Kill All the Lawyers

Seventeen

"What did you do to make the judge so furious?"

Victoria demanded.

"Nothing," Steve said. "Nada. Bupkes."

"You must have done something."

"Why?" Steve had come home hoping for comfort and support. Instead he was being cross-examined in his own kitchen. "Why do you automatically assume it's my fault?"

"Because you have a knack for driving people crazy."

"Judge Schwartz was crazy decades before I met him. Can you believe I'm supposed to be counseled by that psychopath Kreeger?"

"Sociopath," Bobby corrected him. "With narcissistic tendencies and omnipotent fantasies." The kid had been reading psychology texts and checking out various medical websites. At least that's what he said when asked why his computer had bookmarked nymphomaniacs.com. Now Bobby gave the adults his wiseguy look from underneath the bill of his Solomon amp; Lord ball cap. Steve had formed a team in the lawyers' softball league, but desperately short of players, he recruited clients to play. Purse snatchers turned out to be excellent base runners; pedestrians knocked down by taxicabs were a little slow off the bag.

Outside the windows, fronds from a sabal palm swatted the stucco walls of the house. Inside, Steve was defending himself from Victoria's torrent of criticism.

"I didn't do anything wrong," Steve insisted. "Kreeger set me up, and Pincher was in on it."

"Why? What's Pincher have to gain?"

"More like what he has to lose. Kreeger threatened to go public, tell everyone our esteemed State Attorney used tainted evidence to convict him."

"Pincher told you that?"

"I figured it out. Pincher's up for reelection next year. Who'd he rather have pissed off at him? A defense lawyer or a guy with a radio show?"

"Aw, why make a big tsimiss out of it?" Herbert Solomon walked into the kitchen, carrying a tumbler filled with ice. "Do the therapy and get the charges dismissed."

"Not that easy, Dad. Having Kreeger as my therapist is like having a burglar in my bedroom."

Herbert had filled his glass so high with bourbon, he needed to slurp it out. "So don't flap your gums about family secrets. Stonewall his ass."

"Then he files a report with the court saying I'm hiding my lunatic impulses."

"If the judge ordered you to go to Kreeger," Victoria said, "you have no choice."

"That's the difference between you and me, Vic," Steve said. "I consider judges' orders as mere suggestions."

"That's the difference between civilization and anarchy. And in your life, anarchy rules."

"Anarchy rules," Bobby repeated. "ANY CRUEL RASH."

"No reason to be all tore up, son," Herbert said. "Maybe the more time you spend with that shrink, the better."

"How you figure, Dad?"

"Ah couldn't find hide nor hair of that boat captain. You need a new plan."

Victoria shot Steve a look. He hadn't told his father everything, and she knew it.

"Dad, it doesn't matter if you found De la Fuente or not. I just want Kreeger to know I'm looking."

Herbert's bushy eyebrows seemed to arch higher. "So you send your old man on a wild-goose chase. Fine son you are."

"But you're right, Dad. There's an upside to spending more time with Kreeger. His girlfriend, too, if I could get her alone."

"You still think you can convince her Kreeger's a killer?" Victoria said.

"No!" He slapped his forehead to signify what an idiot he was. No one disagreed. "I've got it backwards. I think she already knows his past."

"And you base this on what?" Victoria asked.

"Something Kreeger said to me about how much he appreciates Amanda's qualities. That she has an intelligence and understanding beyond her years. That sort of thing."

"Yeah?"

"She's the one he feels safe with, the one who comforts him. Kreeger could have told her about Beshears and Lamm. And who knows? Maybe there's-"

"A third murder," Victoria said.

"Exactly. If Amanda knows Kreeger's secrets, and I can drive a wedge between them, maybe I can get her to help me nail him."

"This 'wedge' of yours? How's that going to work, exactly?"

"I don't know yet, Vic. I'm just riffing here."

"And you don't think a guy as smart as Kreeger will catch on?"

"So he's smart. What am I? Chopped liver?"

"You don't exactly bend spoons with your mind, Uncle Steve." Bobby unscrewed two halves of an Oreo cookie and used his teeth to scrape off the vanilla filling.

"Thanks, guys," Steve said. "But Kreeger's got his weaknesses. He's so damn cocky, he'll figure there's no way I can take him down."

