Kill All the Lawyers (15 page)

"This 'wedge' of yours? How's that going to work, exactly?"

"I don't know yet, Vic. I'm just riffing here."

"And you don't think a guy as smart as Kreeger will catch on?"

"So he's smart. What am I? Chopped liver?"

"You don't exactly bend spoons with your mind, Uncle Steve." Bobby unscrewed two halves of an Oreo cookie and used his teeth to scrape off the vanilla filling.

"Thanks, guys," Steve said. "But Kreeger's got his weaknesses. He's so damn cocky, he'll figure there's no way I can take him down."

"The omnipotence fantasy," Bobby added. "Freud wrote about it."

"And if Kreeger wants to hang out, like Dad says, that's fine, too."

"Keep your friends close but your enemies closer," Bobby recited.

"Freud?" Steve asked.

Bobby winced. "Al Pacino.
Godfather, Part II
."

"Don't you have homework to do?" Steve said.

"Nope."

"And where were you last night?"

"Nowhere."

"Physically impossible."

The boy tossed his shoulders, the adolescent symbol for "so what" or "whatever" or "who gives a shit?"

"You violated curfew, kiddo."

"Jeez, this is like a prison."

"Ease up on the boy," Herbert said. "When you and Janice were kids, Ah—"

"Was nowhere to be found," Steve interrupted.

* * *

Bobby wanted to tell Uncle Steve the truth.

"I was with Mom. We sat in her car down by the bay and talked for hours."

But he couldn't do it. Uncle Steve thought she was a really bad influence. But she didn't seem that way at all. She seemed kind of lost, like she needed Bobby more than he needed her.

Mom seems so lonely, like there's nobody for her to talk to.

So Bobby had listened as she talked about growing up in a house with a sick mother and an absent father, Grandpop always being off somewhere, and Steve out playing sports. Mom had been the outsider, or that was how she felt, anyway.

When Mom was talking about the man who picked her up hitchhiking—she couldn't remember his name, even though he might be Bobby's father—Bobby tried to decide whether he loved her. Yeah, he probably did in some weird way. But he was certain he felt sorry for her.

Now Bobby listened as Uncle Steve and Grandpop argued for the zillionth time about the past.

"Don't tell me you're still mad because I didn't come to your Little League games," Grandpop said.

"Or to my spelling bees, my track meets, or the hospital when I had my tonsils out."

"For crying out loud, you were only there a few hours."

"Because you wouldn't pay for a room. The doctor wanted to keep me overnight."

"Highway robbery."

Sometimes Bobby wished the two of them would grow up.

* * *

Victoria tried to decide who was more immature, Steve or his father. Clearly, they were equally argumentative and pugnacious. She tried to picture the Solomon home during Steve's childhood. It didn't seem to be a happy place. Certainly, it was not a quiet place.

They railed at each other another few moments, Herbert calling Steve an "ungrateful grumble guts," Steve calling Herbert a "tumbleweed father, gone with the wind." Then they seemed to tire, and Steve turned back to Bobby. "You still haven't said where you were last night."

"Probably with his little shiksa," Herbert said.

"Dad! That's a derogatory term."

"The hell it is."

Here we go again,
Victoria thought.
These two could argue over "Happy Chanukah."

"A shiksa's a gentile gal," Herbert continued. "Nothing derogatory about it. As for little Miss Havana-Jerusalem, her mother's a Catholic and that makes her a shiksa."

"So I'm a shiksa," Victoria said.

"Hell, no. You're Jewish by injection." Herbert laughed and took a pull on his bourbon. "Unless you two haven't played hide-the-salami yet."

"Dad, put a lid on it," Steve ordered.

Herbert grinned at Victoria. "How 'bout it,
bubele
? Stephen been slipping you the Hebrew National?"

Herbert cackled again and headed toward the living room without waiting for an answer. "Hold mah calls. Ah'm gonna watch a titty movie on Cinemax, then take a nap."

Victoria whirled toward Steve. "Why do you have to bait him?" she demanded.

"I could tell you, Vic, but I'm not sure you'd understand."

"Try me, partner. I've been to college and everything."

