Kill All the Lawyers

'Nothing, except Dr. Goldberg thinks I'm weird.' The pain was audible in the boy's voice.

'You're weird?' Steve said. 'He's a periodontist.'

Victoria ran a hand through Bobby's hair. 'Why would he say something like that?'

Bobby hunched his shoulders. 'Lots of reasons, I guess. Dr. Goldberg's always cracking on me. Like, he hates the T-shirt Uncle Steve got me.'

'What T-shirt?'

Steve shook his head in Bobby's direction, but the kid either didn't pick up the sign or didn't care. ' 'If We Don't Have Sex, the Terrorists Win.''

Victoria shot a look at Steve. In the household of the three Solomon men, she now concluded, Steve clearly was the most childish.

'And Dr. Goldberg hated the poetry I wrote for Maria,' Bobby continued. 'I made anagrams of every line of 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.''

'Why, that must have been beautiful,' Victoria said, trying to boost the boy's ego.

'Dr. Goldberg said the whole poem was smutty.'

'Smutty!' Steve smacked the countertop.

Why was it, Victoria wondered, that men always needed to throw things, hit things, and make noise to express displeasure?

'Who uses words like 'smutty' anymore?' Steve railed. 'What else did this tight-ass say to you?'

'Nothin'.' The boy licked another open-faced Oreo.

'C'mon, Bobby. Don't hold out on Uncle Steve.'

Without looking up from the table, Bobby said: 'That I was a klutz. That he didn't want me hanging around Maria. And in case I thought she liked me, she didn't. She just wanted me to do her homework.'

Steve smacked both hands on the countertop. 'That asshole! I'm going over there and kick his butt.'

'That would be very smart,' Victoria said evenly. 'Give Kreeger ammunition for the judge.'

'Forget Kreeger. This jerk's got no right to talk to Bobby that way.'

'It's okay, Uncle Steve.'

'The hell it is!'

'Steve,' Victoria cautioned. 'Settle down. You're not going over to the Goldbergs'.'

'Vic, this is between Bobby and me, okay?'

She stiffened. 'What does that mean?'

'Nothing.'

'Are you trying to put distance between us?'

'I have no idea what you're talking about.'

'Then answer this. Am I a member of this family or not?'

Steve hesitated. Just a second. Then he said, 'Sure. Sure, you are.'

Victoria remembered an early boyfriend once saying he loved her. She had thought it over a couple seconds- one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two-and finally agreed, 'I love you, too.' But if you have to think about it, well, the feeling just isn't there.

'So you don't consider me a member of the family?'

'I just said I do.'

'Let's examine the instant replay,' Victoria demanded, 'because you looked like you were moving in slow motion.'

'I just like to think before I speak.'

'Since when? You have an intimacy problem, you know that, Steve?'

'Aw, jeez, don't change the subject. Name one good reason why I shouldn't go over to Myron Goldberg's house and call him out.'

'Because it's juvenile, illegal, and self-destructive,' Victoria said. 'Three reasons.'

That seemed to silence him. Then he said: 'Okay, I get it. I'm going to take care of my stuff first. Go to Kreeger. Get my head shrunk, get the case dismissed. Then I'm going to see Myron Goldberg and ask politely but firmly that he apologize to Bobby.'

'And if he doesn't? What then?'

'I'll kick his ass from here to Sopchoppy,' Steve said.

SOLOMON'S LAWS

7. When you run across a naked woman, act as if you've seen one before.

Eighteen

SKIN SHOW

Halloween had come and gone, Thanksgiving was around the corner, but the air was washcloth thick with heat and humidity. The palm fronds hung limply on the trees, no ocean breezes drifted inland. Driving through the winding streets of Coral Gables, Steve wore green Hurricanes shorts and a T-shirt with the logo 'I'm Hung Like Einstein and Smart as a Horse.' On the Margaritaville station, Jimmy Buffet was singing 'Off to See the Lizard.'

Steve parked next to a pile of yard clippings in a culde-sac off Alhambra, next to the Biltmore golf course. Halfway down the block was the home and office of Dr. William Kreeger.

Steve hopped out and headed down the street on foot. He could hear a power mower churning away behind one of the houses, could smell the fresh-cut grass. Around the corner, on Trevino, the sounds of sawing and chopping, a city crew cutting back the limbs on neighborhood banyan trees.

He wasn't quite sure why he parked so far away. Kreeger's place had a driveway, and there was parking at the curb, too. Maybe it was the embarrassment, going to visit a shrink. Or was Steve more like a burglar, stashing the getaway car out of sight? Didn't matter. The walk through the neighborhood of Mediterranean homes with barrel-tile roofs gave him a chance to plan. Should he bring up the subject of the boat captain? He could try bluffing, tell a big, fat lie.

'Say, Kreeger. I found the guy who was driving the boat when you killed your pal Beshears. Oscar De la Fuente. He's got some interesting things to say.'

No. Too obvious. Let Kreeger bring it up. By now, he should know that Steve had been looking for the guy. Herbert had dropped off Steve's business card at every saloon and boat-repair yard in the Keys, lingering longer in the saloons, no doubt. Steve had placed ads in newspapers and on the Internet, promising a reward for anyone finding De la Fuente. No one came forward.

Kreeger lived in a stucco house that dated from the 1920s. The walls had been sandblasted, giving them the pallor of a dead man. Kreeger's office was around back. Steve followed a path of pink flagstones between hibiscus bushes and emerged in a yard surrounded by a ficus hedge. A waterfall gurgled between coral rock boulders and spilled into a rectangular swimming pool.

Steve had been here before. A lawyer always visits the scene of the crime. At the far end of the pool was the hot tub where Nancy Lamm had drowned.

Nothing had changed since Steve was here seven years ago, except that day, best he could recall, there was no naked woman on a chaise lounge. But today, reclining on a redwood chaise with thick patterned cushions was a very lithe young woman wearing sunglasses and nothing else. Her body was slick with oil, and the scent of coconut was in the air.

'Hello there,' he said jauntily.

She sleepily turned her head toward him. 'You don't recognize me, do you?'

'Sure I do.' In truth, he hadn't been looking at her face. 'Amanda, right? The niece. But I don't know your last name.'