"You, too, Cece."

They exchanged high fives, then b.u.mped chests, like football players celebrating a touchdown.

Okay, so this was their routine, Victoria thought. First they trade barbs, then display affection. So now there were four people who seemed to care for Solomon. There was that old couple, Marvin and Teresa, who followed him around the courthouse; there was sweet, needy Bobby; and now this felonious, steroid-juiced secretary. What was his appeal, anyway?

Am I missing something? Or am I just too normal to belong to the Steve Solomon Fan Club?

"Okay, everyone to the inner sanctum," Steve said. "Let's talk about how to win a murder trial."

As Steve led his crew through a door into his private office, Victoria was aware of two sensations: the smell of rotten vegetables and what sounded like metal garbage cans banging against each other. Just below the grimy window, in a narrow alley, was a green Dumpster, horseflies buzzing around its open lid. Across the alley was a three-story apartment building, and on the nearest balcony, five bare-chested men beat sticks against metal pans and what looked like fifty-five-gallon oil drums.

"Trinidad steel band," Steve said.

"That's rea.s.suring," she said. "I thought it was a prison riot."

To escape the stench and the percussion, Victoria moved toward a corner of the room where a bubbling fish tank housed half a dozen rust-colored crustaceans. "Let me guess. You poach lobsters in your spare time."

"You think too small."

"His client hijacks refrigerated trucks coming up from the Keys," Cece said.

Victoria scoped out the rest of the place. On one wall was a framed cartoon of a courtroom filled with water. The fins of two sharks were visible, cutting smoothly through the water, headed toward the judge. The caption read: "Counsel Approaching the Bench."

Sure, Solomon would relate to that.

Victoria was in purgatory. What had happened to her master plan? Five years of public service parlayed into a job in a prestigious firm, all leading to partnership and lifetime tenure. Or maybe a judgeship.

Judge Lord.

But here she was, inhaling the fumes from a Dumpster, her plans dashed, her career in shambles.

Looking at the cracked and soiled plaster walls, feeling a mixture of anger and regret, Victoria said: "For a hotshot lawyer, Solomon, your office is . . ." How could she put this delicately? "A real s.h.i.t hole."

So there it was, Steve thought. Being compared to the deep-carpet types downtown. Being compared to Bigby, too, he supposed, with all that inherited money. What were her values, anyway? If wealth and status were her turn-ons, maybe it was better that she was taken.

"That stuff important to you, Victoria? Marble on the floor, mahogany on the walls?"

"For better or worse, that's how we measure success."

"Success should never be confused with excellence."

"Here we go again," Cece said. "He always uses this s.h.i.t to explain why my paycheck's late."

Steve walked to the lobster tank, picked up a stale bagel from a dish, crumbled it, and dropped the pieces into the water. He watched the crustaceans crawl over each other, like fans after a Barry Bonds home run. "Success is how other people judge you," he said. "Are you driving that Ferrari, buying that house in Aspen? Excellence can't be measured in dollars. Ideals don't fit into a bank account. It's about judging yourself. Have you lived up to your principles or have you sold out?"

"You have principles?" Victoria asked.

"I make up my own."

"Solomon's Laws," Cece said. "Every time he gets a bright idea, I gotta write it down for posteridad."

"Write this down, Cece. 'I will never compromise my ideals to achieve someone else's definition of success.'"

"Yeah, yeah, I got it."

"Sounds like you're making excuses for not earning enough money to buy a decent car and clean the carpets," Victoria said.

"He could make a s.h.i.tload," Cece said, "if he wasn't the santo patrn of lost cases. You got a lousy case and no money, come on down. Haitian refugees want green cards, Miccosukees want their burial ground, migrant workers want fair pay. We take 'em all."

"I didn't know you did pro bono work," Victoria said.

Steve shrugged. "I do my share."

"And everybody else's," Cece said. "I don't let him advertise it, or every deadbeat in town would be in our waiting room."

"Solomon, you are full of surprises," Victoria said.

"Don't make a big deal out of it," he said.

"No, I mean it. I'm sorry."

"Yo, jefe," Cece said. "We gonna talk about the case or what? I gotta do my speed reps."

Steve sat on the edge of his desk. "Let's start with Charles Barksdale. Victoria, paint us a picture."

She took a breath. "He had a lot of interests," she began. "Art, literature, poetry. He was proud of his first editions. He was extremely well read. And he let everybody know it."

"How?"

She seemed reluctant to go on. Was Victoria Lord too refined, Steve wondered, to speak ill of the dead? That never troubled him. The deceased were the only people who couldn't sue you for slander.

"Sometimes, at a dinner party," she continued apologetically, "Charles would bring up some book by Proust or a Sylvia Plath poem, and you got the idea he'd just read it that day and shoehorned it into the conversation."

"So Barksdale was a phony? A pseudo-intellectual?"

