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  “Mr. Kincaid,” I said, “you appear to admit the allegations of the Bar complaint.”

  Kincaid tugged at a fleshy earlobe as if deep in thought. In his late fifties, he wore his hair long and dyed shoe-polish black, which only emphasized the white saucer of bare skull on top. “Could you be more specific, Mr. Lassiter?”

  “Do you admit to having sex with several female clients?”

  “No-lo con-ten-dere,” he sing-songed. “A serial seducer, I am, I am.”

  “Are you familiar with Bar Rule 4-8.4 prohibiting sexual relations with a client?”

  “Unconstitutional! Violates my right to the pursuit of happiness.”

  “That’s in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution,” I said.

  “Either way, our Founding Fathers were a bunch of horndogs. I saw it on the History Channel. Ben Franklin didn’t just fly kites. He had babes on the side.”

  I lowered my tone to a stentorian bass to indicate the gravitas of my question. “Would you concede that being sexually involved with a woman in a child custody case might interfere with your professional judgment?”

  “I concede nothing!” He fixed me with a glum expression. “Jeez, Jake, why are you prosecuting me anyway? You’re a defense lawyer, you big galoot. You don’t carry the government’s water.”

  “Jake’s no water boy,” the judge agreed.

  “Bert. Mr. Kincaid,” I said, “let’s keep this professional.”

  “Everyone on Flagler Street knows you have brain damage. Is that what’s behind this?”

  “It’s a good question, Jake,” the judge said. “What made you switch teams?”

  Concentrate, I told myself. Stay on track!

  “My doctors thought I should reduce stress,” I explained, “so I gave up my private practice for a nine-to-five job.”

  “Too many concussions on the football field,” Kincaid agreed, sympathetically.

  The judge stroked the stuffed alligator head on his desk, symbol of his beloved University of Florida. Gridley was a Bull Gator Emeritus, and his last will and testament provided for his ashes to be tossed into the air at the 50-yardline of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.

  “You had no quick, Jake, but you surely could hit,” the judge said.

  “Never thought I’d see the day you’d go to work for those tight asses in Tallahassee,” Kincaid complained, piling on.

  “It gives me no pleasure to bring you before Judge Gridley,” I said.

  “That’s me,” his Honor announced, in wonderment, Balboa discovering the Pacific Ocean.

  The serial-seducing lawyer and the semi-senile judge had knocked me off-kilter. It should have been easy to nail Kincaid, who had admitted to having sex with five clients, including one in a detention facility, the tryst captured on security cameras and broadcast on TMZ. In response to my petition to disbar him, he filed papers claiming that “No client ever complained about the quality of my services, legal or sexual. I am one of the rare breed of lawyers who can litigate all day and fornicate all night—and do both well.”

  And he says I have brain damage.

  “Mr. Kincaid, do you have any legal defenses to the charges against you?” I asked.

  “Sure, I do, Jake. I’m a sex addict, protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act.”

  Judge Gridley put his right thumb and index finger into his mouth and whistled two short blasts. “Halftime, boys. We’re in recess until 3 p.m. because Jake has an appointment to get his head examined.”

  “It’s about time, Your Honor,” Kincaid said, giving me a sly grin. He grabbed his briefcase and bolted from chambers.

  I gathered my files and headed for the door, but Judge Gridley stopped me. “How are you feeling, Jake?”

  “Got some ringing in the ears and headaches. Minor complaints. We’ll see what the brain scan shows.”

  He paused a moment and said, “This morning, when you came into chambers, we both said howdy, and you asked, ‘How’s Martha?’ You remember?”

  “Sure. And you said she was ‘fine and dandy.’ Your exact words.”

  “Well, Jake. I didn’t know what to say. Martha passed almost three years ago.”

  I stood frozen. “Oh, jeez, Judge. I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me.”

  “No, it wasn’t. I could see you didn’t remember. But the thing is, you were at Martha’s funeral. I remember because you commented on her famous coconut flan.”

  We remained silent. The judge let me think my private thoughts, which were mostly fears about my mind turning to a pile of mud. How could I tell truth from fiction when the past shows itself, then fades away like a mirage?

