The Deep Blue Alibi svl-2

by Paul Levine

  "Fact of the matter, Mr. Luber, you're a fixer, right?"

  "Already told you. Consultant."

  "You know a lot of people in government?"

  "I been around a long time."

  "You're pals with county commissioners? Agency heads? Judges?"

  "Yeah. Some of 'em even send me Chanukah cards."

  "You're too modest, Mr. Luber. Let's say I wanted to put up billboards along I-95. Would I come to you for help?"

  "If you're smart. Which you ain't."

  "And just what would you do to get me my billboards?"

  "I'd introduce you to some people downtown and hope everyone falls in love."

  "So, you're a matchmaker?"

  "I grease the skids, kid."

  "You ever grease the skids in Circuit Court?"

  "That's old news. I did my time. What's that gotta do with the price of borscht?"

  Just then the door opened and Herbert Solomon barged in, his flip-flops smacking the floor with each step.

  "Cessante causa cessat et effectus!" Herbert sounded like a Roman senator but looked like a beach bum in paint-splattered denim cutoffs and an aloha shirt festooned with bougainvillea flowers. "Cease and desist, son."

  "Are you drunk, Dad?" Steve asked.

  "Ah'm removing you as counsel." Herbert turned to Luber and nodded. "Pinky, you're looking good."

  "You look like Hawaii Five-O," Luber said.

  "You hear me, son?" Herbert said. "Ah'm firing you and dismissing the case."

  "You can't fire me," Steve retorted. "You don't have standing."

  "In mah own damn case, ah sure as hell do."

  "I filed under the private attorney general statute. You're not the real-party-in-interest. The people of Florida are."

  "You slippery bastard," his father said. "You think you can get away with that?"

  "You did when you sued those phony muffler repair shops."

  "Ah should have known you wouldn't have an original thought." Herbert turned back to Luber. "So how the hell are you, Pinky?"

  "Jesus, Dad. This is the guy who butt-fucked you."

  "Is 'butt-fucked' hyphenated?" Sofia Hernandez asked, typing away.

  "Go off the record, sweetie," Herbert ordered, and Sofia's hands flew up like a pianist finishing a concerto.

  "I say when we go off the record," Steve protested.

  "So, on or off?" Sofia asked.

  "Off," Steve instructed, "but only because I said so."

  She shrugged and opened her purse, looking for a nail file.

  "On the nitro, that's how I am, Herb." Luber patted his chest. "Plus Nexium for the acid reflux. And a whole drawerful of pills for arthritis. And you?"

  "Feeling good, Pinky. No complaints."

  "Like I was saying to your boy, you're better off out of the rat race. But the big k'nocker don't listen too good."

  Using bastardized Yiddish to brand him a "big shot," Steve knew. "Better a k'nocker than an alter kocker," he fired back. Calling Luber an "old fart."

  "Steve's always been a hard case," Herbert allowed.

  "Dad. What are you doing?"

  "Pinky and ah go back a long way."

  Steve couldn't believe it. Here was the guy who'd torpedoed his father's career, and the two of them were acting like old war buddies. Next, they'd be exchanging pictures of their grandchildren.

  "I won seventeen capital cases in a row in front of your old man," Luber said.

  "Yeah, yeah, I know," Steve said. "Just like the Dolphins."

  "But like Don Shula used to say, you remember the losses more. I'll never forget the last jury before the streak started. They must have come straight from an ACLU meeting." Pinky hacked up a laugh, his body jiggling like a beach ball. "All shvartzers from Liberty City and Yids from Aventura."

  "Happens that way sometimes," Herbert said. "Luck of the draw."

  "Those folks wouldn't have convicted Ted Bundy of littering." Luber turned to Steve. "See, kid. Jurors will do what they damn well please. I remember one trial, they were all dressed in jeans and sneakers. Gene Miller writes in the Herald that times had changed. Used to be, jurors would wear coats and ties, dresses or nice skirts. Now, your old man had instructed the jury not to read the papers, but the day after the story appeared. ."

