Solomon versus Lord svl-1

by Paul Levine

  “Have you seen the way he looks at her?” Marvin asked his cronies. “He's got it bad.”

  “Reminds me of this lady in K.C.” Cadillac slurped coffee. “Tore out my heart, fed it to the catfish.” He sang: “Kansas City woman. Oh-h-h, what you done to me…”

  Marvin was at the register, fishing change from a pocket.

  Steve called out: “Put it all on my tab.”

  “Por Dios!” Teresa said.

  Cadillac clutched his chest. “My pacemaker's gonna blow a fuse.”

  “The big macher,” Marvin said. “If I'd known he was paying, I'd have got a bagel.”

  “Please hurry up,” Steve said. “I'm trying to get an innocent woman out on bail.”

  “I have seen your client, and she is not so innocent,” Teresa said.

  “A real paskudnyak,” Marvin agreed.

  “What are you talking about?” Steve said.

  “Too much decolletage, very declasse,” Teresa said primly.

  Teresa had learned English as a child at Havana's pre-Castro, upper-crust Ruston Academy. When she spoke, Steve could visualize neat feminine handwriting with even spaces between each word. “C'mon, Teresa. Just because you don't like Mrs. Barksdale's taste in clothes doesn't mean she killed her husband.”

  “Now, Charles Barksdale,” Teresa said. “Very classy.”

  “You knew him?”

  “Not really. But I heard him speak at a seminar he sponsored. ‘Women Poets, Tortured Souls.' He seemed to be a most sensitive man.”

  “Especially when wearing a leather penis pouch,” Steve said.

  “Personally, I think the puta killed him,” Teresa Torano said.

  Twenty-two

  THE SLEEKEST SHARK

  “Of all the courtrooms in all the counties of this swampy state, you had to walk into mine,” Judge Alvin Schwartz said.

  “And good morning to you, Your Honor,” Steve said.

  Victoria knew the judge's reputation as king of the curmudgeons. She'd appeared twice on his motion calendar and found him to be irascible, impatient, and inattentive. He was also prone to passing gas at sidebar conferences, then blaming it on the stenographer. Old, short, and angry, Judge Schwartz did not particularly like male lawyers who were young, tall, and happy. He had survived three attempts to remove him from the bench for intemperate comments, sexual harassment, and sleeping through trials.

  “I know all about your shenanigans, Mr. Solomon.”

  “Thank you very much, Your Honor,” Steve said, as if he'd been named Kiwanis Man of the Year.

  At the prosecution table, Ray Pincher stifled a smile. Next to Victoria, Katrina squirmed in her chair. She wore a jailhouse orange jumpsuit, instead of her usual Prada.

  The judge said: “You make any mischief in my courtroom, Mr. Solomon, I'll send you to a place you've never been.”

  “Already been to jail, sir.”

  “I'm talking about law school.”

  Across the aisle, Pincher barked out a little laugh.

  “What's going on?” Katrina whispered.

  “It's okay,” Victoria said, patting her arm. “Steve knows what he's doing.”

  She was trying to reassure their client. And maybe herself, too.

  “That you, Ms. Lord?” The judge peered over the top of his rimless spectacles.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Aren't you on the wrong side of the courtroom?”

  “I'm a defense lawyer now. Cocounsel with Mr. Solomon.”

  “Last good-looking blonde he brought in here was inflatable.” The judge gestured toward Katrina with his gavel. “That the little lady what waxed her husband?”

  “Your Honor, I must object,” Victoria said.

  “Don't get your panties in a bunch. There's no jury here, just those jackals of the press.” The judge swung the gavel toward the gallery, where a TV camera whirred and a dozen reporters scribbled notes. “Where's that fellow who wrote I should be impeached?”

  Three hands shot up. The judge harrumphed and turned to the prosecution table. “Here are the ground rules, Mr. State Attorney. I don't want to hear any of that ghetto rap. None of that…” He turned to his bailiff, a young black woman with dreadlocks. “Wanda, what's that turd-brained music called? Hopscotch?”

  “Hip-hop,” she said.

  “No hip-hop. And no Bubonics.”

  “Ebonics,” Wanda said.

  “And who's that kid in the front row?”

