The Road to Hell

 EL VALIENTE EN EL INFIERNO (THE BRAVE ONE IN HELL) I am not afraid. That is what I tell myself. Just after midnight, five hundred meters from the border fence, I keep still, squatting on the ground beneath a mesquite tree. Buried in the sand are motion sensors and infrared cameras. My name is Victor Castillo. I am 13 years old. Back home, in my village, a man warned me not to do this. You are looking for el cielo. Heaven. But you will find only el infierno. Hell. Still, I am not afraid. In a matter of minutes, I will be in the United States. By breakfast time, I will be with my Aunt Luisa in a little California town called Ocotillo. She is a nurse, but an even better cook. The best huevos rancheros in the world. Homemade tortillas, the eggs not too runny, the red sauce spiked with jalapenos. We will have a cry about my mother, then mi tia will put me on a bus to Minnesota, where my father works in the sugar beet fields. But first, there is the fence. It slithers down a rocky slope and disappears between distant boulders, like an endless snake. We move from the cover of the trees to a ravine filled with desert marigolds. I hope the golden flowers are a good omen. We climb out of the ravine and up to the fence, the links glowing like silver bullets in the moonlight. The man who calls himself El Leon — “The Lion” — snips at the metal with wire cutters. He wears all black and his long hair is slick with brilliantine. In the States, they would call El Leon a coyote. In Mexico, he is a pollero, a chicken wrangler. Which makes the rest of us — Mexicans, Hondurans and Guatemalans — the pollos. The chickens. Hopefully, not cooked chickens. If we are caught and turned back, I don’t know what I will do. All my mother’s savings — $2,200 — are paying for my passage The wire cutters fly from El Leon’s hands, and he curses in Spanish. This is taking too long. Above us, a three-quarter moon is the color of milk. Under our feet, the earth is hard as pavement. Somewhere, on the other side of the fence, La Migra, the Border Patrol, waits. I listen for the whoppeta of a helicopter or the growl of a truck. El Leon, please hurry! He keeps working and keeps cursing. I sit on my haunches, inhaling the smell of coal tar from the creosote bushes. From a pocket in my backpack, I take out a photograph of my mother, her face pale in the moonlight. El Leon works quickly now, the links cra-acking like bones breaking. Finally, he says, “You first, chico.” I duck through the opening, then hold the wire for a Honduran girl. Maybe I should say a Honduran “woman,” because she is pregnant, her stomach a basketball under her turquoise blouse. But she is probably only seventeen or eighteen and is traveling alone, and she looks too young and too scared to take care of a child. On her feet, huarches, sandals made from old tire tread. I hope she can keep up with us. A selfish thought, I realize, and immediately feel ashamed. My mother taught me better. The pregnant girl places two hands on her stomach, bends over, and squeezes through the fence. Following her are two campesinos from Oaxaca who smell like wet straw. The men wear felt Tejana hats, cowboy boots, and long-sleeve plaid work shirts. Then the rest, fourteen in all. Ten minutes later, we are climbing a dusty path, moonbeams turning the arms of cholla cactus into the spiny wings of monsters. Los Estados Unidos. I am here! Do I feel different, changed in some way? I am not sure. The rocks on the ground and the stars in the sky all look the same as in Mexico. Maybe mi mami is looking down at me from those stars. Her weak lungs gave out five days ago, and I recited the oraciónes por las almas over her grave. “Let me see her again in the joy of everlasting brightness.” The stars have “everlasting brightness,” so yes, I pretend she watches me, even though I never believed half of what the priests said. I travel alone to find my father. My two older brothers have been with papi for nearly a year, carrying their weeding hoes all the way from our village in Sonora to a town called Breckenridge in Minnesota. Beets, strawberries, cabbage. Melons, corn, peas. Whatever is in season and requires hands close to the ground. The work is hard, but the pay is good, at least by Mexican standards. Now we walk along a rocky path that crawls up the side of a hill sprouting with stubby cactus like an old man who needs a shave. El Leon yells at two Mexican sisters, calls them parlanchinas — chatterboxes — tells them to keep quiet. He has a rifle slung over a shoulder. But why? Who would he shoot? The older sister is still babbling, something about every house in California having a swimming pool, when El Leon hisses, “¡Cállense la boca!” He cocks his head toward the hill. I hear something, too. A clopping. Growing louder. Horses! A gunshot echoes off the hillside. “Vigilantes!” El Leon yells. My stomach tightens. Our village priest warned me about the vigilantes. Not policemen. Or National Guard. Or Border Patrol. Private citizens, gabachos, calling themselves the Patriot Patrol. Maybe protecting their country or maybe just taking target practice with their friends. Maybe one day shooting Mexicans instead of road signs and cactus. “Run!” El Leon screams. But where? On one side of the path, a steep upward slope. On the other, a creviced, dry wash. The two campesinos leap into the wash and take off, the spines of prickly pear tearing at their pant legs. El Leon leads the others back toward the border. But I cannot follow them. ¡Mi papi está en los Estados Unidos! I scramble up the steep slope, grabbing vines, pulling myself hand-over-hand. The horses are so close now I can hear their hooves kicking up rocks on the path. “Yippee ti-yi-yo, greasers!” A gabacho’s voice. Gruff and mean. Two men on horseback in chaps, boots, and cowboy hats. One man holds a large revolver over his head and fires into the air. “Git on back to Meh-ee-co! Look at ‘em run, Calvin.” Calvin, a big man with a belly flopping over his jeans, coughs up a laugh. “Whoa, what do we got here, Woody? Looks like a piñata on Michelins.” I see her then, too. The pregnant Honduran girl in her tire-tread huarches, trying to hide in the shadow of the hill. “Someone aims to have herself an anchor baby,” Calvin says. I know what the man means. Anyone born on this side of the border is automatically an American citizen. Doesn’t matter if you’re from Mexico, Guatemala, or Mars. If Osama bin Laden fathered a child in Los Angeles, the kid would be an American. “Welfare and food stamps and diapers all on the taxpayer’s dime.” Woody spits out the words. Gripping a vine at its root, I keep still. Afraid to dislodge a stone. Afraid the gabachos will see me. And ashamed of my fear. On the path below me, the girl tries to run back toward the border, but the best she can do is a duck waddles. The two men cackle and whoop. Calvin grabs a lariat from his saddle. “Where you goin’ chica? The amnesty bus already left the station.” He twirls the lariat and tosses it over the girl’s head, where it settles on her chest. He pulls it tight, nearly yanking her off her feet. “No!” she screams, clawing at the rope. “¡Mi bebé!” “If there really is a kid…” Calvin hops off his horse. “Let’s have a look, chica.” He struts toward her, bowlegged, his belly jiggling over his wide belt, which is studded with silver buttons. I want to fly down the mountain and take the gun away. If they give me any trouble, I will shoot one in the kneecap and the other in his big, fat belly. Isn’t that what a valiente — a courageous man — would do? Take any risk, fight any foe, protect the weak, punish the wicked. But I am a boy. And they are grown men with guns. “You with that coyote calls himself ‘El Leon?’” Calvin demands The girl’s head bobs up and down. “El Leon’s a narcotraficante. You carrying his cocaina instead of a kid? You a mule?” “No! Mi bebé!” “C’mon. He always uses kids and women to carry his drugs.” “Not me. ¡Te lo juro por Dios!” Calvin slips the lariat off the girl, then yanks up her blouse. Even from this distance, I can see her bulging stomach, creamy white in the moonlight. “She ain’t lying,” he says to Woody, patting the girl’s belly. “Maybe we should deliver the baby right now. Save the county some money.” The girl screams. “You got a knife, Woody?” “You know I do. Bowie knife.” I must do something, but what? My arms feel like they’re dipped in boiling water. I try to get a better grip on the vine, but it tears from the dry earth. I dig my sneakers into the slope. Calvin says, “Who’s gonna operate?” “You do it, Woody. I can’t stand the sight of blood.” The girl chants in Spanish. Asks God to take her own life but save her baby. I do not expect God to answer her prayers. He did not answer mine when my mother was sick. It is up to me. Can a valiente be afraid? I tell myself yes. If he acts with courage, despite the fear. I grip the vine with my left hand, pick up a rock with my right. Round and jagged, the size of a baseball. I throw the rock at Woody, the gabacho still on his horse. It sails past the man’s head, clunks into the dry wash. “What the hell!” Woody turns in the saddle, faces the slope, revolver in hand. “Up here, pendejos!” I yell. “It’s a kid,” Calvin says, pointing. “Right there, Woody.” “C’mon down here, you little jumping bean,” Woody orders. “Come and get me, culero!” I throw another rock, adjusting for the downward arc. Woody never sees it coming out of the darkness, and it plunks his shoulder. He yelps and his horse does a little dance under him. He turns the revolver toward the slope and fires. A bullet pings off a boulder. Not even close. I think maybe he is not such a good shot. “I work for El Leon!” I yell, waving my backpack in the air. As if I’m carrying cocaine and not just a pair of jeans, two t-shirts, and a first baseman’s mitt. “Little greaser’s the mule!” Calvin sounds as if he’s just made a great discovery. Now, I think maybe the men are not too smart, either. “I may be a mule, but you’re nothing but chicken-hearted banditos!” I start up the slope again, clawing at rocks to make my way. “Stop, you little punk!” I keep going, hoping they will try to follow. Another gunshot ricochets off a boulder far over my head. “C’mon down here, you little peckerwood!” Woody shouts. “Give us the coke and we’ll let you go.” I reach the top of the slope and look down toward the two vigilantes. “So long, pendejos!” “Go around that way, Cal,” Woody orders, tugging the reins and pointing into the darkness. “We’ll meet up on the far side.” The vigilantes turn their horses and take off in opposite directions. They will try to cut me off on the other side of the hill. And they may succeed. But at least, they have left the girl alone. I glance one last time down the slope. The girl waves and says something to me I cannot hear, but in my head, I think she is chanting a blessing for me. I wave back and scramble on hands and knees over the top of the hill. Minutes later, I am stumbling in the dark, tripping over roots and trying to avoid prickly pear with spines as long and sharp as porcupine quills. The slope becomes too steep, and I slide part way down on my butt, ripping my pants, and scraping my hands. Near the bottom, I stop and listen for the sound of horses or the shouts of angry men. But what I hear is a wail. A cry of pain. “Broke my damn ankle, Woody. Can’t put an ounce of weight on it.” “Hang in there Cal.” I peek around a stand of organ pipe cactus. Two horses, but only one man. Woody is bent over the edge of a cliff, his hands yanking at his lariat, which is stretched taut. “Damn rope’s fouled in the rocks.” “Git it loose, Woody. Hurry! Ankle’s swole up and hurts like hell.” Calvin’s voice, raw with pain, coming from over the side. The vigilantes must have stopped here and gotten off the horses. The big man never saw the cliff. Now he was over the side. It is more than I could have hoped for. A perfect distraction. I can work my way around them in the darkness. I can get away. Then I hear Calvin moan. “Damn, hurts like a sumbitch. I might pass out.” “Hang with me, man!” “Gonna die out here.” Calvin starts to sob. Great, wracking sobs that seem to echo off the rocks and boulders. I am not sure why I don’t just sneak past them. But sometimes we do things without ever knowing exactly why. “You can’t get the rope free that way,” I say to Woody as I come up behind him. Startled, he wheels around. “Ain’t your business, chico. Git out of here.” “I can rope down the cliff.” “What the hell you talking about?” “Rappelling. Rock climbing. I’ve done it back home.” I look over the side of the cliff. Calvin sits on a ledge about 20 feet below us. The rope is stuck in a crevice maybe 15 feet from him. “I’ll work the rope out, walk it along the cliff face till I reach your friend.” Woody looks at me as if he thinks I might steal his wallet. “Why would you help?” “Because somebody has to.” He seems to think about this a moment. “After you pull him up, drop the rope back to me,” I tell the man. “You trust me to do that, kid?” “Why wouldn’t you?” “Okay, then,” he says, just as an orange streak of the sun appears over the mountains to the east. I rappel down the face of the cliff. Seconds later, I am working the rope out of a slot between two rocks. Once it is free, I wrap the rope around my waist, hold on with both hands, and bounce-walk along the face of the cliff until I reach the ledge. “Thanks. You’re a good kid.” Calvin winces in pain as I hand him the rope. Up close, he looks older and not as fierce as he did from so far away. His face is slick with sweat. His puffy cheeks have a gray stubble and his breath smells of tobacco and beer. He is able to put weight on one leg and use it against the cliff face. Huffing, puffing, and cursing, Woody pulls him up, then as promised, drops me the rope. A few moments later, I reach the surface just as Calvin painfully struggles to get back on his horse. Woody looks down at the ground, kicks at the dust. Seems like he wants to say something. Sorry, maybe. But he can’t quite get it out. “You’re not a drug mule, are you kid?” he says, finally I shake my head. “I just didn’t want you to…” “We never would have hurt that gal. Just meant to scare her into going back home, tell her friends to stay put.” “Where you headed?” Calvin asks, one hand gripping his ankle. “Ocotillo. My aunt lives there.” “We got a truck two miles over if you want a lift. Ocotillo’s on our way to the hospital.” He says it softly. Sounding a little embarrassed, wishing he had more to offer. “My Aunt Luisa’s a nurse. She can take a look at that ankle.” Neither man takes me up on the offer. “Mi tia can make us all breakfast,” I say, trying again. “She’s a great cook.” The sun is an orange fireball, fully above the distant mountains now. The two men don’t look like vigilantes any more. Ordinary guys with creased, tired faces. They exchange bashful looks. “Do you like huevos rancheros?” I ask. “Love ‘em,” Calvin says. “No better breakfast on either side of the border,” Woody agrees. “So?” I ask. There is no more meanness in the men’s faces. “What are we waiting for?” Woody says. “I’m hungry as hell.” I do something I haven’t done since crossing the border. I smile. ### A HELL OF A CRIME “Ladies and gentlemen, the state will prove that Dr. Philip Macklin intentionally drove his Mercedes sedan into the Santa Ynez canal. Why? To kill his wife and make a premeditated murder look like an accident.” Scott Gardner pasted on his solemn face and paused. Keeping quiet was the trial lawyer’s most difficult task, but he wanted his words to sink in. Premeditated murder. “A homicide both heinous and cruel,” he continued. “Dr. Macklin swims to safety as his wife gasps for air, black water engulfing her like a shroud of death.” A tad melodramatic, but Channel 3 will love the sound bite, and the jurors will be moved by my passion. Tomorrow. Tonight, Scott Gardner, duly elected District Attorney of Santa Barbara County, spun his tale for the empty chairs of his conference room. A dry run. “Earlier that fateful evening,” he continued, “Dr. Philip Macklin, the man sitting right here…” J’accuse! Pointing his index finger like a rapier at the monster. “…placed the drug Seconal in his wife’s drink. You will hear evidence that alcohol and barbiturates were found in Mrs. Macklin’s blood, and that both substances were present in a cocktail glass in the family living room. Not only that…” Softly but gravely. Make them lean forward, thirsting for every word. “Dr. Macklin’s fingerprints were found on that glass, along with those of his wife. He mixed her drink, and when she passed out, he carried her to the car, a scrap of her blue satin blouse catching on the Spanish bayonet bush in the driveway. He drove at a high rate of speed down Santa Ynez Road, veered through a guardrail, over the embankment, and into the canal. Just as he had planned.” “You have a motive for all this?” Scott wheeled around. “Jesus! Mom, I didn’t hear you come in.” “Your father used to say I treaded softly as an angel.” “I think he was going deaf there at the end.” She didn’t laugh at his joke. She never laughed at his jokes. “Say, how’d you get past security?” She smiled and gave a little shrug. “Aren’t you going to get your hair trimmed before trial?” Reflexively, Scott ran a hand through his shaggy mop. Next, he expected his mother to straighten his tie, tuck in his shirttail, and remind him to eat his veggies. “No time, Mom. We pick a jury in the morning.” She sighed her disapproval. For a moment, Scott stared at his mother, marveling at her elegance. A gold silk embroidered jacket with a matching skirt falling just below the knees. Armani or Gucci, he figured. Grey hair stylishly cut, glacial blue eyes and a still-firm chin. “So what’s up, Mom? I’m a little busy.” “I’m here to help. It’s not like you’re in court every day. Not like your father. Now there was a lawyer.” As opposed to me? “And there was a man,” she added, wistfully. Ditto, he thought. “So, what’s the motive, Scottie?” his mother said. Scottie. Jeez, how many times had he asked her not to call him that? He turned to his imaginary jury. “And just why did Dr. Macklin kill his wife? Because he was deeply in debt, his psychology practice foundering. Because Mrs. Macklin planned to divorce him, and she was his cash cow.” “Cash cow? Dear God, what a vulgarity. Why not call