Lassiter 01 - To Speak for the Dead

Also by Paul Levine: The new Jake Lassiter novel

Available now in hardcover from Bantam Books

THE CRITICS SPEAK UP FOR TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD:

"Fascinating. Levine's judges are a howl, and his knowledge and use of Miami, both inner city and surrounding country, are provocative and expert. . . . Jake Lassiter is attractive, funny, savvy and brave."
—Chicago Tribune

"A first-rate courtroom novel. . . . The prose is as smooth as a writ for libel."
—Boston Globe

"An entertaining, suspenseful and well-written tale."
—The Florida Times-Union

"A baffling whodunit."
—Publishers Weekly

"Excellent."
The Miami Herald

"Funny, sardonic, and fast-paced ... a damn fine mystery. . . . The courtroom scenes are snapping with life, and the characters are nasty bits of business indeed."
—Detroit Free Press

MORE PRAISE FOR TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD:

"Crackling in-and-out-of-courtroom suspense from a welcome newcomer."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Paul Levine is guilty of master storytelling in the first degree." —Carl Hiaasen, author of
Skin Tight

"A dazzler, extremely well-written and featuring so many quotable passages . . . you'll want someone handy to read them aloud to."
—Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

"Levine keeps the plot spinning and the pages turning. . . [Jake Lassiter is] a hero crafted for the 1990s." —United Press International

"If you decide to pick up
To Speak for the Dead,
it's unlikely you'll be putting it down anytime soon."
—The Arkansas Gazette

MORE PRAISE FOR TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD:

"Levine . . . orchestrates his tense courtroom and medical scenes with expert panache, fluid prose, and sly humor."
—Library Journal

"A humdinger . . . authentic courtroom scenes and an intriguing plot."
—Chattanooga Times

"Highly entertaining."
—St. Petersburg Times

"[A] witty courtroom thriller."

—San Francisco Chronicle

"The opening courtroom scene in this book is a gem, and the book just takes off from there."

' —The Orlando Sentinel - —

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To Speak For the Dead Night Vision
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TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD

Paul Levine

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD

A Bantam Book Bantam hardcover edition/August 1990 Bantam rack edition/October 1991

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to use an excerpt from "The Lawyers Know Too Much" from
Smoke and Steel
by Carl Sandburg, copyright 1920 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and renewed 1948 by Carl Sandburg, reprinted by permission of the publisher. "It's Still Bock and Roll To Me" by Billy Joel, copyright © 1980 by Impulsive Music. All rights controlled and administered by EMI April Music Inc. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission.

All rights reserved. Copyright © 1990 by Paul J. Levine. Cover art copyright © 1990 by One Plus One Studio. Library of
Congress
Catalog Card Number: 89-18460. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

ISBN 0-553-29172-6
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

RAD 0987654321

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of South Florida medical examiners Dr. Joseph Davis and Dr. Ronald Wright, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Joel Kalian, the great trial lawyers and friends Stuart Grossman, Edward Shohat and Philip Freidin, my indefatigable secretary Gayle Bouffard, my agent Bob Colgan and my editor Kate Miciak. The rest of you know who you are.

I also 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.

"The Coroner shall view the bodye and the woundes and the strokes, and the bodye shalbe buryed. And yf the Coroner fynde the bodye buried before his comminge, he shall not omitte to digge up the bodye.

"And when the inquest is sworne ye Coroner must inquire if ye person were slayne by felony or by misadventure. And after it shalbe enquired who were presente at the dede, and who be coulpable of the ayde, force, commandement, consent, or receite of suche felonies wittingly."

Anthony Fitzherbert,

The New Book of Justice,
1545
a.d.

TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD

MAY 1980

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. Blacks against police, whites against blacks, 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-cty battle some where neither side surrendered, but wach put away its weapons and withdrew. 

"That's a real poster ass, huh?"

Roger Salisbury 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 Bob Griese."

"Uh-huh," Salisbury 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 her 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 Billy Joel, who was turned up way too high:

What's the mat-ter with the clothes I'm wearing?

Can't you tell that your tie's too wide?

May-be I should buy some old tab collars.

Welcome back to the age of jive.

The working guy was looking at Salisbury now, 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. A professor at Miami—Dade maybe, the working guy figured.

Salisbury 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