Lassiter 08 - Lassiter by Paul Levine Read Free Book Online Page A

Glamour and fame just a Greyhound ride away.
    “If I’d kept my mouth shut, Krista never would have left.” Amy choked on her words. It was the first emotion, other than anger, I’d seen cross her face.
    “You did what any sister would do.”
    As she made an effort not to sob, I listened to the groan of hulls against pilings, giving her a moment to mourn all over again. It only took a moment, and she composed herself.
    “If Krista didn’t say good-bye, how’d you know she came down here?” I asked.
    “She called me after a week, said she was sleeping on the beach. She’d met an older guy who said she could make some money modeling, maybe get into the movies.”
    “I don’t suppose she mentioned a name.”
    Amy shook her head. “No, but now I guess it was Charlie Ziegler.”
    “What did you tell your parents?”
    “Nothing. Krista made me promise not to. A few months went by, and someone called Dad. He wouldn’t say who.”
    Sonia Majeski, I knew.
    “Dad just went to the airport, and when he came home, he said Krista had died in a boating accident in Florida, and her body was never found. He said we needed to get on with our lives.”
    “When did you realize your father was lying?”
    “Not until he died six weeks ago. I came across his journals and the photo from the strip club. Krista was dead to him, so he decided she had to be dead to me, too.”
    That explained why it took Amy all these years to begin looking for her sister. I processed that and tried to figure just what it must have been like for an eleven-year-old girl growing up in that house. Thinking maybe I should cut Amy a break, given what she’d been through.
    “Tomorrow, we’ll pay a visit to the State Attorney,” I told her. “Things are gonna start rolling.”
    “You haven’t mentioned a fee. How much will this cost me?”
    “Nothing. Not a dime. This one’s not about money.”

10      We, the Jury
    The next morning, I was late for our meeting with State Attorney Castiel. Unavoidably detained, as they say. The jury had reached a verdict in Pepito Dominguez’s DUI trial. So now I stood in Judge Philbrick’s courtroom, arms folded across my chest, waiting for the clerk to announce the verdict.
    A shitty little misdemeanor, the equivalent of powder-puff football in a tackle league. Still, my heart pounded.
    Yeah, I know I said I didn’t care. But now, with seconds to go, I was the guy on trial. The jury was about to rule on
me
.
    It’s always like this. I want to win
.
    And fast. Amy was waiting for me upstairs in the lobby of the State Attorney’s Office.
    The gallery was empty, except for a couple of seniors who came in for the air-conditioning, and dozed off in the back row. CNN had chosen not to cover the trial, and legal scholars somehow never showed up.
    Judge Philbrick asked the magic question: “Has the jury reached a verdict?”
    The jury foreman gave the right answer: “We have, Your Honor.”
    The foreman handed a slip of paper to the bailiff, who carried it to the judge, who glanced at it and passed it on to the female clerk, sitting directly in front of the bench.
    “The clerk shall publish the verdict,” the judge said, in stentorian tones.
    The clerk, a fifty-ish woman with eyeglasses slung around her neck on a chain of imitation pearls, squinted at the page, then read aloud: “We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.”
    She notched an eyebrow on the word “not.”
    The judge nodded, the prosecutor scowled, and the jurors started gathering their things. Pepito Dominguez threw his arms around me. “Papa said you were the best! And you are. Thanks, man!”
    I peeled Pepito’s hands off my shoulders. “You’re welcome. Tell your old man the bill is in the mail.”
    “How ’bout I buy you a drink?”
    “You shitting me?”
    “Let’s hit Lario’s. Couple pitchers of margaritas. Place is full of models.”
    I wanted to bitch-slap the kid. I also wanted to keep my Bar ticket, and the folks in