Bum Rap Page 9

  “I know as much about the pit as the jeweler,” I said.

  Gorev’s dark eyes went wide. I had surprised him, and he did not like surprises. He glanced around the bar. A couple of the other tourist marks were looking this way. Maybe getting edgy about the place.

  “We need a more private place to talk.” Gorev turned to the bouncer and said something quickly in Russian. Then he turned back to me. “My car is downstairs. We go now.”

  Before I could say nyet, the bouncer grabbed my left arm above the elbow while the bartender took my right arm. They started pushing me toward the door. I gave no resistance. I figured we had a staircase to go down, then the alley, before they shoved me into the backseat . . . or the trunk. I would much rather take my chances in the alley than in this confined space.

  With my good-natured cooperation, there was no reason for the bouncer to latch on to my left wrist and hoist it into a hammerlock over my shoulder blade. I’d separated the shoulder three times. Then there was the rotator cuff surgery with its requisite scar tissue. So, I didn’t much care for the pain shooting through the joint.

  That’s why I stomped hard on the bouncer’s instep. How hard? Two hundred forty-five pounds hard. I thought I heard his talus bone cra-ack. I know I heard him scream something in Russian.

  With my left hand free, I pivoted and threw a short hook into the bartender’s huge gut. I caught a slab of his ribs instead of his solar plexus, but he still let go of my right arm. I threw my right elbow at his throat and smashed his Adam’s apple. He gagged and crumpled forward. But Alex came up from behind me and tossed a punch or a karate chop—I never saw it—at the back of my neck. It is a thick neck attached to a thick skull.

  Still, I saw stars and staggered two steps forward. Joining in the fun were Marina and Elena. Marina leapt onto my back, wrapped an arm around my neck, and raked my cheek with her lacquered nails. Elena had removed her shoes and pounded a stiletto heel into my chest, which only a few minutes ago, she was lovingly stroking. Then she reached inside my suit coat, no doubt trying to pick my pocket. Fortunately, that’s not where I keep my wallet. But maybe that was a diversion, because I immediately noticed that my watch was gone. One of the women was now the proud owner of a knockoff Piguet.

  Nearing the top of the staircase, I shook off both the women, turned, and ducked as Gorev threw a sloppy roundhouse right at my chin. His punch sailed high, and I did the manly thing. I kneed him in the groin because I hate hitting people in the face. I have missed the face so many times, slugging the skull instead and breaking knuckles.

  Gorev squealed something in a Russian falsetto and doubled over. The bartender moved toward me and threw a big paw toward my face. I stepped backward . . .

  Right off the top stair.

  Arms windmilling, I caught the bartender’s wrist and pulled him toward me. I shifted my hips like a sneaky little wide receiver and pulled him around me like a dance partner.

  We both tumbled down the stairs, but he was a three-hundred-pound pillow of lard that helped cushion the roll. The only downside, his breath smelled of beer and garlic as we bounced to the bottom.

  I stumbled to my feet. The bartender stayed down.

  I staggered outside, hearing rapid footsteps on the stairs behind me.

  Alex and the bouncer. Followed by Marina and Elena.

  I didn’t have my sea legs, and as I wobbled away, the gimpy bouncer easily caught up, then used both hands to smash me into the side of a nearby Dumpster. A garbage can sat alongside. If this were the 1950s, the can would be metal, and I could have grabbed the lid and brained the bouncer, just the way Sonny Corleone beat up his lousy brother-in-law in The Godfather. But this was 2014 and the can was blue rubber—recyclables on Thursday—and there was nothing to grab but maybe some Styrofoam peanuts inside.

  The bouncer came at me with his fists, in a stand-up prizefighter stance. I covered up, bringing my elbows in to protect my gut and my fists up to shield my pretty face. He took a few swings, hitting me with short punches, my forearms taking the abuse. I would be black-and-blue tomorrow. When he paused to take a breath, I snapped a short left jab that hit him squarely on the nose, which spouted a Trevi Fountain of blood.

