by Paul Levine
Steve let out a breath. Okay, that was exactly what he'd agreed to with one of Pincher's deputies. But why was the boss here? What was so damn special about the case?
"Mr. Solomon?" The judge seemed to focus on Steve for the first time. "Aren't you that lawyer I throw in the clink every now and then?"
"I plead nolo to that, too, Your Honor."
"Okay, then. Let's put the stuffing in this turkey."
The judge started running through the plea protocol. Did Steve understand the charges against him? Did he know he had the right to a trial? Was he entering the plea freely and voluntarily?
Steve gave all the right answers, and in less than three minutes, the judge had checked off the boxes on his form and signed the order Pincher handed to him. Judge Schwartz leaned close to the document, showing the courtroom the crown of his bald head as he read: "The Court finds that the defendant is alert and intelligent and understands the consequences of his plea, which is accepted for all purposes. Adjudication of guilt is withheld pending completion of anger-management therapy under the auspices of William Kreeger, MD, board-certified psychiatrist."
What!? Did the judge say what I think he said?
"Dr. Kreeger will file a written report with the Court at the conclusion of said therapy."
Yes. He definitely said it. But that's nuts. There must be some mistake.
"At which time, charges will either be dismissed and all records expunged, or in the event of the failure to satisfactorily complete said therapy, the defendant shall be sentenced in accordance with his plea of nolo contendere."
"Hold on, Judge!" Steve shouted, loud enough for the old buzzard to hear. "Kreeger's a convicted felon."
"Not anymore," Pincher shot back. "His rights have been restored. Dr. Kreeger received commendations from the Corrections Department for his work with violent offenders, and the DPR restored his medical license. He's a model of rehabilitation."
"He's a model nutcase," Steve said.
"You heard my ruling," the judge rasped. "Now stop your bellyaching and go get your anger managed."
The judge hammered his gavel. "Clerk, call the next case."
"No fucking way," Steve said.
"What'd you say?" the judge demanded.
"No fun this way, Your Honor."
"It's not supposed to be fun. You're a criminal, aren't you?"
"No, sir. I'm a defense lawyer."
"Same difference. You're accused of assaulting one . . ." The judge licked his index finger and thumbed through the court file. "Arnold Freskin, an employee of the great State of Florida." Judge Schwartz used his feet to pedal his chair away from his desk and toward the flagpole a few feet away. He grasped the edge of the state flag and pulled it taut. "What do you see, Mr. Solomon?"
"I see the state seal, Your Honor. A Native American woman is scattering flowers on the ground."
"Damn right. These days the squaw would be raking in chips at the casino." The judge dropped the flag and rolled back to his desk. "My point, Mr. Solomon, is that you offended the dignity of the great State of Florida, and Mr. Pincher has magnanimously decided to cut you a break."
"Yes, sir, but—"
"No 'but.' I just disposed of this baked turd of a case."
"I'm being set up, Judge. By Mr. Pincher and Dr. Kreeger."
"You're talking in riddles, Mr. Solomon. I called the next case, and by God, I'm going to hear the next case."
The clerk called out: "City of Miami Beach versus Weingarten Delicatessen. Violation of Kosher Food Ordinance."
Pincher grabbed Steve's elbow and whispered: "Just chill. See Bill. Ain't nothing but a fire drill."
"You sold me out, Sugar Ray." Steve turned to the judge. "Your Honor, I move to withdraw my plea."
"Are you still here?" Judge Schwartz was scowling. "I'm going to charge you rent, Counselor."
Steve felt a presence beside him. Kreeger had come through the swinging gate. "Your Honor, Mr. Solomon's recalcitrance is a normal manifestation of his behavioral type. I'm sure he'll do fine with therapy."
"Like I give a rat's tuches," the judge said. "Where's that butcher who's selling trayf as kosher?"
"Judge, there's a motion pending," Steve insisted. "I've moved to withdraw my plea. I want to go to trial."
"Motion denied. It's time to clear my calendar, Mr. Solomon, and not the one with the Playboy bunnies on it."
