States of Grace Page 3

  “Wait. Maybe you need a little incentive.”

  He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Meaning?”

  I dig my fingernails into my thighs and forge ahead. “Meaning how would it look if I happened to let it slip, let’s say to some tabloid, that City Commissioner Martinez has been doing more than the mambo with the wife of one of the county’s most prominent citizens?”

  The color drains from his face.

  “Wouldn’t go over well with your conservative constituents, would it? The ones in those big houses on the water who contribute so generously to your campaigns and for whom you appear at Mass every Sunday, even though you don’t believe in God?”

  He juts his chin out, a ropy vein pulsing in his forehead. “Neither of us is without blame for what happened to our marriage, and you know it.”

  “True, but I don’t have a reputation to protect.”

  “Anymore.”

  “Touché, but I do have one I need to rebuild, and that’s where you can help, given your relationship with Mrs. Slim.” I’d make air quotes with my fingers around the word “relationship,” but my hands are shaking so hard I keep them anchored under my thighs.

  I steel myself, determined to keep any hint of self-doubt out of my voice. “The way I see it, what I’m proposing is a win-win for everyone. Zoe Slim gets a good lawyer. I get a payday and some much-needed good publicity. And you? Well, I think I’ve already made myself clear on that.”

  Without taking his eyes off mine, he brushes some non-existent crumbs from his pants.

  “And one last thing. I’d appreciate your returning my car,” I say, referring to Percy’s British racing green Jaguar E-Type roadster. The car I learned to drive in. The one he picked me up from boarding school in to go leaf peeping. The car we were in on September 12, 2001, when I told him I’d enlisted in the Army. “That was a mistake,” he’d said. Maybe he was right. While my father believed in doing one’s civic duty, his idea of service was more upscale, less hands on. Maybe the State Department and a nice posting to London. The Peace Corps, even. But enlist in the Army and in war time? A mistake, for sure.

  He sighs. “You finished?”

  “Maybe. Do we have a deal?”

  A tug on the tie, his classic tell when he’s on the ropes. “Whoever represents Zoe isn’t up to me.”

  “Technically, you’re correct. But, come on. Like I said, you can make it happen. Or at least, Gretchen can, and I think she will come to understand it’s in her best interest to use her powers of persuasion on her husband.”

  “Soon-to-be ex-husband.”

  I glance at the folder. “There’s a lot of that going around.”

  He fingers the bulbous University of Miami class ring I gave him to remind him of home when we were at Columbia together—me in law school, Manny in business school.

  “And no, we are no longer involved, in case you were wondering, although I no longer owe you an explanation for anything.”

  “Did I ask?”

  He ignores the question, staring off into the distance. “She’s not a bad kid. No way she did what they’re saying.”

  The wistful look in his eyes punches me in the gut. It’s the same one he got every time we visited his seven brothers and sisters in Miami. How I’d relished his family’s backyard barbecues, so different from my parents’ stuffy soirées attended by politicians, business moguls, and famous artists. In Miami, with Manny, I’d felt hopeful for the first time since returning from Iraq. Racing around with his rambunctious nieces and nephews as the older generations watched with pride, it was easy to imagine that we would have a brood of our own, and that they would be watched over by grandparents saying, “Sí, eso es. This is what life is all about. This is why we made the journey on a raft of sticks.” But none of that was to be.

  “She was adopted. From a Russian orphanage when she was six. Like lots of adopted kids, she’s had some problems. But kid stuff. Not murder, for God’s sake.”

  “Maybe she did it, maybe she didn’t, but she is facing the death penalty, so she does need a lawyer. I think you’d agree, I fit the bill.”

  He’s chewing his upper lip, the way he always does when weighing the pros and cons of a business deal. A picture of calm, but the flush rising up from his neck gives him away. He knows he has no choice.

  “And it would be what’s best for Gretchen too, don’t you think? Dr. Slim seems like the kind of man who wouldn’t think twice about leveraging your little entanglement against his wife. Rich people are like that. And, of course, there is an election in your future, isn’t there?”

  He raises his hands in surrender. “If I can convince her to hire you, you’ll sign the divorce papers?”