  “My nephew, Bobby,” Steve said.

  “I've heard about those word tricks of yours, you little scamp.” The judge dug a pinky into his ear, rooted around, then called out: “Donald Rumsfeld.”

  “SELDOM FUND LARD,” Bobby shot back.

  “I'll be damned.”

  At that moment, the courtroom door opened, and three tall young women strutted in. They were dressed identically, in solid black, from their eyeglasses and wigs to their ultraminis, silk blouses, and knee-high boots. Their lips were painted a glistening red and glossed to an obscene shine. Carrying thin black briefcases, they waltzed through the swinging gate, hip-swiveled to the front of the bar, and corkscrewed into their seats, just behind the defense table. In one fluid motion, all three crossed their legs in unison and pulled legal pads from their briefcases. It took Victoria a moment to realize they were Lexy, Rexy, and Gina, looking like Robert Palmer's girls' band. What the hell? Then she remembered: “The judge likes young women lawyers in miniskirts.”

  Was there anything Solomon wouldn't do to win?

  “And who, may I ask, are these lovely creatures?” the judge said, brightening.

  “My law clerks,” Steve said.

  “Always glad to help young scholars.” The judge sat up straighter on the pillow he used to ease his hemorrhoids. “You gals come on back to chambers anytime you want.”

  Katrina leaned close to Victoria. “The judge seems a trifle odd.. ..”

  Again, Victoria patted her arm. A reassuring gesture, but Victoria was growing worried. How do you deal with such a judge?

  “What say the state on the defense motion for bail?” the judge said.

  “This is a capital case,” Pincher replied. “The state opposes all bail.”

  “What say the defense?”

  Victoria rose and exhaled a long breath. She hoped she didn't appear as nervous as she felt. On her table, five color-coded index cards were fanned out like a poker hand. “Under State v. Arthur, the court cannot deny bail unless the state demonstrates that the proof of guilt is evident or the presumption great. We submit the state can do neither. Further, Katrina Barksdale has no prior criminal record and has deep ties to the community. In short, she is an excellent candidate for pretrial release.”

  “Alrighty-ditey,” the judge said. “Mr. State Attorney, let's hear some testimony, and keep it short. My bladder ain't what it used to be.”

  Pincher started with Medical Examiner Wu-Chi Yang. Dr. Yang was a slim man in his forties, in a brown suit and a yellow bow tie. He'd switched to bow ties years earlier because they didn't flap out of the lab coat and drip into whatever squooshy organ he happened to be dissecting.

  In clipped tones, Dr. Yang related his findings. “Performed neck dissection after evisceration and removal of the brain. Dissected the sternocleidomastoid muscles, reflected omohyoid and sternohyoid muscles, incised soft tissue medial to carotid artery.”

  “And what did you find?” Pincher asked.

  “Bruising on muscles of neck and hemorrhages near circoid cartilage, consistent with strangulation. Tardieu's spots on face and eyelids consistent with asphyxia.”

  As Dr. Yang droned on, Victoria shot a look at Steve. On a legal pad, he was drawing a diagram of a table for five, complete with a seating chart. Doris Kranchick at twelve o'clock, then running clockwise, Victoria, Steve, Jackie, and Bruce.

  He's planning dinner, not rebuttal.

  How will he handle cross-examination if he's not even listening?

  Dr. Yang held up a black leather c
ollar-State Exhibit A-and demonstrated how pulling one end through an open loop would tighten it. He showed the judge a photo of the bruises circling Charles Barksdale's neck. A ruler shown in the photo measured the bruise at eighty-six centimeters high. With his own ruler, Dr. Yang then showed that the collar was exactly the same.

  “If the collar fit…” Dr. Yang said happily.

  “You can't acquit,” Pincher finished the thought.

  Judge Schwartz shot Pincher an angry look. “You want to wrap up this dog-and-pony show?”

  “Your conclusion, Dr. Yang?” Pincher asked.

  “The cause of death was asphyxia from strangulation, which resulted from a tightening of the collar that compressed the decedent's neck.”

  “Defense got anything to say?” Judge Schwartz asked.

  Victoria waited for Steve to stand. When he didn't move, she leapt to her feet. “Yes, Your Honor, just a few questions…”

  “Which I'll ask,” Steve said, easing from his chair. “Good morning, Dr. Yang.”

