Solomon vs. Lord

by Paul Levine

  So where the hell was she?

  Steve was supposed to be interviewing new clients—the Barksdale publicity had flushed out a few quail—but his heart wasn't in it. He was still thinking about THE KISS. Feeling it. Tasting it. The physical sensation lingering on his lips, sweeping through his body, searing itself on his brain. Or what was left of it.

  What the hell's going on?

  His mind drifted to other kisses. Two decades ago, he'd planted one on fourteen-year-old Sarah Gropowitz in the theater balcony during the movie Witness. He remembered waiting until Harrison Ford got his car started in the barn, and Sam Cooke was singing that he didn't know much about history.

  Ford takes Kelly McGillis in his arms, and they dance, a brazen sacrilege, because of her Amish upbringing, to say nothing of her recent widowhood. Young Steve figured this was the kind of scene that turned chicks on, forbidden love and all that. Just as Cooke confessed that he was equally deficient in biology, Steve leaned close to Sarah's Clearasil-spotted face. Puckering up, Steve strafed her like a cruise missile hitting a terrorist camp. For his efforts, he got a mouthful of her jujubes, a cackling laugh, and derision from his peers for weeks to come.

  Thinking about the movie deflated him. Harrison Ford didn't get the girl. True to his nature, the hard-boiled cop returned to his city. And true to her roots, Kelly McGillis hooked up with a strapping, blond farmer. Sort of an Amish Bruce Bigby. All of which led Steve to two disheartening conclusions.

  Maybe opposites attract, but they don't usually end up together.

  And . . .

  If Harrison Ford couldn't get the girl, how the hell could he?

  “Qué pasa, jefe?”

  Cece stalked into his office with the morning's mail in one hand, a twenty-five-pound dumbbell in the other. Today, she wore lower-than-low Brazilian jeans and a cropped tee. Trying to look like J-Lo or Shakira or Thalia—Steve couldn't keep them straight.

  “Victoria call?” he asked.

  “Why should she?”

  “Because she's late.”

  “Slave driver.” She dumped the mail on his desk. “Your next customer will be here ahorita mismo.”

  “Client, Cece. We call them clients.”

  She shrugged, her trapezius muscles fluttering.

  “It's not like Victoria to be late.”

  Cece started doing one-arm curls with the dumbbell. “What's with you today?”

  “Nothing. Nothing's happened.”

  “Didn't say anything happened. Why you wigging out?”

  “I'm fine. Everything's fine. We've got a murder trial to prep, that's all.”

  “So how'd dinner go?”

  “Kranchick adores Victoria and wants to run off with Bigby.”

  “So you snowed the doc?”

  “I'm not sure. Vic and I weren't always on the same page.”

  “What a shock,” Cece said, shifting the dumbbell to her other hand.

  Steve riffled through the mail. He could hear the steel band warming up across the alley. Either that, or a truck was dumping scrap metal on the asphalt.

  “What's this?” Steve was holding a square envelope on fine linen paper. His name and address were written in calligraphy.

  “Open it and find out.”

  “That's your job, Cece. Open the mail, calendar hearings, deposit checks.”

  “What checks?”

  Steve opened the envelope and pulled out a wedding invitation. Bruce Kingston Bigby and Victoria Lord. Slipping it back into the envelope, he had the bizarre notion that he could stop the wedding by pretending the invitation did not exist.

  What's going on, anyway? What are these feelings?

  He felt like a man with a strange, undiagnosed disease. He felt no pain, but had a sense of impending doom.

  Five minutes later, Cece was back in the waiting room, free weights clanging, and Steve heard a buzzing. Looking up, he saw Harry Sachs wheeling himself through the open door in his motorized chair. Harry was in his early forties, beady-eyed, jowly, and paunchy. He wore a gray U.S. Marines T-shirt with camouflage pants and paratrooper boots. An American flag flew from back of the chair and a decal read: “Help a Grenada Vet.”

  “I'm not gonna handle your divorce, Harry,” Steve said.

  “Who said anything about a divorce?”