  C.T.E. is to former football players what black lung is to coal miners: the grim reaper cutting a swath through our fraternity. It’s a progressive, neurodegenerative, incurable brain disease. My prior brain scans showed early evidence of the disease, but no definite diagnosis can be made except in an autopsy. Hah! I don’t mind the blood draws, the radioactive imaging, even the spinal taps. But I damn well draw the line at an autopsy!

  The judge broke the silence. “You take care of yourself, Jake. Go get your noggin looked at, and Godspeed.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Protocol of Parenting

  Melissa Gold . . .

  Jake’s bare butt was sticking out the back of his hospital gown, so Melissa slapped it.

  “Ouch! What was that for?” he protested.

  “You’re supposed to leave your underwear on.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s a brain scan. Do you keep your brains in your underpants?”

  “Well . . .”

  She slapped his butt again. Left-handed. Where she wore the emerald-cut diamond ring Jake had given her the night he proposed while wading in the shorebreak off South Beach, a supermoon glowing overhead. Now, under the glare of fluorescent hospital lighting, they stood by a bank of lockers just outside the imaging room. Jake followed her instructions and retrieved his blue boxer shorts emblazoned with figures of roaring Nittany Lions. Other than the butt-slapping, she intended to keep the appointment professional.

  Jake had already been injected with a radioactive tracer, and in a few minutes, he would undergo positron emission tomography, a PET scan. Because he’d had several others over the past three years, it would be possible to determine if the tangles of tau protein—a sticky sludge that kills brain cells—had increased, decreased, or stayed the same.

  Melissa had administered a bunch of experimental treatments, from lithium and hyperbaric oxygen to protein antibodies and good old marijuana. So far, there was no cure for C.T.E. and no reliable method of either predicting its onset or the speed of its advance.

  After injections of the protein antibodies a couple years ago, the tangles seemed to shrink. But Melissa’s team wasn’t sure because the neuroimaging equipment had improved so much, it might have been simply a more accurate picture of what previously existed. As with much of experimental medicine, the results were vague and uncertain. When Melissa ran possible scenarios through her mind, she tried to chase the scariest ones away. With Jake, she struggled to remain objective, pretending at times that he was just another patient. That seldom worked. The burden of her research, so far unfruitful, weighed on her.

  I want to find a cure. I need to find a cure. For Jake and for everyone.

  Melissa’s current project studied the brains of former football players, cage fighters, and military personnel who had suffered head injuries, large and small. It had become well known that even sub-concussive injuries—getting your helmet slapped hundreds of times—can cause brain damage years later. The more we learn about the brain, the more concern there is about head injuries, she had told the grant committee.

  “How are you feeling?” Melissa asked in her serious doctor tone.

  “If you’re asking as my fiancée, I’m still in the afterglow of last night. But since you’re holding a clipboard, I’m guessing you’re asking as my physician. Tip-top. I could
do a triathlon.”

  “That might be a bit much.”

  “Drinks, dinner, and sex. Surely, you haven’t already forgotten, Doc.”

  No, she had not. Still dreamily in her mind was the passion and heat in the tumble of sheets beneath the paddle fan whompety-whomping in endless circles.

  “My short-term memory is fine,” she said. “How’s yours?”

  “Apparently, it’s A-OK, though I can’t remember if you had three or four . . .”

  “Can’t help with your arithmetic. How’s your tinnitus?”

  “Three drums and a tuba short of a marching band.”

  “Stress level?”

  “Remarkably low. Swapping criminal defendants for prosecuting my brethren of the Bar seems to agree with me.”

  “Good to hear. Irritability and temper?”

  “I got really steamed at Kip yesterday, but I kept it under control.”

  “Well done. Impulse control?”

  “Excellent. Not a minute ago, I resisted the urge to kiss my doctor.”

  “How about your long-term memory?”

  “Hard to say. Kip claims he told me a bunch of things that I swear he didn’t.”

  “You swear? Or you just don’t remember if he told you?”

