Shark Skin Suite_A Novel Page 9

  “You won’t remember everyone else’s names right now, but you’ll like them,” said Ken.

  The rest smiled and nodded.

  “We have high hopes for you,” said Ken.

  “Heard great things,” said Willard.

  “The future is later,” said Shug.

  Brook became dizzy. Outside those floor-to-ceiling windows on the east side of the conference room was the reverse of her sidewalk view: a steep drop down to antlike people, taxis and the Las Olas shopping district reaching toward the Atlantic beach along Highway A1A.

  The table chirped to life with chitchat, everyone commenting on Brook’s TV debut outside the foreclosed bank. Laughter. Brook was silent.

  “Now down to business,” said Ken. “We’ve already assigned your first case. Sheffield et al v. Consolidated Financial.”

  Brook’s jaw fell. “That massive class-action mortgage suit against one of the biggest companies in the state?”

  “Then you’re already up to speed,” said Ken.

  “I don’t even know where my desk is.”

  Ken casually flicked his wrist. “It’ll all come naturally. The desk, the case. Relax.”

  “We’re counting on you,” said Willard.

  “No rush, you can start after lunch,” said Shug.

  Her eyes ping-ponged between the partners. It was something weird. They looked very much different, hair color, face shapes. Yet they appeared the same, the way some dogs look like their owners. It was a combination of clothes, carriage and general aura from decades of building one of the most powerful legal firms in Florida, inbreeding their mannerisms and speech. When one reached for a water carafe, so did the others. Their sentences segued seamlessly.

  Ken pressed a button on the intercom. “Nancy, eleven o’clock, take Brook shopping for some clothes.”

  Brook self-consciously looked down at herself, then pulled her chair up tight to the table.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Ken. “‘I’ve just started.’ But according to TV, you’re already a rock star at mortgage law.” He strolled around the side of the table and placed a hand on a shoulder. “You’ll be teamed with Shelby here . . .”

  Shelby said hello by raising a single finger.

  “ . . . He’ll teach you everything you need to know. We’ve decided you’re essential for this trial. You’re wondering why?”

  Brook nodded.

  “You’re jury candy,” said another voice.

  Ken chuckled and placed a hand on another shoulder. “This is Dmitri Smoot, our jury consultant. He can be a little blunt.”

  Smoot was the only person at the table with a goatee and no sense of humor. “Do you wear glasses?”

  “No,” said Brook.

  “You do now,” said Smoot. “The lenses will be plain glass. Our focus groups selected rims that connect with sixty-five percent of the total population, and eighty-one percent of those who can’t figure how to get out of jury duty.”

  Ken pressed the intercom again. “Nancy, twelve thirty, Vision Palace.”

  “Mauve scarf,” said Smoot.

  “Nancy . . .” said Ken.

  Brook poured a glass of water. So did the partners. The room started to spin.

  “That’s about it,” said Ken.

  “That wraps it up,” said Willard.

  “Roll credits,” said Shug.

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  THE EVERGLADES

  A Ford Cobra raced east across a narrow two-laner with no shoulders called the Tamiami Trail. It passed a roadside attraction of airboats and gator nuggets.

  They drove on in silence.

  More boat docks, dams, spillways, panther crossing signs, people cane-fishing in straw hats, vultures working the road. Pickups parked along grassy embankments. Men in camo caps roamed with machetes and baseball bats.

  Coleman turned his head as they went by. “Who are those dudes?”

  “Python hunters.”

  “I thought the hunt was over.”

  “Only the contest part. The stupidness continues.”

  The pair completed eighty miles from the west coast. Just before reaching the outskirts of Miami, the Ford made a right at Dade Corners and sped south on Krome Avenue. After arriving at the end of the state in Homestead and Florida City, Serge took a fork southeast away from the rest of traffic, into sparser settlements and grids of agriculture until there was nothing. He threaded the Cobra onto the kind of solitary road that said turn around.

  “What is this street?” asked Coleman.

