Blood Relations (20 page)

Perplexed, Marty Cassie replied, “Sure. A very nice guy, Klaus.”

“Do you like me?”

Cassie shrugged. “Yeah, sure. You’re funny. I have a good time at your parties.”

Jerry Fine looked across the terrace, out toward Miami.

He wondered what would happen if he got up and left. He could see his law firm’s building among the others down town, shiny blue and white.

Klaus said to Marty Cassie, “Would you help Tereza with her show next week?”

“Okay. What do you want me to do, some promotion?

C @!l some people?”

No, She needs someone to help her set up the chairs.”

Marty exhaled, glancing at Jerry Fine, who said nothing. “Why not? W4?re all nice guys here.” He laughed.

“And would you help clean up afterward? Please? For Tereza. You know. She’s so tired, planning for her big show. We can talk about the apartments if you promise to help Tereza.”

“Jesus. Sure, okay.”

“And would you kiss my ass if I asked you to? If I promised to buy the property, would you kiss my ass right now?”

Marty made a high-pitched whinny and glanced around.

The other half-dozen people on the terrace were watching.

The naked girl, who had wrapped a towel around her self, hid a gi-2gle behind her hand.

“I, T not going to kiss your ass,” Marty said. “Kiss mine.

Gripping the curved metal frame of the chair on either side of his knees, Klaus pulled himself up. He took out his wallet and counted five hundred-dollar bills. “Okay, here’s a deposit, which I give to my attorney in escrow.

Not enough. I need more cash. Dominique! Va, cherche moi encore de Vargent!” Klaus pointed. “Jerry, write a contract. You have paper? Good. The Englander Apartments. Address, such and so. Seller-Tolin Associates’

Right? Yes. Purchaser, Ruffini Properties. Price-” He looked at Marty Cassie. “I forgot the price. How much?”

“Six hundred.”

“Six hundred thousand dollars, all cash, standard terms, and so on. Okay?”

Marty stared up at him from his chair.

“Okay or not?”

“Jesus. You’re kidding.”

“Does this look like kidding? Am I kidding you?”

Klaus dropped his trousers and his blue jockey shorts, holding on with both hands to keep them from falling -tree shirt hung just down entirely. The hem of his palm below his groin. The pink tip of an uncircumcised penis who pressed bobbled as, he turned his back toward Marty, himself against the chair.

Klaus wiggled his fanny. “Marty, you want me to do something for you? Okay, do this for me. It’s clean. If you kiss it I’ll tell my attorney to write the contract. Jerry, did you hear what I said? Call your office, get the legal description. Do it!”

Muttering darkly to himself, Fine flipped open his portable phone and punched in the number. Dominique came cropping out onto the terrace again, carrying several banded stacks of hundreds With loathing, Marty Cassie braced his hands on his thighs, and took a breath. He gritted his teeth, then reached out to lift the hem of Klaus Ruffini’s shirt.

Quickly Klaus whirled around, pulling up his pants, laughing. “My God! He would do it! Oh, no!”

Cassie stumbled out of the chair, nearly weeping with rage. His voice was choked. -you lousy fuck. May you rot in hell.”

“Marty, I was making a little joke. l,m sorry. I didn’t think you would do it.” Klaus was laughing and trying to zip his pants at the same time. “Go with us to Nick’s for lunch. Okay? Watch the boats, have a drink with us.

Come on.” He put his arms around Marty Cassie.

“Go to hell, you dago bastard.” Marty Cassie violently pushed him away, grabbed his bag and portable phone, and ran across the terrace. Laughter came from the onlookers. Klaus hid his face in his hands and sank to his knees, a parody of remorse.

Jerry Fine closed his telephone. He felt dizzy, and the sun reflecting on the bay made shards of light that hurt his eyes.

“Everybody!” Klaus rebuckled his belt. “Let’s go to Nick’s. I am starving.” He paused beside Jerry Fine and rubbed his shoulder. “We’ll get a separate table from the rest, okay? Then you can tell me how to save myself from Edward Mora.”

At the door he called, “Jerry! Come on.”

After a moment, Jerry Fine struggled out of the butter fly chair and followed him across the terrace.

The press conference in State vs. Ruffini, Lamont, and Fonseca was held just before noon, in time to be edited Tor the midday news and rebroadcast in the evening.

