Three To Get Deadly Read online

  THREE TO GET DEADLY

  To Speak For The Dead

  Paul Levine

  Motion To Kill

  Joel Goldman

  The Walk

  Lee Goldberg

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  To Speak For The Dead

  Paul Levine

  Defending a surgeon in a malpractice case, linebacker-turned-lawyer Jake Lassiter suspects his client is innocent of negligence...but guilty of murder. Add a sexy widow, a deadly drug, and a grave robbery to the stew, and you have the recipe for Miami's trial of the century. Check it all out in To Speak for the Dead, the sizzling legal thriller by Paul Levine.

  Motion To Kill

  Joel Goldman

  When two of his partners are killed, corruption, sex and murder fill trial lawyer Lou Mason’s docket as he tracks the killer. Will Lou be the next victim? Find out in Motion To Kill, the action-packed, can’t-put-it-down first book in Joel Goldman's Lou Mason thriller series.

  The Walk

  Lee Goldberg

  A massive earthquake devastates L.A. One ordinary man sets across the landscape of destruction to his home in the San Fernando Valley. It's a journey that will test the limits of his endurance and his humanity, a trek from the man he was to the man he can be... if he can survive The Walk, an epic adventure from Lee Goldberg.

  TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD

  PAUL LEVINE

  A Jake Lassiter Novel

  (Second Edition, January 2012)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For inspiration, I acknowledge the hellish paradise of Miami, a tropical Casablanca of sultry days and pastel sunsets, where buzzards endlessly circle the courthouse, some on wings and some in Porsches.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE: TABLE DANCER

  1: THE RONGEUR

  2: THE GOOD GUYS

  3: THE WIDOW

  4: THE SPORTSWRITER

  5: THE CORONER

  6: THE VOYEUR

  7: SQUOOSHY

  8: THE LATE SHOW

  9: PROXIMATE CAUSE

  10: WE HAVE, YOUR HONOR

  11: THE WASP AND THE CATERPILLAR

  12: KNIGHT ERRANT

  13: GRAVEYARD SHIFT

  14: DEAD MEN DON'T BLEED

  15: THE CONCH BRIGADE

  16: OH NO, SOCOLOW

  17: TELLING LIES

  18: CIRCUS MAXIMUS

  19: THE NURSE

  20: THE CONTRACT

  21: SHARK VALLEY

  22: FOR WANT OF A NAIL

  23: VOIR DIRE

  24: VENOM

  25: THE ROAD MAP

  26: THE TEST

  27: IKKEN HISSATSU

  28: THE KARATE KING

  29: TWO OUT OF THREE

  30: GREAT HANDS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Prologue

  TABLE DANCER

  He would remember the sounds—the wailing sirens, the moans of the injured—and the smells, a smoky ashen stench that clung to hair and clothing. Late the first night, he slipped into the parking lot for some air, and he tasted the sky as the smoke rose above Miami's inner core. He heard the city scream, the popping of wood and plastic aflame, short bursts of gunfire followed by silence, then the crackle of police radios. Later he would remember slipping in a puddle of blood on the tile floor of the Emergency Room.

  He would not leave the hospital for seventy-two hours, and by then, he had treated more gunshot wounds than most doctors see in a lifetime. African-Americans against cops, Hispanics against African-Americans, whites running home to check their ammo supplies. Savage violence in a ghetto hopelessly misnamed Liberty City. By the time the shooting stopped and the fires were out, an eerie silence hung over the area, an inner-city battle zone where neither side surrendered, but each put away its weapons and withdrew.

  * * *

  "That's a real poster ass, huh?"

  Roger Stanton shot a sideways glance at the man next to him. A working guy, heavy boots and a plaid shirt open at the neck. Thick hands, one on a pack of cigarettes, the other on his drink, elbows resting on the scarred bar. "Like to frame that ass, hang it in the den next to Dan Marino."

  "Uh-huh," Stanton mumbled. He didn't come here to talk, didn't know why he came. Maybe to lose himself in a place crammed with people and noise, to be alone amid clinking glasses, laughter, and the creaminess of women's bodies. He strained his neck to see the curve of her butt above him on the stage.