  “And I’ll be out of your hair forever. Do we have a deal?”

  He picks a strand of lint from his sleeve. “You’re relentless, Grace, you know that? You drive a hard bargain.”

  I affect a coquettish smile. “I learned from the best.”

  “And, if it’s not too much to ask, maybe you could suggest that Gretchen send over a retainer. Let’s say…ten thousand? By noon tomorrow.”

  He drums the fingers of both hands on the table for what feels like forever, before saying, “Okay, you win. I’ll talk to Gretchen. But as for the car—I’m holding on to that for the time being. Percy left that old rust bucket with me for a reason.”

  I scrape my chair back, anxious to leave before he changes his mind. “I can live with that.”

  At the door, I glance back at Manny, his head lowered. “Please forgive me.”

  I duck outside into the soul-sucking sauna that is August in South Florida, hoping that one day, not too far in the future, I won’t have to apologize for my behavior. Or ask forgiveness.

  Chapter 4

  The screen door to the Star Bar and Grill flaps in the night breeze, playing “now you see it, now you don’t” with the hulking, barbed-wire-topped walls of the Broward County Jail across the street—four concrete bunkers, spitting distance away from each other, built to house five thousand but always overbooked.

  The Star, the community center for defense lawyers on the way to or from the jail has a sign on the door warning, “Cops and Prosecutors Enter at Your Own Risk.” The Star is the only legitimate business in the neighborhood. At least if you don’t count the Booty Call, the strip joint next door, and the St. Vincent Mission on the corner that offers free hot meals to all comers. Cheap booze, an espresso machine, and lax enforcement of the no-smoking ban. The lone food item on the menu is a medianoche, a Cuban ham and cheese sandwich with pickles, and the only entertainment a vintage jukebox that takes a kick or three to get the 45s to drop.

  I shoulder open the door and head for my usual perch, the barstool nearest the exit and tonight, the farthest from two bedraggled suits, ties askew, heads craned back, watching a fishing show on a circa 1975 TV mounted high in a corner.

  “Grace!” Jake’s hand waves at me from the kitchen pass-through. “Be right with you.”

  Besides owning the Star, Jake is an on-again, off-again investigator and all-around muscle for defense lawyers, or whoever can pay him enough. Jake knows the streets. He also makes a mean martini. Or so I’ve heard.

  I climb onto the red leatherette stool and drop my backpack atop the sea of sunflower seed shells carpeting the cracked linoleum floor. Pepitas, as Manny calls them. Just the thought of him makes my blood boil. Still, he did come through in the form of Gretchen’s driver delivering a cashier’s check for ten grand this afternoon with the word “retainer” printed on the memo line. It’s a start, I guess. But the thought of another guilty client, so close on the heels of the wife beater, is discouraging.

  Jake slips behind the bar, dish towel slung over his shoulder. “Drop shot?”

  “Roger that. And make it a double.”

  “Good Lord, how can you sleep with all that caffeine?”

  “Clear conscience,” I say with a wink. “And I’m not here to sleep.”

  “Yeah, well, why
are you up here so late, Counselor?”

  I motion with my head in the direction of the jail.

  “Yeah, who’s the scumbag?”

  I shake a scolding finger at him. “Client, Jake, client.”

  He turns his back to ready my regular poison, yanking on the levers of a brass espresso machine as big as a garden shed. Honest Abe’s Bail Bonds is emblazoned on the back of the tight, black T-shirt, which does little to hide his muscular physique. He’s tall and far from clean cut. A blond, sun-bleached mop hangs to his shoulders. Not my type, not that I have a type. I make it my business to keep to myself these days, unlike Jake, who makes it his business to know everything that could be of value about anyone who comes through the door. And then there’s the fact that Jake was once a cop. Talk is that he went bad. Maybe he did or maybe he didn’t, but all cops, good or bad, have something to hide.

  “Who be the client?”

  I stare at the shiny parade of liquor bottles assembled on the back bar until Jake drops the shot glass filled with steaming espresso into a pint of Coca-Cola and sets it in front of me. The viscous liquid bubbles up as the tiny glass makes a tinkling sound when it hits bottom. I take a swig and exhale.

