Die Laughing: 5 Comic Crime Novels

by Steve Brewer

Her favorite law professor, a woman in her seventies, had told Victoria that.

  “Walk like a man, think like a woman, and strike like a tiger.”

  Long before she became a professor, Sylvia Massey had worked her way up to managing partner of a deep-carpet New York law firm. It had not been an easy path. When Sylvia was a young associate, she’d been called “Honey” by the head of litigation and even worse by the female secretaries, who fiercely resented her.

  “Dress as if you’re going to court. Not a disco.”

  Victoria smiled to herself as she passed a pair of female public defenders sashaying down the corridor in short skirts and blouses opened two buttons too low. One of the women wore black fishnet stockings; the other’s legs were bare.

  “If you want to pick up men, go to a bar. If you want to win in court, look, act, and speak like a professional.”

  Old school. It made sense to Victoria. Today she wore a Coeli brown plaid jacket, belted at the waist, and a matching A-line skirt that fell below the knees. She had legs long enough for the A-line and a waist flat enough for the jacket. She looked back at the two young public defenders trailing in her wake. One chewed gum with an open mouth. The other had used a mahogany lip liner the width of a highway stripe.

  What’s next? Bare midriffs?

  Oh, Jesus. Walking toward her was one of the paralegals from the Probation Department. A Britney Spears wannabe in a red spaghetti-strap blouse that stopped three inches above her navel. Spandex black Capri pants and fuschia flip-flops that smacked the tile as she hurried toward the Probation office.

  Victoria entered Judge Gridley’s courtroom. Empty, except for the bailiff. Elwood Reed was snoozing in a cushioned chair at the side of the bench. He was a stooped, lean, slow-moving man who got to his feet only twice a day—once when announcing His Honor’s entrance and once his exit—and would be jobless if he were not the judge’s cousin by marriage.

  Victoria settled at the prosecution table and opened her partitioned briefcase. She pulled out her pleadings binder, evidence folder, research files, a yellow legal pad, a paperback version of the Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure, and five pens of different colors.

  She waited, the only sounds the bailiff snoring and the air-conditioning humming. Steve would be late, of course. He’d whip on his tie while exiting the elevator. He’d shave with the Norelco as he waltzed down the corridor. He’d say “Howdy” to cronies, debate college football with uniformed cops, compliment a judge’s assistant on her new hairdo, scope out the hallways and rest rooms for any unrepresented felons who looked prosperous enough to pay a small retainer, and in general just be . . . Steve.

  The door to the corridor opened.

  This is a first. Steve, early?

  But it wasn’t her lover, partner . . . and opponent. It was State Attorney Ray Pincher, scowling. “We need to talk, Ms. Lord.” He shot a look at the sleeping bailiff, then motioned toward the closed door of the jury room. “In there.”

  “It’s not appropriate for us to discuss the case.” She sounded a little stiff, even to herself, but it was true. Once Pincher was “conflicted out”—admitted he was related to the defendant—he had to stay out. Lawyers call it a “Chinese wall,” a barrier to keep the person with the conflict of interest away from the case.

  “I know the rule. But I’m no fool.” Pincher stepped into the jury room and, with a slight bow, held the door open, waiting for her to enter the interior room.

  An odd feeling came over Victoria once inside. It was a Spartan place, having twelve chairs, one table, and no windows. Fleetingly, she wished she had heard all the debates that had taken place in this room. What a primer that would be for any trial lawyer.

  “Hector Diaz paid me a visit this morning,” Pincher said.

  The U.S. Attorney. Victoria had never met the man, but she knew Diaz’s reputation as a political opportunist.

  Pincher paced at the head of the long table. “There’s an ongoing federal investigation of the Animal Liberation Movement. Diaz wants my dumb-shit nephew to cooperate, flip on the leaders of the group, maybe bring down the guys who hit that cruise ship.”

  Victoria knew about the incident. For decades, Florida cruise lines had deposited passengers on a remote island for day excursions. “The Castaways Adventure, your own private, desert island,” according to the brochures. The brochure didn’t mention the tortoise beds along the beach, which the tourists would routinely trample.

