“ I don’t know. It’s so…”
“ Organized?”
“ Anal.”
Victoria pulled her Mini-Cooper into the Matheson Hammock marina, swerving to avoid a land-crab, clip- clopping across the asphalt. The sun was already baking the pavement, the air sponge-thick with humidity. Just above a stand of sea lavender trees, a pair of turkey buzzards flew surveillance.
Victoria sneaked a look at Steve as he hauled the cooler out of the car’s tiny trunk. Dark, unruly hair, a slight, sly grin as if he were one joke ahead of the rest of the world. The deep brown eyes, usually filled with mischief, were hidden behind dark Ray Bans.
Dammit, why won’t he level with me?
Why did he always take the serpentine path instead of the expressway? Why did he always treat laws and rules, cases and precedents as mere suggestions?
Because he has more fun making it up as he goes along.
Steve drove her crazy with his courtroom antics and his high-wire ethics. If he believed in a client, there was nothing he wouldn’t do to win. Which was exactly what frightened her now.
Just what would Steve do for Teresa Torano?
They headed toward the dock, the morning sun beating down so ferociously Victoria felt her blouse sticking to her shoulder blades. The only sounds were the groans of boats in their moorings and the caws of gulls overhead. The air smelled of the marshy hammock, salt and iodine and fermenting seaweed. The fronds of thatch palms hung limp in the still air.
“ Gimme a kiss. I gotta go,” Steve said, as they stepped onto the concrete dock. In front of them were expensive toys, gleaming white in the morning sun. Rows of powerful sportfishermen, large as houses. Dozens of sleek sailing craft, ketches and sloops and schooners.
“ Sure, Mr. Romance.” She kissed him lightly on the lips. Something seemed off-kilter, but what? And what was that pressing against her through his shorts?
Hadn’t last night been enough? Twice before SportsCenter, once after Letterman.
She sneaked a hand into his pocket and came out with a pair of handcuffs. “What’s this, the latest in fishing tackle?”
“ Ah. Well. Er…” Gasping like a beached grouper. “You know that store, Only Sexy Things? ” He grabbed the handcuffs and slipped them back into his pocket. “Thought I’d spice up the bedroom.”
“ Stick to cinnamon incense. Last chance, lover boy. What’s going on?”
“ You’re fucking late, hombre!” Manuel Cruz yelled from the fly bridge of a power boat tied up at the dock. He was a muscular man in his late thirties, wearing canvas shorts and a white shirt with epaulets. A Marlins’ cap was pulled low over his eyes, and his sunglasses hung on a chain.
The boat was a sportfisherman in the sixty-foot range, all polished teak and gleaming chrome. A fly bridge, a glass enclosed salon, and a pair of fighting chairs in the cockpit for serious deep-sea fishing. The name on the stern read: “ Wet Dream. ”
Men, Victoria thought. Men were so one-dimensional.
“ Buenos dias, Ms. Lord.”
She gave him a nod and a tight smile.
“ Let’s go, Solomon,” Cruz urged. “Fish are hungry.”
Steve hoisted the cooler onto the deck. “Toss the lines for us, hon?”
She leveled a gaze at him. “Sure, hon. ”
Victoria untied the bow line from its cleat and tossed it aboard. She moved quickly to the stern, untied the line, propped a hand on a piling crusted with bird dung, and leapt aboard.
“ Vic! Whadaya think you’re you doing?”
“ Going fishing.”
“ Get back on the dock.”
She smiled and pointed toward the increasing body of water that separated them from land.
“ You’re not dressed for fishing,” Steve told her.
“ I’m dressed for your bail hearing.” She kicked off her velvet-toed pumps and peeled off her panty hose, distracting Steve with her muscular calves, honed on the tennis courts of La Gorce Country Club. “Now, what’s with the handcuffs?”
Steve lowered his voice so she could barely hear him above the roaring diesels. “You remember Solomon’s Law number one?”
Oh, that. Steve’s personal code for rule breaking.
“ How could I forget? ‘If the law doesn’t work…work the law.’”
“ In the matter of Manuel Cruz, the law isn’t working.”
“ What’s that?” Cruz asked, eying the cooler on the deck.
“ Brought beer and bait,” Steve said.
“ What for? I got a case of La Tropical and a hundred pounds of shiners and wiggles.”
All three of them stood on the fly bridge. Twin diesels throbbing, the Wet Dream cruised down Hawk Channel inside the barrier reefs. The water was green felt, smooth as a billiard table, the boat riding on a plane at thirty knots.
Cruz ran a hand over the polished teak steering wheel. “I come to this country with nothing but the clothes on my back and look at me now.”
“ Very impressive,” Steve said, thinking it would be even more impressive if Cruz hadn’t stolen the money to buy the damn boat.
Cruz winked at Victoria, his smile more of a leer. “You two want to fool around, I got clean sheets in the master stateroom.”
“ Sounds lovely,” Victoria cooed. “Want to fool around, Steve?” Her smile was as sweet as fresh-squeezed guarapo, but Steve caught the sarcastic tone.
“ Maybe after we catch something,” he said, pointedly.
“ Heads and A/C work, faucets don’t,” Cruz said. “Water tank’s fouled.”
Steve studied the man, standing legs spread at the wheel, a macho pose. A green tattoo of a scorpion crawled up one ankle. On the other ankle, in a leather sheaf, was a foot-long Marine combat knife. It looked like the weapon Sylvester Stallone used in those “Rambo” movies. Out here, it could be used to cut lines or clean fish.
Or gut a lawyer planning to do him harm.
They had just passed Sombrero Light when Cruz said, “So here’s my offer, hombre. The Torano bitch gives me a release with a promise never to sue. And vice versa. I won’t sue her ass.”
“ I don’t like the way you talk about my client,” Steve said.
“ Tough shit. I don’t like Fidel Castro, but what am I gonna do about it?”
“ Your offer stinks like week-old snapper.”
“ You sue me, what do you get? A piece of paper you can wipe your ass with. I got nothing in my own name, including the boat.”
Steve looked right and left to get his bearings. Off to port, in the direction of the reef, he spotted the fins of two sharks heading toward strands of yellow sargasso weed, home to countless fish. Red coral just below the surface cast a rusty glow on the shallow water. To the starboard was the archipelago of the Florida Keys. From here, the island chain was strung out like an emerald necklace. “Let Vic take the wheel a minute,” Steve said. “I want you to see something.”
Cruz allowed as how even a woman lawyer could keep a boat on 180 degrees, due south, and followed Steve down the ladder to the cockpit. Just off the stern, the props dug at the water like a plow digging at a field. Steve opened the cooler, reached underneath the ice and pulled out a two foot-long greenish-blue fish, frozen solid. A horse-eyed jack.
“ Great bait, huh?” Steve held the fish by its tail and let it swing free. It had a fine heft, like a small sledgehammer.
