“Panulirus argus,” Charlie mumbled. “The spiny lobster is actually a crawfish.” He took a sip of home brew from a jelly jar. “Now, where was I?…”
“Something about maggots,” Granny suggested, though I don’t know why she encourages him.
“Right. These days, a good coroner has to know the lifestyles of flies and lice,” Charlie said. “Jake, have I ever told you about the case I handled a few years back in Lacoochee?”
“Not recently,” I allowed.
“A body was found in a swamp in July, some drug runner. No one knew how long the body had been there. There was a suspect who had an alibi for the previous week, but that was it. If the body had been there longer, he couldn’t account for his whereabouts.”
“So?” Granny prompted him.
“The body was infested with fly maggots. Based on the time the flies took for feeding, laying eggs, and the development of the maggots, it was clear the body was more than a week old. That blew the alibi.”
“Keep it up, I’m going to blow lunch,” I said.
Granny dismissed me with a wave of her nut-brown arm. “Boy’s a tad squeamish. Never wanted to eat catfish if I cooked ’em with the head still on.”
“Granny!”
“Then, I remember the time we were snorkeling off Matecumbe Key, and a moray eel bit clean through his fins. The boy wouldn’t go back in the water for a week.”
“Granny, please. No old stories. Let’s talk about anything but me.”
That only provoked her. “You married yet, boy?” She’d taken off her sandals, and her feet were propped in Charlie Riggs’s lap.
“You know I’m not.”
“Good. I never married, and I never regretted it. Not that I ain’t been asked. If I recollect correctly, five fellows proposed, a couple of ’em sober at the time. But who needs a man, and who needs rug rats? You were enough to handle, and you were what, eight or nine, when you started bunking with me.” She turned to Charlie, who was munching his appetizer, some of Granny’s deep-fried hush puppies. “Lord, that boy could eat. Pork barbecue, yellowtail snapper, six-egg omelets, you name it. And raise a ruckus, whoooee. He used to hit the walls. Hit ’em with his shoulders, shake the whole house. I figured he was just going through puberty, but he kept it up so long, I made him go out for the football team.”
“These days, he usually hits the walls with his head,” Charlie said, between crackly bites.
“C’mon, I asked for help, not abuse. You two are my brain trust.”
Granny cackled at me. “Then you’re in trouble, boy. Charlie’s half-potted on white lightning, and I never did understand your business. Just talky-talk.”
“Really, Granny, I need help. I’ve got the weekend to figure out what to do, and then it’s back to court Monday.”
Charlie poured himself a refill. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. “I don’t see the problem, Jake. You’re ethically bound to use Gondolier’s testimony. You’re not in a position to judge his veracity.” Ver-ashity.
“Charlie, admit it. Whatever Tupton found, it wasn’t a plan for a golf course. It’s something far worse. His reaction was way over the top.”
“You’re assuming Tupton’s reaction was rational, even though he’d been drinking heavily.” Charlie paused long enough to burp. “And you have no proof that Gondolier is lying.”
“But I know he is.”
“How? Do you have documentary evidence? Contradictory witnesses? Have you caught him in inconsistencies?”
“No, dammit, I just know. I do this for a living, remember. It’s my job to know.”
Outside the kitchen window, the Gulf breeze sent shivers through the bell-shaped flowers of a violet jacaranda tree.
“It’s your job to give your client the best representation you can.” Charlie cleared his throat. It sounded like a train leaving the station. “It’s not your job to cloud your judgment with conflicts of interest.”
“The boy in Dutch again?” Granny asked. “I’d bet my new spinning rod it’s a woman. He’s been fooled by more than one.”
Charlie patted his lips dry with a dish towel Granny used for a napkin. “As Virgil asked, ‘ Quis fallere possit amantem. Who can deceive a lover?”
“Easy,” I answered. “The lover’s lover.”
“Ah, the cynic in you speaks.”
“The voice of experience,” I said.
“Just so you haven’t taken up with that cheerleader again,” Granny said, sipping at her drink. “Son, that girl was nothing but trouble.”
I had been promoted from “boy.”
“She was a dancer, Granny.”
“And she married that fellow who builds those crappy condos on stilts from Hialeah to Marathon. I read the society pages, just to remind myself how much I hate evening gowns, tuxes, and the people who wear ’em.”
“She’s got nothing to do with this,” I said defensively.
They both looked at me as if I’d spent too long in the midday sun.
“Don’t you believe me?” I asked.
Charlie was massaging Granny’s feet under the table, and Granny wasn’t complaining. He looked at me with a headmaster’s stare. “What do you believe, Jake? Why is this case different for you from just another insurance- company defense?”
“Do you know you have an irritating habit of answering a question with a question?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Charlie replied.
I was trying to wash down Granny’s mango cheesecake with a cup of coffee the color of crankcase oil that had gone more than its allotted miles. “If only I knew what Tupton really found in Nicky Florio’s den…”
“Why don’t you ask Gina?” Charlie asked.
We were sitting on Granny’s front porch. A red-winged blackbird was making chucking sounds as it circled the jacaranda trees. I was in the old wicker rocking chair, my brain trust in the love seat. Granny was snoring peacefully, her head on Charlie’s shoulder. Charlie poured himself a second cup of coffee. If that didn’t clear the fog, nothing would.
“Ask her what? To go through her husband’s desk? To tell me if her husband’s planning anything illegal, unethical, or particularly nasty?”
“She is your paramour, is she not?”
“I hate to tell you this, Charlie, but people don’t use words like ‘paramour’ anymore.”
“Para-mour any-more,” he mused putting a little tune to it.
“Besides, what makes you think Gina would help me?”
“Since we know Gina is not loyal to her husband in matters of the heart, perhaps the same would be true in business affairs. I am assuming, of course, that you have already violated your attorney-client relationship against my advice.”
“Forget it, Charlie. It wouldn’t work, anyway. It’s over with Gina.”
“Why, because of Gondolier? You couldn’t handle her dancing in two discos at once. Is that lingo more with it?”
I ignored his jab. “I’d like to tell you I dropped Gina, but the fact is, she lowered the boom on me. She wants to work on her marriage.”
He shrugged and downed the rest of his sludge. “Odd way to work on the marriage, don’t you think, with her husband’s partner?”
“I really don’t care.”
Charlie raised a bushy eyebrow at me. Granny stirred in her sleep and grunted.
“Really, Charlie. I’m more interested in what Florio and Gondolier are up to.”
“Or is that simply the pretext for maintaining connection with Gina? Is your suspicion of her husband and his partner rational, or is it a subconscious attempt to facilitate your obsession with the woman?”
“Obsession’s a little strong, Charlie.”
