by Paul Levine
“Not gonna 'criminate myself.” Cece looked at Victoria with suspicion. “So now I gotta slave for two of you?”
“I'm sure we'll all get along fine,” Victoria said, not believing it for a moment.
Cece ran her bloodred fingernails over her abs, contracted and relaxed the muscles. The sailfish wagged its tail. “Look, Lord, I don't make coffee. I don't take your Needless Markup designer shit to the cleaners, and I don't type. We cool?”
“Cece types,” Steve contributed. “She just can't spell.”
“It's my lexus,” Gina said. “You fire me, I'll sue your ass off.”
“You don't have dyslexia. You're just too lazy to use the spell check.”
“Hey, Lord, hear that? He's saying Hispanics are lazy. I'm calling the EEOC.”
“And I'm calling your probation officer,” Steve said.
Victoria watched in amazement. She'd never seen such a lack of professionalism. How could she work in a place like this?
Cece laughed. “Good one, jefe.”
“You, too, Cece.”
They exchanged high fives, then bumped chests, like football players celebrating a touchdown.
Okay, so this was their routine, Victoria thought. First they trade barbs, then display affection. So now there were four people who seemed to care for Solomon. There was that old couple, Marvin and Teresa, who followed him around the courthouse; there was sweet, needy Bobby; and now this felonious, steroid-juiced secretary. What was his appeal, anyway?
Am I missing something? Or am I just too normal to belong to the Steve Solomon Fan Club?
“Okay, everyone to the inner sanctum,” Steve said. “Let's talk about how to win a murder trial.”
As Steve led his crew through a door into his private office, Victoria was aware of two sensations: the smell of rotten vegetables and what sounded like metal garbage cans banging against each other. Just below the grimy window, in a narrow alley, was a green Dumpster, horseflies buzzing around its open lid. Across the alley was a three-story apartment building, and on the nearest balcony, five bare-chested men beat sticks against metal pans and what looked like fifty-five-gallon oil drums.
“Trinidad steel band,” Steve said.
“That's reassuring,” she said. “I thought it was a prison riot.”
To escape the stench and the percussion, Victoria moved toward a corner of the room where a bubbling fish tank housed half a dozen rust-colored crustaceans. “Let me guess. You poach lobsters in your spare time.”
“You think too small.”
“His client hijacks refrigerated trucks coming up from the Keys,” Cece said.
Victoria scoped out the rest of the place. On one wall was a framed cartoon of a courtroom filled with water. The fins of two sharks were visible, cutting smoothly through the water, headed toward the judge. The caption read: “Counsel Approaching the Bench.”
Sure, Solomon would relate to that.
Victoria was in purgatory. What had happened to her master plan? Five years of public service parlayed into a job in a prestigious firm, all leading to partnership and lifetime tenure. Or maybe a judgeship.
Judge Lord.
But here she was, inhaling the fumes from a Dumpster, her plans dashed, her career in shambles.
Looking at the cracked and soiled plaster walls, feeling a mixture of anger and regret, Victoria said: “For a hotshot lawyer, Solomon, your office is . . .” How could she put this delicately? “A real shit hole.”
So there it was, Steve thought. Being compared to the deep-carpet types downtown. Being compared to Bigby, too, he supposed, with all that inherited money. What were her values, anyway? If wealth and status were her turn-ons, maybe it was better that she was taken.
“That stuff important to you, Victoria? Marble on the floor, mahogany on the walls?”
“For better or worse, that's how we measure success.”
“Success should never be confused with excellence.”
“Here we go again,” Cece said. “He always uses this shit to explain why my paycheck's late.”
Steve walked to the lobster tank, picked up a stale bagel from a dish, crumbled it, and dropped the pieces into the water. He watched the crustaceans crawl over each other, like fans after a Barry Bonds home run. “Success is how other people judge you,” he said. “Are you driving that Ferrari, buying that house in Aspen? Excellence can't be measured in dollars. Ideals don't fit into a bank account. It's about judging yourself. Have you lived up to your principles or have you sold out?”
