Solomon & Lord Drop Anchor (11 page)

He stopped in mid-bite. A glob of ketchup
clung to his mustache. “What investigative piece? Who assigned
you?”

“No one. I’ve been working on my own. A
blockbuster I can’t tell you about, yet. I’ve got a confidential
source.”

Jerry loosened his tie, which was already at
half-mast. He plugged another cassette into the VCR. After the
color bars and the countdown, a petite Oriental woman appeared in
front of a burning building. She held a microphone and showed a
dazzling smile likely used for stories of quintuplet births and
plane crashes alike. Michelle noticed that her orange helmet
clashed with her green flak jacket. She wondered if the teeth were
real.

“Meee-chelle, baby,” Jerry said, “you’re not
Bob Friggin’ Woodward. You’re a face, a very good face, and your
numbers are catching up with 
Gilligans
Island
 reruns on Channel Four.”

She tried to give him a tough look she
learned from numerous Jane Fonda films. It had the effect of
crinkling her collagen-injected lips.

“Now, don’t pout at me,” Jerry said. “Hey,
that was a great interview today. What’s a looker like that doing
with mass murderers:

“Serial murderers.”

“Whatever,” Jerry Abrams said.

* * *

The bedroom’s jalousie windows were cranked
open, and Michelle could hear nighttime traffic on Ocean Drive. The
trendy club and barhopping crowd. Michelle smiled, relieved to be
free of the feigned happiness of the South Beach full-time
floating-disco-party team, junior varsity, second string. What with
chlamydia, herpes, and gonorrhea creeping around, not to mention
AIDS. Hadn’t they just done a show on the misery of venereal warts,
images of rashes and itches giving her the willies right on the
set.

Having one man—even a part-time married
man—was better than a bunch of sweaty one-night stands. Even though
her man was, more often than not, a thirty-minute
slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am stand. Which is why she didn’t consider it
cheating to spend an occasional night with a carefully chosen lover
in a more leisurely mode.

Michelle stretched a hand across the sheets
and touched a warm thigh. She heard the regular, measured breaths
of peaceful sleep and smiled again. It had been wonderful for them
both, better than she had dared hope for something so new, a warmth
that had grown slowly, gently caressing her, building into a flame
that had nearly consumed her. Better than with …

There was a stirring next to her and she
watched her lover turn to one side. Great body, too. Silently,
Michelle climbed out of bed. She had tossed her blue silk dress,
specially chosen by her fashion consultant, across a chair. Her
matching spike-heeled shoes, her panty hose, and discarded uplift
bra formed a trail from living room to bedroom. Naked, Michelle
entered the bathroom and closed the door. She removed the tinted
contact lenses and scrubbed three layers of makeup from her face.
There hadn’t been time before, it had happened so fast. She slipped
into a black silk camisole, headed for the tiny kitchen, and
grabbed a low-fat vanilla yogurt from the refrigerator. Then she
sat down at a desk in a corner of the living room and turned on her
computer.

Michelle punched up the directory labeled
“INVST-1" and started typing:

When your platoon entered the village of Dak
Sut on January 9, 1968, what orders did you give?

“No,” she said to herself. “Too direct.”
Christ, this wasn’t like interviewing celebrity authors. She tried
to imagine how Geraldo Rivera would do it.

For the next hour she kept typing and
retyping questions.

Was there evidence of NVA or VC in the
village?

He’s going to say yes. Then what? How do you
follow up? This is harder than it looks.

The last time you saw Lieutenant Ferguson
alive, was he—

Forget it. She could try again tomorrow. She
punched a button and magically transported the questions to her
computer’s hard memory. She exited the word-processing program,
then hit the keys for the modem, which automatically dialed a local
number. After a few seconds the computer tinkled a romantic ballad
and the medical symbols for the male and female of the species
appeared on the screen, the male’s arrow piercing the female’s
circle. The symbols changed shape, becoming the figures of a nude
man and woman, until they, too, electronically unwound and formed
letters and then a word. “Compu-Mate.”

> DO YOU WISH TO ENTER THE MATING
ROOM?

> YES.

> YOUR HANDLE, PLEASE.

> TV GAL.

She had been meaning to change her handle
after several Compu-Mate correspondents asked whether she enjoyed
cross dressing. She typed a numerical password, and after a moment
the computer purred, and a new message scrolled down the
monitor.

