Trial and Error

Yeah. A hairy-chested sixth grader. Thirteen years old, Rich had been held back a year, not because he was stupid-though he was-but because his even stupider father thought it would give Rich an advantage getting a college athletic scholarship.

Was Rich looking his way?

I never should have anagrammatized his name.

Bobby hadn’t meant it as an insult. Last week, they’d been in the cafeteria, Shactman goofing off, squeezing one hand into his armpit, making farts as girls walked by. Pretty lame for sixth grade. But all the guys were whooping it up because the girls looked embarrassed, and let’s face it, a farting sound is pretty funny, no matter how old you are. Bobby wanted to be part of the crowd.

Dumb. Why’d I open my mouth?

“Hey, Rich,” Bobby had said casually, as if they were buds, “do you know the letters of your name can be rearranged to spell ‘Can Charm Shit’?”

“Who you calling ‘shit,’ noodle neck?”

“No. What I mean is, you know, ‘can charm shit.’ It’s like a compliment.”

“Why you wanna compliment me, you little faggot?”

Bobby felt his face redden. “Because I-”

Shactman pushed his face close to Bobby. “Stay out of my grill, dude.”

Bobby couldn’t stand to be this close to anyone, except maybe Uncle Steve and Victoria. He felt claustrophobic, trapped. He also smelled garlic bagel on Rich’s breath.

“I know all about you, Solomon.” Shactman gave him a nasty little sneer. “Your mother’s a ho who locked you in a dog cage. Now she’s in jail somewhere, eating pussy in the shower.”

“She’s not in jail.” Bobby staggered backward. Feeling puny and weak. He wanted to punch out Rich the Shit, hit him as hard as he could. But he knew Shactman would beat the crap out of him.

And then Bobby had turned and run.

In the week since the confrontation in the cafeteria, Shactman had been riding him hard. Bobby didn’t understand it. He’d known Rich from Sunday school at Beth Am. He’d been to birthday parties at the Shactman home in Pinecrest. A sprawling McMansion with the biggest yard Bobby had ever seen. The lawn was a full-size football field with yard markers and goalposts. Behind a row of royal palms was a sandpit with a professional volleyball court. One wing of the house held a basketball court with a set of folding bleachers and an electric scoreboard. A lap pool was behind the house, along with two clay tennis courts-lighted, of course.

Why does one family need two tennis courts? Or five cars, for that matter?

Rich’s father owned a chain of sporting goods stores, which explained all the jerseys and bats and balls signed by Marlins and Dolphins and Heat players. Bobby dreaded Rich’s birthday parties, which always centered around bone-crushing games of touch football and exhausting basketball games. But never swimming races, Bobby’s only decent sport.

Now, walking toward his locker, feeling Rich Shactman’s hard, mean eyes on him, Bobby felt his stomach tighten. A moving blob of students pushed through the corridor, oozing toward their homerooms.

“Here comes Word Boy,” Shactman taunted. His posse of C-minus retards scratched their nuts and waited. “Hey, Word Boy, what’s my name today?”

“Rich. Your name’s Rich.”

“And your name’s Ass Burger Boy, right?”

Making a crack about his Asperger’s syndrome. A friggin’ riot.

A couple of Shactman’s friends laughed. Bobby got to his locker, twirled the combination lock, and opened the door. Shactman leaned over and slammed the locker shut so fast, Bobby’s fingers were nearly caught. “Hey! Jeez!”

“Listen up, loser. I want you off my team.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a total spaz. You can’t hit. You can’t catch. You can’t throw. I want you to quit.”

“It’s only a Sunday school league.”

“Only? Where do you think the high school coaches recruit? I’m gonna play at Gulliver or Ransom, then at U of M, and I don’t want a dweeb like you messing me up.”

“I’m not quitting.”

“You will after I shove a bat up your ass.”

Bobby considered mentioning just how homo that sounded but thought better of it. He reopened his locker, pulled out his Social Studies book, closed the locker, spun the lock, and repeated, “I’m not quitting, Rich. You can’t make me.”

“I know where you live, Solomon. You and your loser uncle.” He turned toward his posse. “The losers live in the South Grove near Little Africa.”

Bobby had never heard it called that, but yes, Kumquat Avenue was a few blocks away from the heart of the African-American section of Coconut Grove. He tried to think of a comeback, some socially conscious remark, but it would sound so lame, he just gave up.

“They don’t even have a swimming pool.” Shactman barked a laugh. “Where do you swim, the public pool? Ever catch scabies?”

Bobby thought about saying that, yes, sometimes he swam at the Venetian pool in Coral Gables, and sometimes he swam with the dolphins, but that would’ve only provoked more abuse. When confronted with ignorance, prejudice, and big muscles, the best thing to do is keep quiet. That’s what Uncle Steve always said.

“Know what else I heard? Word Boy here talks to fish.” Shactman poked Bobby in the chest. “C’mon, loser. Say something in fish talk.”

Bobby wanted to say: “Dolphins aren’t fish. They’re mammals. And I’ve never met a dolphin as stupid as you.”

But he didn’t say that. Bobby didn’t say anything. He walked away, deciding just how he was going to kill Rich (The Shit) Shactman.

SOLOMON’S LAWS

4. A prosecutor’s job is to build a brick wall around her case. A defense lawyer’s job is to tear down the wall, or at least to paint graffiti on the damn thing.

Thirteen

A Crack In The Brick Wall

Steve wanted his father’s help on the Nash case, but instead, he was getting a tongue-lashing.

“Don’t be a damn fool,” Herbert Solomon drawled. “You can’t try a case against your lady.”

“Dad, I’m not asking whether to take the case. I’m asking how to win it.”

“You’re plowing too close to the cotton, son.”

“Drop the cornpone, okay?” Steve pounded a baseball into the pocket of Bobby’s new glove, trying to soften the leather. “I’m not one of your drinking buddies at Alabama Jack’s.”

“Son, you got two conflicts of interest. If you lose, your client will claim ineffective assistance of counsel because your judgment was compromised. And win or lose, you’re risking your relationship with that fine woman.”

Wearing paint-stained canvas shorts, Herbert stood at Steve’s kitchen counter, dropping ice into a tumbler. Four cubes. Just like Sinatra. Then he poured his Jack Daniel’s, three fingers’ worth-if they were Shaquille O’Neal’s fingers. The old man’s face was sunbaked, and his long silver hair was combed straight back and flipped up at the neck. To Steve, his Savannah-born father looked like a Confederate general, albeit a Jewish one. Herbert still spoke in imperative sentences, a remnant of his days as a Florida trial judge.

“You best let Victoria prosecute the case, son, and you stay the hell out of it. Don’t you blow it with this gal, because frankly, she could do a helluva lot better than you.”