her his femme de miel?” “If I get any Parisians on the jury, I will.” His mother lowered herself into one of the conference chairs. She gracefully crossed her legs and reached into her handbag, some Italian number made of supple leather the color of hay and soft as butter. She tapped a cigarette out of a blue Gauloises Blondes box and said, “Sometimes, Scottie, I wonder if you’re cut out for criminal law.” “The voters of Santa Barbara County think I am.” “Oh, come dear. They didn’t know they were voting for Scott Gardner, Junior.” That again. In any contest with his father, he would always come in second. Scott Gardner, Sr. had been D.A. for a dozen years before going back into private practice with his wife. Gardner & Gardner, LLP. For all those messy problems of the monied folk with big houses in the hills of Montecito and on the cliffs above the beach. So, sure, Scott knew that a lot of voters mistakenly thought his old man was making a comeback, even though he’d been residing in a cemetery overlooking the Pacific for the past three years. “God, how I miss your father,” she said, lighting a cigarette in violation of state, county, and city laws. “Me too, Mom.” “I should never have gotten remarried.” “After what you and Dad had, you were bound to be disappointed.” Scott once told his mother that her marriage was a lot like the Reagans’. Husband and wife adoring each other and basically ignoring their children. She didn’t deny the charge, saying simply that little tadpoles need to swim on their own, or something to that effect. She tilted her head toward the ceiling and exhaled a puff of smoke. “So what’s your proof this wasn’t an accident?” “Seventeen minutes. The car’s clock stopped at 10:18 P.M. Macklin called 9-1-1 at 10:35. What was he doing for seventeen minutes?” “Maybe he was in shock.” “Paramedics say he was fine.” Scott smiled, letting her know he’d covered that base, just like good old Dad would have done. “Say, have you eaten? Kristin’s stopping by with cheeseburgers.” “Cheeseburgers?” Making the word sound like “herpes sores.” “And fries.” “Kristin never did learn to cook, did she?” “Don’t start, Mom.” “I’m amazed she’s kept her figure. Must have been all that exotic dancing.” “Mom, she was a Laker Girl.” “So she was. A regular Isadora Duncan.” “If you want a burger, tell me now, and I’ll catch Kristin at the In ‘n Out.” “I’d rather eat glass.” She tapped cigarette ash into an empty coffee cup. “What makes you think Macklin didn’t dive into the water and pound on the car windows for seventeen minutes?” “He never claimed he did. Not a word to the cops at the scene or in the hospital. What does that tell you?” “His silence is inadmissible.” “I’m just saying, would an innocent man keep quiet?” “Maybe. If he had to think things through.” “Why? To plan his lies for trial?” “To tell a painful truth that would nonetheless prove his innocence.” “What are you talking about?” “The holes in your case.” “Hey, Mom. It’s one thing to play devil’s advocate, but I’ve been over this a hundred times. There are no holes.” “Do you remember the night of the crash?” “Hard to forget. The sheriff called me at home. I was at the scene in fifteen minutes.” His mother exhaled a perfect smoke ring. She’d learned the trick from his father. “Did the lovely Kristin go with you?” He thought a second. “No. She wasn’t home.” “Ten-thirty at night. Where was she, donating blood at the Red Cross?” “It was a Thursday. Girls’ night out. Racquetball.” “Was she there when you got back?” “Of course. I didn’t get home until nearly dawn. Kristin was asleep.” “How was she in the morning?” “I don’t understand the question, Counselor.” “Yes, you do. I always told your father you were brighter than you appear.” “Gee, thanks Mom.” “Was Kristin stiff or sore? Was she visibly injured in any way?” “What’s that got to do with—” “The witness shall answer the question.” Fine, he’d play along. “I wouldn’t call it an injury. She had a bruised cheekbone from getting hit with a racquetball.” “Easily covered, I suppose, by all that Estee Lauder foundation she trowels on.” The intercom rasped with a woman’s voice. “Honey, can you buzz me in?” “Only if you’re bringing food.” Scott hit a button and heard the lock double-click open. “We haven’t much time,” his mother said. “Don’t make me go through this when you already know the answer.” “Mom, I swear I don’t even know the question.” “You’re in denial, Scottie.” “Of what?” “Let’s say that Mrs. Macklin was supposed to be traveling that fateful evening. But a marine layer rolled in, and the Lear couldn’t get out of the municipal airport.” “Okay, she’s fogged in.” His mother laughed, the sound of church bells pealing. “Oh my, yes. Was she ever fogged in. Anyway, she comes home and finds her husband in bed with a young woman. The woman was astride the miscreant in what I believe they call the cowgirl position, and sure as shooting, her whoops and hollers would have been appropriate for a rodeo.” Scott heard the door to the anteroom open. “Honey,” Kristin called out. “I’ll be there in a sec after I get some Cokes from the fridge.” “Take your time.” He turned to his mother. “Your story doesn’t make sense. If Mrs. Macklin catches her husband in flagrante delicto, no way she’s going to sit down and have a drink with him.” “She doesn’t.” “So what’s with his fingerprints on the glass?” “I assume she put Seconal in her whiskey, downed it, then dropped the glass. Her husband simply picked up the glass, perhaps to sniff it, or maybe he’s a neat freak.” They could hear Kristin in the next room, the sound of ice cubes rattling out of a tray. “You’re saying she committed suicide,” Scott said. “Tried to. OD’ed into a semi-conscious state.” “So what’s she doing in the car with her husband?” “What’s down Santa Ynez Road? Three miles past the site of the accident.” He considered the question. “The Cottage Hospital.” “Exactly. If I were defending the case, I’d say Dr. Macklin felt enormous guilt over causing his wife’s suicide attempt. He picked her up, carried her to his car, her blouse catching on that damn thorny bush. He’s driving to the hospital at 70 miles an hour when he lost control on a curve and plunged into the canal.” “So why didn’t he pull her out of the water?” “Because he only had time to rescue one person, and no matter how heavy his guilt, he was in love with someone else. Stated another way, his wife was second on his triage list.” “Wrong. There was no else in the car.” “You mean there was no one else there when paramedics arrived. Dr. Macklin didn’t call 9-1-1 until his paramour – a lovely term, is it not? – left the scene. There’s your seventeen minutes.” “So who’d he rescue? Who’s this paramour?” “How about a woman who hit her cheekbone on the dashboard when the car went into the water?” He shook his head and his shoulders sagged. Of course, he knew. He just couldn’t accept it. Not that or the knowledge of his own cowardice. He’d never challenged Kristin, and he’d never confronted his own unethical conduct. He wanted to punish Macklin. Not for homicide, because the man wasn’t a killer. No, he wanted to punish Macklin for cuckolding him. “So what do I do now?” he said. “Scott, who are you talking to?” With a dancer’s graceful gait, Kristin waltzed into the conference room in black yoga pants and a florescent orange sleeveless sports top. She carried a tray of food and drinks. “Tell me!” he yelled. “Tell you what?” Kristin asked. “What are you upset about?” “Mom, what do I do?” “Oh Christ.” Kristin dropped the tray on the table, spilling a soda. “Not this again.” “Mom!” He could still see Gayle Gardner Macklin, but her image was fading. “Mom, don’t leave me. Please!” Trembling, Kristin said, “Scott, you know your mother drowned in that car.” “No! She’s here now.” “Honey, you spoke at her funeral and bawled your eyes out.” Scott propped one hand on the conference table and struggled to his feet. He brushed past his wife without even seeing her. “The judge should never have allowed you to handle the case,” Kristin said. “I knew something weird would happen.” His legs felt rubbery as he staggered out, leaving behind his trial bag, the pleadings, the exhibits. His wife. “Scott, where are you going?” She sniffed the air. “Did you start smoking again?” No answer. He was gone. *** A moment later, Kristin dropped into a chair. She examined a coffee cup on the table. Inside, a half-smoked cigarette. The tip still glowing. French. Just like her bitch mother-in-law used to smoke. Before she went straight to hell. A shudder went through Kristin, and she crushed the cigarette into the bottom of the cup. From the doorway, she heard a melodious voice. “Kristin, dear. You look just darling in your workout gear.” She spun around in her chair. Omigod. “Last time we met, you were au naturel and grunting like a sow in heat.” Kristin steadied herself against the fear. Her words came in forced breaths. “What have you become? What do you want?” “At long last, I am my true self. And all I want is justice.” Paralyzed, Kristin watched as Scott, wearing a woman’s grey wig, his cheeks rouged and lips glossed, raised a handgun and pointed it at her chest. ### DEVELOPMENT HELL Marvin Beazle slipped off his tinted shades, tugged at his ponytail and studied the emaciated writer sitting across from him. Skin the texture of paraffin. Stained trousers, moth-eaten frock coat, and a silk cravat dangling like a tattered curtain. “Love the Johnny Depp look,” Beazle said. “But why the long face?” The writer stared back with rheumy eyes. “Like absinthe with its cork askew, I do not travel well.” A scarecrow in a wool coat, Beazle thought. One of those writers who could use a tanning salon, a tailor, and some Zoloft. “Okay if I call you Eddie? Or do you prefer Al?” “I prefer Edgar. Or Mr. Poe.” The writer wheezed an unhealthy cough. “But if you insist, you may call me Eddie. I have never stood on ceremony.” “My man!” Beazle beamed, a tiger dreaming of tasting a lamb. They were in the executive offices of Diablo Pictures on Sunset Boulevard, and Beazle had a rights deal to close. In his experience – and he’d been doing this forever – writers were worms. Drowning in doubt, strangling on self-loathing. A little money, a little flattery, and most scribblers would sell their souls along with their scripts. Beazle vaulted from his ergonomically correct swivel chair and pointed toward the floor-to-ceiling window. “What do you see out there, Eddie?” The writer squinted into the afternoon sun. “Houses on a precipitous hillside. A hideous white sign. ‘Hollywood.’ As if the inhabitants need assistance recalling their whereabouts.” That snooty East Coast attitude, Beazle thought. Like Baltimore is the Garden of Eden. “It can all be yours, Eddie.” “All of what, sir?” “Okay, not my digs on Mulholland. But a big chunk of this burg is yours for the taking.” Beazle peeled off his black silk Armani suitcoat and tossed it onto his leather sofa. He plopped back into his chair and swung his five-hundred dollar Matteo sneakers onto the desk. The sneakers – alligator hide dyed red and gold - made Beazle recognizable to everyone who counted, especially the maître d’s of Prime, Maestro’s, and The Grill, where he ate his steaks bloody. “Gotta hand it to you, Eddie. You’re a helluva wordmeister.” “So you have read my story?” “‘The Pit and the Pendulum.’ Devoured it. The coverage, I mean. Not the whole story.” Beazle picked up three-page synopsis and skimmed through it: “Condemned prisoner wakes up in a dungeon. Nearly tumbles into a deep pit. Falls asleep, wakes up strapped to a board, a pendulum above his head with a razor-sharp scythe, swinging lower and lower.” Beazle looked up from the document, sniffed the air. “I smell franchise, Eddie.” “I beg your pardon.” “Slasher flicks keep on trucking. Sequels, prequels, spinoffs.” “Slasher? What a macabre word.” Beazle returned his gaze to the document. “Then you throw in some moving walls for a second act complication, and finally the guy’s rescued by the French army. A little deus ex machina , but we can fix that. Our reader – a top film student who happens to be my niece – says you’ve got a bold voice and a literary style. Don’t worry about that ‘literary’ part. We can fix that, too.” “I am not certain I take your meaning.” “Forget it. Let’s talk money, Eddie. How much you making now?” “The Southern Literary Review pays me fifty dollars a month. Occasionally, there is extra remuneration. I was paid ten dollars for ‘The Raven.’” Like a fisherman with a woolly bugger, Beazle baited the hook. “Diablo Pictures wants to option your story, Eddie. A quarter million bucks for one year against a cool million pick-up price.” “The devil you say!” “I shit you not, Eddie. Plus three points of the net, which of course is zilch, seeing how ‘Gone With the Wind” still hasn’t turned a profit. But you’ll get the usual boilerplate regarding sequels and merchandising.” “Merchandising?” “If McDonald’s wants to license the ‘Pit Burger,’ you get some dough. If Gillette markets the ‘Double Bladed Pendulum,’ you get a slice of the pie. Assuming we don’t change the title.” “Is this really happening, Mr. Beazle, or is this some phantasm of my imagination?” “It’s real, pal. You’re talking to the guy who greenlit three of the top ten grossing pictures of all time. Adjusted for inflation, of course. And here’s the foam on the latte. We want you, Eddie Poe, to write the script. In fact, we insist. Half a mill for a first draft, a re-write and a polish. Whadaya say?” “I fear I might swoon.” “As long as you don’t piss yourself. Fitzgerald did, right in that chair.” The writer’s forehead beaded with sweat. Either it was the excitement or the heavy wool coat on an August day. “You look a little dry, Eddie. You want something to drink?” “Laudanum, perchance?” “What a kidder! Okay, let’s do some business.” Beazle pulled out a thick sheath of papers stapled to luxurious blue backing. “All I need is your signature, and it’s a done deal. Check’s already written. A quarter mill up front.” He brandished the check, waving it like a pennant in a breeze. Handing a pen to the writer, Beazle said, “Before you know it, Eddie, you’ll be sitting in a director’s chair with your name on it, eating craft service omelettes, and banging the script girl.” The writer searched for an inkwell before figuring out that the pen had its own supply. His hand poised over the contract, he said, “What did you mean a moment ago? About changing the title.” “The jury’s still out, Eddie. But we may have to lose ‘Pendulum.’ It’s three syllables.” “And that presents a conundrum?” “Titles need punch. There. Will. Be. Blood. Get it? Too bad ‘Saw’ is already taken.” “But the pendulum is essential to the predicament. The scimitar swings ever closer, magnifying the horror.” “So who wants to see a circumcision? It’s a movie, not a bris.” Confusion clouded the writer’s face like fog over Malibu. “But I thought you liked my story.” “Exactly. Liked it. Didn’t love it. That’s why we gotta make some changes.” The dark bags under the writer’s eyes seemed to grow heavier. “Am I not free to write the script as I see fit?” “Sure you are. When hell freezes over.” Beazle drummed a manicured fingernail on his desktop. “Look, Eddie. Do you want the deal or not? I got Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley dying to get their projects out of turnaround.” “I daresay some cautious editing might be appropriate,” the writer ventured. Like taking a biscotti from a baby, Beazle thought. “That’s the spirit, Eddie. So I gotta ask you. Where’s the girl?” “What girl?” “You got a guy strapped to a board. Talking to himself. Bor-ing! Maybe Tom Hanks can schmooze with a volleyball for two hours, but he had the beach, the ocean, the great outdoors. You got a dark hole in the ground.” “The solitude represents man’s existence.” “Deal-breaker, pal. If you’re gonna ask Leo or Cuba or Russell to spend the entire shoot in a hole, at least give ‘em Scarlett Johansson for eye candy.” “Scarlett…?” “In a torn blouse. And instead of those rats chewing off the guy’s straps, she unties him.” “The rats represent our primal fears.” “Box office poison, Eddie. A one-way ticket straight-to-video.” “But a woman…” The writer’s voice trailed off and he scratched at his mustache as if it had fleas. “Writing from the distaff point of view is hardly my forte.” “No problema, Eduardo. We’ll bring in Nora Ephron to punch up the he-said, she-said dialogue.” “Another writer?” “Read me your first sentence, Eddie.” The writer recited by heart. “‘I was sick–-sick to death with that long agony.’” “Downer. Maybe we get Judd Apatow to lighten the mood, toss in some fart jokes.” “But that would dilute the horror.” “Hold the phone, Eddie! Just got a brainstorm. The prisoner falls in love with Scarlett, but she’s got a fatal disease.” “Good heavens. What would that accomplish? “‘Halloween’ meets ‘Love Story.’ Boffo B.O.” The writer’s face took on the pallor of a drowning victim. “Perhaps the theme of the story is unclear to you.” “Hey, you want to send a message, use e-mail. You want foreign box office, you need stars, action, sex.” “I assure you my work is quite popular in France.” “Sure, you and Jerry Lewis. The point is, we’re going after the masses, not the art-house crowd.” The writer still held the pen in a death grip. He stared at the check. Picking up sunlight from the window, the paper seemed to be made of burnished gold. He exhaled a long sigh and said, “I suppose you know best, Mr. Beazle. So if there are no other changes…” Beazle smiled, his double row of porcelain crowns gleaming. He loved breaking a writer. It was better than sex. Maybe not sex-on-coke, but straight sex. “One more thing, Eddie. What’s the setting? Where the hell’s this prison?” “Spain, of course.” “Fine. We’ll shoot in Vancouver. But no subtitles and we gotta update.” “How? It’s the Spanish Inquisition.” “Period piece? No can do. With all respect, Eddie, you’re no Jane Austen. And as for the ending, we gotta lose the French Army. Who’s gonna believe they win a battle? I’m picturing a SEAL team, maybe the Rock in a cameo.” The writer’s alabaster hand trembled as he fiddled with a loose button on his heavy coat. Beazle made a mental note to send the guy to Melrose Avenue for some new threads before letting him on the set. “That is it, then?” the writer asked. “A new title. Another writer. A naked woman. No rats. A SEAL team. And Canada.” “Almost there. But tell me. Who’s the hell’s the heavy?” “A faceless evil. The horror is intensified by the anonymity of its source.” “Muddled storytelling, Eddie.” The writer’s shoulders sagged. “I suppose you could say the villain is the unseen executioner.” “Unseen? It’s motion pictures, not radio. How about Anthony Hopkins? Those creepy eyes will pucker your orifice.” The writer’s forehead knotted like burls on pine. “Putting a face to the evil is unnecessary. The man in the pit believes he is going to die. True horror is not physical pain. It is the anticipation of pain, the realization that death is a certainty, whether by falling into the pit or being eviscerated by the pendulum. Do you understand, sir?” “Sure. You don’t like Anthony Hopkins. You want to go younger? My daughter says Clive Owen makes her panties wet. Whadaya say?” “Mr. Beazle, I cannot surrender my integrity.” “Not surrender. Sell! I’ll get you a suite at the Peninsula. Room service. Blow. You want a hooker? I got a chippie you’ll love. Name’s Lenore.” The writer pulled himself up, knees wobbling. “If I agreed to your terms, it would indeed be a midnight dreary.” “Sit down, Eddie!” “I think not.” He took a step toward the door. “You’re saying no to money, pussy and drugs? What the hell kind of a writer are you!” But he was already out the door. Beazle couldn’t believe it. A moment earlier, the bastard was perched on the edge of the abyss. Beazle grabbed his suit coat and hurried into the corridor, alligator sneakers clomping on the tile. He caught up with the writer at the elevator bank. “Eddie! Is it the dough? I’ll double it.” Two elevator doors opened simultaneously. One attendant, a smoking hot redhead in a black leotard festooned with orange flames, winked and said, “Down?” The writer recoiled as waves of heat rolled from the open car. In the other car, the attendant, a petite blonde in a white leotard with snowy wings, smiled angelically and said, “Up?” “Last chance Eddie!” Beazle implored. “Never more,” the writer whispered, soft as a lover’s lament. Beazle sighed in surrender. He didn’t lose often, but when he did, it hurt. “He’s going up.” The writer stepped into the blonde’s elevator, the door closing with a quiet whoosh. Beazle grabbed a fat cigar from his suit pocket. A Cohiba, a gift from Fidel himself at the Havana Film Festival. Beazle ran the wrapper paper under his nose and inhaled deeply. Not even burning sulphur smelled this good. Beazle took a double guillotine cutter from his pants pocket and snipped off the cap of the Cohiba. He snapped his thumb and middle finger together, setting off a spark that engulfed the tip in flame. He drew smoke – his mother’s milk – into his lungs, and held it there. “There’ll be others,” he said, exhaling a cloud as black as coal dust. There were always others, dying to sell their souls. Writers who dream of starlets and red carpets and their own insignificant names flickering across the screen. Vainglorious fools, every one, all destined to spend eternity in development hell. ### SOLOMON & LORD: TO HELL AND BACK “What aren’t you telling me?” Victoria Lord demanded. Jeez. Her grand jury tone. “Nothing to tell,” Steve Solomon said. “I’m going deep-sea fishing.” “You? The guy who got seasick in a paddle boat at Disney World.” “That boat was defective. I’m gonna sue.” Steve hauled an Igloo cooler onto the kitchen counter. “You may not know it, but I come from a long line of anglers.” “A long line of liars, you mean.” The partners of Solomon & Lord, Attorneys-at-Law, stood in the kitchen of Steve’s bungalow on Kumquat Avenue in Coconut Grove. The place was a square stucco pillbox the color of a rotting avocado, but it had withstood hurricanes, termites, and countless keg parties. Unshaven and hair mussed, wearing cargo shorts and a t-shirt, Steve looked like a beach bum. Lips glossed and cheekbones highlighted, wearing a glen plaid suit with an ivory silk blouse, Victoria looked sexy, smart, and successful. “C’mon, Steve. What are you really up to?” Her voice drizzled with suspicion like mango glaze over sautéed snapper. Steve wanted to tell his lover and law partner the truth. Or at least, the partial truth. But he knew how Ms. Propriety would react: “You can’t do that. It’s unethical.” And if he told her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? “You’ll be disbarred! Jailed. Maybe even killed.” No, he’d have to fly solo. Or swim solo, as the case may be. Steve pulled two six packs of Heineken out of the refrigerator and tossed them into the cooler. “Okay, it’s really a business meeting.” Victoria cocked her head and pursed her lips in cross-exam mode. “Which is it, Pinocchio? Fishing or business? Were you lying then or are you lying now?” For a tall, lanky blonde with a dazzling smile, she could fire accusations the way Dan Marino once threw the football. “I’m going fishing with Manuel Cruz.” “What! I thought you were going to sue him.” “Which is what makes it business. Cruz wants to make an offer before we file suit. I suggested we go fishing, keep it relaxed. He loved the idea and invited me on his boat.” So far, Steve hadn’t told an outright fib and it was almost 8 A.M. Not quite a personal best, but still, he was proud of himself. For the last five years, Manuel Cruz worked as controller of Toraño Chevrolet in Hialeah where he managed to steal three million dollars before anyone noticed. Teresa Toraño, a Cuban exilado in her seventies, was nearly bankrupt, and Steve was determined to get her money back, but it wouldn’t be easy. All the computer records had been erased, leaving no electronic trail. Cruz had no visible assets other than his sportfishing boat. The guy didn’t even own a house. And the juiciest piece of evidence – Cruz fled Cuba years ago after embezzling money from a government food program – wasn’t even admissible. “Just you and Cruz, alone at sea.” she said. “Sounds dangerous.” “I’m not afraid of him.” “It’s not you I’m worried about.” *** Victoria punched the RECORD button on her pocket Dictaphone. “Memo to the Toraño file. Make certain our malpractice premiums are paid.” “You and your damned Dictaphone,” Steve complained. “Drives me nuts.” “Why?” “I don’t know. It’s so…” “Organized?” “Anal.” Victoria pulled her Mini-Cooper into the Matheson Hammock marina, swerving to avoid a land-crab, clip-clopping across the asphalt. The sun was already baking the pavement, the air sponge-thick with humidity. Just above a stand of sea lavender trees, a pair of turkey buzzards flew surveillance. Victoria sneaked a look at Steve as he hauled the cooler out of the car’s tiny trunk. Dark, unruly hair, a slight, sly grin as if he were one joke ahead of the rest of the world. The deep brown eyes, usually filled with mischief, were hidden behind dark Ray Bans. Dammit, why won’t he level with me? Why did he always take the serpentine path instead of the expressway? Why did he always treat laws and rules, cases and precedents as mere suggestions? Because he has more fun making it up as he goes along. Steve drove her crazy with his courtroom antics and his high-wire ethics. If he believed in a client, there was nothing he wouldn’t do to win. Which was exactly what frightened her now. Just what would Steve do for Teresa Toraño? They headed toward the dock, the morning sun beating down so ferociously Victoria felt her blouse sticking to her shoulder blades. The only sounds were the groans of boats in their moorings and the caws of gulls overhead. The air smelled of the marshy hammock, salt and iodine and fermenting seaweed. The fronds of thatch palms hung limp in the still air. “Gimme a kiss. I gotta go,” Steve said, as they stepped onto the concrete dock. In front of them were expensive toys, gleaming white in the morning sun. Rows of powerful sportfishermen, large as houses. Dozens of sleek sailing craft, ketches and sloops and schooners. “Sure, Mr. Romance.” She kissed him lightly on the lips. Something seemed off-kilter, but what? And what was that pressing against her through his shorts? Hadn’t last night been enough? Twice before SportsCenter, once after Letterman. She sneaked a hand into his pocket and came out with a pair of handcuffs. “What’s this, the latest in fishing tackle?” “Ah. Well. Er…” Gasping like a beached grouper. “You know that store, Only Sexy Things?” He grabbed the handcuffs and slipped them back into his pocket. “Thought I’d spice up the bedroom.” “Stick to cinnamon incense. Last chance, lover boy. What’s going on?” “You’re fucking late, hombre!” Manuel Cruz yelled from the fly bridge of a power boat tied up at the dock. He was a muscular man in his late thirties, wearing canvas shorts and a white shirt with epaulets. A Marlins’ cap was pulled low over his eyes, and his sunglasses hung on a chain. The boat was a sportfisherman in the sixty-foot range, all polished teak and gleaming chrome. A fly bridge, a glass enclosed salon, and a pair of fighting chairs in the cockpit for serious deep-sea fishing. The name on the stern read: “Wet Dream.” Men, Victoria thought. Men were so one-dimensional. “Buenos días, Ms. Lord.” She gave him a nod and a tight smile. “Let’s go, Solomon,” Cruz urged. “Fish are hungry.” Steve hoisted the cooler onto the deck. “Toss the lines for us, hon?” She leveled a gaze at him. “Sure, hon.” Victoria untied the bow line from its cleat and tossed it aboard. She moved quickly to the stern, untied the line, propped a hand on a piling crusted with bird dung, and leapt aboard. “Vic! Whadaya think you’re you doing?” “Going fishing.” “Get back on the dock.” She smiled and pointed toward the increasing body of water that separated them from land. “You’re not dressed for fishing,” Steve told her. “I’m dressed for your bail hearing.” She kicked off her velvet-toed pumps and peeled off her panty hose, distracting Steve with her muscular calves, honed on the tennis courts of La Gorce Country Club. “Now, what’s with the handcuffs?” Steve lowered his voice so she could barely hear him above the roaring diesels. “You remember Solomon’s Law number one?” Oh, that. Steve’s personal code for rule breaking. “How could I forget? ‘If the law doesn’t work…work the law.’” “In the matter of Manuel Cruz, the law isn’t working.” *** “What’s that?” Cruz asked, eying the cooler on the deck. “Brought beer and bait,” Steve said. “What for? I got a case of La Tropical and a hundred pounds of shiners and wiggles.” All three of them stood on the fly bridge. Twin diesels throbbing, the Wet Dream cruised down Hawk Channel inside the barrier reefs. The water was green felt, smooth as a billiard table, the boat riding on a plane at thirty knots. Cruz ran a hand over the polished teak steering wheel. “I come to this country with nothing but the clothes on my back and look at me now.” “Very impressive,” Steve said, thinking it would be even more impressive if Cruz hadn’t stolen the money to buy the damn boat. Cruz winked at Victoria, his smile more of a leer. “You two want to fool around, I got clean sheets in the master stateroom.” “Sounds lovely,” Victoria cooed. “Want to fool around, Steve?” Her smile was as sweet as fresh-squeezed guarapo, but Steve caught the sarcastic tone. “Maybe after we catch something,” he said, pointedly. “Heads and A/C work, faucets don’t,” Cruz said. “Water tank’s fouled.” Steve studied the man, standing legs spread at the wheel, a macho pose. A green tattoo of a scorpion crawled up one ankle. On the other ankle, in a leather sheaf, was a foot-long Marine combat knife. It looked like the weapon Sylvester Stallone used in those “Rambo” movies. Out here, it could be used to cut lines or clean fish. Or gut a lawyer planning to do him harm. *** They had just passed Sombrero Light when Cruz said, “So here’s my offer, hombre. The Toraño bitch gives me a release with a promise never to sue. And vice versa. I won’t sue her ass.” “I don’t like the way you talk about my client,” Steve said. “Tough shit. I don’t like Fidel Castro, but what am I gonna do about it?” “Your offer stinks like week-old snapper.” “You sue me, what do you get? A piece of paper you can wipe your ass with. I got nothing in my own name, including the boat.” Steve looked right and left to get his bearings. Off to port, in the direction of the reef, he spotted the fins of two sharks heading toward strands of yellow sargasso weed, home to countless fish. Red coral just below the surface cast a rusty glow on the shallow water. To the starboard was the archipelago of the Florida Keys. From here, the island chain was strung out like an emerald necklace. “Let Vic take the wheel a minute,” Steve said. “I want you to see something.” Cruz allowed as how even a woman lawyer could keep a boat on 180 degrees, due south, and followed Steve down the ladder to the cockpit. Just off the stern, the props dug at the water like a plow digging at a field. Steve opened the cooler, reached underneath the ice and pulled out a two foot-long greenish-blue fish, frozen solid. A horse-eyed jack. “Great bait, huh?” Steve held the fish by its tail and let it swing free. It had a fine heft, like a small sledgehammer. “Already told you. I got shiners and wiggles.” “Then I better use this for something else.” Steve swung the frozen fish at Cruz’ head. The man stutter-stepped sideways and the blow glanced off his shoulder and sideswiped an ear. Steve swung again, and Cruz ducked, the fish flying free and shattering the glass door of the salon. Cruz reached for his knife in the ankle sheath and Steve barreled into him, knocking them both to the deck. On the fly bridge, Victoria screamed. “Stop! Both of you!” The two men rolled over each other, scraping elbows and knees on the planked deck. Cruz was heavier, and his breath smelled of tobacco. Steve was wiry and quicker, but ended up underneath when they skidded to a stop. Cruz grabbed Steve’s t-shirt at the neck and slammed his head into the deck. Once, twice, three times. Thwomp, thwomp, thwomp. Steve balled a fist and landed a short right that caught Cruz squarely on the Adam’s apple. The man gagged, clutched his throat, and fell backward. Steve squirmed out from under, but Cruz tripped him. Steve tumbled into the gunwale, smacking his head, sparks flashing behind his eyes. He had the sensation of being dragged across a hard floor. On his back, he opened his eyes and saw something glistening in the sun. The knife blade! Cruz was on his knees, knife in hand. “Pendejo! I oughta make chum out of you.” “No!” Victoria’s voice, closer than it should have been. Steve heard the clunk, saw Cruz topple over, felt him bounce off his own chest. Straddling both of them was Victoria, a three-foot steel tarpon gaff in her right hand. “Omigod,” she said. “I didn’t kill him, did I?” “Not unless a dead man grunts and farts at the same time,” Steve said, listening to sounds coming from both ends of the semi-conscious man. He shoved Cruz off and stood up, wrapping his arms around Victoria, who was trembling. “You were terrific, Vic. We work great together.” “Really? What did you do?” “Come on. Help me get him up the ladder.” Steve pulled the handcuffs from his pocket. “I want him on the bridge.” “What now? What insanity now?” “Relax Vic. In a few hours, Cruz will be dying to give back Teresa’s money.” *** Steve had played fast and loose with the rules before, Victoria thought, but nothing like this. This is scary. And in the eyes of the law, she was dirty, too. This could mean trading the couture outfits and Italian footwear for orange jumpsuits and shower shoes. With one wrist handcuffed to the rail at the rear of the bridge, Cruz had been berating Steve for the past twenty minutes. “Know what, Solomon? She hits harder than you do.” “Mr. Cruz,” Victoria said, “if you begin to feel dizzy or nauseous, let me know. Head trauma can be very dangerous.” “What about my head?” Steve demanded. “It’s impervious to trauma. Or reason.” The Wet Dream was planing across the tops of small whitecaps when Steve said: “Take the wheel, Vic. Keep it on two-zero-two.” “Please,” she said, irritated. “What?” “‘Keep it on two-zero-two, please.’” “A captain doesn’t say ‘please.’” “Maybe not Captain Bligh.” Victoria slid behind the wheel, thinking maybe she’d hit the wrong man with the gaff. She still didn’t know where they were headed, and Steve’s behavior was becoming increasingly bizarre. He had the beginning of a lump on his head, and blood trickled from his skinned elbows and knees. “Kidnaping,” Cruz said. “Assault. Boat theft. You two are gonna be busy little shysters.” “Shut up,” Steve said. “Under the law of the sea, I’m master of this craft.” “What law? You stole my fucking boat.” *** Once past Key West, they entered the Florida Straits, the water growing deeper, the color turning from light green to aquamarine to cobalt blue. No reefs here, and a five-foot chop slapped at the hull of the boat. The wavecaps sparkled, as if studded with diamonds in the late afternoon sun. “Gonna tell you a story, Cruz,” Steve said, “and when I’m done, you’re gonna cry and beg forgiveness and give back all the money you stole.’” “Yeah, right.” “Story starts forty-some years ago in Havana. A beautiful lady named Teresa Toraño lost her husband who was brave enough to oppose Fidel Castro.” “Tough shit,” Cruz said. “Happened to a lot of people.” “Teresa came to Miami with nothing. Worked minimum wage, mopped floors in a car dealership, ended up owning Toraño Chevrolet.” “My papi always told me hard work pays off,” Cruz said, smirking. “Too bad he never got out of the cane fields.” “A few years ago, she hires a new controller. A fellow exilado. This guy’s got a fancy computer system that will revolutionize their books. It also lets him steal three million bucks before anybody knows what hit them. Now, the banks have pulled Teresa’s line of credit, and she could go under.” “I’m not crying, Solomon.” “Not done yet. See, this lady is damn important to me. If it hadn’t been for Teresa giving me work my first year out of school, I’d have gone broke.” “Lo único que logró la dama fue posponer lo inevitable,” Cruz said. “She only postponed the inevitable.” Victoria knew there was more to it than just a financial relationship. Teresa had virtually adopted Steve and his nephew Bobby, and the Solomon Boys loved her in return. After Victoria entered the picture, she was added to the extended Toraño