Solomon vs. Lord

by Paul Levine

  “You're slicing the prosciutto too thin,” Victoria said.

  “Since when does someone named Lord know anything about prosciutto?” Steve said.

  “And what's your name, Solomonte?”

  They were standing shoulder to shoulder at his kitchen counter. He was carefully constructing bruschetta al prosciutto, and she was supervising.

  “Jews and Italians both know food,” he said. “This is top-grade prosciutto from Parma. It's supposed to be paper-thin, so it melts on your tongue.”

  Victoria watched Steve slice the pink, buttery meat with the care of a surgeon. Outside, the sun had set, and the wind slammed palm fronds against the windows.

  “When I was a kid, my mother served prosciutto and melon appetizers at her dinner parties,” she said.

  “Great combination. The salty and the sweet.”

  Like the two of us, she thought. Then chased the thought away. “How long have you been cooking?”

  He gave her a sharp look. “I know what you're doing.”

  “What?”

  “This nurturing shtick. You're trying to take my mind off Bobby's case.”

  Busted. Does he really know me that well?

  “What we should be doing is prepping Bobby for his testimony,” he said.

  “You sure you want him to testify?”

  “He needs to tell the judge he wants to stay with me.”

  “But it's risky. When Bobby gets nervous, there's no telling what he might say.”

  Steve peeled a garlic clove with his fingers. “Gotta pull rank on you here. Bobby testifies.”

  “I can be more objective than you can.”

  “But I have more at stake, so it's my call. Besides, my gut tells me he'll do fine.”

  “That again?”

  “I keep telling you, listen to your gut.”

  “Mine says I'm starving.” She pointed at the tiny ribbons of white that laced the meat. “Is that fat?”

  Again, he gave her a long look.

  “I'm not nurturing,” she protested. “I'm asking because I watch what I eat.”

  “Just enough fat for flavor.”

  Tempted, she grabbed a tiny sliver of the meat, nibbled at it, and closed her eyes in ecstasy. “Mmm, succulent.” She took a larger slice, placed it on her tongue, and purred, “So su-cu-lent.”

  “If you say ‘succulent' one more time, I'm suing you for sexual harassment.”

  She placed a fingertip in her mouth, extracted the last bit of flavor, and said, “Suc-cu-lent. So sue me, Solomon.” She picked up a wafer of garlic, rubbed it across a slice of ciabatta. “You going to heat the bread?”

  “Not heat it, grill it. The panini grill gives it crispness. A good meal is a combination of flavors and textures. Like your mother's prosciutto and melon.”

  “Opposites sometimes fit together well,” she said.

  He gave her a look but didn't pick up the ball and run with it. “I take it you and Bruce don't do much cooking.”

  “I'm lousy in the kitchen, and Bruce is pretty much a yogurt and veggie guy.”

  “For me, eating's a sensual pleasure. Makes up for the lack of other ones.”

  “Don't pull that on me, Solomon. How's the court reporter with the Rudnicks, anyway?”

  “Sofia? Not seeing her anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “We didn't have a lot to talk about.”

  “Talk? Could it be you're maturing before my eyes?”

  “Nah. Just a temporary phase.”

  “Have you called Jackie yet?”

  He drizzled olive oil on the garlicky ciabatta, put it into the panini grill. “I will. When I get some time.”

  For someone capable of intricate subterfuge in the courtroom, he was a terrible liar in the kitchen.

  A minute later, he removed the ciabatta from the grill, added the prosciutto and a few drops more oil. She took a bite, let the flavors envelop her tongue.

  “Oh, that is so wonderful.”

  At the same time, Victoria felt guilty. She should have been at Bruce's an hour ago. What would he say if he knew she was wolfing down a piece of meat?

  “Animal flesh! You ate animal flesh?”

  Okay, Bruce could be a little dogmatic, she thought. A little controlling, if you got right down to it.

  “Don't fill up on the appetizers,” Steve said. “You're invited for dinner.”

  “Sorry, can't.”

  “Linguine with shrimp and scallops in a puttanesca sauce.”

  “Ooh. With anchovies?”

