"Benny has a brother?"

Benny. One horse had crossed the line. Let's go for the perfecta. All I needed was the last name. But I couldn't ask for it without tipping Dominguez that I was just fishing for information.

"Benny's brother Max," I said.

Benny and Max sounded good together, I thought.

"Benny never mentioned him. Is he in the same racket?"

"Well," I said, "they're into so much."

Manuel seemed to think about it before a scowl crossed his face. "Wait a second, Jake! You're pulling one over on me."

I yanked the rocking chair backward, then shoved it hard forward. Manuel scrambled to stand up, wobbling unsteadily as he got his feet under him. Too much butterscotch souffle. "Give Benny my regards, Manuel. And get the hell off my porch."

-13-.

What a Hunk Victoria was in bed reading her notes, which she had already begun color coding. She wore her pajamas. A present from Steve. Victoria's Secret pj's, because, as he put it, with Solomonic wisdom, "What the hell else would I buy you?"

The phone rang, and she sat up in bed.

"Sorry for calling so late," Lassiter said when she answered.

"I'm still awake, so don't worry about it."

He told her about the visit from Manuel Dominguez and asked if she was going to see Steve in the morning. Sure, she'd ask if the name Benny meant anything to him. Maybe Nadia or Gorev mentioned the name. And if not, did Steve have any idea who Benny might be?

She wanted to ask Lassiter something, but it was difficult, and she hesitated a moment before blurting it out. "You believe Steve, don't you, Jake? That he didn't shoot Gorev."

"I do."

"Great. Steve always says he presumes his clients are guilty because it saves time."

Lassiter laughed. "I like that. I just might steal it."

"Like I said, you guys are more alike than either one of you wants to admit."

"Nah. He's luckier than I am."

"How do you mean?"

There was a pause, just the electrical hum of the line. "Well, Steve has you."

She froze a second and didn't respond. Then Lassiter added, "In his corner, I mean."

But that's not what she thought he meant. He had not complimented her lawyering, but rather her womanhood. Lying there in her pink daisy tank pajamas, she was sure of it. Then he'd become embarrassed and tried to backpedal. Maybe that's what gave her the courage to ask a question of her own.

"Jake, what about the rest of what Steve said?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you believe in your heart he wasn't involved with Nadia?"

"That again? Jeez, Victoria, I already told you. Barrios is stuck for a motive and that's all he could come up with. I'm not even sure he believes it."

"What if it were you?"

"How do you mean?"

"This beautiful young woman comes to your office and asks you to have a sit-down with a gangster who's allegedly holding her property. You don't know the territory. You haven't checked her out. Or him. Would you just hop in your car and go?"

"How beautiful did you say she was?"

She let out an exasperated sigh. "I'm serious, Jake. What did you call it the other day? 'Wandering clueless into the cave of the Russian bear.' Would you have done it?"

"A beautiful woman in distress is a powerful intoxicant."

"So men are basically weak. Is that what you're saying?"

"Actually, the opposite. There's something deep in men that makes us the protectors. It's probably been engraved in our DNA since the time we were still swinging on vines. We're the hunters and the rescuers. It's even part of our mythology. We rescue damsels in distress from the dragons . . . or the Russian Bratva."

"In order to get laid," she said.

"Not necessarily. A man doesn't have to be sleeping with the damsel or even want to. He just saddles up and rides into danger because that's what a man does. So to answer your question, yeah, I probably would have done the same thing as Solomon. At least, I would have when I was his age. These days, I might have done some research, popped a couple anti-inflammatories for my knees, and taken along backup."

"You're not that creaky, Jake. You know what my secretary said when I told her we were hiring you?"

"Nope."

"She's seen you in the gym. And she said, 'Ay, Lassiter. Que bueno est!' Roughly translated, 'What a hunk!'"

"Ex-hunk is more like it. But all those years pumping iron. It's a habit I can't break. And every year, I do less weight and fewer reps. Not because I want to, but because of the aging process and my fear of tearing some tendons I didn't know I had."

There was something in his voice that troubled her. In their first phone call, all that angst about losing cases and now the talk about aging. Was Lassiter over-the-hill?

"Jake, I have to ask you something else, and I hope you won't be offended."

"Shoot."

"Back in the jail, Steve called you a burnout."

"Actually, he called me a 'deaf, punch-drunk burnout.'"

She smiled to herself. At least Lassiter's memory still worked. "Well, what about it? Are you going through some personal crisis? Have you lost that swagger, the legendary Lassiter cockiness? Is there anything bothering you we should know about?"

"Have no fear, Victoria. Once we're in trial, the adrenaline starts pumping, and I come out swinging from the opening bell."