  He brought up his hands to his face, so I pivoted and put all my weight into a right hook that dug deep into his solar plexus. That dropped his hands, giving me the time for a big whirling uppercut, the bolo punch. I’ve taught the punch to Kip on the heavy bag that hangs from a live oak tree in the backyard. With enough behind it, the bolo dents the bag, rattles the tree, and snaps the twigs on some orchids growing out of the limbs. But that’s against a bag. Against a man, it takes too long to deliver . . . unless you have the hands of Sugar Ray Leonard, or your opponent is already bloodied and hurting. I brought the punch up from below my waist, and it met no resistance until it landed squarely on the bouncer’s chin. The impact lifted him off his feet. Then he crumpled to the ground and pitched forward on his knees, vomiting, just missing my dress shoes. Nobody said fighting was pretty.

  I turned and saw Gorev moving toward me, something in his right hand. A switchblade. Click. The blade popped out.

  Lord, how I hate a knife.

  “We haven’t finished our talk, big mouth,” he said.

  That’s when I heard the car tires squealing in the alley behind me. A Miami Beach police cruiser braked to a stop. A uniformed officer sat at the wheel. Detective George Barrios leapt out of the passenger door and surveyed the scene. The bloody, vomitous bouncer by the Dumpster. The porcine bartender facedown in the doorway. The two B-girls, now both barefoot and holding their shoes, their bouncy hair messy and tangled. Gorev, watching me with a murderous glare, his knife and hand back in his pocket. And, of course, little old me. Disheveled and beaten, scratched face bleeding, suit coat shredded, and quite possibly drunk.

  “You look like shit, Jake,” Barrios said.

  “Whadaya mean? This is my best suit.”

  “How about I give you a ride home?”

  “My car’s a block away.”

  “Not a good idea. There’s a DUI checkpoint at the entrance to the MacArthur, and you’ll never make it through.”

  “Okay, you’re on.”

  I was about to open the back door of the police cruiser when Gorev shouted at me. “We will talk again, lawyer asshole.”

  “Make an appointment. Have your B-girl call my B-girl.”

  “I promise you will tell me everything you know about Benny the Jeweler.”

  “Benny the Jeweler?”

  “Who the hell else we been talking about?”

  I was groggy so it took me a moment to process the information. The jeweler who knew all about the pit in Russia was named Benny. The guy who hired Miguel Dominguez to find Nadia was also Benny. I never won the Fields Medal for mathematics, but I could put two and two together. They were the same guy. Just a shred of evidence, but still, maybe something that would help lead me to Nadia Delova.

  “I’ll tell Benny you said hello!” I yelled to Gorev, ducking into the rear of the police car.

  When we were a block away, Detective Barrios said, “You shouldn’t mess with the Russians, Jake. They’re as ruthless as the Colombians back in the eighties.”

  “Thanks for covering my back. Who called the cops, anyway?”

  “No one. We been watching you ever since you got to the Fontainebleau.”

  “To protect me?”

  “Hell, no. To let you do shit we can’t. And maybe pick up a scrap of evidence here and there.”

  “Either way, I appreciate the help.”

  “You’re getting too old for this shit, Jake.”

  “You’re telling me.” My head was throbbing, and I knew the rest of my body would start feeling the pain as soon as the adrenaline ebbed. “George, there’s this burg in Vermont with a prep school. I’ll bet they’ve got a little police force with a kindly chief like Andy Griffith.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “A New England May
berry. Maybe the chief is about to retire just like the football coach at the prep school. We could have lunch every day at the local diner. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes.”

  Barrios looked at me sideways. Maybe wondering if I’d left some of my brain cells back at Anastasia.

  “When you go on pension, George, think about it. Vermont. You and me. Best pals.”

  “Did you get a concussion, Jake? Vermont? Don’t you have a murder case to try?”

  “You’re right. For now, I need to start putting the clues together. But when this is over, who knows?”

  “What’d you find out from the Russians?”

  “Nothing you didn’t hear.”

  “I heard ‘Benny the Jeweler.’ You been looking for a guy named Benny who might want to kill Nadia Delova. Now you know he’s a jeweler with some connection to the Gorev brothers.”

