The Deep Blue Alibi (31 page)

“Just like contingency fee lawyers,” Victoria said.

“With even worse morals. Some salvors set false lights, actually lured ships onto the reefs.”

“The Robinsons do that sort of thing?”

He smiled and got up from his desk. “Let me show you something, Ms. Lord.”

He put on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and led her to a framed document on the wall. Handwritten in fancy script was a salvor’s license signed by a federal judge and dated October 1889.

She read the stilted legal language aloud:
“Know all men by these presents that Walter J. Robinson, owner and master, is hereby licensed to employ his Sloop
Satisfaction
in the business of wrecking and salving along the coast of Florida.”

“My great-great-grandfather. Do you know why he named his ship
Satisfaction
? That was Sir Henry Morgan’s warship. The one that rescued the first Robinson and led to generations of black pirates, leading straight to Walter J. Robinson. So you ask whether my great-great-granddaddy was a tough customer? Let’s just say he kept up with the competition. People said he’d save bales of cotton and let stranded sailors drown. A cutthroat business, it was.”

“A cutthroat era.”

“Aren’t they all?”

Victoria wished Steve were here. He would have insights into Robinson she lacked. The man seemed disarmingly open with her. She knew he was trying to create an impression. Friendly and transparent. Was it an act? One of Steve’s lessons involved witnesses too eager to talk:

“If they’re filling all that dead air, it’s because they want to control the conversation.”

Robinson went on for a while, tracing his family history. Walter Robinson ran the town’s cockfights and owned a brothel and a saloon that catered to both blacks and whites. He also built the grandest house in Key West. There it was, the oil painting on the wall. In the Queen Anne style, with a double veranda, balustraded railings, and a widow’s walk, the pink house had been an extravagant showplace overlooking the ocean. There were conflicting stories of how the house was destroyed, Robinson said. His father told him it was demolished in a hurricane. But he’d later heard that his grandfather, Walter’s grandson, having lost the family businesses, torched the property for the insurance. After that, it was downhill for the Robinsons. Leicester’s father crewed on a shrimp boat and scraped up enough money to buy a leaky tugboat.

Leicester went off to college in New England, intending to teach history, but returned home to rescue the business when his father died.

The powerful gravitational pull of family.

Her own. Steve’s. Maybe Junior Griffin feared the loss of the family fortune, and maybe Leicester Robinson was obsessed with restoring his. But even if that was true, she still had no idea who murdered Ben Stubbs. And as for Leicester Robinson, no idea if he was a poet or a pirate.

Thirty-six

MAXIMUM HERB

Steve lay in wait like an assassin … if assassins surveilled their prey from the front seat of the ultramini Smart car.

He scanned the grassy terrain through binoculars. There was his target, in houndstooth slacks, a black polo shirt, and black leather gloves. Steve could pick him off easily with a scoped M-16. Or pop him in the head with a nine iron. Or just call him on his pager. Reginald Jones was driving a golf cart. Next to him, riding shotgun, some fat-assed business type. The fat guy looked familiar, but Steve couldn’t quite place him.

Earlier that morning, while spooning papaya pulp into the blender with yogurt to make Bobby’s smoothie, Steve had scanned the
Herald
‘s sports section. The Marlins had been rained out, a seventh-grade soccer coach was caught selling steroids, and there was a charity golf tournament at Doral. Athletes, semi-celebrities, and local politicos would be teeing up. Including Reginald Jones, Chief Clerk of the Circuit Court.

Before setting out for the Doral, Steve’s phone rang, Willis Rask calling. The sheriff had run the name “Conchy Conklin” through the computer.

“Full name’s Chester Lee Conklin,” Rask said. “Got the nickname because he’s dumb as a conch shell. And that’s his friends talking. Guy’s got a record. Couple B-and-E’s. Couple DUI’s. On probation for an ag assault in a bar. Settled an argument with a broken beer bottle.”

“If he’s on probation, you gotta know where he is,” Steve said.

“We would, except he missed his last two appointments. Probation officer went out to the trailer he was renting in Tavernier. No sign of him. Neighbors say they haven’t seen him or his Harley in a month.”

