by Paul Levine
Her hip took the fall, and pain shot down a leg. The snake flew off her arm, slid across the tile, and coiled in front of the bathroom door. Blocking her exit. The reptile's head bobbed, left to right and back again, tongue flicking, daring her to move.
Naked. Wet. Hip throbbing. Afraid. Victoria stayed on the soapy floor, her eyes searching for a weapon. What was there? A bar of soap? A towel? A tiny bottle of perfume.
A shoe!
She'd nearly tripped over it. An ankle-strapped, halter sandal with fuschia pom-poms. One of the Manolo Blahniks filched by a client. Nothing more than flimsy scraps of leather, weighing a few ounces. What she needed was a work boot with steel toes.
But look at the heel. A solid three inches. You could pound nails with it. The shoe was three feet away, halfway between her and the damned serpent.
The snake's head swung back and forth, seeming to size up the space between them. Then lowering itself to the floor, the snake slithered toward her.
"Princess! Princess! Are you all right?"
Her mother's voice. From the bedroom. She must have come through the connecting door. The snake stopped. It turned its head toward the sound.
Now!
Victoria's hand flew out, grabbed the sandal, swung as hard as she could. The heel caught the top of the snake's snout, pierced its hide, and slammed it to the tile. The snake coiled and shook its entire body, the sandal staying put.
"Princess! Are you in there?" Her mother getting closer.
"Stay out!" Victoria commanded, scrambling to her feet.
On the floor, the snake writhed, and the sandal tore loose. Victoria grabbed the tail and cracked the snake like a bullwhip. There was the crunch of breaking cartilage. She whipped the snake again, its head smashing against the tile wall. Then she dropped it, motionless, onto the floor.
"Princess! What's happening? Why'd you scream?"
The Queen came through the doorway. She'd taken the time to put on a swirling white silk gown and fluffy slippers. A beauty mask was propped on top of her head.
"Omigod!" Her mother shrank back, keeping her distance from the snake. "Those red stripes. Coral snake?"
Victoria sank to the cold tile floor, trembling. "Yeah, I think so."
"Are you all right?"
"I fell pretty hard, but I'm fine." Victoria rubbed her hip; there'd be a bruise within hours.
"Thank God. I should get some ice-"
"It's okay, Mom. Don't worry about me."
"Not for you. For the snake."
Oh. Her mother thinking more clearly than she was. "For evidence. That's a good idea, Mother."
"Evidence? What evidence? I've got a craftsman in Miami who can make a killer handbag out of that beauty."
Twenty minutes later, her mother had gone back to sleep and Victoria had changed into pink cotton sweats and sneakers. Outside, Monroe County deputies roamed the pool deck and parking lot. Inside the hotel suite, Sheriff Willis Rask stood astride the dead reptile and hefted Victoria's fuschia pom-pom sandal.
"You killed that monster with this little-bitty thing?" The sheriff wore a quizzical look.
Victoria shrugged.
When Steve arrived from the houseboat, he hugged her tightly and expressed all the right concerns, saying if he caught whoever did this, he'd pulverize the guy. Break every bone in his body, starting with his knees. Rask told Steve to chill out, then asked Victoria to tell him everything that had happened that night. She did as instructed, skipping the nude-coed-in-turquoisewater dream.
"Snake in a shower's a new one on me," Rask admitted. "Saw a toilet filled with mud puppies and scrub lizards once. Men's room at Charlie Harper's Arco on Tortuga Drive. Molly Alter's boy dumped the poor creatures there after Charlie caught him stealing cans of tire glue. Boy was a sniffer."
"Lizards and mud puppies won't bite you," Steve said.
"Maybe not, but if one licks your butt, you might trip over your own drawers and bang your head on the wall. Happened to Charlie."
Victoria pointed a sneakered toe at the carcass. "That's not a mud puppy, Sheriff. It's a coral snake. Someone tried to kill me."
"Maybe. Maybe not," Rask mused.
A little too mellow for Victoria's taste. The sheriff carried the scent of cannabis with him. Either Rask had just captured a freighter stuffed with marijuana or he'd smoked a joint on the drive over.