  “If you say so,” the ME said, warily.

  Without asking for permission to approach, Steve walked to the witness stand and reached for the leather collar. “May I?”

  Dr. Yang shrugged, then handed it over. “Not mine.”

  “So it's clear, you just expressed your opinion as to the medical cause of death, not whether that death was a homicide, correct?”

  “That is right.”

  Steve turned and walked back to the defense table. Glided, really, Victoria thought. She remembered the poster on his office wall. The courtroom filled with water, sharks cutting to and fro. Steve was the sleekest shark in the lagoon, and these were his waters. Swimming toward the defense table, he unbuttoned his suit coat and smiled at Victoria. Now what?

  “Dr. Yang, if I wanted to force Ms. Lord to wear this collar, what would I do?” Steve asked.

  “Don't ask me. She's your partner.”

  In the gallery, someone chuckled.

  “Well, let's find out.” Steve circled behind the defense table, barely leaving a wake. He lifted Victoria's hair, wrapped the open collar around her neck, and slid the leather tongue through the loop. “Now, if Ms. Lord wants to stop me from tightening this, let's see what she does.”

  Victoria reached up with both hands and worked her fingers under the collar. Steve pulled the leather through the loop, trapping her fingers against her neck. She felt her fingernails digging into her flesh. She gasped for air and Steve loosened the collar, bending close enough to her neck that she could feel his breath.

  “Let the record reflect that there are fingernail marks on Ms. Lord's neck where she attempted to ward off the collar,” he said.

  He turned back to the witness. “Doctor, what about Charles Barksdale? Any sign of a struggle? Any scratches, bruises, lacerations, skin under his fingernails?”

  “That's five questions,” Pincher protested.

  “Let's hear five answers,” the judge said.

  “No. No. No. No. And no,” Dr. Yang said.

  Steve stood behind Victoria, resting a hand on each of her shoulders. It was an odd sensation, feeling him there but not seeing him. The next sensation was even stranger. One of his thumbs was stroking the nape of her neck.

  “No evidence of a struggle,” Steve said, in case the judge missed it. “So, apparently, Mr. Barksdale consented to being collared and to having the collar tightened.”

  “Tightened up to a point, yes.”

  She felt both his thumbs kneading her neck, like a Swedish massage. A pleasant, tingling sensation moved down her torso, and she squirmed in her seat.

  “Isn't the bondage, the choking, the sexual paraphernalia consistent with consensual asphyxiophilia?”

  “That is correct. It's in the medical journals.”

  “And the reason it's in the medical journals is because of the occurrence of accidental death during these practices?”

  “Accidental death is a known risk, yes.”

  Steve paused. The witness had made an important concession, and a good lawyer lets helpful words hang in the air before chasing them away. Victoria allowed herself a slight smile. Steve was in control, not only of himself, but of the entire courtroom. He'd been right about one thing he'd told her early on: She could learn from him.

  But her mind wasn't totally focused on legal lessons. The mini-massage was continuing, and her entire body seemed to be overheating. She wished she could take off her Anne Klein cropped jacket, maybe her silk blouse, too. Did Steve even know what he was doing? She hoped that Katrina, sitting alongside, couldn't see what was going on.

  “You cannot rule out the possibility of accidental death, can you, Dr. Yang?” Steve said.

  “Could be accident, that's right.”

  Steve made sure the reporters in the gallery saw him smile. He gave Victoria's neck one last squeeze, released her, and sat down. “Nothing further.”

  Victoria knew that her face was flushed. She wondered if anyone else noticed. Next to her, Katrina leaned over and whispered. “Before we're done today, do you think he can do that to me, too?”

  Dr. Yang had left the courtroom and Homicide Detective Delvin Farnsworth was answering questions by the time Victoria felt her body temperature return to normal. She didn't know Farnsworth but had checked around. A twenty-year veteran with a brush mustache and alert, dark eyes, he had a reputation for honesty and competence. She had read his report, so there no were surprises in his direct testimony.

