Solomon versus Lord

Fourteen
SUCCESS VERSUS EXCELLENCE

“Me first,” Bobby shouted, running ahead and ducking into a pink, two-story stucco building. It had been built in the 1930's but had none of the charm of Art Deco. No graceful curves or ornamental friezes. No oak floors or cathedral ceilings. The walls were made of plaster mixed with beach sand, and the caustic effect of the salt corroded the plumbing and wiring. As a result, the building was subject to power outages and overflowing toilets. A sign on the exterior read, “Les Mannequins.”

Three young women, impossibly tall, impossibly thin, high-stepped out the front door. All three wore short shorts, cropped tees, and open-toed sandals with four-inch heels. “Hi, Steve,” they cooed.

“Let me guess,” Victoria said. “Your law clerks?”

“It's a modeling agency,” Steve admitted.

“Really? And I thought it was the Supreme Court.”

“All right, listen up, Lord. Getting to my office is like walking over hot coals. So whatever happens, just keep moving.”

“Why?”

“You'll see.” Steve took Victoria by the arm and hurried her through the door. In the lobby, two more young women-six-foot-tall twins with long, flaxen hair-stood at a counter studying contact sheets of headshots.

“Hey, Steve,” they said in unison. “When are you-”

“Lexy. Rexy,” Steve said, still on the move. “Not now.”

“But you promised,” Lexy said. Or maybe it was Rexy.

“You owe us,” the other one said. “Remember?”

“I'm busy.” He tried to hustle past them, but the two women, slender as straws, spun gracefully, despite their high-heeled slingbacks, and blocked his path. In spandex tube minidresses, one Day-Glo red, the other Day-Glo green, with long legs spread, the pair looked like twin Eiffel Towers decorated for Christmas.

“Do you know what parking's like on Ocean Drive?” Lexy asked.

“I know, I know,” Steve said.

“So where are our handicap stickers?” Lexy asked.

“We had to walk three blocks today,” Rexy said.

“In our Jimmy Choos,” Lexy said.

“You're not handicapped.” Steve pushed past the two women.

“Anorexia doesn't count?” Victoria said.

“Come on. My office-our office-is on the second floor.” Steve tried to hurry her along. Bobby was already at the stairs.

“The penthouse,” Victoria said. “I remember.”

“Don't bust my chops, okay? I get free rent in exchange for handling the agency's legal problems. Gotta do some work for the models, too. The trick is to get upstairs before they-”

“Steve, wait up!” A suntanned young woman in Lycra bicycle shorts and a sport bra approached.

“Later, Gina,” Steve said. “I've got law business.”

“So do I.” Pouty-lipped and big-busted-Rudnicks, Victoria guessed-Gina had a China chop of coppery hair as bright as a new penny. She stuck out her left hand and showed off a diamond the size of an eyeball. “Paco asked me to marry him.”

“Looks like you accepted,” Steve said.

“For one night. Then I changed my mind. He's just another Euro-rich model-humper. Now the creep wants the ring back.”

“Imagine the nerve.”

“I don't have to give it back, do I?”

“How should I know?” Steve said.

Victoria interceded. “The general rule is that an engagement ring is a gift. So, even if there's no wedding, the woman keeps the ring.”

“Look who got the book award in Contracts One,” Steve said with mock admiration. “Gina, this is Victoria, my new law partner.”

“Great,” Gina said. “Will you be my lawyer if the prick sues me?”

“I should caution you, Gina,” Victoria said in her lawyerly voice, “if you intended to break up ab initio, your fiance could claim fraud and get the ring back.”

“Ab what?” Gina asked.

Bobby said: “Ab initio. From the beginning. Like, did you always plan to rip off the guy like you did the fertilizer salesman who paid for your boobs?”

“You have a big mouth, Bobby,” Gina said. Then she let out a little gasp and grabbed Victoria's left hand. “Omigod! Look at yours. It's gorgeous.” She practically drooled on Victoria's emerald-cut diamond, propped up on four pedestals, with smaller diamonds running up two side channels. “I love the design. The baguettes are, like, I don't know, a shiny staircase, a pathway to heaven.”

