Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones (34 page)

"
Mystic Pizza
." he shot back without hesitating. "That's an easy one. Bet you don't know who had her first starring role."

"Julia Roberts, unless you count
Baja Oklahoma
."

"Doesn't count 'cause it was made for cable."

"Yeah, but they showed it in theaters anyway," Tanya said.

Great, the kid had found a soulmate.

They were quiet a moment before Kip said, "
The Pizza Triangle
with Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti."

"Wow! That's a tough one."

I closed the window just as Charlie came into the kitchen and started clearing my counter of a week's worth of fast food. Dried-out burgers, curled pizza crusts, half-empty cola cups.

"You shouldn't make promises you can't keep," he said, tossing some shriveled French fries into the garbage can.

I shot a look toward the door.

"She's sleeping," he said, "but before she nodded off, she told me you had a great, secret plan. Want to share it with me?"

"Nothing to share," I said.

"Just as I thought." He was folding pizza boxes in half, jamming them into the trash. "She's such a frail thing, Jake."

"That's why I've got to win. She'll never make it in prison. Never."

"You're in a quandary," Charlie said. "You've proved Chrissy is a victim of Schein's manipulations, but you can't get around the fact that she killed her father."

"It's not a fact. It's an assumption made by the medical examiner." Getting out of my doldrums, starting to think like a lawyer.

"Unless you have contrary evidence, my boy, it's a
fact
."

"It could have been natural heart failure. It could have been medical malpractice. Larry Schein might have killed Harry in the hospital room."

"Proof, Jake! Where's your proof?"

I thought about it a second. "Schein said a couple of squirrelly things in court today, and they're still bothering me."

"A fine piece of lawyering, Jake, in case I failed to mention it. You built a fine ladder, put your hostile witness on the top rung, then knocked it down. He fell pretty hard."

"Thanks. Did you notice his time line's off?"

"How so?"

"Schein rushes out of the Hotel Astor at eleven-oh-five P.M. He gets to the hospital at eleven-forty P.M. It shouldn't take thirty-five minutes to get from the Astor to Mount Sinai."

"It was a Friday night. You know how slow traffic is on South Beach."

"Only if you go up Ocean Drive. The hospital is a straight shot up Alton. Ten to twelve minutes, no problem, especially if you're in a hurry."

"Maybe someone's watch was wrong. Maybe the valet parkers at the Astor were smoking weed or shooting craps."

"Yeah, and maybe Schein stayed to polish off his Grand Marnier soufflé, but I think it's screwy."

"What else?" Charlie asked. "What else did Schein say that you found 'squirrelly'? An interesting choice of words."

"Why, because he's a rodent?"

"No, because the name is derived from the Vulgar Latin
scuriolus
, which sounds so much like our word 'scurrilous.' At any rate, what did he say?"

"Maybe it's nothing, but it gave me an idea. Can you get a business directory for Miami Beach, one of those books that lists every commercial establishment by street?"

"Sure."

"And go over the autopsy report again, everything from toxicology to the EKG, okay?"

"I'll do it, Jake. But Harry Bernhardt wasn't poisoned; he wasn't stabbed; and he wasn't smothered. He was shot by that poor girl and had a heart attack following surgery. They've got causation nailed down tight. What's the point of attacking it?"

"It's the only way to win," I said.

I finished my preparations for the morning session just after the eleven o'clock news. Now I was lying on my sofa, eyes closed, half sleeping, half thinking, when Chrissy nudged me. She wanted to go out. A vestige of the mow-dell days, parties that start at midnight and end with steak and eggs for breakfast at the News Café.

"I'm too tired," I told her. "I missed my disco nap 'cause I was tied up in court."

"Tell me about it," she said. "Look, if you don't mind, I gotta go anyway. It's an opening, Jake, and they're gonna pay me two thousand dollars."

"You know our rules. No booze, no drugs, no parties 'til the trial's over."

After which there might not be any festivities for a very long time, my lawyerly self might have added.

"Jake, I need the money."