  "Not that one," the man said, tapping the bar with a solid index finger. "Over there at the stairs, the on-deck circle. A real poster ass. Never saw a skinny girl with an ass like that. Eat my lunch offa that."

  She wore a black G-string, a red bikini top, and red high-heeled shoes. If not for the outfit and the setting, she could have been a cheerleader with a mom, dad, and grandmom in Kansas. Good bone structure, fair complexion with freckles across a button nose, short wavy reddish-brown hair, wholesome as a wheat field. The face belonged in a high school yearbook; the body launched a thousand fantasies. Her thin waist accentuated a round bottom that arched skyward out of both sides of the tiny G-string. Her breasts were round and full. She was warming up, fastening a prefab smile into place, taking a few practice swings, tapping a sequined shoe in time to Lady Gaga, who was turned up way too high:

  The working guy was looking at Stanton now, probably sizing him up. Looking at a blow-dry haircut that was a little too precise for a place like this. Clean shaven, skin still glistening like he'd just spanked his face with Aqua Velva at two A.M., as if the girls in a beat-your-meat joint really care. The hair was starting to show some early gray, the features pleasant, if not matinee idol stuff.

  Stanton knew the guy was looking at him, now at his hands, just as he had done. Funny how hands can tell you so much. Proud of his hands. Broad and strong. They could have swung a pick, except there were no calluses. He had washed off the blood, scrubbing as hard after surgery as he had before the endless night began. Seventy-two hours with only catnaps and stale sandwiches until the hospital cafeteria ran out. But he stood there the whole time, one of the leaders, the chief orthopedics resident, setting broken bones, picking glass and bullet fragments out of wounds, calming hysterical relatives.

  After showering at the hospital, he had tossed the soiled lab coat into the trash and grabbed a blue blazer from his locker. Now he was nursing a beer and trying to forget the carnage. He could have gone home. Twenty-seventh Avenue was finally open after the three-day blockade. But too tired to sleep, he wound through unfamiliar streets and was finally lured out of the night by the neon sign of the Tangiers on West Dixie. He would think about it later, many times, why he stopped that night, what drew him to such a strange and threatening place. Pickup trucks and old Chevys jammed the parking lot. Music blared from outdoor loudspeakers, a rhythmic, pulsating beat intended to tempt men inside just as the singing of the Sirens drew Greek sailors onto the rocks. It might have been the flashing sign. The throbbing colors got right to the point –––– NUDE GIRLS 24 HOURS … NUDE GIRLS 24 HOURS –––– blinking on, blinking off, proof of bare flesh moment after moment after moment.

  The working guy was talking to him: "I say let 'em burn colored town down to the ground if they want to, no skin offa my nose. I mean, the cops was wrong, killing one of the coloreds, had his hands cuffed behind his back, no need for that. But some of 'em just looking for excuses to behave like animals. They burned a poor Cuban alive in his car, heard it on the radio."

  "We tried to save him," Stanton said quietly.

  The guy gave him a look. "Sure! You're a doctor. Should have known. Jesus, you musta seen it all. Wait a minute, Sweet Jesus, here comes Miss Poster Ass. She's
worth a twenty-dollar dance, or I'm the Prince of Wales."

  Roger Stanton watched her walk toward them, an inviting smile aimed his way. The other men around the small stage hooted and slapped their thighs. Roger Stanton lowered his eyes and studied his drink.

  "Your first time?" the man asked. Silence. "Yeah, your first time. Loosen up. Here's the poop. First the girls dance out here on the bar stage. No big deal, they take it all off, you stick a dollar bill in their garter and maybe one'll kiss you. In the back, where it's darker, you got your table dances, twenty bucks. That's one-on-one and I may buy me an up-close-and-personal visit with Miss Poster Ass. Haven't been able to get here all week what with the jungle bunnies staging their block parties."

