Free Three To Get Deadly by Paul Levine

signify her continuing grief. I wanted to see, close up, what kind of woman plots to kill her husband. An actress, I thought. A fooler of men ripe to be fooled.
    I turned her down, Roger had assured me last night. Philip was my friend. I would never kill him.
    Did she take no for an answer?
    Roger shrugged. Said she knew some guys who'd kill Philip and never blink.
    I'll bet she did. A woman can't tiptoe through the gutter and keep her feet clean. If she'd been grinding in one of those jerk-off joints, she'd have run into pimps, dopers, dirty cops, confidence men, porno kings, and the other flotsam of the city. Plus, more than a few triggermen. Roger Stanton was in over his head with that crowd. Of course, Philip Corrigan didn't die from a bullet or knife or garrote. He died from an aneurysm twelve hours after my client operated on him.
    Dan Cefalo kept after Stanton for another twenty minutes but couldn't shake him. Then, tripping on his untied shoelaces, Cefalo called it quits and dropped into his chair. We tidied up some of the trial's loose ends, reading depositions into the record, admitting certain medical reports into evidence. I had no other ammo so I announced that the defense rested. We renewed our motions for a directed verdict, and Judge Leonard denied them, saying we had issues for the jury. Actually what he said was, "You boys got yourself a real horse race here."
    Dan Cefalo said he had one rebuttal witness, and the judge figured we could breeze through that after lunch and he'd still have time to make it to Hialeah. The Widener Cup was Saturday, and, like football fans who go to practice, he visited the stalls and watched the horses eat their oats and crap in the paddock.
     
    * * *
     
    Another down time, waiting for the judge after lunch recess. While Cefalo paced, I made notes for tomorrow's closing argument, Roger Stanton flipped the pages of a medical journal, and my secretary Cindy waltzed into the courtroom as inconspicuous as a shark in the wading pool. She wore a white miniskirt, black fishnet stockings, leather earrings with chrome studs, all topped by a new hairdo that was spiked, punked, and Day-Glo pinked. Her hair shot in various directions like hundreds of porcupine quills. It looked like she stuck her finger in an electrical outlet.
    " Que pasa, el jefe? "
    "Do I know you?" I said.
    "Not as well as some men I could name."
    "Not enough time for that."
    "You don't look so busy to me."
    "We're waiting for the judge. At least I'm waiting for the judge. The grieving widow is waiting for Probate Court to release the estate funds. And Cefalo's waiting for Wallbanger Watkins, his rebuttal witness."
    "He's got a long wait," Cindy said.
    "Huh?" That's my probing question technique.
    Cindy sat down and propped her feet on the counsel table. "Got a long wait for the good doctor," she said matter-of-factly.
    "What do you know that I don't, but should?"
    "So many things. But I'm willing to teach."
    "Cindy, this is serious. We're in trial."
    She frowned. "Lighten up. I just have a sneaking suspicion that Watkins is AWOL, and Dan Cefalo is so shit out of luck he oughta buy a new suit."
    "You didn't kidnap him, did you?" With Cindy you never could tell. Once in a sex discrimination case, a department store executive denied that he ever hit on my client, his young female assistant. Said he'd never been unfaithful to his wife, never even made a pass at another woman. Cindy tracked the guy to his favorite watering hole, ran an inviting toe inside his pantleg, and took him home. Luis (Long Lens) Morales, a convicted counterfeiter and part-time divorce photographer, leapt from her closet in time to shoot some grainy black-and-whites of the executive slipping out of his boxers.
    "Kidnap him?" she asked, feigning indignation and arching her eyebrows, striped brown and orange like a Bengal tiger. "Do you think that's the only way I could get a man to buy me a drink?"
    "You bagged Watkins in some bar?"
    "How crude," she