  “And capers and olives.”

  “Sounds great, but I promised Bruce . . .”

  “Hey, no problem.”

  But she could see the disappointment in his eyes. “Bruce is so worried about the cold front. Freeze is supposed to hit tomorrow.” Embarrassed now. Like she owed Solomon a reason why she was going to her fiancé's house.

  “I understand. No big deal.”

  She used a napkin to wipe all traces of the prosciutto from her lips. She'd pop a couple Tic Tacs before kissing Bruce. “You gonna be okay?”

  “Actually, I'm having a personal crisis. I don't know what to get you for a wedding present.”

  “Ri-ght.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Guacamole, the couple that has everything.”

  “Are you getting passive-aggressive on me?”

  “I was shooting for just aggressive.”

  “I'm worried about you, sandwich man.”

  “It's not about me.” He made a show out of slicing fresh figs to decorate the plate of bruschetta. “You shouldn't become a real estate lawyer.”

  “I'll take it under advisement.” Such a baby, she thought. Why didn't he just say it: Don't marry Bruce. How did Steve ever score all those runs if he was so afraid of failure? Or was stealing home easier than stealing a heart?

  “Glass of wine before you go?” he said. “There's a nice Chardonnay in the fridge.”

  She opened the refrigerator, spotted a bottle, and read aloud. “‘Arnaud Ente Puligny Montrachet Les Referts.' Golly, Solly. That's good stuff. You surprise me.”

  “I have a client who brings it in from France.”

  “A wine importer. Great client.”

  “More like a longshoreman at the Port of Miami.”

  “So it's stolen?”

  “Technically, lost in transit.”

  She pulled out the bottle and saw something else behind it. An unopened container of coleslaw and a sweet potato pie, both from Cadillac's lunch wagon. She checked the date stamp on the coleslaw container.

  Made today!

  Steve had told her he didn't have time to see Cadillac. Why would he lie? She tried to think like Solomon, wend her way down the serpentine path he walked.

  Because he's planning something illegal.

  She closed the refrigerator, found a corkscrew in a drawer, and went to work on the bottle. “That rule of yours, the one about telling your lawyer the truth . . .”

  “What about it?”

  “I'm your lawyer. What are you cooking up with the cook?”

  “Cadillac? Nothing.”

  “Not buying it, Solomon.”

  “You're just going to have to trust me on this.”

  “Problem is, I don't. Look, I want to win, but I'd prefer not to be disbarred in the process.”

  “Which is why you're better off not knowing everything.”

  Dammit. Does he really expect me to look the other way?

  “All I'm doing is leveling the playing field,” he continued.

  “With a rake? Or a bulldozer?”

  “C'mon, ease up, Victoria.”

  “You c'mon. You can't hide things from me. I won't put up with it.”

  Just then, Bobby walked into the kitchen. She'd have to grill Solomon later.

  “Hey, guys,” Bobby said, heading for the counter and picking up a slice of prosciutto. He was wearing his regular uniform, baggy shorts and a Miami Heat T-shirt with a flaming basketball dropping
through a hoop.

  “You were supposed to be back before dark,” Steve said.

  “I'm not a baby,” Bobby said.

  Victoria popped the cork on the wine bottle. “Bobby, you should have a sweater on. It's cold out.”

  “Only girls wear sweaters.”

  “Listen to Victoria, kiddo,” Steve said, running water over a colander filled with fresh shrimp. “Where you been?”

  “Riding my bike.”

  “Without a helmet?”

  “When you were a kid, did you wear a helmet?”

  “Objection, irrelevant,” Steve said.

  “Sustained.” Victoria poured two glasses of wine. “Wear your helmet, Bobby.”

  “Jeez, why are you two ganging up on me?”

  “Because we love you,” Victoria said.

  She had just astonished herself. Blurting it out like that.

  We love you?

  As if they were a couple. She put down the wineglass. “I've got to go. See you tomorrow, guys.”

  “See you,” Bobby said.

  She slipped into a tailor-cut black leather jacket. “Steve, we'll work on the poem tomorrow, okay?”

  “What poem?” Bobby asked.

