by Paul Levine
“She's got more than ten thousand.”
“Jeez, one day in private practice, you're greedy already. Look, we'll get a million dollars' worth of publicity, and if we win, the money gets freed up and we get paid.”
“I can't buy groceries with publicity.”
“Why do you rich people worry so much about money?”
“I'm not rich, you jerk.”
“But your clothes.”
“Consignment shops.”
“And jewelry?”
“My mother's castoffs.”
“Princeton? Yale?”
“Scholarships and loans.”
“Oh,” he said, downcast. “And I was hoping you could front the expenses for expert witnesses, lab tests, consultant fees.”
“You are so totally dim. I'm broke.”
“All the more reason for you to tag along.”
“I don't tag along.”
“Okay, you take the law, I take the facts.”
“I'll consider it if we split fees, sixty-forty my way,” she said.
“Sixty-forty, my way. I'm providing you with free space in my penthouse office.”
“You have a penthouse?”
“Top floor. Of a two-story building.”
“I'll bet it's a real showplace,” she said. “Fifty-five, forty-five, my way.”
“Fifty-fifty. You can use my secretary. She types a hundred words a minute. In Spanish. In English, she spells everything phonetically, so you gotta really proof it.”
“She won't mind the extra work?”
“Doesn't matter. It's a term of her parole that she have a job.”
“Great,” she said, feeling her temples beginning to throb. “Just great.”
“So, we have a deal?”
She thought a moment before saying: “Not until you agree to some ground rules.”
“Whatever you say.”
“None of your macho bullshit. You treat me as an equal.”
“You got it.”
“We don't do anything unethical.”
“Of course not.”
“And none of your sophomoric cracks about my sex life.”
“Or lack thereof?”
“That's what I'm talking about,” she said.
“Just testing the boundaries. So-partners?”
“For one case.”
“Fine. Let's shake.”
She extended a hand, but he didn't shake. Instead, he fanned out his fingers, just as Bobby had done. She paused another moment-dammit, this sucked, but what choice did she have?-raised her hand, and pressed it against his.
Steve looked into her eyes as their hands pressed together, wondering just how long she would hold the position. First time they'd ever touched, and he sure as hell wasn't going to be the one to break away.
She caught the look in his eyes and pulled her hand back.
Suddenly, a churning noise in the water startled them both. The engines on the Kat's Meow were firing up, and water churned at the stern.
“Hey there!” a voice came from above. “Sorry if I spooked you.”
On the flying bridge, a sun-baked man in a white shirt with epaulets stood at the wheel. In his mid-thirties, he sported a mustache and wore aviator sunglasses and a blue ball cap. “Wanna give me a hand with the lines?”
“No problem,” Steve said. He walked to the front cleat, unwrapped the bow line, and tossed it aboard.
Katrina called from the courtyard: “Where you going, Chet?”
“The marina. Carbon monoxide gauge is on the fritz. Be back before sundown.” He looked down at Steve, who was untying the stern line. “She's a beauty, huh?”
For a second, Steve thought he was talking about Katrina.
“Sixty-four feet with a hull draft of only twenty-three inches,” the man said.
Oh.
“Sleeps eight. Or twelve if you're real good friends.” The man laughed, and Steve tossed the stern line onto the deck.
“You live aboard?” Victoria asked, and Steve smiled. He was about to ask the same thing.
“Captain's quarters,” Chet said.
“Were you here the night Charles died?” she asked. That was Steve's next question, too. He'd been right about Victoria. She had great instincts. “Mr…?”
“Manko. Call me Chet. I was sleeping in my stateroom. Mrs. B called me right away. I got there even before the paramedics, but Mr. B was already dead.”
“We're going to need to talk to you, Mr. Manko,” Victoria said.
Steve smiled, liking the sound of the “we.”
“Not a problem,” Manko said. “I'm always around.” Then he waved to Katrina, gave the throttle some juice, expertly pulled away from the dock, and headed toward the open bay.