  “An impossible question. I don’t know what I don’t know.”

  She made a notation on her paperwork. She knew Jake understated his deficits. “And your short-term memory?”

  “Trick question! You already asked.”

  “Well done. Let’s move on. Migraines?”

  “Pretty much every day. They start at level three, a petite ballerina bouncing a few grand jetés inside my skull. Then up to a level nine, a herd of pachyderms pounding the pavement.”

  “What are you taking for the migraines?”

  “You know the answer. Cannabis. All varieties. Sativa, indica, hybrids. Oils, edibles, buds, and honey. I’m an equal opportunity pothead.”

  Her pencil scratched a note.

  “If I’m not mistaken,” he continued, “you joined me last night about 10 p.m. with a particularly potent bud called Mendocino Thunderhump.”

  She looked around as if someone might be listening, then whispered, “It has certain psychoactive properties I find appealing and . . .” She lowered her voice even more. “Arousing.”

  So much for my professional demeanor.

  “And all this time, I thought it was me,” Jake said.

  Over the P.A., a Dr. Prystowsky was being called to the I.C.U.

  “Cannabis is also an anti-inflammatory,” she said, “so it may be useful for your various joint pains.” Meaning both shoulders, his right hip, his left knee and ankle, and a turf toe injury that had never healed.

  “Can we get this show on the road?” he said. “I want to pick up Kip and I have to get back to court.”

  “We have to wait for the tracers.” She checked her watch. “Ten minutes.”

  Her mind drifted back to last night, after their triathlon. They had talked about Jake’s troubling visit to Kip’s hospital room. She’d tried to convince him that his problems communicating with Kip were not that unusual. Many parents, maybe most parents, went through similar rough patches with their kids. Jake had disagreed, saying this went far deeper than missed communications.

  “It’s like he’s a completely new person,” he had said, “one I don’t know and don’t particularly like.”

  As always, she treaded carefully, aware of boundaries. She was a latecomer to Jake’s household. She didn’t know Kip when he was younger, so it was hard to measure the changes in him. She loved both uncle and nephew. “My boys,” she called them. More than anything, she wanted the family unit—Jake and Kip and her—all in harmony. That didn’t seem like too much to ask.

  But for a trained scientist, the vagaries of parenthood seemed imponderable. Where was the graph with numerical constants? The protocol for diagnosis and treatment?

  Last night, she had chosen her words cautiously and had spoken them gently. “I’m wondering if this might be the time to give Kip some room. Let him figure this out.”

  “Just the opposite. I’ve let him get away from me because I’ve been so damn involved with my own problems. What’s crazy is that he thinks the opposite. That I got overly involved when I thought I might be dying. It’s confusing as hell.”

  “We’ve talked about this, Jake. Hard as it is to accept, kids should achieve a healthy independence from their parents.”

  “You don’t get it, Mel. He’s hiding things. That’s not independence, it’s deception. And what about the Blizzard? You’ve taken psychiatry courses. He wasn’t rejecting cows or ice cream or a milkshake.” Frustrated, he raised his voice. “He was rejecting me!”

  Melissa’s laugh was a gentle wind chime that defused Jake’s anger.

  “What?” he asked. “What’s so funny?”

  “Jake, he wasn’t rejecting you. He was expressing his sense of individuality and personhood. Sometimes a Blizzard is just a Blizzard.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Two Men in Suits

  Melissa waited with me in the imaging room while the radioactive tracers traveled from my arm through my bloodstream into my thick skull and swirled around inside my brain. At least that’s how I imagined it.

  A young female technician wearing a smock with her embroidered name, “Lourdes Garcia,” approached, saw Melissa, la jefa, huddling with me, and retreated to the control room. She could wait a few minutes to fry my brain.

  “I had a revelation last night,” Melissa said. “About us.”

  “Really?”

  “I fell in love with you the day we met, when you took my deposition.”

  “It took me longer. I didn’t fall for you until you said, ‘This might sting a little.’”

  Melissa Gold. Neuropathologist. Compassionate human being. Smart, savvy, and sexy. The future Mrs. Lassiter.

