Kill All the Lawyers

Three

Steve parked the car and admired the twenty-foot-high likeness of himself. It was a part of the day he always enjoyed.

The two-story mural was painted on the chipped stucco wall of Les Mannequins, the modeling agency where Solomon amp; Lord maintained its offices. There was Steve, sitting on the edge of a desk, wearing a charcoal gray suit, reading a law book. Something he never wore, something he never did. Standing next to him was Victoria, in a ruby red knit suit with a two-button, ruffled-trim jacket, her breasts fuller, her hips rounder than in real life.

Artistic license.

Then the caption, in fancy script:

Solomon and Lord, Attorneys-at-Law

The Wisdom of Solomon, the Strength of the Lord

Call (555) UBE-FREE

Victoria had been appalled, of course. "Cheesy" and "blasphemous" were two of her kinder adjectives. The mural was the handiwork of Henri Touissant, a sixteen-year-old Steve had represented in Juvenile Court. One of the best graffiti artists in Little Haiti, Henri was busted while tagging an overpass with a drawing of President Bush having intimate relations with a goat. "Profound political satire," Steve argued in the lad's defense. The judge gave Henri probation, and Steve hired him to paint the mural, in lieu of attorney's fees.

Now, heading into the building, Steve was plagued by a question that had been bothering him all morning.

Just how much should I tell Victoria?

It was one of the recurring issues of their relationship, both professional and personal. He'd been more open with Victoria than with any other woman he'd ever known. Of course, he'd never cared for any other woman with the depth of feelings he had for her.

But she can be so damn judgmental.

Steve remembered the fireworks in Bobby's guardianship case. Faced with the possibility that the state would take his nephew away, Steve had secretly paid Janice, his drug-addled sister, to change her testimony. When Victoria found out, she exploded.

"You can't bribe a witness."

"I'm paying her to tell the truth. If I don't, she'll lie and we'll lose."

"It's still illegal."

"When are you gonna grow up? When the law doesn't work, you've got to work the law."

Smack. Vic slapped him. Hard. Sparring partners instead of law partners.

So just how would Victoria react if he told her the truth?

"Oh, by the way, Vic. State versus Kreeger. Forgot to tell you. I tanked the case."

She'd clobber him with his Barry Bonds rock-hard maple baseball bat. Or his Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, or Rafael Palmeiro models. Steve favored bats by baseball's most notoriously juiced players.

Or maybe not. Would she even believe him?

"You took a dive? You, the guy who cheats to win?"

As he walked through the front door, Steve decided to tell Victoria everything about the Kreeger case. What he did and why he did it.

Women appreciate honesty. He'd read that in one of Victoria's magazines, a relationship column tucked away in the ads for overpriced Italian footwear. Expose your doubts, express your fears, confess your weaknesses, and she'll be understanding and forgiving.

Okay, he'd bare his soul. He'd do it today. He made that promise to himself. He wished he had a Bible to swear on, wondering what happened to the one he lifted from a hotel room in Orlando.

"Ste-vie! Ste-vie!" A high-pitched whine.

"Wait up!" A second voice. Louder and more insistent.

The shouts came from somewhere between the photo studio and the wardrobe room.

Damn. If I don't hustle, they'll cut me off at the stairs.

"Stevie, wait!"

Steve heard the clackety-clack of leather hoofbeats, and in a second there they were. Lexy and Rexy. Pale blond twins. Models, six feet tall. As litigious as they were leggy.

One wore florescent orange spandex shorts and a white halter top. The other was in Daisy Duke cutoffs with a leopard-print halter. Both wore strappy sandals with stiletto heels that could take out an eye.

"You gotta help me," Lexy demanded. Or maybe it was Rexy. Who could tell?

"Got to," her sister agreed.

"What now, Lexy?" Taking a shot at the name. "I'm really busy."

"I'm Rexy! My belly button is an inny."

"And mine's an outy," Lexy confirmed.

"Everybody on South Beach knows that." Rexy shook a long index finger at him, the lacquered nail festooned with gold stars. "Margaux says you have to represent me. It's in your lease."

Margaux being the owner of Les Mannequins. Solomon amp; Lord got free office space under the litigate-for-rent clause he'd thought was such a great idea. Now he was spending half his time handling mishegoss for the models.

"Haven't I done enough for you two?" he asked.

"Hah." Rexy again.

He'd already gotten them handicapped parking stickers, successfully arguing that bulimia was as much a disability as paraplegia. He'd skated Lexy out of a RWI case-Rollerblading while intoxicated-even though she'd plowed into a group of tourists on Ocean Drive, knocking them over like bowling pins. And he'd beaten back a lawsuit against Rexy by an angry suitor who had spent two thousand bucks on dinner, drinks, a limo, and a Ricky Martin concert, only to have her go home with a member of the band.

"A man who dates a South Beach model takes the risk she'll be a rude, inconsiderate airhead," Steve had argued to the judge. Rexy thought he'd been brilliant.

Now the sisters blocked his path to the stairs, bony elbows akimbo, like wooden gates at a railroad crossing.

"Look at this!" Rexy waved an eight-by-ten flyer at him. An advertisement for a South Beach plastic surgeon with before-and-after shots of a woman's breasts. She pointed at the photo. "Can you believe this?"