"It's a Jewish thing. We love arguing, complaining, talking with our mouths full. You're Episcopalian. You love—I don't know—drinking tea, wearing Burberry, the Queen of England."

Victoria was not particularly pleased about being reduced to a stereotype. She would talk to Steve about it later. But right now Bobby was still there, fishing into the Oreo bag. "Steve, don't you have some unfinished parenting to do?"

"Parenting's always unfinished." He turned to the boy. "So, kiddo, was your grandpop right? Were you with Maria last night?"

"Jeez, it's like the Inquisition in here." Bobby pried off the top of a cookie. "No, I wasn't with her. Maria's stupid dad won't let me see her anymore."

Victoria spoke gently. "Bobby, what's happened?"

"Nothing, except Dr. Goldberg thinks I'm weird." The pain was audible in the boy's voice.

"You're weird?" Steve said. "He's a periodontist."

Victoria ran a hand through Bobby's hair. "Why would he say something like that?"

Bobby hunched his shoulders. "Lots of reasons, I guess. Dr. Goldberg's always cracking on me. Like, he hates the T-shirt Uncle Steve got me."

"What T-shirt?"

Steve shook his head in Bobby's direction, but the kid either didn't pick up the sign or didn't care.
" 'If We Don't Have Sex, the Terrorists Win.'"

Victoria shot a look at Steve. In the household of the three Solomon men, she now concluded, Steve clearly was the most childish.

"And Dr. Goldberg hated the poetry I wrote for Maria," Bobby continued. "I made anagrams of every line of 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.'"

"Why, that must have been beautiful," Victoria said, trying to boost the boy's ego.

"Dr. Goldberg said the whole poem was smutty."

"Smutty!" Steve smacked the countertop.

Why was it, Victoria wondered, that men always needed to throw things, hit things, and make noise to express displeasure?

"Who uses words like 'smutty' anymore?" Steve railed. "What else did this tight-ass say to you?"

"Nothin'." The boy licked another open-faced Oreo.

"C'mon, Bobby. Don't hold out on Uncle Steve."

Without looking up from the table, Bobby said: "That I was a klutz. That he didn't want me hanging around Maria. And in case I thought she liked me, she didn't. She just wanted me to do her homework."

Steve smacked
both
hands on the countertop. "That asshole! I'm going over there and kick his butt."

"That would be very smart," Victoria said evenly. "Give Kreeger ammunition for the judge."

"Forget Kreeger. This jerk's got no right to talk to Bobby that way."

"It's okay, Uncle Steve."

"The hell it is!"

"Steve," Victoria cautioned. "Settle down. You're not going over to the Goldbergs'."

"Vic, this is between Bobby and me, okay?"

She stiffened. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing."

"Are you trying to put distance between us?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Then answer this. Am I a member of this family or not?"

Steve hesitated. Just a second. Then he said, "Sure. Sure, you are."

Victoria remembered an early boyfriend once saying he loved her. She had thought it over a couple seconds—one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two—and finally agreed,
"I love you, too."
But if you have to think about it, well, the feeling just isn't there.

"So you don't consider me a member of the family?"

"I just said I do."

"Let's examine the instant replay," Victoria demanded, "because you looked like you were moving in slow motion."

"I just like to think before I speak."

"Since when? You have an intimacy problem, you know that, Steve?"

"Aw, jeez, don't change the subject. Name one good reason why I shouldn't go over to Myron Goldberg's house and call him out."

"Because it's juvenile, illegal, and self-destructive," Victoria said. "Three reasons."

That seemed to silence him. Then he said: "Okay, I get it. I'm going to take care of my stuff first. Go to Kreeger. Get my head shrunk, get the case dismissed. Then I'm going to see Myron Goldberg and ask politely but firmly that he apologize to Bobby."

"And if he doesn't? What then?"

"I'll kick his ass from here to Sopchoppy," Steve said.

SOLOMON'S LAWS

7. When you run across a naked woman, act as if you've seen one before.

Eighteen

SKIN SHOW

Halloween had come and gone, Thanksgiving was around the corner, but the air was washcloth thick with heat and humidity. The palm fronds hung limply on the trees, no ocean breezes drifted inland. Driving through the winding streets of Coral Gables, Steve wore green Hurricanes shorts and a T-shirt with the logo
"I'm Hung Like Einstein and Smart as a Horse."
On the Margaritaville station, Jimmy Buffet was singing "Off to See the Lizard."

