Read Online JL04 - Mortal Sin by Paul Levine - Free Book Online Page A

double loop on the thumb and a tented arch on the forefinger, as I recall. Have you ever read the definitive text by the Argentinean Juan Vucetich?
Dactiloscopia Comparada.
Published a hundred years ago, but still valuable in assessing…”
    “Charlie!”
    He cleared his throat. “Sorry for the digression. The prints came from the right wrist of Mr. Tupton. Others on the left wrist were simply not usable.”
    “And?”
    “Well, the ones we’ve got match up quite nicely with that of your client, Nicky Florio.”
    “I see.”
    Charlie was silent a moment. “Do you?”
    “I’m not surprised, that’s all.”
    “Why?” Charlie asked. “It proves nothing. When the paramedics arrived, the body was outside on the patio. Florio gave a statement saying he carried Tupton out there. Obviously, he may have grabbed the man by the wrists to hoist him up and carry him out.”
    “Or he may have dragged him into the wine cellar by the wrists when Tupton was still alive.”
    Charlie scowled at me. “Just whose side are you on, Jake?”
    Again I was silent. At trial, I try not to ask a question when I don’t know the answer. In real life, I don’t like to respond to questions for the same reason.
    An open Jeep with four Hispanic teenagers was crowding me on the left, its radio blaring “
Sopa de Caracol.
” Again, I tapped the horn, which now blared a few notes of the Penn State alma mater.
    The guy riding shotgun in the Jeep, a pimpled bodybuilder in a muscle T-shirt, reached under his seat and came up holding a nine-millimeter handgun. He didn’t point it at me, just sort of waved it in the air with a smirk on his face. What is it our local humorist Dave Barry likes to say?
Miami is a place where homicide is a misdemeanor, and motorists use guns instead of turn signals.
Something like that. As if to prove the point, the Jeep pulled into the far left lane, cutting off a florist’s delivery truck, then screeched around the corner without flashing a turn signal.
    “I read somewhere that the homicide rate goes up when it gets hotter,” I said.
    “So? What does it mean?”
    “That the heat makes us angrier, I suppose. People lose their temper, that sort of thing.”
    Charlie shook his head. “
Quot homines, tot sententiae.
So many men, so many opinions. There are a myriad of variables that could affect the homicide rate. Other factors may coincide with the summer months besides heat. Perhaps unemployment, heavier drinking. Do you follow me?”
    “Like a duck behind its mother.”
    Charlie chewed on his cold pipe. “There’s another study that shows that men’s sperm count goes down during the summer. Would you say the heat causes that?”
    I was getting too smart to jump to conclusions. “No, it probably has something to do with baseball.”
    “Just as likely,” Charlie said with a laugh. “Men who live and work in air-conditioned surroundings also have reduced sperm counts in the summer, so the heat may be irrelevant.”
    Traffic thinned as we neared Sweetwater, a suburb of Nicaraguan émigrés on the western fringe of the city. “So what’s my point, Jake?”
    “Same as always, Charlie. Things are seldom what they seem.”
    “Correct! Non semper ea sunt quae videntur.”
    “You took the words right out of my mouth,” I told him.
    A handsome white ibis sat on the hood of a Dodge pickup. We pulled in next to the truck, and the bird flapped its black-tipped wings and took off, but not before leaving behind a memento on the windshield. Next to us, two charter buses from Wachula were disgorging their elderly passengers. I helped Charlie Riggs out of his shoulder harness, and we walked into the bingo hall, a gleaming white building the size of a convention hall.
    Inside, the pot-of-gold and pull-tab video games blinked their red and green lights, dispensing coupons redeemable for cash. No jangle of coins here, but these were slot machines just the same. Slide a twenty-dollar bill into the slot, get twenty plays.