"Your Honor, I have an absolute right to—"
Bang! The judge smacked the gavel so hard, Steve could feel his teeth reverberate. "I'm driving the Studebaker, Mr. Solomon, and you're the greasy speck of a horsefly on my windshield."
Steve had no intention of giving up or backing down. "Judge, I once represented Kreeger in a case. State Attorney Pincher prosecuted for the state. They've cooked this up. If Kreeger doesn't clear me, you'll sentence me to jail. Can't you see it, Judge? It's a conspiracy."
Judge Schwartz turned his bleary gaze on Kreeger, and for a moment Steve thought maybe he'd made an impression.
"Let's hear from the headshrinker," the judge said. "Doc, what do you say about these accusations?"
"Nothing to be alarmed about, Your Honor," Kreeger replied in his soothing baritone. "While I'm working on Mr. Solomon's anger, I'll check out that paranoia, too."
SOLOMON'S LAWS
6. A creative lawyer considers a judge's order a mere suggestion.
Seventeen
THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS
OF PARENTING
"What did you do to make the judge so furious?"
Victoria demanded.
"Nothing," Steve said. "Nada. Bupkes."
"You must have done something."
"Why?" Steve had come home hoping for comfort and support. Instead he was being cross-examined in his own kitchen. "Why do you automatically assume it's my fault?"
"Because you have a knack for driving people crazy."
"Judge Schwartz was crazy decades before I met him. Can you believe I'm supposed to be counseled by that psychopath Kreeger?"
"Sociopath," Bobby corrected him. "With narcissistic tendencies and omnipotent fantasies." The kid had been reading psychology texts and checking out various medical websites. At least that's what he said when asked why his computer had bookmarked nymphomaniacs.com. Now Bobby gave the adults his wiseguy look from underneath the bill of his Solomon & Lord ball cap. Steve had formed a team in the lawyers' softball league, but desperately short of players, he recruited clients to play. Purse snatchers turned out to be excellent base runners; pedestrians knocked down by taxicabs were a little slow off the bag.
Outside the windows, fronds from a sabal palm swatted the stucco walls of the house. Inside, Steve was defending himself from Victoria's torrent of criticism.
"I didn't do anything wrong," Steve insisted. "Kreeger set me up, and Pincher was in on it."
"Why? What's Pincher have to gain?"
"More like what he has to lose. Kreeger threatened to go public, tell everyone our esteemed State Attorney used tainted evidence to convict him."
"Pincher told you that?"
"I figured it out. Pincher's up for reelection next year. Who'd he rather have pissed off at him? A defense lawyer or a guy with a radio show?"
"Aw, why make a big tsimiss out of it?" Herbert Solomon walked into the kitchen, carrying a tumbler filled with ice. "Do the therapy and get the charges dismissed."
"Not that easy, Dad. Having Kreeger as my therapist is like having a burglar in my bedroom."
Herbert had filled his glass so high with bourbon, he needed to slurp it out. "So don't flap your gums about family secrets. Stonewall his ass."
"Then he files a report with the court saying I'm hiding my lunatic impulses."
"If the judge ordered you to go to Kreeger," Victoria said, "you have no choice."
"That's the difference between you and me, Vic," Steve said. "I consider judges' orders as mere suggestions."
"That's the difference between civilization and anarchy. And in your life,
anarchy rules."
"Anarchy rules," Bobby repeated. "ANY CRUEL RASH."
"No reason to be all tore up, son," Herbert said. "Maybe the more time you spend with that shrink, the better."
"How you figure, Dad?"
"Ah couldn't find hide nor hair of that boat captain. You need a new plan."
Victoria shot Steve a look. He hadn't told his father everything, and she knew it.
"Dad, it doesn't matter if you found De la Fuente or not. I just want Kreeger to know I'm looking."
Herbert's bushy eyebrows seemed to arch higher. "So you send your old man on a wild-goose chase. Fine son you are."
"But you're right, Dad. There's an upside to spending more time with Kreeger. His girlfriend, too, if I could get her alone."
"You still think you can convince her Kreeger's a killer?" Victoria said.
