Solomon vs. Lord Read Online Free

dressed in a designer gown for the Vizcayans Ball, her Judith Leiber evening bag flecked with jewels but lacking cab fare inside. She remembered, too, her mother fussing about Victoria's decision to go to law school. A dirty business, she called it.
    “You don't have that cutthroat personality.”
    Maybe The Queen was right. Maybe law school had been a mistake. She struggled to be strong, to cover up her insecurities. But maybe she just didn't have what it takes. Certainly Ray Pincher seemed to doubt her abilities.
             
    What's this bullshit about Pincher sitting second chair?
Steve hated the idea. There'd be no more fun in the courtroom, that's for sure. And Pincher would put even more pressure on Victoria. Steve wondered if she could handle it.
    Doing his pretrial homework, Steve had looked her up in the State Attorney's Office newsletter, the “Nolo Contendere.” Princeton undergrad, summa cum laude, Yale Law School, a prize-winning article in the law journal. Nice pedigree, compared to his: baseball scholarship at the University of Miami, night division at Key West School of Law.
    In addition to the ritzy academics, there was a little ditty in the newsletter: “We're hoping Victoria joins us on the Sword of Justice tennis team. She won the La Gorce Country Club girls' tennis championship three years running while in high school.”
    La Gorce. Old money, at least by Miami standards, where marijuana smugglers from the 1980's were considered founding fathers. The La Gorce initiation fee was more than Steve cleared in a year. Thirty years ago, no one named Solomon could have even joined.
    So why was Victoria Lord slumming in the grimy Justice Building, a teeming beehive of cops and crooks, burned-out lawyers and civil service drudges, embittered jurors and senile judges? A place where an eight A.M. motion calendar—a chorus line of miscreants on parade—could crush her spirit before her
café con leche
grew cold. Steve felt a part of the place, enjoyed the interplay of cops and robbers, but Victoria Lord? Had she gotten lost on her way to one of the deep-carpet firms downtown? Stone crabs at noon, racquetball at five.
    Now Steve tried to follow the conversation. Judge Gridley was spouting his views on a college football playoff—a grand idea, there'd be more games to bet on—when they were interrupted by a cell phone chiming the opening bars of Handel's “Hallelujah.”
    “Excuse me,” Pincher told them, fishing out his phone. “State Attorney. What? Good heavens! When?” He listened a moment. “Call me when the autopsy's done.”
    Pincher clicked off and turned to the others. “Charles Barksdale is dead.”
    “Heart attack?” the judge asked, tapping his own chest.
    “Strangled. By his wife.”
    “Katrina?” Victoria said. “Can't be.”
    “She probably had a good reason,” said Steve, ever the defense lawyer.
    “Claims it was an accident,” Pincher said.
    “How do you accidentally strangle someone?” the judge said.
    “By having sex in a way God never intended,” Pincher said. “They found Charles tied up in some kinky contraption.”
    “This is big,” Steve said. “Larry King big.”
    “Charles was a dear friend,” Pincher said, “not just a campaign contributor. To die like that . . .” He shook his head, sadly. “If the grand jury indicts, I'll prosecute it myself.”
    Pincher was not given to many honest emotions, Steve thought, but the old fraud seemed genuinely upset.
    “Charles was a gentle man, a charitable man, a good man,” Pincher continued.
    Now he sounded like he was rehearsing his closing argument.
    “Boy, would I love to defend,” Steve said.
    “Widow'll end up with Ed Shohat or Roy Black,” Judge Gridley predicted.
    “I'm as good a lawyer as they are.”
    “This ain't a Saturday night stabbing in Liberty City,” Pincher said. “This is high society.”
    Pincher was right, Steve knew. He'd had dozens of murder trials, but most were low pay or no