PAUL LEVINE has won the John D. MacDonald fiction award and was nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller, Shamus and James Thurber prizes. He wrote 20 episodes of the CBS military drama “JAG” and co-created the Supreme Court drama “First Monday” starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna. “To Speak for the Dead,” an international bestseller featuring lawyer Jake Lassiter, was his first novel. He is also the author of the “Solomon vs. Lord” series of legal capers. Among his latest novels are "Bum Rap," a Amazon Number One Bestseller, and “Cheater’s Game,” in which Lassiter dives deep into the college admissions scandal. His newest novel is “Early Grave,” in which an ailing Lassiter sues to abolish high school football as a “public nuisance.” A graduate of Penn State and the University of Miami School of Law, he divides his time between Santa Barbara, CA and Miami, FL.
Actual News Item: The Miami Heat Big Three, LeBron James, Dwywane Wade, and Chris Bosh, were spotted EATING SALADS at the Soho Beach House Wednesday, presumably discussing whether to take pay cuts in order to remain the key ingredients of the NBA franchise.
The Soho Beach House is a fancy oceanfront hotel/club/spa a few blocks south of the Fontainebleau, but that’s besides the point. It’s the “EATING SALADS” that drew my attention and reminded me of this event, which may or may not have happened.
Mickey Mantle, his wife Merlyn, and Toots Shor
Miami Heat Big Three Do Not Eat Here
TOOTS SHOR’S RESTAURANT, WEST 51st STREET, MANHATTAN, JUNE 1956
Three New York Yankees — Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin, and Yogi Berra — sit down for lunch.
“What do you want to eat, Billy?” Mantle asks.
“I’m thinking about the kale salad with sliced pear and walnuts, balsamic vinaigrette on the side,” Martin says.
Mantle watches a waiter rush by, carrying a massive platter of calf’s liver covered in onions and surrounded by bacon. “What about you, Yogi?”
“Nuttin’ fancy,” Berra says. Maybe the arugula salad with walnuts. Hold the dressing.”
Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin on their way to church.
“I’m thinking about sliced ahi,” Mickey says.
“Ain’t you heard about mercury poisoning?” Berra shoots back.
“Right.” Mantle goes back to studying the menu.
Toots Shor comes by the table with Jackie Gleason, who’s holding his usual glass of ginger ale. They slap the guys on the back, crack wise and move on, discussing the world situation, which is to say, how the New York Football Giants will do this Fall.
Toots Shor and Jackie Gleason enjoy their non-alcoholic beverages.
Mantle watches a diner at an adjacent table, wolfing down chopped hip sirloin covered in fried onion rings. “I think I’ll go for the mixed greens with extra frisee,” Mantle says, finally.
“Again!” Martin and Berra shout, in derision.
“With a pineapple mango smoothie, low-fat yogurt.”
Early the next morning, which is to say 10:30 a.m., Mantle awakens with start. “Jeez, hon, I had a terrible nightmare.”
“What about?” his wife, Merlyn, asks. “You sleeping here two nights in a row?”
“No, worse. What the hell is kale, anyway?”
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Would Miami Heat Big Three Get a Table at Toots Shor’s?
While we await the Miami Heat Big Three decision — on their contracts, not lunch — let me pass on this great anecdote about Toots Shor, restauranteur and pal to celebrities and athletes.
Toots Shor served lots of things: kale salad was not among them.
One night, the MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer was unhappily standing in line for a table. Spotting Toots, Mayer says: “I hope the food is worth waiting for.” Replied Toots, “It’ll be better’n some of your crummy pictures I stood in line for.” Credit Wikipedia with the story. It’s too good not to be true.
The ten-episode Fargo TV Series, based loosely on the Coen Brothers darkly comedic feature film, went out with a bang — several bangs — and fans can finally let out a deep breath.
HUGE SPOILER ALERT: Hit man Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) is dead.
PAT MYSELF ON THE BACK ALERT: Several episodes ago, I told my wife Marcia that meek cop-turned-mailman Gus Grimly, not protagonist Deputy Molly Solverson, would kill Malvo. Dramatically, it had to happen that way. More on why below.
Meanwhile, a lawyer friend asked last night. “Okay, what’s it all mean?”
Well, where to begin? The Fargo TV series was many things. On the surface it’s a serial killer story with the usual question: Will justice be done? But that’s the issue in virtually every cop show in the history of television.
