Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones by Levine, Paul (best fiction books to read TXT) 📗

dusk and still rush hour, a steamy heat rising from the pavement. Plumes of carbon monoxide mixed with the tang of smoking ribs as traffic clogged the north-south road, horns bleating.

I offered to buy Roberto a pork sandwich or a slab of ribs, but he declined, shooting nervous glances from side to side and whispering anxiously, "I can't get busted, Jake. You gotta know that. You, of all people, gotta know that."

"I need you, Roberto. You have to trust me. I did get you out on bond."

"Yeah, well, if I'm busted—"

"I know. I know. I'll handle the case for free."

"Hell with that! I'll flip on you. You're gonna need your own lawyer."

At the next table, a truck driver with tattooed forearms shot us a look. I slathered my ribs platter with barbecue sauce—heavy on the vinegar with a touch of cayenne—slopping some onto the fries.

I decided to play the guilt card. "They always talk about a lawyer's loyalty to a client. What about the other way around?"

''Chíngate!'' Roberto Condom said.

"I guess playing the guilt card only works with someone who has the capacity to feel guilty."

"Fuck you," he told me, in case I hadn't gotten it the first time.

I was wearing an old Oakland Raiders jersey, one of the black ones, turned inside out so the silver numbers wouldn't glow in the moonlight. It belonged to a left-handed quarterback who had left it behind at my house following a Super Bowl to which neither of us had been invited. My recollection is hazy, but I seem to recall the QB leaving the party with a blonde who had started the evening as my date, leaving me with his jersey and several empty tequila bottles. And you wonder why I hate quarterbacks.

Roberto Condom was wearing an army camouflage outfit, his pant legs neatly bloused into paratrooper boots, his face greased with eye black. A bit overdone, I thought, but with his Latino good looks, he could have been a recruiting poster for the Panamanian Defense Force.

We were crawling on our bellies through a muddy field fragrant with the scent of ripe mangoes. I had left the Olds at the ribs joint, and Roberto had driven us to the edge of the Bernhardt farm in a Ford Taurus with Manatee County plates.

"You rented a car?" I had asked him.

"No, I borrowed it."

"What?"

"I'm a valet parker at Flanigan's Quarterdeck Saloon, so I just—"

"Flanigan's doesn't have valet parking," I said.

"How many tourists you think know that? I stand there at the front door, a guy gets out of his car, I rush over and take his keys."

"Doesn't he want a receipt?"

"I give him a used trifecta ticket from jai alai, he gives me his new Taurus."

A three-quarter moon was rising in the east, darting in and out of a thin layer of scudding clouds. We continued moving along in what the marines call the high crawl, weight on the forearms and legs, knees behind the butt to keep close to the ground without belly slithering. A swarm of tiny gnats the locals call no-see-ums buzzed around my ears and invaded my nostrils. The night was moist with the fecund bouquet of growing things. We crept past a fragrant bush of white ginger, what Granny calls the butterfly lily. I remember its scent on a lei worn by Lila Summers in Maui. Not far away was a wild blooming jasmine, the fragrance heavy and overpowering.

"Cristo! Smells like a funeral parlor out here," Roberto muttered.

The earth itself gave up the fertile aroma of freshly plowed soil, and the night was alive with the sound of feeding birds and singing crickets.

Suddenly, I caught the scent of a woman.

Or of perfume.

Eerily like Chanel No. 5.

"Do you smell that?" I asked Roberto.

"Ilang-ilang trees. They're planted along the irrigation ditch, so we must be getting close."

"Intoxicating. I've never smelled a tree like that."

"Jake, you gotta learn to appreciate nature more."

"Like you, the thief of palms?"

"Among other things," he admitted.

To the west, heat lightning reflected off clouds billowing over the Everglades. The only other illumination came from sodium-vapor lights on poles spaced every fifty yards or so. Along with the cawing of the night birds, there was the crickety noise of insects and the incessant whine of a rodent named Roberto Condom.

"Jeez, Jake, I'm telling you, if I see any of those chichi cabrón guards with shotguns, I'm gonna shit my pants."

"C'mon, Roberto. We're almost there."

Suddenly, a whirring as one of the giant irrigation towers' guns came on, spraying us with a mist from a hundred yards away. "Shit, now I'm gonna catch pneumonia," Roberto complained.

As we headed toward the house, Roberto kept up his patter. "If you get disbarred for this, Jake, where does it leave me?"

"Stop worrying."

"If you go down, I don't want some ca-ca lawyer representing me," Roberto said.

"Not politically correct, Roberto, making fun of the Cuban-American court-appointeds."

"Yeah, well, I don't want an abogado just off the boat from Mariel. I want you, Jake."

"And you're my favorite two-time loser," I said, trying to reciprocate.

A moment later, I silently raised an arm, signaling Roberto to stop. "Do you hear something?"

"Yeah. I hear my probation officer calling the state attorney."

"Water. Running water." Rising up on one knee, I saw what looked like the outline of a mountain on the horizon. "There's the levee along the irrigation channel."

"Jeez, look at that!"

His tone startled me, and I whirled around but saw nothing except a clump of small trees.

"Sago palm," Roberto said. "Smart to hide them in the middle of a mango field. I could get a thousand bucks easy for a six-footer. Damn things only grow an inch a year."

"C'mon, Roberto."

"You think we could fit one in the trunk of the Taurus?"

"Roberto!"

The sound of rushing water grew louder, and in a moment we were slogging up the soggy levee and looking down into a river. Glowing silver in the moonlight, the water tumbled down the channel, gurgling merrily, rippling over rocks, tree branches, and clumps of dirt.

"The well field's a