“Why would a man give a woman a ring like that,” Steve asked, “when for a fraction of the money, he could buy a plasma TV?”

“Don't listen to him,” Gina said. “He's the least romantic man I've ever slept with. And I've shagged some real turkeys.”

“But look who's the biggest giblet of them all.” Victoria's smile was as shiny as her diamond.

“Victoria, if you broke up with your fiance, would you give the ring back?” Gina asked.

“I'm definitely going to marry Bruce, so it's a moot question.”

“But what if something happened,” Gina persisted, following them halfway up the stairs. “What if you caught him cheating?”

“I can't imagine Bruce doing anything like that,” Victoria said.

“I can,” Steve said. “In flagrante delicto with a curvaceous avocado.”

“Or what if you got tired of him or found someone else?” Gina said.

“That,” Victoria said, sounding profoundly confident, “would never, ever happen.”

Victoria checked out Steve's waiting room like a detective at a crime scene. Faded plaster walls and flickering fluorescent lights. Client chairs covered in cracked vinyl but missing clients. A receptionist sat at her desk, and it was a good thing the phone wasn't ringing, because she wouldn't have answered it. The receptionist was a life-size inflatable doll that bore a striking resemblance to Pamela Anderson in a bikini. Her desk was littered with empty cartons of Chinese takeout and stacks of unopened mail. Most looked like bills.

Victoria had never seen a law office-or any office-quite like it. The carpet, which must have been an industrial gray when new, was spotted with coffee stains, and the few clean spots were threadbare. The air smelled of dust and mildew.

Okay, so she hadn't expected teak wainscoting, but this…

What a dump.

She tried to suppress what she was feeling. That she'd been conned. That Solomon was a small-time shyster, a low-rent-strike that-a no-rent, flimflam man.

Steve tried to look at his waiting room through Victoria's eyes. He had always thought of his office as understated, but now it seemed downright shabby. But dammit, material things weren't important to him. How could he explain that without sounding like a total loser? He wanted to tell her about his pro bono cases-clients with just causes and thin wallets-but it would sound so self-serving, so defensive, he just kept quiet.

From somewhere Victoria heard a grunt, then the clang of metal on metal.

“That you, Cece?” Steve asked.

A woman's voice rose from behind Pamela Anderson. “No, jefe, it's Sandra Day O'Connor.”

In the space between Pamela Anderson's chair and the wall, a thickset woman in her early twenties lay flat on her back on a workout bench. As she raised a barbell, straining against the weight, cursing in Spanish-“Ay, mierda!”-the tattoo of a cobra on her beefy upper arm coiled and uncoiled.

She wore a sleeveless cropped tee and low-slung tattered jeans and had a cream-of-caramel complexion. Her neck seemed to be connected to her shoulders with thick steel cables, and her shoulders rippled with muscles. Her eyebrows had been plucked into diagonal slashes, one pierced by three metal studs, and she had a crown of curly, reddish-brown hair.

“Maldito!” the woman exhaled as she lowered the bar. “Who's gonna spot me?” Her accent was pure Little Havana.

Bobby hustled over to her. “Me, Cece.”

“Gracias, brainiac.”

Bobby kept his hands on the bar as the woman did two more reps, then, with a grunt, eased the bar down into its brackets. Still on her back, Cece looked up at Victoria and said: “El Jefe's got no manners. I'm Cecilia Santiago.”

“My personal assistant,” Steve said.

“Personal slave is more like it. You that persecutor?”

“Ex-persecutor,” she said. “Victoria Lord. Hello, Cecilia.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Hey, Cece,” Steve said, “when you're done working on your pecs, could you schedule a press conference on the Barksdale case?”

“Is that ethical?” Victoria asked.

“Would F. Lee Bailey ask that question?”

“Probably not. He's been disbarred.”

Cece vaulted to her feet. A printed message was visible on her cropped tee: “All Men Are Animals. Some Just Make Better Pets.” She had a second tattoo, a green sailfish, which seemed to burst from the top of her low-slung jeans and leap over her navel. “Yo, Lord. King Solomon tell you anything about me?”

