Solomon vs. Lord

by Paul Levine

  Four hours later, Renée introduced him to the wonders of blossoming Gallic womanhood in the backseat of his Jeep, pulled into a mangrove thicket at Matheson Hammock. It was his first time, though not hers, and he completed the act even faster than he had rounded the bases. With her guidance, a second effort was more rewarding, and a third left them breathless. By dawn, he was sure no one had ever felt like this before, and he uttered the three magic words—“I love you”—which made Renée laugh and call him a “silly boy.”

  For the next two weeks, barely a moment went by that he wasn't touching her or kissing her. Every shared experience—no matter how mundane—miniature golf, pepperoni pizza, Sting's “Every Breath You Take,” unleashed torrents of joy. Could this be anything but forever-and-ever love?

  Then, a mere 363 hours and 17 minutes—by Steve's deranged calculation—after they had first scrunched up in the backseat of the Jeep, it ended. When Steve tried to join Renée in the cafeteria, she was sitting with Angel Castillo, the burly fullback on the football team. Baseball season was over; spring football practice was starting; and Steve had been discarded like a splintered Louisville Slugger.

  In the nearly twenty years since, he had refrained from even once telling a woman that he loved her. How could he? The risk of pain was too great. And now he was standing mute in the face of Victoria's challenging glare.

  Victoria resisted the urge to pull him out of his chair and throw her arms around him. He had never looked so hopeless and so huggable. So different from the smart-ass she first met in court. But she steeled herself against showing any emotion other than indifference. She wouldn't reveal what she felt. How could she? She couldn't even define it herself. She didn't know what propelled her toward Solomon. But he had been right about one thing: I kissed him. I grabbed him and kissed him deeply, passionately . . . dangerously.

  So reckless. So irresponsible. So unlike her. She desperately wished she could take it back.

  Or did she? With the boats creaking in their moorings and the moonlit sky swirling above, she'd molded her body to his, a yin-and-yang perfect fit. The kiss had left her disoriented and dizzy and frightened. She wanted to write it off to gin and stress and exhaustion. But in truth, she had no idea what was happening to her. Was she subconsciously trying to sabotage her relationship with Bruce? Did she have a self-esteem problem? Did she feel she didn't deserve someone so right? So damn-near-perfect it could sometimes be daunting just being with him?

  Working it over now, she thought she was figuring it out.

  I'm in love with Bruce and in lust with Steve.

  Thank God she'd been around enough to know all about the lust factor. Relationships built on passion last about as long as the fever that accompanies the flu. When was the last time she had succumbed? Maybe six years ago—a lifetime, it seemed—there'd been Randy, a teaching pro at a tennis club in Boca Raton. Australian. Sun-bleached hair. A laugh like surf crashing on rocks. And a sexual athlete. Thank God her chiropractor's bills were covered by insurance.

  She was waiting tables the summer between college and law school . . . and totally in love. Or what she mistook for love. Postadolescent lust was more like it. All those steamy nights in Randy's shoebox apartment with its wheezing air conditioner, mildewed shower curtain, and retro water bed. And one night of tears.

  She remembered the pain, finding another woman—a married tennis pupil, of all the lousy clichés—riding the waves in Randy's bedroom. His confession was without guilt or remorse: “Not my fault the sheilas want to have a naughty with me.”

  Thinking back, the men after Randy seemed like a procession of faceless gray suits. Lawyers, CPAs, brokers. Ambitious young men in pinstripes. Impatient men who often pushed the relationship too quickly. She remembered Harlan, a brainy tax accountant, popping the question on their third date. At that moment, they were stuck in a mob at Joe's Stone Crab, waiting for a table. How do you politely reply—“Are you out of your bean-counting mind?”—when some tourist is standing on your foot and the maître d' is announcing, ‘Grossman, party of five!'”

  “Why do you want to get married?” she had asked, befuddled.

  “Because I love you,” Harlan had replied. Then, sheepishly, “And my firm favors married guys in selecting partners.”

  “So, I'm sort of a talking point on your résumé?”

