“So, why’d Carl pick on you?” I asked.
“I hit him first.”
“No way.”
“Carl said my mom’s a whore and I’m a bastard.”
Oh.
Genealogy-wise, Carl was spot-on. My half sister, Janet, was the unintended byproduct of a match made in hell, my alcoholic mother and Chester Conklin, a roughneck from Oklahoma. Just as Conklin and the Widow Lassiter never married, neither did Janet and her beau, whoever he was. Janet could only guess which unemployed, shiftless loser had fathered Kip.
Every six months or so, Janet drifted into town to see her son, dropping off presents and apologies. Then it was back on the road with some petty thief or drug-dealing boyfriend. Then a spell of rehab paid by me. The Lassiter family tree is not exactly the House of Windsor. Closer to the House of Pancakes.
“I told the boy you’d teach him to fight,” Granny said. “He’s gotta defend the family name.”
What name? I wondered. “Trailer Trash”? But what I said was, “Granny, you don’t understand these fancy private schools.”
“You’d fight back, Jake. Hell, you did.”
“When?” Kip asked.
“Never mind, kiddo.”
I’m not proud of the story, and Kip wasn’t yet ready to hear even a sanitized version. I was sixteen, working part-time mopping up puke at a roadside bar in the Keys. A couple biker punks got drunk and razzed me. Time and again.
“Ain’t you the Lassiter kid? I fucked your momma in the parking lot.”
“Shit, Billy,” the other one said. “Who didn’t?”
Wiry and mean, filthy jeans, dusty boots, and greasy hair. Born stupid, reared stupid, and they’d doubtless die stupid.
“Your mom takes it up the ass, kid.”
“Only when she’s drunk, Billy.”
I barreled into the first one, bounced him off the wall, shattering the neon Budweiser sign. Clinched him and broke his nose with a head butt. Same move I’d use years later the night I wore a wire for Alex Castiel.
The punk’s friend snapped a pool cue across his knee and whipped it across my temple. I staggered sideways and when he swung again, I stepped inside the arc and splintered his jaw with a straight right. I could have left it there, but I didn’t. When he fell to the floor, I stomped him. Kicked him in the head, the gut, the balls.
Stomped him, not because I loved my mother, but because I hated her. Stomped him for all the pain of my childhood, for losing my father to a blade, not ten feet from where I stood, kicking the piss out of the biker.
The two punks landed in the hospital, and I did three months in juvie detention. Granny framed a copy of the judge’s order, as if it were an Ivy League diploma.
“Jacob Lassiter is hereby adjudged delinquent.…”
I didn’t want Kip to follow in my footsteps. But deja-fucking-vu, those dang Lassiter genes.
“We’ll work the heavy bag tomorrow,” I told Kip. “Teach you to jab, a couple combinations, maybe some kick-boxing, too.”
“I can’t fight Carl. He’s too big.”
“No one’s too big.”
“Maybe not for you, Uncle Jake.”
“For all of us. No one’s too big and no one’s too strong.”
“Carl will kill me!”
“Listen up, Kip. I’m gonna teach you to hit Carl in the gut so hard, his eyes will pop out of his head, he’ll shit his pants, and he’ll vomit all over his shoes.”
“That’s my boy,” Granny said.
16 Naked Came the Night
Kip was asleep in his bedroom and Granny was snoring in the rocking chair on the back porch when the phone rang. Cindy. The red Escalade, license plate U R NXT, was registered to a Miguel Sanchez of Homestead.
“Never heard of him, Cindy.”
“Doubt he was driving, anyway.”
“Why?”
“He’s at FCI, awaiting trial on cocaine charges.”
That solved nothing. Who the hell was driving the con’s car, and what did they want with me? I was thinking a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks might help answer the question when there was a knock at the door. A knock so dainty I barely heard it over the whompeta of the ceiling fan.
It took three tugs to yank the door open. Standing on the front step was a six-foot-tall caramel-skinned young woman in a stretchy mini-skirt and high heeled, strappy sandals sloped like a ski jump. Her breasts, round as cantaloupes, threatened to tumble out of her fluorescent orange tube top. A bare tummy, tanned and taut. Hair bleached white-hot platinum. She gave me a small, knowing smile, as sinful as the devil’s laugh.
“Jake Lassiter?” she asked.
I said “Yes” on the assumption that she was neither a process server nor a Jehovah’s Witness.
“I’m Angel Roxx. Rhymes with ‘cocks’ but spelled with two ‘x’s.”
“Yeah?”
“Would you like a blow job?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“I work for Charlie Ziegler.”
“Let me guess. Spiritual adviser?”
“P.R. consultant. And I act.” She cocked a hip. You could have put a saddle on it. “Did you ever see A Tale of Two Titties. Or Lawrence of a Labia?”
“Not unless they were on ESPN. Why don’t you come inside? Fewer mosquitoes.”
She sashayed inside, dropping her bag on the wine barrel filled with umbrellas, fly rods, and a tarpon gaff. Csonka waddled over, jammed his nose under her mini-skirt and sniffed. She didn’t flinch.
Angel’s eyes danced around the living room, which looked like a garage sale at a fraternity house. My coffee table, a sailboard propped on empty milk cartons, seemed to amuse her. Or maybe it was my tree stump end table topped by a lamp in the shape of a vintage Miami Dolphins helmet.
She made an exaggerated motion of fanning herself. “What’s with this heat? A/C broken?”
“I’m saving the earth, all by my lonesome.”
“So what’s Charlie want with someone like you?”
“You tell me.”
“All he told me was to make sure you were in his office at nine A.M.”
“After blowing me tonight?”
“He didn’t get specific. Just said to prep you.”
“Great idea. Lately, I’ve been prepping myself.”
“You’re kinda cute in a beat-up sort of way. You look a little like Studley Do-Right.”
“Studley …?”
“Duh. Major porn star, like a thousand years ago.” She settled herself onto my old, lumpy sofa. Made of Haitian cotton, it had looked fine until one of my teammates dropped a lit joint between the cushions, starting a small but sweet-smelling fire.
“I hope you’re not on steroids. I hate when guys have shriveled balls.”
I put the pieces together. Earlier today, Alex Castiel had refused to investigate Ziegler and warned me to back off. Ziegler could be bad for my career, though Castiel failed to mention the guy could be good for my sex life. Either way, the State Attorney had called Ziegler and told him about me.
“Help me out here, Angel. If Ziegler wants to see me …”
“Why not just call you?”
“Yeah.”
“Charlie’s gotta be different. Gotta do things big. The grand gesture, he calls it.”
“I still don’t get it.”
She pursed her lips, which seemed to gorge cute little lines in her forehead. Deep thinking mode. “Charlie needs to impress people. And to be liked. So, when you see me at your door, you’re supposed to think, A present for me? What a guy!”
Actually, I was thinking, Charlie Ziegler, what a jerk, but I followed the logic.
“Anyway, that’s the sweet Charlie,” she continued. “The good Charlie.”
“But there’s another one?”
“You kidding? Lots more. Mean Charlie. Potty-mouth Charlie. Smack-you-around Charlie. You ought to see him when his face turns all red. Jeez!”