"Boobs. What about them?"

"Don't you recognize them?" She yanked down her halter, exposing two coconut-size, gravity-defying breasts with pointy nipples.

"Ah," he said. "The afters." Suddenly, Steve was happy Victoria was across the causeway in the courthouse. Not that he kept his past a secret from her. Still, sleeping with a room-temperature IQ model wasn't something he'd post on his resume. "They're your boobs, right?"

"You gotta sue that quack for my mental anguish." Rexy kept the top pulled down and stood, hipshot in model pose, as if Richard Avedon might record the moment for a coffee-table book. "A million dollars, at least."

Steve was about to say: "A million bucks of mental anguish seems excessive for a twenty-dollar mind," then realized he'd told her that every time she wanted to sue someone.

"They're handing these out in the clubs," Rexy wailed, shaking the flyer in his face.

"I don't know, Rexy. Your face isn't even in the photo. What are your damages if you're the only one who knows it's you?"

"Are you nuts? You know how many guys already called me, saying they saw my tits on the way to the men's room?" She pulled her top back up, and Steve took the opportunity to brush past her and hightail it up the stairs.

"I'll go to the library, research the law," he called out, with as much sincerity as he could muster.

"Like you know where the library is," Rexy shot back.

At the top of the stairs, Steve was just about to open his reception room door when he heard a thump, followed by a woman's scream. Another thump, as if someone had bounced off a wall, then a woman's angry voice: "No me toques, idiota!"

Cece's voice!

Steve threw open the door and saw a jumble of images. His secretary, Cece Santiago, in red panties and bra. A man hoisting her into the air, swinging her left and right, her feet sailing off the floor.

"Hey, put her down!" Steve thundered.

"Fuck you!" The man was bare-chested and big, with a watermelon gut. Mid-forties, face lathered in sweat. He wore suit pants with suspenders and was barefoot.

Steve crossed the room in two steps. The man let go in midswing, and Cece flew across her desk, knocking files to the floor.

Steve grabbed the man by the suspenders.

"Hey! I don't do guys," the man protested.

"Steve, no te metas!" Cece shouted, just as he uncorked a straight right hand. It caught the man flush on the chin, and he fell to the floor like a sack of mangoes.

"Jesus! You knocked him out," Cece wailed. "I'll never get paid."

"What are you talking about? This guy was trying to rape you."

Cece stepped into a pair of spandex workout shorts. "Rape me? That limp-dick pays me two hundred dollars to wrestle."

"But you screamed. I thought-"

"I let him think he's gonna win, then I pin him."

"Here? In my office? You're running a sex service here?"

"Not sex, jefe. Fantasy wrestling. Some guys get off on it."

She tugged a sleeveless T-shirt over her head, her deltoids flexing, and the tattoo of a cobra coiling on her carved right bicep. Cece spent more time lifting than typing, and it showed, both in her ripped physique and in Steve's typo-laden legal briefs.

The guy moaned and tried to get to his feet.

"You all right, Arnie?" Cece asked.

"Gonna sue," the man mumbled, rubbing his jaw.

"Sorry I hit you, Arnie," Steve told him. "I didn't know."

"Yeah. Well, I know all about you, Solomon. I heard on the radio. You're that shyster who couldn't win a jaywalking case if the light was green."

"Aw, jeez."

"Gonna file criminal charges." Arnie grabbed his shirt from a corner of Cece's desk, picked up his socks and shoes from the floor, and hurried out the door.

"Are you gonna get in trouble, jefe?" Cece asked Steve.

"Me? What about you? This violates your probation."

"Doubt it. Arnie's my probation officer."

"No way."

"Verdad, jefe. On his reports, he says I enjoy competitive sports as a hobby."

Cece Santiago had been Steve's client before she became an employee. A little matter of beating the stuffing out of a cheating boyfriend, then driving his car off the boat ramp at Matheson Hammock.

Steve walked to his desk. "Do you think we can do a little work this morning, assuming it doesn't interfere with your hobby?"

"What work? Nobody called. Mail's not here yet. But you did get a personal delivery." She nodded toward the corner of the reception room.

Propped against the wall was a graphite pole, maybe eight feet long with a stainless-steel hook at the end.

"Fishing gaff," Steve said. "Who sent it?"

"No se. It was outside when I opened up the store."

Steve picked up the gaff, hefted it, ran his hand over the sharp, lethal hook. "For landing big fish. Like marlin."

Kreeger on the radio. The marlin in the door. And now the gaff. It was all coming together, Steve thought, and he didn't like where it was heading.

Kreeger's telling me he's killed before, and he can kill again.

Steve felt a chill run up his spine. He sensed a presence behind him, whirled around, but no one was there.

The bastard's getting to me.

Which had to be part of Kreeger's plant, too. It would give him pleasure to inflict fear as well as pain.

"Deep-sea fishing?" Cece said. "Didn't you get seasick when you took Bobby on a paddle boat at Water World?"

"The gaff's not for me to use. It's to remind me of something."

"Of what, jefe?"

"Of the time a client of mine went fishing with someone else and only one of them came home."

SOLOMON'S LAWS

1. I'd rather lie to a judge than to the woman I love.