> HERE’S WHO’S IN THE MATING ROOM
NOW:

 
SUPER STUD

 
CANDY FEELGOOD

 
PASSION PRINCE

 
BUSH WHACKER

HELEN BED

ICE GODDESS

CHARLIE HORSE

BIGGUS DICKUS

TV GAL

ORAL ROBERT

HOT BUNS

A sound came from the bedroom. A sliver of
light appeared under the door. Michelle punched into the chat mode
and made some connections. Oral Robert told her he’d save her ass
and to hell with her soul. Bush Whacker tried to type dirty but
couldn’t spell any word over four letters. Biggus Dickus, a nearly
normal guy she remembered from last week, asked about her
work. 
Bor-ing!
 She brushed them off.

> HELLO, TV GAL. LIGHTS, CAMERA,
ACTION—PASSION PRINCE.

A little jolt went through her, as it always
did. A new name, a voice in the dark. Maybe this time. She heard
the bathroom shower turning on. It wouldn’t be an all-nighter after
all.

> HELLO, PASSION PRINCE. WHAT ARE
YOU UP TO

> NO GOOD.

Just dancing around and she didn’t have all
night.

> TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF, PP

> EIGHT FEET TALL, GREEN SCALY SKIN,
A LONG SNOUT, AND LARGE TEETH . . .

Christ, a comedian. Why not just a sincere,
single, self-sup porting male, thirty-five, gainfully employed,
likes dining out, movies, and romantic walks on the beach?

> . . .AND YOU, TV PERSON?

Might as well give him a cheap thrill.

> FIVE-NINE WITH LONG, LONG LEGS.
LARGE ROUND BREASTS, A FLAT, SMOOTH STOMACH, AND FULL HIPS.

She stared at the screen. Nothing. Maybe
scared him off. She waited. Outside, an ocean breeze rattled the
windows.

> WHAT ABOUT YOUR ASSHOLE?

Oh brother. One of those.

> IS IT NICE AND TIGHT?

She started to hit the escape button but
stopped. In the bathroom, the water was turned off, the pipes
clanking in the old apartment. The prince of passion was still
typing.

> DO YOU LIKE POETRY?

> NOTHING DIRTY, PASSION GUY.

> WHEREOF MY FAME IS LOUD AMONGST
MANKIND, CURED LAMENESS, PALSIES, CANCERS. THOU, O GOD, KNOWEST
ALONE WHETHER THIS WAS OR NO. HAVE MERCY, MERCY! COVERALL MY
SIN!

> THATS POETRY? SOUNDS LIKE FATHER
McCORKLE IN WILKES BARRE.

She hoped that would stop him, but the
electronic blips kept coming, the words marching across her
screen
.

> THEN, THAT I MIGHT BE MORE ALONE
WITH THEE, THREE YEARS I LIVED UPON A PILLAR, HIGH.

> I BEEN STONED, TOO, BUT THREE
YEARS? THATS HEAVY.

> NO, NO TV-GAL. DO YOU KNOW NOTHING
OF THE STYLITES?

Jeez, I don’t know what’s worse, Michelle
thought, a pervert or a bore. She looked toward the bedroom. The
door was open, the light off.

> A MO-TOWN GROUP, RIGHT?

> AH, PERHAPS MUSIC IS MORE TO YOUR
TASTE.

Ought to sign off now, Michelle thought, play
hostess, offer a good-bye drink and exchange lies about next time.
So quiet, the only sound the hum of the computer, the only light
the luminous black-and-white display of the monitor. Now what was
he typing? Rock ’n’ roll lyrics. What’s with this guy? Can’t he
think for himself? Trying to tell me I shake his nerves and rattle
his brain. He was rattled long before tonight. And don’t tell me
what drives a man insane. But there he goes, hammering out the
whole damn song. And he probably can’t even carry a tune. She heard
footsteps behind her.

> OK, OK, PRINCE . . . I BROKE YOUR
WILL AND GAVE YOU A SUPER-DUPER THRILL, BUT I REALLY GOT TO GO
NOW.

A shadow crossed the screen, then
stopped.

She didn’t turn.

She expected a caress, a lover’s hug.

“Hello, darling,” Michelle said.

There was no reply.

She hit the escape button, punching out of
the program, and stared into the black background of the screen.
The outline of shoulders …

Two hands grabbed Michelle’s neck from behind
and yanked her out of the chair. For a moment she thought it was a
joke. But it wasn’t funny, and rough sex after tender loving didn’t
make sense. She thought of a man who wanted her to choke him just
before he came. Oxygen deprivation to enhance the orgasm.

Weird. Now this.

The hands slipped from her neck, then closed
again. Michelle clawed at the hands as they pressed harder. She
kicked backward and tried to scream, but nothing came out. She
gasped for air, fought off the nausea, and sucked in a breath as
the hands relaxed again. But she was losing consciousness and her
strength was gone.

She barely felt the hands this time, and her
last memory would be a tiny sound, a sickening crack like a
wishbone snapped in two.