  “Zoe Slim.”

  He takes a step back. “The one who killed the dude at that fancy school? You’re her lawyer?”

  “You seem surprised.”

  “La-di-da. Moving on up the food chain, are we? Not that you’re not a good lawyer and all. With all that family money you’d have thought they’d get some shark.”

  “So, I’ve been told.”

  “You never know, maybe she didn’t do it,” he says, wiping down the bar. “I mean why would a kid like that kill someone? Rich. Pretty. A life of luxury. Only poor people kill people, right? What would be the point?”

  “Thank you for your wisdom and humor, Mr. Philosopher Bartender. And that’s exactly why reason isn’t a defense, isn’t it? One thing we both know for certain is that you can never really know what a person is capable of, no matter who they are.”

  I survey the den-like space, but I can’t fool myself. I’m stalling going across the street to visit Zoe Slim. “Where are the storm troopers tonight? I assume your shindigs are still the best place to weather storms north of Key West.”

  “No doubt, but Ophelia’s gonna be a bust. Not even a Cat 1 hurricane. Just some tropical shower. Spoiled what could’ve been a rockin’ good time in here.”

  “No chance for violent death and mass destruction is always a downer, I suppose.”

  “Three months left in hurricane season, my friend. Plenty of time.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  He shrugs and jabs a remote to change the channel to the news. “Slim, your girl’s father, owns a chain of plastic surgery clinics, right? Lots of ads on late-night TV.”

  “Yep, new boobs with interest-free financing.” I wrinkle my nose. “Seems like there are two things in this world you shouldn’t go cheap on.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “Plastic surgery and lawyers.”

  He snorts, poking at the bottles on the back bar with a thing that looks more like a dead squirrel than a feather duster.

  “How’d you catch the Slim case?”

  I bite my bottom lip.

  “Come on, you can tell ol’ Jakey. Consider it the bartender’s version of the priest-penitent privilege. I’ll never tell.”

  I hesitate, uncertain if it’s because I’m embarrassed or angry. “Gretchen Slim, the defendant’s mother, is, or maybe was, Manny’s mistress.”

  “Ouch!” He leans against the back bar, arms crossed.

  I hold up my hand. “Not the best idea.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s a big case. And if the money’s right—”

  “Hey, turn that up, would you?” I say, pointing at a reporter standing outside the headquarters of the FLPD.

  “Excuse me ladies and gentlemen,” the reporter says, pressing an earpiece to into his ear. “We have some breaking news from the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. The prints on the gun recovered during the investigation of the brutal murder of Brandon Sinclair have been identified as those of the teen accused of his brutal murder, Zoe Slim, daughter of plastic surgeon to the stars, Anton Slim.”

  I tuck a twenty under the empty glass. “Of course they are.”

  “Hey, that’s too much,” Jake says, but I wave him off and slip out into the cloying darkness.

  Chapter 5

  I drop my yellow legal pad, Florida Bar card, and a blunt pencil pilfered from a convenience store last time I bought a lottery ticket onto the conveyor belt and proceed through the magnetometer, a gargantuan metal detector at the jail entrance.

  Beep beep beep.

  “Shoot.” I step back.

  The guard seated to the side of the contraption, an older man with a paunch from years of sitting, doesn’t take his eyes off a dog-eared copy of Sports Illustrated. “Got anything in your pockets, Miss? Change? A ballpoint pen?”

  I pull up my left pant leg and shake Oscar in his direction. “Nope, just this.”

  He leaps up, bug-eyed. “Holy Mother of God.” He turns his head this way and that, examining what, to the untrained eye, is nothing more than a metal bar attached to a flesh-colored shoe tree. “Can’t rightly say I’ve ever seen one of them things up close.”

  I drop my pant leg and proceed, ignoring the beeping. “Then you’re a lucky man.”

  He thrusts his shoulders back and salutes in the practiced way of muscle memory that will never fade.

  “What branch?” I ask.

  “Army. Spent some time in Nam. Damn near killed me. You?”

  “Same. Army. Iraq. Damn near killed me too.”

