I'm on a strange planet in a distant galaxy. How did I get here?
Steve came back into the room, carrying Victoria's missing shoe and wearing sweatpants, thank God. He tossed a man's shirt to Sofia.
“The old Rudnicks were silicone,” Bobby said. “Some funky chunky neurotoxins.”
Victoria wished they would change the subject. Sofia slipped into the shirt but didn't button it. She looked like one of those magazine ads that seemed to suggest: Sex was grand, let's drink some vodka.
“Methyl ethyl ketone,” Bobby continued. “Cyclohexanone, acetone, polyvinyl chloride, xylene, ethyl acetate, benzene-”
“Stop showing off,” Steve said.
“Kid's brilliant,” Sofia said. “Sometimes I wish I was an idiot savant.”
“I'm not an idiot, you twat,” Bobby said.
“Bobby! That's an ugly, ugly word,” Sofia said.
“No it's not,” Bobby said. “‘Twat. Noun, seventeenth century. Slang for vulva, related to thwaite, meaning forest clearing.'”
“You've memorized the dictionary?” Victoria asked.
“Not all of it. Wanna play the name game?”
“I don't know how.”
“Give him a famous name,” Steve said.
“George W. Bush,” Victoria said.
The boy squinted behind his thick lenses and chewed his lip. Then he smiled for the first time, revealing two rows of shiny braces. “HE GREW BOGUS!”
“Good one,” Steve said.
“It's called an angiogram,” Sofia said.
“Anagram,” Bobby corrected.
“How did you do that?” Victoria asked.
“Letters float around in my head, and I catch them. Give me another name.”
“Monica Lewinsky,” Victoria said.
Bobby fidgeted a moment, then said, “INSANE MILKY COW.”
“Wow,” Victoria said.
Steve sat down on the sofa. “Bobby suffered sensory deprivation-”
“When Mom locked me in a dog cage for, like, a year,” Bobby said.
“Oh, God,” Victoria said.
“Bobby's left brain sort of shut down,” Steve said. “Limbic memory, logical and sequential thinking. But his right brain took off. Striatal memory, habit and procedural thinking.”
“I can memorize stuff,” Bobby said.
“We've been reading a lot of medical journals together,” Steve said.
“We're best buds,” Bobby said. “I'm gonna live with Uncle Steve until I'm old enough to hook up with Jenna Jameson.”
“Is she from the neighborhood?” Victoria asked.
“Duh.”
“She's an actress,” Steve said.
“I don't think I've seen her movies,” Victoria said.
“Jennatilia,” Bobby said. “Lip Service. Cum One, Cum All.”
“I should be going,” Victoria said.
“Will you come back?” Bobby asked.
“Now, there's a first.” Steve tousled Bobby's hair and looked at the boy with genuine warmth. Gone was the smart-ass grin, the wiseguy guile. At home, with his nephew, Solomon was a different man, Victoria thought.
On the sofa, the boy swiveled up onto his knees and held up his right hand toward Victoria, fanning out his fingers.
“Son-of-a-gun,” Steve said. “He wants to touch hands.”
Victoria raised her right hand and they touched palms and fingers.
“Like with Mom,” Bobby said. “Except no window.”
“Window?” Victoria asked, bewildered.
“Jail visitors' room,” Steve interpreted. “When Bobby was little and his mom was doing time, they'd touch each side of the glass.”
Victoria didn't want to embarrass Bobby by asking about his mother's incarceration. Behind his glasses, there was a sadness and vulnerability in his eyes.
“Please come back,” Bobby said.
“If it's okay with your uncle,” she said.
“Anytime.”
“So long, Solomon,” Victoria said. “Bobby, you're a wonderful kid. Sofia, nice seeing you and your Rudnicks.”
“You bet,” Sofia said.
Steve walked Victoria to the door. “Good luck on the case. If you need any advice, just call.”