“You have principles?” Victoria asked.
“I make up my own.”
“Solomon's Laws,” Cece said. “Every time he gets a bright idea, I gotta write it down for posteridad.”
“Write this down, Cece. ‘I will never compromise my ideals to achieve someone else's definition of success.'”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”
“Sounds like you're making excuses for not earning enough money to buy a decent car and clean the carpets,” Victoria said.
“He could make a shitload,” Cece said, “if he wasn't the santo patrón of lost cases. You got a lousy case and no money, come on down. Haitian refugees want green cards, Miccosukees want their burial ground, migrant workers want fair pay. We take 'em all.”
“I didn't know you did pro bono work,” Victoria said.
Steve shrugged. “I do my share.”
“And everybody else's,” Cece said. “I don't let him advertise it, or every deadbeat in town would be in our waiting room.”
“Solomon, you are full of surprises,” Victoria said.
“Don't make a big deal out of it,” he said.
“No, I mean it. I'm sorry.”
“Yo, jefe,” Cece said. “We gonna talk about the case or what? I gotta do my speed reps.”
Steve sat on the edge of his desk. “Let's start with Charles Barksdale. Victoria, paint us a picture.”
She took a breath. “He had a lot of interests,” she began. “Art, literature, poetry. He was proud of his first editions. He was extremely well read. And he let everybody know it.”
“How?”
She seemed reluctant to go on. Was Victoria Lord too refined, Steve wondered, to speak ill of the dead? That never troubled him. The deceased were the only people who couldn't sue you for slander.
“Sometimes, at a dinner party,” she continued apologetically, “Charles would bring up some book by Proust or a Sylvia Plath poem, and you got the idea he'd just read it that day and shoehorned it into the conversation.”
“So Barksdale was a phony? A pseudo-intellectual?”
“More like he had to show everybody he was the smartest guy at the table.”
“Who cares what he read?” Cece said. “Did his bony-assed wife kill him?”
“Let's take a vote,” Steve said. “Gut impressions. Who thinks Katrina murdered her husband?”
“Cooch wouldn't have the balls,” Cece said.
“Okay, that's a not guilty. Bobby.”
“Ubi mel, ibi apes.”
“Meaning?”
“Honey attracts bees.”
“Meaning?” he repeated.
“She killed him for the money.”
“One not guilty. One guilty.” Steve turned to Victoria. “Partner?”
“I don't think we have enough facts,” she said.
“Facts shmacks. What's your gut say?”
“I try not to go with my gut.”
“I know. If you did, you wouldn't be marrying Mr. Guacamole.”
“Don't take that shit from him,” Cece said. “He talk that way to me, he wouldn't be able to feed himself.”
“C'mon,” Steve said. “There's a question pending. Guilty or innocent?”
After a moment, Victoria said: “I just don't see how Katrina could have done it. How do you live with a man, have breakfast with him every day, kiss him before he goes to the office, sleep with him every night, then kill him?”
“A vote for the goodness of huma
n nature, a vote for innocence,” Steve said.
“I'm hoping,” Victoria said. “And what do you think?”
“She's our client,” Steve said, “and she's relying on us for every breath she takes. If a hundred witnesses saw her shoot a man on Flagler Street at high noon, they're lying or nearsighted or insane. If the polygraph goes off the Richter when she professes love for old Charlie, the machine is on the fritz. If the forensics all point to her, they've been tainted by mendacity or incompetence. She's our client, which means she's wrongfully accused, an innocent victim of a system run amuck. We hold her key to the jailhouse door, and we, my friends, shall swing that door open and set her free.”
6. Lie to your priest, your spouse, and the IRS, but always tell your lawyer the truth.
Fifteen
SKELETONS IN THE CABANA
Victoria was trying to decipher the first autopsy report she'd ever read in the first murder case she'd ever handled.