Rask said he’d start the paperwork for the probation violation, see if they could find Conklin, bring him in.

Now, with the midday sun high in the sky, the air was muggy with fat, puffy clouds building over the Everglades. Steve was slick with sweat, partly from the humidity, partly from the tension. His car was tucked into a strand of sabal palms along the narrow fairway of the eighteenth hole of the Doral Gold Course. While stalking Jones, he’d cruised past other foursomes, waving as if he were the head groundskeeper in a vehicle only slightly larger than their own carts.

Jones and his partner both put their tee shots in the middle of the narrow fairway. The eighteenth hole was just a shade under four hundred yards and straight, but with an island green totally surrounded by water. Jones’ second shot was a beauty, hitting twenty feet from the pin and dying there, like a quail felled by a hunter. The son-of-a-gun must have been sneaking out of the courthouse early to practice. His chunky partner plopped three shots into the drink and cursed loud enough for Steve to hear every syllable from his camouflaged position.

The two golfers climbed back in their cart and headed for the green. Steve tore out of the palms after them. The men were nearing the bridge to the green when Steve beeped the horn and overtook them.

“What the hell!” Jones jerked the golf cart to the right and skidded off the path, heading straight for the water hazard.

An image came to Steve, his beloved Caddy crashing through the guardrail and plunging nose-down to the bottom of Spanish Harbor Channel. The golf cart slid sideways in the moist grass and splashed to a stop in the shallow water.

“The fuck! The fuck!” Jones stepped out of the cart and sank up to his knees in mud. Not looking quite as dapper as he did in the framed photos in his office.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Jones,” Steve told him. “But it’s the only way I could get to see you.”

Jones waded to the shore, his shoes sucking at the mud. His passenger, the heavyset man, waddled toward Steve, brandishing a sand wedge. “You crazy bastard. I’m gonna scramble your brains—”

“Hold on, Jack.” Jones held up a calming hand then turned to Steve. “You’re Herb Solomon’s son, aren’t you?”

“Guilty as charged.”

“I know you!” The heavyset man wagged the sand wedge in Steve’s face. “You’re that ambulance-chasing shyster.”

“Before you call anyone a shyster, I’d like to see your scorecard,” Steve shot back.

“What are you implying?”

“If you put in for any of the prizes, I’m calling the cops.”

“Mr. Solomon,” Jones interrupted, “say hello to Police Chief Jack McAllister.”

All things considered, Steve thought the chief clerk and the police chief were downright hospitable, as soon as he offered to buy them new shoes. After Jones two-putted for a par and the sheriff gave himself a five despite at least nine strokes, not including penalties, Steve sat at the bar in the Nineteenth Hole with the chief clerk.

“Your father was a mentor to me,” Jones declared.

“He was always terrific with other people’s kids,” Steve conceded.

They drank beer and munched burgers. Steve was paying for lunch, too. He was happy he didn’t have to pick up their greens fees.

“I was going to community college part-time when I started clerking for your father. The judge talked me into getting my bachelor’s then helped me get a scholarship at FIU for my master’s. Government administration. All the while telling me I could be whatever I wanted if I applied myself.”

“Funny, he used to tell me I’d never be half the lawyer he was.”

Jones chuckled. “Half of Herb Solomon is still a helluva lawyer.”

When they’d run out of small talk, Steve said: “I need to know what my father was involved in when Pinky Luber ran Capital Crimes.”

“Judge Solomon was involved in the pursuit of justice.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“All I’ll say is this: You keep this up about Herb’s Bar license, you’re gonna open a can of worms. Just let it go.”

“Not until I know what’s in that can.”

Jones sipped at his beer, glanced out the window to where other golfers were finishing up. “You remember the early eighties, after the Mariel boatlift?”

“I was still a kid. But I remember the Pacino movie
Scarface.
”

“Well, that wasn’t far off. Cocaine cowboys. Shantytown under the expressway filled with Castro’s mental patients and criminals. Machine-gun shootouts at the Dadeland Mall. Highest murder rate in the country. Tourism down, businesses leaving.”

“What’s that have to do with my old man?”

“Herb was chief judge of the criminal division. He decided to do something about it.”