“Not in any detail,” Victoria replied, diplomatically.

“What I done was no big deal. Sort of like choplifting.”

“Right,” Steve said. “You choplifted Enrique's Toyota.”

“My boyfriend. He was screwing my cousin, Lourdes, behind my back. So I borrowed his car.”

“You beat him up, then you drove his car off the boat ramp at Matheson Hammock.”

“Not gonna 'criminate myself.” Cece looked at Victoria with suspicion. “So now I gotta slave for two of you?”

“I'm sure we'll all get along fine,” Victoria said, not believing it for a moment.

Cece ran her bloodred fingernails over her abs, contracted and relaxed the muscles. The sailfish wagged its tail. “Look, Lord, I don't make coffee. I don't take your Needless Markup designer shit to the cleaners, and I don't type. We cool?”

“Cece types,” Steve contributed. “She just can't spell.”

“It's my lexus,” Gina said. “You fire me, I'll sue your ass off.”

“You don't have dyslexia. You're just too lazy to use the spell check.”

“Hey, Lord, hear that? He's saying Hispanics are lazy. I'm calling the EEOC.”

“And I'm calling your probation officer,” Steve said.

Victoria watched in amazement. She'd never seen such a lack of professionalism. How could she work in a place like this?

Cece laughed. “Good one, jefe.”

“You, too, Cece.”

They exchanged high fives, then bumped chests, like football players celebrating a touchdown.

Okay, so this was their routine, Victoria thought. First they trade barbs, then display affection. So now there were four people who seemed to care for Solomon. There was that old couple, Marvin and Teresa, who followed him around the courthouse; there was sweet, needy Bobby; and now this felonious, steroid-juiced secretary. What was his appeal, anyway?

Am I missing something? Or am I just too normal to belong to the Steve Solomon Fan Club?

“Okay, everyone to the inner sanctum,” Steve said. “Let's talk about how to win a murder trial.”

As Steve led his crew through a door into his private office, Victoria was aware of two sensations: the smell of rotten vegetables and what sounded like metal garbage cans banging against each other. Just below the grimy window, in a narrow alley, was a green Dumpster, horseflies buzzing around its open lid. Across the alley was a three-story apartment building, and on the nearest balcony, five bare-chested men beat sticks against metal pans and what looked like fifty-five-gallon oil drums.

“Trinidad steel band,” Steve said.

“That's reassuring,” she said. “I thought it was a prison riot.”

To escape the stench and the percussion, Victoria moved toward a corner of the room where a bubbling fish tank housed half a dozen rust-colored crustaceans. “Let me guess. You poach lobsters in your spare time.”

“You think too small.”

“His client hijacks refrigerated trucks coming up from the Keys,” Cece said.

Victoria scoped out the rest of the place. On one wall was a framed cartoon of a courtroom filled with water. The fins of two sharks were visible, cutting smoothly through the water, headed toward the judge. The caption read: “Counsel Approaching the Bench.”

Sure, Solomon would relate to that.

Victoria was in purgatory. What had happened to her master plan? Five years of public service parlayed into a job in a prestigious firm, all leading to partnership and lifetime tenure. Or maybe a judgeship.

Judge Lord.

But here she was, inhaling the fumes from a Dumpster, her plans dashed, her career in shambles.

Looking at the cracked and soiled plaster walls, feeling a mixture of anger and regret, Victoria said: “For a hotshot lawyer, Solomon, your office is…” How could she put this delicately? “A real shit hole.”

So there it was, Steve thought. Being compared to the deep-carpet types downtown. Being compared to Bigby, too, he supposed, with all that inherited money. What were her values, anyway? If wealth and status were her turn-ons, maybe it was better that she was taken.

“That stuff important to you, Victoria? Marble on the floor, mahogany on the walls?”

“For better or worse, that's how we measure success.”

“Success should never be confused with excellence.”

“Here we go again,” Cece said. “He always uses this shit to explain why my paycheck's late.”