  One sunny day, half a dozen men and women wearing commando gear and armed with paintball guns landed in a speedboat. Screaming “Death to tyrants” and “Long live the turtles,” they splattered dozens of middle-aged tourists from the Midwest. Red seemed to be the predominant color, causing lots of people to think they’d actually been shot.

  Chaos, of course. Six of the frightened passengers tried to swim back to the ship. One woman nearly drowned. A man had a heart attack. The paintballers were never caught.

  “Diaz suggests you offer a plea,” Pincher continued. “Involuntary manslaughter. Six years. Seven years. Doesn’t care about the sentence. After all, the dead guy, what’s his name . . . ?”

  “Sanders.”

  “Yeah. Sanders was a lowlife, one of the bad guys.”

  “He was a retired naval officer,” Victoria corrected him. “Got a medal in Desert Storm.”

  “Have any family members contacted you? Anyone claim the body?”

  “No.”

  “So no one cares about this guy. Why should we?”

  “Felony murder’s a slam dunk. You said so yourself, Ray.” It was the first time she’d ever called him by his first name. But he was treating her as an equal, for once, and it just felt right. “We’ll have more leverage if I get the conviction, then bargain with Nash for his cooperation.”

  “Already suggested it to the feds. Diaz says he can’t take the risk you’ll lose.”

  “I won’t lose, dammit.”

  “Don’t take it personally. It’s not about you.”

  “What, then?”

  “You never know what a jury will do. Or wasn’t that O.J. Simpson I saw on the first tee at Mel Reese the other day?”

  Victoria didn’t want to plead out the case. She wanted to win it the old-fashioned way, with the reading of a verdict, the defendant slumping over, his lawyer looking like he’d taken an elbow to the Adam’s apple.

  His lawyer. Steve.

  Damn, what’s the right thing to do?

  Victoria analyzed her feelings. Usually, she approached every legal issue with dispassionate logic. But now was her thinking warped by her competitiveness, her desire to beat Steve at his own game?

  “All right,” she said with a sigh. “If I offer the plea, will your nephew cooperate?”

  Pincher smiled. “He’d be a fool not to, but then my sister raised a house full of fools.”

  “You think Nash has the information the feds want?”

  “No idea. The ALM isn’t one group. It’s a bunch of disorganized cells. Losers who hook up and do one job, then go back to smoking weed. I’m betting Gerald doesn’t know a hell of a lot.”

  “And you told this to the U.S. Attorney?”

  “Of course. But he says he needs someone inside the group. For better or worse, he wants Nash.”

  “So is this his request? Or yours?”

  “We’ve got four or five joint operations with the feds. They’ve got more manpower and equipment than we do. I need their help, so yeah, I’m asking you to do this. But I can’t force you, Victoria. You know that.”

  Likewise, it was the first time he’d called Victoria by her first name. She had never seen Pincher so humble. So human. There was something else, too. An air of resignation.

  “Do you trust the U.S. Attorney, Ray?”

  Pincher shrugged. “Diaz is a careerist who wants to run the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. He doesn’t take a crap unless someone in D.C. tells him to.”

  “So this is coming from Washington? Why would
a couple dolphin kidnappers be that big a deal?”

  “Exactly what I asked Diaz. All he’d say was something about a ‘parallel investigation.’ Diaz thinks my nephew’s tied into something bigger than animal rights. But whatever it is, he won’t tell me.”

  Victoria sized up the situation. If she tried the case, she’d win and Gerald Nash would get twenty-five years to life. Harsh. Especially when he didn’t pull the trigger and hadn’t intended to harm anyone. He was basically a naive kid who’d been led astray. If she let him plead to manslaughter, it wouldn’t exactly be striking like a tiger. But maybe there’d be a measure of justice in it. Surely there’d be a measure of compassion. Then there was her duty to the State Attorney’s Office and Pincher’s need for federal cooperation.

  “I’ll make the offer,” she said. “But I doubt Steve will accept it.”

  “Why? He’d be crazy not to.”

  “Because he’s having too much fun trying to beat me.”

