Lassiter 06 - Fool Me Twice (26 page)

Another memory came back to me on the drive
past Woody Creek. In my first year as an assistant public defender,
I was handling domestic violence cases. One of my first clients was
a grinning yahoo who had tossed a frying pan filled with sizzling
bacon at the woman who lived with him. The grease left a ridge of
scar tissue from one eye diagonally across her nose to her upper
lip.

“
Bitch deserved it,” he
told me, a cigarette flapping out of the corner of his mouth. “If I
told her once, I told her a hundred times to have two six-packs in
the fridge, cold and ready. A man comes home from pouring tar on
roofs in August, a man is thirsty. She’s there making BLTs and she
says, ‘Sorry, honey, there’s only one can left, but you took the
car, and I couldn’t carry beer, what with the eggs and bread and
what all.’ So I chugged the can, smashed the empty on her forehead.
Bitch just smiled at me, so hell, I picked up the frying
pan.”

Then he grinned, looking for approval from
his state-appointed counsel. Just a couple of guys who understand
you have to smack them around once in a while, let them know who’s
boss.

I’m not real proud of what I did. He was
small and wiry and sun-browned from his outdoor work, with a
creased face and dumb, blank eyes. He was expecting to cop a plea,
maybe get probation, go out drinking with the boys, brag about
teaching the bitch a lesson. He wasn’t expecting his lawyer to be
crazed on the subject of men beating women.

“
I’d like you to put out
your cigarette,” I told him.

He looked around. “Don’t see no
ashtray.”

“
I want you to swallow it,”
I said, placidly.

He gave a nervous little smile, wondering if
I was joking. I let him wonder a moment, then came around my desk
and yanked him out of his chair by the scruff of his neck. The
cigarette fell from his mouth, but I caught it, remembering even
now the singe of hot ash in the palm of my hand. His eyes were wide
and fearful. I let go of his neck, and with one hand, pinched his
jawbone hard, forcing his mouth open. Then, I jammed the cigarette
in, hit him under the chin to close his mouth, and yanked back on
his neck to tilt his head toward the ceiling.

“
Swallow!” I yelled at him.
“Swallow, you worthless piece of slime.”

I watched his Adam’s apple work the butt
down his throat, then I let go of him.

The punk filed a complaint, and I was
suspended for a month without pay, forced to undergo psychiatric
testing, then counseling, then a program called Alternatives to
Violence, which, ironically, was intended for abusive husbands and
boyfriends. When I came back to work, I was reassigned to zoning
cases, where I defended a Santeria priest for sacrificing live
goats in neighborhoods usually reserved for drug deals.

It was years later in private practice that
I crossed paths with another of those cowardly cretins. This one
was a yellow-haired, blue-eyed devil in a padded-shoulder,
double-breasted suit, a guy Granny would say considered himself the
last Coke in the desert. He was a rich man’s son, driving a
Porsche, living in a high rise on the Intracoastal, sharing his
chrome and glass bachelor pad with a flight attendant who
eventually grew tired of his two-timing. When she moved out, the
blond boy’s ego was hurt, and he asked her to return his Christmas
presents. She thought he was joking—the presents were the crowns on
her front teeth—but he took them back anyway. With pliers.

“
Can we, like pay a fine,
and go home?” he asked, slouching in the cushioned client chair in
my office.

I couldn’t help it, but I kept looking at
his smile. “You have nice teeth.”

“
Huh?”

“
They all real?”

“
Yeah, sure. What of it?”
He self-consciously licked his lips and forced the smile
closed.

“
Does it bother you when I
look at your teeth?”

He shook his head and shot nervous glances
around the office. Except for a full-size cardboard cutout of Joe
Paterno, we were alone.

“
Nice teeth,” I
repeated.

I riffled some papers, finding the A-form
and the dentist’s report. “Two incisors, two canines, upper and
lower. Eight in all. That right?”

“
Huh?”

“
The crowns you
repossessed.”

“
Yeah, I guess. I dunno.
What difference does it make? I mean, how much is it going to
cost?”

