suit of Sylvia Schwartzbaum, plaintiff from hell.