Paul Levine: Kill All the Lawyers

"My P.E. teacher," the boy replied. "He's a real dipstick."

Bobby's rebellious streak had started with the onset of puberty. If it were up to Steve, his nephew would have stayed a little kid forever. Playing catch, riding bikes, camping out in the Glades. But the kid had become a steaming kettle of testosterone. He was already interested in girls, dangerous terrain for even the well-adjusted. For a troubled boy like Bobby, this new frontier would be even more treacherous.

"Last warning, and I mean it." Steve poured some molten steel into his voice. "No more coffee, no more murderers, or you're grounded."

Bobby put down the cup, and drew a finger- hush, hush -to his lips.

Steve nodded his thanks and turned to Victoria. "What were you saying about Kreeger's eyes?"

"Hot," Victoria said. "Dark, glowing coals. The camera would come in so close you could almost feel the heat."

"Turned women on," Steve said.

"What about that woman in his hot tub? Did he kill her?"

"Jury said he did, in a manslaughterly kind of way."

"What do you say?"

"I never breach a client's confidence."

Victoria laughed. "Since when?"

"Dr. William Kreeger is out of my life."

"But you're not out of his. What aren't you telling me?"

"Wil-liam Kree-ger," Bobby said, drawing out the syllables, his eyes narrowing.

Steve knew the boy was working up an anagram from Kreeger's name. Bobby's central nervous system deficit had a flip side. Doctors called it "paradoxical functional facilitation." The kid had a savant's capacity to memorize reams of data. Plus the ability to work out anagrams in his head.

"William Kreeger," the boy repeated. "I EMERGE, KILL RAW."

"Nicely done," Steve complimented him.

"So you do think he's a murderer?" Victoria cross-examined.

"The jury's spoken. So has the judge and the appellate court. I respect all of them."

"Hah."

"Don't you have to get to court, Vic?"

"I've got lots of time."

"But I don't. Bobby, let's go to school."

"I'd rather watch you two fight," the boy said.

"We're not fighting," Steve said.

"Yet." Victoria studied him, her eyes piercing green laser beams. "This morning, Dr. Bill challenged you to come on the air and defend yourself."

"Forget it."

"I thought you'd leap at free publicity."

"Not on some third-rate radio program."

"Aren't you the guy who bought ads on the back of ambulances?"

"Ancient history, Vic," Steve said. "I've decided to become more like you. Principled and dignified."

"Uncle Steve's speaking softly again," Bobby said, "and trying to look sincere."

Thirty minutes later, Steve was headed across the MacArthur Causeway toward Miami Beach. He had kissed Victoria good-bye and dropped off Bobby at Ponce de Leon Middle School. Now, as his old Mustang rolled past the cruise ships lined up at the port, Steve tried to process the morning's information. What was this feeling of dread creeping over him? The last time he'd seen Kreeger was at the sentencing. It had been a messy case with just enough tabloid elements-drugs, sex, celebrity-to attract media attention.

A woman named Nancy Lamm had drowned in three feet of water. Unfortunately for Kreeger, the water was in the hot tub on his pool deck. That wouldn't have been so bad, except for the gash on Nancy Lamm's skull. Then there was the tox scan revealing a potent mixture of barbiturates and booze. The pills had come from Kreeger, which was a big no-no. He was a court-appointed expert in Nancy's child custody case, so he shouldn't have been playing footsie with her in a Jacuzzi. In an unseemly breach of medical ethics, Kreeger and Nancy had become lovers. The state claimed they'd had a spat, and she was going to blow the whistle on him with the state medical board. Armed with proof of motive, the state charged Kreeger with murder.

Steve could still remember his closing argument. He used the trial lawyer's trick of the loaded rhetorical question.

"Is Dr. William Kreeger a stupid man? No, he has a near-genius IQ. Is he a careless man? No, quite the contrary. He's precise and meticulous. So, ask yourselves, if Dr. Kreeger were inclined to kill someone, would he do it at his own home? Would he be present at the time of death? Would he admit to police that he had provided a controlled substance to the victim? I think you know the answers. This was an unfortunate accident, not an act of murder."

The jury returned a compromise verdict: guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Not a bad result, Steve thought-but then, he didn't have to serve the time. Now he dredged up everything he could remember about the moment the jury came back with the verdict. Kreeger didn't even wince. Not one of those clients whose knees buckle and eyes brim with tears.

Kreeger didn't blame Steve. Thanked him, in fact, for doing his best. Kreeger hired another lawyer for the appeal, but nothing unusual there. Appellate work was brief writing. Steve was never much for book work, and footnotes gave him a headache.

He never heard from Kreeger again. Not a call or postcard from prison. And nothing when he got out.

So what's with all the insults now? Why is he calling me a shyster and challenging me to debate him on the air?

Steve didn't like the answer. Only one thing could have changed.

He found out. Somehow, he found out exactly what I did.

Meaning Kreeger also figured out that he would have been acquitted if any other lawyer on the planet had defended the case. And that marlin on the door? It had to be a message from Kreeger, something they both would understand.

A marlin.

Not a grouper or a shark or a moray eel.

A marlin had significance for both of them.

So what's Kreeger want?

Steve tried the loose-thread approach, something his father taught him. "Whenever you're stumped and feeling dumb as a suck-egg mule," Herbert T. Solomon used to drawl, "grab a loose thread and pull the cotton-picking thing till you find where it leads." Now Steve pulled at the idea of Kreeger suddenly attacking him on the radio and jamming a rotting fish into his front door. Where did that thread lead?

Probably not to a lawsuit or disbarment proceedings. No challenge for Kreeger's towering ego to seek redress through official channels. No chance to show his obvious superiority. Steve pulled at the thread some more. It kept leading back to a dead woman in a hot tub.

"The bitch betrayed me."

That's what Kreeger had told Steve, even while denying that he'd killed Nancy Lamm. Kreeger's hot eyes notwithstanding, there was an icy coldness to the man that could make you shiver. And now the answer Steve was seeking emerged with chilling clarity.

The bastard doesn't want to sue me. He wants to kill me.

Walking down the noisy corridor at school, dodging bigger kids with Mack truck shoulders, Bobby tried to remember the dream.

It was a dream, right?

The face in his bedroom window. He tried to picture the face, but it was lost in the fog of sleep. Dammit, his brain was letting him down. All that stuff in his head, but where was the face?

When I close my eyes, why does all this useless 411 pop up?

In one corner of his brain, floating letters, constantly rearranging themselves into new words. In another corner, the periodic table of elements, 118 of them, from hydrogen to ununoctium. So where did the face go?

He hadn't told Uncle Steve about the face in the window because it was just a dream.

Or was it?

Bobby decided to put his brain in reverse and logically consider the events of the past twelve hours. The same night someone stuck a giant fish on the front door, he dreamed of a face in the window.