"More like he had to show everybody he was the smartest guy at the table."

"Who cares what he read?" Cece said. "Did his bony-a.s.sed wife kill him?"

"Let's take a vote," Steve said. "Gut impressions. Who thinks Katrina murdered her husband?"

"Cooch wouldn't have the b.a.l.l.s," Cece said.

"Okay, that's a not guilty. Bobby."

"Ubi mel, ibi apes."

"Meaning?"

"Honey attracts bees."

"Meaning?" he repeated.

"She killed him for the money."

"One not guilty. One guilty." Steve turned to Victoria. "Partner?"

"I don't think we have enough facts," she said.

"Facts shmacks. What's your gut say?"

"I try not to go with my gut."

"I know. If you did, you wouldn't be marrying Mr. Guacamole."

"Don't take that s.h.i.t from him," Cece said. "He talk that way to me, he wouldn't be able to feed himself."

"C'mon," Steve said. "There's a question pending. Guilty or innocent?"

After a moment, Victoria said: "I just don't see how Katrina could have done it. How do you live with a man, have breakfast with him every day, kiss him before he goes to the office, sleep with him every night, then kill him?"

"A vote for the goodness of human nature, a vote for innocence," Steve said.

"I'm hoping," Victoria said. "And what do you think?"

"She's our client," Steve said, "and she's relying on us for every breath she takes. If a hundred witnesses saw her shoot a man on Flagler Street at high noon, they're lying or nearsighted or insane. If the polygraph goes off the Richter when she professes love for old Charlie, the machine is on the fritz. If the forensics all point to her, they've been tainted by mendacity or incompetence. She's our client, which means she's wrongfully accused, an innocent victim of a system run amuck. We hold her key to the jailhouse door, and we, my friends, shall swing that door open and set her free."

6. Lie to your priest, your spouse, and the IRS, but always tell your lawyer the truth.

Fifteen.

SKELETONS IN THE CABANA.

Victoria was trying to decipher the first autopsy report she'd ever read in the first murder case she'd ever handled.

"What are Tardieu's spots?" she asked.

"Pinpoint hemorrhages on the face," Steve said. "Common in strangulation." He was leaning back in his chair, flipping the pages of a magazine.

"Charles Barksdale's thyroid cartilage was intact. Shouldn't it have been fractured?"

Steve didn't look up from the magazine. "Maybe in a hanging, but not a slow, steady pressure like we've got here."

Victoria was starting to wonder about Steve's work ethic. He'd spent half an hour drinking Cuban coffee, eating guava pastries, and reading the Miami Herald, laughing out loud at Carl Hiaasen's column. He'd spoken on the phone with a man he called Fat Louie, saying, "Gimme the over for a nickel on the DolphinsJets." And for the past twenty minutes, he'd been thumbing through Sports Ill.u.s.trated, and it wasn't even the swimsuit issue. She longed to say, "Get to work, lazybones," but that would sound too much like her mother.

"Other than the injury to the neck, Charles had no bruises or lacerations," she said.

"Uh-huh."

Sounded bored. When was he going to roll up his sleeves, dig into the file?

"That's consistent with Katrina's story that Charles consented to being tied up and collared," she said.

"Yeah."

"The toxicology was normal. Blood gases showed-"

"Hey, rookie." He tossed down the magazine. "You're interrupting my train of thought."

"Excuse me. I'm trying to learn the forensics."

"You're wasting your time."

"Really?"

"Pretend you're Pincher. How do you prove the death was a homicide and not an accident?"

"Motive," she said. "Pincher needs a reason Katrina would kill Charles or he can't win a circ.u.mstantial case."

"Exactly," he said. "Forget the blood gases. Figure out motive."

"You didn't get anything from Katrina?"

"Nothing besides pa.s.sion-fruit iced tea."

"Maybe if you hadn't been so busy flirting."

"I was establishing common ground, building a bond. It's what I do."

"Especially with attractive women."

"Not always successfully." He gave her a long look. "Like I told you, she swears she loved her husband with all her heart. They had a perfect marriage. She had no reason to kill good old Charlie."

"And you believe she's telling the truth?"

"Absolutely. I'm the Human Polygraph Machine, and we've got ourselves an innocent client."

Had he been convincing? He had not told Victoria the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He knew she badly wanted Katrina to be innocent, needed her to be innocent. A career prosecutor-if you call three trials and two cups of coffee a career-Victoria had never defended any client, much less a murder client. Steve feared her demeanor could give it away, their client's guilt written all over her face. He doubted she'd fight as hard if she thought their client was guilty. h.e.l.l, that's when you have to fight harder and be more creative.

Maybe Katrina was innocent, but in the real world, the arithmetic was against it. How many lost souls, swallowed by the so-called justice system, were truly innocent? Five percent? Less.

Best was to have a client you liked, a cause that was just, and a check that cleared. One out of three was the norm, he figured.