"Seen your pit-cher in the paper," she said, pointing toward the refrigerator. Indeed, the clipping was held there by a magnet shaped like a stone crab. Some wit had added a mustache and hat so that I looked like a villain in a silent movie, the heroine unconscious in my arms.
"I see Kip's been practicing his artistry again."
"Don't stifle the boy, Jake." She looked into the sizzling pan. "And not so much flour! Those hoppers lose their taste with all that breading."
I hadn't even known I had a nephew, or a half sister, until Kip was arrested for spray-painting graffiti on a movie theater that had changed the advertised showing of Casablanca to Revenge of the Nerds III. I got him probation and became his semilegal guardian, though Granny helped out considerably.
On cue, Kip's bare feet padded onto the linoleum floor of the kitchen. "All righty then!" he proclaimed with a goofy Jim Carrey grin.
"Kip, did anybody ever tell you that you watch too many movies?"
"Yep. And Uncle Jake, did anyone tell you that you look guilty?"
"What?"
"In the paper. Doesn't he, Granny?"
"Guilty as sin," she agreed.
"Neat, Granny," Kip said, laughing. "That was a movie. Rebecca De Mornay's a lawyer who defends Don Johnson on charges he killed his wife. 'Course she falls for him."
"Ain't that a conflict of interest?" Granny asked, looking at me. "Litigating by day, fornicating by night."
"Sure is," I allowed.
"You'd never do that, would you, Jake?"
"Am I under oath?" I asked.
"The same thing happened to Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges in Jagged Edge," Kip said. "He's a rich guy accused of killing his wife. She defends him, and they get it on."
"Kippers," Granny warned, "watch your mouth!"
"Does Hollywood always copy itself like that?" Kip asked.
"Like a virus," I said.
I took a long look at Kip, still in wonder that the same blood flowed through our veins. Razor-thin, blond hair, pale complexion with a light blue vein visible on his temple, he was almost fragile. Nothing like his thick-necked and thick-headed uncle.
Kip opened the refrigerator door and grabbed a container of Granny's smoked mackerel. He dipped a finger in and licked it off. Closing the door, he gestured at the photo. "Look at yourself, Uncle Jake. Just like North by Northwest when a guy gets knifed at the UN, and a photographer shoots a picture of Cary Grant holding the dying man."
"Jake doesn't look like Cary Grant," Granny chimed in. "More like Harrison Ford if somebody had broken his nose."
"Hey, you two! I didn't kill anybody. Chrissy Bernhardt did."
Granny took over at the stove, yanking a frog leg from my hands. "So how can you represent her if you know she's guilty?"
" 'Cause she's a babe," Kip volunteered. "Just like Madonna in Body of Evidence. Willem Dafoe's defending her on charges she killed her husband by"-he lowered his voice-"screwing him to death."
"Kippers!" Granny shouted.
"Hey, Kip, why don't you do your homework?"
"Don't have any."
I looked at him skeptically. "Is that the truth?"
He curled a lip at me and raised his voice into a twelve-year-old's snarl. "You don't want the truth!"
"What?"
"Because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall!"
"Kip, I'm going to toss the VCR in the gulf and put my foot through the TV screen."
"It's true, Uncle Jake. School ended yesterday."
"Oh."
Granny was rooting around in her walk-in pantry, where she puts up pickles and preserves. In a moment, she came out carrying three mason jars of her moonshine, or "rye likker," as she called it. "So why represent this no-count party girl what killed her father?"
"What makes you think she's a party girl?" I was already thinking about jury selection and the impression my client makes.
"I seen her pit-cher. I can tell."
I made a mental note to have Chrissy the Model dress like Marian the Librarian when we picked a jury. "Just because she admittedly shot her father doesn't mean she's guilty," I told my assembled kinfolk.
Granny poured the bacon-fried swamp cabbage from a pan into a serving platter and shoved it at me. "Just like an obfuscating, prevaricating, fast-talking shyster. Just like the so-called Dream Team that made me want to scream, lying through their teeth. 'It's not O. J.'s blood, but if it is, the cops planted it.' Now why would they do that? Seems to me the cops gave him all the breaks every time he slammed the bejesus out of his wife. It's not his glove, it's not his shoe, it's not his hair, it's not his cap, it's not his blood. I suppose the disguise in the Bronco wasn't his neither. So why the hell was he running away? Explain that one to me."
"Granny, don't ask me. I'm just-"
"A lawyer! 'Course you're not as good as Johnnie Cochran, who's slick as owl shit, so I don't expect you to get that party girl off."
"Johnnie has his style, I have mine."
It's true. My style is straight ahead, both hands wrapped around the ball. No ninety-yard touchdowns, but not many fumbles either.
"Didn't you tackle that fellow when you were a so-called athlete?" Granny asked.
"I missed a lot of tackles, including one in Buffalo, where I ended up with a snowdrift in my face mask and he got a touchdown."
"Well, it just seems to me that you lawyer fellows are getting too damn good at making excuses," Granny went on, haranguing me as always. "You got your so-called battered wives slicing off their husbands' John Henrys. You got those rich boys in Beverly Hills shotgunning their parents. The Abuse Excuse, I seen it on Oprah. You attack the victim and then haul out some phony-baloney eggheads to mix up the jury with syndromes and traumas and irresistible impulses. They got a reason for everything 'til it seems nobody takes responsibility for their own actions."
"Remind me not to seat you on one of my juries," I said.
"I wouldn't do it unless I could get conjugal visits from Charlie," Granny said, winking.
"What's conjugal?" Kip asked.
"Never you mind," my licentious granny told him. She put a pitcher of limeade on the table, then turned to me. "Would somebody please tell that old goat that supper's on?"
Just then Charlie Riggs appeared in the doorway, rubbing his eyes. "Did I hear the word 'supper'?" he asked.
Dr. Lawrence Schein let a stream of water play against the leathery green leaves of a wild coffee shrub and said, "Xeriscape landscaping. Environment-friendly and drought-resistant."
After just a few moments, Schein turned the hose on a wild tamarind tree, its purple puffball flowers in full bloom. "You don't see any palm trees, hibiscus hedges, or blooming impatiens in my yard, do you?"
Figuring it was a leading question, I could have objected, but instead I just listened.
"They just swallow up the water. You know the town of Manalapan?"
"Sure, up in Palm Beach County. Big houses, big yards, a Ritz-Carlton hotel."
"Until they put a stop to it, that little town was using six hundred twenty-seven gallons of water a day per resident, most of it watering lawns and flowers. Can you imagine it?"
We were in the yard of Dr. Schein's ranch house in the Redlands section of southern Dade County. I had spent the night at Granny's, eating her food, drinking her moonshine, and losing to Kip in gin rummy. At one point, in the cinematic equivalent of a mixed metaphor, he told me, "You play a mean game of gin, fat man."
Now, on a steamy June morning, I was trying to determine just how useful Dr. Schein would be to the defense of Chrissy Bernhardt. He was a thin man in his late fifties with a shaved head and a small goatee. I had somehow pictured him in a herringbone sports coat with leather elbow patches, but today he wore bib overalls and L. L. Bean rubber boots as he watered his plants.
"You know what's happening to the Biscayne Aquifer, don't you?" Dr. Schein asked.