State vs Lassiter

by Paul Levine

  “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. “CNN 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 will end up with Roy Black or Marcia Silvers,” 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.

  How he hated that. Which prompted another disheartening thought.

  Was Victoria Lord out of his league, too?

  #

  For more information or to purchase, please visit the “Solomon vs. Lord” Amazon Page. To preview Paul Levine’s other books, please visit his 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.

  FALSE DAWN: After his client confesses to a murder he didn't commit, Jake follows a bloody trail from Miami to Havana to discover the truth.

  MORTAL SIN: Talk about conflicts of interest. Jake is sleeping with Gina Florio and defending her mob-connected husband in court.

  RIPTIDE: Jake Lassiter chases a beautiful woman and stolen bonds from Miami to Maui.

  FOOL ME TWICE: To clear his name in a murder investigation, Jake follows a trail of evidence that leads from Miami to buried treasure in the abandoned silver mines of Aspen, Colorado.

  FLESH & BONES: Jake falls for his beautiful client even though he doubts her story. She claims to have recovered "repressed memories" of abuse…just before gunning down her father

  LASSITER: Jake retraces the steps of a model who went missing 18 years earlier…after his one-night stand with her. (Also available in a new paperback edition).

  LAST CHANCE LASSITER: In this prequel novella, young Jake Lassiter has an impossible case: he represents Cadillac Johnson, an aging rhythm and blues musician who claims his greatest song was stolen by a top-of-the-charts hip-hop artist.

  SOLOMON vs. LORD SERIES

  “A cross between ‘Moonlighting’ and ‘Night Court.’ Courtroom drama has never been this much fun.” – FreshFiction.com

  SOLOMON vs. LORD: Trial lawyer Victoria Lord, who follows every rule, and Steve Solomon, who makes up his own, bicker and banter as they defend a beautiful young woman, accused of killing her wealthy, older husband.

  THE DEEP BLUE ALIBI: Solomon and Lord come together – and fly apart – defending Victoria’s “Uncle Grif” on charges he killed a man with a speargun. It’s a case set in the Florida Keys with side trips to coral reefs and a nudist colony where all is more –and less – than it seems.

  KILL ALL THE LAWYERS: Just what did Steve Solomon do to infuriate ex-client and ex-con “Dr. Bill?” Did Solomon try to lose the case in which the TV shrink was charged in the death of a woman patient?

  HABEAS PORPOISE: It starts with the kidnapping of a pair of trained dolphins and turns into a murder trial with Solomon and Lord on opposite sides after Victoria is appointed a special prosecutor, and fireworks follow!

  LASSITER, SOLOMON & LORD SERIES

  “The pages fly by and the laughs keep coming in this irresistible Florida romp. A delicious mix of thriller and comic crime novel.” – Booklist

  BUM RAP: Lassiter defends Steve Solomon in a murder case…and tries not to fall for his client’s law partner and lover, Victoria Lord.

  BUM LUCK: After clearing a guilty client, a despondent Lassiter threatens to kill the man. Jake’s pals think he suffered one too many concussions playing football, and all signs point to the fatal disease CTE.

  STAND-ALONE THRILLERS

  IMPACT: A Jetliner crashes in the Everglades. Is it negligence or terrorism? When the legal case gets to the Supreme Court, the defense has a unique strategy: Kill anyone, even a Supreme Court Justice, to win the case.

  BALLISTIC: A nuclear missile, a band of terrorists, and only two people who can prevent Armageddon. A “loose nukes” thriller for the 21st Century. (Also available in a new paperback edition).

  ILLEGAL: Down-and-out lawyer Jimmy (Royal) Payne tries to re-unite a Mexican boy with his missing mother and becomes enmeshed in the world of human trafficking and sex slavery.

  PAYDIRT: Bobby Gallagher had it all and lost it. Now, assisted by his 12-year-old brainiac son, he tries to rig the Super Bowl, win a huge bet…and avoid getting killed. (Also available in a new paperback edition).

  Visit Paul Levine’s AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE for more information.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The author of 20 novels, Paul Levine won the John D. MacDonald fiction award and was nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller, Shamus and James Thurber prizes. A former trial lawyer, he wrote twenty-one episodes of the CBS military drama “JAG” and co-created the Supreme Court drama “First Monday” starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna. The international bestseller “To Speak for the Dead” was his first novel. He is also the author of the “Solomon vs. Lord” series and several stand-alone thrillers. His most recent legal thrillers are “Bum Rap,” a number one bestseller on Amazon, and the critically acclaimed “Bum Luck.” Both novels bring Lassiter together with rivals Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord. A graduate of Penn State and the University of Miami Law School, Paul divides his time between Miami, Florida and Santa Barbara, California. Visit the author’s website at https://www.paul-levine.com

  COPYRIGHT © 2013 Paul J. Levine

  All rights reserved

  Published by Nittany Valley Productions, Inc.

  Cover design by www.damonza.com

  Interior design by Steven W. Booth, www.GeniusBookServices.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Paul J. Levine.