"We need you," Lexy said.
"A bunch," Rexy said.
"Not now." Steve tried to edge past the twins but was blocked by Lexy's bony elbows. "I'm busy."
"You owe us," Lexy said.
Damn. He was about to be roped into work that was both nonpaying and mind-numbing.
Les Mannequins provided Solomon amp; Lord with office space in return for legal services for a bevy of lithe young women who frequently sued their plastic surgeons and occasionally their hairdressers. Lexy and Rexy also sometimes ran afoul of the law for forging diet pill prescriptions, parking in handicapped spaces- neither low IQs nor bulimia being recognized by the State of Florida as legitimate handicaps-and once assaulting a TV meteorologist who predicted sun on a day in which thunderstorms ruined an outdoor photo shoot. In the three days that Steve had been away, who knows what legal calamities had befallen these stork-legged, lazy-yet-rapaciously-avaricious young women?
"Lex, Rex, it's gotta wait. Really. I've got a murder case going."
Lexy pouted and lodged an elbow on a shot hip, her skinny upper arm, forearm, and angular pelvis forming a triangle.
"You gotta sue Paranoia for us," Lexy said.
"Paranoia? The club? Why?"
"Our names weren't on the list, and this new bouncer didn't recognize us," Rexy pouted.
"The big stoop," Lexy said.
"So you couldn't get in," Steve said. "What's the big deal?"
"We got in," Lexy said. "But the jerk made us wait, like fifteen minutes, and it was so hot, our mascara melted." She fanned herself to convey just how Hades-like it had been, standing on Ocean Drive, queued up outside a noisy, trendy club where horny young men crawled over one another like scorpions to buy them drinks.
"Matt Damon was there." Rexy picked up her sister's fanning motion, so now they seemed to be performing a Kabuki duet. "I'll bet he'd have cast us in his new movie if we hadn't looked so shitty."
Steve saw an opportunity, and while the twins pantomined, he slipped past them on the stairs. "I'll research the law," he called out.
"Mental anguish!" Lexy blared. "Gotta be worth six figures."
"Sure, Lexy. Sure. A hundred thousand dollars of anguish for a fifty-dollar mind."
"Whadaya mean by that?" Lexy demanded.
There was the clang of metal on metal as Steve opened the door to his reception room. Once inside, he heard a grunt, a guttural growl, and an exhaled "Maldito! That's heavy." Cecilia Santiago, a thickset young woman in black tights and a muscle tee, was lying on her back on a bench press. She had a cafe au lait complexion, and three metal studs pierced one wavy eyebrow, which was shaped like the tilde in "manana."
"Morning, Cece."
"Wanna spot for me, jefe?" She hoisted the bar and a cobra tattoo curled upward from rippled triceps.
"I'll make a deal with you, Cece. Type up the overdue pleadings and correspondence, and I'll spot for you."
"Slave driver."
"Anybody call?"
"The usual. Xerox says you're three months behind on the copy machine lease. Bobby's teacher called, something about truancy. A couple bimbos from downstairs. They wanna sue Ben and Jerry's. Just discovered there's fat in ice cream."
"What about Vic? Where is she?"
"Queen Victoria? How should I know?"
"Vic's a princess. It's her mother who's The Queen."
"Whatever, jefe. She ain't here and she ain't called."
He wanted to see her, wanted to talk to her. Why is it, he wondered, when a relationship feels shaky, you crave the connection even more?
Cece started another set, exhaling on the thrust upward, inhaling on the negative downward motion, the bar clanging into the metal brackets. Steve had hired her not from a paralegal school, but from the Women's Detention Center. He considered her crime a mere peccadillo. Beating the stuffing out of her boyfriend, then driving his Toyota into the bay after catching him fooling around with her cousin, Lourdes. Cece was a decent enough assistant, even though she screwed up Steve's pleadings by typing every word phonetically, when she bothered to type at all. She was particularly adept at keeping the models away, mostly by threatening to break their spindly limbs.
Steve walked to her desk and riffled through the mail. Bills, solicitations, and Cece's muscle mags. Maybe he should lift weights, grow some stingray lats like Mr. Deep Diver. He opened a magazine called Big and Brawny, turned to a photo of a guy in a G-string, his granite torso oiled up, his arms bursting with veins like writhing snakes. The headline: "Do Steroids Really Shrink Your Testicles?" Steve tossed the magazine aside.
"Guy's waiting," Cece huffed.
"Who? Where?"
"In your office. Some old geezer. Said he was a friend of your papi's."
Steve shot a look at the door to his office. Closed. He had no appointments today. Who the hell was in there, and why?
"Dammit, you can't let somebody you don't even know into my inner sanctum."
She looked up from the bench. "You afraid they're gonna steal your great works of art?"
"If you're talking about my Florida Marlins posters. ."
"Ain't talking about your briefs."
The premises of Solomon amp; Lord consisted of Cece's reception room/gym and a single office overlooking a narrow alley and a rusting green Dumpster. On warm days, meaning nearly every day, the pungent perfume of rotting vegetables, decomposing ham croquettes, melting tar, stale beer, and fresh piss wafted through the open window. Across the alley, on an apartment balcony within spitting distance, a Jamaican steel band could be counted on for migraine-inducing rehearsals, the musicians smoking giant doobies and occasionally cooking jerk chicken on a hibachi.
The office furnishings were Salvation Army Moderne. Two desks, purchased at police auctions of stolen property; a Jupiter Hammerheads baseball-bat rack, a gift from a grateful client, a minor-league outfielder Steve helped beat a steroids rap; and a fish tank usually stocked with Florida lobster, courtesy of a poacher client. On the wall, instead of diplomas or plaques from the Kiwanis, were posters celebrating the Marlins' two World Series Championships.
The fermenting stench from the Dumpster hit Steve as he stepped inside. Another scent, too, bay rum cologne. Steve knew only one man who used the stuff, and the son-of-a-bitch was here, round and pink, sinking into the sagging client chair.
"Some shit hole you got here, Stevie," Peter Luber said, gesturing with a small pink hand. In his late sixties, Pinky Luber-no one ever called him "Peter" or "Pete"-had a rotund torso with short pudgy legs and a round, bald head with a thin, hooked nose. His face and his scalp were the same carnation pink, as if he were mildly feverish. His cheeks were so chubby that his eyes were reduced to slits of indeterminate color. He wore a jet-black suit, a white shirt with rough-hewn gold nugget cuff links, and a red silk tie as gaudy as fresh blood. On his lap was a black felt hat with a maroon feather and a narrow, upturned brim. The bowler, Steve remembered, was a Luber trademark, as distinctive as an eye patch or a cane, and highly useful for keeping the sun off his already pink scalp. An unlit Cuban cigar, the short, fat Robusto, was clenched in his teeth. On the little finger of his left hand-yeah, the pinky finger-was a black onyx ring set with a glistening diamond.
What's the perjurious pink bastard doing here?
"If I'd known you were coming, I'd have fumigated for vermin," Steve said. "Now I'll just do it after you leave."
A hard look flickered in Luber's tiny eyes, then passed quickly. In that instant, Steve saw the toughness the man tried to hide behind his cherubic pinkness, his bowling ball physique, and his silly English hat.