  "All the men wore suits, all the women dresses." Herbert filled in the rest. "Looked like they were going to church."

  "So what's the lesson, kid?" Luber said.

  "Don't patronize me," Steve said.

  "You can't trust juries. Take it from me."

  "You don't believe in the system, that it, Luber?"

  "Would you want to be judged by people too stupid to get out of jury duty?"

  "You believe that, too, Dad?" Steve challenged.

  "I don't think about those things anymore."

  "Jesus, we had some cases," Luber said.

  "We?" Steve shook his head. "You guys weren't partners."

  "The law's stacked against the state, so a good prosecutor always gets the judge on his side. Right, Herb?"

  Herbert silently walked to the window and stared across the alley.

  "You remember the Butcher of Lovers' Lane?" Luber prodded.

  When Herbert didn't respond, Luber kept chattering: "I was at the top of my game. Jury voted in thirty-nine minutes to fry his ass. That still the record, Herb?"

  "Ah wouldn't know." Herbert still looked out the window.

  Steve was trying to figure out the change that had come over his father. At first, Herbert had seemed genuinely pleased to see this rosy-faced son-of-a-bitch. That was strange enough. But now, with Luber telling war stories, his old man's mood had dipped.

  What message is Pinky sending that I'm not getting?

  Herbert turned around and faced the two of them. "Son, if you've got some questions for Pinky, why not ask them and get this over with?"

  "Fine," Steve said. "Sofia, back on the record."

  She stretched her arms over her head, then behind her back, which caused her breasts to strain against the fabric of her silk blouse. All three men-one young k'nocker, two alter kockers-took a gander at Sofia's knockers. Smiling to herself, she curled her fingers over the stenograph keys and waited.

  "Did there come a time you testified to the Grand Jury in a corruption probe, Mr. Luber?" Steve asked, reverting to the formal cadence of a trial lawyer.

  "Yes."

  "Did you testify that Herbert Solomon took bribes to rezone agricultural property to commercial use?"

  "Lemme save you some time, kid," Luber said. "If you're asking me to recant what I said about Herb, I ain't gonna do it."

  "So your lies stand, is that it?"

  "Go pound your pud, bud."

  "Son, just get back to your murder case and drop this, okay?" Herbert pleaded.

  "I offered to help the kid out," Luber said. "And this is the way he treats me."

  "Don't want your help," Steve said.

  "I'll give you some, anyway. You oughta be following the green path."

  Steve must have looked puzzled.

  "The money trail, kid. Hal Griffin's got a hundred thousand cash on his boat, then the cops find forty grand in Stubbs' hotel room after he croaked. But with Oceania, you're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. So if a hundred forty thousand's floating around, there's gotta be more. Find out who's greasing those skids, kid. Follow the money, sonny."

  Nineteen

  LORD'S LAW

  "Not guilty!" Hal Griffin proclaimed in a strong, clear voice. Exactly the way Victoria had instructed him. They were standing in front of Judge Clyde Feathers in a fourth-floor courtroom of the Monroe County Courthouse, three blocks from the harbor in Key West. With Steve in Miami prepping his father's case, Victoria was flying solo, handling Griffin's arraignment by herself. Happy to be in charge.

  She had rejected Steve's advice that Griffin sing out: "Not guilty, not guilty. Thank God Almighty, I am not guilty!" All to the rhythm of Martin Luther King's "free at last." Too melo
dramatic for Victoria's taste.

  Lately, Steve had been fussing around with creative pleas, intended to influence the press and prospective jurors. Once he tried "Innocent as the pure, driven snow," an unfortunate choice in a cocaine trial.

  But is Uncle Grif really innocent?

  For the past two days, at Steve's suggestion, Victoria had been following "the green path," and she didn't like where it seemed to lead. She'd been hauling down mildewy books in the county's Real Property records room, breaking two fingernails and poring over real estate sales. Now she was sure Uncle Grif had misled her, and she planned to confront him as soon as they got back to the hotel.

  "Damn it, Uncle Grif. I told you to be honest with me. I can't help you if you lie."