family. Now, each year at Christmas, they all gathered at Teresa’s estate in Coral Gables for her homemade crema de vie, an anise drink so rich it made eggnog seem like diet soda. All of which meant that Steve would do anything for Teresa. One of Steve’s self-proclaimed laws expressed the principle: “I won’t break the law, breach legal ethics, or risk jail time…unless it’s for someone I love.” Now that Victoria thought about it, the question wasn’t: Just what would Steve do for Teresa Toraño? It was: What wouldn’t he do? “That sleazy accountant,” Steve said. “In Cuba, he kept the books for the student worker program, the students who cut sugar cane. Ran the whole food services division. But he had a nasty habit of cutting the pineapple juice with water and selling the meat off the back of trucks. The kids went hungry and he got fat. When the authorities found out, he stole a boat and got the hell out of the worker’s paradise.” “Old news, hombre.” “Vic, still on two-zero-two?” Steve asked. “I know how to read a compass,” she said, sharply. “Where you taking me?” Cruz demanded. “Jeez, how’d you ever get from Havana to Key West?” Steve said. “Everybody in Havana knows the heading to the States. You want Key West, you keep it at twenty-two degrees.” “A bit east of due north. So what’s two-zero-two?” “A little west of due south.” “Keep going, Cruz. I think you’re catching the drift, no pun intended.” Steve waited a moment for the bulb to pop on. When it didn’t, he continued, “Two hundred two minus twenty-two is one hundred eighty. What happens when you make a hundred eighty degree turn, philosophically or geographically speaking?” “Fuck!” Cruz jerked the handcuff so hard the rail shuddered. “We’re going to Havana!” “Bingo.” “You’re taking me straight to hell!” “Precisely. We’re repatriating you.” “You crazy? Cuban patrol boats will sink us. You remember that tugboat. Trece de Marzo. Forty people dead.” “The Marzo was trying to leave the island. We’re coming in, and we’re bringing a fugitive to justice. They should give us a reward, or at least a bottle of Club Havana rum.” “They’ll kill me.” “Not without a trial. A speedy trial. Of course, if you tell us where you’ve stashed Teresa’s money, we’ll turn this tub around.” “Dammit, Steve,” Victoria said. “We have to talk.” *** Steve put the boat on auto – two hundred two degrees – and took Victoria down to the salon. “You could get us killed,” she said. “Or jailed. Right now, the best case scenario would be disbarment.” “That’s why I didn’t want you along.” Steve walked to the galley sink and turned on the faucet, intending to rinse the dried blood from a scraped elbow. The plumbing rattled and thumped, but nothing came out. He opened the ice maker. Empty, too. “Cruz is a lousy host,” Steve said. “Are you listening to me? Let’s go back to Miami. I’ll see if we can talk Cruz out of filing charges.” They both heard the sound, but it took a second to identify it. A scream from the bridge. “Sol-o-mon!” Followed a second later by machine gun fire. *** Steve and Victoria ran back up the ladder to the bridge. Cruz was tugging against the rail, his wrist bleeding where the handcuff sawed into his skin. Three hundred yards off their starboard, a Cuban patrol boat fired a short burst from a machine gun mounted on its bow. Dead ahead, the silhouette of the Cuban island rose from the sea, misty in the late afternoon light. “Warning shots,” Steve said. “Everybody relax.” Steve eased back on the throttles, tooted the horn, and waved both arms at the approaching boat. “C’mon Cruz. It’s now or never. When they pull alongside, I’m handing you over.” “Do what you got to do, asshole.” “Steve, turn the boat around,” Victoria ordered. “Now!” The patrol boat slowed. Two men in uniform at the machine gun, a third man holding a bullhorn. “I’m not fucking with you, Cruz,” Steve said. “You’ve got thirty seconds. Where’s Teresa’s money?” “Chingate!” Cruz snarled. “Senores del barco de pesca!” The tinny sound of the bullhorn carried across the water. “Last chance,” Steve said. “Se han adentrado en las aguas territoriales de la República de Cuba.” “Steve, we’re in Cuban waters,” Victoria said. “I know. I passed Spanish 101.” “Den la vuelta y salgan inmediatamente de aquí, o los vamos a abordar.” “They’re going to board us if we don’t turn around,” she said. “I kind of figured that out, too.” Steve turned to Cruz. “Absolutely, positively last chance, pal. I’m handing you over.” “I’m betting you don’t,” Cruz said. The patrol boat was fifty yards away. One of the men in uniform pointed an AK-47 their way. “Steve…?” Victoria’s voice was a plea. This wasn’t the way he’d planned it. By this time, Cruz should have been spouting numbers and accounts from banks in the Caymans or Switzerland or the Isle of Man. But the bastard was toughing it out. Calling Steve’s bluff. Is that what it is? An empty threat. Steve wanted to hand Cruz over, wanted him to rot in a Cuban prison. But dammit, I’m a lawyer, not a vigilante. He wished he could turn his conscience on and off with the flick of a switch. He wished he could end a man’s life with cold calculations and no remorse. But the rats that would gnaw at Cruz at Isla de Pinos would visit the house on Kumquat Avenue in Steve’s nightmares. “Take the wheel, Vic.” Filled with self-loathing, wishing he could be someone he was not. “Twenty-two degrees. Key West.” “Say ‘please,’” Cruz laughed, mocking him. *** Just before midnight, the lights of Key West off the port, the Wet Dream cruised north through Hawk Channel, headed toward Miami. The sky was clear and sparkled with stars. The wind whipped across the bridge, bringing a night chill. Victoria slipped into her glen-plaid jacket. Hair messed, clothes rumpled, emotionally drained, she was trying to figure out how to salvage the situation. I came aboard to save Steve from himself and I’m doing a lousy job. Steve stood at the wheel, draining a La Tropical beer, maybe listening, maybe not, as Cruz berated him. “You fucking loser,” Cruz said. “Every minute I’m tied up is gonna cost you.” Cruz rubbed his arm where the cuff was biting into his wrist. “I got nerve damage. Gonna add that to my lawsuit. When this is over, you’ll wish the Cubans had taken you prisoner.” “Steve, I need a moment with you,” Victoria said. Steve put the boat on auto – Cruz complaining that it was a damn reckless way to cruise at night – then headed down the ladder, joining Victoria in the salon. “You can’t keep him locked up,” she said. “I need more time.” “For what?” “To think.” He walked to the galley sink and turned the faucet, intending to toss cold water on his face. Same rattle, same thump. “Damn, I forgot. Cruz put all that money into his boat and still can’t get the water to work.” “What?” “A fancy boat like this and you can’t wash your hands.” “No. What you said before. ‘Cruz put all that money into his boat.’” “It’s just a figure of speech.” “Think about it, Steve. He doesn’t own a house. He leases a car. No brokerage accounts, no bank accounts. Everything he has, he puts into his boat. If he ever has to leave town quickly…” “Like he left Cuba,” Steve said, picking up the beat. “With nothing but the clothes on his back.” “This time it would be different because…” “The money’s here! On the boat.” In sync now, she thought. A man and a woman running stride for stride. “Vic, why don’t you go back up to the bridge and make sure we don’t crash into any cruise ships?” “And what are you doing?” “I’m gonna fix the plumbing.” *** Steve opened the hatch in the salon floor and climbed down a ladder to the engine compartment, wincing at the noise from the twin diesels. He found the black water tank first, tucked up under the bow. Sewage and waste water. Nothing unusual about it, and Cruz wouldn’t want to dirty his hands with that, anyway. Then Steve found the freshwater tank, a custom job built into one of the bulkheads. Made of fiberglass, it looked capable of holding 500 gallons or more. The boat had desalinization equipment, so why did Cruz need such a big tank? A big tank that wasn’t working. Steve grabbed a flashlight mounted on a pole and took a closer look. He peered into an inspection port and could see the tank was three quarters full. On top of the tank was a metal plate with a built-in handle. He turned the plate counter-clockwise and removed it. Then he aimed the flashlight into the opening. Water. Well, what did you expect? He grabbed a mop that was attached by velcro to a stringer and poked the handle into the tank. The end of the handle clanked off the walls. Clank. Clank. Clank. Thud. Thud? What the hell? Steve pushed the mop handle around the bottom of the tank as if he were stirring a giant vat of paella. It snagged on something soft. He worked the handle under the object and lifted. Something as long as a man’s body but much thinner. Thin enough to fit into the opening of the custom-built tank. The object was a transparent, plasticized pouch, and when the end peeked out of the opening, Steve saw Ben Franklin’s tight-lipped face. A hundred dollar bill. Stacked on others. Dozens of stacks. As he pulled the pouch out of the tank, he saw even more. Hundreds of stacks, thousands of bills. *** Damn heavy, Steve thought, lugging the pouch up the ladder from the engine compartment. Then he dragged the load out the salon door and into the cockpit. “Now you’ve done it,” Cruz sounded almost mournful. He stood on the bridge, aiming a double-barrel shotgun at Steve. The rail where he had been cuffed hung loose. “I didn’t want this. But it’s your own damn fault.” “I’m sorry, Steve,” Victoria said. “When I came up here, he’d gotten out.” “Not your fault,” Steve said. He dragged the pouch to the starboard gunwale. “Stop right there!” Cruz ordered. “Step away from the money.” “Nope. Don’t think so.” Cruz pumped the shotgun, an unmistakable click-clack that Steve felt in the pit of his stomach. “I’ll blow your head off.” “And leave blood and bone and tissue embedded in the planking? Nah. You may kill us, but you won’t do it on your boat.” Steve hoisted the pouch onto the rail. “If I can’t take this to Teresa, I’m sure as hell not gonna let you have it. Your treasure, pal, is strictly Sierra Madre.’” The shotgun blast roared over Steve’s head, and he flinched. The pouch balanced on the rail, halfway between the deck and the deep blue sea. “Put the money down, asshole.” “Okay, okay.” Steve shoved the pouch over the rail and it splashed into the water. “It’s down.” “Asshole!” Cruz grabbed both throttles, slowed the boat, and swung her around. He turned a spotlight on the water. Nothing but a black sea and foamy whitecaps. He swung the spotlight left and right. Still nothing, until…the beam picked up the pouch floating with the current. Cruz eased the boat close to the pouch at idle speed, slipped the engine out of gear, then dashed down the ladder. Grabbing a tarpon gaff, he moved quickly to the gunwale. Shotgun in one hand, gaff in the other, he motioned toward Steve. “Back up. All the way to the chair.” “Do what he says, Steve,” Victoria called from the bridge. “Only because you said so.” Steve moved toward one of the fighting chairs. Cruz leaned over the side and snagged the pouch with the gaff. He struggled to lift it with one arm, still aiming the shotgun at Steve. Suddenly, the boat shot forward, and Cruz tumbled into the water, the shotgun blasting into space as it fell onto the deck. On the bridge, Victoria had one hand on the throttles, the other on the wheel. “Cono!” Cruz shouted from the darkness. “Do sharks feed at night?” Steve leaned over the side. “Or should I just drop some wiggles on your head and find out?” “Get me out of here!” His voice more fearful than demanding. “Nah.” “No me jodas!” “I’m not fucking with you. Just don’t feel like giving you a lift.” Victoria raced down the ladder and joined Steve in the cockpit. “Testing, testing,” she said, punching a button on her pocket Dictaphone. “What are you doing?” Steve said. “Mr. Cruz,” Victoria called out. “We’ll bring you on board once you answer a few questions.” Cruz was splashing just off the starboard side. “What fucking questions!” “Do you admit stealing three million dollars from Teresa Toraño?” Victoria said. *** Pink slivers of sky lit up the horizon and seabirds squawked overhead as Steve steered the boat into the channel at Matheson Hammock. He had one hand on the wheel and one draped on Victoria’s shoulder. A shivering Cruz, his arms and legs bound with quarter-inch line, was laced into a fighting chair in the cockpit. His taped confession would be in the hands of the State Attorney by noon. The pouch of money lay at his feet, taunting him. “What are you thinking about?” Victoria asked. “I was just imagining the look on Teresa’s face when we give her the money.” “She’ll be delighted. But it was never about the money, Steve.” “Whadaya mean?” “When you were a baby lawyer, Teresa believed in you and nobody else did. You needed to prove to her that she was right. And maybe you needed to prove it to yourself, too.” Steve shrugged. “If you say so.” She wrapped both arms around his neck. “But remember this, Steve. You never have to prove anything to me.” They kissed, at first softly, and then deeper and slower. The kiss lasted a long time, and when they each opened their eyes, the sun was peeking above the horizon in the eastern sky. Their bodies pressed together, Victoria felt something digging into her hip. “Are you carrying another pair of handcuffs?” “Nope.” “Then what…?” She jammed a hand into one of his pocket. “Oh. That!” Steve smiled. “Like I said, no cuffs.” “That’s okay, sailor.” She brushed her lips against his cheek. “You won’t need them.” ### All four full-length novels in the “Solomon vs. Lord” series are available in paperback, ebook, and audio formats. For more information about Paul Levine’s “Jake Lassiter” series and stand-alone thrillers, please visit his Amazon Author Page. “MORTAL SIN” SNEAK PREVIEW Chapter 1 Thy Client’s Wife ON A STIFLING AUGUST DAY OF BECALMED WIND AND SWELTERING humidity, the Coast Guard plucked seven Haitians from a sinking raft in the Gulf Stream, the grand jury indicted three judges for extorting kickbacks from court-appointed lawyers, and the Miami City Commission renamed Twenty-Second Avenue General Máximo Gómez Boulevard. And Peter Tupton froze to death. Tupton was wearing a European-style bikini swimsuit and a terry cloth beach jacket. Two empty bottles of Roederer Cristal champagne 1982 lay at his feet. His very blue feet. Two thousand six hundred forty-four other bottles—reds and whites, ports and sauternes, champagnes and Chardonnays, Cabernets and cordials—were stacked neatly in their little wooden bins. A high-tech air-conditioning system kept the wine cellar at an even 56 degrees and 70 percent humidity. Hardly life-threatening, unless you wandered in from the pool deck sopping wet, guzzled two liters of bubbly, and passed out. Cause of death: exposure due to hypothermia. Which didn’t keep the Miami Journal from seizing on a sexier headline: ON YEAR’S HOTTEST DAY, ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST FREEZES TO DEATH The medical examiner reported that Tupton’s blood contained 0.32 percent alcohol. If he’d been driving, he could have been arrested three times. But he’d been swimming, then sipping mimosas on the pool deck. When he stumbled into the wine cellar, he must have kept drinking, this time leaving out the orange juice. Cheers. “He was a most disagreeable man,” Gina Florio said, dismissing the notion of the late Peter Tupton with a wave of the hand. It was a practiced gesture, a movement so slight as to suggest the insignificance of the subject. When the hand returned, it settled on my bare chest. I lay on my back in a bed that had a bullet hole in the headboard. The bed had been Exhibit A in a case involving a jealous husband and a .357 Magnum, and I picked it up cheap at a police auction of old evidence. I stared at the ceiling fan, listening to its whompety-whomp while Gina traced figure eights with a blood-red fingernail across my pectorals. A crumpled bed sheet covered me from the waist down. Her clothing was simpler; there wasn’t any. She reclined on her side, propped on an elbow, the smooth slope of a bare hip distracting me from the hypnotizing effect of the fan. Outside the jalousie windows, the wind was picking up, the palm fronds swatting the sides of my coral-rock house. A most disagreeable man. In earlier times, she would have called him a dickbrain. Or if there were clergy on the premises, simply a birdturd. But Gina was a sponge that absorbed the particulars of her surroundings, the good, the bad, and the pretentious. Lately, she’d been hanging out with the matrons of the Coral Gables Women’s Club. Finger sandwiches at the Biltmore, charity balls at the Fontainebleau, tennis at the club. Discussions of many disagreeable men. Mostly husbands, I’d bet. “A swine, really,” Gina said. “A short, bald, lumpy swine who mashed out his cigarettes in my long-stemmed Iittala glasses.” “Iittala, is it?” “Don’t mock me, Jake. Finnish, top of the line. Nicky likes the best of everything.” “That’s why he married you,” I said, without a trace of sarcasm. “You’re still mocking me, you prick.” Prick. Now, that was better. You can take the girl out of the chorus line, but … “Not at all, Gina. You Ye a name brand. Just like Nicky’s Rolex, his Bentley, and … his Iittala.” “What’s wrong with my name, anyway?” Defensive now. She could play society wife with the white-shoe crowd at Riviera Country Club, but I’d known her too long. “Nothing,” I said. “I’ve liked all your names. Each suited the occasion.” “Even Maureen? Rhymes with latrine.” “I didn’t know you then. You were Star when I met you.” She made the little hand-wave again, and her butterscotched hair spilled across my chest, tickling me. Her movements hadn’t always been so subtle. When her name was Star Hampton, she jumped and squealed with the rest of the Dolphin Dolls at the Orange Bowl. She had long legs and a wide smile, but so did the others. What distinguished her was a quick mind and overriding ambition. Which hardly explained why she chose me—a second-string linebacker with a bum knee and slow feet—over a host of suitors that included two first-round draft choices with no-cut contracts and a sports agent who flew his own Lear. Then again, maybe it explained why