  “You really believe Katrina doesn't know what it means?” Steve asked her.

  “Absolutely. She's not real strong on allegory and metaphor.”

  “What poem!” Bobby demanded.

  Steve took a knife and started deveining the shrimp. “Something Barksdale wrote. Doesn't concern you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I'm not supposed to get you involved in my cases.”

  “Little late for that, Uncle Steve.”

  Steve glanced at Victoria, who shrugged her okay.

  Then he recited:

  “Hide a few contretemps

  Defer a competent wish

  Cement a spit-fed whore.”

  “Cool,” Bobby said. “Each line has nineteen letters.”

  “I didn't notice.”

  “Then I guess you didn't notice they're all the same letters.”

  “What!” Steve was stunned. “You're saying it's an anagram?”

  “Duh,” Bobby said, grabbing another piece of prosciutto.

  “Bobby, what else can the letters be arranged to say?” Victoria asked urgently.

  Bobby made a show out of it, wrinkling his forehead, closing his eyes: “Lots of things. ‘Ferment a cowhide pest.' ‘A deft timeworn speech.' ‘A west morphine defect.'”

  “But there's only one we want,” Steve said. “A message to Katrina. Or about Katrina. Something like that.”

  “It's called the ‘source gram,' Uncle Steve. The one he used to make all the others.”

  “So help us out here, Bobby. What other phrases do you see?”

  “Get outta town! There'll be hundreds, maybe thousands.”

  “C'mon, kiddo.”

  “I'm hungry. Can we do this later?”

  “Bobby, this is important.”

  “I'll do it for a glass of wine.”

  “No deal. What else do you see? Any phrase with ‘wife' or ‘woman' in it?”

  Bobby pouted.

  “We could get them all with a computer program,” Victoria suggested.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” Bobby singsonged. “I wanna do it.”

  “Make up your mind,” Steve said, letting his frustration come through. “Do you want to help or not?”

  “Fuck it!” Bobby yelled.

  “Cool it!” Steve said.

  “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Bobby grabbed a handful of shrimp and threw them across the kitchen, where they thwacked against the cupboards. “You don't care about me! Don't care! Don't care!” He was rocking back and forth, eyes unfocused.

  “Aw, jeez,” Steve said. “How long since you've eaten?”

  “Who cares? Who cares?”

  “Your blood sugar's low. You know you're supposed to—”

  “Don't care! Don't care!”

  “C'mon, Bobby. Calm down.”

  “Don't care! Don't care!”

  “Bobby, you're really, really good at this,” Victoria said tenderly, “and we really value your help.”

  The boy's eyes were welling up. “That all you care about, my helping you?”

  “Of course not. You're a wonderful boy. Sensitive and sweet.”

  “I'm not a wuss.” A tear streaked down his face.

  “No, you're not. You're all boy, and I want to be around to see the man you become.”

  “Really?” Bobby used the back of his arm to swipe away a tear.

  “Watch this,” Steve said, picking up the cue from Victoria. He grabbed a handful of shrimp and tossed them against the cupboard. Two or three stuck, and the rest slithered toward the floor.

  “Cool.” Bobby picked up a handful of shrimp, hurled them at the wall, and started giggling.

  “There are still some left,” Steve said.

  “Victoria's turn,” Bobby said.

  She grabbed a few shrimp and lobbed them at the cupboard.

  Bobby laughed. “You throw like a girl.”

  Steve put his hand on the back of the boy's neck, gave him a squeeze. “Know what, kiddo?”

  “What?”

  “No father ever loved a son any more than I love you.”

  Bobby put his arms around Steve's waist and hugged. Steve wrapped an arm around the boy's shoulders.

  “I think I know the source gram, Uncle Steve.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “Wanna know what it is?”

  “Nah, I want to hug some more.”

  “C'mon, Uncle Steve.”

  “It can wait. Tomorrow. Next week. A year after your Bar Mitzvah.”

  “Now!”

  “Okay, kiddo, shoot.”

  “‘The woman is perfected,'” Bobby said. “That's your source gram. ‘The woman is perfected.'”