Sam Hagen stood at a cluster of microphones in a blaze of light, the state and U.S. flags behind him. He swept his gaze around the room and denied that the sexual battery charges had been filed for political reasons. This was not part of a plan to stop development of the Grand Caribe Resort. A crime had been committed, and the defendants would be brought to trial. Sam was flanked by two other assistant state attorneys he had named as members of the prosecution team: a woman from the Sexual Battery Unit and Joe McGee, on temporary loan from the Felony Division.

Insiders in the state attorney’s office knew what was going on here. Edward Mora might he leaving. Whoever he recommended as his interim replacement, Sam Hagen would be running for state attorney in the fall. The battle was starting now, in front of these cameras.

“Mr. Hagen, the girl is seventeen years old. Is there any indication that the defendants realized this? Did she pre sent herself as older?” A local TV reporter in the front row had stood up so he could get himself on video.

Sam heard the unstated question, What kind of girl is this? He said, “I don’t know what they thought. Whether she looked fifteen or twenty-five, does it matter?” Sam waited a beat for emphasis. “No one deserves to be the victim of such a brutal attack.”

“What can you tell us about her?”

“Well, first, I admire her courage. She’s willing to testify against people who could influence her career. The young lady is a native of our area. She’s been modeling for about a year, and she hopes to pay her way through college. That’s all I’m prepared to tell you at this time.”

Florida law prohibited publication of her name. Sam had begun to refer to Ali Duncan as the victim or the Young lady. He didn’t want details of her life to show up in the Press-not yet-although sooner or later the media would sniff them out. For now, she was the girl next door.

A reporter from the Miami Herald asked about evidence, and Sam gave a brief overview, keeping his response as nonspecific as he could and refusing to give the names of any witnesses.

The story had hit the national news the day before, but only in the form of a ten-second announcement on NBC that actor Marquis Lamont, along with two other men, had been arrested for an alleged sexual assault on a model 4 in a Miami Beach night club. An entertainment news show had asked Sam for an interview, but he had refused to talk to them. Klaus Ruffini had not been mentioned except as a codefendant, and George Fonseca not at all. The only in-depth coverage was local, although a pale young woman in black had come from New York to do a story for Women’s Wear Daily. Eddie Mora’s predictions of media bedlam had been wildly off the mark.

The state attorney himself was absent. He had gone to a Cuban-American Bar Association meeting, tending to his own political fortunes, making sure he kept the local exile community happy so they didn’t scuttle his chances to go to Washington.

“How did the girl get into the Apocalypse at age seventeen?” someone asked.

Sam replied, “She was let in by the management. Most clubs are careful about this, but there are a few that cause problems.” He glanced around at his prosecution team, then said, “We’ve talked to Chief Mazik of the Miami Beach police department about a joint effort to identify and prosecute those owners and managers who don’t

19 ppp@

control the doors or who permit the use or distribution of narcotics on the premises, usually in the rest rooms or the so-called VIP rooms. This is not, and I stress this, a judgment on Miami Beach nightlife as a whole. Most of the clubs and restaurants are great places to go, an asset to the community.”

As several reporters called out questions, Sam lifted a hand, then said, “You know, what concerns me, as a prosecutor and a resident of Dade County, is the idea that because we rely so much on tourist dollars, we have to excuse things that most other communities wouldn’t put up with. The attitude that people with enough money or sophistication ought to be indulged. This has consequences, particularly for our young people. What do they learn when we say that not everyone has to be held accountable to the same rules? I see forty thousand felony cases come through this office every year, and I can tell you that most of those defendants think that somehow the rules just don’t apply to them.”

After a few more questions Sam checked his watch, apologized for having to cut it short, and thanked every one for coming.

Avoiding the lunchtime crowds in the elevators, Sam took the stairs to the ground floor with Joe McGee and Lydia Hernandez. Lydia, from Sexual Battery, was a petite young woman with frizzy blond hair. Hustling down the stairwell in her flats, she said that the motions demanding blood samples would be personally served on the defense attorneys in the morning.

Joe McGee rounded the landing. “Good. We won’t have a whole lot of time. Fonseca’s lawyer says he’s going to ask for a speedy trial.”

When he reached for the handle of the heavy steel door, Sam told him to wait a second.

“I had a phone call this morning from Norman Singletary. He says Marquis Lamont isn’t so sure now he wants to plead out.”

