The Deep Blue Alibi

room. Once inside, he heard a grunt, a guttural growl, and an exhaled 'Maldito! That's heavy.' Cecilia Santiago, a thickset young woman in black tights and a muscle tee, was lying on her back on a bench press. She had a cafe au lait complexion, and three metal studs pierced one wavy eyebrow, which was shaped like the tilde in 'manana.'

'Morning, Cece.'

'Wanna spot for me, jefe?' She hoisted the bar and a cobra tattoo curled upward from rippled triceps.

'I'll make a deal with you, Cece. Type up the overdue pleadings and correspondence, and I'll spot for you.'

'Slave driver.'

'Anybody call?'

'The usual. Xerox says you're three months behind on the copy machine lease. Bobby's teacher called, something about truancy. A couple bimbos from downstairs. They wanna sue Ben and Jerry's. Just discovered there's fat in ice cream.'

'What about Vic? Where is she?'

'Queen Victoria? How should I know?'

'Vic's a princess. It's her mother who's The Queen.'

'Whatever, jefe. She ain't here and she ain't called.'

He wanted to see her, wanted to talk to her. Why is it, he wondered, when a relationship feels shaky, you crave the connection even more?

Cece started another set, exhaling on the thrust upward, inhaling on the negative downward motion, the bar clanging into the metal brackets. Steve had hired her not from a paralegal school, but from the Women's Detention Center. He considered her crime a mere peccadillo. Beating the stuffing out of her boyfriend, then driving his Toyota into the bay after catching him fooling around with her cousin, Lourdes. Cece was a decent enough assistant, even though she screwed up Steve's pleadings by typing every word phonetically, when she bothered to type at all. She was particularly adept at keeping the models away, mostly by threatening to break their spindly limbs.

Steve walked to her desk and riffled through the mail. Bills, solicitations, and Cece's muscle mags. Maybe he should lift weights, grow some stingray lats like Mr. Deep Diver. He opened a magazine called Big and Brawny, turned to a photo of a guy in a G-string, his granite torso oiled up, his arms bursting with veins like writhing snakes. The headline: 'Do Steroids Really Shrink Your Testicles?' Steve tossed the magazine aside.

'Guy's waiting,' Cece huffed.

'Who? Where?'

'In your office. Some old geezer. Said he was a friend of your papi's.'

Steve shot a look at the door to his office. Closed. He had no appointments today. Who the hell was in there, and why?

'Dammit, you can't let somebody you don't even know into my inner sanctum.'

She looked up from the bench. 'You afraid they're gonna steal your great works of art?'

'If you're talking about my Florida Marlins posters. .'

'Ain't talking about your briefs.'

The premises of Solomon amp; Lord consisted of Cece's reception room/gym and a single office overlooking a narrow alley and a rusting green Dumpster. On warm days, meaning nearly every day, the pungent perfume of rotting vegetables, decomposing ham croquettes, melting tar, stale beer, and fresh piss wafted through the open window. Across the alley, on an apartment balcony within spitting distance, a Jamaican steel band could be counted on for migraine-inducing rehearsals, the musicians smoking giant doobies and occasionally cooking jerk chicken on a hibachi.

The office furnishings were Salvation Army Moderne. Two desks, purchased at police auctions of stolen property; a Jupiter Hammerheads baseball-bat rack, a gift from a grateful client, a minor-league outfielder Steve helped beat a steroids rap; and a fish tank usually stocked with Florida lobster, courtesy of a poacher client. On the wall, instead of diplomas or plaques from the Kiwanis, were posters celebrating the Marlins' two World Series Championships.

The fermenting stench from the Dumpster hit Steve as he stepped inside. Another scent, too, bay rum cologne. Steve knew only one man who used the stuff, and the son-of-a-bitch was here, round and pink, sinking into the sagging client chair.

'Some shit hole you got here, Stevie,' Peter Luber said, gesturing with a small pink hand. In his late sixties, Pinky Luber-no one ever called him 'Peter' or 'Pete'-had a rotund torso with short pudgy legs and a round, bald head with a thin, hooked nose. His face and his scalp were the same carnation pink, as if he were mildly feverish. His cheeks were so chubby that his eyes were reduced to slits of indeterminate color. He wore a jet-black suit, a white shirt with rough-hewn gold nugget cuff links, and a red silk tie as gaudy as fresh blood. On his lap was a black felt hat with a maroon feather and a narrow, upturned brim. The bowler, Steve remembered, was a Luber trademark, as distinctive as an eye patch or a cane, and highly useful for keeping the sun off his already pink scalp. An unlit Cuban cigar, the short, fat Robusto, was clenched in his teeth. On the little finger of his left hand-yeah, the pinky finger-was a black onyx ring set with a glistening diamond.

What's the perjurious pink bastard doing here?

'If I'd known you were coming, I'd have fumigated for vermin,' Steve said. 'Now I'll just do it after you leave.'

A hard look flickered in Luber's tiny eyes, then passed quickly. In that instant, Steve saw the toughness the man tried to hide behind his cherubic pinkness, his bowling ball physique, and his silly English hat.

'If I were you, I'd burn this joint down,' Luber said, gravel in his voice.

'If you were me, I'd kill myself.'

'Nothing like your old man in the old days. Herb always went for mahogany. When he was first elected judge, he spent his own money to panel his office in the Justice Building.'

His father's name coming out of Luber's mouth made Steve want to toss the son-of-a-bitch into the Dumpster.

'Herbert T. Solomon,' Luber mused. 'Now, there was a lawyer.'

' 'Was' being the operative word. Just what the hell are you doing here, Luber?'

'C'mon, Stevie. Call me 'Pinky.' Everybody does.'

'Wouldn't feel right. But I got some other names that might.'

'You got some attitude, kid. As for your old man, he's better off fishing in the Keys. I wouldn't want to be in that rat race downtown now.'

'You don't have a choice. They pulled your ticket when they sent you away.'

Luber took the Robusto out of his mouth and waved it like a wand. 'Eighteen months in Eglin. No big deal. I worked on my tennis game, got my life master's in contract bridge.'

'Didn't know you can cheat in bridge.'

'Mind if I smoke?' Luber licked the tip of his cigar with a pink tongue. 'Might improve the smell in here.'

'I mind.'

'Aw, hell, Stevie. Your old man's let it go. Why can't you?'

'I'm not my old man.'

'I remember when you'd come to the courthouse and play with your baseball cards in the holding cells.' Luber's unlit cigar bobbed up and down as he spoke. 'I was Chief of Capital Crimes, your old man Chief Criminal Judge.'

Suddenly, Steve felt the room get warmer. Pinky Luber's cologne had turned the air sticky sweet. 'You were chief of sleaze. Dad was a public servant. I can't fucking believe what you did to him.'

'You blame me for your father's tsuris.' Giving Steve some Yiddish for old-times' sake.

'You're the momzer who lied under oath.' Adding his own Yinglish to the yin and yang of the sparring match.

'Kid, there are things you don't know, and that's all I'm gonna say.'

Steve walked to the corner of the room and pulled a Barry Bonds bat from the rack. Gorgeous maple, only