Fargo TV Series: Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) was one icy killer.
Just as “True Detective” (another many-layered serial killer story) was deeply rooted in the psychological traumas of the two main characters, much was going on beneath the surface in the Fargo TV series:
* It’s a father-daughter story. Two stories, really. Lou (Keith Carradine), the retired and wounded cop, fears for his daughter Molly, (Allison Tolman), the deputy-who-should-be-chief. And widower Gus Grimly (Colin Hanks) fears that if he’s killed, his daughter will be an orphan.
* It’s a story of two sociopaths, though one doesn’t know it in the beginning.
* It’s a story of two cowards, but one really isn’t.
* It’s a story of redemption for the coward who was really a hero.
* But most of all, it’s a story about a very smart female cop whose talents are ignored by her donut-chomping male superiors until the very end, where she prevails, just as the former chief had foreshadowed.
Deputy Molly Solverson is frustrated by the incompetence of the chief in the Fargo TV Series
Fargo TV Series: In the Beginning, a Shocker!
Let’s go back to the beginning. All is well with the world in little Bemidji, MN. Vern, the nice guy police chief, recognizes Molly’s superior intelligence and dedication and expresses the hope that she’ll be the next chief. Then, BOOM! Hit man Malvo kills Vern in a scene of shocking violence.
That shooting came hard-on-the-heels of Malvo killing the town bully in a whorehouse, and meek insurance salesman Lester Nygaard (the incomparable Martin Freeman) splattering his wife’s brains with hammer. A true coward, Lester has learned from Malvo that having no conscience can get things done. You can kill your nagging wife, frame your irritating brother, lie to the widow of the town bully and have sex with her, then finally set up your second wife to take a bullet intended for you. All with hardly a second thought. It was Malvo who brought out Lester’s sociopathic tendencies, though I suppose there was always an underlying narcissism.
Fargo TV Series: Gus Grimley’s “Desires” and “Needs”
Midway through the season, we discover we have a co-protagonist. It’s widower-cop Gus Grimly, who takes a shine to Molly, marries her, and gets her pregnant. But there’s a “ghost” looming over him, to use the screenwriting term. Early on, he freezes up and lets the murderous Malvo go, after stopping him for speeding. But if you recall, it was Gus’s fear of leaving his daughter an orphan — not cowardice — that prompted Gus’s action…or inaction. Still, that left Gus despondent, and after a second screw-up, accidentally shooting Molly in a white-out blizzard, he’s canned from the force. Now he can pursue his real dream…becoming a mailman. No, really.
Killer Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) and reluctant deputy Gus Grimly (Colin Hanks) in the Fargo TV series.
Gus might not be cut out to be a cop, but neither is he a coward. In the finale, he sneaks into Malvo’s hidden cottage to await his return. Logically, Gus should have called the cops, right? Wrong! As wife Marcia pointed out while we were watching the show, Gus knew that his wife, the pregnant Deputy Molly, would rush to the scene, directly into harm’s way. Gus was protecting her with his seemingly illogical action.
Another reason, too. Let’s go back to film school (a place I’ve never been). In screenwriting, they talk about a character’s “desires” versus a character’s “needs.” On the surface, Gus desires a peaceful life. A family. A pleasant drive through the countryside delivering the mail. But his “need” is interior, perhaps even unconscious. He needs to prove to himself that he is not a coward. He needs to protect his wife and daughter. (In this regard, he is just like Molly’s father Lou, who sits on the porch all night with a shotgun to protect Gus’s daughter from harm). In short, Gus needs redemption. That’s why it was clear to me, early on, that Gus will kill Malvo. And boy, was it satisfying! Seldom is a shooting in cold blood so damn well earned.
Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) takes his lumps en route to becoming a killer on the Fargo TV series
Hey, speaking about redemption, let’s say a word about the knucklehead police chief Bill (Bob Odenkirk), who, as another observer pointed out, is “not the sharpest blade in the woodchipper.” He gains redemption by recognizing his weaknesses and Molly’s strengths and retiring so she can become chief. In an unusually introspective moment, he admits to not being up to the job in an era of cruelty and inhumanity:
“I used to have positive opinions about people. Used to think the best. Now looking over my shoulder — an unquiet mind — that’s what the wife calls it. The job has got me staring into the fireplace, drinking. I never wanted to be the type thinking about the nature of things. All I ever wanted was a stack of pancakes and a V-8.”