Solomon seemed sincere, Victoria thought, stepping into the humid night, heading for her car. What was that she was feeling, her emotions as tangled as raveled wool? A tinge of disappointment, maybe. She was going to miss the sparks that crackled off their crossed swords. She had the strange sense of something ending without ever having begun.
“Victoria, wait,” Steve called out, hurrying down the flagstone path after her.
For a reason she couldn't fathom, excitement buzzed inside her like a bee against a windowpane. What did he want?
Steve handed her a snakeskin Gucci pump. “You forgot this,” he said, then walked back into his house and closed the door.
3. I will never take a drink until sundown… two o'clock… noon… I'm thirsty.
Twelve
THE BIRD-DOGGING, CLIENT- RUSTLING CASE POACHER
Maybe she'd judged him too quickly, Victoria thought the morning after her visit to Solomon's house. Sure, in court, he was a gunslinger, taking potshots at anything that moved. But at home, he displayed something else altogether. Besides his pecs, she meant.
For all Solomon's flaws, he clearly loved his nephew, and the boy adored him. So few men these days were good candidates for fatherhood. If Solomon could only cure several dozen obnoxious traits, maybe he'd be a decent catch for someone.
Victoria was thinking these thoughts as she drove under a canopy of banyan trees along Old Cutler Road on her way to Katrina Barksdale's house. Giving it some gas, she passed a Gulliver Prep bus, a reckless maneuver on the two-lane road that meandered along the coastline. But time was of the essence, as lawyers were inclined to say. The Grand Jury was in session this morning. Word had leaked out that Katrina would be indicted for murder by Happy Hour. Victoria needed to sign her up and prep her for the forthcoming arrest and booking.
Still rehashing last night, she realized that Solomon had surprised her with something else, too. He'd graciously backed off the Barksdale case. Maybe he wasn't a total shark, after all. Now that she thought of it, there had been other moments when he showed a human side. Hadn't he defended her to Ray Pincher? “She's gonna be really good if you don't squeeze the life out of her.”
And there was Bobby repeating what his uncle had said. “She's pretty and smart and the best rookie lawyer I've ever seen.”
So, upon rehearing, she reconsidered the case of Stephen Solomon, Esq. She'd been too harsh with him. She knew she could be abrasive. Maybe she brought out his worst behavior with her own. Next time she ran into Solomon, she promised herself, she'd apologize and make amends.
As she turned on Casuarina Concourse, her mind settled on the business of the day-State v. Barksdale-and Solomon had no part in it. Would the indictment be for first-degree murder? What was the evidence of premeditation? What was the motive? Which led to another thought, more philosophical than legal. Just why do spouses kill, anyway? It all seemed so foreign to her. Solomon said he had tried more than two dozen murder cases, and now, for a moment, she wished she had handled at least one.
She wanted to appear confident with Katrina, but tension started to creep up her spine. She pictured Ray Pincher holding a press conference just in time for the evening news. Whipping up the media like a lion tamer at the circus. Maybe she should hire a PR firm. Hold her own press conference. Would that even be ethical? She had no framework for a high-publicity trial.
As she headed toward the bay, a soft breeze rustled the fronds on the towering Royal Palms in the grassy median. She passed a dozen postmodern houses, asymmetric concrete boxes gleaming in the morning sun. At the end of the block, sitting on a promontory surrounded on three sides by water, was Casa Barksdale. Victoria drove through an open wrought-iron gate, wended past bubbling bronze fountains, and stopped in front of a seventeenth-century Italian palazzo… built in 1998. Her mother, who always fancied ruffles and flourishes, would love this place. A sprawling estate of courtyards and loggias, arches and gazebos, curlicues and ornate designs. Inside were marble stairwells and terrazzo floors, dark wood wainscoting and plaster crown molding. Behind the main house, facing the waterway that opened directly to the bay, a lap pool with a mosaic pattern floor, and a keystone deck. At the tiled dock, the Kat's Meow, a custom Bluewater yacht.