“What are Tardieu's spots?” she asked.
“Pinpoint hemorrhages on the face,” Steve said. “Common in strangulation.” He was leaning back in his chair, flipping the pages of a magazine.
“Charles Barksdale's thyroid cartilage was intact. Shouldn't it have been fractured?”
Steve didn't look up from the magazine. “Maybe in a hanging, but not a slow, steady pressure like we've got here.”
Victoria was starting to wonder about Steve's work ethic. He'd spent half an hour drinking Cuban coffee, eating guava pastries, and reading the Miami Herald, laughing out loud at Carl Hiaasen's column. He'd spoken on the phone with a man he called Fat Louie, saying, “Gimme the over for a nickel on the Dolphins–Jets.” And for the past twenty minutes, he'd been thumbing through Sports Illustrated, and it wasn't even the swimsuit issue. She longed to say, “Get to work, lazybones,” but that would sound too much like her mother.
“Other than the injury to the neck, Charles had no bruises or lacerations,” she said.
“Uh-huh.”
Sounded bored. When was he going to roll up his sleeves, dig into the file?
“That's consistent with Katrina's story that Charles consented to being tied up and collared,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“The toxicology was normal. Blood gases showed—”
“Hey, rookie.” He tossed down the magazine. “You're interrupting my train of thought.”
“Excuse me. I'm trying to learn the forensics.”
“You're wasting your time.”
“Really?”
“Pretend you're Pincher. How do you prove the death was a homicide and not an accident?”
“Motive,” she said. “Pincher needs a reason Katrina would kill Charles or he can't win a circumstantial case.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Forget the blood gases. Figure out motive.”
“You didn't get anything from Katrina?”
“Nothing besides passion-fruit iced tea.”
“Maybe if you hadn't been so busy flirting.”
“I was establishing common ground, building a bond. It's what I do.”
“Especially with attractive women.”
“Not always successfully.” He gave her a long look. “Like I told you, she swears she loved her husband with all her heart. They had a perfect marriage. She had no reason to kill good old Charlie.”
“And you believe she's telling the truth?”
“Absolutely. I'm the Human Polygraph Machine, and we've got ourselves an innocent client.”
Had he been convincing? He had not told Victoria the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He knew she badly wanted Katrina to be innocent, needed her to be innocent. A career prosecutor—if you call three trials and two cups of coffee a career—Victoria had never defended any client, much less a murder client. Steve feared her demeanor could give it away, their client's guilt written all over her face. He doubted she'd fight as hard if she thought their client was guilty. Hell, that's when you have to fight harder and be more creative.
Maybe Katrina was innocent, but in the real world, the arithmetic was against it. How many lost souls, swallowed by the so-called justice system, were truly innocent? Five percent? Less.
Best was to have a client you liked, a cause that was just, and a check that cleared. One out of three was the norm, he figured.
Yesterday, he'd given his trial team—as he'd come to think of Victoria, Bobby, and Cece—his old key-to-the-jailhouse-door speech. That was true; they had a duty to set Katrina free if they could. But he hadn't revealed how he felt on the ultimate question: Did she kill her husband?
When he was skimming through the magazine, he was replaying those moments alone with Katrina before Victoria arrived. He had tried to rattle Katrina to shake out the truth. It's always a good idea to give your client a dose of cross-examination before the prosecutor has a chance to do it.
Sitting at the table in the courtyard, Katrina's smile had been teasing, her eyes sparkling, her laugh tinkling. As he watched the slit on her skirt slide up her thigh, he wondered: Why so frisky for such a recent widow?
Steve had told her his ground rules for the attorney–client relationship. “Lie to your priest, your spouse, and the IRS, but not to your lawyer. I don't want any surprises at trial, so if there are any skeletons in the cabana . . .”
“Meaning?” Katrina asked, guileless as a child bride.
“Any men in your life besides your husband?”
“Only my masseur, my Pilates instructor, and my plastic surgeon.” She laughed and tossed layers of raven hair his way.