  “I’d say we’re both lucky,” he says, eyes drifting away to somewhere he’d been a long time ago. Back when he was young and everything was possible.

  “You’re good to go,” he says, rushing to retrieve my belongings and hand them to me.

  “Thanks,” I say, chin high, hand cocked in the first salute I’ve given since leaving Walter Reed.

  “No, thank you.”

  The guard mumbles into his shoulder-mounted radio and a barred gate slides open. I proceed to the central command post for the women’s wing, the clickety-clack of my steps echoing off the cinder block walls. At the end of the long corridor, another guard stands behind a smudged glass partition, a frail woman with mousey brown hair with a thin body, like a plumb line suspended within her green polyester uniform.

  I slide my Bar card and driver’s license into the metal drawer along with a scrap of paper on which I scrawled the cell block location for Zoe Slim I found online. The guard pulls the drawer toward her, but leaves the card and license sitting there. Instead, she scoops up a drippy sandwich from a paper wrapper and starts to eat. I take a seat opposite the window and wait. I wait some more. Waiting’s not a skill taught in law school, but it is one which has to be perfected to survive, as either attorney or inmate.

  I try not to dwell much these days on my service, but the guard’s reaction reminds me some still consider military service the height of patriotism. For me, enlisting was the most impulsive thing I’ve ever done, and that’s saying something. On September 12, 2001, I walked into an Army recruitment office and signed up, much to the chagrin of my father, who’d gotten me my first law job—a job in the North Tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan.

  As luck would have it, I was running late for work on September 11, 2001. The moment I emerged from the subway the first plane hit the North Tower. In an instant, my law firm was no more, my colleagues were dead, and the world had changed forever. No longer could I justify arguing about rich people’s money for a living. I knew in my heart I had to actually do something—not just talk about it—not recite hollow prayers for the fallen and their families, only to go back to business as usual. I felt compelled to act. The terrorists had left me no choice. What I vowed to do was not stand on the sidelines and officiate, bu
t to fight back with my own two hands to avenge the countless victims leaping from the towers against the backdrop of the bluest of bluebird skies I’ve ever seen.

  I shake my head to chase away the horrendous memories and motion to the guard in a “Hey, I’m just reminding you I’m here” kind of way. It’s been more than an acceptable period of time, even by jail standards, but a more direct approach such as a “Hey, will you hurry things along,” will only cause her to use what little authority she has to piss me off by making me wait even longer.

  She palms her forehead and takes a slurp of a swimming-pool-sized soda, stands, wipes her hands on her pants, and croaks into a microphone. “Attorney visit for Slim, Women’s North Unit B, bed twelve?” It sounds like more like question than a statement. I look around to see if maybe I’d dozed off and missed the arrival of some other visitor. But, no, I’m alone.

  “Tower B. One floor up,” she says, pointing at a ceiling-to-floor gate constructed of thick iron bars. It opens as I walk toward it. When it clangs shut behind me, I cringe.

  Tower B is stenciled in red paint on a door at the top of the stairwell, behind which are two rows of visiting rooms on either side of a security post. A black-and-white photocopied sign hangs on the door of each room, ATTORNEYS ONLY, which strikes me as a statement of the obvious, given my ilk are the only people allowed up here. Friends and family are permitted to visit once a week in cubicles on the first floor where they communicate via filthy wall phones, no physical contact. Inmates, however, can meet face to face here with attorneys twenty-four seven. Cops too, any time of the day or night, up here or downstairs, lawyer or no lawyer present—the jail’s frequent fliers know better than to say anything to law enforcement.

  “Room three. Hit the panic box if there’s a problem,” the guard says, focus trained on a console of video monitors.

  The panic box is an alarm rigged up under the table. One swift kick is supposed to alert the guard to trouble, but on my first visit to the jail as defense counsel, I booted a panic box just to be sure. Nothing happened. Just the hollow sound of shoe hitting wood, and a sneer from the man with a face covered in tattoos on the other side of the table. I’m not cowed, though. Way I see it, if you’re sitting across from me in here, I’m the last friend you’ve got, which is exactly how I need Zoe Slim to feel about me.