Lassiter 03 - False Dawn (7 page)

“Good work. You shot the photos from above.”

“They were on the beach behind the Palace Hotel in San Juan. From the roof of the hotel, I used a Nikon 8008 with a three-hundred-millimeter autofocus lens at a twenty-two F-stop, two-fifty speed, and your basic Tri-X film.”

“His wife must have loved them.”

“Ordered two dozen different shots, blew them up into posters for the divorce party.”

Lourdes reached into the case again and pulled out a pair of binoculars with a microphone mounted between the barrels. A wire ran from the mike to two earpieces.

“Audio glasses,” she said. “From the top of the hotel, I could hear everything they said at two hundred meters. Got a handle on how much he was spending on the girl, where he was hiding his money, who his shrink was, and wouldn’t his wife just die if she could see him now.”

I shook my head. “Why do you suppose men tell their mistresses so much?”

“Because men are just little boys looking for their mommas.” She cracked a decidedly nonmaternal smile. “Anyway, my client got the kids, the dog, the Dolphins and Heat tickets, the condo in Aspen, plus fifty percent of the business, and permanent alimony.”

“How’d you know he was going to be in San Juan?”

She looked from side to side and leaned closer. The faint perfume was stronger. “I’ll show you,” she whispered. Again, she reached into her case. What other treasures were stored there? She pulled out a fountain pen, removed the cap, and shook out an inch-long capsule.

“A tracking transmitter,” she said. “I had the wife slip it into a pen he always carried with him. The receiver is portable. It’ll track up to sixty-five miles. A great help on surveillance when you take a wrong turn coming through Ponce and into old San Juan. First, I tailed him around Miami for a few weeks. I’d call his secretary and pretend to be a bunch of different people. Used the electronic voice changer to become a man with a southern drawl, that sort of thing. It’s amazing how much secretaries will tell you if they think you’re important business associates.”

I signaled the waiter for two cups of
café Cubano
. “You didn’t track him to Puerto Rico with that.”

She tried not to chuckle. “No, I had some help. The wife put a voice-activated recorder on his private line. He talked in code to his girlfriend, but I knew they were headed to the airport, and I just followed.”

“Illegal as hell …”

“But extremely effective.”

She gathered up the accoutrements of her cloak-and-dagger life. I watched the fine blue veins on the back of her hands. White, tapered fingers with short, clear lacquered nails. She ran a hand through her glossy black hair and cocked her head at me again. She put the binoculars back into their foam-cushioned spot in the aluminum case. “So what took you to the justice building this morning?”

“Francisco Crespo, a murder case. Probably a reasonable doubt defense. I need a witness to put somebody else at the scene, maybe find somebody who had a grudge against the victim.”

“Is that all? No signed confession from a notorious serial killer?”

I like a woman with a sharp sense of humor. Especially when she isn’t afraid to aim it at me. “You’re right,” I conceded. “I sometimes ask for too much. Right now, I’d settle for knowing a little more about my client’s employer. Crespo worked for an importer named Matsuo Yagamata. Ever heard of him?”

Her lips played with a smile, then let me have it. “Francisco Crespo used to work for my father. And my father used to be in business with Matsuo Yagamata.”

Oh.

“You knew I was representing Crespo, didn’t you?”

“A good investigator ought to know what’s going on around town.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? Why the life and times of Lourdes Soto?”

“I wanted you to hire me based on my qualifications, not my contacts.”

The waitress brought the check. I tried to sort it out. Lourdes Soto had information I wanted. Or she could get it. What did I have that she wanted?

“Crespo’s not telling me everything,” I said. “Or he’s telling me too much.”

“What do you mean?”

She was staring intently at me, her body perfectly still. This was happening a little too fast. I wasn’t ready to entrust Francisco Crespo’s future, or lack of it, to a woman I had just met, a woman who encouraged wives to illegally wiretap their husbands, and who probably knew what I ate for dinner last night. Still, I could use her.

“I need to find out everything I can about Yagamata. Why don’t we start with your father? Will you set up a meeting?”

She smiled and nodded. “I guess that means I’m hired.”

Back went the photos and the transmitter pen. As she slipped the pen into its slot, her hand brushed the leather divider of the case, revealing another compartment. It was visible for only a second, but I know a voice-activated tape recorder when I see one. Of course, it could have been turned off. Probably was, right?