“I guess that's a no.”
“On the ice tour, we were all young and in great shape. A different hotel every other night, lots of parties, guys with great butts. Some of the guys were even straight, and boy, did they make out like bandits. But when I met Charlie, I quit that scene. I've been faithful to him since the day he proposed.”
“And vice versa?”
“Charlie would never stray, I can guarantee you that.”
Boasting more about her own abilities than her husband's fidelity, Steve thought. “Anything out there that can embarrass you?”
“There was a party once with about half the Detroit Red Wings, but that's ancient history. And Charlie knew all that stuff, anyway. He liked hearing about the other men, the group sex, the girl-on-girl. Give Charlie a hot story and leather restraints, he'd be sailing over Viagra Falls.”
“Any old boyfriends who are gonna post X-rated video on the Internet?”
Her eyes were clear and cool as a winter rain. “I had lots of X-rated moments, but I didn't let anyone tape them.”
“Good.”
“I worked a Vegas ice show in a thong and skates. That a problem?”
“Don't think so.”
“When you're in a sit spin, the breeze off the ice can really freeze your beav.”
For a moment, the only sound in the courtyard was the gurgling fountain of spitting cherubs.
Her tongue seemed to flick across her lips, but she might have just been moistening her gloss. “You unattached, Steve?”
“Like a piece of driftwood.”
“Maybe when this is over . . .”
She let the bait play in the water, but he didn't leap for it.
“Any prenup?” he asked, getting back to business.
“You know a rich old guy who doesn't demand one?”
“I'll need a copy.”
“Sure, but I can tell you what it says. If we got divorced, I'd keep what I brought into the marriage.”
“Which is what, other than your skates and thongs?”
“What difference does it make? We weren't getting divorced. We were planning a trip to Tuscany in the spring. We were going fishing off Bimini next week. We had a good life.”
“It might matter to the State Attorney, so I have to ask.”
“Besides my skates and thongs,” she said, eyes wary, “if we got divorced, I'd keep my wits. They've always been good to me. As for money,
I wouldn't get a dime.”
“And if you were married when your husband died, you'd get . . . ?”
“One-third of his estate, the rest goes to his kids from his first marriage.”
“If you were unhappy, that might be a motive for murder.”
“I wasn't unhappy.”
“Or if Charlie planned to divorce you . . .”
“And lose the best blow jobs of his life? Look, we got along. He had his business and his poetry seminars, and I had the club and my friends. Charlie gave me everything I wanted. Why would I risk all that by killing him?”
“Spouses kill each other all the time for the darnedest reasons.”
“If I'd killed Charlie,” she said, her voice as sharp as a skate blade, “I'd have a better alibi than ‘I was sucking his cock and then he strangled.'”
“I wonder if there's a way we might rephrase that for the jury. . . .”
The hazel eyes, which had been sparkling with flirty invitations, had gone cold. “Are you on my side or not?”
“I'm your best friend in the world. I'm here to carry your spear into battle. I just need your help.”
“Then hear this, spear carrier: I wasn't fucking around and I didn't kill Charlie. Got it?”
“The way you're looking at me right now . . .”
“What about it?”
“If you're on the witness stand, don't ever look at the jury that way.”
“Why not?”
“Because you look angry enough to kill somebody.”
Watching Victoria sift through the autopsy and toxicology reports, Steve knew she was wasting her time. Having cross-examined hundreds of witnesses over the years, he'd put his money on his built-in polygraph. It wasn't a matter of respiration, perspiration, or blood pressure. Just a gut feeling.
His gut told him two things. He was fairly certain Katrina Barksdale had been screwing around. As for the other question, he figured it was 75–25 that she'd aced good old contented Charlie. He couldn't articulate exactly why; his gut just told him so.
But that's okay, he thought. If your client is truly innocent, the pressure to win is overwhelming. But a guilty client? Hey, if you lose, justice is done.