  “That’s about it.”

  “So what’s Benny the Jeweler’s involvement in the shooting?”

  “Not a clue.”

  I straightened out my Armani suit coat, which had three tears. Granny would be pissed. Checked to make sure I still had my wallet, which I did. No more watch, of course. My Ray-Bans were gone. No cell phone, but I remembered leaving it in my car. I patted my suit pockets, reached into one, and came out with a folded napkin with the Club Anastasia logo. A phone number was written on it, 786 area code. A South Florida number.

  Elena hadn’t been trying to pick my pocket. She’d slipped me the phone number in all the commotion.

  “George, don’t drive me home. Take me to my car.”

  “I told you. The DUI checkpoint.”

  “I’m not impaired. Besides, I’ll stay off the MacArthur.”

  “What’s going on, Jake?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “I’m grateful and all. But at the end of the day, George, you’re a homicide detective and I’m a defense lawyer. You want to put my guy away, and I want to walk him.”

  He gave a little harrumph. “And here I thought we were both after the same thing. Justice.”

  He said it earnestly. No sarcasm intended. So I responded the same way, with deadly honesty. “George, you know how I always piss and moan about the system not working?”

  “Yeah, you bore the shit out of me with it.”

  “It’s real. I mean, it’s the way I feel. You know that, right?”

  “If you say so, Counselor.”

  “It’s the way I think. Call it my philosophy.”

  “I know. The so-called justice system.”

  “There ought to be a better way. Maybe we should abolish the adversary system altogether. Maybe we should have three investigating judges hop in a car and go out into the night to find the truth. And whatever they say—innocent or guilty—goes.”

  “But that’s not the way it is.”

  “Exactly. We’re gladiators, you and I. We go into an arena where there’s a winner and a loser.”

  “I just sharpen the sword of the state attorney. He’s the gladiator.”

  “Either way, blood will be shed. The strong will win. Not necessarily the one with the just cause or pure heart.”

  “And you’re not about to change the system. Is that your point?”

  “Not tonight. I’m too damn tired.”

  “Then good luck, Jake. And vaya con Dios. To you and your client.”

  “That’s the other thing, George. Solomon didn’t hire me to do justice. He hired me to win.”

  -19-

  The Other B-Girl

  Five minutes after the cops dropped me at my car, I headed north on Alton Road, pulling into an all-night gas station. Traffic in the southbound lane was gridlocked all the way from Fifth Street to Lincoln Road, thanks to the DUI checkpoint on the MacArthur Causeway and the construction on Alton. The city had torn up the street to install a water drainage system. It was about time. When a full moon coincides with high tide, the stores haul out the sandbags, and you could surf down the street. Global warming and rising seas are causing Miami Beach—equal parts mangrove, barrier island, sandbar, and man-made fill—to sink into the ocean.

  Horns were blaring and drivers—drunk and sober—were pissed off. Some stood outside their cars, yelling at each other or just cursing at nothing in particular.

  I parked next to the air hose machine and kept the car running, just for the AC. I grabbed my cell from the glove compartment and called the number on the Club Anastasia napkin.

  “Allo?”

  “It’s Lassiter. Can you talk?”

  “Da.”

  “You’re the blonde, right?”

  “Elena Turcina. Friend of Nadia.”

  “You know where she is, don’t you?”

  “Da. She is a good person. Sweet. Maybe too—what is the word?—naive.”

  “Will you tell me where she is?”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “I have a feeling she’s in big trouble with the federal government.”

  “She told me that, yes.”

  “I know people in the US Attorney’s office. I can help.”

  That was at least half true. I knew people. But I left out the part that the US Attorney, his assistants, and his investigators pretty much hated me. The FBI and US Marshals Service weren’t crazy about me, either. That’s what happens when you win a case or two in federal court. The feds are zealots, and they’re not happy winning 97 percent of their trials. So, if you happen to nail them with an illegal search and seizure and get the evidence suppressed, they treat you like a public enemy. I know one guy in the Justice Department who, if he could, would order a drone strike on my little coral rock house just as I walked outside to get the morning paper.