“What could he do that he wasn’t already doing? Maximum Herb was always tough.”

“Before you can sentence them, you’ve got to convict them.”

“Meaning what? A judge has to be impartial.”

“If you examine your father’s rulings, you’ll find he was. The appellate courts must have thought so, too. Lowest reversal rate in the Eleventh Circuit.”

“What aren’t you telling me? What the hell do you mean my father decided to do something about all the crime?”

Jones slid his plate away. “The judge always had a pure heart. And cleaner hands than most.”

“You’re talking in riddles, Mr. Jones.”

“And one more thing. Your father loves and respects you.”

“So I’m told.” By everybody except him.

SOLOMON’S LAWS

10. Choose a juror the way you choose a lover. Someone who doesn’t expect perfection and forgives your bullshit.

Thirty-seven

WINNING STREAK

“You win cases in voir dire.”

Steve had told Victoria that when they tried their first case together, defending Katrina Barksdale in a murder trial.

“Lawyers think they win with closing argument. Wow the jury with their oratory. But it’s too late then. Jury selection’s the most important part of the trial. Not opening statement. Not cross of the state’s chief witness. And not closing argument. Voir dire! Pick right, win. Pick wrong, lose.”

One of his many lectures. He could be so irritating when pontificating. But he was usually right. Which was even more irritating. Ever since she’d left the State Attorney’s Office, Victoria had picked juries with Steve at her side. Now, on a rainy Key West day, she was standing alone. Okay, not quite alone. Her mother was perched like a snowy egret in the first row of the gallery. Virginal white the predominant color of her outfit. The Queen apparently trying to send subliminal messages of purity and innocence to the prospective jurors. A Max Mara skirt with a white jasmine floral design and an asymmetric hem, a white linen jacket with a tie front, and gunmetal sandals. The suede bag with lizard trim picked up the gunmetal color and provided what she called the
“accènto.”

The Queen passed the time scribbling her observations about each potential juror, then handed the fine linen stationery to the bailiff, who slipped the pages to Victoria. Her helpful hints were confined to criticizing skirts that were too short, shoes that were out-of-date, and the mortal sin of carrying a knockoff faux-leather Prada handbag.

Hal Griffin sat at the defense table, trying to smile at each potential juror without appearing obsequious. His son slouched in the single row of chairs in front of the bar that separated the well from the gallery. Junior had warned Victoria that he was likely to fidget, as he was unaccustomed to being cooped up indoors. Would she mind if he dropped to the floor for eighty push-ups in the middle of voir dire? Yes, she would. Not wanting the defendant’s son to be seen squirming in his chair, she advised Junior to run up and down the staircase to the ground floor if he started feeling antsy.

He’d passed her a note, too. Asking her out to dinner. She’d shaken her head and pointed at her briefcase.
“Work to do.”
Junior had given her a sad smile, as if she’d broken his little heart.

Does he have any idea of the pressure of defending a murder trial?

With his father in the dock, shouldn’t Junior be a little more understanding?

Now, she was annoyed with both Steve and Junior. Maybe with
all
men.

Reporters packed the first two rows of the gallery. Off to one side, the pool TV camera and a single newspaper photographer, all that was permitted under the rules of court. They would share their video and photographs with all the others.

Victoria forced herself to listen as Richard Waddle, the Monroe County State Attorney, made his introductory remarks to the jury panel. Nicknamed “Dickwad” by defense lawyers, the prosecutor was a jowly man whose pencil mustache combined with seersucker suits gave him a 1940’s look.

“The jury is the cornerstone of justice, the bedrock of freedom,” Waddle intoned. “Samuel Adams called the jury the ‘heart and lungs of liberty.’ ”

Actually, it was John Adams, Victoria knew. His cousin, Samuel, was the patriot who ignited the Boston Tea Party, probably so people would drink his beer.

Waddle strolled alongside the jury box, pausing at each occupied chair like a train conductor punching tickets. “And when old Ben Franklin wrote the Declaration of Independence …”

Thomas Jefferson, Dickwad.

“He guaranteed us the right to trial by jury.”

Actually, that’s in the Constitution. But close enough for government work.