"Willis, I gotta agree with Vic," Steve said. "Whoever broke in planted the snake in the bathroom."
"Most likely true," Rask agreed, "but Ms. Lord could have gotten to the hospital in ten minutes. Plenty of time, and they're damn good with snakebites. If a local did this, he'd know that."
"What are you saying, Sheriff?" Victoria demanded. "This was just a practical joke? Like lizards in the toilet?"
"Ever see a baby gator bite a woman in the ass?" Rask asked.
A breathtaking non sequitur, Victoria thought. Weed will do that.
"Trailer park on Stock Island." Rask nodded at the memory. "Woman gets in the bathtub, plans to soak a while, file down her corns. Her husband neglected to mention he'd caught a baby gator that morning. Don't know if he planned to eat it or raise it. Woman's ass took thirty stitches, as I recall."
"Sheriff, someone ran Steve off a bridge. Now someone puts a poisonous snake in my shower. You don't see a pattern here?"
"Pattern, yes. Attempted murder, no. Like I told Steve before, if someone wanted to kill him, they wouldn't just toss glop on his windshield. And whoever was in your room tonight could surely have killed you if they wanted."
"They want to mess with our heads," Steve said. He walked to the mini-bar and tried to open it, but Victoria had hidden the key to keep her mother from charging booze to her room. "They want to foul up Griffin's defense."
"Which means," Victoria broke in, "that whoever's doing it is also trying to frame Uncle Grif."
"And is probably the real killer," Steve said.
"Can't comment on that," Rask said. "My position's gotta be that your guy's the one."
"Vic, you're not spending any more nights alone," Steve advised her.
"The houseboat's too small," she replied. "I need room to work."
"Then I'll move in here."
She didn't immediately reply.
How to say it?
"I need my space, Steve."
"Nice try, tiger," Rask needled him.
"Then give her official protection, Willis. Two deputies here all night. One in the corridor, one under the balcony."
"I dunno, Stevie. We got a budget crisis down here. . "
"Willis. This is important to me, okay?"
"Jeez, Stevie."
"My dad would want you to."
Playing that card, Victoria thought. Did Willis Rask owe his career to Herbert Solomon, getting him out of trouble all those years ago?
Rask sighed. "Okay, you got it."
"I don't want it," Victoria said.
"I don't care," Steve said.
"Are you listening? I don't want police protection."
"Not your call, cupcake."
"What did you call me?"
"Keep your cops here, Willis," Steve instructed. "Send in the National Guard, too, while you're at it."
"You can be so damn controlling." Pretending to be annoyed, but deep down, appreciating the way Steve stepped up to the plate for her. The concern in his voice. With all the doubts she had about their relationship, there was something about which she was always certain: Steve truly, deeply cared for her.
The sheriff crouched down and straightened the snake to its full length. "Think there's enough skin for a pair of boots, Stevie?"
"I was thinking more of a briefcase," Steve replied, crouching down beside him.
"Forget it, both of you," Victoria ordered. "Someone else already has dibs."
Twenty-nine
V FOR VICTORY
An hour later, Sheriff Rask carted off the dead snake in an Igloo cooler, promising to FedEx it to Irene's leather craftsman as soon as it w
as measured, photographed, and analyzed for evidentiary purposes. By nine a.m., Victoria and Steve were driving north toward Paradise Key.
Steve felt a stew of conflicting emotions. Relief that Victoria was okay. Guilt that he hadn't been there to protect her. Guilt over something else, too. His deception.
He hadn't told her about rooting around in his father's trash. He knew she would disapprove; the phrase "invasion of privacy" came instantly to mind. So, not a word about uncovering his father's mysterious phone calls to Reginald Jones, Chief Clerk of the Circuit Court. That was something he would have to investigate by himself.
Jones to Luber to Solomon.
Sounded like a double-play combination, with his old man the first baseman. But what the hell really went on two decades ago in all those capital cases? Back then, the courthouse was a beehive of little fiefdoms, with sleazy lawyers, greedy bail bondsmen, and corrupt cops buzzing in the corridors. Presiding over the messy business, perched on a higher plane in each courtroom, were the robed lords of the manor, some decent, some incompetent, and some nakedly opportunistic.