Weirdly, Chrissy had become a local celebrity. While the national advertisers wouldn't touch her, the publicity in Miami had made her a star. A Hialeah garment manufacturer had hired her as the spokesperson for Fem-Gun, a brassiere with a compartment for a .22 pistol. She'd been asked to speak to various women's clubs, including Daughters Against Rape, an incest survivors' group, and Bitches with Balls, a lesbian support group.

Reporters followed her to the courthouse, reported on her clothing, her lifestyle, her garbage (yogurt, torn panty hose, spermicidal jelly), and her reading habits, which consisted of fashion magazines and mysteries by Carol Higgins Clark. So, when a new club opened, it paid to have Chrissy there, along with the likes of Madonna, Sly, and occasionally Jack Nicholson. And if she was going, I was going, too.

The bouncer wore a muscle T-shirt and three earrings, one of which was embedded, like an errant fishhook, in his right eyebrow. His trapezius muscles bulged almost to his ears and bore the telltale acne of steroid abuse. While the plebeians strained against the red velvet rope, my lady and I were waved to the front, Musclehead's dim face showing recognition when he saw Chrissy in her red leather mini.

"Maybe I should frisk you," he said with a leer.

"I already have," I said, and we pushed past him into Quicksand, the newest club about to enjoy its fifteen minutes of South Beach fame.

The throbbing music grated at a decibel level that once induced General Noriega to come out of hiding. Multicolored lasers pierced through a man-made fog that drifted to the ceiling. Some undressed bodybuilders, male and female, frolicked in the pit filled with mud that gave the club its name. On the dance floor, folks of various genders spun and twirled: bare-chested gay boys, their pecs slicked with oil; girls dancing with girls; a few guys with their dates, hanging on for dear life. It was a sea of leather, chains, boots, and bare flesh, each person trendier than the next.

Chrissy leaned close and yelled something into my ear. I couldn't hear a thing. She motioned toward two middle-aged men in double-breasted suits over black T-shirts. A covey of Miami Beach quail hovered around them, and a photographer for
Ocean Drive
magazine snapped off a dozen pictures. One of the men had a ponytail, though he was nearly bald on top. The other had a shaved head, reminding me of Larry Schein. I still couldn't hear Chrissy, but as she moved to talk to the guys, I figured they were the owners of this newest establishment of high culture.

I let Chrissy go do her thing and wandered off on my own. Foam poured into a nearby pit, and several naked revelers dived in and disappeared. A few yards away, a guy/gal in camouflage pants, combat boots, and a pink halter top (which covered his/her small breasts) was pouring pills from a Baggie into the hands of two identically dressed girls who were too young to vote. I took a second look. They seemed familiar. Sure, I'd seen them at SoBeMo auditioning, their mother leading the charge. Somehow they'd gotten into the party scene, if not the modeling scene. One of the girls handed several bills to the transgender Rambo, who kissed them both on each cheek and put the Baggie back into a pocket of his camouflage pants.

I don't know crack from smack, crank from coke, XTC from LSD. Sure, I smoked some weed in my younger days, but now I won't ingest anything stronger than caffeine. I walked over and yelled at the girls, "That stuff will kill you!"

In unison, they stuck out their tongues at me, so I decided to mind my own business. I walked around the perimeter of the dance floor. At the roped-off entrance to one of the VIP rooms, the tuxedoed guardian recognized me. He should have; I'd gotten him probation once on a bad-check charge. He waved me past the ropes, and once inside, I saw several local politicians, a Hispanic soap-opera star, and a few other familiar faces. Softer music played. A spotlight played on a small stage where a naked black woman covered with whipped cream was moving seductively toward a naked white woman covered with chocolate. Though I am inexperienced in South Beach revelry, I figured this was not a cooking class.

The women took each other's hands, then slid thigh against thigh, exchanging whipped cream for chocolate. Then they lay down on the stage, their heads facing in opposite directions, their legs intertwined. Two well-muscled young men appeared. Naked, Caribbean-brown. They placed maraschino cherries on the women's nipples, then lay down next to them, one to either side, the men bent at the waist, their bodies arching into parentheses. All four began moving to the music, and then a young woman stepped from the crowd onto the stage. Applause greeted her.

