Last Chance Lassiter, Page 2

  "Thing is," I said to Farrell, "the replay showed my knee was down by contact when I recovered the ball. The play should have been blown dead. Our ball. We win by a point instead of losing by one."

  "A bad ruling." He gave me a sly little grin, then stood up and paced around my office. "I can relate."

  "How's that?"

  "Life's not fair. You make one boneheaded play in your career, that's all anybody remembers. Same thing with my deal if I get convicted of this bullshit. Basically, I'm a good guy."

  "A prince," I said, agreeably.

  He spent a moment admiring my rack of baseball bats, then pulled one from its slot. The bat was a gift from a client in lieu of a fee. The client, a sports memorabilia dealer, claimed the bat was used by Edgar Renteria of the Marlins to drive in the winning run in the seventh game of the 1997 World Series. Indeed, Renteria's signature appeared on the bat. But I sensed neither the signature nor the provenance was real. My client, after all, made most of his money engaged in what the federal government considers mail fraud.

  Clients are like that. If they'll cheat their customers, they're just as likely to lie to their lawyers.

  "You don't want to see me take a fall because of one slip-up," Farrell continued.

  "Except in my case, the ref blew the call. In your case, the drift I'm getting is that you beat up your wife."

  He took a practice swing with the bat. "I'll swear under oath that I never touched her."

  "In my experience, honest people don't need to put their hand on a Bible to tell the truth, and with dishonest people, it makes no difference." I slipped Farrell's booking photo out of the file. "When you were arrested, your face had fingernail scratches, and the knuckles of your right hand were raw."

  "Whose side are you on, Lassiter? I told you I got a doctor who'll back me up."

  "I know doctors who'll swear a paraplegic can win the decathlon."

  "So what's your strategy? What's your legal advice?"

  "Plead guilty to a lesser offense. Simple assault, maybe. Get probation and some counseling."

  "And give that bitch ammo for the divorce? Fuck that."

  I didn't like Farrell the moment I saw him, and my opinion hadn't changed for the better. I glanced out the windows. Three black vultures were parasailing in the updrafts. Just floating there without any apparent effort. Lucky birds.

  "What is it you're not telling me, Farrell?"

  Another practice swing. Strike two. "You're so smart, you figure it out."

  It only took a second. "You can't plead because you're got a prior. No probation for you."

  He shrugged. "Ex-girlfriend claimed I beat her up. I never should have pleaded to that one."

  Damn clients. Always keeping secrets. "Guys who hit women," I told him, "they're scum-sucking bottom feeders."

  "Watch it, pal."

  "They've got doubts about who they are, what they're made of."

  "I don't care if you're a former jock. I know karate."

  "That what you used on your wife?"

  "Warning you, Lassiter."

  "Those doubts, I mentioned. It's about their manhood."

  "You calling me a...?"

  "Got nothing to do with your sexual leanings. But you know what you are? A coward. A pussy who pretends to be a tiger."

  That did it. He leapt from his chair and herky-jerked around my desk. I got to my feet and he stopped, the baseball bat in his right hand. If he swung at my head, I'd duck and plow a right hook into his gut. Once he threw up on my desk, I'd rub his face in it.

  He cocked the bat, waggled it back and forth.

  "Face it Farrell, you don't have the balls to do it."

  Just then, the son-of-a-bitch uncorked a swing, aimed at my head.

  -2-

  More Bang for the Yen

  I didn't know this until it was too late, but at precisely the moment James Farrell swung the baseball bat at my head, Lyle Krippendorf was strolling down the corridor outside my office with two potential clients and my alleged girlfriend Kim Coates. Krippendorf must have heard raised voices – mine and Farrell's – from the other side of the door and quickly decided not to include my office as a stop on the tour.

  I can't blame him. Why risk introducing your loose cannon associate to a couple of middle-aged, three-piece suited Japanese bankers who could be worth a fortune in fees, once they stopped bowing and smiling? At least, Kim Coates could be depended on to say and do the right thing.