  Romantic love, she believed, was a myth that preyed on our illogical need to fulfill fantasies. It was, by definition, irrational. Just look where it got her mother. Romantic love was like a vacation suntan. It faded quickly.

  What she had with Bruce she called “rational love.” It was based on logical factors. Intelligence, kindness, sensitivity, empathy. And one more thing: Bruce was the first man in her life—including her father—who didn't disappoint her in a major way. So, romantic love be damned. She cherished and adored Bruce, but in a different way. It was a love based on so much more than passion, she told herself. Then, just to be sure, she told herself again.

  “I have to know you can handle this,” Victoria said.

  “Handle what?”

  “Our working together without you getting all moony-eyed.”

  “Aw, c'mon, I'm a big boy. If you say the kiss didn't mean anything, I'm cool with that.”

  “You sure?”

  “Totally.”

  “Good. From now on, we're living by Lord's Laws. No touching, no flirting, no kissing. Nothing but business.”

  “You got it,” Steve agreed. He had a sense of loss, which was weird, because how can you lose what you never had?

  “Now, let's get down to Gables Estates and let you burglarize our client's closets.”

  “Ready when you are.”

  Victoria started packing her briefcase. “So, what do you think of Jackie?”

  “Seems nice. Has a good laugh.”

  “Think she's pretty?”

  “Sure.” Where was this going?

  “She thinks you're hot.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You want her number?”

  Steve would not let her see his pain. “Sure. She like stone crabs?”

  Victoria laughed. “Jackie says some guys take a girl out for stone crabs and expect a b.j. afterward.”

  “They wait till after?”

  “You two have the same sense of humor. This could work out.”

  “Great.”

  “I don't want to push you into anything if you're reluctant.”

  “No. I'd like to see her,” Steve said, knowing it was a lie. “As long as you don't mind.”

  “I think it'd be great,” she lied right back.

  Twenty-seven

  OUT OF THE CLOSET

  The rich are different, Steve decided. They have bigger closets.

  Katrina Barksdale's wood-paneled two-story coliseum was larger than Steve's bedroom. Strike that. The shoe section was larger than his bedroom.

  He heard the purr of a dehumidifier and smelled a lavish mixture of aromas. The tang of cedar, the richness of leathers . . . the scent of money. Katrina's closet was a cool and peaceful sanctuary, dripping with silks and linens, minks and wools. Every pair of shoes had its own Plexiglas drawer, tastefully lighted like a sculpture in a museum. Designer clothing hung on a motorized track that circled the room like a toy train. You punched in the key of a designer—Armani, Saint Laurent, de la Renta, Moschino—then a garment code, and the track hummed contentedly as it delivered to your manicured hands a suede jacket or lacy skirt or velvet blazer.

  Steve had told Katrina Barksdale he needed to take photos, which was true, as far as it went. He'd left her downstairs with Victoria, sipping wine and preparing for trial. He spent the next twenty minutes in the master suite with a digital camera, creating a 360-degree view, from the four-poster, silk-canopied bed—where Charles had expired, breathless but erect—to the arched entryways of the mammoth his-and-her closets. Then he tackled his other mission, finding the Breitling dive watch.

  In a vestibule that led to Charles' closet,
Steve came across a teak chest with small drawers like a library's card catalog: Charles Barksdale's jewelry cabinet. Inside were cuff links, rings, and an assortment of watches. Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin, Patek Philippe, Cartier, Rolex, even a Casio G-Shock, named for Jeremy Shockey, the football player. Some were new and some antiques, some solid gold, others stainless steel, still others circled with diamonds.

  But no Breitling dive watch.

  So maybe Bobby was right. Maybe Katrina Barksdale didn't buy the watch for good old Charlie. But then again, there were other places to keep the watch. He'd have to check out the master stateroom on the Kat's Meow.

  “What the hell?”

  The growl came from behind him, and Steve whirled around, looking guilty as a purse snatcher. There was Chet Manko, the boat captain, wearing a mesh athletic shirt and paint-splattered cargo pants and holding a wood chisel.