“
Eight teeth,” I said, and
then I counted aloud from one to eight, trying to imagine the pain
and the terror he had caused. He watched me as if he had a lunatic
for a lawyer. He did.

“
Stand up, shithead!” I
ordered him.

“
What?” Confusion. The
beginning of fear.

“
A tooth for a
tooth.”

He bolted from the chair and started for the
door. I jumped up, danced around my desk, caught him by a shoulder
and spun him around. He screamed before I could slug him, and the
sound, a high-pitched girlish squeal, threw me off. I swung high,
glancing an overhand right off his nose, which nonetheless squirted
blood and closed his eyes. The next shot was on target. I came up
from below with a left that connected flush on his mouth, splitting
his upper lip and breaking off two incisors right at the gum line.
I felt a stinging in my hand and looked down to find the teeth
embedded in my knuckles. I still have tiny scars to prove it.

He was wailing, blood pouring from his nose
and gurgling from his mouth, and looking far worse than he was.

“
Six more to go,” I told
him, but by now, my office door had flown open, and crowding inside
were three of my partners, my secretary, a paralegal, and, mouth
agape, the general counsel of an insurance company we were trying
to woo. I decided to regain some sense of decorum, so I chose that
moment to extract the two teeth from my knuckles and toss them into
my wastebasket where they
ping-pinged
to the bottom.

“
My client,” I said to the
crowd, as if that somehow explained everything. Then I turned to
the insurance company lawyer, trying to salvage the moment. “You
ought to see what we do to the opposition.”

So it was not without some history that I
approached the ranch of K. C. Cimarron this cool summer night in
the high country.

***

Light spilled across the countryside from a
three-quarter moon. Cattle stood motionless in fenced fields, and
as we slowed for a curve, a deer bolted in front of our headlights,
prancing out of our way. We followed the dirt road as it wound
toward the Red Canyon Ranch. I parked the car outside the gate,
pulling off the road into some sagebrush, where we began walking
the mile or so to the barn. By daylight, the barn was a faded red.
At night, it was the black maroon of dried blood.

“
Kip, there’s a lesson
about life I need to give you now, I hope you’ll remember as you
get older.”

“
Oh brother.”

“
Listen up. You never
strike a girl. Never. You never touch—

“
I know, Uncle Jake. Granny
told me all that.”

“
Already?”

“
Yeah, plus, I shouldn’t
cheat or steal or say nasty stuff.”

“
You got the whole course.
Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. I want you to videotape Jo
Jo.”

“
For my movie?”

“
No, for evidence. I’ll
interview her on tape. I want visible proof of her injuries. It’ll
help prosecute Cimarron and might help in my defense if he claims I
assaulted him.”

“
Are you going to pick a
fight?”

“
I’m going to tear him into
little pieces.”

“
Uncle Jake.”

“
Yeah?”

“
He’s too big. He’s the
only man I know who’s bigger and stronger than you, and in the mean
department, he’s got it all

over you.”

“
Don’t underestimate your
uncle when he’s all angered up,” I told him.

***

The barn door was open, and inside, in the
darkness, I could make out the shadows of horses in their stalls, a
saddle sitting astride a railing, bales of hay silhouetted against
a corncrib by the moonlight streaming in a window. Kip reached for
my hand and stayed close. I was aware of the sound of my breathing,
of the rumbling exhalation of one of the horses, the caw of a
nighttime bird in the distance.

“
Nobody’s here, Uncle
Jake,” Kip whispered. “Shhh.”

A few more steps. Then, “Jake. Is that
you?”

It was her voice, coming from above.

“
In the loft. Up here.” She
flicked on one of those lanterns that runs off a nine-volt battery
but is made to look like an old kerosene lamp.

I scrambled up the ladder to the loft, Kip
right behind me. Jo Jo was huddled in a corner, wrapped in a
blanket. Her face was smudged with tear-streaked dirt. Her eyes
were puffy. The beginning of a bruise was apparent on one cheek,
and an angry red scratch was visible on her neck.