  Afterwards, I imagined what Krippendorf would have told them: "Ms Coates is one of our outstanding associates. She'll show you our state-of-the-art library. One hundred percent digital, and you folks sure know all about that."

  At about that moment, Krippendorf would have heard a thud shake the door to my office.

  Inside, I was trying to fend off a client with rage issues who was swinging my baseball bat. I raised my arms to protect my head, and the bat glanced off my left forearm. The guy swung more like Edgar Allan Poe than Edgar Renteria.

  I fired a short right hand into his gut and he whoomped and staggered backwards but didn't puke. He also didn't drop the bat. He swung again, one-handed, this time aiming at my knees. I side-stepped, but he clipped me on the hip. I winced. The sting reminded me of a hip pointer I suffered in a pileup on the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field.

  The swing left Farrell off balance. I grabbed his shirt collar with one mitt and slung him into the door with a loud thwomp.

  "How's it feel to get pushed around, tough guy?" I taunted him.

  Now, with both hands on his shirt collar, I slammed him into the door again.

  Thwomp.

  "Got some idea how your wife felt or do you need some more?"

  He gasped but still had enough air to yell at me. "You second string loser! I'll get you disbarred."

  That deserved another, so I slammed him into the door yet again.

  Twice. Thwomp. Thwomp.

  The door banged open and Farrell flew out, barreling into the corridor toward Krippendorf, whose back was turned as he spoke to the potential clients from Tokyo. "With my firm, Shimono Bank will get more bang for its yen."

  Farrell bounced off Krippendorf and crumpled to the floor. Krippendorf staggered but didn't fall. The fat fart had a low center of gravity. Without seeming perturbed, he launched into damage control, bowing to his visitors: "Taihen moushi wake arimasen."

  The Japanese men just bowed and smiled back.

  "Just what kind of insane asylum are you running here, Krippendorf?" Farrell demanded from his position on the floor.

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Farrell," Krippendorf said. "Jake, apologize to your client."

  "He's not my client."

  "Regardless, apologize!"

  "I'm sorry. I made a mistake."

  "That's a start. Go on."

  "No, Krip, I'm apologizing to you. I'm sorry I took your job offer and deprived you of another ass-smooching sycophant. I don't belong here. No one with self-respect does."

  Krippendorf just stood there, mouth agape, as I headed down the corridor and toward a new life.

  -3-

  Flirting with Disbarment

  "Take a memo," I said.

  "To whom?" Cece asked.

  "To me."

  "You want to remind yourself to give me a raise?"

  We were in my new office. My oceanfront office, in the loosest sense of the word. I was in a ground floor windowless hovel of a room in a parking garage, located in an alley just off Lincoln Road on Miami Beach. If you were on the roof of the garage and climbed the ladder up the exterior of the elevator shaft, then stretched on tippy-toes, and were six-feet-two to start with, you could see a slice of the Atlantic Ocean. Unfortunately, from inside the bowels of the garage, I could see only the four concrete walls of my twelve by twelve compartment.

  Prisoners on death row have better accommodations.

  On the other hand, there was plenty of parking, and the building wouldn't blow down in a hurricane.

  "I will live by no
code but my own," I recited to Cece.

  "Huh?"

  "Write it down. Type it up. That's my mantra from now on."

  "You will live by no code but your own?"

  "You got it."

  "What about the Florida statutes? The U.S. Constitution?"

  "Mere suggestions. I'm tired of selling out. Tired of playing by the other guys' rules. Guys like Krippendorf."

  "Okay, okay." She scribbled something on her notepad. Hopefully, it was a close facsimile to what I had dictated.

  "Next. My word is my bond."

  "Nice one," she agreed.

  "From anyone else, I want an affidavit. Write it down."

  Cece scribbled on her pad. "How 'bout a mantra about not hitting people?"