I think that was intended to pay homage to the Coen Brothers’ “No Country for Old Men,” where Sheriff Tommy Lee Jones bemoans the passing of simpler times. Here’s a truncated version of that monologue:
“I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old. Hard to believe. My grandfather was a lawman; father too. Me and him was sheriffs at the same time; him up in Plano and me out here…Some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lotta folks find that hard to believe…The crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure. It’s not that I’m afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand.”
Sharp observers might remember a couple weeks back, Malvo told the story about the bear who chewed his leg off to get out of a trap, then died in a stream, but on his own terms. Then Malvo gets his leg broken in Lester’s bear trap…leading to his own death at Gus’s hands. No biggie. Just the screenwriter showing off a bit.
Finally, there is the wonderful ending of the Fargo TV series. On a comfy sofa, preganant Molly, Gus and Gus’s daughter Greta are watching television. Gus is a tad embarrassed that he’s getting a citation for bravery for taking down Malvo. Says he thinks Molly should get it. “Nope,” she says, “that’s your deal. I get to be the chief.”
Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse is set to plead guilty to helping thousands of Americans cheat Uncle Sam in tax evasion schemes. At the same time, the federal government is chasing taxpayers who hid their money overseas. It seems a good time to ask what’s fair and just in tax evasion cases.
You can’t throw a bank in jail. But Credit Suisse will pay a whopping $2.6 billion in penalties. Additionally, eight employees – though not senior executives – have been indicted by the Justice Department. But what about the American tax cheats? Let’s look at two ongoing tax evasion cases involving secret Swiss bank accounts.
Dr. Patricia Lynn Hough, 67, of Sarasota County, and her husband sold their two Caribbean medical schools, deposited $35 million into secret accounts, and didn’t pay taxes. A federal grand jury indicted them both, and the husband, Dr. David Frederick, fled, leaving his wife to face trial alone. (Now, there’s chivalry for you!) A jury convicted Patricia Hough of filing false tax returns; her husband remains a fugitive.
Dr. Patricia Hough, convicted of income tax evasion.
Ty Warner,69, of Oak Brook,IL, the creator of the Beanie Baby and owner of many luxury resorts, has a net worth of $1.7 billion. He deposited $100 million of undeclared income in Swiss banks and failed to pay more than $5 million in taxes. Indicted and facing certain conviction, he plead guilty to tax evasion.
Billionaire Ty Warner, after entering his guilty plea to tax evasion
Tax Evasion: Prison or Probation?
In each case, the government sought prison sentences. Now, You Be the Judge. Prison or probation?
1. Because of the huge amounts involved, the longstanding nature of the tax evasion, and as a deterrent effect, both defendants get prison time.
2. Both defendants are elderly. Both have done good works, Warner with substantial charitable donations, Dr. Hough, as a kind-hearted psychiatrist. Probation will do for the non-violent crime of tax evasion.
3. One goes to prison; one gets probation.
If you answered number three, go to the head of the class. But who does the time?
Dr. Hough will spend two years in prison, courtesy of Judge John Steele in Ft. Myers.
Ty Warner gets two years probation (plus 500 hours of community service), as determined by Judge Charles Kocoras in Chicago. The government has taken the rare step of appealing Warner’s sentence as “unreasonable.”
In announcing the probation, Judge Kocoras said that Warner’s charitable giving “trumped” his crime. In its brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Seventh Circuit, the U.S. Attorney flatly rejected that reasoning: “A defendant’s acts of charity cannot ‘trump’ his criminal conduct.”
The government’s brief also scoffed at this statement of the trial judge: “The public humiliation the defendant has suffered is manifest. Only he knows the private torment he has suffered.”
Are humiliation and private torment sufficient punishment? Judges are given wide discretion in “downward departures” from Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which in Warner’s case called for a term of roughly four years.
Meanwhile, the government had asked for only one year in prison. Only a year, and the judge wouldn’t give that!
If I were the trial judge, I would have said:
“Mr. Warner, you went to extraordinary lengths to hide your money for years. You flew to Switzerland and switched banks when the Justice Department got close. You could have paid back taxes and penalties in the Amnesty Program and gone free. Was $1.7 billion not enough? Was it necessary to cheat the government out of another $5 million?”
I would have banged my gavel and ordered Warner to prison for far more than a year, perhaps the four years called for by the Guidelines. Let the sentence serve as a deterrent to others in the top one per cent of the one per centers. But I have no prediction as to what the Seventh Circuit might do on the government’s appeal.