The hands continued to squeeze for a full
minute, then dropped her back into the chair. A moment later, they
grabbed Mabel Dombrowsky by the hair and roughly jammed her head
forward into the monitor, shattering the screen, shards of glass
piercing her eyes. From inside the broken screen, an electronic pop
and fizzle and a puff of flame.

“Great balls of fire!” sang a voice she never
heard.

If Marvin the Maven tells me not to yell in
closing argument, I don’t yell. Marvin knows. He’s never tried a
case, but he’s seen more trials than most lawyers. Drifting from
courtroom to courtroom in search of the best action, he glimpses
eight or nine cases a day. Five days a week for the last seventeen
years since he closed up his shoe store in Brooklyn and headed
south.

Some lawyers don’t listen to Marvin and his
friends—Saul the Tailor and Max (Just Plain) Seltzer—and they pay
the price. Me, I listen. The courthouse regulars can’t read the
fine print on the early-bird menus, but they can spot perjury from
the third row of the gallery.

Marvin, Saul, and Max already told me I
botched jury selection. Not that
lawyers 
pick
 jurors anyway.
We 
exclude
 those we fear, at least until we run
out of challenges.

“You’re 
meshuga
, you leave number
four on,” Marvin told me on the first day of trial.

“He’s a hardworking butcher,” I said
defensively. “Knows the value of a dollar. Won’t give the store
away.”

Marvin ran a liver-spotted hand over his
toupee, fingering the part. “Lookit his eyes, 
boychik
.
Like pissholes in the snow. Plus, I betcha he lays his fat belly on
the scale with the lamb chops. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I
could spit.”

I told myself Marvin was wrong and that he
hadn’t intended to shower me with spittle to make his point.

Some lawyers hire psychologists to help with
jury selection. They’ll tell you that people who wear bright colors
crave attention and feel for the underdog. Plaintiffs jurors. Dark
colors are worn by introverts who don’t care about people.
Defendant’s jurors. Hoop earrings and costume jewelry are good for
the plaintiff, Rolex watches and three-karat diamonds for the
defense. To me, that’s a lot of malarkey. I pick jurors who smile
when I smile and don’t fold their bodies into tight balls when I
stand close.

No second-guessing now. Closing argument. A
time to sing the praises of freedom of the press, of the great
newspaper that fulfills the constitutional function of
blah-blah-blah. And Marvin said don’t yell. No emotion. 
The
jury don’t care about the Foist Amendment
. Besides, Nick Wolf
is a great schmoozer, Marvin told me. The jurors love him. Number
five, a Cuban receptionist, keeps batting her three-inch eyelashes
at him.

And I thought she had trouble with her
contacts.

The four men on the jury are your real
problem, Marvin said. One black, two Cubans, one Anglo, all men’s
men. Nick’s kind of guys.

So what am I, chopped liver?

He gave me that knowing look. 
Ey,
Lassiter, it ain’t your jury; it ain’t your day
. And with that,
the gang took off, a kidnapping trial down the hall drawing them
away.

Nick Wolf’s lawyer, H. T. Patterson, yelled
in closing argument. Hell, he sang, chanted, ranted, rocked, and
roiled. A spellbinder and a stemwinder, H.T. worked the jurors like
a Holy Roller. Which he was at the Liberty City Colored Baptist
Church while attending law school at night in the days before
Martin Luther King.

“They subjected Nick Wolf, a dedicated public
servant, to scorn and ridicule, to calumny, and obloquy,” Patterson
now crooned in a seductive singsong. “They lied and distorted. They
defamed and defiled. They took his honorable name and soiled it.
Besmirched, tainted, and tarnished it! Debased, degraded, and
disparaged it! And what should a man do when they stain, sully, and
smear his good name?”

Change it, I thought.

“What should a man of honor do when those
with pens sharp as daggers poison his reputation, not in whispers
but in howls, five hundred three thousand, six hundred seventy-nine
times?”

Five hundred three thousand, six hundred
seventy-nine being the Sunday circulation of the 
Miami
Journal
, and Sunday being the day of choice for fifty-megaton,
rock-’em-sock-’em, take-no-prisoners journalism. Which is what
the 
Journal
 is noted for, though I thought the
offending story—STATE ATTORNEY VIOLATED CAMPAIGN LAWS—lacked
characteristic punch. Not sharing my opinion was Nicholas G. Wolf,
bona fide local high-school football star, decorated Vietnam war
hero, former policeman, and currently state attorney for the
Seventeenth Judicial Circuit in and for Dade County, Florida. The
article accused Wolf of various technical violations of the
campaign contributions law plus one unfortunate reference to
accepting money from a reputed drug dealer.