  “That's amazing,” Steve said. “I was just thinking about the boat, and boom, there you are.”

  Manko raised the chisel. Muscles ripped on his bronzed arm. “What the hell you doing?”

  “Taking photos.” Steve held up the camera as Exhibit A to his innocence. “Getting the lay of the land.”

  “In Mr. B's jewelry box?”

  There was some New England in Manko's voice, Steve thought. Working-class Boston, maybe. “Actually, I was looking for something. Evidence.”

  “What evidence?” Manko didn't even try to mask his suspicion.

  “Afraid that's privileged. What are you doing up here, Manko?”

  “Digging dry rot out of the balcony overhang.” Again, the chisel came up. “Kat know you're in her bedroom?”

  Kat. The hired help was on mighty friendly terms with the lady of the house, Steve thought.

  He saw it then, gleaming on Manko's thick left wrist. A Breitling Superocean dive watch, extra-large face, good to three thousand feet.

  “Aw, shit,” Steve said.

  “Tell me in your own words when you noticed Charles was in distress,” Victoria said.

  In your own words.

  A lawyer's verbal tic, she knew. Whose words would Katrina use? Abraham Lincoln's?

  “Like I told the cops, like I told Steve, like I told everybody, Charlie's tied up, just like always. I whip him with the cat-o'-nine-tails, then do my custom blow job with a mouthful of hot water. That always drove him nuts. After he shoots his load, I go over to the bar and pour myself a Stoli. I hear something, and when I look over at Charlie, he's flopping up and down, making noises like a goose squawking. Wait a second.” She paused, biting her lip. “Now that I think about it, I might have been drinking Grey Goose. Anyway, I run over there, and he's all blue. His face, not his balls. By the time I get the collar off, he's not flopping anymore.”

  They were in the living room, seated on a beige sofa Katrina said was custom-made in Rome. She was wearing red silk pants and an embroidered blouse with a Chinese design and had polished off half a bottle of a crisp Chardonnay. Victoria was sticking to club soda as she took Katrina through her story, looking for inconsistencies.

  “If you're asking me all these questions a zillion times, I must be testifying, huh?”

  “We don't know that yet.” Victoria noticed how the grain of each limestone tile lined up with the grain of the adjacent one. “If our cross of the state's witnesses leaves reasonable doubt, we might keep you off the stand.”

  “Isn't that risky?”

  “Not half as risky as lying to your lawyer,” Steve said, hustling into the room, with Manko trailing. “Didn't I warn you? Dammit, Katrina, didn't I?”

  “What's wrong, Steve?” Victoria asked.

  “Our slutty client, for starters.”

  “You can't talk to her that way,” Manko said.

  “Fuck you, boat boy,” Steve exploded. Red-faced, he wagged a finger at Katrina. “You know what I hate more than a woman who kills her husband? A woman who lies to her lawyer.”

  Katrina coolly placed her wineglass on the mahogany coffee table. A dainty gesture. “What have you been telling him, Chet?”

  “Not a damn thing,” Manko said.

  Katrina crossed one red silk pant leg over the other. “So what seems to be the problem, Stephen?”

  He let his voice go high and mocking: “‘I've been faithful to Charlie since the day he proposed.'”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yeah, that. How long you been porking Manko here?”

  “Does it matter? How long, I mean.”

  “What matters is that you lied to us. And if you lied about one thing . . .”

  “Everything else I told you was true.”

  “Yeah? Who else you fucking?”

  “Steve, must you be so crude?” Victoria said.

  “Chet is my only extracurricular activity,” Katrina said.

  “No golf pros?” Steve said. “Aerobics instructors? Sweaty gardeners you invite in for lemonade and a quick pop?”

  “You got no right—” Manko took a step toward Steve.

  “Shut up!” Steve jabbed a finger into Manko's chest, surprising the bigger man. “I haven't gotten to you yet.”

