The Deep Blue Alibi

'I don't think this is about my shirt.' He'd bought the black cotton tee at Fast Buck Freddy's on Duval Street. The shirt had a drawing of a man on a bar stool with the inscription: 'Rehab Is for Quitters.' 'So what's really going on here, Vic?'

'You stole my client.'

'Our client.'

'Weren't you listening? I'm going out on my own.'

'C'mon, we have a big new case. Uncle Grif wants me on this.'

'Don't call him that. He's not your uncle.'

'As much as he's yours.'

'Infuriating. I left that one out. You're overbearing, arrogant, egotistical, and infuriating.'

'And you hate my shirt. But we're cocounsel on Grif's case. It's what he wants.'

She knew Steve was right, which only made her angrier. 'All right. But it's our last case. It's the only way I can grow as a lawyer. And the only way to preserve our personal relationship. I want to be with you, but not in the courtroom.'

'You're sure about it? You really want to break up our firm?'

'Most of the time, I love being with you. You can be warm and funny and caring. But at work, you drive me crazy.'

'Really, really sure?'

'Yes, dammit!'

'Okay, then. Our last case. Win, lose, or mistrial.'

'And I sit first chair.'

'What?'

'You heard me, Steve.'

'Okay. Okay.'

'You really accept it?' Sounding suspicious.

' 'Course I do. You're the boss. This is our swan song. After this, you fly solo. Get that autonomy you're talking about.'

'You respect my feelings on this?' Still not quite buying it.

' 'Course I do. I can lay down a bunt for the team.'

But that wasn't what Steve was thinking. He was thinking that he'd square around to bunt, then pull back and smack the ball past the third baseman. Sure, he'd give Victoria more authority. At first. Then, when she got in trouble, he'd be right there to rescue her. She'd see how foolish she'd been to even think about splitting up the firm.

'I can trust you on this?' Victoria Lord asked. 'You'll respect my wishes?'

'Would I lie to you?' Steve Solomon said.

Five

RECOVERING LAWYER

When they reached Sugarloaf Key, Steve hung a right onto Old State Road, and after another two miles, he brought the Eldo to a stop under a gumbo-limbo tree. The past few minutes, he'd been thinking of something other than his relationship with the brainy and leggy woman in the passenger seat.

'When are you going to tell your father about the Bar petition?' Victoria asked, getting out of the car.

Jeez, reading my mind.

He'd filed a lawsuit to get back his father's license to practice law but neglected to mention it to his old man. 'Not till I have some good news to report.'

They walked on a path of crushed shells toward the waterline at Pirates Cove. Victoria's leather-soled slides were, well, sliding on the moist shells, and she shortened her stride. 'I wonder if that's the right way to do it. Keeping it secret, I mean.'

Her roundabout, feminine way, Steve knew, of saying, 'You're really messing up here.'

'Trust me, Vic. I know how to handle my old man.'

Steve knew his father desperately missed being a lawyer. Not just any lawyer, but Herbert T. Solomon, Esq., a Southern-born, silver-tongued, spellbinding stem-winder of a lawyer. And then a respected Miami judge. Before his fall.

Now Herbert spent his days fishing, usually alone. But today he'd been taking care of his grandson. On the trip down the Overseas Highway the day before, Steve and Victoria had dropped off twelve-year-old Bobby Solomon. Bobby lived with Steve instead of his own mother, Steve's drug-addled and larcenous sister, Janice, who recently claimed to be growing organic vegetables in the North Carolina mountains. Steve made a mental note to check if the government's food pyramid listed marijuana under vegetables.

As they approached the houseboat, Steve could hear the wind chimes-beer cans dangling on fishing line- on the rear deck. The old wreck-the boat, not his father-was tied to a splintered wooden dock by corded lines thickened with green seaweed. Herbert Solomon owned five acres of scrubby property off Old State Road, but docking the boat there was still illegal, even under the Keys' notoriously lax zoning. Even in the dark, the boat clearly listed to starboard. From inside came the sounds of calypso, Harry Belafonte singing, 'Man Smart (Woman Smarter).'

'I'm wondering if you should be the one to handle your father's case,' Victoria volunteered.

'Who'd be better?'

'Someone who can be objective.'

'I don't plan to be objective. I'm a warrior, a gladiator.'

'You know what I mean. You have to separate the truth from fiction. When your father was disbarred-'

'He resigned. There's a difference.'

Christmas lights were strung on the overhang of the houseboat, even though it was May, and even though the Solomons were descended from the tribes of Israel. Splotches of green paint haphazardly covered divots of wood rot in the stern deck.

Steve could see movement on the rear porch, his father getting up from a wooden rocker, a drink in his hand. Herbert's shimmering white hair was swept straight back and flipped up at his shoulders. His skin, remarkably unlined for a man of sixty-six, was sunbaked, and his dark eyes were bright and combative.

'Hey, Dad,' Steve said.

'Don't 'Hey, Dad' me, you sneaky son-of-a-bitch.'

'What'd I do now?' Steve stepped aboard, thinking he'd been asking that question a lot lately.

'Victoria,' Herbert said. 'How do you put up with this gallynipper?'

'Sometimes, I wonder,' she replied.

'You could do a helluva lot better than him.'

'Maybe I'll go check on Bobby,' Victoria said, 'let you boys play.'

'He's asleep,' Herbert said. 'Tuckered out from poling the skiff all day.'

'I'll go inside, just the same,' she said.

'Coward,' Steve told her as she headed through a door into the rear cabin.

'There's rum on the counter, soda in the fridge,' Herbert called after her, gesturing with his glass, sprigs of mint peeking over the rim. Deep into his evening mojitos. He turned back to Steve and scowled. 'You best cut your own weeds, son, and stay out of mah tater patch.'

Even when reaming him out, the old man's voice maintained the mellifluous flow of molasses oozing over ice cream. Savannah born and raised, Herbert still spoke the honeyed patois of his youth.

As a boy hanging out in the courthouse, Steve heard his father call a witness 'So gosh-darned crooked, he could stand in the shadow of a corkscrew and nevuh see the sun. So slippery, gittin' ahold of him is like grabbing an