Back in Florida, Dr. Hough will start serving her two years shortly. Meanwhile, I can’t help but think of her missing husband. In my mind, I see him reclining on a chaise on a Caribbean beach with several million dollars in a safe deposit box and a young woman in a bikini serving him a mojito. There are some wrongs, it seems, that the Justice System can’t right.
But today I’m turning the blog over to Oline Cogdill, widely regarded as the top crime fiction reviewer in the country. (She’s won the Raven Award, presented by the Mystery Writers of America, to prove it).
Review of “Lassiter”
I’m simply re-printing Oline’s 2011 review of “Lassiter,” which marked the comeback for the linebacker-turned-lawyer, who hadn’t been seen since 1997’s “Flesh & Bones.” I might add that I’m doing this without asking Oline’s permission or that of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel or The Miami Herald, or the written consent of the National Football League. So sue me.
By Oline H. Cogdill
Paul Levine brings a certain symmetry to “Lassiter,” which marks the return of Jake Lassiter, a Miami Dolphins linebacker turned hard-nosed lawyer.
Levine’s series launched in 1990 with “To Speak for the Dead,” named one of the 10 best mysteries of the year by the Los Angeles Times. The Lassiter series came at the start of the wave of Florida mysteries that shows no sign of slowing down and earned Levine the John D. MacDonald Florida Fiction Award.
“To Speak for the Dead,” the first of the Lassiter novels
Now Jake is back after a 14-year absence in the aptly named “Lassiter,” and it’s as if this wise-cracking, renegade lawyer never left. “Lassiter” works as a gripping legal thriller, a story of self-discovery, and a look at corruption set against an insider’s evocative view of South Florida.
And it seems fitting that Levine reintroduces his attorney by having him look into an incident that occurred early in his career.
Like many people, Jake has regrets, especially about his wilder days. One regret is that he didn’t do more to help Kristin Larkin, a teenage runaway.
“Back then, I had yet to develop the empathy for others that marks the passage into manhood,” he says. Today, Jake is a different man and he’s caught off guard when Amy Larkin shows up, accusing him of being involved in her sister’s disappearance 18 years earlier.
Amy, who was only 11 when her sister ran away, had always believed her sister dead until her father recently told her on his deathbed that he didn’t know what happened to Kristin. The obsessive Amy targets Jake since he is the only link she has to her sister.
Jake Lassiter is both suspect and investigator in the disappearance of a young woman
Jake’s investigation leads him to Charlie Ziegler, a former pornographer turned philanthropist; Alex Castiel, a Cuban-American prosecutor who is one of Jake’s best friends; and Miami’s history of organized crime.
Lassiter Serious, Witty, and Sardonic
Levine’s energetic storytelling works well in “Lassiter” as the author manages to make his novel serious, witty and sardonic — sometimes even in the same sentence. Levine steeps his plot in realism, making Jake’s look into an 18-year-old trail seem plausible.
Jake knows who he is now as well as who he once was — “the egotistical jock with all the trappings of stunted male adolescence.” He knows that rich and famous clients aren’t about to come through his door. Still, he’s a good lawyer and trying to be a better parent to his young nephew he’s raising.
Levine demonstrates that he knows Miami by following Jake’s travels on the myriad causeways, along South Beach and through Coconut Grove. In the story as in real life, no trip to Miami is complete without a visit to Versailles restaurant in Little Havana.
Although Levine put his attorney on hiatus in 1997, the author has been quite busy, writing the humorous Solomon vs. Lord legal series set in Miami and working as a screenwriter in Los Angeles, including writing 20 episodes of the TV series JAG.
“Lassiter” makes us remember how much we enjoyed Jake’s company. It’s good to have him back.
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And to that, I say, thank you and return to work on my next book!
The College Football Hall of Fame could not have been on Shane Conlan’s mind when he played high school basketball on a wintry night in early 1982. He was 6-3, 175 pounds, and if there’s anything he didn’t look like, it would have been a major college linebacker.
That January night, in tiny, frozen Frewsburg in western New York State, Conlan just wanted to put on a good show for the college football coach in attendance: Tom (Scrap) Bradley, then a young assistant at Penn State. Bradley was the only coach in the country interested in Conlan as a football player. No one from Pitt or Ohio State or Michigan…or even little Division 2 schools had any interest in the skinny kid from the sticks.