  Thirty-five

  THE RUNNING MAN

  Saturday morning the weather guys and gals were all atwitter about the arctic blast that was working its way south. “Freeze Watch!” the announcers screamed.

  Steve watched the histrionics while standing at his kitchen counter, slicing a carambola, the yellow star fruit that grew on neighborhood trees. On the screen, Ricardo Sanchez, the Channel 4 weather guru, was garbed in a parka. Standing in front of an irrigation canal, Sanchez held his microphone in a gloved hand and interviewed a handsome, blond man in a bombardier jacket, a white silk scarf tied at his neck. Bruce Bigby, looking like a World War I aviator. The Green Baron, maybe?

  In the background, Steve could see farmworkers wrapping palm fronds around the trunks of avocado trees. They wore jeans and T-shirts and didn't seem to be suffering hypothermia, even though most would have been natives of frost-free Caribbean islands.

  “Could be the coldest night since the freeze of December 1894,” Sanchez said.

  “We can battle Mother Nature a lot better now,” Bigby assured him. “Sprinklers, heaters, wind machines. Plus, I've got an army of two hundred workers.”

  Not one with a green card, Steve felt certain.

  Bigby droned on, explaining the difference between radiation frost and advective frost, then smoothly moving to his favorite topic. “Let me remind your viewers that no matter the weather, the Bigby Resort and Villas' sales office will be open tomorrow, regular hours. Affordable vacation units for a lifetime of enjoyment.”

  It was only eight A.M., but he'd already had his fill of Bigby. He turned off the TV, and five minutes later, Victoria called.

  “‘The woman is perfected,'” she said. “I fell asleep thinking about it.”

  With Bigby alongside, no doubt.

  “Me, too,” Steve said. “It's a lot different than saying, “‘The woman is perfect.' But what's it mean?”

  “Can we work on it Monday? I'm gonna be stuck on the farm all weekend.”

  “I saw your guy on the weather forecast. He looked dashing.”

  “I'm so worried,” she whispered
. “Bruce is trying to act brave, but inside he's terrified about what might happen.”

  In the background, Steve heard someone shouting. “Smudge pots, pronto! Comprende?”

  “You're coming down here tonight, aren't you, Steve?”

  “Not if I have to watch the two of you smooching around a campfire.”

  “We'll be working to save the farm. You know that.”

  “Look, I wouldn't be much use. Even my weeds die.”

  “Bruce likes you, Steve.”

  “Bruce is a lousy judge of character.”

  “Please, do this for me, Steve.”

  After that, what choice did he have? He told her he'd be there by sundown to shovel shit or whatever Bigby wanted. She said to dress Bobby in several layers, and for a moment, it sounded very domestic to him, like she was his wife and Bobby their son. But that thought passed when Victoria said she had to go. Bruce was calling her, something about sandwiches and soup for two hundred men.

  It was sunny and windy, the temperature plunging when Steve, in cotton sweats, took his run. He followed the usual route through South Grove, across the Gables Waterway bridge, to the end of Cocoplum Circle. Bobby rode his bicycle twenty yards ahead. Bribed with the promise of a papaya smoothie, the kid had pulled a windbreaker over his Marlins jersey.

  Steve was hoping to get into the zone, that relaxed place where the body goes on autopilot and the mind relaxes in the La-Z-Boy. Sometimes, zoned out, ideas would pop into his head—new sandwich recipes or trial strategies—and he'd race home and write them down. But today he had only questions.

  What did Charles mean? “The woman is perfected.”

  Steve's gut told him it was the key to the case.

  Questions in Bobby's case, too.

  How do we discredit Kranchick and Thigpen? Who's the mystery rebuttal witness? And how the hell do we win?

  A question about Victoria, too.

  If we'd met before she hooked up with Bigby, would things have turned out differently?

  All questions, no answers.

  Passing the halfway point, Steve concentrated on his form. Arms relaxed, head still. There wasn't much traffic, just a few real estate brokers chauffeuring clients past waterfront homes. He saw Bobby half a block ahead, carving figure eights on his bike, then swerving back on course.