by Paul Levine
“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 sa
id.
“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.”
“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 Renee 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.
Renee 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.
Four hours later, Renee introduced him to the wonders of blossoming Gallic womanhood in the backseat of his Jeep, pulled into a mangrove thicket at Matheson Hammock. It was his first time, though not hers, and he completed the act even faster than he had rounded the bases. With her guidance, a second effort was more rewarding, and a third left them breathless. By dawn, he was sure no one had ever felt like this before, and he uttered the three magic words-“I love you”-which made Renee laugh and call him a “silly boy.”
For the next two weeks, barely a moment went by that he wasn't touching her or kissing her. Every shared experience-no matter how mundane-miniature golf, pepperoni pizza, Sting's “Every Breath You Take,” unleashed torrents of joy. Could this be anything but forever-and-ever love?
Then, a mere 363 hours and 17 minutes-by Steve's deranged calculation-after they had first scrunched up in the backseat of the Jeep, it ended. When Steve tried to join Renee in the cafeteria, she was sitting with Angel Castillo, the burly fullback on the football team. Baseball season was over; spring football practice was starting; and Steve had been discarded like a splintered Louisville Slugger.
In the nearly twenty years since, he had refrained from even once telling a woman that he loved her. How could he? The risk of pain was too great. And now he was standing mute in the face of Victoria's challenging glare.
Victoria resisted the urge to pull him out of his chair and throw her arms around him. He had never looked so hopeless and so huggable. So different from the smart-ass she first met in court. But she steeled herself against showing any emotion other than indifference. She wouldn't reveal what she felt. How could she? She couldn't even define it herself. She didn't know what propelled her toward Solomon. But he had been right about one thing: I kissed him. I grabbed him and kissed him deeply, passionately… dangerously.
So reckless. So irresponsible. So unlike her. She desperately wished she could take it back.
Or did she? With the boats creaking in their moorings and the moonlit sky swirling above, she'd molded her body to his, a yin-and-yang perfect fit. The kiss had left her disoriented and dizzy and frightened. She wanted to write it off to gin and stress and exhaustion. But in truth, she had no idea what was happening to her. Was she subconsciously trying to sabotage her relationship with Bruce? Did she have a self-esteem problem? Did she feel she didn't deserve someone so right? So damn-near-perfect it could sometimes be daunting just being with him?
Working it over now, she thought she was figuring it out.
I'm in love with Bruce and in lust with Steve.
Thank God she'd been around enough to know all about the lust factor. Relationships built on passion last about as long as the fever that accompanies the flu. When was the last time she had succumbed? Maybe six years ago-a lifetime, it seemed-there'd been Randy, a teaching pro at a tennis club in Boca Raton. Australian. Sun-bleached hair. A laugh like surf crashing on rocks. And a sexual athlete. Thank God her chiropractor's bills were covered by insurance.
She was waiting tables the summer between college and law school. .. and totally in love. Or what she mistook for love. Postadolescent lust was more like it. All those steamy nights in Randy's shoebox apartment with its wheezing air conditioner, mildewed shower curtain, and retro water bed. And one night of tears.
She remembered the pain, finding another woman-a married tennis pupil, of all the lousy cliches-riding the waves in Randy's bedroom. His confession was without guilt or remorse: “Not my fault the sheilas want to have a naughty with me.”
Thinking back, the men after Randy seemed like a procession of faceless gray suits. Lawyers, CPAs, brokers. Ambitious young men in pinstripes. Impatient men who often pushed the relationship too quickly. She remembered Harlan, a brainy tax accountant, popping the question on their third date. At that moment, they were stuck in a mob at Joe's Stone Crab, waiting for a table. How do you politely reply-“Are you out of your bean-counting mind?”-when some tourist is standing on your foot and the maitre d' is announcing, ‘Grossman, party of five!'”
“Why do you want to get married?” she had asked, befuddled.
“Because I love you,” Harlan had replied. Then, sheepishly, “And my firm favors married guys in selecting partners.”
“So, I'm sort of a talking point on your resume?”
Romantic love, she believed, was a myth t
hat preyed on our illogical need to fulfill fantasies. It was, by definition, irrational. Just look where it got her mother. Romantic love was like a vacation suntan. It faded quickly.
What she had with Bruce she called “rational love.” It was based on logical factors. Intelligence, kindness, sensitivity, empathy. And one more thing: Bruce was the first man in her life-including her father-who didn't disappoint her in a major way. So, romantic love be damned. She cherished and adored Bruce, but in a different way. It was a love based on so much more than passion, she told herself. Then, just to be sure, she told herself again.
“I have to know you can handle this,” Victoria said.
“Handle what?”
“Our working together without you getting all moony-eyed.”
“Aw, c'mon, I'm a big boy. If you say the kiss didn't mean anything, I'm cool with that.”
“You sure?”
“Totally.”
“Good. From now on, we're living by Lord's Laws. No touching, no flirting, no kissing. Nothing but business.”
“You got it,” Steve agreed. He had a sense of loss, which was weird, because how can you lose what you never had?
“Now, let's get down to Gables Estates and let you burglarize our client's closets.”
“Ready when you are.”
Victoria started packing her briefcase. “So, what do you think of Jackie?”
“Seems nice. Has a good laugh.”
“Think she's pretty?”
“Sure.” Where was this going?
“She thinks you're hot.”
“Yeah?”
“You want her number?”
Steve would not let her see his pain. “Sure. She like stone crabs?”
Victoria laughed. “Jackie says some guys take a girl out for stone crabs and expect a b.j. afterward.”
“They wait till after?”
“You two have the same sense of humor. This could work out.”
“Great.”
“I don't want to push you into anything if you're reluctant.”
“No. I'd like to see her,” Steve said, knowing it was a lie. “As long as you don't mind.”
“I think it'd be great,” she lied right back.