  Twenty

  STEVE SOLOMON STREET

  Steve parked his Mustang near the drawbridge on the Miami River, an inky and stinky body of water that wound its way through the middle of the city to the Bay. He never used the Justice Building parking lot, where his car had a fifty-fifty chance of being broken into, what with all the presumably innocent defendants in the vicinity.

  Now Steve had a three-block walk to court, where Judge Gridley would hear discovery motions. He was running late for the hearing, but no matter. It was Thursday, and Judge Gridley always called his bookie right after lunch to run through the weekend’s college football games. The two o’clock calendar wouldn’t start until two-thirty at the earliest.

  Victoria, of course, would already be there. Planning, prepping, rehearsing. Steve liked to wing it, both because he was better when he was spontaneous, and because he was criminally lazy.

  He could hear the hum of tires over the 12th Avenue drawbridge. A few blocks south, the avenue had been renamed “Ronald W. Reagan Avenue” because the former President once ate lunch at a Cuban restaurant there. A number of Miami streets had been renamed by the city and county padres. You could get lost if you didn’t know that Southwest Eighth Street, already called “Calle Ocho” by everyone in Little Havana, had been rechristened “Pedro Luis Boitel Avenue,” after an anti-Castro dissident. Another few blocks of the same street were now called “Celia Cruz Way,” after the singer, and yet a third stretch was named “Carlos Arboleya Boulevard,” after a local banker.

  War heros and artists, Steve could understand. But a banker?

  Only thing he could figure, local politicians solicit wads of cash from the financial community. Which could explain Abel Holtz Boulevard, named for a banker who went to prison for perjury.

  Steve’s favorite thoroughfare, however, was Southwest 16th Street, which the County Commission renamed “José Canseco Street,” after the famed steroid-juiced slugger and tattletale. Steve would have been even happier if Canseco had hired him for one of his domestic violence cases, but that was not to be.

  Walking along the river, Steve watched a crane hoist a white Chevy Suburban onto the deck of a rust-eaten freighter. The SUV joined half a dozen others. Recent vintage, bound for the islands. A growing business in Miami, grand theft (specific) auto. Say you’re in the Dominican Republic and you want a white Chevy Suburban with coffee leather seats, a navigation system, and low mileage. Place your order, and someone in Miami will steal it for you.

  Having wasted as much time as he could, and feeling the heat of the afternoon sun, Steve trekked toward the Justice Building. Behind him, he heard a fishing boat bleating its whistle at the drawbridge operator.

  He walked along 13th Avenue, which had yet to be renamed Steve Solomon Street, but hey, he had his hopes. Three hundred yards from the front steps of the Justice Building, a black Lincoln pulled to the curb. The driver’s tinted window unzipped, and a guy said, “You Steve Solomon?”

  “Not if you’re a process server.”

  “I can help you on the Nash case. Hop in.”

  The driver leaned out the window and showed the smile of someone who doesn’t smile much. A pink face, as if he’d just shaved. Short blond hair turning gray. Gold’s Gym wife-beater tee, massive biceps and delts, as if he’d been sharing trainers with Barry Bonds.

  “Nah. My momma told me never to get into cars with strangers on steroids.”

  The back door flew open, and a guy leapt out. Much smaller than the driver. Jeans. Scuffed cowboy boots and a black T-shirt. Short hair, broken nose. Looked like a fighter, a middleweight maybe. He gestured toward the door. “We just need a minute of your time, Mr. Solomon.”

  I could run. No way Cowboy Boots can catch me. But it seems unmanly.

  “Call my secretary, Cece, for an appointment. She’ll forget to tell me, but drop by the office tomorrow, anytime you want.”

  “Cut the crap and get in, Solomon.” Cowboy Boots was trying to sound tough. He was also succeeding.

  “Are you nuts? Look around. Justice Building. County Jail. Sheriff’s Department. A thousand cops within spitting distance. All I have to do is yell—”

  Steve never saw the punch. A short right, square in the gut. Steve gasped. His knees buckled. He would have hit the ground, but Cowboy Boots grabbed him neatly by the collar of his suit jacket and shoved him into the backseat, piling in after him. Steve was still wheezing to catch his breath when the car pulled out. No shrieking tires, no crazy turns. Just a smooth acceleration past the Justice Building, where Steve’s presence was expected, if not entirely desired.