  I felt lucky as hell that such a woman would fall for me. Melissa was a tall, slender woman with reddish brown hair and a sprinkling of freckles the color of paprika across her nose. Her eyes were a pale green flecked with gold. Her complexion had a rosy hue as if she’d just jogged five miles. And, oh, she was whip smart, to use one of my Granny’s expressions.

  Melissa had a bachelor’s degree from Columbia, a medical degree from Duke, and both a Ph.D. in molecular science and a master’s in neuroscience from Yale. This compares favorably with my education. I had been an indifferent student at Coral Shores High in Tavernier in the Florida Keys. We were the “Hurricanes,” though why we—or the University of Miami—would celebrate killer storms was something I never could fathom. At Penn State, I did enough work to get by, though I hit the blocking sled harder than the books. And night law school was a struggle.

  Now Melissa looked toward the window of the control room and caught the eye of Lourdes Garcia, who returned to the imaging room. They were ready to peek inside my brain.

  Ms. Garcia helped me into the sliding tray. The hospital gown crept up my thighs, and I was glad Melissa made me put my boxers on. I’m sure that doctors invented hospital gowns to embarrass patients so completely that they’ll be more amenable to following orders.

  Melissa gave me one last look, and I gave her a thumbs-up. She smiled and retreated into the control room where she would watch the monitors in real-time along with the radiologist.

  Ms. Garcia pushed a button, and the tray slipped into the machine with me aboard. “This always reminds me of a loaf of bread going into the oven,” she said.

  I thought it was more like sliding a corpse into the cooler at the morgue, but I kept quiet. Once I was inside, the monster machine began to cuck, cuck, cuck in those hollow percussive sounds. Insistent and loud, the way FBI agents knock on your door before battering it down.

  I had declined the offer of earphones with music to help the time go faster while lying motionless inside the machine. I preferred to think, my mind floating to my unhappy confrontation with Kip. I considered Melissa’
s opinion. She was crazy smart, but I thought she was wrong. This wasn’t a communications breakdown or some normal separation process.

  I failed the boy. In retrospect, how could I not have?

  What did I know about fathering, anyway? My own father was killed in a bar fight in Islamorada when I was a kid. My mother ran off with a guy who worked on oil rigs in the Gulf. That was Chester something-or-other, who fathered my half-sister Janet, who gave birth to Kip, father unknown, but likely someone whose mug shot has been featured in various post offices. Not that the Lassiter clan was descended from the House of Windsor.

  My granny raised me in the Florida Keys, basically by booting me out the screen door in the morning with a fishing pole and instructing me to bring home supper. In retrospect, that was a perfect way to be raised. I hung out with similarly lower-middle class barefoot kids on the island chain. Swimming one day on the Gulf side and the next in the ocean. Playing football on a field of crushed seashells with an ocean breeze in my face wasn’t so bad, either.

  But poor Kip. A vanished father. A vagabond mother, my half-sister, a serial shoplifter who fashioned herself a Bohemian rather than a fleeing felon.

  The cuck, cuck, cuck quickened its pace, sounding now like a thousand Mauser rifles, their bolts thrown into place, CUCK! CUCK! CUCK!

  Melissa thought that Kip was just expressing his individuality, his independence, his adulthood. I would never say this to her, but all her book-learning and medical knowledge couldn’t replace one missing element. She wasn’t a parent. Something else. She hadn’t been there in the hospital. She hadn’t seen his demeanor. She hadn’t heard the sharpness of his words. And she surely didn’t feel the wound, as I did.

  “Wake up, Jake! Survival of the fittest. Capitalism at work. And it does work. Max Ringle pays me very well, as my Tesla ought to prove.”

  The words still stung. How was it possible that Kip had rejected my values so completely?

  When the scan was over, with my freshly baked and possibly radioactive body out of the tray, I poked my head into the control room. Melissa and the radiologist were discussing the ligand molecules that bind to the tau and other stuff I didn’t understand. The project’s protocol called for three radiologists to review the scan before revealing the results, so I wouldn’t get any news for a while.