  Sure, I would help Nadia, if I could. But what I really wanted was for her to help Solomon.

  “I will meet you in one hour,” Elena said.

  “Where?”

  “Not on the Beach. Do you know the Russian Orthodox Church?”

  I’d been thinking an all-night diner, but church was fine.

  “I can find it.”

  “Saint Vladimir’s. Just off Flagler Street. There we can talk.”

  “One hour,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  Yes! This was the best news since I’d agreed to represent Solomon. Nadia held the key to his acquittal. Elena had access to the key. I was going to church and maybe I’d even say a little prayer and a “thank you” to the Big Guy.

  I pulled out of the gas station and headed north on Alton. Smart guys stuck on the other side of the street were pulling U-turns and heading for the Venetian Causeway, which crosses several man-made islands on the way to the mainland. The Venetian is pocked with dangerous potholes, but when it’s not closed for repairs, it will bring you out on Fifteenth Street next to what used to be the Miami Herald. That bayside building—like so much in Miami—has recently been torn down. The newspaper, to the extent it continues to exist, is now located somewhere on the edge of the Everglades.

  Problem was, the backup on the MacArthur caused the Venetian to be clogged, too, so I headed farther north on Alton, passing the golf course and hanging a left onto the Julia Tuttle Causeway. I noticed a gray Range Rover behind me. There’d been one two pumps over at the gas station. It probably meant nothing—a lot of Range Rovers in Miami—but I kept an eye on my rearview mirror.

  Traffic was blessedly clear on the Julia Tuttle. Sailing over Biscayne Bay, I dialed a number on my cell that I now knew by heart. I was calling Victoria Lord.

  -20-

  Lassiter, Solomon & Lord

  Victoria simply could not fall asleep.

  She’d been lying there all night. Fearful. For Jake.

  He was out there somewhere in the dark, trying to scam the Bar girls, who were maybe the best scammers on the planet. Likely, he would come up empty. Or he could somehow make things worse. She was worried about the case but even more worried about Jake. What would happen to him if he got inside Club Anastas
ia and started shooting off his big mouth?

  Jake had a ton of confidence in himself, but she wondered if he fully appreciated just how dangerous Russian mobsters were. Obviously, Steve hadn’t.

  I was right when I said the two of them didn’t know how alike they are.

  Maybe when this was over, if it ended well, the three of them could hang out together. Get grilled snapper sandwiches at Scotty’s Landing on the bay before they tore the old fish joint down to build another shopping center. Maybe even team up to try a case together, if it was big enough and the money wasn’t too thin. Wouldn’t that be something?

  Lassiter, Solomon & Lord.

  Wouldn’t look bad on a shingle, either. Steve would have to get used to second billing, but Jake had seniority.

  With those thoughts, she drifted off to sleep. Dreaming. A sweet, sexy dream. A Caribbean island, hotel room on the beach, windows open, breeze swirling diaphanous curtains across the bed. Locked in passionate, rhythmic lovemaking with Steve. Her breaths coming faster, harder, feeling that hot stirring below.

  The ringing phone jolted her awake with a startling revelation.

  The dream!

  It wasn’t Steve. It was Jake.

  Lassiter! Oh God.

  Well, it meant nothing, she told herself. Just the brain playing nighttime tricks.

  The LED lights on the night stand clock read 4:12 a.m.

  The phone was still ringing. When she finally answered, she heard Lassiter’s voice, a bit slurred, “Howdy, pardner.”

  “Jake, where are you? What’s happened?”

  “I’m on the Tuttle, headed toward the mainland. Do you know how beautiful the city looks at night?”

  “Jesus, have you been drinking?”

  “All those buildings on the bay, the lights twinkling like Christmas trees. And the downtown office skyscrapers. I wouldn’t want to work there, but there’s something so peaceful at night.”

  “How much have you been drinking?”

  “There’s no traffic. I’ll be at your place in fifteen minutes.”

  “Why?”