"Aren't you too old for hot flashes, Mother?"
"You've gotten bitchier since you dumped that insufferable Solomon." She barefooted back to the table and poured herself a glass of wine. "As for your catty remark, I'm barely middle-aged."
"Only if you live to be a hundred sixteen."
"I know what ails you, Princess, and I have a suggestion. Go out with Junior. He's gaga over you, and I'll bet he's fabulous in bed."
"I have things on my mind. Why don't you service both the Griffins?"
"If I were your age, don't think I wouldn't give Junior a ride. You saw his tool, didn't you?"
"Mother, why don't you go take a cold shower?"
"Not that size always equates with performance. I remember a Spaniard I met in Monaco. Mucho grande. Like a salchicon sausage."
"I'm not having this conversation."
"But a real dud in the sack. Then there was this Frenchman who wasn't carrying much more than a cornichon, but oooh-la-la."
"You're doing this just to aggravate me, aren't you?"
"And you're bitchy because I'm happy."
"That's ridiculous."
"But I am happy, darling." She managed to sigh and smile at the same time. "Grif and me, connecting after all these years."
"Reconnecting, you mean."
"That again? I told you the truth. We never had an affair."
"But Father thought you did. Is that it?"
"No, dammit. Don't you see what's happening? You've been angry with your father all these years. But you can't yell at him, so you take it out on me."
Victoria was quiet a moment. She swatted futilely at the damn mosquito, now buzzing around her ears. "I am angry at him. That part's true."
"Understandable, dear."
"You know what drives me crazy?"
"The suicide note thing?"
"I've asked myself a thousand times. Why couldn't he write something? 'I'm sorry, Princess. Forgive me. I love you.' "
Irene reached out and gripped her arm. "He did love you, dear. He loved you very much."
"A little note. Is that too goddamn much to ask?"
Irene's voice was little more than a whisper. "He wrote a note."
"What?"
"He said he loved you very much."
"You're making this up. Lying to make me feel better."
"Nonsense. I only lie to make myself feel better." She sipped the Cabernet, made a face. "Your taste in wine is really abysmal."
"Jesus, Mother. Was there really a note?"
"Your father wrote that he loved you more than he could express and his biggest regret was that he'd never know the woman you would become."
Suddenly, her mother was right: The room had gotten very warm. "All these years! Why didn't you tell me?"
"I had my reasons." For the first time Victoria could remember, The Queen almost looked her age.
"Why? What else did it say? Did Dad accuse you of having an affair with Uncle Grif? Why not just admit it, after all this time?"
"There was no affair."
"Then why did you destroy the note?"
"Who said I destroyed it? It's in my safe-deposit box. I thought someday you'd be old enough-mature enough-to read it. Apparently, that day has not yet come."
Irene stood, smoothed her dress, and glided to her room, carrying her shoes. Without looking back or saying good night, she closed the door between the suites and slid the bolt shut.
Two hours later, Victoria lay in bed, listening to the palm fronds slap against the balcony wall. She longed to talk to Steve, but it was too late to call him. No matter the problems between them, he was the closest person in the world to her. At this moment, at this awful, heart-aching moment, she had never felt so alone.
She heard the buzzing again, the damned mosquito. Now where was it?
Ouch. She felt the sting on the side of her neck.
Forty-one
Suicidal lovebugs-coupling in the air-smacked the windshield, dying instantly in one last orgasmic splat. So many peppered the Smart that Steve swore the miniature car swerved with each machine-gun burst of pulverized bugs.
Just after two a.m. they approached Sugarloaf Key, Bobby asleep in the passenger seat, a good trick in the tiny cockpit. On the way south, Steve rehearsed what he would say to his father, but he still didn't know quite how to do it.
Just how do you say to your old man: "Gotcha"?
It had taken several hours and three run-throughs of voir dire to tie Herbert Solomon to the conspiracy. At first, Steve had made a mistake focusing solely on his father when watching the video. As with a football game, you can't just keep your eye on the quarterback.
His father's role in the scheme was subtle. It did not require him to speak a word. After questioning each prospective juror, Pinky Luber had paused and scribbled a note to himself. Nothing unusual there. Most lawyers jot down their impressions before being called on to accept or challenge. Studying Luber, Steve discovered a "tell." Like the poker player who fingers his chips or stares down his opponent before bluffing, Pinky had a tic, too. Just before writing his note, Pinky always shot a look at the bench. Herbert Solomon never returned the look. Invariably, at this moment, the judge poured himself a glass of water. His old man must have had an iron bladder, because he took a drink each time Pinky finished with a prospective juror.
It wasn't until the third viewing that Steve saw the signal.
The lid of the pewter water pitcher.
When Herbert left the lid up, Pinky kept the juror on the panel. When Herbert closed the lid, off went the juror. Each and every time.
Steve remembered that pitcher. It sat on his father's bench for years. There was a matching tray with an inscription from the Florida Judicial Conference. Distinguished Circuit Judge of the Year. Maybe there was still time for a recount.
Herbert Solomon was hip-deep in the conspiracy. Pinky Luber had won seventeen straight murder trials with help from a clerk who stacked the panel and a judge who pruned an already bloodthirsty group into a lynch mob.
It was a brilliant, if blatantly illegal scheme. Herbert Solomon had presided over hundreds of capital cases. He could read jurors better than any prosecutor, and his help would be invaluable to Luber. The poor defense lawyer, meanwhile, was outgunned, three to one.
There was little chance the conspiracy could be discovered. As long as there were some African-Americans on the juries, who would notice that the larger panels themselves were skewed? Not the ever-changing cast of defense lawyers. Only the judge, the prosecutor, and the clerk who hatched the scheme. But why did they do it? And why, years later, did Pinky Luber implicate Herbert in a zoning scandal? There seemed to be no connection between the rigged murder trials in which Herbert was a player and the zoning bribes where he wasn't. And just what was the link between those two events and the suit to get back Herbert's Bar license?
When Steve was a rookie lawyer and was stumped by a case, his father told him: "Whenever you find a loose thread, pull it to see where it leads." Steve had done that. It all led back to the stacked juries and his father's startling willingness to break the law. Still, Steve had more questions than answers. Turning the little car onto the gravel road that led to his father's houseboat, his mood plunged. There would be no joy in proclaiming "gotcha." Herbert was already a broken man. But what took him down that path? Why did he violate his oath? Why did he risk everything?
"Jesus, Dad. Why?"
"Why!" Herbert Solomon fumbled with the drawstring of his ratty old terry-cloth bathrobe. "You drive all the way down here and wake me up to ask why'd ah do it? What kind of a shlimazel are you?"