"The two-hundred-and-eighty-five-pound guy who killed two men because one had hit his friend."

"Two unarmed men. One had thrown a punch. That's it."

"That case is on appeal."

"Nope. Florida Supreme Court denied cert this week. Third District opinion stands."

"You surprise me, Lassiter. You pretend to be a cowboy, banging your way through the saloon doors. But you still read appellate cases, like a young associate trying to make partner."

"I learned a long time ago it's best to be underestimated."

"The Mobley case . . ." Victoria was thinking about it. It's what lawyers do. Read precedent. Noodle a bit. Try to apply facts from other situations to your own, hoping the legal principles help your case.

Mobley surprised a lot of people even more than the verdict in the George Zimmerman shooting of Trayvon Martin did. Here's what happened. There's an argument between a man named Chico and two abrasive young men inside a restaurant. Chico's friend is the 285-pound guy, Mobley, who sees the argument and gets worried. He goes to his car and gets his .45 caliber Glock. When his pal Chico leaves the restaurant, one of the young men punches him, hard, in the eye. The second man approaches Mobley and seems to be reaching under his shirt. Bang! Actually five bangs. Mobley fires five shots, killing both unarmed men. That's right. There was no weapon under the second guy's shirt.

The judge held an immunity hearing and found the big guy's fear was unreasonable and ordered a trial. A jury would still have the chance to disagree with the judge and find the shooting justified under Stand Your Ground. But here's where it gets interesting. The appellate court in Miami reversed the trial judge. Mobley's fear was reasonable. Shooting the two unarmed men was justified.

Immunity granted. Charges dismissed. The jury never got to hear the state's case.

"So you're saying that we don't need Gorev's gun if he was threatening Steve in some other way," Victoria said. "Throwing a punch or even a stapler."

"Hey, it's Florida. Toss a beach ball at me, I'll empty my .45 into you and be home in time for Jimmy Kimmel."

"But it's all hypothetical, anyway." Victoria frowned. "Steve didn't fire the shot. If anyone has immunity under Stand Your Ground, it's Nadia."

"Which means . . ."

"If we can find Nadia and convince her to come back and every piece falls into place . . ."

"If she only took from the safe what belonged to her," I said. "And if she'll testify that Gorev had a gun, which Solomon will corroborate."

"And if she admits the shooting, out of fear for her life, she gets immunity and everyone goes home."

It was a lot to hope for, like the Miami Dolphins winning the Super Bowl, instead of finishing eight-eight every year. But trial lawyers, like athletes, relish a tough fight.

We exchanged see-you-laters. Victoria backed out of her parking spot, and I stood there a moment, watching her through the windshield, the wipers clacking back and forth. We were working well together, thinking along the same lines. I headed for my car, feeling invigorated. It was a challenging case, but we had a client who swore he was innocent, and he might just be.

I got into my Eldo, turned the ignition, and felt the old V-8 rumble to life. I sat there, my mind reviewing the past hour or so. Introspection has never been my strong suit, but I had a sudden realization. That invigoration? That pleasant little buzz? Sure, some of it had to do with the case. But what I really liked was being with Victoria. A second thought then, an itchy little one in the back of my brain, as scary as the pop when a ligament tears.

Why isn't Victoria Lord my partner . . . in law and in life?

-10-.

True Confession Steve Solomon wanted to bang his head against the steel toilet. Jail cell model. No lid and no seat.

He was mad as hell. At himself.

Victoria seemed to believe his every word. Lassiter, too. Of course, he had shaved the facts like a whittler with a sharp knife and a piece of pine.

He had considered telling them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But he'd boxed himself in by talking to the police at the crime scene.

And damn it, I know better!

When there's a dead body in the room, you never, ever answer cops' questions without your lawyer present. Which is to say, your lawyer answers the questions by saying, "We have nothing to say at this time."

Find out what the cops know before you tell them your version. And always call your lawyer!

But he had never asked for Victoria. Even after being read his Miranda warnings-which he knew by heart anyway-he'd just blurted it all out.

Nadia.

The passport.

The guns. Two of them!

The safe.

Nadia firing in self-defense.

He could not resist the powerful human impulse to talk, to explain, to profess his honesty and innocence. When you call 9-1-1 and the cops find you in a locked room with a dead man and a gun in your hand, who has the self-discipline to clam up? Of all his many talents, staying quiet was not one of them.

Solomon felt new empathy for his blabbermouth clients, the ones who always make everything worse by talking to the investigating officers instead of calling him.

Here's the problem. Once you tell Story A to the cops, you're stuck with it. Flip to Story B at trial, and the prosecutor will impeach your sorry ass in front of judge and jury. "Were you lying then or are you lying now?"

That timeless ditty is the courtroom equivalent of "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

So once he told the cops Story A, he repeated it to Victoria and then to Lassiter. Not that it was a complete fabrication.

Nadia had talked about wire fraud and racketeering, just like he'd said. Gorev had spoken ominously of dropping her into a deep pit and had mysteriously mentioned the jeweler, wearing a wire, and Aeroflot 100. And, yes, Nadia had opened the safe and taken off with its contents.

There was just that other little thing he couldn't bring himself to say to the cops, his lover, or his lawyer. Really, just an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny little detail.

I'm the one who killed Nicolai Gorev.

-11-.