  “Every month you come in here saying you want out. I file the papers, then you and Joanne reconcile.”

  “She's still busting my balls, but that ain't why I'm here.”

  Steve liked Joanne Sachs but knew she could be a nag, always insisting that Harry give up his chosen profession as a con man.

  “Then what is it?” Steve said. “I already told you I won't sue your parents for being ugly.”

  “Not just for being ugly,” Harry said. “For having the chutzpah to procreate.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Okay, but I got a new one that'll make us both rich. You know that strip club on the Seventy-ninth Street Causeway? The Beav?”

  “Don't think I do.”

  “That's funny, 'cause two of the girls there recommended you. Not that I'd ever use another lawyer.”

  “I appreciate it, Harry. Tell me about the case.”

  “Discrimination. We're talking big bucks here.”

  “I'm listening and I'm fascinated,” Steve said, telling two lies for the price of one. In reality, he was still thinking about the taste of Victoria's lips. And just why couldn't Kelly McGillis end up with Harrison Ford? And if she had, would he have come to the country or would she have gone to the city? That's the rub. Even if he ever got together with Victoria, who would change to accommodate the other? And wasn't it asinine even to be thinking these thoughts? She was about to be married, and in case he'd forgotten, the engraved invitation was there to remind him.

  Harry Sachs buzzed his wheelchair closer to Steve's desk. “I been a regular at The Beav for years, ever since the cops shut down Crotches. I got the membership card, you buy ten lap dances, get one free, just like Frappuccinos at Starbucks. But they remodeled, and now the VIP lounge is up three stairs, and I can't get there.”

  “So?”

  “Whadaya mean, ‘so'? Equal access to public facilities. I'm talking punitive damages, a class action.”

  “What's the class, con artists?”

  “The disabled. We got a right to get our rocks off. Life, liberty, and”—Harry grabbed his groin—“the pursuit of happiness.”

  “Not exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind.”

  “Sure it is. Didn't you see the Nick Nolte movie? Anyway, they're violating my rights. Some thanks I get for leaving my blood on foreign soil.”

  “Harry, the closest you ever got to Grenada was Club Med.”

  “I got the medals!”

  “Off the Internet. C'mon, you were never in the Marines, and your wheelchair's a prop for your homeless-veteran scam.”

  “Who says?”

  “You jog. You Rollerblade. You play volleyball at the topless beach.”

  “That's my rehab.”

  Steve was ready to roll Harry Sachs out of his office, but instead said: “These lap dances you get—”

  “Used to get.”

  “You ever kiss the girls?”

  “You crazy? I don't even kiss my wife.”

  Twenty-six

  THE LUST FACTOR

  Harry was gone. The office was quiet, except for the steel band across the alley, playing some sort of conga that seemed to use hand grenades instead of tambourines. Victoria was still AWOL. If she didn't show up in five minutes, Steve would . . .

  What? What will you do, smart guy?

  Call the police, the hospitals, the Bigster?

  Calm down. She's fine. You're just being neurotic.

  Then his mood shifted east to west, like squalls in a thunderstorm. He sensed something positive might be in the air. She might be sitting under a palm tree on the beach, writing a Dear Bruce letter.

  “I've met someone else. I hope you'll understand. We
can always be friends. And by the way, I hate avocados.”

  Cheered by that thought, he leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, feet propped on his desk, eyes closed. Wearing nothing but his Speedos, he was at the wheel of a sailboat on a turquoise sea. Victoria appeared on deck in one of her herringbone trial suits. Leaning against the mast, her hair tossed by the wind, she peeled off her outfit, piece by piece, revealing a black thong bikini. Speedo Steve approached, placed a hand on her bare, sun-warmed hip. They kissed, long and slow, with acres of bare skin against bare skin, and this time, she did not pull away. He tasted her moist lips, listened to the wind fill the sail, felt the bulge in his Speedos. He could hear Bob Marley and the Wailers singing “Waiting in Vain.”

