“That's reassuring,” she said. “I thought it was a prison riot.”
To escape the stench and the percussion, Victoria moved toward a corner of the room where a bubbling fish tank housed half a dozen rust-colored crustaceans. “Let me guess. You poach lobsters in your spare time.”
“You think too small.”
“His client hijacks refrigerated trucks coming up from the Keys,” Cece said.
Victoria scoped out the rest of the place. On one wall was a framed cartoon of a courtroom filled with water. The fins of two sharks were visible, cutting smoothly through the water, headed toward the judge. The caption read: “Counsel Approaching the Bench.”
Sure, Solomon would relate to that.
Victoria was in purgatory. What had happened to her master plan? Five years of public service parlayed into a job in a prestigious firm, all leading to partnership and lifetime tenure. Or maybe a judgeship.
Judge Lord.
But here she was, inhaling the fumes from a Dumpster, her plans dashed, her career in shambles.
Looking at the cracked and soiled plaster walls, feeling a mixture of anger and regret, Victoria said: “For a hotshot lawyer, Solomon, your office is…” How could she put this delicately? “A real shit hole.”
So there it was, Steve thought. Being compared to the deep-carpet types downtown. Being compared to Bigby, too, he supposed, with all that inherited money. What were her values, anyway? If wealth and status were her turn-ons, maybe it was better that she was taken.
“That stuff important to you, Victoria? Marble on the floor, mahogany on the walls?”
“For better or worse, that's how we measure success.”
“Success should never be confused with excellence.”
“Here we go again,” Cece said. “He always uses this shit to explain why my paycheck's late.”
Steve walked to the lobster tank, picked up a stale bagel from a dish, crumbled it, and dropped the pieces into the water. He watched the crustaceans crawl over each other, like fans after a Barry Bonds home run. “Success is how other people judge you,” he said. “Are you driving that Ferrari, buying that house in Aspen? Excellence can't be measured in dollars. Ideals don't fit into a bank account. It's about judging yourself. Have you lived up to your principles or have you sold out?”
“You have principles?” Victoria asked.
“I make up my own.”
“Solomon's Laws,” Cece said. “Every time he gets a bright idea, I gotta write it down for posteridad.”
“Write this down, Cece. ‘I will never compromise my ideals to achieve someone else's definition of success.'”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”
“Sounds like you're making excuses for not earning enough money to buy a decent car and clean the carpets,” Victoria said.
“He could make a shitload,” Cece said, “if he wasn't the santo patron of lost cases. You got a lousy case and no money, come on down. Haitian refugees want green cards, Miccosukees want their burial ground, migrant workers want fair pay. We take 'em all.”
“I didn't know you did pro bono work,” Victoria said.
Steve shrugged. “I do my share.”
“And everybody else's,” Cece said. “I don't let him advertise it, or every deadbeat in town would be in our waiting room.”
“Solomon, you are full of surprises,” Victoria said.
“Don't make a big deal out of it,” he said.
“No, I mean it. I'm sorry.”
“Yo, jefe,” Cece said. “We gonna talk about the case or what? I gotta do my speed reps.”
Steve sat on the edge of his desk. “Let's start with Charles Barksdale. Victoria, paint us a picture.”
She took a breath. “He had a lot of interests,” she began. “Art, literature, poetry. He was proud of his first editions. He was extremely well read. And he let everybody know it.”
“How?”
She seemed reluctant to go on. Was Victoria Lord too refined, Steve wondered, to speak ill of the dead? That never troubled him. The deceased were the only people who couldn't sue you for slander.
“Sometimes, at a dinner party,” she continued apologetically, “Charles would bring up some book by Proust or a Sylvia Plath poem, and you got the idea he'd just read it that day and shoehorned it into the conversation.”
“So Barksdale was a phony? A pseudo-intellectual?”
“More like he had to show everybody he was the smartest guy at the table.”
“Who cares what he read?” Cece said. “Did his bony-assed wife kill him?”
“Let's take a vote,” Steve said. “Gut impressions. Who thinks Katrina murdered her husband?”
“Cooch wouldn't have the balls,” Cece said.
“Okay, that's a not guilty. Bobby.”
“Ubi mel, ibi apes.”
“Meaning?”
“Honey attracts bees.”
“Meaning?” he repeated.
“She killed him for the money.”
“One not guilty. One guilty.” Steve turned to Victoria. “Partner?”
“I don't think we have enough facts,” she said.
“Facts shmacks. What's your gut say?”
“I try not to go with my gut.”
“I know. If you did, you wouldn't be marrying Mr. Guacamole.”
“Don't take that shit from him,” Cece said. “He talk that way to me, he wouldn't be able to feed himself.”
“C'mon,” Steve said. “There's a question pending. Guilty or innocent?”
After a moment, Victoria said: “I just don't see how Katrina could have done it. How do you live with a man, have breakfast with him every day, kiss him before he goes to the office, sleep with him every night, then kill him?”
“A vote for the goodness of human nature, a vote for innocence,” Steve said.
“I'm hoping,” Victoria said. “And what do you think?”
“She's our client,” Steve said, “and she's relying on us for every breath she takes. If a hundred witnesses saw her shoot a man on Flagler Street at high noon, they're lying or nearsighted or insane. If the polygraph goes off the Richter when she professes love for old Charlie, the machine is on the fritz. If the forensics all point to her, they've been tainted by mendacity or incompetence. She's our client, which means she's wrongfully accused, an innocent victim of a system run amuck. We hold her key to the jailhouse door, and we, my friends, shall swing that door open and set her free.”
6. Lie to your priest, your spouse, and the IRS, but always tell your lawyer the truth.
Fifteen
SKELETONS IN THE CABANA
Victoria was trying to decipher the first autopsy report she'd ever read in the first murder case she'd ever handled.
“What are Tardieu's spots?” she asked.
“Pinpoint hemorrhages on the face,” Steve said. “Common in strangulation.” He was leaning back in his chair, flipping the pages of a magazine.
“Charles Barksdale's thyroid cartilage was intact. Shouldn't it have been fractured?”
