The Deep Blue Alibi

Five

When they reached Sugarloaf Key, Steve hung a right onto Old State Road, and after another two miles, he brought the Eldo to a stop under a gumbo-limbo tree. The past few minutes, he'd been thinking of something other than his relationship with the brainy and leggy woman in the passenger seat.

"When are you going to tell your father about the Bar petition?" Victoria asked, getting out of the car.

Jeez, reading my mind.

He'd filed a lawsuit to get back his father's license to practice law but neglected to mention it to his old man. "Not till I have some good news to report."

They walked on a path of crushed shells toward the waterline at Pirates Cove. Victoria's leather-soled slides were, well, sliding on the moist shells, and she shortened her stride. "I wonder if that's the right way to do it. Keeping it secret, I mean."

Her roundabout, feminine way, Steve knew, of saying, "You're really messing up here."

"Trust me, Vic. I know how to handle my old man."

Steve knew his father desperately missed being a lawyer. Not just any lawyer, but Herbert T. Solomon, Esq., a Southern-born, silver-tongued, spellbinding stem-winder of a lawyer. And then a respected Miami judge. Before his fall.

Now Herbert spent his days fishing, usually alone. But today he'd been taking care of his grandson. On the trip down the Overseas Highway the day before, Steve and Victoria had dropped off twelve-year-old Bobby Solomon. Bobby lived with Steve instead of his own mother, Steve's drug-addled and larcenous sister, Janice, who recently claimed to be growing organic vegetables in the North Carolina mountains. Steve made a mental note to check if the government's food pyramid listed marijuana under vegetables.

As they approached the houseboat, Steve could hear the wind chimes-beer cans dangling on fishing line- on the rear deck. The old wreck-the boat, not his father-was tied to a splintered wooden dock by corded lines thickened with green seaweed. Herbert Solomon owned five acres of scrubby property off Old State Road, but docking the boat there was still illegal, even under the Keys' notoriously lax zoning. Even in the dark, the boat clearly listed to starboard. From inside came the sounds of calypso, Harry Belafonte singing, "Man Smart (Woman Smarter)."

"I'm wondering if you should be the one to handle your father's case," Victoria volunteered.

"Who'd be better?"

"Someone who can be objective."

"I don't plan to be objective. I'm a warrior, a gladiator."

"You know what I mean. You have to separate the truth from fiction. When your father was disbarred-"

"He resigned. There's a difference."

Christmas lights were strung on the overhang of the houseboat, even though it was May, and even though the Solomons were descended from the tribes of Israel. Splotches of green paint haphazardly covered divots of wood rot in the stern deck.

Steve could see movement on the rear porch, his father getting up from a wooden rocker, a drink in his hand. Herbert's shimmering white hair was swept straight back and flipped up at his shoulders. His skin, remarkably unlined for a man of sixty-six, was sunbaked, and his dark eyes were bright and combative.

"Hey, Dad," Steve said.

"Don't 'Hey, Dad' me, you sneaky son-of-a-bitch."

"What'd I do now?" Steve stepped aboard, thinking he'd been asking that question a lot lately.

"Victoria," Herbert said. "How do you put up with this gallynipper?"

"Sometimes, I wonder," she replied.

"You could do a helluva lot better than him."

"Maybe I'll go check on Bobby," Victoria said, "let you boys play."

"He's asleep," Herbert said. "Tuckered out from poling the skiff all day."

"I'll go inside, just the same," she said.

"Coward," Steve told her as she headed through a door into the rear cabin.

"There's rum on the counter, soda in the fridge," Herbert called after her, gesturing with his glass, sprigs of mint peeking over the rim. Deep into his evening mojitos. He turned back to Steve and scowled. "You best cut your own weeds, son, and stay out of mah tater patch."

Even when reaming him out, the old man's voice maintained the mellifluous flow of molasses oozing over ice cream. Savannah born and raised, Herbert still spoke the honeyed patois of his youth.

As a boy hanging out in the courthouse, Steve heard his father call a witness "So gosh-darned crooked, he could stand in the shadow of a corkscrew and nevuh see the sun. So slippery, gittin' ahold of him is like grabbing an eel in an oil slick. So low a critter, ah had to drain the swamp just to find him."