"No!" He slapped his forehead to signify what an idiot he was. No one disagreed. "I've got it backwards. I think she already knows his past."
"And you base this on what?" Victoria asked.
"Something Kreeger said to me about how much he appreciates Amanda's qualities. That she has an intelligence and understanding beyond her years. That sort of thing."
"Yeah?"
"She's the one he feels safe with, the one who comforts him. Kreeger could have told her about Beshears and Lamm. And who knows? Maybe there's—"
"A third murder," Victoria said.
"Exactly. If Amanda knows Kreeger's secrets, and I can drive a wedge between them, maybe I can get her to help me nail him."
"This 'wedge' of yours? How's that going to work, exactly?"
"I don't know yet, Vic. I'm just riffing here."
"And you don't think a guy as smart as Kreeger will catch on?"
"So he's smart. What am I? Chopped liver?"
"You don't exactly bend spoons with your mind, Uncle Steve." Bobby unscrewed two halves of an Oreo cookie and used his teeth to scrape off the vanilla filling.
"Thanks, guys," Steve said. "But Kreeger's got his weaknesses. He's so damn cocky, he'll figure there's no way I can take him down."
"The omnipotence fantasy," Bobby added. "Freud wrote about it."
"And if Kreeger wants to hang out, like Dad says, that's fine, too."
"Keep your friends close but your enemies closer," Bobby recited.
"Freud?" Steve asked.
Bobby winced. "Al Pacino. Godfather, Part II."
"Don't you have homework to do?" Steve said.
"Nope."
"And where were you last night?"
"Nowhere."
"Physically impossible."
The boy tossed his shoulders, the adolescent symbol for "so what" or "whatever" or "who gives a shit?"
"You violated curfew, kiddo."
"Jeez, this is like a prison."
"Ease up on the boy," Herbert said. "When you and Janice were kids, Ah—"
"Was nowhere to be found," Steve interrupted.
* * *
Bobby wanted to tell Uncle Steve the truth.
"I was with Mom. We sat in her car down by the bay and talked for hours."
But he couldn't do it. Uncle Steve thought she was a really bad influence. But she didn't seem that way at all. She seemed kind of lost, like she needed Bobby more than he needed her.
Mom seems so lonely, like there's nobody for her to talk to.
So Bobby had listened as she talked about growing up in a house with a sick mother and an absent father, Grandpop always being off somewhere, and Steve out playing sports. Mom had been the outsider, or that was how she felt, anyway.
When Mom was talking about the man who picked her up hitchhiking—she couldn't remember his name, even though he might be Bobby's father—Bobby tried to decide whether he loved her. Yeah, he probably did in some weird way. But he was certain he felt sorry for her.
Now Bobby listened as Uncle Steve and Grandpop argued for the zillionth time about the past.
"Don't tell me you're still mad because I didn't come to your Little League games," Grandpop said.
"Or to my spelling bees, my track meets, or the hospital when I had my tonsils out."
"For crying out loud, you were only there a few hours."
"Because you wouldn't pay for a room. The doctor wanted to keep me overnight."
"Highway robbery."
Sometimes Bobby wished the two of them would grow up.
* * *
Victoria tried to decide who was more immature, Steve or his father. Clearly, they were equally argumentative and pugnacious. She tried to picture the Solomon home during Steve's childhood. It didn't seem to be a happy place. Certainly, it was not a quiet place.
They railed at each other another few moments, Herbert calling Steve an "ungrateful grumble guts," Steve calling Herbert a "tumbleweed father, gone with the wind." Then they seemed to tire, and Steve turned back to Bobby. "You still haven't said where you were last night."
"Probably with his little shiksa," Herbert said.
"Dad! That's a derogatory term."
"The hell it is."
Here we go again, Victoria thought. These two could argue over "Happy Chanukah."
"A shiksa's a gentile gal," Herbert continued. "Nothing derogatory about it. As for little Miss Havana-Jerusalem, her mother's a Catholic and that makes her a shiksa."
"So I'm a shiksa," Victoria said.
"Hell, no. You're Jewish by injection." Herbert laughed and took a pull on his bourbon. "Unless you two haven't played hide-the-salami yet."