  She had been careful all morning not to let Griffin know she was upset. He needed to appear confident and at ease in his first court appearance. Glancing at him now, she thought Griffin seemed dignified and prosperous in a dark, double-breasted suit. But the suit made him even thicker through the chest-more physically imposing-and Victoria made a mental note to have him dress in something slimming when a jury was impaneled.

  She wore a double-breasted suit, too. A mauve, Dolce amp; Gabbana with the extra-wide lapels, a boned bodice, and a fitted skirt. A hip-hugging summer wool fabric made stretchy with a touch of spandex, and no, she didn't need any slimming tricks, thank you very much. Her suede-lined Bottega Veneta woven-leather black purse-large as a satchel-was perfect for carrying a legal file as well as her makeup. What had Sarah Jessica Parker said on Sex and the City?

  "Purses are to women what balls are to men. You'd feel naked leaving home without them."

  Got that right, girl.

  Judge Feathers spent a few minutes with housekeeping details. Victoria waived the formal reading of the indictment. Calendars came out, and the judge set discovery deadlines and a trial date. Then he announced bail would be one million dollars. No problem there. The amount had been agreed upon in advance, and the surety was already posted. Griffin would walk out of the courthouse without ever feeling the shame and discomfort of the orange jumpsuit with the Monroe County jail logo. . unless he was convicted at trial.

  A hot blast of muggy air hit her as they left the courtroom, which opened directly onto an outdoor walkway that led to the elevators. Cameras clicked and questions were shouted as Victoria escorted Griffin through the snarling, slobbering, shoving pack of backpedaling jackals and hyenas, aka journalists.

  "Any chance of a plea?" one reporter yelled.

  "What's your defense?" shouted another.

  "Why'd you do it, Griffin?" a particularly rude reporter called out.

  "My attorney will answer all questions," Griffin said, serenely.

  Victoria put on her lawyer's look for the evening news-confident but not cocky. "We fully believe the jury will conclude this was all a tragic accident."

  "Tragic accident."

  Steve had given her the tag line and told her to repeat it as often as possible. "Start drilling your theme into the public consciousness and never let up," he'd instructed.

  Okay, she had to admit Steve had won a bunch of cases using the technique.

  Mistaken identity.

  Sloppy police work.

  Justifiable homicide.

  And now tragic accident. Which would have been a lot easier if Uncle Grif had said he was showing Stubbs the speargun when it accidentally fired. But Griffin stuck to his story: He was on the bridge, and when Stubbs didn't respond to the intercom, he put the boat on auto, climbed down the ladder, and found the man with the spear in his chest. So she was stuck arguing to the jury that Stubbs had been messing around with the speargun and accidentally shot himself.

  The spear's angle of entry was crucial to support the theory. So far, Victoria had consulted two expert witnesses: a biomechanics professor from Georgia Tech and a safety engineer from a private firm. The professor told her the accident theory was "not provable to a reasonable degree of biomechanical probability" and the engineer said his tests were similarly inconclusive. Nothing they could use in court. There was another professor, a human factors expert from Columbia University, but his report wasn't prepared yet.

  Steve had been toying with the idea of a courtroom demonstration where he would load the speargun, trying to shoot himself in the chest while wearing a Kevlar vest. He did a dry run in the office and managed to fire the spear out the window and onto the balcony across the alley where the Jamaican steel band was grilling chicken and smoking weed. Victoria was fairly certain it would not help their case if they impaled a juror.

  Now she guided Griffin by the elbow, steering him toward the elevator. An odd sensation, this role reversal. She could remember Uncle Grif's protective hand on her arm, steering her through crowds at Disney World so many years ago. Now she was the protector. She was all that stood between Uncle Grif and life in prison. At least for the moment. When the trial began, Steve would be alongside, jockeying for position.

  For now, though, she enjoyed the spotlight, the attention from the press. Amazing, the instant respect a high-profile murder case seemed to convey. Especially when you sit first chair. No wonder Steve was reluctant to give it up. But she'd laid down the law, Lord's Law.

