“ Edward G. Robinson’s last movie,” the kid concluded, finally cracking a smile.
We were back at Granny’s place on the Gulf of Mexico side of Islamorada. I had lived there, too, in the old Cracker house of cedar planks and tin roof, eaves spouts that collected rainwater in barrels and a sturdy wooden porch with a swing, awning, and rocking chair. Charlie was snoozing in the rocker, the kid was watching TV in the Florida room, and I was keeping Granny company in the kitchen. She was squeezing lime juice over a mess of mullet we had caught when the bonefish proved too elusive.
“ So what’s bothering you, Jake? You’ve had a burr under your saddle ever since you got down here.”
“ Nothin’.”
“ Uh-huh.”
Outside, plump gray clouds were building over the Gulf. The temperature was dropping, and the air smelled of rain.
“ Granny, do you think I’m a silver-tongued shyster?”
“ You’re not silver-tongued,” she answered, proving that sarcasm runs in the family. Granny dipped the mullet fillets in flour and poured some oil into a frying pan. She was from the old school, and broiled fish just didn’t have enough taste for her. “You got that burned-out feeling again?” she asked.
“ Not exactly.” I picked up a Key lime and sucked on it, bringing tears to my eyes. “You remember Blinky Baroso?”
“ Fat fellow who sells stuff he don’t own.”
“ That’s him.”
“ Now, he’s silver-tongued.”
“ Yeah, well anyway, I just walked him in a fraud case, and now, it’s one of those times of self- examination.”
The wind had picked up, and fronds from a coconut palm were slapping against the side of the house. Heavy raindrops began pinging off the roof. I used to fall asleep to that noise, just down the hall and to the right.
“ You didn’t cheat, did you?” Granny asked.
I shook my head. “I just did my job.”
“ Then, what’s the problem? You’re a lawyer, a hired gun. You can’t be judge and jury, too.”
“ I know. I keep telling myself that, but it sounds like a rationalization for what I’m doing, which, let’s face it, has no social utility.”
She dropped a chubby white fillet into the sizzling oil. “Social utility? Are you the same Jacob Lassiter who used to cut school to go frogging in the ‘Glades? Are you the same boy who’d rather hit a blocking sled than study for finals?”
“ C’mon, Granny, I’ve grown up.”
She regarded me skeptically. “Is there a woman behind this?”
“ Whadaya mean?” Even the dimmest witness knows how to avoid a question by asking one of his own.
“ Men generally don’t do any self-examining unless they get criticized by someone else first. As far as I know, the only people whose opinions matter to you are Charlie and me, and we both love you no matter what you do. So I figure there’s gotta be a woman.”
“ Now you’re playing psychologist.” Another delaying tactic, shifting the focus to the questioner.
“ Okay, if you don’t want to talk about it…” She let it hang and returned to her cooking. When the fillets were golden brown, she removed them from the pan, strained the oil, added some flour, lime juice, tomato sauce, garlic, pepper, thyme, and a pinch of pepper and salt for the sauce. Outside the window, lightning flashed across the Gulf, and the rain slanted in silver sheets along the beach. “Well, at least, I hope that sleazebag paid you a bundle.”
“ You know my rule, Granny. Get paid up front.”
“ Did you?”
I ignored the question and kept going. “Because if you don’t and you lose, you never see the money. The client says, ‘What good did you do? I could have been convicted without a lawyer.’
And if you win, he says, ‘What’d I need you for? I was innocent.
“ So did you get paid up front?”
“ Not exactly,” I admitted.
“ Afterward?”
“ Sort of.”
“ I hope you didn’t take a check from that bum. He writes checks on banks that closed in twenty-nine.”
“ Not a check, either.”
“ Cash? Did you check to see if all the serial numbers were the same?”
“ Not cash, either.”
“ What then?”
“ Stock.”
“ Huh?”
“ Blinky gave me a hundred shares in Rocky Mountain Treasures, Inc. It’s incorporated in Colorado, licensed to do business in Florida.”
Granny was looking at me as if she’d raised a fool. “What makes me think this so-called corporation is not one of the Fortune 500?” she asked.
“ Probably because Blinky is the incorporator, the president, and the sole director.”
“ And he gave you the stock instead of a fee.”
“ He’s tapped out. Look, Granny, I know what you’re thinking, but there’s one person in the world Blinky wouldn’t stiff, and that’s me. Now, it may turn out that company doesn’t make any money and the stock could be worthless. I know that. But, for once, it’s a legitimate enterprise.”
“ What’s this Rocky Mountain corporation do?”
“ Sort of geological research,” I mumbled.
“ What’s that, mining?”
“ Not exactly.”
“ C’mon, Jake.”
“ They look for things.”
“ What sort of things?”
“ Buried treasure,” I said, staring out the window at the rippling Gulf, slate gray in the storm.
“ Oh Lordy, Jake. Get me a mason jar. I need a drink.”
“ Look, lots of lawyers take stock in lieu of fees: Imagine if I’d represented Microsoft ten years ago.”
“ Microsoft didn’t try to sell chunks of a condemned condo as pieces of the Berlin Wall, did it?”
I had forgotten about that scheme. Just then, somebody behind me said, “Gregory Peck would have taken vegetables, instead of worthless pieces of paper.”
I turned around. Kip was barefoot and wore torn jeans and a faded T-shirt.
“ Vegetables?” I asked him.
“ In To Kill a Mockingbird, he takes collard greens as his attorney’s fee when a client can’t pay. At least you can eat them.”
“ Thanks for the advice, kid. Why don’t you see if Judgment at Nuremberg is on? It’ll keep you busy for three and a half hours.”
The kid pouted and backed out of the kitchen. In a moment, I heard him clicking through the channels in the other room. Now Granny was scowling at me. “Jake, I want you to be nice to Kippers.”
“ Okay, okay.”
“ And I want you to represent him.”
“ He needs a lawyer? What happened, did they fail to deliver his TV Guide?”
“ It’s a little problem in Juvenile Court. I’d rather let Kippers tell you about it.”
“ Let him hire Gregory Peck. He works cheap.”
“ Jake!”
I stuck an index finger into the sizzling lime-tomato concoction and burned myself. “Holy blazes,” I said,