“You're thinking he's a corroborating witness?” Steve asked.
“I'm hoping,” she said.
“Me, too. Because the other choice is accomplice.”
On the loggia, the Honduran housekeeper was back with their drinks and three uninvited guests. Two plainclothes detectives and Ray Pincher.
“Already,” Victoria said.
“Let's go to work, partner,” Steve said.
They hurried back just as Pincher was telling Katrina that the Grand Jury had indicted her for first- degree murder, and she had the right to remain silent.
“Our client invokes all her rights,” Steve called out.
“Solomon and Lord. On the same side?” Pincher said, a twinkle in his eye. “This is going to be fun.”
“What does he mean by that?” Katrina asked.
“Shh,” Steve said. “You're remaining silent.”
“We'll want a private entrance to the jail for booking,” Victoria said to Pincher.
“Not necessary,” Steve said.
“No advance word to the media,” Victoria said. “We don't want a circus.”
“Circus is fine,” Steve said. “Cirque du Soleil even better.”
“Mrs. Barksdale will need twenty minutes to get dressed,” Victoria said.
“Make it an hour,” Steve said.
Pincher beamed and turned to one of the detectives. “Del, I think we could charge admission to this one.”
Looking worried but retaining her composure, Katrina stood and started toward the house. “I'd excuse myself,” she said to Pincher, “but my lawyers instructed me to remain silent.”
Steve pulled Victoria aside and whispered, “Go help her. You know what clothes to pick out?”
“Something subdued,” Victoria said. “Maybe a Carolina Herrera pantsuit.”
“Wrong,” he said. “A slinky dress, maybe one of those leopard prints, something off the shoulder. Show some boobs. And those stockings with holes.”
“Fishnets?” Victoria was shocked.
“Yeah. And red lipstick, really red.”
“You want our client to look like a hooker?”
“I want her to look like a farm girl, an innocent naif from the Midwest who was corrupted by the dirty old man she married. He twisted her into his perverted sex slave.”
“You think we can sell that?”
Steve's tone of righteous indignation was a rehearsal for the jury. “How dare the state accuse this woman of murder when all she did was try to satisfy her husband's deviant demands? What is she guilty of, besides giving too much of herself, unaware of the dangers?”
“That's our defense?”
“For now, it's all we've got,” Steve said.
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE ELEVENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT IN AND FOR MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA-FALL TERM, 2005 INDICTMENT MURDER FIRST DEGREE
Fla. Stat 782.04(1) amp; 775.087
STATE OF FLORIDA vs. KATRINA BARKSDALE
IN THE NAME AND BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA:
The Grand Jurors of the State of Florida, duly called, impaneled and sworn to inquire and true presentment make in and for the body of the County of Miami-Dade, upon their oaths, present that on or about the 16^th day of November 2005, within the County
of Miami-Dade, State of Florida, KATRINA BARKSDALE did unlawfully and feloniously kill a human being, to wit: CHARLES BARKSDALE, from a premeditated design to effect the death of the person killed, by strangling the said CHARLES BARKSDALE with a weapon, to wit: a leather device, in violation of Fla. Stat. 782.04(1) and 775.087, to the evil example of all others in like cases, offending and against the peace and dignity of the State of Florida.
Mitchell Kaplan
Foreperson of the Grand Jury
4. I will never carry a pager, drive a Porsche, or flaunt a Phi Beta Kappa key… even if I had one.
Thirteen
DOODADS AND DILDOS
“You're saying Charles Barksdale forced Katrina to have kinky sex?” Victoria shouted above the wind.
“Not physical coercion,” Steve answered. “More like emotional pressure. ‘If you love me, you'll do this.' And financial pressure. ‘Look at everything I've given you.' Plus the trump card: ‘If you won't wear a strap-on, if you won't whip my ass, if you won't do bondage, I'll dump you and find someone who will.'”
Victoria was dubious. “Kat told you all that?”
