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real pro at a young age. Maybe overly earnest for my taste. I could be wrong, but she seemed to be one of those anti-gluten, pro-yoga, organic wine bar, Generation-Y echo boomers. A Gwyneth Paltrow type who would name her first daughter Persimmon or whatever.
    They’re really different, Solomon and Lord, but as people say, opposites attract. For whatever reason—maybe because they each bring different strengths to the courtroom—they’ve become a damn good trial team.
    Traffic slowed to a halt between Seventeenth Avenue and the entrance to I-95. A mattress lay in the middle lane. Typical. At least it wasn’t on fire. I was stuck behind a muddy old Chevy that belched oily smoke. The tag was expired, and I’d bet a hundred bucks the driver had neither a license nor insurance. I squeezed my oversize Eldo into the left lane, cutting off a young guy in a white Porsche. He banged his horn, and through the rearview, I saw him shoot me the bird.
    Aw, screw you, Porsche Boy. And your designer sunglasses, too.
    I’m tired of Miami. For a long time, I’ve felt out of place, a brew-and-burger guy in a pâté-and-chardonnay world.
    I got a call a few weeks ago from Clarence Washington, an old Dolphins teammate. After retirement, he picked up a master’s degree and then a doctorate in education. And this from a kid who grew up in the projects. I have a lot of respect for Clarence. Now, he’s headmaster at a boy’s prep school in the green hills of Vermont. And to think I knew him when he tossed a beer keg off a seventh-story balcony into a hotel swimming pool. With a Dolphins cheerleader riding that keg all the way down.
    Anyway, Clarence said he needed a new football coach. The guy who had the job had retired after like a hundred years. Apparently, there’s very little pressure coaching a bunch of pampered skinny white boys who play against others of their ilk. It doesn’t really matter if you win, as long as the uniforms don’t get too dirty and the parents’ cocktails are chilled. And you get to wear a sweat suit to work with the crest of the school on the chest.
    So Vermont was on my mind as I drove to the stinkhole county jail, stuck in traffic, horns blaring, and the thermometer closing in on ninety-six degrees.
    Steve Solomon, you may not know it, but you’re the tipping point. If you’re a lying scumbag murderer, I’m hanging up my shingle and heading north.
    Green hills. Autumn leaves. Ben & Jerry’s.
    Half an hour later, I pulled off the Dolphin Expressway onto Twelfth Avenue and parked my thirty-year-old convertible, canvas top up, in an open lot.
    I walked to the jail, a hot rain falling, as it did practically every day in the summer. But as the fat drops pelted me, I could smell the dewy grass of a manicured playing field on a cool September morning.

-5-
    Nadia and the Feds (Part Two)
    One week before the Gorev shooting . . .
    Office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida
    In Re: Investigation of South Beach Champagne Clubs and one “John Doe”
    File No. 2014-73-B
    Statement of Nadia Delova (Continuation)
    July 7, 2014
    (CONFIDENTIAL)
    ----

    Q: [By AUSA Deborah Scolino] I understand your reluctance to become involved, Ms. Delova, but you may not appreciate the precariousness of your position.
    A: [By Nadia Delova] I do not understand this word, precar . . .
    Q: You admit signing the ESTA form marked as Exhibit A?
    A: Yes.
    Q: In order to gain admittance to the United States?
    A: Is great country.
    Q: And you swore you had no criminal convictions involving moral turpitude despite being jailed in Latvia and Estonia?
    A: I was only Bar girl. No turpitude.
    Q: You swore you would not work in the United States.
    A: Nicolai Gorev told me to say that or they would not let me in.
    Q: And you swore you would leave within ninety days?
    A: That, too, he told me to say.
    Q: You are a coconspirator with Mr. Gorev in a wire fraud and money laundering scheme. Probably racketeering,