Solomon vs. Lord (26 page)

Thirty-seven

THE WHISPERING
OF PALM TREES

Steve's butt was sore, and his torn lip flared with pain. Bobby was starting to calm down, asking if he could have marshmallows in his hot chocolate. They were walking on a flagstone path between two rows of cypress trees. Bigby's farmhouse sat on a rise ahead of them.

“Big house for one person,” Bobby said.

“Two people,” Steve corrected.

The house was a solid three stories of Dade County pine with a wraparound porch and a tin roof. It had been built by Bigby's great-grandfather, who'd also had the good sense to buy two thousand acres of surrounding land nobody wanted at the time. The exterior grounds had been preserved much as they must have been in the reign of Bigby the First, Steve figured. A sugarcane grinder sat under a lean-to; a dinner bell topped a ten-foot-high pole; and firewood was stacked next to a smokehouse, where in earlier days hogs were turned into hams.

Steve spotted some modern additions. A red clay tennis court ringed by coconut palms. A lagoon surrounded by a man-made beach, and a chickee hut with bamboo walls and a roof of dried palm fronds. He visualized Victoria as Lady of Bigby Manor, didn't like the picture, chased it away.

He and Bobby walked inside, where a uniformed housekeeper seemed to be expecting them. Bigby must have called ahead on his cell phone or walkie-talkie, Steve figured, or maybe he sent smoke signals. The maid held a cup of steaming coffee for Steve and a cup of hot chocolate for Bobby. With marshmallows.

The coffee stung Steve's lip. The hot chocolate sent Bobby off on a riff about cocoa beans. He'd read somewhere about the health benefits of flavonoids, and he was repeating the chemical composition to Steve, who wasn't listening. Instead, he was thinking about Bruce Bigby. The man with everything. Including Victoria.

So why don't I hate him?

Maybe because Bigby seemed decent enough. Sure, the guy was irritatingly upbeat and so forthright that irony sailed right by him. Then there was that streak of boosterism, hawking his time-shares like some kind of subtropical Babbitt. But so what? Compared to most people Steve encountered each day—violent criminals, incompetent judges, perjurious witnesses—Bigby was a Boy Scout with shiny merit badges. Besides, it didn't matter what he thought. Victoria loved the guy.

So get over it, chump. She's his.

The interior of the house had been updated recently, Steve thought, as he walked Bobby to a guest bedroom. The walls were sleek mahogany, the floors Italian tile. The artwork—mostly South American and Native American—was expensive, eclectic, and tasteful, if you overlooked the six-foot oil painting of two ripe avocados dangling on a branch like pendulous breasts.

The guest bedroom was a cozy place with Native American baskets, wall hangings, and pottery. Steve tucked Bobby into bed, pulling a comforter up to his chin.

“Don't go till I fall asleep, Uncle Steve.”

Steve sat on the edge of the bed. “Not going anywhere, kiddo.”

“That was raging today, huh?”

“Raging?”

“When you waxed Mom's friend, you were totally tight.”

“Totally,” Steve agreed. There was something buzzing around in Bobby's head, Steve knew, but it was having a hard time coming out. “You want to talk about what happened, kiddo?”

Under the comforter, Bobby's thin shoulders shrugged.

“You know the rules. Anything you ask, I answer.”

“My mom,” Bobby said. “Is she a bad person or is she, like, totally whacked?”

He'd never lied to the boy. He couldn't start now. “A little of both. Maybe a lot of both.”

“How come she's bad and you're good?”

“She's not all bad and I'm not all good.”

And that was the truth, he thought. Only hours earlier, he'd agreed to pay Janice a bribe. One hundred thousand dollars for her favorable testimony. His only defense was that he didn't have the money to carry out the crime. He would work on that tomorrow. He would try
not
to consider the ethical and moral ramifications of what he had agreed to do. That, he knew, would come another day, and with it, a pain worse than his current headache.

The boy's eyelids were fluttering. “If Mrs. Barksdale murdered her husband, wouldn't she be way bad?”

“Way bad,” Steve agreed.

“Not the bad that's good. The bad that's bad.”

“Yep.”

“The woman is perfected,” the boy whispered. “We'll figure it out.” A second later, he was asleep.

“You're a wonderful father,” a soft voice said.

Steve turned. Victoria stood just inside the bedroom door.

“Thanks. But sometimes I think I get more from him than he does from me.”