"Dad, put a lid on it," Steve ordered.
Herbert grinned at Victoria. "How 'bout it, bubele? Stephen been slipping you the Hebrew National?"
Herbert cackled again and headed toward the living room without waiting for an answer. "Hold mah calls. Ah'm gonna watch a titty movie on Cinemax, then take a nap."
Victoria whirled toward Steve. "Why do you have to bait him?" she demanded.
"I could tell you, Vic, but I'm not sure you'd understand."
"Try me, partner. I've been to college and everything."
"It's a Jewish thing. We love arguing, complaining, talking with our mouths full. You're Episcopalian. You love—I don't know—drinking tea, wearing Burberry, the Queen of England."
Victoria was not particularly pleased about being reduced to a stereotype. She would talk to Steve about it later. But right now Bobby was still there, fishing into the Oreo bag. "Steve, don't you have some unfinished parenting to do?"
"Parenting's always unfinished." He turned to the boy. "So, kiddo, was your grandpop right? Were you with Maria last night?"
"Jeez, it's like the Inquisition in here." Bobby pried off the top of a cookie. "No, I wasn't with her. Maria's stupid dad won't let me see her anymore."
Victoria spoke gently. "Bobby, what's happened?"
"Nothing, except Dr. Goldberg thinks I'm weird." The pain was audible in the boy's voice.
"You're weird?" Steve said. "He's a periodontist."
Victoria ran a hand through Bobby's hair. "Why would he say something like that?"
Bobby hunched his shoulders. "Lots of reasons, I guess. Dr. Goldberg's always cracking on me. Like, he hates the T-shirt Uncle Steve got me."
"What T-shirt?"
Steve shook his head in Bobby's direction, but the kid either didn't pick up the sign or didn't care. " 'If We Don't Have Sex, the Terrorists Win.'"
Victoria shot a look at Steve. In the household of the three Solomon men, she now concluded, Steve clearly was the most childish.
"And Dr. Goldberg hated the poetry I wrote for Maria," Bobby continued. "I made anagrams of every line of 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.'"
"Why, that must have been beautiful," Victoria said, trying to boost the boy's ego.
"Dr. Goldberg said the whole poem was smutty."
"Smutty!" Steve smacked the countertop.
Why was it, Victoria wondered, that men always needed to throw things, hit things, and make noise to express displeasure?
"W
ho uses words like 'smutty' anymore?" Steve railed. "What else did this tight-ass say to you?"
"Nothin'." The boy licked another open-faced Oreo.
"C'mon, Bobby. Don't hold out on Uncle Steve."
Without looking up from the table, Bobby said: "That I was a klutz. That he didn't want me hanging around Maria. And in case I thought she liked me, she didn't. She just wanted me to do her homework."
Steve smacked both hands on the countertop. "That asshole! I'm going over there and kick his butt."
"That would be very smart," Victoria said evenly. "Give Kreeger ammunition for the judge."
"Forget Kreeger. This jerk's got no right to talk to Bobby that way."
"It's okay, Uncle Steve."
"The hell it is!"
"Steve," Victoria cautioned. "Settle down. You're not going over to the Goldbergs'."
"Vic, this is between Bobby and me, okay?"
She stiffened. "What does that mean?"
"Nothing."
"Are you trying to put distance between us?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Then answer this. Am I a member of this family or not?"
Steve hesitated. Just a second. Then he said, "Sure. Sure, you are."
Victoria remembered an early boyfriend once saying he loved her. She had thought it over a couple seconds—one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two—and finally agreed, "I love you, too." But if you have to think about it, well, the feeling just isn't there.
"So you don't consider me a member of the family?"
"I just said I do."
"Let's examine the instant replay," Victoria demanded, "because you looked like you were moving in slow motion."
"I just like to think before I speak."
"Since when? You have an intimacy problem, you know that, Steve?"
"Aw, jeez, don't change the subject. Name one good reason why I shouldn't go over to Myron Goldberg's house and call him out."
"Because it's juvenile, illegal, and self-destructive," Victoria said. "Three reasons."