she left me. We were together two years, or about half my less-than-illustrious football career, and then she drifted away, leaving her name—and me—behind. When the gods finally determined that my absence from the Dolphins’ roster would affect neither season ticket sales nor the trade deficit with Japan, I enrolled in night law school. By then, Star had sailed to Grand Cayman with a gold-bullion salesman, the first of three or four husbands, depending if you counted a marriage performed by a ship’s captain on the high seas. I hadn’t heard from her for a few years when she called my secretary, asking to set up an appointment with Mr. Jacob Lassiter, Esq. She wanted her latest marriage annulled after discovering the groom wasn’t an Arab sheikh, just a glib commodities broker from Libya who needed a green card. We became reacquainted, and Gina—though that wasn’t her name vet—kept drifting in and out of my life with the tide. Sometimes, it was platonic. She’d complain about one man or another. The doctor was selfish; the bodybuilder dull; the TV newsman uncommunicative. I’d listen and give advice. Yeah, me, a guy without a wife, a live-in lover, or a parakeet. Sometimes, it was romantic. In between her multiple marriages and my semirelationships, there would be long walks on the beach and warm nights under the paddle fan. One Sunday morning, I was making omelets—onions, capers, and cheese—when she came up behind me and gave me a dandy hug. “If I didn’t like you so much, Jake,” she whispered, “I’d marry you.” And sometimes, it was business. There were small-claims suits over a botched modeling portfolio, an apartment with a leaking roof, and a dispute with a roommate over who was the recipient of a diamond necklace bequeathed by a grateful thief who had enjoyed their joint company during a rainy Labor Day weekend. And, of course, the name changes. She had been born Maureen Corcoran on a farm somewhere in the Midwest. A mutt name and a mutt place, she said long ago. So she changed her name and place whenever she deemed either unsuitable. She called herself Holly Holiday during one Christmas season, Tanya Galaxy when she became infatuated with an astronaut at Cape Canaveral, and Star Hampton when she dreamed of a Hollywood career. Finally, she asked me to make it official: Maureen would become Gina. “It goes well with Florio, don’t you think?” she had asked. “And Nicky likes it.” Nicky. What was he doing today? Making money, I supposed. Wondering whether he was going to get sued by the estate of one Peter Tupton. Maybe worrying about his wife, too. Had Gina said she was going to see her lawyer? Their lawyer, now. I could see Gina cocking her head, asking Nicky if it wouldn’t be sweet to hire Jake Lassiter. You remember Jake, don’t you, darling? Sure, he remembered. *** Before he was filthy rich, Nicky Florio used to hang around the practice field. He was hawking someone else’s condos then, and he’d deliver an autographed football at each closing. If he couldn’t get Griese, Csonka, Kiick, Warfield, or Buoniconti, I’d sign my name. And theirs. Nicky was a great salesman. He pretended to love football, always looking for the inside dope on the team. Injuries, mostly. How had practice gone? What was Shula’s mood? I’d give him a tip now and then, knowing what he was up to, but I never bet on games. Well, seldom. And I never bet against us. *** Nicky probably balked when she mentioned me. I need another lawyer like I need another asshole. Besides, your old boyfriend’s just an ex-jock with a briefcase. He was right. I don’t look like a lawyer, and I don’t act like a lawyer. I have a bent nose, and I tip the scales at a solid 223. My hair is too long and my tie either too wide or too narrow, too loud or too plain, depending on the fashion of the times. I’ve hit more blocking sleds than law books, and I live by my own rules, which is why I’ll never be president of the Bar Association or Rotary’s Man of the Year. I eat lunch in shirtsleeves at a fish joint on the Miami River, not in a tony club in a skyscraper. I laugh at feeble lawyer jokes: How can you tell if a lawyer is lying? His lips are moving. And I do the best I can to inflict the least harm as I bob and weave through life. Which made me wonder just what the hell I was doing with Gina yet again. If Nicky had said no, Gina would have waited, then tried again. When the neighbor sued over the property line, Give Jake a chance. I picture Nicky Florio running a hand through his black hair, slicked straight back with polisher. He’d squint, as if in deep thought, his dark eyes hooded. He’d shrug his thick shoulders: Sure, why not, he can’t screw it up too bad. Putting me down, building himself up. Hire the wife’s old boyfriend, something to gloat about at the club, tell the boys how he tacks a bonus onto the bill, like tossing crumbs to a pigeon. To Nicky, I was a worker bee he could lease by the hour. He could buy anything, he was telling me, including Gina. Well, who’s got her today, Nicky? Was that it, I wondered, my infantile way of striking back? Hey, Lassiter, old buddy, what are you doing in bed with Maureen, Holly, Star, Gina? Don’t you have enough problems, what with the Florida Bar on your back? What would the ethics committee say about bedding down a client’s wife? With all the single women available, what are you doing with a married one? South Beach is chock-full of unattached women, leggy models from New York, Paris, and Rome. Downtown is wall-to-wall professionals in their business-lady pumps, charcoal suits, and silk blouses. The gym has an aerobics instructor plus a divorcee or two who brighten up when you do your curls. So what’s with this destructive, nowhere relationship mired in the past? “Jake, what are you thinking about?” Gina asked. “Star Hampton,” I answered, truthfully. I rearranged myself on the bed to look straight into her eyes. “Do you remember the time you hit me?” “Was it only once?” “Yeah. You were leaving me for some cowboy. A rodeo star named Tex or Slim.” “It was Jim. Just Jim.” “No, Jim was the Indy driver.” “That was James,” she corrected me. “Or was he the tennis pro?” “You hit me because I didn’t beg you to stay.” “I don’t remember,” she said. But I did. *** We’d been living together in my apartment on Miami Beach. She stepped out of the shower, her hair smelling like a freshly mowed field. She kissed me, soft and slow, then said she was leaving. I told her I’d miss the wet towels balled up on the bathroom floor. She let fly a roundhouse right, bouncing it off my forehead, cursing as she broke a lacquered nail. Good kiss, no hit. She dressed quickly and tossed her belongings into a couple of gym bags. Then she said it to me, a parting line I was to hear time and again. “Maybe I’ll see you later,” she said, heading out the door. “And maybe I won’t.” *** “Slugged anybody lately?” I asked. She laughed. It was the old laugh. Hearty instead of refined. “Gawd, I was so young then. Did you know I turned thirty last April? You think I need a boob job? Am I starting to sag?” She sat up, stretched her long legs across the bed, and hefted her bare breasts, one at a time, her chin pressed into her chest. The streaked blond hair hung straight over her eyes. Outside, the wind was crackling the palm fronds. Only three o’clock, but it had gotten dark inside the bedroom. I peered out the porthole-sized window. Gray clouds obscured the sun as a summer squall approached from the west. “Jake! You’re ignoring me.” So was Nicky, I thought. Maybe that was why she was here. Or was it just for old times’ sake? “Can we be friends again?” she had asked when she showed up at my office for a lunch appointment. “Friends?” “Friends who screw,” she explained. Which, come to think of it, is what we had been from the beginning. After all these years, I was still dazzled by her beauty, the granite cheekbones, the wide-set deep blue eyes rimmed with black, the body sculpted by daily workouts with a personal trainer. Attention must be paid to such a woman, I thought. She dropped her breasts, which, as she well knew, sagged not a whit. “Jake?” “Tell me more about Tupton,” I said. “Ugh! No more talk about business.” “I thought that’s what this was about.” “Come on, Jake. That was an excuse. I missed you.” She rolled on top of me and grabbed a handful of my sunbleached hair. “You get better-looking every year. I don’t know why I talked Nicky into hiring you. You’re too tall and too tanned and too damn sexy” “That’s why you talked him into hiring me. And here I was hoping it was for my legal acumen.” “It’s for your amorous acumen.” She let go of my hair and began nuzzling my neck. “Look, Gina, you’re just bored. It’s an occupational hazard of the haut monde wife.” Her teeth were leaving little marks on my earlobes. She whispered in my ear. “If you think I don’t know what that means, you’re trés trompé. My second husband took me to Paris. Or was it my third?” “C’mon, let’s do some work—unless you want me to charge you two hundred fifty dollars an hour for—” “A bargain at twice the price.” “Gina. I’m serious.” “I know you are. You’re suffering from postcoital guilt.” “Really?” “I’ve had therapy,” she said proudly. “My next-to-last ex-husband was a big believer in self-growth.” “C’mon now, tell me more about Tupton.” She sighed and rolled off me, her hair trailing across my chest. Her back toward me, I admired the twin dimples at the base of her spine. Then she turned to face me, her full lips pouting. “We invited him to the pool party to soften him up. Nicky’s bright idea. Why fight the guy, waste thousands on legal fees—” “What better use for your money?” “… when maybe we could reason with him, show him the good life, serve him some grilled pompano—” “And chilled champagne.” “Jake, stop it! If you don’t want to fool around anymore, treat me like a client.” “You want me to pad the bill?” “No, I want you to screw me.” “Gina!” “Okay, okay. Fire away.” “So you invited Tupton to a pool party.” “Along with a bunch of stuffed shirts, Friends of the Philharmonic, the opera and ballet groups. I haven’t seen so many bobbed noses and tummy tucks since the Mount Sinai Founders Ball.” “A society crowd.” “Business, too. With Nicky, a party can’t just be a party. We had some of the big growers plus a Micanopy chief or two. Nicky always says if you want to do business in the Everglades, you’ve got to make friends with the Indians and the sugar barons. And, of course, we invited Tupton, the turd.” Dropping all Gables Estates pretenses now. More like Star Hampton, who once shared a two-bedroom Miami Springs apartment with five stewardesses, none of whom could scrub a pot. “I’ve seen his name in the paper,” I said. “What did they call him, an ‘environmental activist’?” “A turd!” “The Journal said he was executive director of the Everglades Society. A pretty nice obituary.” “A shithead.” “I assume he wasn’t fond of real estate developers the likes of Nicholas Florio,” I said. She placed a hand on my stomach. “All Nicky did was send some surveyors onto the Micanopy Reservation. He’s been doing business with the Indians for years.” “The reservation’s in the Big Cypress Swamp, so Tupton was probably concerned that— “Who cares! I mean, the Indians have something like seventy thousand acres out there. It’s all mucky. Yuk! Who would want it?” “Nicky, I guess. He’s probably going to improve the environment by draining the groundwater, chasing out the birds and alligators, and building ticky-tacky condos on rotten pilings.” “Jake, that’s not fair. He’s got a planned community on the drawing board. Something that would enhance the environment. That’s what the brochures say.” “Maybe the buildings would even last until the first hurricane.” “Don’t let your feelings about Nicky interfere with your good judgment, Jake.” She let her fingers do the walking, or maybe it was a slow dance under the sheet, a soft stroking of me farther south. “Anyway, Tupton files a suit against Nicky’s company for not having all the right permits. But Nicky wasn’t dredging or anything, just surveying, for crying out loud! I gotta tell you, Jake, these bird-watchers and gator-loving econuts are real wackos. They’ve protested against the oil companies for making seismic tests and the airboat tours for disturbing the tadpoles. And Tupton, talk about holier than thou, he comes to our house wearing jeans and a chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled up, like some urban fucking cowboy. I’ll bet the dipshit makes thirty-five K a year, tops.” “Made,” I said. “He’s not cashing any more checks. And I remember when you shook your booty for fifteen bucks a game at the Orange Bowl.” She withdrew her hand and studied me. “You disapprove of me, don’t you, Jake? You never say it, but I disappoint you.” I listened to fat raindrops plopping against the window. The wind whistled through gaps in the barrel-tile roof. “Nothing and nobody ever turns out the way you think.” She turned away from me, either to express her displeasure or to show off her profile. “And what did you think, Jake, that I’d be doing brain surgery now? I just count my blessings that I’m not dancing tabletops in one of those dives near the airport.” In the distance, a police siren sang against the wind. “Maybe I’m just jealous that you’re with Nicky, and this is the way I show it.” “You? Jealous?” She laughed a throaty laugh, her breasts bouncing. “Since when? You never cared. You never once said you loved me, not even when it was just the two of us. We were close, Jake, or don’t you remember?” “I remember everything,” I said. “The Germans wore gray. You wore blue, and I missed the boat.” “The boat?” “The one to Grand Cayman—others too, I imagine. I never could keep up with you.” She turned back to me and brought an elbow down into my stomach. Not hard, but not soft either. I let out a whoosh. “Jeez, what’s that for?” “You jerk! You big, dumb jock jerk! You never asked me to stay. You think I wouldn’t have stayed? You never cared!” “Who says I didn’t care?” “Me! I say it. You didn’t care.” “I cared,” I said softly. “Then you’re a double dumb jerk for never saying so.” *** Gina sat on the edge of the bed, craning her long neck and blowing cigarette smoke into the air. She’d been quitting smoking ever since we met, probably longer. Self-discipline was not her strong suit. It took her another half hour to tell me the rest of the story. She had put on what she called her sweet face and served Peter Tupton a pitcher of mimosas to loosen him up. Nicky lent him a swimsuit, and before you knew it, there he was frolicking in the pool with a couple of Junior Leaguers from Old Cutler Road. “Is there a Mrs. Tupton?” I asked. Without a wife and kids, the value of the wrongful-death case would plummet. “There is, but he didn’t bring her,” Gina told me. “Why not? Were they separated?” An impending marital split could limit the damages, too. “Tupton said something about Sunday being her day to spend at Mercy hospital. She’s a volunteer with child cancer patients.” Oh shit. When the surviving spouse is an angel, tack another digit onto the verdict form. “Any little Tuptettes?” “No. They’d been married a couple of years. No kids yet.” Be thankful for small blessings. “How’d he get into the wine cellar?” She exhaled a puff into the draft of the ceiling fan. “Beats me. When he first arrived, Nicky gave him a tour of the house, including the cellar, which isn’t a cellar at all or it’d be under five feet of water. It’s a custom-built room off the kitchen. Lots of insulation, custom wood shelving, a couple thousand bottles. He must have come back into the house from the pool. Maybe the jerkoff wanted to steal a Château Pétrus 1961. Or maybe he was looking for a place to pee.” I was trying to figure it out, but it made no sense. There was plenty to drink outside, where it was also warm, and tummy-tucked women in bikinis lounged poolside. “Why would he wander into a freezing room soaking wet, settle down, and drink two bottles of champagne? Did he lock himself in?” “Impossible,” she answered, tossing me the hand again. “The bolt slides open from the inside. Apparently, he didn’t want to leave.” Or couldn’t, I thought. The rain had stopped, and the wind had died. Outside the window, the late-afternoon sun peeked from behind the clouds, slanting shadows of a palm frond across the room. In the chinaberry tree, a mockingbird with white wing patches was yawking and cackling. Mimus polyglottos, Doc Charlie Riggs called him, using the bird’s Latin name. Mimic of many tongues. My mocker is a bachelor. They’re the ones who sing the songs. Maybe that’s what I was doing, too. “Who was the last person to see Tupton alive?” I asked. Gina looked around my bedroom for an ashtray. She seemed to consider the question before answering. “Nicky, I think.” She appeared lost in thought. There being neither an ashtray nor Iittala glassware on the premises, Gina dropped the cigarette butt into the mouth of an empty beer bottle. Her eyes brightened. “Sure, they were both sitting in the kiddie pool drinking the mimosas, Nicky trying to charm him. I remember thinking that Nicky must be making progress, maybe getting through to him. Then they walked toward the house together, going into the kitchen. That’s the last I saw him. You’ll have to ask Nicky what happened next.” I intended to do just that. As Nicky’s lawyer, I had to be ready for anything. I had to “zealously” defend my client. It’s in the Canons of Ethics, you can look it up. Just now, the lawyer inside me—the guy who sees evil and deception, artifice and mendacity—had a lot of questions to ask. And so would the state attorney, I was willing to bet. The death of Peter Tupton was just a bit too bizarre. Words like “inquest” and “autopsy” and “grand jury” were popping into my head. And motive, too. What was it Doc Riggs always said? When there’s no explanation for the death, always ask, cui bono, who stands to gain. Hey, Nicky Florio, this may be more trouble for you than just a wrongful-death suit that’s probably insurance-covered anyway. You could be up to your ass in alligators. Gina was up and getting dressed. She wriggled into her ultratight jeans and shot me a look. “Jake, why are you smiling?” “Didn’t know I was.” “You were. Your blue eyes were crinkling at the corners, and you had that crooked grin you used to sweep me off my feet.” “So that’s what did it. I