She hoped it was true. That was, after all, the Jake Lassiter everyone talked about.

"I've just become more thoughtful as I've matured. I'm more open about my feelings. And maybe I just talk too much."

"No! It's good. I wish Steve did that."

"Like I say about a lot of things, give him time."

With that, she said good night and hung up.

Victoria spent the next twenty minutes trying to will herself to sleep. But her mind was too active. Thoughts of Steve, locked in that jail cell. They'd come so far together since they met as opponents in criminal court. A rookie prosecutor, she had been hoodwinked by Steve in that stupid talking bird case. Well, technically, an illegal importation of wildlife case. Defending the smuggler, Steve tried to call a white cockatoo named Mr. Ruffles to testify. As precedent, he cited The Case of the Perjured Parrot, a Perry Mason novel involving a bird that had witnessed a murder.

Of course, the judge denied Steve's motion. But then Solomon the Sneak tricked her into getting the bird to talk. The judge declared a mistrial and held them both in contempt for bickering.

"When I checked my calendar this morning," the judge said, "the case was State versus Pedrosa, not Solomon versus Lord."

To make matters worse, Mr. Ruffles pooped on her Armani jacket, and State Attorney Ray Pincher fired her. The same guy who would now be prosecuting Steve.

She and Steve then spent a couple of hours in adjacent holding cells behind the courtroom. She was furious. He was flirting. What was it he had said that was so damn infuriating? Oh, yeah . . .

"Cell mates today, soul mates tomorrow."

How did he know?

As she became drowsy, her thoughts surprisingly drifted to Lassiter. A good man. A complicated man. And something else. Que bueno est!

-14-.

Fed Talk I hung up the phone with Victoria and realized, I do talk too much!

And what about the rest of it?

"Steve's luckier than I am. He has you."

How ass-puckeringly embarrassing. I blame the Jack Daniel's. Three fingers after shooing Manuel Dominguez off the porch, and another three fingers before calling Victoria. Let's see: three plus three equals . . . hammered.

Jeez, I should listen to Granny. "Don't be sniffing after a client's woman."

At least I was proud of myself for telling the truth. She'd fed me this lob: Was Steve screwing Nadia? I had every chance in the world to toss a grenade into their relationship. But I did the right thing. I told the truth.

Then, at the end, she'd said she wished Steve were more like me. Okay, not exactly. But she wished he opened up a little more. Showed his pain. Like me. The wounded boar.

Just then, the phone rang.

Holy shit! It had to be Victoria calling back.

She must not be able to sleep. Wanted to talk some more. Or maybe needed me to come over and share my Jack Daniel's. I was on Poinciana. She was on Kumquat. I could jog up Solana and be there in three minutes.

I picked up the phone, calmed my voice, and said, "Hello again."

"Again?" A man's voice.

"Who's this?"

"George Barrios."

Just why was the Miami Beach chief of homicide calling me after midnight?

"Who'd you think was calling, Jake?" Detectives have an insatiable curiosity.

"One of your ex-wives, George."

"Better you than me."

"Whoever got killed tonight, I assure you I have an alibi."

"You always do. Listen, Jake, we gotta talk."

"Now?"

"First thing in the morning."

"Okay, how about a preview?"

"There are some things I gotta tell you about Nadia Delova."

I didn't sleep well. Up at sunrise, I found a tiny frog hopping across the Mexican tile in the kitchen. A cockroach-we euphemistically call them palmetto bugs-was flat on its back, its legs wiggling helplessly. Nearby, a green lizard-call him Mr. Gecko-watched, deciding what part to eat first. Hey, it's not my fault. Or Granny's. We keep a clean house. It's just summer in Miami.

At 6:00 a.m., wearing my Penn State boxers-tasteful little Nittany Lions on a blue background-and nothing else, I picked up the Miami Herald from under the jacaranda tree in the driveway. I intended to skim the paper and have one cup of coffee before meeting Detective Barrios.

It was already hot and humid enough to give a guy jock itch. By the time I got back to my front door, several mosquitoes had dive-bombed my ankles for breakfast.

The Herald's lead story reported that the pink flamingos at Hialeah Park had begun laying eggs again. This may not seem like front-page news, but the flamingos had gone five years without sex before a recent orgy. This gave me hope.

Thirty minutes later, I was dressed in faded jeans and a T-shirt from the Quarterdeck Lounge, a favorite watering hole and fish joint. Twenty minutes after that, I was aiming my old Caddy across the MacArthur Causeway toward Miami Beach. The car is a cream-colored 1984 Biarritz Eldorado with red velour upholstery and a personalized license plate: "JUSTICE?" Yeah, I think it's a good question.