  “It’s a dead end.”

  “Where’s the dead end?”

  “Forty miles.”

  Coleman whistled. “Now, that’s a dead end. Why are we going there?”

  Serge stuck a thumb over his shoulder. “To get away from all those python-hunting wannabe mooks. If I’m going to track giant constrictors, I need a sector all to myself so I can bag every last one.”

  The Cobra hadn’t seen another vehicle in either direction for a half hour. Coleman was working a bottle of Old Crow with diligence when . . .

  Splat.

  Coleman leaned toward a dime-sized blotch on the windshield. “Serge, what was—”

  Splat . . . splat, splat.

  Serge turned on the wipers and fired a squirt of washer fluid. “Mosquito season.”

  “Those giant red stains are mosquitoes?”

  “Where we’re going is arguably the fiercest insect breeding ground in the entire nation, where you often need wipers in total sunshine.”

  Splat, splat, splat.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Flamingo.” Serge hit the washer fluid again. “Most people think where we just came from is the last extreme stop on the bottom of the mainland, but our alternate destination is the real brass ring. So ridiculously remote that few ever make it or even know it exists.”

  “Anything out there?”

  “A ghost town.” Serge came around a final slow bend. “More than a hundred years ago, settlers had plenty of land upon which to raise crops and gather other staples to sail down to the wealthy wreckers and cigar kings of land-starved Key West. After the town disappeared, the Everglades National Park put in a remote visitors’ outpost, with a few motel rooms, but that was canceled by Hurricane Wilma in 2005, and now only the most rugged tenters hammer their stakes in the sand. From an airplane, the virtually empty designated camping area looks like a big pineapple.”

  The Cobra parked outside the visitors’ center. “They even sell mosquito lapel pins and bumper stickers and can coozies with drops of blood. It’s reverse-psychology advertising: Embrace your biggest drawback and tourists think that if they aren’t eaten alive, they’ve been gypped.”

  Coleman slapped his neck. “Like all those funky bars that say ‘Warm beer, lousy service’?”

  “True fact about those bars. The owners started getting complaints from British customers because they drink warm beer anyway, and when cold beer arrives, they say, ‘What gives?’ I guess bartenders in Liverpool are also rude.”

  They went inside and approached the info desk.

  “May I help you?” asked a park ranger.

  Serge opened his wallet. “Yes, one souvenir mosquito pin. Nice marketing tactic. With a name like Smucker’s . . .”

  “What?”

  “Where’s the tombstone?” said Serge. “I must touch it.”

  “Oh, the tombstone,” said the ranger, ringing up the pin. “Right over there with the exhibits.”

  Serge snatched the souvenir off the counter and ran across the room. He placed his palms against a flat rock and closed his eyes.

  Coleman bent down to read the artifact. “ ‘Guy Bradley’?”

  “Shhhhh,” said Serge. “I’m channeling. For the entire time I’m here, I’m going t
o be Bradley and carry on his legacy.”

  “But, Serge—”

  “I don’t know anyone named Serge.”

  “Uh, but, Guy.”

  “Yes?”

  “Who was he?”

  “Just one of my all-time Florida heroes.” Serge opened his eyes. A small tour group had arrived. He faced them and spread his arms. “Thank you for coming! Besides being a ghost town, Flamingo was also the Wild West. And Bradley became the unofficial sheriff, hired by the Audubon Society.”

  “We’re from the Audubon Society,” said someone in the group with big binoculars.

  “And a fine group it is,” said Serge. “Especially overcoming a scandalous past that you’ve been trying to hush up all these years.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “James Audubon visited Key West in 1832 and stayed at the landmark home on Whitehead Street, which is now a museum and gallery. He spurred conservation awareness of our feathered friends through his fabulous paintings. Ironically, in order to capture their majesty on canvas, he first had to kill the birds and prop them up in aesthetic poses with whatever they used before pipe cleaners were invented. You have to let him slide a little on that one because otherwise there’d be birds flapping around the ceiling of his studio, and all the paintings would have been blurry.”