thought it was my witty repartee aided by ample quantities of Jack Daniel’s.” She was looking around the room for her bra. “No. It was your smile. That and shoulders I could lean on.” “Since then, one’s been separated, the other dislocated, and I’ve torn a rotator cuff.” She found the bra, red and frilly, in a tangle of bed sheets. “Just now, you were almost laughing. What were you thinking about?” “The Canons of Ethics.” She gave me a shove. “No, really.” “Okay, then. The Ten Commandments, or at least one of them.” “Which one?” “Something about thy client’s wife,” I said. Chapter 2 Self-inflicted Pain “HOW LONG HAVE YOU KNOWN MR. LASSITER?” ASKED WILBERT FAIRCLOTH. “Since he was a pup,” Doc Charlie Riggs answered. “May we assume that constitutes many years?” “We may,” Charlie said, wiping his eyeglasses on his khaki shirt. His old brown eyes twinkled at me. “When I was chief M.E., Jake was a young assistant public defender. Well, not as young as the others, since he’d spent a few years playing ball, though heaven knows why. He wasn’t very good, and he blew out his anterior cruciate ligaments.” Charlie scratched his beard and shot me a sidelong glance. “Anyway, when he began practicing—law, not football—we were on opposite sides of the fence. I’d testify for the state as to cause of death, the matching of bullets to weapons, that sort of thing, and Jake would cross-examine on behalf of his destitute and very guilty clients. He always did so vigorously, if I may say so.” “No one is questioning Mr. Lassiter’s competence,” Faircloth said. Good. Not that it was always that way. New clients, particularly, are suspicious. They want to see your merit badges—diplomas from prestigious universities, photos with important judges, newspaper clippings laminated onto walnut plaques. I don’t have any. No letters from the Kiwanis praising my good works. I don’t have a family, so no pictures of the kiddies clutter my desk. If anyone wants to examine my diploma from night law school, they can visit my house between Poinciana and Kumquat in Coconut Grove. The sheepskin isn’t framed, so the edges are yellowed and torn, but it serves a purpose, covering a crack in the bathroom wall just above the commode. I like it there, a symbolic reminder of the glory of higher education, first thing every morning. I don’t give clients a curriculum vitae or a slick brochure extolling my virtues. I just tell them I’ve never been disbarred, committed, or convicted of moral turpitude, and the only time I was arrested, it was a case of mistaken identity—I didn’t know the guy I hit was a cop. I keep my office walls bare except for a couple of team pictures and a black-and-white AP wirephoto from some forgotten game. The sideline photographer caught me moving laterally, trying to keep up with the tight end going across the middle. The shutter must have clicked a split second after my cleats stuck in the turf. My right leg was bent at the knee in a direction God never intended. Nobody had hit me. It’s one of those rare football photos where the lighting is perfect and you can see right through the face mask. My eyes are wide, mouth open. Startled. No pain yet, just complete astonishment. The agony came later. It always does. What had been perfectly fine ligaments were shredded into strands of spaghetti. Doc Riggs gave me the photo on the day I retired, which is a polite way of saying I was placed on waivers and twenty-seven other teams somehow failed to notice. Because he always has a reason for everything, I asked Charlie why he went to the trouble of having the photo blown up and framed. “Why do you think?” he asked right back. Sometimes, his Socratic approach can be downright irritating. “You want me to remember the pain so I don’t miss the game so much.” “No, you’ll do that without any prompting. As Cicero said, Cui placet obliviscitur, cui olet meminit. We forget our pleasures, we remember our sufferings.” “Okay, so why—” “Most of the pain we suffer we inflict on ourselves,” he said. I still didn’t understand. “You want me to be cautious? Doesn’t sound like you, Charlie.” “I want you to examine the consequences of your actions before you act. Respice finem. You have a tendency to …” “Break the china.” “Precisely. And usually your own.” I knew I’d never be a great lawyer. I lost most of my cases as a public defender. The clients—I didn’t start calling them “customers” until they could pay—either pleaded guilty, or a jury did it for them. Occasionally, the state would violate the speedy-trial rule, or witnesses wouldn’t show, or the evidence would get lost, and someone would walk free, at least for a while. I can still remember my first jury trial. State of Florida v. Monroe Shackleford, Jr. Armed robbery of a liquor store. Abe Socolow was the prosecutor. More hair then, but same old Abe. Dour face, sour disposition. Lean, mean Abe in his black suit and silver handcuffs tie. “Can you identify the man with the gun?” he asked. “He’s sitting right over there,” the store clerk answered, pointing directly at Shackleford. Outraged, my saintly client leaped to his feet and shouted, “You motherfucker, I should have blown your head off!” I grabbed Shackleford by an elbow and yanked him into his chair. Sheepishly, he looked toward the jury and said, “I mean, if I’d been the one you seen.” *** Wilbert Faircloth appeared to be studying his notes. “Dr. Riggs, did there come a time when you and Mr. Lassiter became friends?” Charlie fidgeted in the witness chair. He’d been in enough courtrooms to know that Faircloth was attempting to discredit Charlie’s favorable testimony by showing bias. It’s the oldest trick in the cross-examination book. “I took the lad under my wing, showed him around the morgue,” Charlie admitted. “He watched me perform a number of autopsies, didn’t toss his lunch even once. It took a while, but Jake learned the basics of serology, toxicology, and forensic medicine.” “The question, Dr. Riggs, was whether the two of you became friends.” Charlie turned his bowling-ball body toward me. He had a mess of unkempt graying hair, a bushy brown beard streaked with gray, and eyeglasses mended with a fishhook where they had tossed a screw. He wore brown ankle-high walking boots, faded chinos, a string tie, and a sport coat with suede elbow patches. He gave the appearance of a bearded sixty-five-year-old cherub. Charlie never lied under oath or anywhere else, and he wasn’t going to start now. “Yes, I’m proud to be his friend, and as far as I know, Jake’s never done anything unethical.” “Ah so,” Faircloth said, mostly to himself, smiling a barracuda’s smile. Wilbert Faircloth was in his mid-forties and razor thin, even in a suit with padded shoulders. He had a narrow black mustache that belonged in Ronald Colman movies and an unctuous manner of referring to the judge as “this learned Court.” After a mediocre career defending fender benders for a now-bankrupt insurance company, he became staff counsel of the state bar. Now Faircloth was making a show of thumbing through his yellow legal pad. He rested the pad on the railing of the witness stand and fiddled at his mustache with the eraser of his pencil. “Would grave robbery be ethical to you, Dr. Riggs?” “Objection!” I was on my feet. “Your Honor, that’s beyond the scope of the bar complaint. It’s ancient history, and no charges were ever filed.” Faircloth looked pleased as he approached the bench, cutting off my view of the judge. “The witness opened the door, and as this learned Court knows, I may walk through it if I please. In addition, I will demonstrate a pattern of misconduct.” Judge Herman Gold peered into the courtroom, empty now except for my old buddy Charlie, the slippery Wilbert Faircloth, and little old grave-robber me. Judge Gold had retired years ago, but you couldn’t keep him off the bench. He accepted appointments to hear disciplinary cases against wayward lawyers, bringing as much of the law as he could remember to the deserted courthouse after hours. It was past 9:00 P.M. now, the grimy windows dark, and little traffic sloshed through the rain below us on Flagler Street. With its ceiling of ribbed beams and portraits of judges long since deceased, the huge courtroom was cold and barren as the old air-conditioning wheezed and cranked out dehumidified air. “Overruled,” Judge Gold pronounced, squinting toward the clock on the rear wall. He had missed the opening of jai alai at the fronton on Thirty-Sixth Street and was not in a pleasant mood. “Past actions are relevant in aggravation or mitigation of the present transgression.” “Alleged transgression,” I piped up. Judge Gold ignored me and gestured toward Charlie Riggs to answer the question. I sank into my chair, armed with the knowledge that I had a fool for a client. “What was the question?” Charlie asked. “I’ll happily rephrase,” Faircloth offered. “To your knowledge, did Mr. Lassiter ever commit the crimes of trespassing, grave robbery, and malicious destruction of property?” “It wasn’t malicious,” Charlie answered, somewhat defensively. “And it was my idea. I was his partner in crime…” Great, Charlie, but they can’t disbar you. “And besides, it was for a good cause,” Charlie Riggs continued. “By exhuming Philip Corrigan’s body, we were able to ascertain the identity of his killer.” “But Mr. Lassiter didn’t obtain court permission for this so-called exhumation, correct?” “Correct.” “Just as he didn’t obtain court permission for the blatantly illegal surreptitious tape recording in this case, correct?” “I’m not familiar with this case, Counselor.” “Ah so,” Faircloth said, as if he had elicited a devastating admission. On his way out of the courtroom, Charlie patted me on the shoulder and whispered, “Vincit Veritas. Truth wins out.” Damn, I thought. Truth was, I committed a crime. We took a brief recess so the judge could call his bookie. When we resumed, my backside hadn’t even warmed up the witness chair when Wilbert Faircloth announced, “Mr. Lassiter, you have the right to counsel at this hearing. So that the record is clear, do you waive that right?” “Yes.” “Do you do so freely, knowingly, and voluntarily?” Faircloth asked in the typical lawyer’s fashion of using three words when one will suffice. “Affirmative, yessir, and friggin’ A,” I answered. One of these days my sarcasm was going to get me in trouble. Maybe this was the day. Faircloth seemed to puff out his bony chest. “The hour is growing late, so I suggest we cut to the chase without further ado.” “I’m all for skipping the ado,” I agreed. Judge Gold gave me a pained look, or maybe he just had stomach gas. “Now, sir,” Faircloth continued, “did you or did you not surreptitiously tape-record your own client, one Guillermo Diaz, on or about February 12, 1993?” *** I remembered the day. It was cool and breezy. I should have gone windsurfing. The black vultures soared effortlessly around the windows of my bayfront office, lazing in the updrafts. Thirty-two stories below, the predators in double-breasted suits were toting their briefcases to the courthouse. Birds of a feather. Guillermo Diaz was chunky and round-faced with a nose somebody hadn’t liked. He wore loafers with elevator heels, a short sleeve knit shirt that was stretched taut against his belly. He had soft white hands and hard black eyes. He was harmless-looking, which made him better at his job. His job was killing people. Diaz worked with a brute named Rafael Ramos who was twice as big but only half as tough. Together they were hired to shake down a horse trainer in Ocala who borrowed sixty thousand dollars from their boss at 5 percent interest. A week. The trainer figured he’d pay it back quickly out of winnings, but his nags had an annoying habit of either finishing fourth, tossing their riders, or suffering heart attacks in the backstretch. With interest accumulating at three thousand a week, before compounding, the debt soon reached a hundred grand. When the trainer couldn’t pay, Diaz and Ramos headed north on the Turnpike in a blue-black Lincoln Town Car. Diaz joked that they should lop off the head of Ernie’s Folly, a three-year-old filly, and leave it in the trainer’s bed. “Just like in the movie.” Ramos was puzzled. “What movie?” “Jesus, with Pacino and Brando. ‘I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.’” Ramos stared blankly at him. “You know, you gotta get out more,” Diaz said. Guillermo Diaz hated working with someone so stupid. He had to do all the thinking himself. What can you talk about with someone like Rafael Ramos, who sits there cleaning his fingernails with an eight-inch shiv? Playing Julio Iglesias tapes all the way up the turnpike. Jesús Cristo! Julio Iglesias. Make him an offer he can’t refuse. Though it started as a joke, riding through dreary central Florida past the orange groves and into the scrubby pine country, the idea sounded better all the time. Outside of Okahumpka, Diaz aimed the Lincoln toward the exit ramp. Ramos didn’t even notice. He was humming along to “Abrázame.” Diaz found a hardware store in a strip shopping center and bought a chain saw from a pimply clerk who tried to sell him tree fertilizer plus fifty pounds of mulch on sale. Back in the car, Ramos asked, “Fuck we need a chain saw for?” “The horse.” “What horse?” Diaz explained again, and Ramos started whining about his new white linen guayabera, and what a mess it would be. Diaz was so tired of the bellyaching, he agreed to forget about the horse—they’d just use the saw to scare the guy. The noise alone would make him shit his pants. “No need to chop him into pieces,” Diaz said. “Not like in that movie with Pacino and the guy in the shower.” “The movie with the horse?” “No, different movie. Pacino’s a Marielito in this one. More Cuban than you. Smarter, too.” They stopped at a service station, and Diaz filled the small tank on the chain saw, dribbling gasoline onto his patent-leather loafers. At the horse farm, they found the trainer in a barn made of telephone poles set in concrete. A light rain was falling, pinging off the barn’s tin roof. The trainer was a gray-haired man in his fifties, lean and wiry, with the blue-veined nose of the drinker. They backed him into a corner, where he stumbled over a pile of Seminole feed bags and nearly impaled himself on a pitchfork. The two enforcers felt out of place here, nearly intoxicated from the ripe, earthy smells of the barn, the distinctive tang of horse sweat, the sweetness of molasses from the feed mixing with the aroma of manure and urine, sawdust and creosote. It took Diaz half a dozen pulls to get the new, warranty-covered Black & Decker chugging. He threatened to cut off the man’s head if he didn’t pay up. Diaz yelled this, because sure enough, the little machine made a hell of a racket. The trainer was crying, begging for more time to pay. All the while, two golden palominos and a paint were kicking and snorting in their stalls. Ramos cursed and lifted his left foot, a moist glob of excrement sticking to his tasseled loafer. Flies buzzed around Diaz’s ears. Not little houseflies. Big, blue-winged monsters that looked like they could suck blood. By the quart. Diaz felt ill. He would rather be in Miami, banging a guy’s head against the asphalt in a back alley. He lived in a two-story stucco apartment building just off Jose Marti Avenue in Little Havana. The smells there were of cooking pork and steaming espresso. There were no horses with ugly square teeth and jackhammer hooves pounding the sideboards. He wanted to do the job and get the hell out of there. While the trainer was pleading for another twenty-four hours, Diaz decided to send him a message. Take a little chunk out of the man’s shoulder, just as a warning. Maybe get the guy to find a safe with some cash in it underneath the manure piles. In a movie, he saw the bad guys chop off someone’s little finger. He couldn’t remember if it made the man talk. Diaz lifted the chain saw with both hands. “No!” the trainer shrieked, his eyes filling with tears. “Ay, be thankful it’s not your pinga,” Diaz yelled over the roar. The saw was bucking, and the man was screaming, and the horses were kicking the place down, and Ramos was saying something he couldn’t hear. Diaz tried to gently tap the wailing machine against the trainer’s shoulder, but he missed. The churning blade came to rest against the man’s neck, where it bit through his carotid artery, splattering Ramos’s white linen guayabera a rich scarlet and spraying the two palominos, turning them into pintos. *** A week later, on that cool and breezy day, Guillermo Diaz sat in my office. “Grand jury meets this afternoon,” I told him. “Big fucking deal. They got no witnesses.” “Ramos turned state’s evidence, testified yesterday. You’re going to be indicted for Murder One.” “That’s bullshit. Where is the chickenshit cobarde? Where’s he now?” “In protective custody. “¿Dónde?” “How should I know? And what difference does it make? You think you can get him to change his mind?” “No, I think I can kill him.” Outside the windows, a buzzard landed on the ledge, spreading its six-foot wings, then folding them in that familiar hunched shoulder look. The ugly birds fly south each winter and perch outside the windows of high-rise lawyers, reminding us of our ethical standards. “You’re not kidding, are you Guillermo?” “You get to take his statement, ¿verdad?” “Right, a pre-trial deposition.” “You tell me when and where, it’s over real quick.” He stood up and paced to the window. Spooked, the buzzard spread its wings and soared away. I leaned back in my chair, put my feet up on the credenza, and flicked the button on the Dictaphone. A little red light blinked on. “Let me get this straight, Guillermo. You’re asking me to set up Rafael Ramos, so you can kill him.” “Ay, Counselor, I do it with or without your help. What other choice I got?” *** “Yes,” I told Wilbert Faircloth. “I recorded my conversation with Mr. Diaz.” Faircloth let his voice pick up some volume. “And did you have a court order permitting you to conduct this recording?” “I did not.” “Was the recording made in the course and scope of a bona fide law-enforcement investigation?” “No, I did it on my own.” “And, as a lawyer, you are familiar with Chapter 934 of the Florida Statutes, are you not?” “I know the gist of it.” “The gist of it,” Faircloth repeated with some distaste. He paused, apparently considering whether to press