Victoria walked to the bed, reached down, and stroked Bobby's cheek. He was breathing so heavily he seemed to be purring. “He idolizes you. You should be very proud.”

But just now, he wasn't feeling proud at all. Not as a would-be father. Not as a lawyer. Not as a man. He felt more like a felon on the verge of being caught. Hoping to change the subject, he gestured toward a darkened window. “How's it going out there?”

“Temperature's dropping. Bruce is freaking.”

“Sorry I'm not more help.”

“That's okay. I just thought it would be nice to have you around.” She was silent a moment. Then she said: “Do you want to take a walk?”

A three-quarter moon peeked through the orange-tinted clouds, and black smoke curled above the trees. Cuban love songs played on the speakers as Victoria led Steve along a path of coral rocks on a ridge above the grove. Suddenly, thousands of brightly colored lights blinked on, turning the avocado grove into a stand of Christmas trees.

“Wow. Look at that.”

“Bruce's idea to heat the trees,” Victoria said. “He cleaned out every Wal-Mart of Christmas lights from Orlando to Key West.”

“Smart guy, your Bigby.”

“He's got nothing on you.”

“Just a few million bucks. And you.”

“Which do you suppose is more important to Bruce?” she asked.

The question surprised Steve. Discussing her relationship with Bigby had been off-limits. “Can't answer for him. Only for me.”

His words hung in the air, trapped like the smoke from the smudge pots. After a moment, she said: “Keep going, Solomon.”

“I'm cold. Let's go back.”

“This way.” She took him by the hand.

“Where?”

She didn't answer, just led him down the path toward the lagoon.

“If you're thinking about skinny-dipping, forget it,” he said.

Two flaming torches were stuck in the ground at the entrance to the chickee hut at the water's edge. “Come on in,” she said. “It's a good windbreak.”

“Yeah, for a Miccosukee hunting party.”

He lingered at the entrance, and she ducked inside.

He wondered: Just what the hell's going on? The walk. The hut. Was she coming on to him? Or could he be misreading the signals? No doubt his brain was addled by his dinner of Jack Daniel's, Tylenol with codeine, and peanut butter cups.

“What are you afraid of?” Her voice came from the shadows inside the hut.

“You.”

“What do you think's going to happen in here?”

“If we were fifteen, we'd make out. But we're not, so I figure you've got pre-wedding jitters, and because I'm your pal, you want to talk. ‘I love this about Bruce,' and ‘I don't like this about Bruce.' Frankly, Victoria, I can do without it.”

“What if I just wanted to make out?”

“What about
el jefe
? He's packing heat.”

“I know you, Solomon. You're not afraid of him. All your fears are self-directed.”

Steve was aware of something cold and wet striking his forehead.
What the hell?
He turned back toward the grove. The orange-lit sky was flecked with white. “It's snowing!”

“Impossible.”

She hurried out of the hut. Then, to his astonishment, she spun a pirouette and yelped with joy, sticking out her tongue to catch the flakes swirling toward her. “It's fabulous!” Over the speakers, Benny Moré was singing something with a bolero beat. “Magical . . .”

“Temporary,” he said, watching the snow melt as it hit the ground.

Benny Moré sang:
“Eres tú flor carnal de mi jardin ideal.”

“So beautiful.” She moved to the music, her long leather coat swinging open, the snow whipping in the wind. “I wish I knew the words.”

“You're the sexual flower of my perfect garden,” Steve said.

“You talking to me, big boy?”

“The lyric. More or less.”

They listened.
“Eres tú la mujer que reina en mi corazón.”

“And you reign in my heart,” Steve said.

“The song again?”

“Of course.”

“You ever talk that way to a woman?”

“Nah.” What could he say to her? That she was beautiful and smart? That he respected her values, her integrity, even her damned rectitude, which he had ridiculed but which deep down, he admired and envied? That he was drawn to her for all the mysterious reasons that drive men mad? “I don't talk like that.”

“But you've felt that way?”

“What are we playing here, Vic? Let's watch Steve plunge a knife into his own chest?”

“C'mon. Was there a woman who reigned in your heart? Is there now?”

“Why should I tell you? So we can kiss? And then you can run away again?”

“Who said anything about running?”

“Don't do this.” He was a trespasser. On another man's property. With another man's woman.

She spoke softly: “The night we kissed, weren't you the one who said, ‘Go with the flow, see where it takes us'?”

“The flow takes us nowhere. You've got other plans.”