“Glad to be on the team,” she said. “Now, tell me everything you know.”

That wouldn’t take long, I figured, watching the little red light pulsate with each word as she snapped the case shut.

U
sually, I don’t show off.

Some guys blast up to the shore, carve a hard jibe, and shower a rooster tail of spray over a bouquet of bikinis. Sort of a male boardsailor’s adolescent fertility rite. I’m too old for that.

Then there are the ones who rig their boards, slip into harnesses, and tune their sails until the wind dies, never getting their booties wet. Swilling brew all day and talking a good game but never playing it. I like the sport too much for that.

I just rig and go. On an April day, a steady northeasterly wind of twenty knots, the temperature a perfect eighty-one degrees, I was chop-hopping the green squirrelly waters off South Beach. Puffy white clouds scudded across the sky, darkening the water with their fleeting shadows. The windows of the high-rise condos winked at me in the morning sun. Okay, so it’s not like windsurfing at Sprecklesville Beach in the shadow of Haleakala, the great Maui volcano. No ten-thousand-foot peak hidden in the mist. But it’s the best we can do in these parts. Four feet of chop for jumping, a steady wind for speed, and if you are so inclined, a beach full of tourist gals from every corner of these here United States, not to mention a wide collection of Central and South American
chicas
plus some Germans and Danes thrown in on a package tour.

I was so inclined.

My board was a nine-and-a-half-foot custom-made sliver of fiberglass with a five-point-four-meter square of orange Mylar for a sail. I was bouncing over the chop, leaning back into the harness, guiding the boom with a light touch, and generally luxuriating in the beauty of the day.

And showing off. Near the shoreline, beginners climbed onto clunky floaters in the frothy surf, unsteady as rookie riders at a dude ranch.
Just why do they call this horse Dynamite?
Windsurfing is a sport with a steep learning curve, and the first few tries can be frustrating. Watching an experienced boardsailor tear through a series of bottom turns and slashbacks on the offshore waves can be inspiring to the newcomer, or so I rationalized my blatant showboating. On occasion, I could even be persuaded to teach a grateful beach bunny how to tie a bowline or a Prusik hitch knot, all in the spirit of sportsmanship, of course.

Approaching the shoreline at warp speed, I leaned a heavy foot on the rail, and the board carved into the wind. I let go of the boom and dragged my aft hand in the water, a flare jibe. In theory, the hand acts as a daggerboard and pulls the board through the turn. In reality, it’s a grandstanding technique equivalent to a hot-rodder fishtailing on the asphalt.
Hey, look at me!
I finished the jibe, flipped the boom, then shot back out over the chop, the wind snapping my sail and whistling a tune like a flute through the holes in the mast extension. I squinted into the sun, jibed again, and rode heavy rollers into the shallow water near the Fifth Street beach. I shot past startled swimmers, a couple of teenage sailors in a Sunfish, and some novice boardsailors. Nearing the shore, I pulled the foot of the sail over my head as the leech swung through the eye of the wind—a flashy duck jibe—and just as the board should have started on a new tack, the tail sunk and the bow shot up like a leaping marlin. I toppled backward into five feet of surf. Served me right.

Shaking water out of my eyes and sand out of my trunks, I recognized the sound of sail crackling in the wind, somewhere behind me, moving closer. It is equivalent to hearing a trucker’s horn when you are on a bicycle. I turned just in time to have a mast topple onto me, whacking my right shoulder, and I went under again. This time, I had company.

She was a tall, sunburned blonde, who hadn’t seen thirty. She wore a white one-piece Lycra suit, and when she crawled back onto the board, I could see telltale scraped shins. Her hair was plastered to her skull, and she breathed heavily through pouting lips. If anyone had ever taught her to boardsail, they hadn’t taught her right.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, clinging to the board, which teetered in the surf. “This is so much harder than it looks.”

“First time,” I guessed.

“No. Yes. I mean, in the ocean. I’ve sailed on Lake Minnewaska. But this …” She gestured at the rollers.

“Lake Minnie …”

“In Minnesota.”

She had a faint singsong accent. Swedish maybe. “It’s a different sport in the waves,” I agreed. “Try again. I’ll give you some pointers.”