A Damn Fool or a Damn Murderer Granny, I may have caught a rare bird," I said.

"A three-legged egret?" Granny Lassiter said.

"An innocent client."

"Hallelujah!"

We were in the kitchen of my coral rock house in Coconut Grove. The aroma of fresh-baked cornbread rose in waves from the oven. Granny was sizzling butter in an iron skillet on the gas range, and I was working the chicken-fried steak assembly line. I had just dropped a slab of meat into a bowl of flour, turning it over to coat both sides. Then I dipped the meat into a bowl of milk and eggs, letting the steak swim a bit. Finally, I put it back into the flour.

That's how you bread steak, and I'd been doing it since I was twelve years old, with Granny Lassiter barking instructions. Then. And now.

"Not too wet, Jake!" Granny scowled while she waited for my prep work. "How many times do I have to tell you?"

Granny had been old for about thirty years, but her appearance hadn't changed in all that time. Still had black hair with a white streak down the middle, but if you ever called her "Skunky," she'd brain you with a rolling pin. A short woman, she wore baggy shorts and a T-shirt with an outline of the map of Florida and the saying "Tourists! Go the Hell Home."

Granny was not really my grandmother. Probably a great-aunt, but who knows? We'd never really talked about the Lassiter lineage of Florida Keys trailer trash. She raised me after my father was killed in a bar fight outside Islamorada and my mother took off with a roughneck from Louisiana or Oklahoma or some such place. That star-crossed couple had a daughter-my half sister, Janet, who at age seventeen gave birth to my nephew, Kip, father unknown.

Now Granny helps me raise Kip, while Janet lives in tents and roams the countryside in search of department stores with lax security guards. I'd call her a gypsy, but that would be an insult to the Romani people. Let's just say she's a serial shoplifter and drug abuser with the parenting skills of a wilted rhododendron.

I dropped three pieces of meat into the iron skillet where the butter sizzled and puffs of fragrant smoke rose above the stove. "I think your fire is too hot," I said.

"Ah been making chicken-fried steak since you were still peeing your pants, so hush up."

I did as instructed and watched Granny poke at the burning meat with a wooden spatula. Without comment, she turned down the heat on the range. Ha!

"So, if you've got an innocent client," she said, "you can quit all your bellyaching. 'Oh, poor me. Ah'm so tired of all these scumbags and their dirty money.'"

"Actually, I never said that, Granny."

"What, then?"

"Said I always wanted a cause that was just, a client I liked, and a check that didn't bounce."

She harrumphed. "You were lucky to get one out of three, and that's if the check cleared."

"This time maybe I hit the trifecta."

"So you must like Solomon?"

"He's a total pain in the ass. But so was I when I was his age."

"I ain't seen much change."

"Solomon is smart and ballsy, and he'll learn to turn down the volume."

"Unless you mess up and he goes to Raiford."

"There's always that chance. It's a helluva lot tougher to defend an innocent client. More pressure to win."

"Now, don't that take all? You don't like 'em guilty, and you're a nervous Nellie when they're innocent." She flipped the steaks with her spatula. "Maybe you should go coach football at that pantywaist school in Vermont. But don't expect me to come along and shovel snow from the porch."

"With a guilty client, you just wash your hands and walk away. But an innocent client. That's a different-"

"Kettle of snapper," she helped out.

"If I lose, it's my fault."

Granny poked at the edges of the meat, which had turned golden brown, then took the steaks from the frying pan and dropped them onto a plate lined with paper towels. That left the pan with a half-inch-thick layer of grease, the secret of Granny's famous cardiac arrest gravy. The Lassiters will never be mistaken for vegans or health nuts. Granny sprinkled flour into the grease and whisked the goo into a paste. The secret to chicken-fried gravy is a mixture that's neither too greasy nor too pasty.

While Granny was fiddling with the ingredients, adding a pinch more flour, then some milk, I told her some more about my meeting with Solomon and Lord. Yeah, technically, I was violating principles of attorneyclient, but I'd long ago deputized Granny, and it's really to the client's advantage. Like a good juror, she's got common sense, so I run cases by her, including the various accounts of my clients.

"Men are such damn fools, ain't they?" Granny said when I had finished.

"Can you be more specific?"

"Well, first you got them male tourists, spending thousands on pissy champagne and then not even getting their peckers wet. Why not just hire one of them ladies of the night?"

"That's the brilliance of the Bar girl business, Granny. A lot of men would never hire a hooker. But if they think they're charming this exotic beauty out of her thong, well, that's different. And if it costs ten times more than your Collins Avenue professional, well, it must be worth it to their egos. Problem is, the men get so drunk, they're pretty much useless, and apparently the women have no plans to go through with it, anyway."

"Hussies," Granny said. "As for stupid men, you've also got your client. If his story is true, he's a damn fool. If it's false, he's a damn murderer."

"We're going for the damn fool defense."

"Tell me more about Solomon's law partner."

"Victoria Lord. Like I said, very classy, very pretty, very smart. We'll make a good team."

Granny gave me a look.

"In court, I mean."

"Don't you be sniffing after a client's woman," she warned.

"Ah, jeez, Granny. Give me some credit."

"You think I don't remember that Gina Florio. And her mobster husband you were representing."

"That was different. I knew Gina before Nicky Florio did."

"So what?"

"Under the law, I was grandfathered in."

"Hogwash! It nearly got you killed."