  I shook my head. "Gotta be a promise I can keep."

  "Anything else?"

  I thought a moment before speaking. It's not something I always do. "I will treat judges with respect and dignity..."

  "For a change," she said.

  "Unless they're fools or crooks," I added.

  Again, Cece took notes, then wrinkled her forehead. "What good is your code without customers?"

  "Clients, Cece. We call them clients."

  I didn't hear the knock on the door at first. One concussion too many may have affected my hearing. But Cece turned her head that way, and then I heard a pounding that competed with the sounds of tires squealing on the nearby up-ramp.

  "Come in!" I shouted.

  The door opened and a stocky man in his forties wearing a grey suit stepped in and looked around dubiously. "This a law office?"

  "Close the door," I told him. "Those car fumes are wicked."

  He did as he was told. "Are you Jake Lassiter?"

  "Yes, if you're a new client. No, if you're a process server."

  "George Grumley," he introduced himself. "The Florida Bar."

  Cece gave me an oh-shit look and left the office.

  Grumley walked toward my desk and handed me a business card. I read aloud: "Chief Investigator, Eleventh Circuit."

  For a moment, I wondered if I might have forgotten to pay my dues.

  "Your client James Farrell filed a complaint," chief investigator Grumley said. "Claims you attacked him, and he's got the medical bills to prove it."

  "He came at me with a baseball bat."

  "That so?"

  "I was defending myself. Under the stand-your-ground law, I could have shot him with a machine gun."

  "Not the way he tells it."

  "So he's a liar and a wife beater."

  "Wife beater? You're not disclosing an attorney-client communication, are you, Mr. Lassiter?"

  Damn.

  "Because frankly, I've seen your file, and for someone who's practiced as short a time as you have, you certainly have been flirting with disbarment."

  Disbarment.

  To a lawyer, it's a word with the emotional heft of say, cancer. Inoperable, terminal, stage four cancer.

  "Look, Mr. Grumley. I might have called Farrell a few names and insulted his manhood. But he was the aggressor."

  "Are you familiar with Bar Rule seven-D, Mr. Lassiter?"

  "Not really, but if it's only number seven, how important can it be?"

  "'Lawyers must comport themselves with...'" He shot a look toward the corner of the room where the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner posters sat on the floor, waiting to be hung. "Dignity."

  "Sounds like a slap-on-the-wrist offense. Can I plead nolo and get a sternly worded letter from Tallahassee?"

  "Assault and battery is a felony, and a felony is a disbarable offense."

  "'Disbarable?' Is that even a word?"

  "Your flippancy will be noted."

  "Now 'flippancy' is definitely a word. But a funny one. No way can you say 'flippancy' and not smile."

  Without warning, Grumley snatched a piece of paper from my desk. And the guy didn't even have a warrant. Reading aloud he said, "'I will live by no code but my own.'"

  "So?"

  "Did you write that?"

  "What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? You punish a man for his thoughts?"

  Grumley backed toward the door, still holding my sheet of notepaper. "Don't bother unpacking, Mr. Lassiter. I'm very good at my job, and I'm making it my business to pull your ticket."

  -4-

  The Goodbye Girl

  "You really piss me off," Kim Coates said.

  "I wasn't looking at that topless girl," I defended myself.

  "I don't care who you look at."

  "Lots of freckles...everywhere."

  "Forget the girl. I'm talking about you! Your career, or what's left of it."

  We were walking on the Tenth Street Beach, where young men and young women – okay, male and female models from the local agencies – were playing volleyball. Others sunbathed, some of the females without their tops.

  I hadn't seen Kim since I was either fired or quit, depending who was telling the story.

  "I can't believe you dissed Krippendorf in front of important new clients," Kim went on. "He can keep you from getting a job in this town."

  "Don't want a job. I'm flying solo. Or duo."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Why don't you quit Krippendorf? Come work with me."

  "Are you crazy? I'm on partnership track."

