JL04 - Mortal Sin by Paul Levine Page A

tongue?”
    “I’ve tried it. Not bad with mustard.”
    Cindy winced. “I can’t imagine eating something that comes out of an animal’s mouth.”
    “How ‘bout some eggs?” I asked her.
    “You are so gross. But if you want to keep loading yourself with nitrites and benzopyrene, pesticides and heavy metals, just keep snarfing your hamburgers.”
    I grunted my intention of doing just that.
    “Speaking of poison,” she said with a sly smile, “guess who’s in the waiting room.”
    I was slurping my chocolate shake, so Cindy answered her own question. “
Missus
Florio.”
    Oh, her.
    Cindy eyed me, looking for a reaction. When I gave her my poker face, she asked, “Why can’t she make an appointment like everyone else, or does she have special privileges?”
    “She has the past.”
    “If I were you,
jefe
, I’d keep it that way.”
    Gina wore a black cotton jersey dress with bare shoulders. There is something about an ivory-skinned blonde in black, a promise of heaven, a threat of hell. The dress was held together by a row of black buttons from the neck to the hem, which nearly reached her ankles. It would have been a demure look if she bothered to button up from mid-thigh down.
    She waltzed around my office, inspecting the surroundings as if she’d never been there before. She picked up a deflated football with the score of a long-forgotten game painted on the side. She replaced the ball, studied a team photo from my college days, and remarked that I looked dorky with a mustache. She thumbed through an open volume
of Southern Reporter
, 2nd Series, skimming past a case where a prisoner sued the state for the right to be served decaffeinated coffee because real java made him jumpy. She looked out the window where an easterly was kicking up whitecaps on the bay. Then she turned and stood still, staring at the Dictaphone on my desk as if it were an object of beauty and wonder.
    Something was bothering her, but what?
    I hadn’t hugged her, or kissed her, or shaken her delicate hand. Hell, I hadn’t even stood up when she came in.
    “We have to talk,” she said finally.
    Have to.
    Which means the subject is painful. Okay, that could be a lot of things. She could confess that Nicky killed Peter Tupton. Or maybe she wanted to admit the affair with Rick Gondolier. Come clean with old Jake. He would understand. Maybe she…
    “We can’t see each other anymore,” Gina blurted out.
    I blinked. Then I shrugged. It was intended to say, So what? Inside, my stomach felt like the elevator suddenly dropped twenty floors.
    She turned away and looked out the window again. Along the shoreline at Bayside, flags stiffened in the breeze. Across Government Cut, one of the cruise ships was easing out of the port, tugboats front and rear. “I guess it doesn’t matter to you that much,” she said.
    “It stopped mattering a long time ago.” I stared at her back, admiring the fine lines of her neck. She was facing east, toward Bimini. Good. My face might have given it away. For a lawyer, I am a lousy liar.
    “That makes it easier. But, still, I’m sorry.”
    “Okay, if that’s it, I’ve got work to do. Hey, you could have called or mailed it in.”
    She turned, walked toward my desk, and sat down in a client’s straight-back chair, crossing her long legs. She fumbled in her purse for something. The purse was smooth leather, small and black. It probably cost a thousand bucks at a Coconut Grove boutique. She withdrew a pink envelope and handed it to me. “I wrote you a letter, but…”
    I turned it over in my hand, a dainty pink envelope carrying the scent of her perfume, bringing back a thousand memories. I resisted the urge to close my eyes and press the envelope to my nose. My name was written on the front in red ink. Girlish script. Straight up-and-down letters. The letter
J
looked like two fat balloons, one on top of the other. A “Dear Jake” letter.
    I opened it and withdrew a neatly folded piece of pink