Kill All the Lawyers

'No reason to be all tore up, son,' Herbert said. 'Maybe the more time you spend with that shrink, the better.'

'How you figure, Dad?'

'Ah couldn't find hide nor hair of that boat captain. You need a new plan.'

Victoria shot Steve a look. He hadn't told his father everything, and she knew it.

'Dad, it doesn't matter if you found De la Fuente or not. I just want Kreeger to know I'm looking.'

Herbert's bushy eyebrows seemed to arch higher. 'So you send your old man on a wild-goose chase. Fine son you are.'

'But you're right, Dad. There's an upside to spending more time with Kreeger. His girlfriend, too, if I could get her alone.'

'You still think you can convince her Kreeger's a killer?' Victoria said.

'No!' He slapped his forehead to signify what an idiot he was. No one disagreed. 'I've got it backwards. I think she already knows his past.'

'And you base this on what?' Victoria asked.

'Something Kreeger said to me about how much he appreciates Amanda's qualities. That she has an intelligence and understanding beyond her years. That sort of thing.'

'Yeah?'

'She's the one he feels safe with, the one who comforts him. Kreeger could have told her about Beshears and Lamm. And who knows? Maybe there's-'

'A third murder,' Victoria said.

'Exactly. If Amanda knows Kreeger's secrets, and I can drive a wedge between them, maybe I can get her to help me nail him.'

'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?'