  A moment later, Steve was vaguely aware that he was the one singing: “I don't wanna wait in vain for your love.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” Victoria said. Not the bikinied Victoria on the sailboat. The real model, cloaked in a charcoal gray, tweedy pantsuit, carrying her briefcase and a cup of coffee into the office. “Auditioning for American Idol?”

  “There you are,” Steve said, trying to recover his dignity.

  “Sorry I'm late.”

  “No problem.” He checked her body language. Spine straight, jaw set, no eye contact. In trial lawyer's lore, if the jury refuses to look you in the eye, they've ruled against you. Along with most such fables, he told himself, it's right half the time.

  He vowed to stick to business, not even mention THE KISS. Let her bring it up. Maybe the initial shock and denial had worn off.

  Sooner or later, she's gotta break down, gotta admit it was a pulse-pounding moment.

  She moved quickly to her desk. Outside the window, the steel band was banging out a Caribbean tune that should have been called “Carnivale Migraine.”

  “We need to see Katrina today,” Steve said, in his most professional tone.

  Any second now, she's gonna come over here, jump my bones.

  “I was going to work on jury instructions,” she said.

  “This is more important. Kiss off the instructions for now.”

  Did I really say, “kiss off”?

  She didn't seem to notice. He told her Bobby's theory that Katrina bought the dive watch for a man other than her husband, a thick-wristed, scuba-diving guy who, in Steve's opinion, probably did not require latex dildos and leather restraints to become aroused. Listening, she chewed on a pencil. To Steve, at this moment, she was so naturally beautiful and innocently seductive as to be—what's the word he was searching for?—bewitching. In that same instant, he realized that “bewitching” was a word that had never before worked its way into his brain.

  Jeez, I'm starting to sound like a perfume commercial.

  “So you're going to ask Kat about the watch?” Victoria said.

  Steve shook his head. “I don't want her thinking we've lost faith in her. If she really bought the watch for Charles, it'll still be in the house.”

  “What are you going to do, ransack the master bedroom?”

  “Yep. While you're talking to her downstairs.”

  “You're not serious!”

  “If the watch isn't there, we'll confront her. If it is there, no harm done.”

  “Invading a client's privacy. This one of Solomon's Laws?”

  “Then, when we get back, we need to work on our exhibit list.”

  “I hope you're leaving off the security video.”

  “Why would I? It backs Katrina's story.”

  “How many times did you watch it?”

  “Once.”

  “You watch some old football game half a dozen times on the classics channel, but a murder scene video only once.”

  “Accident scene,” he corrected her.

  “Has Pincher filed his exhibit list?”

  “Not yet.”

  What was she getting at? Both state and defense had gotten the tapes from the home security system. The house had been wired with hidden cameras. None in the bedrooms, so no porn shots of trussed-up Charlie Barksdale with Katrina riding him, cowgirl style. But a camera was fitted into a picture frame in the corridor just outside the master suite. With the door open, the wide-angle lens had caught a sliver of the wet-bar area, maybe twenty feet from the bed. Steve remembered everything on the tape; there wasn't that much. At 11:37 P.M., according to graphics on the screen, Katrina walked into the frame. She was wearing black leather chaps, crotchless panties, and a laced corset with openings in the bra for her peekaboo nipples. Her Sunday church outfit, no doubt.

  As Katrina poured herself a drink, she suddenly turned and headed back toward Charlie. Even though the bed was out of camera range, Steve could argue to the jury that what could be seen corroborated Katrina's story: Standing at the bar, she heard Charlie in distress and ran to him. She tried to loosen the leather collar, but it was too late.

  “So what's the problem with the video?” he asked.

  Victoria dug into her briefcase, came out with the tape, and slipped it into the VCR on the bookshelf. “Did you watch it in slo-mo?”

  “No slo-mo. No instant replay. No Telestrator. So what?”

  She turned on the VCR and the TV, and the grainy black-and-white video came on. Thirty seconds of nothing but an empty corridor with a gray granite bar visible in a corner of the room. Then Katrina sashays into the frame. If there'd been audio, Steve figured, he could have heard her leather chaps rustling. She pours what looks like vodka into a glass. Suddenly—well, not that suddenly in slo-mo—her head whips back toward the bed. Steve knew what came next, but now he saw something he hadn't seen before. Just a split second before hurrying to the bed, Katrina's eyes flicked toward the corridor.