me on the particulars of the law. “Do you know, sir, that the statute forbids tape recording a conversation unless all parties to that conversation have consented?” “Yes.” “Did you know that on February twelfth, 1993?” What would be better, I wondered, denying knowledge of the statute and therefore admitting incompetence, or conceding I knew my conduct was felonious? Probably the former, but damn, it would be a lie. They couldn’t prove it, of course. No perjury charge. Still, one of Lassiter’s Rules is not to lie to the court. “Yes, I knew the law at the time.” “May we assume you obtained your client’s permission?” “You may assume it, but it wouldn’t be true.” “So then, you did not have Mr. Diaz’s consent to tape-record his conversation?” I can’t stand it when lawyers posture. “You expect me to ask permission to record his threats to kill a witness?” “No, Mr. Lassiter. I expect you to follow the law.” Touché. “Look, my plan was to record Diaz, withdraw from his case, and warn him that the tape would be turned over to the state attorney if anything happened to Rafael Ramos. The idea was to force him not to kill a man.” “But you were his attorney, Mr. Lassiter. You owed Mr. Diaz the duty of unyielding loyalty. The conversation was privileged. What gave you the right to act as his conscience?” “My conscience,” I answered. “Besides, once he disclosed the plan to commit a crime in the future, I believed the privilege was lost.” “Did you seek an advisory opinion from the bar to confirm your so-called belief?” “No. There wasn’t time.” “So you proceeded to knowingly violate Chapter 934 and to also breach the privilege by contacting the state attorney?” “Yes. Diaz fired me when I wouldn’t agree to set up a murder. I contacted Abe Socolow after Ramos was found with three bullets in his skull.” “Do you have any regrets about your conduct?” “Yeah. I regret not calling Abe before Diaz killed Ramos.” “Now, isn’t it true that Mr. Diaz was never convicted of that crime?” “Right. There was a profound lack of witnesses.” “And you have no proof that Mr. Diaz committed this crime, do you, Mr. Lassiter?” “No. I mean, yes, I have no proof.” I hate questions phrased in the negative. “And do you have an explanation for your behavior?” “It seemed the right thing to do at the time,” I said. Faircloth couldn’t suppress a snicker. “It seemed the right thing to do.” He shot a look at the judge, trying to figure if he was scoring points. When he turned back to me, his smirk announced he was three touchdowns up with a minute to play. “Is that how you live your life, Mr. Lassiter, doing what seems right at the time?” I didn’t have to think about the answer. It was just there, the simple, stark truth. “As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I do.” ### “Mortal Sin” and all the legal thrillers in the Jake Lassiter series are available in paperback, ebook, and audio formats. For more information, please see Paul Levine’s Amazon Author Page. “SOLOMON vs. LORD” SNEAK PREVIEW One CELL MATES The man in the holding cell loosened his tie, tossed his rumpled suit coat into a corner, and stretched out on the hard plastic bench. The woman in the facing cell slipped out of her glen plaid jacket, folded it carefully across an arm, and began pacing. “Relax, Vickie. We’re gonna be here a while,” the man said. “Victoria,” the woman corrected. Her angry footsteps echoed off the bare concrete floor. “Wild guess. You’ve never been held in contempt before.” “You treat it like a badge of honor.” “A lawyer who’s afraid of jail is like a surgeon who’s afraid of blood,” Steve Solomon said. “From what I hear, you spend more time behind bars than your clients,” Victoria Lord said. “Hey, thanks. Great tag line for my radio spots. ‘You do the crime, Steve does the time.’” “You’re the most unethical lawyer I know.” “You’re new at this. Give it time.” “Sleazy son-of-a-bitch,” she muttered, turning away. “I heard that,” he said. Nice profile, he thought. Attractive in that polished, cool-as-a-daiquiri way. Long legs, small bust, sculpted jaw, an angular, athletic look. Green eyes spiked with gray and a tousled, honey-blond bird’s nest of hair. Ballsy and sexy, too. He’d never heard “sleazy son-of-a-bitch” sound so seductive. “If you weren’t so arrogant,” he said, “I could teach you a few courtroom tricks.” “Save your breath for your inflatable doll.” “Cheap shot. That was a trial exhibit.” “Really? People have seen the doll in your car. Fully inflated.” “It rides shotgun so I can use the car-pool lane.” She walked toward the cell door. Shadows of the bars pin-striped her face. “I know your record, Solomon. I know all about you.” “If you’ve been stalking me, I’m gonna get a restraining order.” “You make a mockery of the law.” “I make up my own. Solomon’s Laws. Rule Number One: ‘When the law doesn’t work, work the law.’ “ “They should lock you up.” “Actually, they already have.” “You’re a disgrace to the profession.” “Aw, c’mon. Where’s your heart, Vickie?” “Victoria! And I don’t have one. I’m a prosecutor.” “I’ll bet you think Jean Valjean belonged in prison.” “He stole the bread, didn’t he?” “You’d burn witches at the stake.” “Not until they exhausted all their appeals.” She laughed, a sparkle of electricity. Damn, she’s good at this. Fending off his mishegoss, trumping his insults with her own. Something else appealed to him, too. No wedding band and no engagement ring. Ms. Victoria Lord, rookie prosecutor, seemed to be unattached as well as argumentative. Maybe twenty-eight. Seven years younger than him. “If you need any help around the courthouse,” he said, “I’d be willing to mentor you.” “Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Touché. But she’d said it with a smile. Maybe this wasn’t so much combat as foreplay. Another parry, another thrust, who knows? The more he thought about it, the more confident he became. She likes me. She really likes me. *** I hate him. I really hate him, Victoria decided. Dammit, she’d been warned about Solomon. He always tested new prosecutors, baited them into losing their cool, lured them into mistrials. And she wasn’t totally “new.” She’d handled arraignments and preliminary hearings for eight months. And hadn’t she won her first two felony trials? Of course, neither one had involved Steve Slash-and-Burn Solomon. “You gotta know, the contempt citation is all your fault,” he said from the facing cell. She wouldn’t give him the pleasure of saying, Why? Or, How? Or, Go screw yourself. “You should never call opposing counsel a ‘total fucking shark’ in open court,” he continued. “Save it for recess.” “You called me a ‘persecutor.’ “ “A slip of the tongue.” “You’re incorrigible.” “Lose the big words. You’ll confuse the jurors. Judges, too.” Victoria stopped pacing. It was stifling in the cell, and her feet were killing her. She wanted to pry off her ankle-strapped Prada pumps, but if she stood on this disgustingly sticky floor, she’d have to burn her panty hose. The plaid pencil skirt was uncomfortable, a tad too tight. Now she wished she’d taken the time to let it out before coming to court. Especially after catching Solomon, the pig, staring at her ass. She saw him now, sprawled on the bench, hands behind his head, like a beach bum in a hammock. He had a dark shock of unruly hair, eyes filled with mischief, and a self-satisfied grin, like he’d just pinned a “Kick Me” note on her fanny. God, he was infuriating. She couldn’t wait to get back into the courtroom and convict his lowlife client. But just now, she felt exhausted. The adrenaline rush was ebbing, the lack of sleep was fogging her mind. All those hours practicing in front of the mirror. “Ladies and gentlemen, you will hear the testimony of Customs and Wildlife Officers…” Maybe she was going about this the wrong way. How many times had she had researched the legal issues, prepped her witnesses, rehearsed her opening statement? “…who will testify that the defendant, Amancio Pedrosa, did unlawfully smuggle contraband, to wit, four parakeets, three parrots, two cockatoos…” And a partridge in a pear tree. Maybe she’d burned herself out. Maybe that’s why she’d cracked today. Had she looked ridiculous pushing a grocery cart overflowing with boxes to the prosecution table? There was Solomon, holding a single yellow pad, and there she was, weighted down with books, research folders, and color-coded index cards bristling with notes. Even though she despised Solomon, she did envy his brash confidence. The way he glided across the courtroom, skating to the clerk’s table, flashing an easy smile at the jurors. He was lean and wiry and graceful, comfortable in his own skin. When she rose to speak, she felt stiff and mechanical. All those eyes staring at her, judging her. Would she ever have his self-assurance? An hour earlier, she hadn’t even realized she was being held in contempt. Judge Gridley never used the word. He just formed a T with his hands and drawled, “Time-out, y’all. This ain’t gonna look good on the instant replay.” It was only then that she remembered that the judge was a part-time college football official. “Mr. Solomon, you oughta know better,” Judge Gridley continued. “Miss Lord, you’re gonna have to learn. When I say that’s enough bickering, that’s by-God enough. No hitting after the whistle in my courtroom. Bailiff, show these two squabblers to our finest accommodations.” How humiliating. What would she say to her boss? She remembered Ray Pincher’s “two strikes” orientation lecture: “If you’re held in contempt, you’ll feel blue. If it happens again, you’ll be through.” But she wouldn’t let it happen again. When they got back into the courtroom, she’d . . . Shit! Something was stuck on the velvet toe of her pump. A sheet of toilet paper! Grimacing, she scraped it off with the bottom of her other shoe. What else could go wrong? “Hey, Lord, we’re gonna be in here a while.” That aggravating voice from the other cell. “So here are the ground rules. When one person has to pee, the other turns around.” She shot a look at the seatless, metal toilet bowl. Right. As if I’d squat over that fondue pot of festering bacteria. When she didn’t respond, he said: “You still there or you bust out?” Somewhere, deep inside the walls, the plumbing groaned and water gurgled. “Suit yourself, but I gotta take a leak.” What a jerk. Solomon was one of those men you run into in bars and gyms, she thought, so clueless as to believe they’re both witty and charming. “No peeking,” he said. There was a plague of these men, with a sizable percentage becoming lawyers. “Unzipping now . . . “ Dear God, scrunch his scrotum, zipper his balls. “Ahhh,” he sighed, the tinkle-tinkle sounding like hailstones on a tin roof. “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall,” he sang out. “Ninety-nine bottles of beer . . . “ “I didn’t realize they still made men like you,” Victoria Lord said. *** I’m getting through to her, Steve thought. Sure, she was still playing that old I am strong, I am invincible, I am wo-man shtick, but he sensed a shift in her mood. There seemed to be something different about the feisty Ms. Lord. Nothing like the court stenographers he usually dated. Quiet, rather submissive women who transcribed whatever they heard. And nothing like the SoBe models, whose brains must have been fried by exposure to so many strobe lights. He remembered looking around the courtroom when Victoria rose to address the judge. All the players—from his shifty client to the sleepy bailiff—had been riveted. Jurors, witnesses, cops, probation officers, jailers, clerks, public defenders. Hell, everybody watched her, even when he was talking. Yeah, she was a natural, with the kind of pizzazz they can’t teach in law school. Maybe the best rookie I’ve ever seen. Of course, she had a rigid prosecutorial mentality, but he could work on that, once she forgave him for suckering her into contempt. Not that he minded the downtime. To him, this eight-by-eight cell was a cozy second home, a pied-à-terre with a view of the Miami River from the barred window. Hell, they ought to put his name on the door, like a luxury suite at Pro Player Stadium. Failing that, he scribbled on the cell wall: Stephen Solomon, Esq. “Beating the state’s butt for nine years” Call UBE-FREE, 822–3733 Steve preferred to defend the truly innocent, but where would he find them? If people didn’t lie, cheat, and steal, he figured he’d be starving, instead of clearing about the same as a longshoreman at the Port of Miami who worked overtime and stole an occasional crate of whiskey. Steve usually settled for what he called “honest criminals,” felons who ran afoul of technicalities that would not be illegal in a live-and-let-live society. Bookies, hookers, or entrepreneurs like today’s client, Amancio Pedrosa, who imported exotic animals with a blithe disregard of the law. Steve glanced into Victoria’s cell. She had resumed pacing, a tigress in a cage. Her tailored plaid jacket was draped over an arm. An expensive outfit, he was sure, but wrong for the jury. The high neck accentuated her—well, stiff-neckedness. She should ditch that Puritan look, get something open at the collar, a bright blouse underneath. The matching skirt was fine, a little tighter than he’d expect on the prim prosecutor. A nice ass for someone so flat on top. “What do you say, after we get out, we hit Bayside, dive into a pitcher of margaritas?” he said. “I’d rather drink from the toilet bowl.” Keeping her distance for now, he thought. Made sense as long as they were in trial. “Okay, let’s wait till we get a verdict. Win or lose, I’ll treat you to tapas.” “I’d die of starvation first.” “You might not be aware, but over the years, I’ve tutored several young women prosecutors.” “I’m aware you’ve bedded down a few. And rifled their briefcases in the middle of the night.” “Don’t believe everything you hear in the cafeteria.” “You’re one of those toxic bachelors, a serial seducer. The only thing that shocks me is that some women find you attractive.” Have I missed a signal? Shouldn’t she be warming up by now? “I’ll bet any relationship you’ve had, the woman always ended it,” she said. “My nephew lives with me and scares most women off,” Steve said. “He scares them off?” “He’s kind of a reverse chick magnet.” “That sort of thing genetic?” she asked. *** An hour later, her feet still ached and the toilet still gurgled, but at least Solomon had shut up. Victoria hoped he understood that she had no interest in him. You hit some men with a frying pan, they think you’re going to make them an omelette. But as annoying as she found him, the sparring did help pass the time. And if nothing else, jousting with Solomon might sharpen her courtroom tactics. The trick was not to let him provoke her once they were back in front of judge and jury. She made a vow. Even if he led a herd of elephants into the courtroom, she would maintain a Zen-like tranquillity. If I get back into the courtroom. She wondered if word had reached Ray Pincher that she’d been sent to the slammer. A shudder went through her, and suddenly she felt both alone and afraid. *** Awfully quiet over there, Steve thought, trying to see her through the shadows. What was she thinking right now? Uptown girl inhaling the stale sweat and toxic cleansers of her own private Alcatraz. Probably planning what she’d tell her boss, that pious phony Ray Pincher. Scared he’d demote her to Traffic Court. Had he gone too far, Steve wondered, baiting her into those outbursts? Judge Gridley’s contempt citations were sort of like calling unsportsmanlike conduct on both teams. But would Pincher understand? Did he even recognize Lord’s potential? Dammit, Steve thought, beginning to feel regretful. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her. He was just trying to have some fun while defending his client. Another worry, too. His nephew, Bobby, barely eleven, was home alone. If Steve was late, who knows what might happen? One day last week, when he rushed through the door just after seven, the kid announced he’d already made dinner. Sure enough, Bobby had found a dead sparrow on the street, covered it with tomato sauce, zonked it in the microwave for an hour, and called it “roasted quail marinara.” It had been easier to throw out the microwave than to clean it. If he ever dated Victoria, he’d introduce her to Bobby, his relationship litmus test. If she responded to the boy’s sweetness and warmth—if she saw past his disability—she might be a contender. But if she was repulsed by Bobby’s semi-autistic behavior, Steve would toss her out with his empty bottles of tequila. Now what the hell was going on? Did he just hear a sniffle? *** I will not cry, Victoria told herself. She didn’t know what had come over her. A feeling of being totally inadequate. A loser and a failure and a fraud. Dammit, what baggage had spilled out of the closet without her even knowing it? “You okay?” Steve Solomon called out. Shit, what did he want now? A lone tear tracked down her face, and then another. Great. Her mascara would turn to mud. “Hey, everything all right?” he asked. “Just great.” “Look, I’m sorry if I—” “Shut up, okay?” The clatter of footsteps and the jangle of keys interrupted them. Moments later, a man’s voice echoed down the dim passageway. “Ready to go back to work?” “Go away, Woody,” Steve said. “You’re disturbing my nap.” Elwood Reed, the elderly bailiff, skinny as an axe blade in his baggy brown uniform, appeared in front of their cells. He hitched up his pants. “Mr. Pincher wants to see both of you, pronto.” A chill went through Victoria. Pincher could fire her in an instant. “Tell Pincher I don’t work for him,” Steve said. “Tell him yourself,” Reed retorted, fishing for the right key. “He’s waiting in Judge Gridley’s chambers and he ain’t happy.” Reed unlocked their cells, and they headed down the passageway, Steve whistling a tune, jarringly off-key, and Victoria praying she still had a job. Two HUMILIATIONS GREAT AND SMALL No more tears, Victoria vowed as they approached the entrance to Judge Gridley’s chambers. She would rather break a nail, tear her panty hose, and shear off a heel of her Prada pumps than cry in front of Steve Solomon. Biting her lower lip, she tried to transport herself to more pleasant venues. A clay tennis court on Grove Isle, stretching high for an overhead smash, the solid thwack of racket on ball. Handling the wheel of her father’s gaff schooner—the Hail, Victoria—when she was ten, the wind snapping against the mainsail. Anyplace but here, where her boss lay in wait, armed with the power to destroy her career. “Something wrong?” Steve said, walking alongside. Instincts like a coyote, she thought. The door was six steps away. She felt her insides tighten; her heart pitched like a boat in a squall. “I’ve known Pincher for years,” Steve persisted. “Why not let me handle him?” “Does he like you?” she asked. “Actually, he hates my guts.” “Thanks, anyway.” “Then a word of advice. Don’t take any shit.” She stopped short. “What are you saying? That Pincher will respect me if I stand up to him?” *** “Hell, no. He’ll fire you. Then you can come over to my side.” Steve thought the chambers cannily reflected both of Judge Gridley’s pursuits, misconstruing the law and bungling pass-interference calls. There were the required legal volumes, laminated gavels, and photos of the judge shaking hands with lawmakers and lobbyists. Then there were old leather football helmets and photos of the striped-shirted Gridley at work on Saturdays in various college football stadiums. One wall was devoted to trophies and posters, evidencing the judge’s fanatical devotion to his alma mater, the University of Florida. A plaque celebrated Gridley as a “Bull Gator Emeritus,” and on his desk was a stuffed alligator head with its mouth open, teeth exposed, like a hungry lawyer. Only two things were missing, Steve thought: a bronzed jockstrap and Judge Gridley himself. Standing on the orange-and-blue carpet was a scowling, trim, African-American man in his forties, wearing a three-piece burgundy suit. When he moved his arms, there was a soft clanging of metal. Raymond Pincher’s dangling silver cuff links were miniature handcuffs. Steve thought that Pincher, the duly elected State Attorney of Miami-Dade County, would have to loosen up considerably just to be called tight-assed. Pincher billed himself as a crime fighter, and his campaign billboards pictured him bare-chested, wearing boxing gloves, a reminder of his days as a teenage middleweight in the Liberty City Police Athletic League. He’d won the championship two years running, once with a head butt, and once with a bolo punch to the groin, both overlooked by the referee, who by serendipitous coincidence was his uncle. Boxing had been excellent preparation for Florida politics, where both nepotism and hitting below the belt were prized assets. These days, when someone suggested he’d make a fine governor, Ray Pincher didn’t disagree. Pincher glared at Victoria, who was biting her lip so hard Steve thought she might draw blood. Suddenly, Steve was worried about her and wanted to save her job. But how to do it? How could he take the heat off her? Victoria said a quick prayer. First that her voice wouldn’t break when she was required to speak. Second, that Solomon would keep his big mouth shut. “Hey, Sugar Ray,” Steve called out. “Execute anyone today?” Oh, Jesus. “Good afternoon, Mr. Pincher.” Victoria nodded stiffly, struggling to remain calm. “Ms. Lord, I am disturbed by what I hear and concerned by what I see,” Pincher chanted in a melodious singsong. Before attending law school, he had studied at a Baptist seminary. There, office gossips claimed, he’d been expelled for selling Bibles intended as gifts to Central American orphanages. “A prosecutor is the swift sword of justice, the mighty soldier in the war of good against evil.” “Amen,” Steve said. Victoria felt her cheeks heating up. Dammit! Don’t be such a girl. “A prosecutor must never be held in contempt,” Pincher said. “Contempt is for defense lawyers of the flamboyant persuasion.” “Flam-boy-ant” sounding like a flaming French dessert. “Contempt is for the hired guns who sell their souls for filthy lucre.” “Or for peanuts,” Steve said. “Stay out of this, Solomon,” Pincher said. “Ms. Lord, what is the most important attribute of any trial lawyer?” “I’m not sure, sir,” she said, afraid to venture a guess. “The ability to lie while saying hello,” Solomon volunteered. “Dignity,” Pincher fired back. “Ms. Lord, do you know what happens to prosecutors who bring disrespect to the office?” She stood rigidly, unable to speak. “Hellfire, damnation, transfer to hooker court,” Steve enumerated. “Termination,” Pincher said. “C’mon,” Steve said. “Give her some room. She’s gonna be really good if you don’t squeeze the life out of her.” Great, Victoria thought, a compliment from Solomon, as helpful as a stock tip from Martha Stewart’s broker. Steve said: “She’s already better than most of your half-wits who want to plead everything out and go home at four o’clock.” “Not your business, Last Out.” Last Out. What was that all about? She’d have to ask around. “My point, Ms. Lord, is that you cannot let Mr. Solomon badger, befuddle, or bedevil you.” Pincher often employed the preacher’s habit of alliteration and the lawyer’s habit of using three words when one will do. “Yes, sir,” Victoria said. “I myself have tried cases against Mr. Solomon,” Pincher said. “You’re the best, Sugar Ray,” Steve said. “Nobody suborns perjury from a cop like you do.” Cuff links jangling, Pincher wagged a finger in Steve’s face. “I recall you bribing a bailiff to take two six-packs of beer to the jury in a drunk-driving case.” “Bribery is an ugly word,” Steve said. “What do you call club seats for the Dolphins?” “The way they’re playing, torture.” “You’re Satan in Armani,” Pincher said. “Men’s Wearhouse,” Steve corrected. “You have raised contumacy to a high art.” “If I knew what it was, I’d be even better at it.” “We have a dossier on you. Contempt citations, frivolous motions, ludicrous legal arguments.” “Flatterer,” Steve said. “Any more circus tricks, I’ll have the Florida Bar punch your ticket.” Pincher shot his cuffs and flashed a hard, cold smile. “You don’t watch your step, you’re gonna end up like your old man.” “Leave him out of this.” Steve’s tone turned serious. “Herbert Solomon felt he was above the law, too.” “He was the best damn judge in the county.” “Before your time, Ms. Lord,” Pincher said, “Solomon’s father was thrown off the bench.” “He resigned!” “Before they could indict him. Bribery scandal, wasn’t it?” “You know goddamn well what it was. A phony story from a dirty lawyer.” “I was only a deputy then, but I saw the files. Your father’s the dirty one.” The room had grown tense. “What’s the penalty for slugging the State Attorney?” Steve said. His hands were clenching and unclenching. Pincher balanced on his toes like a prizefighter. “You don’t have the balls.” The two men glared at each other a long moment. “Boys, if you’re through wagging your dicks,” Victoria heard herself say, “I need to know whether to go back into court or look for a new job.” After a long moment, Steve laughed, the tension draining away. Now she was trying to help him. “Aw, fuck it, Sugar Ray.” “Never saw you back down before.” Pincher sounded suspicious, like Steve might sucker punch him the second he dropped his guard. “Vickie’s influence.” “Victoria,” she corrected icily. Pincher appraised each of them a moment, tugged at an earlobe, then said: “Ms. Lord, because I know of Mr. Solomon’s predilection for provocation, I’m not firing you today.” “Thank you, sir.” She exhaled and her shoulders lost their stiffness. “For now, consider yourself on probation.” His good deed for the week, Steve thought, helping save her job. But what a prick, that Pincher, hacking away at the newbie. Steve felt embarrassed, like he’d been eavesdropping on another family’s quarrel. Victoria tried so hard to be tough, but Steve had seen the tremble of her lower lip, the flush in her cheeks. She was scared, and it touched him. A loud rush of water interrupted his thoughts, the unmistakable sound of an ancient toilet. A moment later, the door to Judge Erwin Gridley’s personal rest room opened, and the judge walked out, carrying the sports section of the Miami Herald. “What’s all this caterwauling?” the judge drawled. He was in his mid-fifties and fighting a paunch but could still waddle down the sidelines after a wide receiver. Suffering bouts of double vision, he wore trifocals in court, but not on Saturdays, which Steve figured might explain some of his more egregious calls, including too many men on the field when replays clearly showed only eleven. “Mr. Solomon and I were reminiscing about old cases,” Pincher told the judge. “Mr. Pincher remembers cases the way a wolf remembers lambs,” Steve said. “I was just about to tell counsel that I’ll be sitting second chair to Ms. Lord for the rest of the Pedrosa trial,” Pincher said. “You, working for a living?” Steve said. “It would be an honor to have you in my courtroom,” the judge allowed. “It’s my new hands-on plan,” Pincher said. “One week every month, I’ll be in court.” “Then who’s gonna shake down lobbyists for campaign money?” Steve asked. “Keep it up, I’ll sue you for slander, Solomon.” “Now, don’t you two git started.” The judge tossed the sports section onto his desk. “Mr. Solomon and Miss Lord wore me out this morning with their grousing.” He turned to the two of them, squinting through his eyeglasses. “I’m hoping a few hours in the cooler settled your nerves.” “We’re fine, Your Honor,” Victoria said. “Thank you.” “Cell mates today, soul mates tomorrow,” Steve vowed. “Hah,” Victoria said. The judge said: “The clock’s running down, so let’s talk business.” “Yes, sir,” Victoria said. “State of Florida versus Amancio Pedrosa.” “University of Florida versus Florida State,” the judge corrected. “Gotta lay five points to take my dog-ass, butt-dragging Gators, for crying out loud.” “You don’t want to touch that, Judge,” Steve advised. “Hell, no. Gator’s QB got a stinger on the turf at South Carolina last week. I oughta know. I called roughing on the play.” *** As the three men continued to talk about football in grave tones, Victoria took stock of her career. Humiliations great and small. “Consider yourself on probation.” She had felt her face redden as Pincher berated her. Why did he have to do it in front of Solomon? It was doubly embarrassing when Solomon spoke up for her, though for a moment, it made him seem almost human. She wondered if the florid tint had faded from her neck and cheeks. Victoria could not remember a time when she didn’t blush under pressure. She dreaded going back into the courtroom with Pincher perched on her shoulder like one of Pedrosa’s illegal birds. All she wanted now was to win and prove she had the chops to be a trial lawyer. But what if she lost? Or worse, got fired? The legal market sucked, and her student loans weighed a ton. Each month she wrote a check for the interest, but the principal just sat there—eighty-five thousand dollars—taunting her. The only clothing she’d bought since law school came from Second Time Around, a consignment shop in Surfside. Except for shoes. Shoes are as important as oxygen, and you don’t want to breathe another person’s oxygen, right? If she lost her job, she’d have to start selling the jewelry The Queen had given her. Irene Lord, called The Queen for her regal bearing and lofty dreams. Even when her money was gone, she had maintained her dignity and grace. Victoria pictured her mother, dressed in a designer gown for the Vizcayans Ball, her Judith Leiber evening bag flecked with jewels but lacking cab fare inside. She remembered, too, her mother fussing about Victoria’s decision to go to law school. A dirty business, she called it. “You don’t have that cutthroat personality.” Maybe The Queen was right. Maybe law school had been a mistake. She struggled to be strong, to cover up her insecurities. But maybe she just didn’t have what it takes. Certainly Ray Pincher seemed to doubt her abilities. *** What’s this bullshit about Pincher sitting second chair? Steve hated the idea. There’d be no more fun in the courtroom, that’s for sure. And Pincher would put even more pressure on Victoria. Steve wondered if she could handle it. Doing his pretrial homework, Steve had looked her up in the State Attorney’s Office newsletter, the “Nolo Contendere.” Princeton undergrad, summa cum laude, Yale Law School, a prize-winning article in the law journal. Nice pedigree, compared to his: baseball scholarship at the University of Miami, night division at Key West School of Law. In addition to the ritzy academics, there was a little ditty in the newsletter: “We’re hoping Victoria joins us on the Sword of Justice tennis team. She won the La Gorce Country Club girls’ tennis championship three years running while in high school.” La Gorce. Old money, at least by Miami standards, where marijuana smugglers from the 1980’s were considered founding fathers. The La Gorce initiation fee was more than Steve cleared in a year. Thirty years ago, no one named Solomon could have even joined. So why was Victoria Lord slumming in the grimy Justice Building, a teeming beehive of cops and crooks, burned-out lawyers and civil service drudges, embittered jurors and senile judges? A place where an eight A.M. motion calendar—a chorus line of miscreants on parade—could crush her spirit before her café con leche grew cold. Steve felt a part of the place, enjoyed the interplay of cops and robbers, but Victoria Lord? Had she gotten lost on her way to one of the deep-carpet firms downtown? Stone crabs at noon, racquetball at five. Now Steve tried to follow the conversation. Judge Gridley was spouting his views on a college football playoff—a grand idea, there’d be more games to bet on—when they were interrupted by a cell phone chiming the opening bars of Handel’s “Hallelujah.” “Excuse me,” Pincher told them, fishing out his phone. “State Attorney. What? Good heavens! When?” He listened a moment. “Call me when the autopsy’s done.” Pincher clicked off and turned to the others. “Charles Barksdale is dead.” “Heart attack?” the judge asked, tapping his own chest. “Strangled. By his wife.” “Katrina?” Victoria said. “Can’t be.” “She probably had a good reason,” said Steve, ever the defense lawyer. “Claims it was an accident,” Pincher said. “How do you accidentally strangle someone?” the judge said. “By having sex in a way God never intended,” Pincher said. “They found Charles tied up in some kinky contraption.” “This is big,” Steve said. “Larry King big.” “Charles was a dear friend,” Pincher said, “not just a campaign contributor. To die like that . . . “ He shook his head, sadly. “If the grand jury indicts, I’ll prosecute it myself.” Pincher was not given to many honest emotions, Steve thought, but the old fraud seemed genuinely upset. “Charles was a gentle man, a charitable man, a good man,” Pincher continued. Now he sounded like he was rehearsing his closing argument. “Boy, would I love to defend,” Steve said. “Widow’ll end up with Ed Shohat or Roy Black,” Judge Gridley predicted. “I’m as good a lawyer as they are.” “This ain’t a Saturday night stabbing in Liberty City,” Pincher said. “This is high society.” Pincher was right, Steve knew. He’d had dozens of murder trials, but most were low pay or no pay. He never had a client with the resources of an O. J. Simpson or Klaus von Bulow. Or the looks and glamour of Katrina Barksdale. He didn’t know the Barksdales, but he’d read about them. Charles had made millions building condos while collecting custom yachts and trophy wives. Katrina would have been number three or four. Wife, not yacht. Photos of the old hubby and young wifey were routinely plastered in Ocean Drive and the Miami Herald. You couldn’t open a restaurant or hold a charity event without the glam couple. And when her husband stayed home, Katrina was on the arm of an artist or musician at younger, hipper parties. The lawyer who got this case was gonna be famous. Steve could picture the Justice Building surrounded by sound trucks, generators humming, a forest of satellite dishes, an army of reporters. A carnival in the parking lot, vendors hawking “Free Katrina” T-shirts, iced granizados, and grilled arepas. There’d be TV interviews, magazine profiles, analysts critiquing the defense lawyer’s trial strategy and his haircut. It’d be a ton of publicity and a helluva lot of fun. And then there was the fee. Not that money juiced him. But Bobby’s expenses were mounting, and he’d like to put some bucks away for the boy’s care. And wouldn’t he love going mano a mano with Pincher? The bastard would try to ride that pony all the way to the governor’s mansion. All the more reason Steve lusted after the case. He hated pretension and self-righteousness, but most of all, he hated bullies. And in Sugar Ray Pincher, he had all three. “This one’s out of your league, Solomon,” Pincher said, hammering the nail home. Out of his league. God, how he hated that. Which prompted another disheartening thought. Was Victoria Lord out of his league, too? # MIAMI-DADE POLICE DEPARTMENT TRANSCRIPT OF EMERGENCY FIRE AND RESCUE CALLS Dispatch: Miami-Dade Police. One moment, please. Caller: 911? Goddammit, are you there? 911? Dispatch: Miami-Dade Police. Is this an emergency? Caller: My husband! My husband’s not breathing. Dispatch: Please remain calm, ma’am. Is his airway obstructed? Caller: I don’t know. He’s not breathing! Dispatch: Was he eating? Caller: We were having sex. Oh, Charlie, breathe! Dispatch: What’s your name and address, ma’am? Caller: Katrina Barksdale, 480 Casuarina Concourse, Gables Estates. Dispatch: Have you tried CPR? Caller: My husband’s Charles Barksdale. The Charles Barksdale! Jeb Bush has been here for drinks. Dispatch: CPR, ma’am? Caller: I’ll have to untie Charlie. Dispatch: Untie him? Caller: I’ve already taken off his mask. ### All four full-length novels in the “Solomon vs. Lord” series are available in paperback, ebook, and audio formats. For more information about Paul Levine’s “Jake Lassiter” series and stand-alone thrillers, please visit his Amazon Author Page. # ALSO AVAILABLE JAKE LASSITER SERIES “Mystery writing at its very, very best.” – Larry King, USA TODAY TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD: Linebacker-turned-lawyer Jake Lassiter begins to believe that his surgeon client is innocent of malpractice…but guilty of murder. NIGHT VISION: After several women are killed by an Internet stalker, Jake is appointed a special prosecutor, and follows a trail of evidence from Miami to London and the very streets where Jack the Ripper once roamed.