  "Your choice, Steve. You can sit second chair. Or take a seat in the gallery."

  "No problem," he'd said. "You're the boss. That's what we agreed."

  Steve's unconditional surrender made her suspicious- she half expected him to burst through the courtroom door with some headline-grabbing announcement-but he'd stayed behind while she handled the arraignment and soaked up her fifteen minutes of media fame. Now, as she clawed her way past the reporters to the elevator, she still wondered if Steve wasn't lurking nearby, about to call his own press conference.

  "Ms. Lord! Mr. Griffin!" a disheveled young man she recognized as a reporter from the Key West Citizen shouted at her. "What happened on that boat?"

  "It will all come out in court." She smiled for the cameras.

  Of all the sappy platitudes, she thought. Of course it will all come out in court. She just didn't know what the hell it would be.

  "And in due course," she added, "it will be clear that the death of Mr. Stubbs was simply a tragic accident."

  Steve would be proud, she thought.

  A fine rain was falling now, and Victoria worried about her makeup running. The courthouse, with its open-air walkways, was one of those designs for the subtropics, where you can get sunburned or rained on while technically still inside the building.

  Once in the lobby, they passed a mural of a Spanish galleon, buccaneers landing on a sandy beach, pirates engaged in sword fights. An unusual image in a courthouse, she thought, a celebration of the island's distant-or not so distant-lawlessness.

  "This way, Ms. Lord!" one photographer screeched, aiming a still camera at her.

  "No. Over here, Ms. Lord!" another belted out.

  "Will Griffin testify?" hollered a man in dirty jeans and a wife-beater T-shirt.

  They were down here, too. Clogging the lobby, scrambling like cockroaches. A bothersome, boisterous, unkempt lot. But feeling a bit like a star on the red carpet, Victoria figured she'd better get used to the attention. The spotlight, she believed, burned bright but was narrowly focused. Wide enough only for one. Even when they're partnered up, lawyers are lone gunslingers. Who remembers the name of Johnnie Cochran's law partner? Or Melvin Belli's? Or Gerry Spence's?

  So, yes indeed, a lawyer who makes a name for herself in a big murder trial had better expect the high-wattage lights. And buy some waterproof makeup, too.

  SOLOMON'S LAWS

  6. The client who lies to his lawyer is like a husband who cheats on his wife. It seldom happens just once.

  Twenty

  THE MONEY TRAIL

  Ten minutes and a pink taxicab ride later, Victoria and Griffin were in the War Room, her suite at the Pier House. An oak conference table and leather chairs, a wicker sofa, sailing prints on the walls. The mis
cellany of trial prep filled the suite. Cardboard boxes stacked on the floor; documents scattered across the table; a model of the Force Majeure on a sideboard.

  Victoria kicked off her velvet-toed pumps, poured mineral water over ice, and sparred with her client. "So where did Stubbs get forty thousand dollars in cash?" she demanded.

  "Like I told you before, Princess, I got no idea."

  "The state will say you bribed him for a favorable environmental report."

  "Let 'em prove it."

  "They can subpoena your bank accounts, get all your records."

  "Good luck to 'em."

  "Meaning?"

  "I've lived in a dozen countries. Even I can't remember where all my money is."

  Victoria didn't know how to get him to open up.

  Should she tell him what she knew, perhaps limiting what he would disclose, or should she keep the questions open-ended, hoping he would fill in even more? She sipped at the mineral water, buying time.

  Outside the windows, tugboats guided a cruise ship into port. In the hotel parking lot, three TV news trucks sat side by side, resembling giant insects, their antennas poking the air. Victoria had the fear, not entirely irrational, that a TV camera attached to a mechanical arm would appear on her balcony and poke its lens into the suite.

  "Uncle Grif, you have to tell me the truth."

  "I have, Princess."

  "Did you give Stubbs the forty thousand?"

  "I didn't. I swear."

  She took a deep breath and plunged ahead. "I've spent the last two days going through the county's real estate records. Do you know what I found?"

  "They're still selling waterlogged property in the Glades?"