  Paramedics had responded to Mrs. Barksdale's 911 call at 11:39 P.M. on November 16, and after attempts to resuscitate her husband failed, the police were called. When they arrived, Charles Barksdale was naked except for a leather collar and what Farnsworth called a “silver-studded leather testicles pouch with a penile opening.” A leather mask with a built-in latex dildo was on the floor nearby.

  Mrs. Barksdale told detectives that she had engaged in her customary sex play involving cutting off her husband's air supply to enhance his orgasm, Detective Farnsworth testified. This time, during a break in the action, something happened, and her husband stopped breathing. That occurred when she was nearly twenty feet from the bed in a wet-bar alcove of the master suite, and she apparently did not immediately realize that her husband was in distress. The detective raised his bushy eyebrows when reciting that tidbit.

  Crime-scene techs tagged and bagged various erotic paraphernalia, including leather straps and collars, chains, masks, fleece-lined handcuffs, cat-o'-nine-tails, and what an evidence form termed a “battery-operated anal stimulation device.”

  Steve stood up on cross. “What was Mrs. Barksdale's demeanor when you questioned her?”

  “She was crying,” Detective Farnsworth said.

  “About what you would expect from a woman whose husband just died?”

  “Objection, irrelevant,” Pincher said.

  “Overruled,” the judge said.

  “I've seen so many reactions, I don't know what to expect anymore,” Farnsworth said.

  “Just what in your investigation made you conclude that the death of Charles Barksdale was not an accident?”

  “The totality of the circumstances.”

  “That doesn't tell us much.”

  “Wasn't intended to.”

  “What was Mrs. Barksdale's motive for killing her husband?”

  “Objection,” Pincher said. “Improper foundation. Goes beyond scope of direct. And protected by work product.”

  “I'll be the judge of that,” Judge Schwartz said. He seemed to think about it, then added, “In fact, I am the judge of that. How'd I rule on the last objection?”

  “You overruled it,” Pincher said.

  “Then this one's sustained.”

  “Let me ask it this way,” Steve said. “Did Katrina Barksdale have any reason to kill her husband?”

  “I wouldn't know,” the detective said.

  “Did he deprive her of food, clothing, trips to the South of France?”

  “I'd say
he provided for her quite well.”

  “Quite well,” Steve repeated. He opened a large portfolio and pulled out a photo blown up to poster size: the Barksdales in formal attire. “That diamond pendant Katrina's wearing at the Attention Deficit Disorder brunch. Who do you suppose bought her that?”

  “Wild guess, her husband,” Farnsworth said.

  Steve moved closer to the witness stand and held up another photo. “What about the aquamarine and diamond brooch she wore to the Stop Bulimia Now dinner?”

  “Same guess.”

  Steve returned to his table and Victoria handed him a file folder thick with receipts. Neiman Marcus. Getz Jewelers. Bavarian Custom Motorcars.

  “The generosity went both ways,” Steve said. “Did you know that in the last two months before Charles' unfortunate demise, Mrs. Barksdale bought him a sapphire ring, three Zegna suits, and a Breitling Superocean watch, twenty-five jewels, with the extra-large face?”

  “She spent a lot of his money. What of it?”

  In the gallery, Bobby squirmed in his seat and gestured toward Steve, who caught the movement but shook his head. “What about in these photos? Katrina and Charles look happy?”

  “Objection,” Pincher said. “It's irrelevant how they looked in photographs.”

  “How'd I rule last time?” the judge asked.

  “You sustained,” Pincher said wearily.

  “Overruled.”

  “Do the Barksdales look happy?” Steve repeated.

  “I'm a homicide detective,” Farnsworth said. “We're not experts on happiness.”

  Steve pulled out another poster-size photo. “And this shot from the Save the Manatees dinner?”

  “He's kissing her. She's got lots of jewelry. What's your question?”

  “Does Katrina look like she's about to kill her husband?”

  “Probably not that evening.”

  “How many pictures do you have?” the judge asked, growing bored.

  “Hundreds, Your Honor. The joy of this couple was infinite. But let's wrap it up with this one.” Steve turned toward the witness but spoke to the reporters. “Three months before he died, Charles Barksdale turned sixty. For a surprise birthday party, Katrina Barksdale sent the whole world a message. She gathered her husband's friends on their boat. She arranged for a band and a gourmet meal. And finally…”