(Yes, hang on, folks. There’s a moral to this story).
Conlan only scored three points in that basketball game, but the field goal came on an alley-oop dunk, and Bradley liked the kid’s athleticism. Bradley’s mentor, the great Joe Paterno, often scouted high school football players by watching them play basketball. Both men thought the sport showed agility and overall athletic ability in a way football — particularly on film — did not). Still, Conlan was not an easy sell at the coaches’ meeting just a few days before signing date:
“No one on the staff really wants him,” Bradley said in an interview with the Harrisburg Patriot-News. “Back then, I don’t have much of a track record. I knew what I saw. But I started thinking: Maybe I don’t know what I’m looking at. Finally, Joe pounds the table and says, ‘You want him? You take him. But you gotta coach him. And you’d better be right.'”
So Penn State gave Conlan his one and only football scholarship offer.
“I owe Tom everything,” Conlan said in an interview. “If he hadn’t given me a shot, if he hadn’t convinced Joe [Paterno] that I was the right kid for them, who knows what would have become of me?”
Lots of lessons here. How important is it to have someone who believes in you. And to have a mentor. And to make the most of your talents with the gifts you have.
The legendary Joe Paterno with assistant coach Tom Bradley.
By “bygone era,” Jones means these were the days before video and YouTube and high school recruiting gurus. All Bradley had to go on — other than that basketball game — were a few grainy frames of 8 mm film showing Conlan playing for his little high school (94 seniors) against less than stellar competition. And, of course, a coach’s sixth sense about a player’s desire, aggressiveness, intelligence, and overall athleticism.
No Easy Route to College Football Hall of Fame
Conlan had a stellar collegiate career. A consensus All American linebacker, he was the Most Valuable Player of one of the most famous games in football history: Penn State’s 14-10 Fiesta Bowl upset over heavily favored Miami to win the 1986 national championship. Conlan had two interceptions of Miami QB Vinny Testaverde and eight tackles in the game. (Testaverde would be the first player selected in the upcoming draft and two other Miami seniors were taken in the first nine slots. Overall, Penn State delivered a whopping 13 players to the NFL that year, including two first rounders).
Okay, so Conlan was a standout in college. But just how would he fare in the NFL?
I happened to be on Penn State’s practice field in Spring 1987 for Pro Day. So were a dozen or so NFL scouts, watching the graduating seniors run agility drills. The players ran, and the scouts scribbled on scraps of paper. (There were no cell phones, iPads, or laptops).
Unlike that wintry night in the Frewsburg gym, Conlan was the center of attention. I knew Shane a bit through two of his classmates I had been been friends with since their freshman year: Tim Johnson, from Florida, the All American defensive tackle who would go on to a 10 year NFL career before becoming a minister, and D.J. Dozier, the running back who would join the select few who played both NFL football and Major League Baseball.
So I’m standing next to Ray Wietecha, the college scout of the Green Bay Packers, which had just finished an abysmal year and were drafting fourth. (NFL aficionados will remember Wietecha as a center for the New York Giants in the 1950’s and 60’s. He was an old-school, tough-as-nails guy). In this photo, he looks like he’s still playing at age 45.
I remember looking at Wietecha’s gnarled hands — broken fingers going this way and that — as he took notes.
“Number 31’s really good,” I said, referring to Conlan, as if my words would boost his draft status.
“Skinny legs,” Wietecha replied.
“Fast. Great anticipation. Great ball sense.”
“Skinny legs,” Wietecha repeated.
In the NFL draft, with that fourth pick in the first round, Wietecha’s employers — the Packers — took Brent Fullwood, a running back from Auburn. He played four years, and if you don’t know his name, well, he was just okay. The Buffalo Bills took Conlan with the eighth pick. He became NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year, was named All-Pro three times, played in three Pro Bowls, and was selected to the Bills’ All-Time 50th Anniversary team. Skinny legs and all.
Shane Conlan with the Buffalo Bills
Long-time readers will know that I have a special kinship with Penn State linebackers. My best-known fictional character, Jake Lassiter, was a walk-on who played linebacker for Paterno. But Jake had disciplinary problems and run-ins with his Coach. As he admits in “Lassiter,” “Joe parked me so far down the bench, my ass was in Altoona.” Jake, needless to say, is not in the College Football Hall of Fame.