“You're such a fool, Steve Solomon.” She put a hand behind his neck, pulled him to her, kissed his bruised lower lip.

“Ouch.”

“Hurt?”

“More than you know.”

“Be brave.”

Her kiss was feathery as snowflakes. He did not kiss her back. No way he'd blunder down that path: hope, rejection, pain. She'd gut him as a hunter guts a deer.

Her lips moved, soft as rose petals, across his cheek. He felt her warm breath against his ear, along his neck. She kissed him again, then traced a fingertip across his forehead, around one eye, along the length of his nose. As if she wanted to later draw his likeness.

He felt light-headed, floating in the cold breeze with the snowflakes, his world spinning off its axis. Then, without meaning to, he kissed her back. A soft and longing kiss. If his head throbbed, if his lip stung, he no longer felt the pain.

The flames from the torches warmed them, tossed their shadows against the exterior of the hut. From below, Steve heard Benny Moré singing to them.

“Mi pasión es rumor de un palmar.”

As Victoria led him into the hut, Steve murmured: “My passion is the whispering of palm trees.”

“The song?”

“Me,” he said.

The hut was filled with bales of straw, some of which had spilled across the floor. She had not planned this, Victoria thought, slipping out of the long coat and laying it across the straw. She was, for once, riding with the moment, letting her emotions carry her along. She was drawn to Steve and had stopped questioning why. But look at him, so afraid and confused. She unzipped his parka, knowing she would have to take the lead. She pulled the jacket off him, unbuttoned his shirt, ran her hands up his chest.

“I want you,” she breathed, kissing him again.

He whispered something, but his face was alongside her neck, and she couldn't hear. One of his hands was working its way under her sweater, and she felt her bra unsnap, and then his hands were on her breasts. Moments later, her sweater and jeans were tangled somewhere in the straw with his clothes, and she peeled off her low-rise panties, because she couldn't wait for him to do it.

Her breaths came deep and fast as his mouth tracked a path down her neck, circled both breasts, settled on one. She felt him pressed against her, hard and erect, and she stroked him, making him gasp. He touched her gently, insistent, probing. She kissed him again, a feverish, deep, urgent kiss.

“I want you inside me,” she breathed into his ear. “Now!”

“Already?”

“We've had weeks of foreplay. Now!”

He entered her, and she wrapped her legs around him. Then she arched back, limber as a cat, her body rising to meet his.

Steve could hear his own heart hammering away, thought he could hear hers. He drank her in with all his senses. The curve of her neck, the path of her spine, the smooth silk of the cul-de-sac below her navel. He kissed her, caressed her, tasted her.

For these moments at least, he was free of the consequences, lost in the eternal ritual. He had always thought that every new encounter echoed with memories of earlier ones. But this one did not. This one was new; this one was different from all the rest.

She came with an explosive force, digging her hands into his scalp, pulling his hair, holding on as if she would fall off the edge of the world. A second later, he exploded, too, just as she felt the aftershocks rock her, mini tremors flowing in hot waves.

And then, still inside her, rocking slowly, sucking each morsel of pleasure for as long as it would last, he said it at long last. “I love you, Victoria. I really, really love you.”

Thirty-eight

THE MORNING-AFTER BLUES

“Where are the bagels?” Marvin the Maven asked.

“Don't have any.” Steve opened a paper bag and pulled out four crusty Italian rolls. “I bought michettes.”

“What
mishegoss
is that?”

“We're talking smoked salmon and
caprino panini
.”

“Feh!
They charge another five bucks, give the lox a fancy name.”

On this chilly morning, Marvin wore a herringbone sport coat over a black turtleneck. A stocking cap, looking a bit like a yarmulke, covered his bald head.

They were standing in Steve's kitchen, roughly twelve hours after his altered-state experience in the chickee hut. At least his body was here. In his foggy brain, snow swirled, and he was still curled up with Victoria on the straw. Which is just where he'd been when a voice on the speaker asked Señorita Lord to come to the staging area.

Bigby was looking for her. She dressed quickly, kissed Steve, and ducked out of the hut, glancing back, giving him a look he couldn't decipher. Melancholy? Longing? Regret?

He went back to the farmhouse, gathered Bobby from the bed, and carried him to the car. Home, Steve tucked Bobby in, then stretched out on his sofa with a bottle of Chinaco Blanco tequila and tried to make sense of the night. By dawn, his lips felt numb and there was a ringing in his ears.