Steve walked to the lobster tank, picked up a stale bagel from a dish, crumbled it, and dropped the pieces into the water. He watched the crustaceans crawl over each other, like fans after a Barry Bonds home run. “Success is how other people judge you,” he said. “Are you driving that Ferrari, buying that house in Aspen? Excellence can't be measured in dollars. Ideals don't fit into a bank account. It's about judging yourself. Have you lived up to your principles or have you sold out?”

“You have principles?” Victoria asked.

“I make up my own.”

“Solomon's Laws,” Cece said. “Every time he gets a bright idea, I gotta write it down for posteridad.”

“Write this down, Cece. ‘I will never compromise my ideals to achieve someone else's definition of success.'”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

“Sounds like you're making excuses for not earning enough money to buy a decent car and clean the carpets,” Victoria said.

“He could make a shitload,” Cece said, “if he wasn't the santo patron of lost cases. You got a lousy case and no money, come on down. Haitian refugees want green cards, Miccosukees want their burial ground, migrant workers want fair pay. We take 'em all.”

“I didn't know you did pro bono work,” Victoria said.

Steve shrugged. “I do my share.”

“And everybody else's,” Cece said. “I don't let him advertise it, or every deadbeat in town would be in our waiting room.”

“Solomon, you are full of surprises,” Victoria said.

“Don't make a big deal out of it,” he said.

“No, I mean it. I'm sorry.”

“Yo, jefe,” Cece said. “We gonna talk about the case or what? I gotta do my speed reps.”

Steve sat on the edge of his desk. “Let's start with Charles Barksdale. Victoria, paint us a picture.”

She took a breath. “He had a lot of interests,” she began. “Art, literature, poetry. He was proud of his first editions. He was extremely well read. And he let everybody know it.”

“How?”

She seemed reluctant to go on. Was Victoria Lord too refined, Steve wondered, to speak ill of the dead? That never troubled him. The deceased were the only people who couldn't sue you for slander.

“Sometimes, at a dinner party,” she continued apologetically, “Charles would bring up some book by Proust or a Sylvia Plath poem, and you got the idea he'd just read it that day and shoehorned it into the conversation.”

“So Barksdale was a phony? A pseudo-intellectual?”

“More like he had to show everybody he was the smartest guy at the table.”

“Who cares what he read?” Cece said. “Did his bony-assed wife kill him?”

“Let's take a vote,” Steve said. “Gut impressions. Who thinks Katrina murdered her husband?”

“Cooch wouldn't have the balls,” Cece said.

“Okay, that's a not guilty. Bobby.”

“Ubi mel, ibi apes.”

“Meaning?”

“Honey attracts bees.”

“Meaning?” he repeated.

“She killed him for the money.”

“One not guilty. One guilty.” Steve turned to Victoria. “Partner?”

“I don't think we have enough facts,” she said.

“Facts shmacks. What's your gut say?”

“I try not to go with my gut.”

“I know. If you did, you wouldn't be marrying Mr. Guacamole.”

“Don't take that shit from him,” Cece said. “He talk that way to me, he wouldn't be able to feed himself.”

“C'mon,” Steve said. “There's a question pending. Guilty or innocent?”

After a moment, Victoria said: “I just don't see how Katrina could have done it. How do you live with a man, have breakfast with him every day, kiss him before he goes to the office, sleep with him every night, then kill him?”

“A vote for the goodness of human nature, a vote for innocence,” Steve said.

“I'm hoping,” Victoria said. “And what do you think?”

“She's our client,” Steve said, “and she's relying on us for every breath she takes. If a hundred witnesses saw her shoot a man on Flagler Street at high noon, they're lying or nearsighted or insane. If the polygraph goes off the Richter when she professes love for old Charlie, the machine is on the fritz. If the forensics all point to her, they've been tainted by mendacity or incompetence. She's our client, which means she's wrongfully accused, an innocent victim of a system run amuck. We hold her key to the jailhouse door, and we, my friends, shall swing that door open and set her free.”

6. Lie to your priest, your spouse, and the IRS, but always tell your lawyer the truth.