  On stage now, grinding to the music, no longer the Kansas cheerleader. Ev-ry-bod-y's talk-in' 'bout the new sound. Funny, but it's still rock and roll to me. In a few moments, the bikini top was off, firm breasts bounding free. The G-string came next, and then she arched her back, bent over, and propped her hands on her knees looking away from the men. The poster ass wiggled clockwise as if on coasters, then stopped and wiggled counterclockwise. Stanton stared as if hypnotized. The ass quivered once, fluttered twice with contractions that Roger Stanton felt deep in his own loins, then stopped six inches from his face. His fatigue gone, the swirl of blood and bodies a dreamy fog, Roger Stanton fantasized that the perfect ass wiggled only for him. He didn't see the other men, some laughing, some bantering, others conjuring up their own steamy visions. None of the others, though, seemed spellbound by an act as old as the species.

  The dance done, the girl smiled at Roger Stanton, an open interested smile, he thought. And though she smiled at each man, again he thought it was only for him. She sashayed from one end of the small stage to the other, collecting dollar bills in a black garter while propping a red, high-heeled shoe on the rim between the stage and the bar. Other than the gaiter and the shoes, she was naked, but her face showed neither shame nor seduction. She could have been passing the collection plate at the First Lutheran Church of Topeka. Roger Stanton slipped a five-dollar bill into her garter, removing it from his wallet with two fingers, never taking his eyes off the girl. A neat trick, but he could also tie knots in thread with a thumb and one finger inside a matchbox. Great hands. The strong, steady hands of a surgeon.

  Her smile widened as she leaned close to him, her voice a moist whisper on his ear. "I'd like to dance for you. Just you." And he believed it.

  Roger Stanton believed everything she said that night. That she was a model down on her luck, that her name was Autumn Rain, that all she wanted was a good man and a family. They talked in the smoky shadows of a corner table and she danced for him alone. Thirty dollars and another twenty as a tip. He didn't lay a hand on her. At nearby tables men grasped tumbling breasts, and the girls stepped gingerly from their perches in four-inch spikes to sit on customers' laps, writhing on top of them, grinding down with bare asses onto the fully clothed groins of middle-aged men.

  "Didja come?" the heavy girl at the next table whispered to her customer, already reaching for a tip.

  "I've never seen anything like this," Roger Stanton said, shaking his head. "It's half prostitution and half masturbation." He gestured toward the overweight girl who was gathering her meager outfit and sneaking a peek at the president's face on the bill she had glommed from a guy in faded jeans.

  "You don't do that, do you?" Stanton asked.

  She smiled. Of course not, the look said.

  He asked her out.

  Against the rules, she said. Some guys, they think if you're an exotic dancer, it means for fifty bucks you give head or whatever.

  But I'm different, Roger Stanton said.

  ***

  She cocked her head to one side and studied him. They all thought they were different, but she knew there were only two kinds of men, jerks and jerk-offs. Oh, some made more money and didn't get their fingernails dirty. She'd seen them, white shirts and yellow ties, slumming it, yukking it up. But either way, grease monkeys or stockbrokers, once those gates opened and the blood rushed in, turning their worms into stick shifts, they were either jerks or jerk-offs. The jerk-offs were mostly young, wise guys spending all their bread on wheels and women, figuring everything in a skirt—or G-string—was a pushover. Jerks were saps, always falling in love and wanting to change you, make an honest woman out of you. Okay, put me in chains, if the price is right. This guy, jerk all the way.

  I'm a doctor, he said.

  Oh, she said, sounding impressed.

  He told her how he had patched and mended those caught in the city's crossfire, how he wanted to help people and be a great doctor. She listened with wide eyes and nodded as if she knew what he felt deep inside and she smiled with practiced sincerity. A doctor, she figured, made lots of money, not realizing that a resident took home far less than an exotic dancer and got his hands just as dirty.

  She looked directly into Roger Stanton's eyes and softened her own. He looked into her eyes and thought he saw warmth and beauty of spirit.

  Roger Stanton, it turned out, was better at reading X rays than the looks in women's eyes.