When Marvin stopped by—a Sunday morning breakfast ritual—he asked about the scrapes and bruises. Steve said he had tripped while jogging. The Maven seemed to buy it. Now he was whining about the menu change. “Where's the cream cheese?”

“I'm using
caprino.
Goat cheese.”

“Fancy-schmancy.”

Steve spread the goat cheese on a roll, sprinkled it with capers and chives, then placed sun-dried tomatoes on top.

“What's with the tomatoes, boychik?” Marvin asked. “They're all shriveled up, like my
schmeckel.
”

“They're sun-dried.”

“Not that anyone's complaining. My
schmeckel,
I mean, not your tomatoes.”

Steve stirred lemon juice with olive oil and drizzled the mixture over the
panino.
“Marvin, I need a favor.”

“Don't worry. I'm gonna help you pick a jury.”

Marvin picked up the
panino,
studied it suspiciously, took a bite. “Hey, not bad. Ain't a bagel and lox, but not bad.”

“I'm not talking about jury selection, Marvin. I need a hundred thousand dollars.”

Marvin whistled. “That's some serious shekels, boychik.”

“A loan, not a gift. If we win Barksdale, I'll pay it back quick. If we lose, I'll pay it back slow.”

“I'd like to help, but I don't have that kind of cash.”

“I figured, but I thought you might have some ideas.”

“What about your father?”

Steve shook his head. “Even if he had it, I couldn't ask.”

“You mean you
wouldn't
ask. Isn't it time to forgive and forget?”

“Not now, Marvin. I can't ask him, not on this.”

Marvin tugged at a fold of skin on his neck. Marvin the Thinker. “What's the money for, if you don't mind my asking?”

Steve shot a look toward the corridor to his nephew's bedroom. All quiet. The boy either was still asleep or he was beating the computer at chess. “It's for Bobby. That's all I can say.”

The old man's eyes lit up. “That's different. For Bobby, anything.” He demolished the sandwich in three bites. “Not that I know where I'm gonna get the money, but I got some friends.”

“Thanks, Marvin.”

“You sleep in a stable last night?”

“Why?”

“You got straw in your hair.”

Steve ran a hand over his head, plucked a strand from behind his ear. “Bigby's farm,” he said, and left it at that.

“What were you doing there, besides lusting after his fiancée?”

“That about sums it up.”

Steve had succeeded in not thinking about Victoria for the last few minutes, but there it was again. Just before Marvin arrived, Steve had called her cell phone, but there'd been no answer. Where was she this morning? With Bigby? Or taking a long walk through the trees, thinking of Steve?

“I don't know how I'm going to try Barksdale with her,” he said. “Or Bobby's case, either.”

“Why not? I thought the two of you were getting along these days.”

“I'll be sitting close enough to smell her shampoo. Every time she'd give me a document, our hands would touch, and . . .” Steve stopped. He hadn't intended to open up.

Marvin was staring at him.
“Ay, gevalt.
You're in love!”

Now Steve wanted to talk. If he had a closer relationship with his father, this would be the time
—“Hey, Dad, what should I do?”—
but with Herbert, he wouldn't get advice, he'd get criticism. “I need some advice, Marvin.”

“Got one word for you. ‘Viagra.'”

“Don't need it.”

“Neither do I, but in case you're nervous when you and that shiksa goddess do it the first time, it can help.”

Steve was silent.

“Ah! You already
shtupped
her?”

This wasn't going to be easy, Steve knew, but he needed to talk. “Marvin, can you be discreet?”

The old man shrugged. “Was Jesus a nice Jewish boy?”

Five minutes later, the front door opened and another Sunday morning regular walked in.

“Where are the bagels?” Cadillac said, entering the kitchen.

“Don't got any,” Marvin said. “Mr. Fancy Pants bought machetes instead.”

“Michettes,” Steve said.

“Just as well,” Cadillac said. “Poppy seeds stick in my dentures.” He looked at Steve. “What happened to your face?”

“I fell jogging.”

“I got marked up like that once,” Cadillac said. “Tripped over a windowsill.”

“How's that possible?” Steve said.

Cadillac sat down at the kitchen table, sighed, propped his feet on a chair. “A jealous husband was coming in the bedroom door with a shotgun, I was going out the window without my pants. Kansas City. Or maybe St. Louis.”

“What's with the duds?” Marvin asked. Cadillac was wearing dark blue coveralls with a patch on the chest that read: “Rockland State Hospital.”

“Doing a favor for Steve,” Cadillac said.