“What?” Steve was dialing through the static, searching for a radio station. Top down on his ancient Cadillac, they were headed across the MacArthur Causeway from Miami to South Beach, the car spewing contrails of oily smoke. In the backseat, Bobby was speed-reading a coroner's textbook, Medicolegal Investigation of Death. Victoria had glanced at an autopsy photo and turned away.
The Solomon Boys, as she'd started thinking of them, had picked her up at her condo, Steve saying they could work on the drive to the office. Taking one look at the convertible, she knew her hair would be wrecked in two minutes. Always a good soldier, she didn't complain.
It was the day after they'd signed up Katrina, who was immediately booked, fingerprinted, and jailed for first-degree murder. There were a hundred things to do, starting with prepping for the bail hearing. Victoria had not had time to interview their new client, so she was forced to rely on Steve's recitation of what Katrina had told him. Naturally, he'd taken no notes. Had she been running the show, they'd have tape-recorded every syllable, and by now they'd have the transcripts indexed and color-coded. When she told Steve this, he smiled tolerantly and said that at the beginning of a case it was better to keep a client's memory flexible.
“Flexible,” she thought. A slippery lawyer's word.
She questioned whether this shotgun marriage was going to work. Sure, Solomon had all that experience. But he was so aggressive, so reckless, he would lead them into untold disasters. She was still furious at him for stealing her client, but she had vowed to put up with him. She needed this case to get on her feet, start building her practice. As far as learning trial tactics from Solomon, she'd study his every move, then do the exact opposite.
He must have found the radio station he wanted, because he stopped fiddling with the dial, and Robert Palmer was singing that a woman was simply irresistible. Victoria yelled over the music and the wind: “Did Kat tell you Charles would dump her if she didn't do what he wanted?”
“Not in those words. I filled in a few gaps for her.”
“You coached her?”
“I amplified her responses.”
“You make fine distinctions.”
“That's what lawyers do, Victoria.”
Victoria, she thought. No more “Vickie.” At least he was starting to show her respect. Crossing the causeway, she looked enviously at a cruise ship steaming out Government Cut toward the Atlantic. The passengers were waving at a party fishing boat following in their wake. The air tasted of salt, and the wind whipped at her hair.
“You're saying Charles pressured Kat into choking him as part of their marital relations,” she said.
“Marital relations? Who talks like that?”
Victoria motioned toward the backseat. “I do, in front of a child.”
Bobby said: “So they had a freaky way of doing the bone dance. Big deal.”
The light turned red at the entrance to the Fisher Island ferry, and Steve pulled to a stop, the Eldo's brakes screeching like the call of a pelican. The morning sun was still low in the southeastern sky but warm as a mitten on their faces. Just across the channel rose hundreds of multimillion-dollar condos protected by a moat from the real world. Directly in front of them was a Metro bus, its rear billboard advertising free consultations with a smiling, mustachioed lawyer. Hablamos Espanol.
Victoria fanned away the diesel fumes. “Could you put the top up?”
“A/C doesn't work,” Steve said.
She made a face but didn't say a word.
“Sorry if I don't drive a Porsche like Bigby,” Steve said.
“Don't start.”
“I also don't carry a pager or wear a Phi Beta Kappa key like the Bigster.”
“You don't have a Phi Beta Kappa key,” Bobby piped up.
“Thanks for the support, kiddo,” Steve said.
He fooled with the radio again, picked up what sounded like a bugle playing reveille, and Bobby yelled happily: “Long Shot Kick De Bucket!”
“A classic,” Steve said as the song began.
Victoria listened a moment, something about weeping and wailing and getting in the race, but it made no sense to her.
“Don't you like reggae?” Steve asked.
“I can never understand the patois.”
“I could teach you. It's the language of sugarcane fields, the music of repression and rebellion.”
“You see yourself as a rebel? A lawyer with a machete?”
He shrugged. “I just like the music.”
The light turned green, Steve gunned the engine, and the old Cadillac coughed and sputtered but managed to pull around the bus.
“Now, where was I?” Steve said.