  "You want to be Krippendorf's partner? Snakes have warmer blood."

  "Jake, do you even know what it takes to be a successful lawyer?"

  "The morals of a pickpocket?"

  I heard Kim sigh as we passed a volleyball court where two female models were arguing whether a spiked ball was in or out. "Your eye lift make you blind?" one goaded the other.

  My plan was to jog north 30 blocks or so to the Fontainebleau Hotel, then turn around and head back. But Kim didn't seem to want to run. Or talk.

  Having picked some juries, I consider myself an authority on body language. At the very least, I know that a juror who coils up like a cobra when I'm asking questions is not likely to be my champion behind closed doors. Just now, Kim had folded her arms across her chest and was walking three yards in front of me. Maybe a fullback dive could close the distance, but a quarterback sneak surely would not.

  I decided to change the subject just a bit, maybe strike some common ground. I liked Kim. I wasn't entirely sure what I was getting from the relationship, but she was smart and sexy, and after a half pitcher of margaritas, she was known to shed her clothes like a snake molting.

  "You know what I hate about our profession?" I asked.

  "Success?"

  "Perception. How clients perceive us. There I was, meeting with Farrell, and he just assumed I'd go along with his lying under oath."

  "So?"

  "It's insulting!"

  "Wake up, Jake. If people didn't lie, cheat, and steal, they wouldn't need you. Jesus, sometimes you're so..."

  "Idealistic?"

  "Naive."

  We passed another beach volleyball game, one of the female models loudly threatening to sue another for aiming a spike at her surgically perfected nose.

  "When we first met," Kim said, "you seemed so together. So manly. I thought you were partnership material."

  "Not if I have to be judged by someone else's standards."

  "Then you sailed off course."

  "Sailed my course."

  "Standing up for that senile old medical examiner."

  "Doc Riggs isn't senile."

  "He forgot who he was working for and got fired for helping defense lawyers."

  "For telling the truth!"

  "He went off the reservation."

  "Why? Because he wouldn't fudge an autopsy for the state attorney? Jeez, the medical examiner is supposed to be neutral, not an arm of the state. They already have enough arms."

  "Like I said, Jake. Naive."

  We trundled through the sand, passing sunbathers spread-eagled on their beach towels, as motionless as if shot by snipers from passing cruise ships. The scent of coconut oil
was in the air. From a café across the street, I heard a band playing funky Afro-Caribbean music.

  "So, we're still okay, right?" I didn't like the lameness in my voice. Whatever happened to Big Bad Jake Lassiter, wooer of groupies in every city in the Eastern Conference, even Buffalo.

  Kim exhaled another sigh, turned away and said, "Good luck, Jake."

  "Good luck?"

  "With your practice. And your life."

  She walked away, kicking up sand in her wake.

  -5-

  A Midget Walks into a Bar

  "She dumped you?" Cece sounded bewildered. "That piranha in pantyhose dumped you?"

  "Shark," I said. "Kim has a bigger appetite than a piranha."

  We were in my garage-office, and my trusty secretary was doing her best to be supportive, not one of her strong suits.

  "Are you hurting, jefe? Because she's not worth it."

  "Thanks, Cece."

  "Not that you're such a bargain."

  "Thanks, again."

  "You know what you need? Work."

  "Great. But I don't have any clients."

  "Sure you do. They answered your ad in the Beach Gazette."

  "What ad?"

  Cece gave me her sly smile and handed me a giveaway tabloid newspaper. Right there on the open page was the silhouette of a man in a suit – me presumably – in a boxing stance. The caption said: "Trial lawyer Jake Lassiter. He'll fight for you."

  I didn't believe in lawyers advertising. My mug on the back of a bus or a billboard? No thanks.

  I shoved the newspaper to the side. "Aw, Jeez, Cece. That's even below my standards."

  "Don't worry about it. Your first customer, excuse me, client, will be here in five minutes."

  ***