Lassiter 06 - Fool Me Twice by Paul Levine Read Free Book Online Page A

company in the kitchen. She was squeezing lime juice
over a mess of mullet we had caught when the bonefish proved too
elusive.
    “ So what’s bothering you,
Jake? You’ve had a burr under your saddle ever since you got down
here.”
    “ Nothin’.”
    “ Uh-huh.”
    Outside, plump gray clouds were building
over the Gulf. The temperature was dropping, and the air smelled of
rain.
    “ Granny, do you think I’m a
silver-tongued shyster?”
    “ You’re not
silver-tongued,” she answered, proving that sarcasm runs in the
family. Granny dipped the mullet fillets in flour and poured some
oil into a frying pan. She was from the old school, and broiled
fish just didn’t have enough taste for her. “You got that
burned-out feeling again?” she asked.
    “ Not exactly.” I picked up
a Key lime and sucked on it, bringing tears to my eyes. “You
remember Blinky Baroso?”
    “ Fat fellow who sells stuff
he don’t own.”
    “ That’s him.”
    “ Now, he’s
silver-tongued.”
    “ Yeah, well anyway, I just
walked him in a fraud case, and now, it’s one of those times of
self-examination.”
    The wind had picked up, and fronds from a
coconut palm were slapping against the side of the house. Heavy
raindrops began pinging off the roof. I used to fall asleep to that
noise, just down the hall and to the right.
    “ You didn’t cheat, did
you?” Granny asked.
    I shook my head. “I just did my job.”
    “ Then, what’s the problem?
You’re a lawyer, a hired gun. You can’t be judge and jury,
too.”
    “ I know. I keep telling
myself that, but it sounds like a rationalization for what I’m
doing, which, let’s face it, has no social utility.”
    She dropped a chubby white fillet into the
sizzling oil. “Social utility? Are you the same Jacob Lassiter who
used to cut school to go frogging in the ‘Glades? Are you the same
boy who’d rather hit a blocking sled than study for finals?”
    “ C’mon, Granny, I’ve grown
up.”
    She regarded me skeptically. “Is there a
woman behind this?”
    “ Whadaya mean?” Even the
dimmest witness knows how to avoid a question by asking one of his
own.
    “ Men generally don’t do any
self-examining unless they get criticized by someone else first. As
far as I know, the only people whose opinions matter to you are
Charlie and me, and we both love you no matter what you do. So I
figure there’s gotta be a woman.”
    “ Now you’re playing
psychologist.” Another delaying tactic, shifting the focus to the
questioner.
    “ Okay, if you don’t want to
talk about it . . .” She let it hang and returned to her cooking.
When the fillets were golden brown, she removed them from the pan,
strained the oil, added some flour, lime juice, tomato sauce,
garlic, pepper, thyme, and a pinch of pepper and salt for the
sauce. Outside the window, lightning flashed across the Gulf, and
the rain slanted in silver sheets along the beach. “Well, at least,
I hope that sleazebag paid you a bundle.”
    “ You know my rule, Granny.
Get paid up front.”
    “ Did you?”
    I ignored the question and
kept going. “Because if you don’t and you lose, you never see the
money. The client says, ‘What good did you do? I could have been
convicted without a lawyer.’
    And if you win, he says, ‘What’d I need you
for? I was innocent.
    “ So did you get paid up
front?”
    “ Not exactly,” I
admitted.
    “ Afterward?”
    “ Sort of.”
    “ I hope you didn’t take a
check from that bum. He writes checks on banks that closed in
twenty-nine.”
    “ Not a check,
either.”
    “ Cash? Did you check to see
if all the serial numbers were the same?”
    “ Not cash,
either.”
    “ What then?”
    “ Stock.”
    “ Huh?”
    “ Blinky gave me a hundred
shares in Rocky Mountain Treasures, Inc. It’s incorporated in
Colorado, licensed to do business in Florida.”
    Granny was looking at me as if she’d raised
a fool. “What makes me think this so-called corporation is not one
of the Fortune 500?”