› THEN, THAT I MIGHT BE MORE ALONE WITH THEE, THREE YEARS I LIVED UPON A PILLAR, HIGH.
› I BEEN STONED, TOO, BUT THREE YEARS? THATS HEAVY.
› NO, NO TV-GAL. DO YOU KNOW NOTHING OF THE STYLITES?
Jeez, I don’t know what’s worse, Michelle thought, a pervert or a bore. She looked toward the bedroom. The door was open, the light off.
› A MO-TOWN GROUP, RIGHT?
› AH, PERHAPS MUSIC IS MORE TO YOUR TASTE.
Ought to sign off now, Michelle thought, play hostess, offer a good-bye drink and exchange lies about next time. So quiet, the only sound the hum of the computer, the only light the luminous black-and-white display of the monitor. Now what was he typing? Rock ’n’ roll lyrics. What’s with this guy? Can’t he think for himself? Trying to tell me I shake his nerves and rattle his brain. He was rattled long before tonight. And don’t tell me what drives a man insane. But there he goes, hammering out the whole damn song. And he probably can’t even carry a tune. She heard footsteps behind her.
› OK, OK, PRINCE… I BROKE YOUR WILL AND GAVE YOU A SUPER-DUPER THRILL, BUT I REALLY GOT TO GO NOW.
A shadow crossed the screen, then stopped.
She didn’t turn.
She expected a caress, a lover’s hug.
“Hello, darling,” Michelle said.
There was no reply.
She hit the escape button, punching out of the program, and stared into the black background of the screen. The outline of shoulders…
Two hands grabbed Michelle’s neck from behind and yanked her out of the chair. For a moment she thought it was a joke. But it wasn’t funny, and rough sex after tender loving didn’t make sense. She thought of a man who wanted her to choke him just before he came. Oxygen deprivation to enhance the orgasm.
Weird. Now this.
The hands slipped from her neck, then closed again. Michelle clawed at the hands as they pressed harder. She kicked backward and tried to scream, but nothing came out. She gasped for air, fought off the nausea, and sucked in a breath as the hands relaxed again. But she was losing consciousness and her strength was gone.
She barely felt the hands this time, and her last memory would be a tiny sound, a sickening crack like a wishbone snapped in two.
The hands continued to squeeze for a full minute, then dropped her back into the chair. A moment later, they grabbed Mabel Dombrowsky by the hair and roughly jammed her head forward into the monitor, shattering the screen, shards of glass piercing her eyes. From inside the broken screen, an electronic pop and fizzle and a puff of flame.
“Great balls of fire!” sang a voice she never heard.
CHAPTER 1
A Matter of Honor
If Marvin the Maven tells me not to yell in closing argument, I don’t yell. Marvin knows. He’s never tried a case, but he’s seen more trials than most lawyers. Drifting from courtroom to courtroom in search of the best action, he glimpses eight or nine cases a day. Five days a week for the last seventeen years since he closed up his shoe store in Brooklyn and headed south.
Some lawyers don’t listen to Marvin and his friends-Saul the Tailor and Max (Just Plain) Seltzer-and they pay the price. Me, I listen. The courthouse regulars can’t read the fine print on the early-bird menus, but they can spot perjury from the third row of the gallery.
Marvin, Saul, and Max already told me I botched jury selection. Not that lawyers pick jurors anyway. We exclude those we fear, at least until we run out of challenges.
“You’re meshuga, you leave number four on,” Marvin told me on the first day of trial.
“He’s a hardworking butcher,” I said defensively. “Knows the value of a dollar. Won’t give the store away.”
Marvin ran a liver-spotted hand over his toupee, fingering the part. “Lookit his eyes, boychik. Like pissholes in the snow. Plus, I betcha he lays his fat belly on the scale with the lamb chops. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could spit.”
I told myself Marvin was wrong and that he hadn’t intended to shower me with spittle to make his point.
Some lawyers hire psychologists to help with jury selection. They’ll tell you that people who wear bright colors crave attention and feel for the underdog. Plaintiffs jurors. Dark colors are worn by introverts who don’t care about people. Defendant’s jurors. Hoop earrings and costume jewelry are good for the plaintiff, Rolex watches and three-karat diamonds for the defense. To me, that’s a lot of malarkey. I pick jurors who smile when I smile and don’t fold their bodies into tight balls when I stand close.
No second-guessing now. Closing argument. A time to sing the praises of freedom of the press, of the great newspaper that fulfills the constitutional function of blah-blah-blah. And Marvin said don’t yell. No emotion. The jury don’t care about the Foist Amendment. Besides, Nick Wolf is a great schmoozer, Marvin told me. The jurors love him. Number five, a Cuban receptionist, keeps batting her three-inch eyelashes at him.
And I thought she had trouble with her contacts.
The four men on the jury are your real problem, Marvin said. One black, two Cubans, one Anglo, all men’s men. Nick’s kind of guys.
So what am I, chopped liver?
He gave me that knowing look. Ey, Lassiter, it ain’t your jury; it ain’t your day. And with that, the gang took off, a kidnapping trial down the hall drawing them away.
Nick Wolf’s lawyer, H. T. Patterson, yelled in closing argument. Hell, he sang, chanted, ranted, rocked, and roiled. A spellbinder and a stemwinder, H.T. worked the jurors like a Holy Roller. Which he was at the Liberty City Colored Baptist Church while attending law school at night in the days before Martin Luther King.
“They subjected Nick Wolf, a dedicated public servant, to scorn and ridicule, to calumny, and obloquy,” Patterson now crooned in a seductive singsong. “They lied and distorted. They defamed and defiled. They took his honorable name and soiled it. Besmirched, tainted, and tarnished it! Debased, degraded, and disparaged it! And what should a man do when they stain, sully, and smear his good name?”
Change it, I thought.
“What should a man of honor do when those with pens sharp as daggers poison his reputation, not in whispers but in howls, five hundred three thousand, six hundred seventy-nine times?”
Five hundred three thousand, six hundred seventy-nine being the Sunday circulation of the Miami Journal, and Sunday being the day of choice for fifty-megaton, rock-’em-sock-’em, take-no-prisoners journalism. Which is what the Journal is noted for, though I thought the offending story-STATE ATTORNEY VIOLATED CAMPAIGN LAWS- lacked characteristic punch. Not sharing my opinion was Nicholas G. Wolf, bona fide local high-school football star, decorated Vietnam war hero, former policeman, and currently state attorney for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit in and for Dade County, Florida. The article accused Wolf of various technical violations of the campaign contributions law plus one unfortunate reference to accepting money from a reputed drug dealer.
“The man should seek redress in a court of law,” Patterson solemnly declared, answering his own question, as lawyers are inclined to do. “He should come before a jury of his peers, citizens of the community. So, my friends and neighbors, ladies and gentlemen of this jury, it is time to pay the piper…”
I didn’t think the metaphor held up to scrutiny, but the jury didn’t seem to notice. The men all nodded, and number five stopped fluttering her eyelashes and now stared mournfully at poor, defamed Nick Wolf.
“It is time to assess damages; it is judgment day, it is time to levy the penalty for these knowing, reckless lies. And I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, is it too much to ask that the Miami Journal, that behemoth on the bay, that monster of malediction, pay ten dollars for each time it lied, yes, ten dollars for each time it sent its message