  Murmurs in the group. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Then in the early 1900s, rich dames in New York tried to outdo each other, strutting down Park Avenue with ridiculous Lady Gaga hats sprouting giant fans of bird plumes that soon became more valuable than gold, and poachers began shooting up entire rookeries in the Everglades. So Bradley single-handedly patrolled the entire bottom of the state from Ten Thousand Islands to Flamingo, valiantly battling the heartless hunters. Out west, gangs robbed trains; in Florida, they collected feathers, which is embarrassing on multiple levels, and in July of 1905, only a few steps up that beach outside, Bradley attempted to arrest the infamous Smith gang and was brutally gunned down. Then, in one of the most famous Florida legal cases that nobody remembers today except me because I’m putting myself through wildcat law school, the head of the Smith clan was found not guilty in a Key West trial. Bradley was buried on the shore behind this building with a dynamite view of Florida Bay, but his grave was washed to sea in 1960 by Hurricane Donna. They recovered the tombstone and put it on display here. You must touch it. Any questions?”

  One of them looked up at Serge’s pith helmet. “Are you one of the rangers?”

  “No, just someone who roams from town to town, taking odd jobs, enlightening people, correcting others, then leaving quickly before they can say thank you . . . Come on, Coleman.”

  They ran out the door.

  The Cobra drove west as far as the park road would go. “Fetch the camping gear in the backseat.”

  “Which is the camping stuff?”

  “All of it.”

  “But there’s also a lot of weird electric stuff that I’ve never seen anyone camp with.”

  “Because nobody’s ever camped this way before.” Serge gathered a spool of wire and armature switches. “I stopped while you were passed out in Naples and did some shopping at the twenty-four-hour home improvement store. Since we’re on the great python hunt, I would be remiss not to conduct scientific experiments to further our awareness of the environment.”

  “But don’t your experiments usually have a—”

  Bang, bang, bang . . .

  Serge popped the trunk.

  “I’ll kill you!” yelled Linus Quim. “Untie me right now!”

  Serge swung the tire iron. “I hate city noise when I’m out in nature.”

  FORT LAUDERDALE

  Four small white cardboard boxes sat on a table. Two pieces of wood went into one of them.

  The wood came out with five lo mein noodles, and five lo mein noodles promptly fell off.

  A man sighed.

  Brook finished chewing and stuck a fork into her own order of chop suey. “Why do you keep trying to use chopsticks?”

  Shelby stuck them back in his box. “Because I’ve never failed at anything. This is important.”

  Brook slid a different box across the table. “Fried rice?”

  “Thanks.”

  Shelby. Shelby Lang, thirty-one, top of his law class and the fastest-rising star in the firm, mainly because of billable hours. That’s why the conference room’s wall clock now said 2:29, which was A.M. The law office had showers, an exercise spa, even a bunk room for catnaps. All about those billable hours. Shelby had on sweats with a Florida State Seminoles insignia.

  Brook’s hair was still damp from the shower. She wore light-green hospital scrub pants and a shirt with a picture of a bridge from a Brooklyn high school. Shelby decided that the dressed-down look wasn’t bad on her. And those doelike eyes couldn’t hurt with juries. But there would never be any untoward crossing of professional lines with Brook, because Shelby liked his roommate Jack better.

  For her part, Brook was a bit surprised by the pairing with her new colleague. The biggest firms were notorious for depersonalization, the bottom line and pricks. Shelby didn’t fit. He was funny, easygoing and devoid of arrogance. In other words, normal. Except for those damn chopsticks.

  “Gimme those!” said Brook.

  Shelby was working a single grain of rice toward his mouth. “Hey!”

  She slapped something in his hand. “Fork!”

  Shelby looked up and began to grin. So did Brook.

  They were hitting it off.

  She opened a folder of financial records. “How did your firm get this case anyway? I thought it was being handled by someone else.”