"A den of treachery and mendacity that ah'll clean up," Herbert Solomon announced when his fellow jurists named him Chief Judge of the Circuit.
But what had happened? What did Herbert do then that made him fear Luber now? Reginald Jones was the link between the two men, literally sitting between them in the courtroom. But what did Jones-a baby deputy clerk at the time-have to do with it?
Today, Steve had intended to find out. He had planned to rent a car, drive to Miami, and drop by Jones' office. Pound the table and get some answers. Or not. But after the episode in the hotel room, Steve was not about to leave Victoria alone. And she insisted on interviewing Clive Fowles. Jones would have to wait.
Steve figured that Fowles was a man with conflicts of his own. Torn between his love for Delia Bustamante and a coral reef on one hand and his duty to Hal Griffin on the other. Just who won that tug-of-war, Steve couldn't be sure.
Victoria turned off her cell phone as they approached the causeway to Paradise Key in her metallic silver Mini Cooper. Reporters had been calling since dawn with questions about the snake attack. The car radio was tuned to a talk show hosted by Billy Wahoo, the self-proclaimed "prime minister of the Conch Republic."
"These two Mia-muh lawyers seem mighty accident prone. First Solomon drives off a bridge, then Lord nearly gets bitten by a snake. Those two are the mouthpieces for that carpetbagger Hal Griffin, and trouble follows him like skeeters on a sweathog. You ask me, Solomon and Lord are gonna be up the creek when they get to court."
"This bastard's polluting the jury pool," Steve complained.
"Don't worry. I'll weed out the bad ones on voir dire."
Steve looked over and laughed.
"What?" she asked, without taking her eyes off the road.
"That was terrific. Your confidence. If there's a problem with the venire, you'll fix it. I love that."
"I learned that from you. Don't you know that?"
"Sure I do. I just like to hear you say it."
At mid-morning on this breezy, sunny day, Fowles droned on about his courageous grandfather and Steve pretended he gave a damn. It was a classic lawyer's trick. You don't just come out and ask: "Did you see my client holding a smoking gun over the victim's body?" You buttered up the witness like a toasted bagel until he was convinced the guy with the gun didn't look anything like your client, and even if he did, he was acting in self-defense, and even if he wasn't, the victim was a son-of-a-bitch who deserved to be killed.
You accomplished this by putting on your sincere listener's face and trying not to doze off while the witness rambled from one inane subject to another. His prize-winning butterfly collection. Her mouthwatering s'mores recipe. Or in this case, the heroic exploits of Horace Fowles, Royal Navy submariner in World War II.
Victoria was terrific at the game. Probably because she actually cared about people and didn't have to feign interest in their banal lives. In the car, she had announced she'd take the lead in questioning Fowles, Steve still seeming a bit woozy and all. Her roundabout way of saying she was better at getting people to talk. Steve didn't disagree. They needed to learn just why Fowles, Griffin's trusted boat captain, was conveniently absent when the boss took Stubbs on the fatal cruise. How solid was the Englishman's alibi? Was he really delving into Delia's oysters-garlic and otherwise-when a spear impaled Ben Stubbs?
They had found Fowles in the boathouse on the far side of the island. An open-sided garagelike building that straddled a narrow inlet, the boathouse caught the easterly breeze and was filled with light. In stained coveralls, Fowles wore an eye shield and heavy gloves and aimed a welding torch at what looked like an old rusted torpedo with two seats built into it. The contraption was suspended from an overhead rack by a pair of heavy chains. Sparks flew as Fowles seared the tail assembly with a blue flame.
Catching sight of the visitors, he had turned down the gas and flipped up his eye shield. "Bet you don't know what this is."
Even had he known, Steve would have kept quiet.
Always let the witness have his fun.
"My grandfather's chariot," Fowles said proudly. "Without the warhead."
Chariot? Warhead?
"Wish I had his midget sub," Fowles continued. "But that's at the bottom of a fjord in Norway."
"Has to be a story in that," Victoria said.
And hurry the hell up and tell it, Steve thought.