McGee groaned. “Oh, man. We’re offering the moon.

What does he want?”

“A not-guilty verdict,” Sam said. “He doesn’t want to plead to anything. If we lose him as a witness, someone has made it worth the risk.”

“Klaus Ruffini,” McGee concluded.

:‘Probably.”

‘Son of a bitch,” Lydia said. “How much do we need Lamont?”

McGee said, “We’ll be okay if the witnesses don’t crap out.”

“Let’s see what happens between now and the arraignment,” Sam said. “Then I’ll have another talk with Norman. Threaten some serious jail time. That might change Lam ont’s mind. Or we give him immunity from prosecution and force him to testify. We’re in for a rough ride, boys and girls.”

Sam opened the door, and they walked into the lobby, then out the rear entrance of the building, squinting in the bright light. Wind tossed the tops of the trees and chased tattered pages from the newspaper across the parking lot.

Joe McGee was grinning. “I feel a little sorry for Marquis.”

“Why, for God’s sake?” Lydia demanded.

“Well, he isn’t getting much media coverage. He’s probably going, ‘Hey, where is everybody? You mean I’m not big enough to have all the TV networks down here? Nobody wants to put me on the cover of the National Enquirer!” ” McGee jerked his head toward the Justice Building. “Sam, you coming over to the cafeteria?”

“No, you two go ahead. I’ve got a meeting.”

Sam’s silver Honda was parked in a private space. As he approached he noticed someone leaning against the fender, a white-haired man in a tan sport jacket and knit shirt. Dale Finley. Sam hadn’t seen Finley since telling Beekie to get him off the investigation team in the Duncan case.

Finley came a couple of steps closer with his uneven gait.

“You’re looking for me?” Sam took his keys out of his pants pocket.

“I caught the press conference on TV,” Finley said.

All that about setting examples for our young people.

Very inspiring.”

Sam stuck the key in the car door. “Excuse me. I’m late for an appointment.”

“With Gene Ryabin.” Finley smiled, and the scar across his chin pulled at his lower lip. “I asked your secretary.”

“What do you want, Finley?”

“Cut to the chase.” Finley’s scalp gleamed through the bristly white crew cut. “Detective Ryabin, so I have been given to understand, has been making inquiries about membered that Mr. Cassie is an associate of a businessman Martin Cassie. What reason? I pondered this. Then I re from Italy currently residing on Miami Beach. And Mr. Cassie has been heard to remark that he personally asked Hal Delucca, the city manager, to persuade the Dade state attorney not to proceed on a certain sexual battery case involving the said Italian businessman.”

Finle ‘s pale eyes, which had been taking in the movement of people through the parking lot, fixed now on Sam Hagen. He said, “I know what you’re thinking. You’re mistaken, but I won’t argue with you. Consider this, though. If you fuck up his nomination, he will stay here, and you can’t beat him in an election, not in Dade County, amigo.”

Sam opened his door. “Stay out of my sight, Finley.”

“It could be an interesting trial,” Dale Finley said. He watched Sam take off his jacket and put it on a hanger behind the front seat. “The lead prosecutor asking questions of the witness, then the defense asking the witness did she ever spread for the prosecutor.”

As Sam slowly grasped what Dale Finley was saying, he felt a wave of fury build, then sweep through him. He turned slowly around, wanting to get his fists around Finley’s lapels.

“You don’t have to be concerned anybody’s going to run out and blow bells and whistles.” Finley gave a slight shrug. “As long as we understand each other.”

He turned and limped across the parking lot toward the state attorney’s office, the sides of his sport coat lifting and failing in the wind.

Waiting for Ryabin, Sam stood outside the Criminal Investigation Unit looking down into the terrazzo-floored lobby. A piece of publicly funded art hung just below him, suspended on thin cables from the high ceiling. The sunlight pouring through the windows glowed through blue and green glass disks and bounced off turquoise, brown, and maroon rods and wires bent into weird shapes.

Every time he came over here he tried to figure out what it was supposed to mean, beyond the $85,000 it had cost the city. Up where the eyebolts screwed into the walls, the plaster was getting rust-colored and flaky. That much money could have fixed the leaks in the roof.

Sam leaned his elbows on the railing. Maybe it was seaweed. Occasionally maintenance would pull out a Styrofoam cup, like the ones that washed up on the beach.