  EIGHT YEARS LATER

  1

  THE RONGEUR

  When the witness hesitated, I drummed my pen impatiently against my legal pad. Made a show of it. Not that I was in a hurry. I had all day, all week. The Doctors' Medical Insurance Trust pays by the hour and not minimum wage. Take your sweet time. The drum roll was only for effect, to remind the jury that the witness didn't seem too sure of himself. And to make him squirm a bit, to rattle him.

  First the pen clop-clop-clopping against the legal pad. Then the slow, purposeful walk toward the witness stand, let him feel me there as he fans through his papers looking for a lost report. Then the stare, the high-voltage Jake Lassiter laser beam stare. Melt him down.

  I unbuttoned my dark suitcoat and hooked a thumb into my belt. Then I stood there, 220 pounds of ex-football player, ex-public defender, ex-a-lot-of-things, leaning against the faded walnut rail of the witness stand, home to a million sweaty palms.

  Only forty seconds since the question was asked, but I wanted it to seem like hours. Make the jury soak up the silence. The only sounds were the whine of the air conditioning and the paper shuffling of the witness. Young lawyers sometimes make the mistake of filling that black hole, of clarifying the question or rephrasing it, inadvertently breathing life into the dead air that hangs like a shroud over a hostile witness. What folly. The witness is zipped up because he's worried. He's thinking, not about his answer, but of the reason for the question, trying to outthink you, trying to anticipate the next question. Let him stew in his own juice.

  Another twenty seconds of silence. One juror yawned. Another sighed.

  Judge Raymond Leonard looked up from the Daily Racing Form, a startled expression as if he just discovered he was lost. I nodded silently, assuring him there was no objection awaiting the wisdom that got him through night classes at Stetson Law School. The judge was a large man in his fifties, bald and moon-faced and partial to maroon robes instead of traditional black. History would never link him with Justices Marshall or Cardozo, but he was honest and let lawyers try their cases with little interference from the bench.

  Earlier, at a sidebar conference, the judge suggested we recess at two-thirty each day. He could study the written motions in the afternoon, he said with a straight face, practically dusting off his binoculars for the last three races at Calder. A note on the bench said, "Hot Enough, Rivera up, 5-1, ninth race." In truth, the judge excelled at handicapping but stank at recognizing hearsay.

  Another thirty seconds. Then a cleared throat, the sound of a train rumbling through a tunnel, and the white-haired witness spoke. "That depends," Dr. Harvey Watkins said with a gravity usually reserved for State of the Union messages.

  The jurors turned toward me, expectant looks. I widened my eyes, all but shouting, "Bullshit." Then I worked up a small spider-to-the-fly smile and tried t
o figure out what the hell to ask next. What I wanted to say was, Three hundred bucks an hour, and the best you can do is "that depends." One man is dead, my client is charged with malpractice, and you're giving us the old softshoe, "that depends."

  What I said was, "Let's try it this way." An exasperated tone, like a teacher trying to explain algebra to a chimpanzee. "When a surgeon is performing a laminectomy on the L3-L4 vertebrae, can he see what he's doing with the rongeur, or does he go by feel?"

  "As I said before, that depends," Dr. Watkins said with excessive dignity. Like most hired guns, he could make a belch sound like a sonnet. White hair swept back, late sixties, retired chief of orthopedics at Orlando Presbyterian, he had been a good bone carpenter in his own right until he lost his nerves to an ice-filled river of Grey Goose. Lately he talked for pay on the traveling malpractice circuit. Consultants, they call themselves. Whores, other doctors peg them. When I defended criminal cases, I thought my clients could win any lying contest at the county fair. Now I figure doctors run a dead heat with forgers and confidence men.

  No use fighting it. Just suck it up and ask, "Depends on what?" Waiting for the worst now, asking an open-ended question on cross-examination.

  "Depends on what point you're talking about. Before you enter the disc space, you can see quite clearly. Then, once you lower the rongeur into it to remove the nucleus pulposus, the view changes. The disc space is very small, so of course, the rongeur is blocking your view."