Paul Levine: Kill All the Lawyers

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.