Paul Levine - Kill All the Lawyers

"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.

I hate lying. Strike that. I hate lying to someone I love.

Some lies were worse than others, Steve thought. In court, lies come in all shapes and sizes. Outright falsehoods, cautious evasions, clever prevarications. Lies are as plentiful as the silk-suited lawyers mouthing them. Not to mention clients, cops, witnesses, and the guy peddling stale empanadas on the courthouse steps. Judges and juries do not expect to be told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And their expectations are always fulfilled.

But you should not lie to the woman you love. This morning, Victoria had asked what happened with Kreeger, and Steve had skated around the thin ice of the truth. Now, headed to meet Victoria at a condo open house, he tried to work up the courage to tell her everything. Just as he passed Parrot Jungle on the MacArthur Causeway, his cell phone rang.

"If you been tuned to the AM dial, you ain't got no cheery smile."

Steve recognized the mellifluous voice. "Good morning, Sugar Ray."

Seven years earlier, when he prosecuted Kreeger, Ray Pincher was just another deputy in the major crimes unit. Now the ex-amateur boxer, ex-seminary student, ex-rap musician was the duly elected State Attorney of Miami-Dade County. "Too bad the dude got out the clink. That crook, that bum, that shady shrink."

"I didn't listen to the show," Steve said. Figuring he was the only one in town who hadn't heard Dr. Bill torch him.

"Said you were more crooked than a corkscrew. Lower than a rattlesnake's belly. As rotten as week-old snapper. And those were the compliments."

"So what? The man's a convicted felon. He's got zero credibility."

"You figure he knows what came down?"

Steve felt a chill. Why the hell bring that up? And on the phone yet? "You taping this call, Sugar Ray?"

"Now, that gives me pause."

"And probable cause?" Steve completed his rhyme.

Pincher laughed. "Golly, Solly. You must have a guilty conscience."

On Biscayne Boulevard now, Steve passed Freedom Tower, the Mediterranean Revival building some called Miami's Ellis Island. Hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees were processed there in the 1960s. Now a developer planned to envelop it with a skyscraper.

"As I recall, Sugar Ray, your hands aren't exactly clean."

Pincher exhaled a breath that whistled through Steve's earpiece. "My job was to prosecute the dude. Yours was to defend him. I did my job, Solomon."

The conversation had taken a nasty turn. Was Pincher threatening him? "Why you calling me, Sugar Ray?"

"To say I can't protect you. If I'm subpoenaed, I'm gonna tell the truth. Only way I can get screwed is by covering for you. Malfeasance. Obstruction. Perjury."

"Hell, you do that before breakfast."

"Ain't gonna be funny, dude after your money."

"I don't have any, and Kreeger'd know that."

"Then he'll get excited to see you indicted."

Steve stayed silent. The conversation was sailing in rough waters. Approaching the Brickell Avenue Bridge, he beeped the horn at a lane-changer, a PT Cruiser with rental plates. Damn tourists. Why don't they all stay at Disney World and let us clog our own streets?

Running late, he could picture Victoria impatiently tapping the toe of her hand-stitched pump on the marble floor of the high-rise condo. Steve's mood had dipped. His desire to buy overpriced real estate was waning by the minute.

"I never asked you to do anything wrong," Pincher continued. "You remember that, don't you, Solomon?"

Sure, he's recording this. Making exculpatory statements and trying to get my corroboration.

"Only thing I remember," Steve said, "when your wife was out of town, you asked me to fix you up with the Les Mannequins girls."

"You prick, Solomon."

"And now that I think about it, I seem to recall you asking where you could score some crystal meth."

Play that for the grand jury, Sugar Ray.

"You're just like your old man, you know that, Solomon?"

"Leave him out of this."

Pincher laughed, the sound of a horse whinnying. "Both of you hold yourselves above the law. And you're both gonna end up the same way. Wouldn't that be something, father and son, both disbarred?"

"Dad wasn't disbarred. He quit the Bar. That's one difference between him and me, Pincher. I don't quit anything."

But the State Attorney had already hung up.

Victoria stood on the balcony of the high-rise condo, forty-one stories up, staring at the bay, where a dozen sailboats were rounding buoys in a triangular race. To her right was Rickenbacker Causeway, the sky bridge to Key Biscayne. The MacArthur Causeway was to the left, connecting the mainland with Watson, Palm, and Star islands on the way to Miami Beach. In the distance beyond, the greenish-blue waters of the Atlantic.