  “It was,” said Shelby, finally able to eat. “But it was just this tiny one-man operation in Tamarac. A hand-painted shingle hanging outside a former used-car lot. Guy named Ziggy Blade.”

  “Is that a real name?”

  “Even more bizarre is how he stumbled into getting the case certified as a class,” said Shelby. “Started with a single raggedy-ass client that nobody else would help. And normally Consolidated Financial is connected enough through political contributions that a plaintiff can only get worthless crumbs of documents during discovery. But Ziggy pulled a decent judge, and after a million objections and appeals, Consolidated was ordered to produce. So they pulled the classic needle-in-a-haystack trick, and literally a forklift arrived at Ziggy’s office with a teetering pallet of file boxes. They figured he’s just one guy; there’s no way he can sift through it all.”

  Brook opened the wonton. “Except they guessed wrong?”

  “Don’t know how the guy found the time, but he connected the dots and discovered such a large pattern of loan-servicing irregularities that it couldn’t be anything but deliberate. The biggest case ever of its kind in the country. And usually a sure win on just those documents.”

  “Except?”

  “You should see the legal team Consolidated is putting on the field.” Shelby bit into an egg roll. “Riley, Moss, Bauer, Tripp and Phaul.”

  “The Death Star,” said Brook.

  “We had a meeting and tried to explain what he was up against, but Ziggy wouldn’t budge. Until Riley went to plan B and buried him with another forklift. This time motions. Now there definitely weren’t enough hours in the day, and Ziggy faced having the case dismissed for non-response. Only a firm of our size has the resources.”

  “So I’m guessing you paid all his back expenses, let him to stay on as consulting counsel and promised a cut if we prevailed that would allow him to retire five times over.”

  “At least,” said Shelby. He handed two files across the desk.

  Brook began flipping through. “I don’t remember these people.”

  “New named plaintiffs to lead the class,” said Shelby. “Our firm dug them up.”

  “Don�
�t we already have enough?”

  “You never have enough against Riley. And these are particularly sympathetic.” Shelby grabbed a fortune cookie. “Dmitri Smoot said they tested well in front of a mock jury.”

  Brook stuck the files in her briefcase. “Guess we’ll be making some house calls.”

  “Hope you have comfortable shoes.” Shelby broke open the cookie and pulled out a tiny strip of paper.

  “What’s it say?” asked Brook.

  “ ‘Help! I’m being held prisoner in a fortune-cookie factory!’ ”

  Brook cracked up.

  “It’s an old Alan King joke,” said Shelby. “But a good one.”

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  FLAMINGO

  The sun rose and so did Coleman. He sat up in the backseat without memory. “What happened last night?”

  “You took an early dive before we could establish camp, so we slept in the car. Just grab something and try to be useful.” Serge set off with duffel bag in hand and a folded tent hoisted over his shoulder.

  Coleman pointed the other way. “What about the campsites in the big pineapple?”

  “Those are for people who don’t know what they’re doing.” Serge headed down to the beach and walked between the waterline and sea oats. He got a contact buzz from the secluded, snow-white shore facing due south toward distant mangrove islets dotting the bay under a crisp sky that filled his polarized sunglasses. Perfection.

  “Serge? Were you just messing with those bird freaks yesterday?”

  “Every word was true. Guy Bradley’s life even inspired the before-its-time 1958 environmental classic Wind Across the Everglades, starring Christopher Plummer, who tracks Burl Ives as the ruthless poacher Cottonmouth.” Serge stopped in the sand and nodded. “This is where Bradley made his last stand. Can you dig it?”

  Bird-watchers strolled along the shore. Up ahead, they saw a man in a pith helmet drop his gear before being riddled by make-believe bullets, staggering backward into the surf and splashing lifelessly. They came running.

  Serge popped out of the water with an ecstatic smile. “We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s historic reenactment . . . Now, my impersonation of a snowy egret.” He began jerking his neck and shuffling in the sand.