“Never saw you back down before.” Pincher sounded suspicious, like Steve might sucker punch him the second he dropped his guard.
“Vickie's influence.”
“Victoria,” she corrected icily.
Pincher appraised each of them a moment, tugged at an earlobe, then said: “Ms. Lord, because I know of Mr. Solomon's predilection for provocation, I'm not firing you today.”
“Thank you, sir.” She exhaled and her shoulders lost their stiffness.
“For now, consider yourself on probation.”
His good deed for the week, Steve thought, helping save her job. But what a prick, that Pincher, hacking away at the newbie. Steve felt embarrassed, like he'd been eavesdropping on another family's quarrel. Victoria tried so hard to be tough, but Steve had seen the tremble of her lower lip, the flush in her cheeks. She was scared, and it touched him.
A loud rush of water interrupted his thoughts, the unmistakable sound of an ancient toilet. A moment later, the door to Judge Erwin Gridley's personal rest room opened, and the judge walked out, carrying the sports section of the Miami Herald.
“What's all this caterwauling?” the judge drawled. He was in his mid-fifties and fighting a paunch but could still waddle down the sidelines after a wide receiver. Suffering bouts of double vision, he wore trifocals in court, but not on Saturdays, which Steve figured might explain some of his more egregious calls, including too many men on the field when replays clearly showed only eleven.
“Mr. Solomon and I were reminiscing about old cases,” Pincher told the judge.
“Mr. Pincher remembers cases the way a wolf remembers lambs,” Steve said.
“I was just about to tell counsel that I'll be sitting second chair to Ms. Lord for the rest of the Pedrosa trial,” Pincher said.
“You, working for a living?” Steve said.
“It would be an honor to have you in my courtroom,” the judge allowed.
“It's my new hands-on plan,” Pincher said. “One week every month, I'll be in court.”
“Then who's gonna shake down lobbyists for campaign money?” Steve asked.
“Keep it up, I'll sue you for slander, Solomon.”
“Now, don't you two git started.” The judge tossed the sports section onto his desk. “Mr. Solomon and Miss Lord wore me out this morning with their grousing.” He turned to the two of them, squinting through his eyeglasses. “I'm hoping a few hours in the cooler settled your nerves.”
“We're fine, Your Honor,” Victoria said. “Thank you.”
“Cell mates today, soul mates tomorrow,” Steve vowed.
“Hah,” Victoria said.
The judge said: “The clock's running down, so let's talk business.”
“Yes, sir,” Victoria said. “State of Florida versus Amancio Pedrosa.”
“University of Florida versus Florida State,” the judge corrected. “Gotta lay five points to take my dog-ass, butt-dragging Gators, for crying out loud.”
“You don't want to touch that, Judge,” Steve advised.
“Hell, no. Gator's QB got a stinger on the turf at South Carolina last week. I oughta know. I called roughing on the play.”
As the three men continued to talk about football in grave tones, Victoria took stock of her career.
Humiliations great and small.
“Consider yourself on probation.”
She had felt her face redden as Pincher berated her. Why did he have to do it in front of Solomon? It was doubly embarrassing when Solomon spoke up for her, though for a moment, it made him seem almost human. She wondered if the florid tint had faded from her neck and cheeks. Victoria could not remember a time when she didn't blush under pressure.
She dreaded going back into the courtroom with Pincher perched on her shoulder like one of Pedrosa's illegal birds. All she wanted now was to win and prove she had the chops to be a trial lawyer.
But what if she lost? Or worse, got fired? The legal market sucked, and her student loans weighed a ton. Each month she wrote a check for the interest, but the principal just sat there-eighty-five thousand dollars-taunting her. The only clothing she'd bought since law school came from Second Time Around, a consignment shop in Surfside.
Except for shoes. Shoes are as important as oxygen, and you don't want to breathe another person's oxygen, right?
If she lost her job, she'd have to start selling the jewelry The Queen had given her. Irene Lord, called The Queen for her regal bearing and lofty dreams. Even when her money was gone, she had maintained her dignity and grace. Victoria pictured her mother, dressed in a designer gown for the Vizcayans Ball, her Judith Leiber evening bag flecked with jewels but lacking cab fare inside. She remembered, too, her mother fussing about Victoria's decision to go to law school. A dirty business, she called it.
“You don't have that cutthroat personality.”
Maybe The Queen was right. Maybe law school had been a mistake. She struggled to be strong, to cover up her insecurities. But maybe she just didn't have what it takes. Certainly Ray Pincher seemed to doubt her abilities.
What's this bullshit about Pincher sitting second chair? Steve hated the idea. There'd be no more fun in the courtroom, that's for sure. And Pincher would put even more pressure on Victoria. Steve wondered if she could handle it.
Doing his pretrial homework, Steve had looked her up in the State Attorney's Office newsletter, the “Nolo Contendere.” Princeton undergrad, summa cum laude, Yale Law School, a prize-winning article in the law journal. Nice pedigree, compared to his: baseball scholarship at the University of Miami, night division at Key West School of Law.
In addition to the ritzy academics, there was a little ditty in the newsletter: “We're hoping Victoria joins us on the Sword of Justice tennis team. She won the La Gorce Country Club girls' tennis championship three years running while in high school.”
La Gorce. Old money, at least by Miami standards, where marijuana smugglers from the 1980's were considered founding fathers. The La Gorce initiation fee was more than Steve cleared in a year. Thirty years ago, no one named Solomon could have even joined.
So why was Victoria Lord slumming in the grimy Justice Building, a teeming beehive of cops and crooks, burned-out lawyers and civil service drudges, embittered jurors and senile judges? A place where an eight A.M. motion calendar-a chorus line of miscreants on parade-could crush her spirit before her cafe con leche grew cold. Steve felt a part of the place, enjoyed the interplay of cops and robbers, but Victoria Lord? Had she gotten lost on her way to one of the deep-carpet firms downtown? Stone crabs at noon, racquetball at five.
Now Steve tried to follow the conversation. Judge Gridley was spouting his views on a college football playoff-a grand idea, there'd be more games to bet on-when they were interrupted by a cell phone chiming the opening bars of Handel's “Hallelujah.”
“Excuse me,” Pincher told them, fishing out his phone. “State Attorney. What? Good heavens! When?” He listened a moment. “Call me when the autopsy's done.”
Pincher clicked off and turned to the others. “Charles Barksdale is dead.”
“Heart attack?” the judge asked, tapping his own chest.
“Strangled. By his wife.”
“Katrina?” Victoria said. “Can't be.”
“She probably had a good reason,” said Steve, ever the defense lawyer.
“Claims it was an accident,” Pincher said.
“How do you accidentally strangle someone?” the judge said.
“By having sex in a way God never intended,” Pincher said. “They found Charles tied up in some kinky contraption.”
“This is big,” Steve said. “Larry King big.”
“Charles was a dear friend,” Pincher said, “not just a campaign contributor. To die like that…” He shook his head, sadly. “If the grand jury indicts, I'll prosecute it myself.”
Pincher was not given to many honest emotions, Steve thought, but the old fraud seemed genuinely upset.