Fowles offered them each a Guinness Stout from a cooler. Steve accepted; Victoria frowned and declined. Fowles' blond hair was mussed. His sunburned face brighter than usual, probably from the heat of the welding torch. Leaning on a sawhorse, Fowles began telling tales of his grandfather.
Horace Fowles had helped design the Royal Navy chariot, basically a torpedo with a six-hundred-pound warhead on the bow. Two men sat atop the chariot on seats sunk into its hull. Horace was an early charioteer, perhaps the most dangerous job in World War II, other than kamikaze pilot. Wearing a bulky dive suit, Horace would pilot the craft underwater, aim it at a German warship, then hop off, hoping to be picked up by a friendly ship or submarine. Later, he graduated from the chariot to four-man midget submarines called X-craft. He named his Fowles' Folly.
"Bloody floating coffin is what the midget sub was," Fowles told Victoria and Steve. "Or sinking coffin may be more like it. Glands leaking, batteries dying, pumps useless. Grandpop would patch her up with chewing gum and twine. Makes my service in the Falklands seem paler than piss. Not like fighting Nazis in the North Sea."
Fowles finished his story. Horace led the raiding party that went after the biggest prize of the war, the Tirpitz, a Bismarck class battleship. To get into the Norwegian fjord where the German ship was anchored, Horace swam out of the Folly in freezing water and cut through submarine nets with a knife. Sailors on the Tirpitz spotted the X-craft but thought it was a porpoise.
"That's how small she looked when you're on the deck of a fifty-thousand-ton battleship," Fowles explained. "Grandpop gets through and brings up the Folly amidship. Picture it, now: three British lads, looking up at this behemoth, twenty-six hundred German sailors aboard. Enough armaments to blow up all of London. But the big bastard can't fire her guns straight down, so the Krauts are using rifles and pistols and there's my Grandpop in the water, attaching charges to the hull. He gets back in and as they're pulling away, ka-boom, the Tirpitz lifts five feet out of the water. Hauling ass out of the fjord, the Folly gets tangled in the net, and a German cruiser sinks them."
Clive Fowles took a pull on his stout, doubtless picturing the midget sub going to her watery grave. "They gave my Grandpop the Victoria Cross. Posthumously, of course."
He reached inside the top of his coveralls and pulled out a medal dangling from a chain. A cross with a crown and lion and the inscription "For Valour."
"Churchill himself presented the medal to my grandmother." Fowles raised a hand above his head and spread two fingers in the fas
hion of the wartime prime minister. " 'V for Victory.' That's what Winnie told my grandmom."
"You must be so proud," Victoria said.
"Doubt if anyone in the war showed more guts than my grandpop." Fowles lowered his voice into a deep Churchillian baritone. " 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.' " He smiled sadly and continued: "That was Horace Fowles. Which makes me a lucky bloke. The man I look up to most is my own flesh and blood."
It was more than that, Steve thought. Clive Fowles seemed to be measuring himself against his grandfather. Desperate to be a hero. But how could a man compete with those memories? In the warm turquoise waters of the Gulf, just what could a man do to earn his own medals?
Ten minutes later, they sat on the edge of the concrete seawall, soaking up the morning sun. Victoria wore an orange Lycra bandini top with floral pants that tied in front and stopped at mid-calf. Her long, tanned legs dangled over the water. Steve wore denim cutoffs and a T-shirt that read: "Could You Come Back in a Few Beers?"
Fowles turned up the bottoms of his coveralls and now resembled a sunburned Huck Finn. He had carried his cooler from the workshop, and Steve accepted a second cold stout, even though it wasn't yet noon. Half a mile offshore, a sailboat headed downwind, its bright orange spinnaker puffed off the bow like an umbrella in a storm.
"Did you know Griffin was taking Stubbs to Key West?" Steve asked.
" 'Course I knew," Fowles said. "I cleaned the boat and fueled it for Mr. G."
"You had drinks at the dock," Victoria elbowed in. "Then you went ashore. Why weren't you driving the boat?"
"When Mr. G has company, he likes to handle the Majeure himself. Show off a bit."
"Even though he was stopping to pull up lobster pots?" Victoria asked.
"Especially then. He gets to play Great White Fisherman. Anchor the boat, get out the gaff, pull in his supper. It's a macho thing."