"I'm wondering if you should be the one to handle your father's case," Victoria volunteered.
"Who'd be better?"
"Someone who can be objective."
"I don't plan to be objective. I'm a warrior, a gladiator."
"You know what I mean. You have to separate the truth from fiction. When your father was disbarred-"
"He resigned. There's a difference."
Christmas lights were strung on the overhang of the houseboat, even though it was May, and even though the Solomons were descended from the tribes of Israel. Splotches of green paint haphazardly covered divots of wood rot in the stern deck.
Steve could see movement on the rear porch, his father getting up from a wooden rocker, a drink in his hand. Herbert's shimmering white hair was swept straight back and flipped up at his shoulders. His skin, remarkably unlined for a man of sixty-six, was sunbaked, and his dark eyes were bright and combative.
"Hey, Dad," Steve said.
"Don't 'Hey, Dad' me, you sneaky son-of-a-bitch."
"What'd I do now?" Steve stepped aboard, thinking he'd been asking that question a lot lately.
"Victoria," Herbert said. "How do you put up with this gallynipper?"
"Sometimes, I wonder," she replied.
"You could do a helluva lot better than him."
"Maybe I'll go check on Bobby," Victoria said, "let you boys play."
"He's asleep," Herbert said. "Tuckered out from poling the skiff all day."
"I'll go inside, just the same," she said.
"Coward," Steve told her as she headed through a door into the rear cabin.
"There's rum on the counter, soda in the fridge," Herbert called after her, gesturing with his glass, sprigs of mint peeking over the rim. Deep into his evening mojitos. He turned back to Steve and scowled. "You best cut your own weeds, son, and stay out of mah tater patch."
Even when reaming him out, the old man's voice maintained the mellifluous flow of molasses oozing over ice cream. Savannah born and raised, Herbert still spoke the honeyed patois of his youth.
As a boy hanging out in the courthouse, Steve heard his father call a witness "So gosh-darned crooked, he could stand in the shadow of a corkscrew and nevuh see the sun. So slippery, gittin' ahold of him is like grabbing an eel in an oil slick. So low a critter, ah had to drain the swamp just to find him."
Herbert could, as they used to say, talk a cat out of a tree. Even though four years at the University of Virginia followed by law school at Duke had polished his diction, Herbert had quickly figured out that playing the Southern gentleman with a tart tongue had its advantages in court. All these years later, whatever regional expressions Herbert still employed came not so much from his youth but from impersonating characters straight out of Mark Twain.
Now, standing on the rear deck of his sagging and splintered houseboat, Herbert T. Solomon, recovering lawyer-rekoven loy-yuh-was giving his son a piece of his mind.
"Who told you to petition the Bar on mah behalf?"
"How'd you know?"
"You think ah'm a senile old Cracker?" Ole Cracka.
"Jews can't be Crackers, Dad. Unless they're matzohs."
"Now, ah was just a jackleg country lawyer, but ah know when ah'm being poleaxed."
"Maybe jurors fell for that muskrat-in-a-tub-of-lard shtick, but I don't. So cut the crap, or I'll tell everyone about your Phi Beta Kappa key."
"Don't change the subject. Ah got friends in Tallahassee who say you been poking around in mah business."
"All right, so I filed papers to get your license back."
"Don't want it back."
"We could practice law together."
"Got a good life here."
"You know what the headline on your obituary will be? 'Disgraced Ex-Judge Kicks Bucket.' "
"So what? Ah'm not gonna be around to read it."
"Well, I will."
"So ah should do this for you? Why don't you just practice law with your beautiful lady and lemme alone?"
"Vic wants to split up, go solo."
Dammit. Steve hadn't planned on revealing that. But now that he had, maybe he could get some sympathy.
"She'll do better without you," Herbert fired back. "If you're not careful, she'll kick you out of bed, too."
"If the Herald interviews me for that obit, I'm gonna say how supportive you always were."
"Aw, don't be such a pussy. Ah remember when those Cuban kids kicked the living piss out of you in the ninth grade."
"Do you remember my coming back with a baseball bat? Breaking some ribs?"
Herbert drained his mojito. "I recollect going to see Rocky Pomerance at the police station, bailing you out. And you say I didn't support you?"
His father's support, Steve recalled, was equally divided between lackadaisical indifference and caustic criticism. Still, as a child, he had idolized the headline-grabbing lawyer, the respected judge. Part of his own psychology, Steve knew, was the childhood fear that he could never measure up to the standards Herbert T. Solomon had set. Then, when his father was implicated by a dirty lawyer in a zoning scandal, everything fell apart. Now Steve couldn't understand why his father wouldn't let him paste it all back together.
"I'm not dropping the case, so you might as well hear me out. I've got a great plan of attack."
"Ah ain't listening."
"You resigned from the bench and the Bar but were never impeached or disbarred."
"So what?"
"You can still pass the 'moral character' test."
"Let it be, son."
"I can win this, Dad."
"Sleeping dogs, son. Let 'em lay."
"What are you saying? Did you take bribes to rezone property?"
"Screw you! You know better than that."
"Then you should have fought back. Hired counsel. Jeez, Dad, if you were innocent-"
"Innocent until proven broke. Ah walked away. That's mah right."
"I'm gonna subpoena Pinky Luber, force him to recant his allegations."
"Son, you ain't got enough butt in your britches to take on Pinky."
"That little old man? He's …He's…"
Steve tried to come up with a down-home expression to keep pace with his father. Just how did you describe Pinky Luber, ex-lawyer and ex-con, the sleaze-ball who fingered his father?
Softer than a pat of butter?
Greasier than a deep-fried donut?
All vine and no taters?
Skipping dinner seemed to make all his metaphors turn on food. Steve settled on: "Pinky's nothing. Nothing at all."
"Don't be fooled by appearances. Pinky always had scary friends, even when he was a prosecutor. Dirty cops, thugs, P.I.'s. And he probably made a few more acquaintances in prison."
"Is that what you're afraid of, Dad? Pinky coming after you?"
"One thing you never learned, son. You start turning over rocks, you best be expecting snakes, not flowers."
Six
It was just after eight a.m., but the humidity already hung in the air like damp sheets on a clothesline. Overhead, the clouds were fleecy white with just enough gray to warn of afternoon rain. Victoria, Steve, and Bobby walked along a scrubby beach at Pirates Cove, waiting for Hal Griffin's seaplane to pick them up and take them to Paradise Key, where Junior would be waiting.
A turtle as big as a garbage-can lid slid from the sand into the water and paddled away. Victoria wished they'd had time for a morning swim. Preferably without Steve's plea for an underwater hump-a-rama. And preferably without crashing boats and cash-carrying lobsters.