I crouched down next to her and reached out,
but she dug herself deeper into the corner like a frightened
animal. When I gently touched her cheek, she trembled.

“
Jo Jo. I’m here for
you.”

“
Oh, Jake, you shouldn’t
have come. And the boy, what’s—”

Kip was already shooting, using the hand
focus ring, rather than the automatic. “Light’s a little low,” he
said, “but this lens has tremendous sensitivity. Plus, the mike is
incredible. This baby can pick up a rat farting at fifty
yards.”

“
No, Jake, please. I’m so
ashamed. The boy shouldn’t be here.”

“
Uncle Jake, please, you’re
cutting off the angle.” The temperamental director was pouting. “I
want to zoom from medium close up to extreme close up.”

“
Jake, no! Haven’t you done
enough to me already?”

Now what did that mean? I was trying to help
her. She seemed on the edge of hysteria. I turned to my nephew.
“Okay, Kip. Cut! I’ve got enough.”

He shrugged and clicked off the camera.

“
Now, head back down the
ladder and wait until I come get you.”

He frowned but took off.

Jo Jo huddled under the blanket, and when I
reached for her hand, she let go. The blanket fell away, revealing
bare shoulders and breasts.

“
He threw my clothes in one
of the filthy stalls and told me that sluts sleep with the horses.
He was so hateful, so ugly. Oh, Jake, I’ve made such a terrible
mistake coming back here. I knew from before what he was like. It’s
almost like he has a split personality. He can be so good, so kind
and caring, and then, if something goes wrong with a claim or the
leases, he becomes ...I don’t know…irrational, unhinged,
violent.”

“
I’ll take care of him, but
first I want to make sure you’re all right.”

I moved close to Jo Jo, and she wrapped her
arms around me, the blanket slipping farther away, her breasts
pressing against me.

“
Oh, Jake. I must smell
like a horse.”

“
Hush. You’re as beautiful
and sweet and precious as the day we met.”

“
Mi
á
ngel
. So
long ago. I’ve changed so much.”

“
No you haven’t. Maybe
you’re not as sure about everything as you were then, but that’s
natural. The young know it all.”

She was crying again. “I was always too hard
on you. I shouldn’t have tried to change you, but I could never
accept things the way they were. It was the same with Luis.”

I pressed my face against hers, and her arms
tightened around my neck. I kissed her, softly, and her lips
yielded, and for a moment it seemed her breathing had stopped, but
then she sighed, a long vast release of tension, and her body
molded itself to mine.

I reached out and clicked off the lamp.
Shafts of moonlight filtered into the loft through cracks in the
plank walls of the loft, dust motes rising in the creamy glow.
Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked, and the chilly nighttime
breeze made the old barn groan and shudder.

And
crack
.

The sound startled me. Like the rung of a
wooden ladder splintering under a heavy foot.

I sat up, and Jo Jo gasped, clutching at the
blanket. Another sound, maybe the shuffling of feet. In the
darkness, I couldn’t pin down the direction. I rolled to one side,
grabbing the lamp, and came up in a crouch, keeping my back to the
wall. I flicked on the lamp, blinked and looked around.

Nothing but shadows.

And a voice. “That’s better. Natural light
just wasn’t doing it.”

I looked up. In the rafters above the loft,
Kip was aiming his video camera at the two of us.

“
Out of here, Kip!
Now!”

“
Okay, okay, I don’t want
to lose my PG-13 rating, anyway.

He scrambled down from the rafter and
climbed back down the ladder. I turned out the light again.

“
Just hold me, Jake,” Jo Jo
said.

I did, and a thousand memories flooded my
mind. I thought again of the day so long ago in her mother’s
backyard. I thought of the good times, and the bad, and no times at
all. I thought of Blinky and what he had gotten me into, and what
was it Jo Jo was keeping from me, and was this the time to ask?

We lay there on our sides, her bare body
warm even in the chill of the unheated barn. She coiled her legs
around mine and buried her head against my chest. I could hear her
heart beating.