Steve parked next to a pile of yard clippings in a culde-sac off Alhambra, next to the Biltmore golf course. Halfway down the block was the home and office of Dr. William Kreeger.

Steve hopped out and headed down the street on foot. He could hear a power mower churning away behind one of the houses, could smell the fresh-cut grass. Around the corner, on Trevino, the sounds of sawing and chopping, a city crew cutting back the limbs on neighborhood banyan trees.

He wasn't quite sure why he parked so far away. Kreeger's place had a driveway, and there was parking at the curb, too. Maybe it was the embarrassment, going to visit a shrink. Or was Steve more like a burglar, stashing the getaway car out of sight? Didn't matter. The walk through the neighborhood of Mediterranean homes with barrel-tile roofs gave him a chance to plan. Should he bring up the subject of the boat captain? He could try bluffing, tell a big, fat lie.

"Say, Kreeger. I found the guy who was driving the boat when you killed your pal Beshears. Oscar De la Fuente. He's got some interesting things to say."

No. Too obvious. Let Kreeger bring it up. By now, he should know that Steve had been looking for the guy. Herbert had dropped off Steve's business card at every saloon and boat-repair yard in the Keys, lingering longer in the saloons, no doubt. Steve had placed ads in newspapers and on the Internet, promising a reward for anyone finding De la Fuente. No one came forward.

Kreeger lived in a stucco house that dated from the 1920s. The walls had been sandblasted, giving them the pallor of a dead man. Kreeger's office was around back. Steve followed a path of pink flagstones between hibiscus bushes and emerged in a yard surrounded by a ficus hedge. A waterfall gurgled between coral rock boulders and spilled into a rectangular swimming pool.

Steve had been here before. A lawyer always visits the scene of the crime. At the far end of the pool was the hot tub where Nancy Lamm had drowned.

Nothing had changed since Steve was here seven years ago, except that day, best he could recall, there was no naked woman on a chaise lounge. But today, reclining on a redwood chaise with thick patterned cushions was a very lithe young woman wearing sunglasses and nothing else. Her body was slick with oil, and the scent of coconut was in the air.

"Hello there," he said jauntily.

She sleepily turned her head toward him. "You don't recognize me, do you?"

"Sure I do." In truth, he hadn't been looking at her face. "Amanda, right? The niece. But I don't know your last name."

"Is that important?"

"I was just wondering how Dr. Bill is your uncle."

She rolled onto her side. "It's an honorary title. But I think that makes Bill even more special, don't you?"

The random fortuity of life struck Steve just then. One sunny day, you're walking on the beach and a bird shits on your head. Or if you're really unlucky, a tsunami swamps you and drags you out to sea. But another day, you're going to see a homicidal guy who hates you, and
poof,
a naked woman appears directly in your path. A woman who could alter the course of several lives. Could do justice where justice has failed. And there she is, like the gatekeeper at a bridge in a Greek myth.

It's almost too coincidental. Okay, strike the "almost."

Kreeger always seemed to be one step ahead of him. If Steve had plans for Amanda, surely Kreeger did, too. Steve just wasn't sure what they were.

"Wanna go for a swim?" Amanda asked.

The question threw him.

"Uncle Bill's still with a patient," she continued. "We've got time."

She cocked her head in the direction of Kreeger's office, a converted Florida room facing the yard. Slatted wooden shades appeared to be closed, but it was possible someone on the inside was watching them.

"I don't have a swimsuit."

"Me, either."

"I see that."

Dumb. "I see that." Of course you see it, schmuck.

"Nice day for a swim, though," he said. "Hot."

"I love hot days," Amanda purred.

"I see that."

Again? "I see that"? Act natural. Act like you've seen a naked woman or two.

She stretched her arms over her head, yawned, and pointed her toes. The motion was graceful and catlike. Her breasts were small, round, and tan, the nipples the color of copper. She was thin but strong, with developed calves that flexed as she straightened her legs. Carved abs. Farther south, a thin triangular strip of pubic hair ran between two small tattoos, but he couldn't make them out from this distance.