words come in very handy.”
Before leaving, I checked
on Kip who was installed in the conference room, a splendid place
of dark wood, tinted glass and marble, all paid for by grateful, or
at least, intimidated clients. Word had gotten back to me that the
lad had been videotaping all the female employees in the office,
telling them he was the casting director for Porky’s IV . No one seemed to mind
until he asked the receptionist to take off her blouse for her
audition. So I grounded him for the day, which he didn’t seem to
mind, inasmuch as television came with the punishment.
My secretary, Cindy, and two young female
paralegals were making a fuss over my ward, who sat in one of the
leather swivel chairs, sneakers propped on the marble slab of a
conference table, watching a black-and-white movie on the TV
tastefully recessed into a teak wall unit. The women were feeding
him doughnuts and sodas from the office kitchen and cooing about
his blond hair and blue eyes.
“ This nephew of yours is
the sweetest little thing,” said Cindy, who, like her boss, will do
anything to avoid sitting at her desk. “He’s going to be a real
lady killer.”
“ James Cagney, 1933,” the
kid said, his mouth covered with powdered sugar.
“ Huh?” Cindy looked
confused. It was not an entirely unfamiliar expression. She’d been
my secretary back in the P.D.’s office and was a tad unconventional
for a downtown law firm with offices thirty-two stories above
Biscayne Bay. She wore miniskirts and orange lipstick and had
three-inch fingernails painted different colors with sparkles
embedded in the polish. Her typing sounded like a chef chopping
vegetables at a Japanese steak house.
“ Look, Cindy, I gotta go.
If it’s not too much trouble, how ‘bout typing some pleadings this
afternoon? I’ll be back later for Little
Lord Fauntleroy .”
“ Freddie Bartholomew,” Kip
said, without taking his eyes from the set. “Ricky Schroder in the
TV remake.”
***
The Olds was right where I left it, which is
always a fifty-fifty proposition in a county where a hundred cars
are stolen each day. Some are stripped for parts, some are taken by
freighter for sale in the islands, and some turn up, repainted, as
local taxicabs. I had parked next to a powder blue SL 300, the
Mercedes convertible. My lead gas—guzzling monster made the little
German car look feminine and petite.
I eased out of the parking garage and onto
Biscayne Boulevard. It’s our showcase downtown street, running
along the bay. There’s a wide median with towering palm trees where
hookers, muggers, and transvestites gather, though they’re
generally shooed out of there just before the Orange Bowl Parade.
The boulevard intersects with Flagler Street, which runs due west
past the county courthouse and provides an entertaining walk among
street peddlers, panhandlers, and tourists chattering in a dozen
languages, none of them English.
Today, I had a short drive
north past Bayfront Park, where the multimillion-dollar Claude and
Mildred Pepper Fountain sits idle and dry because the city can’t
pay for the electricity to run it. Just past the park is Bayside,
an outdoor mall of T-shirt shops and rum-punch booths. On the west
side of the boulevard used to be the Coppertone sign with the dog
pulling down the little girl’s swimsuit. It’s gone, now, along with
the old library they knocked down to redo the park. Gone too are
the Columbus and McAllister hotels that were bought by some Saudis,
then flattened, and a few other local institutions, including The Miami News ,
Eastern Airlines, and Pan Am. Things change, but seldom for the
better.
In four minutes I was on the Venetian
Causeway, the bridge across the man-made islands to Miami Beach.
Blinky lived on the first island past the tollgate in one of those
step-back high rises that looks like a pre-Columbian pyramid. I had
been there before, but never with a police escort. Two uniformed
Miami cops were in the lobby. Another
Before leaving, I checked
on Kip who was installed in the conference room, a splendid place
of dark wood, tinted glass and marble, all paid for by grateful, or
at least, intimidated clients. Word had gotten back to me that the
lad had been videotaping all the female employees in the office,
telling them he was the casting director for Porky’s IV . No one seemed to mind
until he asked the receptionist to take off her blouse for her
audition. So I grounded him for the day, which he didn’t seem to
mind, inasmuch as television came with the punishment.
My secretary, Cindy, and two young female
paralegals were making a fuss over my ward, who sat in one of the
leather swivel chairs, sneakers propped on the marble slab of a
conference table, watching a black-and-white movie on the TV
tastefully recessed into a teak wall unit. The women were feeding
him doughnuts and sodas from the office kitchen and cooing about
his blond hair and blue eyes.
“ This nephew of yours is
the sweetest little thing,” said Cindy, who, like her boss, will do
anything to avoid sitting at her desk. “He’s going to be a real
lady killer.”
“ James Cagney, 1933,” the
kid said, his mouth covered with powdered sugar.
“ Huh?” Cindy looked
confused. It was not an entirely unfamiliar expression. She’d been
my secretary back in the P.D.’s office and was a tad unconventional
for a downtown law firm with offices thirty-two stories above
Biscayne Bay. She wore miniskirts and orange lipstick and had
three-inch fingernails painted different colors with sparkles
embedded in the polish. Her typing sounded like a chef chopping
vegetables at a Japanese steak house.
“ Look, Cindy, I gotta go.
If it’s not too much trouble, how ‘bout typing some pleadings this
afternoon? I’ll be back later for Little
Lord Fauntleroy .”
“ Freddie Bartholomew,” Kip
said, without taking his eyes from the set. “Ricky Schroder in the
TV remake.”
***
The Olds was right where I left it, which is
always a fifty-fifty proposition in a county where a hundred cars
are stolen each day. Some are stripped for parts, some are taken by
freighter for sale in the islands, and some turn up, repainted, as
local taxicabs. I had parked next to a powder blue SL 300, the
Mercedes convertible. My lead gas—guzzling monster made the little
German car look feminine and petite.
I eased out of the parking garage and onto
Biscayne Boulevard. It’s our showcase downtown street, running
along the bay. There’s a wide median with towering palm trees where
hookers, muggers, and transvestites gather, though they’re
generally shooed out of there just before the Orange Bowl Parade.
The boulevard intersects with Flagler Street, which runs due west
past the county courthouse and provides an entertaining walk among
street peddlers, panhandlers, and tourists chattering in a dozen
languages, none of them English.
Today, I had a short drive
north past Bayfront Park, where the multimillion-dollar Claude and
Mildred Pepper Fountain sits idle and dry because the city can’t
pay for the electricity to run it. Just past the park is Bayside,
an outdoor mall of T-shirt shops and rum-punch booths. On the west
side of the boulevard used to be the Coppertone sign with the dog
pulling down the little girl’s swimsuit. It’s gone, now, along with
the old library they knocked down to redo the park. Gone too are
the Columbus and McAllister hotels that were bought by some Saudis,
then flattened, and a few other local institutions, including The Miami News ,
Eastern Airlines, and Pan Am. Things change, but seldom for the
better.
In four minutes I was on the Venetian
Causeway, the bridge across the man-made islands to Miami Beach.
Blinky lived on the first island past the tollgate in one of those
step-back high rises that looks like a pre-Columbian pyramid. I had
been there before, but never with a police escort. Two uniformed
Miami cops were in the lobby. Another
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