Jacob Lassiter, Esq., to the rescue. Accused murderers and sopping wet damsels, walk right in. She looked at me the way they do when sizing you up. Deciding whether you’re Tom Cruise or Charles Manson. I crinkled my best beach smile at her and must not have looked too lethal, because she allowed as how my assistance would be peachy, got to her feet, grabbed the uphaul, and pulled, straining to get the sail out of the water. She had some fine ripples in her triceps, but the mast stayed put, weighted down by what must have seemed like a ton of water burying the sail. Beneath the white Lycra, her nipples were perking up.

“Heavy son of a bitch,” she muttered.

At first I thought she meant me.

I like a woman who curses. Makes me think she’ll be honest in personal relationships. It’s stupid, I know, like believing a guy who doesn’t look you in the eyes is shifty, when he may just be bashful.

“Damn right,” I said, adapting my lingo, chameleonlike, to my companion. “Try leaning back. Let your legs do the work. Don’t be afraid. You won’t fall, just keep hold of the uphaul.”

Beginners have this fear of toppling over backward, so they stand straight up and do all the pulling with their arms. Gradually, she leaned back and got the tip of the mast out of the water, and the rest followed. She grabbed the boom, raked it in, and headed the twelve-foot board out through the surf.

She yelled something that sounded like “whoopee,” and looked back at me over her shoulder through her flying blond hair, brave enough now to loosen up a little. “Sail with me.”

Willingly, I ducked under my boom and lay in the water on my back. I propped my feet on the board, and tilted the mast into the wind. When I felt a gust, I lifted the boom gently and let the sail pick me up as it filled with air. I slid my feet into the straps, tugged the boom toward me, and followed my Minnesota friend. I pumped the sail twice and whizzed alongside her.

“Thanks for showing me the ropes,” she called out. “I’m Jillian. Will you let me take you to my hotel for lunch?”

I couldn’t think why not. “Sure. I’m Jake. Let’s get past the surf line. I’ll show you some tricks they don’t know in Duluth. When we get in, I’ll give you some salve for those scrapes.”

Doctor Lassiter at your service; we make beach calls.

She smiled and kept sailing. I stayed upwind and behind her, watching her calf muscles undulate through the window on my sail. “Watch out for those jet skis,” I yelled, pointing in the general direction of Bimini. Three hundred yards away, two machines euphemistically called “personal watercraft” were chawing away, fouling the breeze with their noxious noise. Nearby, a sleek yacht was anchored, pitching gently in the offshore waves.

What loggers are to forests, what sheep are to grass, that’s what jet skis are to a fine patch of turquoise water. It’s not the machine, of course, loud and irksome as it is. The yahoos who ride them, water bullies, are the problem. They ignore the rules of right-of-way, cut off sailboats, terrorize swimmers, scare the fish, and toss beer bottles into the surf. Down in Islamorada recently, a fisherman plugged a jet skier with a .22 rifle when the punk wouldn’t heed his warnings to keep a distance. Only a flesh wound in the leg. Most of the locals wish the fisherman was a better shot.

These two surf jockeys were headed right for us on their black-and-white monsters, churning up the water, jumping each other’s wake, and generally destroying the tranquility of a place where the only sound is the smooth slash of water and the tune of the wind. We stayed on our tack, a close reach to the northeast. The onshore wind swept the gaseous stink across the waves. The two intruders slowed about thirty yards away. Two Hispanic men, early twenties. Both wiry, both looking at me, instead of Jillian, which any red-blooded guy would do. One of them said something, but with the sound of the damned engines and the whistling wind, I couldn’t hear. A second time, louder. “Ay, you! Follow us.”

I shook my head, dumbfounded.

“C’mon, asshole. Somebody wants to see you.”

I luffed the sail and slowed, but at two hundred twenty-something pounds, I can’t stop. If I do, the board will sink. “No thanks, have a lunch date.”

Jillian sailed by and was looking back over her shoulder. Probably thinking about all the Miami horror stories she must have heard. It’s one thing to be caught in the crossfire of a Colombian cowboy drug war at a shopping mall. Or to wander into a Santería ceremony sacrificing live goats to the god Yemayá. But to witness a boardsailor’s kidnapping might be a new one for the folks in mid-America.