Paul Levine - The Deep Blue Alibi

"No. I pity the man who takes you for one. Or who crosses you."

"Steve, please." A command, not a request. "Uncle Grif, I'm sorry. Steve can be abrasive sometimes."

"No problem, Princess. I like this punk."

"You do?" She sounded stunned.

"Most lawyers stick their tongues so far up my butt, it tickles my nose. Sorry, Princess. Your mother used to say I was uncouth. Not like your father. All polished fingernails and luncheon clubs. Of course, if Nelson had begun life spreading hot tar on roofs, his hands might not have been so clean." Griffin turned back to Steve and showed a crooked smile. "I told the cops my head hurt, and I'd talk to them later. I do good, Counselor?"

"Real good. Not a word to the cops until we hear what Stubbs has to say. Then we'll draft a statement for you. Assuming you want us to represent you."

"We'll see. Give me a game plan."

"We have to prepare for the worst. Stubbs comes to and says the two of you argued, and you speared him like an olive with a toothpick. We get a doctor who'll say that after losing all that blood, Stubbs is hallucinating."

Griffin winked at Victoria. "I like the way this punk thinks."

"So who knocked Uncle Grif unconscious?" Victoria said.

"The same guy who shot Stubbs," Steve answered.

"And that would be …?"

"Jeez, we've been here ten minutes. Give me a chance to come up with our one-armed man."

"Steve, you can't just spin stories out of thin air," Victoria said.

"Sure I can. It's one of Solomon's Laws."

"What laws are those?"

"Steve makes them up as he goes along." Victoria pursed her lips, showing her displeasure. " 'If the law doesn't work, work the law.' That sort of thing."

" 'If the facts don't fit the law,' " Steve said cheerfully, " 'bend the facts.' That's another one."

"I like what I'm hearing." Griffin seemed to be enjoying himself, despite his injuries. "What else, Solomon?"

"I want to be there when the cops question Stubbs. Or better yet, question him first."

"It'll never happen," Victoria said. "The police won't let you near him."

"There are ways," Steve said.

"Don't even think about it."

"What's going on?" Griffin asked.

"Steve likes to crash parties. Once, he faked a heart attack to get into an ER."

"It wasn't a big deal," Steve said, "until I got the bill for my angiogram."

Griffin coughed up a laugh. "You're an asshole, Solomon."

"Yeah?"

"But my kind of asshole." He turned to Victoria. "Princess, you did real good hooking up with this guy. You're hired. Both of you."

How could this be happening?

Steve taking over as if they were still partners and he was numero uno.

How did I let this happen again?

Victoria had intended to split up the firm, and here was Steve poaching her client. Winning over Uncle Grif with all that macho crap.

Steve excused himself, saying he'd give the two of them a little time together, then catch up with Victoria in the hospital lobby.

Victoria waited until the door closed behind him, making certain the deputy in the corridor couldn't hear her. Maybe there was still a way to push Steve out, or at least into the second chair. "Uncle Grif, what's the legal work you called me about? Does it have anything to do with Stubbs?"

"My son will give you all the answers. You remember Junior, don't you, Princess?"

"You don't forget the first boy who kissed you."

Griffin nodded. "Junior's done nothing but talk about you since I told him we were getting together. Your father always said our lives always would be intertwined, our families connected. Nelson even thought you and Junior might end up together." His eyes seemed to focus on a distant memory. "It's a damn strange world, Princess, but the older I get, the more I believe in destiny. Like some things are just meant to be."

The man in the white lab coat with the stethoscope draped around his neck hurried through the swinging door of the ICU, nodded to an attendant at the nurses' station, and kept moving at a brisk pace.

Always keep moving. Act confident. Look like you belong.

Steve's rules for trespassing. He'd once confessed to a fictional crime to get access to a police station holding cell. Another time, he'd crashed corporate offices in an exterminator's uniform and sprayed the baseboards with insecticide. He'd even picked up a personal injury client by pretending to be a paramedic.

Paramedic to doctor. One small step for a man. One giant leap for a lawyer.

With wide-open physicians' locker rooms, hospitals were among the easiest venues to crack. Scrubs, lab coats, stethoscopes. Samples of the newest amphetamines, if you're into that sort of thing.

At the moment, Steve wore rubber-soled white shoes, scrub pants, and a lab coat with a name tag reading, "G. Koenigsberg, MD."

Spotting a cop standing outside a closed door, Steve headed that way. "Officer, how's our patient doing?"

"Damned if I know," the deputy answered. Another young one with hair shaved close enough to show scalp through the buzz cut. "Your people won't let us in."

"I'll check and see if he's up to talking."

Steve entered the room, closing the door behind him. An oxygen clip in his nose, Ben Stubbs lay on his back. A snarl of tubes and wires sprouted from him. He was a small man with a narrow face and sunken cheeks, his skin the unhealthy gray of an amberjack. His chest was thick with white bandages, and a bedside machine beeped in sync with his heartbeat.

"And how are we feeling today, Mr. Stubbs?"

Stubbs' eyes were open but unfocused. He seemed to be in a twilight state of semi-consciousness.

"We'll have you waterskiing in no time. Unless you never skied before. Then it might take a little longer."

Still no reaction.

Steve moved closer to the bed. "Mr. Stubbs, can you remember what happened?"

The man's pale eyes blinked and he moved his head slightly.

"Who did this to you?"

Stubbs' lips moved. No words came out. Slowly, he raised his right hand a few inches above the bedsheets. Shakily, he held up two fingers, like a scalper selling a pair of Dolphins' tickets. A very weak scalper.

"Two? What are you saying? Two men did this to you?"

Stubbs' hand fell back to the bed, and the door flew open. A middle-aged man in a suit and tie stormed into the room, two uniformed deputies at his heels. "Just who the hell are you?" the man demanded.

"You first," Steve shot back.

"Dr. Gary Koenigsberg. Head of trauma."

"Marcus Welby. Internal Security. Florida Department of Medicine. As a matter of professional courtesy, I'll just write up a warning today."

"Warning? What the hell are you talking about?"

Steve unclipped the name tag and tossed it to the doctor. "You've got some real security problems here, Koenigsberg."

SOLOMON'S LAWS

2. Always assume your client is guilty. It saves time.

"You're impossible," Victoria fumed. "What would

you have done if a patient really needed a doctor?"

"Surgery," Steve suggested.

"I leave you alone five minutes, and you get arrested."

"I wasn't arrested. More like escorted out."

"It's humiliating being your partner. Can you see why I need to be on my own?"

"Loosen up, Vic. I got some information from Stubbs."

"He talked?"

"Not exactly. But I think two guys might have attacked him."

Steve told her about Stubbs raising two fingers, but she seemed unimpressed with his sleuthing. "It could mean anything," Victoria said. "Or nothing."

It was just after nine on a muggy night, and they were back in the old Caddy headed north on U.S. 1. Well, the sign said, North. Steve knew they were on a portion of Useless 1 that ran due east. The Keys were a scimitar-shaped archipelago running northeast to southwest, from Miami to Key West. Though Key West was a coastal city, if you drew a line due north from Sloppy Joe's Bar on Duval Street, you'd actually end up west of Cleveland. The curving coastline created the geographic oddity, like Reno, Nevada, being farther west than Los Angeles.