“Everybody he's asking favors these days.”

“Cadillac's a helluva PI,” Steve said.

“Janitor's more like it,” Cadillac said. “Your doc was there last night, by the way.”

“So you couldn't snoop?”

“Sure I could. Gimme a sandwich and lemme tell it my way.”

Steve put the finishing touches on a
panino
he'd been working on.

“Last couple nights, I been going through her desk,” Cadillac said. “In-box, out-box. Patient records. Test charts. Lot of mumbo-jumbo. Last night, I come into her office around eleven o'clock, pushing my broom, rolling my cart. Only this time she's still there. Big woman with a sour face.”

“She say anything to you?”

“Not to me. She was on the phone.”

Steve handed Cadillac the
panino
. “So you left?”

“Hell, no.” Cadillac took a bite, nodded his approval. “I emptied her wastebasket, dusted the counters, puttered around. She just kept on talking. Old black man pushing a broom. You don't get more invisible than that.”

“Who was she talking to?”

“All I know, his name was Carlos, and he was in Mexico.”

Steve's look must have asked a question because Cadillac said: “‘What time is it in Guadalajara, Carlos?' That's what she was saying when I walked in. Then she says she wants a thousand units of replen-something.”

Steve grabbed a pen and a pad. “Replen . . . ?”

“One of those drug names they make up that don't mean nothing. Like Viagra.”

“I don't need it,” Marvin said for the second time that morning.

“So that's it?” Steve said.

“Settle down, boy,” Cadillac said. “When you write a song, you don't give away the story in the first verse.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Like all those songs Gordon Jenkins wrote for Sinatra.” He started singing softly:

“Opposites attract, the wise men claim,

Still I wish that we had been a little more the same,

It might have been a shorter war.”

“Sounds like Steverino and his lady partner,” Marvin said.

“Can we get back to Kranchick for a second?” Steve pleaded.

“Then the song throws you a curve.” Cadillac resumed singing:

“She knew much more than I did,

But there was one thing she didn't know,

That I loved her, 'cause I never told her so.”

Cadillac smiled. “There's the surprise. He never had the guts to tell the lady he loved her.”

“Just like our friend.” Marvin turned to Steve. “Unless you told her last night.”

“What happened last night?” Cadillac asked.

“What happened in the
hospital
last night?” Steve countered.

“Steverino
shtupped
his law partner,” Marvin said.

“No,” Cadillac said.

“The
emmis.
Right under the nose of her fiancé.”

“Attaboy,” Cadillac said. “Reminds me of the time I was seeing this dancer who was married to a comic. Every night, when he went on the stage—”

“Cadillac! What the hell happened in the damn hospital?”

“All right. Keep your britches on. The doc must not have liked the price. 'Cause she says, ‘Forget it, Carlos. You're not gonna fuck me up the ass.'”

“She said that?” Marvin made a
tsk-tsk
sound.

“Reminded me of a foulmouthed little mama I knew in Memphis,” Cadillac said.

“Then what?” Steve demanded. “After she argued with Carlos about price?”

“She said something about calling this supplier in Argentina. But Carlos must have lowered the price because she calmed right down and said, fine, she'd wire the money first thing in the morning, and no, she didn't want a receipt. No paper trail. She hangs up and I go out and work the rest of the floor.”

“Replen-something,” Steve said, mostly to himself. “Replen what?”

“Replengren,” Cadillac said.

“How do you know?”

“Because after she left, I came back and emptied her wastebasket a second time. It's my damn job, right?” He reached into his pocket and handed Steve a slip of paper. A crumpled sheet from a notepad with the Rockland State Hospital logo on top, Kranchick's name on the bottom, and what had to be her handwriting in between.

80 mg Replengren X 1000

San Blas Medico

“So what is it?” Marvin asked.

Steve wrote “Replengren” on his pad followed by three question marks. “Something Kranchick doesn't want anybody to know about, and that's gotta be good. You're beautiful, Cadillac. I love you. You, too, Marvin.”

“Forget us,” Cadillac said. “Did you tell the lady that you love her?”

“He told her,” Marvin said. “She didn't say nothing back, and now the schlemiel wants some advice from the Maven.”

“Thanks for being so discreet,” Steve said, rubbing both temples. A headache was brewing.

“So what did you tell him?” Cadillac asked Marvin.

“I told him to get off his
tuches.
Love don't come along every day, and if you let her get away, you'll always regret it.”