Free Lassiter 01 - To Speak for the Dead by Paul Levine Page B

courtroom as inconspicuous as a shark in the wading pool. She wore a white miniskirt, black fishnet stockings, leather earrings with chrome studs, all topped by a new hairdo that was spiked, punked, and Day-Glo pinked. Her hair shot in various directions like hundreds of porcupine quills. It looked like she stuck her finger in an electrical outlet.
    ''Que pasa, el jefe?"
    "Do I know you?" I said.
    "Not as well as some men I could name."
    "Not enough time for that."
    "You don't look so busy to me."
    "We're waiting for the judge. At least I'm waiting for the judge. The grieving widow is waiting for Probate Court to release the estate funds. And Cefalo's waiting for Wallbanger Watkins, his rebuttal witness."
    "He's got a long wait," Cindy said.
    "Huh?" That's my probing question technique.
    Cindy sat down and propped her feet on the counsel table. "Got a long wait for the good doctor," she said matter-of-factly.
    "What do you know that I don't, but should?"
    "So many things. But I'm willing to teach."
    "Cindy, this is serious. We're in trial."
    She frowned. "Lighten up. I just have a sneaking suspicion that Watkins is AWOL, and Dan Cefalo is so shit out of luck he oughta buy a new suit."
    "You didn't kidnap him, did you?" With Cindy you never could tell. Once in a sex discrimination case, a department store executive denied that he ever hit on my client, his young female assistant. Said he'd never been unfaithful to his wife, never even made a pass at another woman. Cindy tracked the guy to his favorite watering hole, ran an inviting toe inside his pantleg, and took him home. Luis (Long Lens) Morales, a convicted counterfeiter and part-time divorce photographer, leapt from her closet in time to shoot some grainy black-and-whites of the executive slipping out of his boxers.
    "Kidnap him?" she asked, feigning indignation and arching her eyebrows, striped brown and orange like a Bengal
    tiger. "Do you think that's the only way I could get a man to buy me a drink?"
    "You bagged Watkins in some bar?"
    "How crude," she protested. "Last night, by utter coincidence, me and Margarita—the girl, not the drink—cruise into the lounge at the Sonesta Beach. And who do we run into but this nice older man with white hair and a silly seersucker suit. He's drinking vodka gimlets but leaving out the lime juice and telling us what a great doctor he is, and Margarita says she's got this back problem, and he says, come up to the room and he'll do a quick exam, so off we go, and meanwhile Harv orders three bottles of Finlandia from room service."
    "Harv?"
    "That's what he asked us to call him."
    "Not very professional," I said.
    "Neither was his treatment of Margarita. Unless all orthopods do pelvic exams. Not that Margarita cared. I'm not saying she's dumb, but she thinks the Silicon Valley is the space between her tits."
    I closed my eyes and massaged my forehead. "Cindy, I can't wait to get a summons from the Florida Bar. It's just like stashing a witness."
    "What? To have a drink with a nice man?"
    We were interrupted by the banging of the courtroom door. In lurched Dr. Harvey Watkins, collar turned up on a seersucker suitcoat that looked like it had just cleaned all the windshields in the Baja road race. His tie was at half mast, his shirt unbuttoned nearly to the waist. He leaned back against the door as if the courthouse were plowing through rough seas. His hair was plastered against his scalp.
    Bluish veins popped through his pink skin. Dan Cefalo was a step behind, trying to steady his witness. Watkins angrily shook the hand off his elbow. As bad as the doctor looked, he was doing better than Cefalo, who had turned an unhealthy gray.
    At that moment the bailiff burst through the rear door, shouting, "All rise! Court of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit in and for Dade County Florida is now in session!" Everyone in the courtroom obeyed, except Dr. Harvey Watkins, who sagged heavily into one of the church pews, his legs jammed at odd angles into