"There's the artist," someone said excitedly, next to me.

"I call this work
Banana Split
," she said proudly, and the crowd applauded heartily.

By now I had a headache and wanted to go home. I hoped Chrissy had done her networking and had picked up her check. Her name would be in Tara Solomon's "Queen of the Night" column in the paper, and the ponytailed Quicksand boys should be happy.

I left the VIP room and found a rest room that had three condom machines. I was bent over the sink, tossing cold water onto my face, when I heard his gravelly voice. "Lassiter, you're making a big mistake."

I lifted my head and saw Guy Bernhardt in the mirror. He still looked like a pig.

"Accusing Larry Schein like that. It makes good press, but it's just a sideshow. The jury won't buy it."

"I'm not done with him yet. Before I'm through, he'll sing a song with your name in it."

"Damn it, Lassiter. You've said the wrong thing."

Then I saw the two guys behind him. I remembered them from the ride through the mango fields. Short, burly Hispanic men owned by their master. Bernhardt took a step back and they came forward. I spun around, flexed my knees, and let my hands dangle at my side. Adrenaline awakened me. I caught the first one with a straight left jab that snapped his head back. I pivoted in time to see the flash of a blade, the second one waving a knife under my nose. I backed up until my ass hung over the sink.

The knife moved closer. It was a shiny switchblade with a black enamel handle. The point was just below my chin when he brought it up and pricked the skin. I felt a drop of blood fall. My head tried to arch backward until my neck hurt. I couldn't move. All I could do was listen to Guy Bernhardt.

"Rusty said you were hardheaded. . . ."

"He doesn't know the half of it."

"He said I couldn't reason with you, deal with you. Apparently he's right. But even a mule, a jackass, can be taught. And today's lesson is that a bigmouth lawyer who points his finger at me is likely to get it cut off. You think you're a tough guy, but you know what? You bleed just like anybody else."

He nodded, and the man dragged the knife across the underside of my chin. A line of blood formed, then began to spill in drops. The man backed off and cleaned the knife on my jacket. His pal stepped forward, and while I had one hand cupped under my chin, he caught me in the gut with a short right hook. I crumpled to the tile floor, coughing and bleeding.

I had two Band-Aids under my chin when Abe Socolow greeted me in the morning. "What happened to you?"

"Cut myself shaving."

"Nervous, huh?" he said, and made his way to the prosecution table.

I had told Chrissy what happened and had grounded both of us for the duration of the trial. Now, we were in the courtroom of the Honorable Myron Stanger, and I was trying to focus on my witness.

The clerk called out her name, and Dr. Milagros Santiago marched to the witness stand, nodded to the jurors, and sat down. She was dressed in a navy skirt and matching jacket, her eyeglasses perched on top her head. She was one of those women who proudly carry twenty extra pounds and to hell what anybody else thinks. Millie gave her credentials and background; then we got down to business.

"The old view of autobiographical memory stems from Freud," Dr. Santiago said. "He described repression as a defense mechanism used to suppress the psychic pain of anxiety, guilt, or shame. We came to believe that every experience of a person's life was stored somewhere in the brain, waiting to be recalled by therapy or drugs, hypnosis or meditation. But now we know it's not that simple. Our memories are constantly being refashioned, and when we dredge them up, it's from a murky sea. There are true memories with false details, and false memories with true details."

She told the jury how historical truth, what actually happened, differs from narrative truth, what we remember.

"We don't store memories like bytes of data on computer disks, ready to be called up with total accuracy at the touch of a keystroke," she said, looking directly at the jury. "Memories are malleable and tend to change and drift with time. When recalled, they're a blend of fact and fiction."

I took Dr. Santiago through her research and that of others. She quoted the work of Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, using her analogy of the memory as a giant blackboard with an endless supply of chalk and erasers. Memory is dynamic, ever changing, susceptible to suggestion, and no one knows where truth ends and the imagination begins. She talked about the personal myths each of us creates about the past, about the dreams we mistake for reality. She told about pseudomemories of past lives and tales of abduction by aliens and satanic abuse.