  The driver spoke first. “Like I said, Solomon, we can help you with the Nash case.”

  “No. You said, ‘I can help you.’ You never mentioned Oscar de la Hoya here.”

  “But first, you gotta help us. You know who we are?”

  “No, but I know where you’re going. There’s a cell with your name on it about a block away.”

  “That ain’t funny.” Cowboy Boots cuffed Steve on the head with an open palm.

  Which is when Steve saw it. Red scar tissue. A chunk out of the man’s arm. Just as Nash had described. But not a bullet wound. Steve had seen a nearly identical divot in another man’s arm. Captain Dan, one of the best fishing guides in Islamorada. It was a shark bite.

  “You’re the two guys on the boat,” Steve said. “You were supposed to bring the dolphins aboard. But you cut and ran when the cops showed up.”

  The Lincoln passed under the I-95 overpass on 20th Street. “What else did Nash tell you about us?” the driver demanded.

  “Nothing. He doesn’t even know your names.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “He doesn’t know if you’re Mr. Blue and your pal is Mr. Pink,” Steve said.

  Cowboy Boots smacked Steve on the head a second time. “What the hell’s that mean?”

  “Reservoir Dogs,” the driver explained to his dimmer friend. “The guys pulling the heist in the movie all used colors for their names.”

  “So why would I be Mr. Pink?”

  “Never mind.” The driver turned to Steve, who felt the beginning of a headache inside one temple. “You know why we’re asking this stuff, right, Solomon?”

  “Because you two worked for Sanders. And because you’re afraid Nash can lead the cops straight to you.”

  Cowboy Boots snickered. It was better than getting slugged. “He thinks Sanders was our boss.”

  It must have been a good joke, because both men laughed.

  “Hey, Solomon,” the driver said. “If you gave Nash a penny for his thoughts, you’d get back change.”

  More yuks. These two seemed to be quite happy kidnappers. And they didn’t seem terribly upset about Sanders’ death, which added to Steve’s confusion. Just then he remembered something Nash had said in the jail. The night of the break-in, Sanders had asked about the Gulf Stream, worried about the size of the waves. One of these guys had replied, “You do your job, we’ll do ours.”

  A command. Not t
he way you speak to your boss.

  These guys didn’t work for Sanders.

  Sanders worked for them.

  But doing what? And what were they gonna do with the dolphins?

  “So what is it you want from me?” Steve asked.

  “There are important people who need to know what Sanders told Nash.”

  “About what?”

  “Where we were planning to go that night, for one thing.”

  That stopped Steve. These guys have nothing to do with ALM, he thought. And if Sanders worked for them, he had nothing to do with the movement, either. This isn’t about animal rights. Never was. So what the hell is it about?

  “Even if Nash told me, I couldn’t tell you—”

  Another open palm ricocheted off the back of Steve’s skull. “Sure you could,” Cowboy Boots said. “Or you’ll be Mr. Brown. As in shit-in-your-pants.”

  “But Nash doesn’t know anything. You said it yourself. He needs two hands to find his dick.”

  The headache dug deeper into Steve’s skull. Back in college, he’d been beaned by a Tulane pitcher who took offense at batters crowding the plate. The pitch cracked Steve’s batting helmet and left him seeing double. Now he was starting to feel as if he’d been hit by another pitch.

  The car pulled to a stop in front of the Justice Building. Steve hadn’t realized it, but they’d driven in a circle.

  “He’s telling the truth,” the driver told his pal, before turning to Steve. “Get out.”

  The second Steve’s feet hit the pavement, the door swung closed, and the black Lincoln pulled away. Hillsborough County plates.

  “S-3-J-1 . . .”

  That’s all Steve could pick up before the car turned the corner. He ran a hand through his mussed hair, tucked his shirttail in, and straightened his tie. Then he bounded up the steps two at a time, heading into the Justice Building. He was late for court.

  Twenty-one

  STUCK ON HIS SHTICK

  “I’m sure Mr. Solomon will be here any moment, Your Honor. Traffic is so heavy today.”

  Victoria often made excuses for Steve when they were cocounsel. Now, even on opposite sides of a case, she was still sticking up for him.