  Victoria watched as Steve took over the room, planting himself like an oak in front of the coffee table, raising his voice, telling Katrina that in all his years of practice, he'd never encountered anyone as foolish, and he should withdraw from the case and let her lie to some other lawyer, and she'd be lucky if the jurors didn't lynch her before rendering a verdict. At first, Victoria thought it was an act, Steve trying to scare their client straight. Then, when he grabbed Manko's arm and ripped off the watch, she decided he was losing control.

  Steve waved the watch in Katrina's face. “You let me make a fool of myself with that Katrina Loves Charles crap. But even worse, you led me into a trap. I put Manko on our witness list, but I can't put him on the stand because I can't subject him to cross. And any chance of your testifying is out because I can't let Pincher get at you, either.”

  “All because I was screwing Chet?”

  “What do you mean, ‘was'?” Manko asked.

  “Didn't I tell you to shut up?” Steve snarled. “I don't have time for a lovers' spat.”

  Katrina said: “Was screwing, is screwing, might screw again, what's the big deal?”

  “Victoria, tell her,” Steve commanded. “Spell it out for her.”

  “Pincher will use your affair to prove motive,” Victoria said.

  Katrina laughed. “What motive? To be with Chet? To marry him? Please.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?” Manko said.

  “Chet, you're adorable in your own way, but you're just a sport fuck and we both know it, so don't pull that shit.”

  Katrina had dropped the mask of the Coral Gables socialite, Victoria thought. It hadn't fit very well, anyway. Now she wrinkled her forehead, proof that she was still a few years from her first Botox injection. “Okay, so I lied about being faithful to Charlie, but I didn't kill him.”

  “Not by yourself,” Steve said.

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  Steve's eyes blazed. There was something wild and dangerous about him, Victoria thought.

  “When you were standing at the bar, Charles was doing just fine,” Steve said. “If he was making any noise, it was to say ‘Hey, untie me already.' You shot a look at him, then turned to the corridor, where Manko was plastered to the wall, out of camera range.”

  “You're nuts,” Katrina said.

  Manko shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “You can't pin this on me.”

  “Of course I can't, Einstein.” Steve clenched a handful of Manko's mesh shirt and shoved him backwards. “Naming you only implicates my client in a murder conspiracy. But Pincher can nail you, even if I can't.”

  “The fuck he can,” Manko snorted.

  “Wanna bet? There's a person's shadow on the security video. Pincher's already told me he's sent the tape to his high-tech forensics guys.”

  No he hasn't, Victo
ria thought, but kept quiet.

  “They'll be able to tell the height and weight of whoever's there,” Steve continued. “What do you want to bet it's a guy about six-three and two hundred pounds with a pea-size brain?”

  “Fuck you,” Manko said.

  “Katrina's glance is the signal to the guy. Now he slithers along the wall because he knows just what the camera sees and what it doesn't. He goes over to the bed, tightens Charles' collar, and strangles him.”

  “This what you lawyers get paid for, making shit up?” Manko said.

  “Just out of curiosity, Manko,” Steve said, “do you have a record? 'Cause I'm laying odds you've done time.”

  “A couple of bullshit A-and-Bs,” Manko said. “Bar fights, is all.”

  “So, welcome to the big time.”

  Victoria drove and Steve leaned back in the passenger seat, one foot propped on the dashboard. They were headed north on Old Cutler Road under the banyan trees. Without asking for permission, Steve fiddled with the buttons on her radio. He stopped at a station where Loudon Wainwright III was proclaiming himself the last man on earth.

  “Was that an act back there?” she asked. “When you looked like you might have a stroke.”

  “I thought I'd get straighter answers if they were afraid I was going to break some glassware, so yeah, it was mostly Drama 101. But a part of me was really pissed.”

  “Why'd you lie about Pincher?”

  “I needed to gauge Manko's reaction. Katrina's, too.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “Katrina's telling the truth. She didn't kill Charlie. Neither did Manko.”

  “And you base this on what?” Victoria was astounded.

  “They passed my human polygraph test.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “That first day, I thought she was lying when she denied killing Charles,” he said.

  “What? You told me you believed her.”