Herbert could, as they used to say, talk a cat out of a tree. Even though four years at the University of Virginia followed by law school at Duke had polished his diction, Herbert had quickly figured out that playing the Southern gentleman with a tart tongue had its advantages in court. All these years later, whatever regional expressions Herbert still employed came not so much from his youth but from impersonating characters straight out of Mark Twain.

Now, standing on the rear deck of his sagging and splintered houseboat, Herbert T. Solomon, recovering lawyer-rekoven loy-yuh-was giving his son a piece of his mind.

"Who told you to petition the Bar on mah behalf?"

"How'd you know?"

"You think ah'm a senile old Cracker?" Ole Cracka.

"Jews can't be Crackers, Dad. Unless they're matzohs."

"Now, ah was just a jackleg country lawyer, but ah know when ah'm being poleaxed."

"Maybe jurors fell for that muskrat-in-a-tub-of-lard shtick, but I don't. So cut the crap, or I'll tell everyone about your Phi Beta Kappa key."

"Don't change the subject. Ah got friends in Tallahassee who say you been poking around in mah business."

"All right, so I filed papers to get your license back."

"Don't want it back."

"We could practice law together."

"Got a good life here."

"You know what the headline on your obituary will be? 'Disgraced Ex-Judge Kicks Bucket.' "

"So what? Ah'm not gonna be around to read it."

"Well, I will."

"So ah should do this for you? Why don't you just practice law with your beautiful lady and lemme alone?"

"Vic wants to split up, go solo."

Dammit. Steve hadn't planned on revealing that. But now that he had, maybe he could get some sympathy.

"She'll do better without you," Herbert fired back. "If you're not careful, she'll kick you out of bed, too."

"If the Herald interviews me for that obit, I'm gonna say how supportive you always were."

"Aw, don't be such a pussy. Ah remember when those Cuban kids kicked the living piss out of you in the ninth grade."

"Do you remember my coming back with a baseball bat? Breaking some ribs?"

Herbert drained his mojito. "I recollect going to see Rocky Pomerance at the police station, bailing you out. And you say I didn't support you?"

His father's support, Steve recalled, was equally divided between lackadaisical indifference and caustic criticism. Still, as a child, he had idolized the headline-grabbing lawyer, the respected judge. Part of his own psychology, Steve knew, was the childhood fear that he could never measure up to the standards Herbert T. Solomon had set. Then, when his father was implicated by a dirty lawyer in a zoning scandal, everything fell apart. Now Steve couldn't understand why his father wouldn't let him paste it all back together.

"I'm not dropping the case, so you might as well hear me out. I've got a great plan of attack."

"Ah ain't listening."

"You resigned from the bench and the Bar but were never impeached or disbarred."

"So what?"

"You can still pass the 'moral character' test."

"Let it be, son."

"I can win this, Dad."

"Sleeping dogs, son. Let 'em lay."

"What are you saying? Did you take bribes to rezone property?"

"Screw you! You know better than that."

"Then you should have fought back. Hired counsel. Jeez, Dad, if you were innocent-"

"Innocent until proven broke. Ah walked away. That's mah right."

"I'm gonna subpoena Pinky Luber, force him to recant his allegations."

"Son, you ain't got enough butt in your britches to take on Pinky."

"That little old man? He's …He's…"

Steve tried to come up with a down-home expression to keep pace with his father. Just how did you describe Pinky Luber, ex-lawyer and ex-con, the sleaze-ball who fingered his father?

Softer than a pat of butter?

Greasier than a deep-fried donut?

All vine and no taters?

Skipping dinner seemed to make all his metaphors turn on food. Steve settled on: "Pinky's nothing. Nothing at all."

"Don't be fooled by appearances. Pinky always had scary friends, even when he was a prosecutor. Dirty cops, thugs, P.I.'s. And he probably made a few more acquaintances in prison."

"Is that what you're afraid of, Dad? Pinky coming after you?"

"One thing you never learned, son. You start turning over rocks, you best be expecting snakes, not flowers."