  Victoria froze the frame. “What's she looking at? Who's in the corridor?”

  “No one.”

  “Keep looking. Against the wall.”

  “What?”

  “Don't you see the shadow?”

  Steve blinked twice. There was a shaded area on the wall. Or was there? With the frame frozen, the screen pulsated, maybe creating an optical illusion. “It could be the pattern of the wallpaper. Or a trick of the lighting. Or just something the camera lens does.”

  “I see the outline of a person,” Victoria said.

  “And some people see the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich.”

  Victoria hit the PLAY button. The shadow, if that's what it was, seemed to fade away.

  “We could take the tape to a photogrammetry expert, have it enhanced,” she said.

  “So could Pincher.”

  “Sure, if he sees the shadow. But if he's like you—if he's like most men—he'll miss the details.”

  “Which is why we make a good team. I see the big picture. You see the shadows. I attack with a saber. You jab with a rapier. I drop the bombs. You . . .”

  “Clean up your bird crap.”

  “Remember, Judge Gridley said we were like Solomon versus Lord. But now . . .”

  “Now what, Solomon?”

  If she didn't have the guts, he did. “Shouldn't we talk about last night?”

  “Nothing to talk about. Chapter closed.”

  “I thought maybe, with the benefit of a night's sleep, you'd—”

  “I didn't sleep.”

  “All the more reason to talk.”

  She walked to the window, looked across the alley toward the balcony where the steel band was taking a break and passing around a joint the size of a salami. “We have a case to try. That's all we're going to talk about. And when it's over, I'm out of here.”

  “What's that mean?”

  “After I marry Bruce, I'm going in-house with his company. It's the best move for me.”

  “You're running away.”

  “From what?”

  “Last night—”

  “Never happened, and even if it did, it won't happen again,” she said, employing the lawyer's technique of alternative pleading. “Look, I'm sorry if I sent out any signals you misinterpreted.”

&nbs
p; “You kissed me. How'd I misinterpret that?”

  “I've been under a lot of pressure. I cracked. That's all it was.”

  “So you won't talk about what you're feeling right now? What you're thinking?”

  She wheeled around. “I'm thinking I liked you better when you were an insensitive jerk.”

  “I'm not buying it.”

  “Don't you get it? I'm unavailable. That makes me more desirable. You're inappropriate. That makes you more desirable. It's a flaw in our genetic code. We can't help ourselves, we're drawn to the flames. It's what makes us the screwed-up human beings we are.”

  “And that's why you kissed me? And I kissed you back?”

  “If you have a better explanation, let's hear it.”

  “I'm not sure. There's something about you that . . .”

  He stopped, unable to continue, and she pounced. “That what?”

  “That makes me, I don't know . . . I . . . I have these feelings,” he stammered.

  “C'mon,” she prodded. “You're the one who wants to open up. Just how do you feel about me?”

  “You had me from ‘Get lost.'”

  “No I didn't. Can't you be sincere?”

  “Only if I fake it.”

  “I mean it. Either tell me how you feel or just shut up.”

  He hadn't expected her to challenge him. Suddenly, he was back at Beach High with a huge crush on Renée de Pres, an exchange student from Paris. Even now, he remembered everything about her. Dark hair cut short in that sexy French way. Tight miniskirts with the top three buttons of her blouse left open. An alluring accent that made him want to lick the dewy perspiration from behind her bare knees. He was, after all, seventeen with an achy-breaky heart and a perpetual erection.

  Renée had been in the stands when they played Hialeah High for the state baseball championship. In the ninth inning, with the score tied, Steve singled, stole second, then third, and scored on a sacrifice fly, sliding headfirst under the tag. His teammates carried him off the field. It was an ephemeral moment, but in his naivete, he believed it was the first of an endless series of joyous spectacles, drums and bugles announcing every triumph of his life.