“Sex,” Bobby reminded him.
Victoria said: “Really, is this proper conversation for a young-”
“Bobby's cool with it,” Steve interrupted. “So Katrina's dressed in leather chaps and a laced corset, and she ties Charlie spread-eagle on the bed. He's wearing a collar around his neck with two leather straps fastened to the bedposts. He increases the pressure on his neck by leaning back, decreases by leaning forward. The idea was to cut off his oxygen, increase the power of his orgasm.”
“Asphyxiophilia,” Bobby said. “I read about this guy who wrapped a wire around his willy, tied it to two teaspoons, put one in his butt, another in his mouth, all plugged to an electrical outlet. Guess what happened?”
“He caused the Northeast blackout of 2003,” Steve said.
Bobby made a sound like bacon sizzling in a pan. “Elec-tro-cuted.”
“Barksdale had something in his mouth, too. A latex dick.”
“That's disgusting.” Victoria wrinkled her nose.
“But relevant to our defense. Why?”
“Because he couldn't cry out with that doodad in his mouth,” she answered.
“You mean dildo.”
“Some female jurors might be offended by the word. I thought I'd soften it.”
Soften it? God, did I really say that?
Steve laughed. “We're gonna be in Criminal Court, not on Sesame Street. Do you know how many words there are for ‘penis'?”
“I know twenty-six,” Bobby said. “One for every letter of the alphabet.”
“Cool it, kiddo,” Steve said.
“Anaconda. Beaver Buster. Corn Dog.”
“Not now, Bobby.”
“Dipstick. Earthworm. Frankfurter.”
“Put a lid on it.”
“Gherkin. Hose. Iron Rod. Joystick.”
“I said that's enough,” Steve ordered.
“And to think,” Victoria said, “when I was in school, we only memorized the Gettysburg Address.”
“Don't look at me,” Steve said. “I didn't teach him that stuff.”
“Kosher Pickle,” Bobby said. “You taught me that one.”
“That's part of your ethnic heritage. Look, it's okay if y
ou screw around with us, but if you try that stuff with Dr. Kranchick, she's gonna think I'm a pervert, and you're gonna be bunking at the state hospital.”
“Who's Dr. Kranchick?” Victoria said.
“Doris Kranchick,” Bobby said. “RAKISH CORN DICK.”
“I'm warning you,” Steve said, then turned to Victoria. “Kranchick works for Family Services. She wants to take Bobby from me.”
“Uncle Steve says we'll go to some desert island if the judge rules against us.”
“What about just filing an appeal?” Victoria said.
“C'mon, let's stay focused,” Steve said. “Barksdale is sprawled on the bed. Katrina performs her magic and gets him off. She unties his hands but leaves the collar on. Then she crawls out of bed and walks over to the wet bar.”
“Why didn't she untie him then?”
“She says he was good for a second pop after a time-out. So she's pouring herself a drink at the bar when she hears something back on the bed. Charlie's thrashing around, this gurgling sound coming from his throat. She runs to him, sees the collar digging into his neck. It takes her a while to loosen the straps, and by the time she gets the collar off, he's not breathing. She calls nine-one-one. End of story.”
Victoria processed the information as they headed east on Fifth Street, three blocks from the ocean. They had left downtown Miami behind, its skyscrapers honeycombed with lawyers and bankers in their light winter wools, the streets in cool shadows from the buildings themselves. Everything was brighter here, the colors of the low-rise stucco buildings, the shorts and shirts of the people hauling coolers and lawn chairs to the beach. She was unexpectedly happy to be with the Solomon Boys, working together, a world away from the stifling confines of the Justice Building.
“Accidental strangulation following kinky sex?” she said. “You think the jury will swallow that?”
“I don't know, but I'm gonna rephrase your question for voir dire.”
“You know what I mean. It sounds pretty far-fetched.”
“Just because you and Bruce never try anything exotic-”
“Don't go there,” she said sternly. “You have no idea what Bruce and I do.”