"The omnipotence fantasy," Bobby added. "Freud wrote about it."

"And if Kreeger wants to hang out, like Dad says, that's fine, too."

"Keep your friends close but your enemies closer," Bobby recited.

"Freud?" Steve asked.

Bobby winced. "Al Pacino. Godfather, Part II."

"Don't you have homework to do?" Steve said.

"Nope."

"And where were you last night?"

"Nowhere."

"Physically impossible."

The boy tossed his shoulders, the adolescent symbol for "so what" or "whatever" or "who gives a shit?"

"You violated curfew, kiddo."

"Jeez, this is like a prison."

"Ease up on the boy," Herbert said. "When you and Janice were kids, Ah-"

"Was nowhere to be found," Steve interrupted.

Bobby wanted to tell Uncle Steve the truth.

"I was with Mom. We sat in her car down by the bay and talked for hours."

But he couldn't do it. Uncle Steve thought she was a really bad influence. But she didn't seem that way at all. She seemed kind of lost, like she needed Bobby more than he needed her.

Mom seems so lonely, like there's nobody for her to talk to.

So Bobby had listened as she talked about growing up in a house with a sick mother and an absent father, Grandpop always being off somewhere, and Steve out playing sports. Mom had been the outsider, or that was how she felt, anyway.

When Mom was talking about the man who picked her up hitchhiking-she couldn't remember his name, even though he might be Bobby's father-Bobby tried to decide whether he loved her. Yeah, he probably did in some weird way. But he was certain he felt sorry for her.

Now Bobby listened as Uncle Steve and Grandpop argued for the zillionth time about the past.

"Don't tell me you're still mad because I didn't come to your Little League games," Grandpop said.

"Or to my spelling bees, my track meets, or the hospital when I had my tonsils out."

"For crying out loud, you were only there a few hours."

"Because you wouldn't pay for a room. The doctor wanted to keep me overnight."

"Highway robbery."

Sometimes Bobby wished the two of them would grow up.

Victoria tried to decide who was more immature, Steve or his father. Clearly, they were equally argumentative and pugnacious. She tried to picture the Solomon home during Steve's childhood. It didn't seem to be a happy place. Certainly, it was not a quiet place.

They railed at each other another few moments, Herbert calling Steve an "ungrateful grumble guts," Steve calling Herbert a "tumbleweed father, gone with the wind." Then they seemed to tire, and Steve turned back to Bobby. "You still haven't said where you were last night."

"Probably with his little shiksa," Herbert said.

"Dad! That's a derogatory term."

"The hell it is."

Here we go again, Victoria thought. These two could argue over "Happy Chanukah."

"A shiksa's a gentile gal," Herbert continued. "Nothing derogatory about it. As for little Miss Havana-Jerusalem, her mother's a Catholic and that makes her a shiksa."

"So I'm a shiksa," Victoria said.

"Hell, no. You're Jewish by injection." Herbert laughed and took a pull on his bourbon. "Unless you two haven't played hide-the-salami yet."

"Dad, put a lid on it," Steve ordered.

Herbert grinned at Victoria. "How 'bout it, bubele? Stephen been slipping you the Hebrew National?"

Herbert cackled again and headed toward the living room without waiting for an answer. "Hold mah calls. Ah'm gonna watch a titty movie on Cinemax, then take a nap."

Victoria whirled toward Steve. "Why do you have to bait him?" she demanded.

"I could tell you, Vic, but I'm not sure you'd understand."

"Try me, partner. I've been to college and everything."

"It's a Jewish thing. We love arguing, complaining, talking with our mouths full. You're Episcopalian. You love-I don't know-drinking tea, wearing Burberry, the Queen of England."

Victoria was not particularly pleased about being reduced to a stereotype. She would talk to Steve about it later. But right now Bobby was still there, fishing into the Oreo bag. "Steve, don't you have some unfinished parenting to do?"

"Parenting's always unfinished." He turned to the boy. "So, kiddo, was your grandpop right? Were you with Maria last night?"

"Jeez, it's like the Inquisition in here." Bobby pried off the top of a cookie. "No, I wasn't with her. Maria's stupid dad won't let me see her anymore."

Victoria spoke gently. "Bobby, what's happened?"

"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.