"Ready," I said, getting up and approaching the bench, leash in hand.
"Br-aah-aay," said the goat.
"Is the defendant ready?" the judge asked.
A dapper man of about fifty in a custom-made double-breasted powder-blue suit rose from the first row. He wore gold-rimmed glasses, had skin the purple-black of a polished eggplant, and strode to the bench with an air of authority. "I am Phillipe Jean Claude Phillipe, and I will represent my church."
"Are you an attorney, Phillipe…uh…Phillipe?" the judge asked.
"I am a Santero, a priest of Santeria," he said, an Afro-Caribbean lilt to his voice.
"Br-aah-aay," said the goat.
The judge raised her eyeglasses from their string of imitation pearls and peered down from the bench. "Mr. Lassiter, is that an animal?"
From behind me, Marvin the Maven whispered, "It ain't the Queen of England."
"Your Honor, this is exhibit one in our eviction proceeding. When the church leased my client's property, Mr. Phillipe here misrepresented-"
"The Right Reverend Phillipe Phillipe," he corrected me.
"Right…Phil. This gentleman misrepresented his intentions. He said the house would be used for pastor's living quarters. Now we find they're slaughtering animals there. Hundreds of people show up to watch."
"To pray," Phillipe Phillipe corrected me. "It is our ceremony to initiate new priests. We have thirteen gods, and to each we must sacrifice two roosters, a pigeon, a guinea hen, and…a goat."
"Your Honor, it's cruel and-"
"Is painless," said the Reverend.
" Br-aah-aay," said the goat, unless it was Marvin the Maven.
"The place is covered with blood," I said. "It attracts flies and rodents."
The judge looked a mite pale, so I toned it down. "This is a residential neighborhood, not a stockyard. They have no license to slaughter-"
"Under your First Amendment, we have freedom of religion," Phillipe Phillipe interrupted. "Our license comes from God."
"Which one?" I asked, but the Right Reverend just looked through me.
"Mr. Lassiter," the judge said, "are you representing the rights of the landlord or of the goat?"
Behind me, I heard Saul the Tailor: "Whichever one pays."
I spoke up. "Your Honor, the church has breached its lease with the landlord, and its ceremonies violate the state's animal cruelty laws."
"He represents both beasts," Marvin the Maven said.
"The evil of two lessors," Saul the Tailor chimed in.
"To sacrifice animals is inhumane," I said.
"Is painless," the Right Reverend protested.
"The animals are conscious when butchered, they're-"
I heard the whoosh but never saw the blade. The shiny steel machete effortlessly sliced through the goat's neck. Blood spurted onto Phillipe Phillipe's powder-blue suit, onto my right shoe, and onto the clerk's lap, splattering her Today's Woman magazine. But the goat never made a sound. It just dropped dead in its tracks, little hooves quivering.
"Is painless," Phillipe Phillipe said.
"What's this shit about Jack the Ripper?" Nick Fox demanded. He was attacking a rare cheeseburger, interrogating me, and howdying every judge, bailiff, and bureaucrat who passed our table in the courthouse cafeteria.
"You saw the lipstick message at the Diamond murder scene?"
"Yeah."
"It mimicked Jack the Ripper."
"So? Let the head cases at Metro Homicide worry about it. Better yet, call Sherlock Holmes."
"There's a link to Mary Rosedahl's murder."
Nick looked up from the cheeseburger, waved to a bondsman who contributed shoe boxes of cash to his campaigns, and slid his chair toward me. "What link?"
"A message there, too. A woman-bashing poem."
"That's it?"
"Plus they both belonged to a computer dating club and both were using its services the night they were killed."
He leaned back in his chair and smiled. It was the election victory smile. "Maybe they both belonged to Triple-A, or maybe both were Girl Scouts. That doesn't mean the same guy aced them."
"No, but it's all we've got."
"You got squat, Lassiter. I'm beginning to doubt my judgment in appointing you."
"So fire me."
"Not a chance. That fish wrapper you represent would nail me. 'Slipshod Administrator' or some other bullshit editorial."
He looked toward the floor. "Hey, Jake, you know one of your shoes is all wet? What the hell is that, looks like-"
"Truth is, Nick, you're more of a trial lawyer than an administrator."
"Damn right, and that's why the public loves me. I don't sit up in the office finagling budgets or figuring crime statistics. I do battle in the courtroom, where it's all on the line."
"And the television crews have permanent spots in the front row."
He laughed. "Today I wish they weren't there. Friggin' city cops got a confession the old-fashioned way."
"Forget to Mirandize?"
"Worse. They bring in this yahoo for a double homicide, charged with killing a couple on lovers' lane out on the causeway. Except they got no weapon, no prints, no witnesses that are still breathing. So they put a colander upside down on the yahoo's head-"
"A colander?"
"Yeah, like to wash lettuce. Then they put Walkman earphones on him and tape the jack to the photocopy machine. One of them writes on a piece of paper, 'He Lies,' and slips it under the lid of the machine. Then they ask the guy if he did the deed. He says no. One cop pushes the button, the light flashes, and out pops a piece of paper…"
"Which says, 'He Lies.'"
"You got it. Finally they tell him to admit the crime just to see what happens, like an experiment. One cop slips in another piece of paper…"
"'He Tells the Truth.'"
"Right. Plus they turn on a tape recorder."
"Judge throw out the confession?"
He picked up his Coke. "Faster'n you could say Earl Warren."
I laughed, but he didn't. He was thinking. I tried to pick up the shadow of the thought behind those dark eyes, but it stayed inside. Finally he said, "This club called Compu-Mate?"
"Yeah. You know it?"
"My wife joined when we got separated. I'd call at night, she'd be talking dirty on the computer."
"She tell you anything else, like who she connected with?"
"Nope. Didn't interest me."
"What about Marsha?"
"I never knew she joined. What's the big deal? Probably something else Prissy got her into."
"Like women's awareness?"
"Yeah."
"And seeing you."
"Yeah."
"What else?"
"How should I know? I didn't see them together, and I didn't talk a hell of a lot to either one."
He was getting irritated. It had been at least twenty minutes since anyone told him what a great guy he was. "Did Marsha ask you many personal questions?"
"Some."
"What'd you tell her?"
"Just the usual life-story bullshit you gotta toss at them to get in their pants. I told her what it was like growing up poor. The high school athlete stuff, going into the service. Told her all my cop stories from when I was a patrolman."
"What about war stories?"
Maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed to lose a little of the color in his cheeks. "If you mean 'Nam, I don't talk about it. Not to her, not to Prissy, and sure as hell not to you."
"But you won the Silver Star, right?"
"Yeah, right."
"It's on your campaign brochures. You talked to the Journal about it as part of a profile before your first election."
"So?"
"Talk to me."
He looked at his watch. "All I'm gonna say is what's in the public record. We had a translator, a Vietnamese girl, maybe nineteen or twenty, educated in one of the French convents. We got pinned down in a firefight in a village. We lost two men in the first five minutes. It was getting dark. Raining, like always. The girl was supposed to stay with the RTO, the radio operator, but she got separated and Mister Charles grabbed her."