Read Online Bum Rap by Paul Levine - Free Book Online

from Manuel Dominguez and asked if she was going to see Steve in the morning. Sure, she’d ask if the name Benny meant anything to him. Maybe Nadia or Gorev mentioned the name. And if not, did Steve have any idea who Benny might be?
    She wanted to ask Lassiter something, but it was difficult, and she hesitated a moment before blurting it out. “You believe Steve, don’t you, Jake? That he didn’t shoot Gorev.”
    “I do.”
    “ Great. Steve always says he presumes his clients are guilty because it saves time.”
    Lassiter laughed. “I like that. I just might steal it.”
    “Like I said, you guys are more alike than either one of you wants to admit.”
    “Nah. He’s luckier than I am.”
    “How do you mean?”
    T here was a pause, just the electrical hum of the line. “Well, Steve has you.”
    She froze a second and didn’t respond. Then Lassiter added, “In his corner, I mean.”
    But that’s not what she thought he meant. He had not complimented her lawyering, but rather her womanhood. Lying there in her pink daisy tank pajamas, she was sure of it. Then he’d become embarrassed and tried to backpedal. Maybe that’s what gave her the courage to ask a question of her own.
    “Jake, what about the rest of what Steve said?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Do you believe in your heart he wasn’t involved with Nadia?”
    “That again? Jeez, Victoria, I already told you. Barrios is stuck for a motive and that’s all he could come up with. I’m not even sure he believes it.”
    “What if it were you?”
    “How do you mean?”
    “This beautiful young woman comes to your office and asks you to have a sit-down with a gangster who’s allegedly holding her property. You don’t know the territory. You haven’t checked her out. Or him. Would you just hop in your car and go?”
    “How beautiful did you say she was?”
    She let out an exasperated sigh. “I’m serious, Jake. What did you call it the other day? ‘Wandering clueless into the cave of the Russian bear.’ Would you have done it?”
    “A beautiful woman in distress is a powerful intoxicant.”
    “So men are basically weak. Is that what you’re saying?”
    “Actually, the opposite. There’s something deep in men that makes us the protectors. It’s probably been engraved in our DNA since the time we were still swinging on vines. We’re the hunters and the rescuers. It’s even part of our mythology. We rescue damsels in distress from the dragons . . . or the Russian Bratva .”
    “In order to get laid,” she said.
    “Not necessarily. A man doesn’t have to be sleeping with the damsel or even want to. He just saddles up and rides into danger because that’s what a man does. So to answer your question, yeah, I probably would have done the same thing as Solomon. At least, I would have when I was his age. These days, I might have done some research, popped a couple anti-inflammatories for my knees, and taken along backup.”
    “You’re not that creaky, Jake. You know what my secretary said when I told her we were hiring you?”
    “Nope.”
    “She’s seen you in the gym. And she said, ‘Ay, Lassiter. ¡Qué bueno está! ’ Roughly translated, ‘What a hunk!’ ”
    “Ex-hunk is more like it. But all those years pumping iron. It’s a habit I can’t break. And every year, I do less weight and fewer reps. Not because I want to, but because of the aging process and my fear of tearing some tendons I didn’t know I had.”
    There was something in his voice that troubled her. In their first phone call, all that angst about losing cases and now the talk about aging. Was Lassiter over-the-hill?
    “Jake, I have to ask you something else, and I hope you won’t be offended.”
    “Shoot.”
    “Back in the jail, Steve called you a burnout.”
    “Actually, he called me a ‘deaf, punch-drunk burnout.’ ”
    She smiled to herself. At least Lassiter’s memory still worked. “Well, what about it? Are you going through some personal crisis?