by Paul Levine
***
“You look like death warmed over.” She opened the blinds with an irritating clackety-clack, and bright sun slanted through the window and across the bed. “Lord-y, you look even worse in the daylight.”
I pried my eyes open and squinted into the glare, finding a silhouette of Granny Lassiter leaning over me. “Good morning to you, too, Florence Nightingale.”
Granny clucked her disapproval and began straightening up the room, picking up perfectly clean T-shirts that happened to be crumpled into piles on the floor. She rearranged my stylish collection of Dolphins commemorative Super Bowl ashtrays, ran a finger over a chest of drawers, leaving a trail in the dust. “Brought you some white lightning,” she said, hoisting a wicker picnic basket onto the bed. She pulled out a mason jar filled with a liquid that could power a Saturn rocket. “It’ll stop the pain dead in its tracks.”
“So will a coma,” I said.
I took a sip and grimaced. Granny slipped downstairs into the kitchen, and at lunchtime reappeared with a bowl of steaming conch chowder and some grouper fillets cooked in coconut milk and lime juice. I ate, then dozed off again, just after she told me she was going to give Kip a haircut since I apparently hadn’t thought about it.
It was late afternoon when two more visitors squeezed into my little bedroom. One had been there before. They both wore navy blue business suits, but the lady looked better in hers.
“Hello, Jo Jo,” I said. “Abe, what brings you here? Find another corpse in my house?”
“Nah, but if you looked any worse ...”
Just then, Kip stuck his court-ordered video camera through the open door. “I told John Law he couldn’t come in without a warrant, but Granny said it was okay. Did I do right, Uncle Jake?”
“You done good, kid,” I said, trying to sound like Jimmy Cagney, “but next time, give him a fatal case of lead poisoning, see?
Kip lowered the camera, winked, and shot a pretend gun at Abe Socolow, who seemed distressed at my felonious advice. Jo Jo came over to the bed, leaned down and kissed me on the forehead, or rather, on a purple welt on my forehead. Kip walked in and sort of hung around in the corner, taping the scene for a documentary, My Uncle, the Punching Bag.
“I brought you something,” Socolow said, tossing a bag onto the bed.
I smelled the garlic bagels before I opened the bag. “Thanks, Abe. Better than serving an indictment. I guess you believe me now.”
“About what?”
“That I didn’t kill Hornback or Blinky. That crazy cowboy Cimarron did, and he tried to kill me, or at least, threatened to.”
Socolow reached into the bag, pulled out one of my bagels and started chewing. “Doesn’t fit. If Cimarron killed Blinky, why’d he ask you where he was?”
I shot a look at Jo Jo.
“I’m sorry, Jake. I gave a statement. I had to tell Abe what Simmy said.”
I turned back to Socolow. “I don’t know why he asked. Maybe it doesn’t make any sense, but look at the facts. There are four people involved in Rocky Mountain Treasures. One is dead, one is missing and presumed dead, one just got the crap kicked out of him by the fourth one. C’mon, Abe, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes ...”
“Maybe you’re right, but maybe not. You know as well as I do that when you’re dealing with circumstantial evidence, you’ve got to rule out the possibility of any other set of facts. Who’s to say that you and Cimarron aren’t involved in a power struggle for that treasure company? Maybe the other two just got in the way. Or maybe Hornback sided with Cimarron, and you had him taken out, and Blinky sided with you, and Cimarron took him out. Or vice versa, or a hundred other scenarios I haven’t thought of.”
“Abe! I’m not in a power struggle with the cowboy. I never even knew the guy existed. I never asked to be in that company. I was just dragged into it.”
Socolow seemed to think about it. He gave the impression of engaging in quiet, deductive reasoning, but after a moment, he said, “You got any cream cheese?”
“No. Abe, you’re giving me a headache. What are you doing about Cimarron?”
“No way we can charge him with murder, but if you and Josefina give a sworn statement, we’ll file a direct information for aggravated assault and trespass. You want us to charge him?”
“Yes,” I said.
“No,” Jo Jo said.
“Well, I’m sure pleased the two of you are back together,” Socolow said. “Just like old times. Maybe I ought to leave the room and let you hash this out.” He stood up and started for the door. “You think your granny brought any of that Key lime pie with her?”
When he was gone, Jo Jo shot a nervous look toward Kip, who was sitting in the corner.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Kip and I are covered by the uncle-nephew privilege.”
“There’s no such thing,” she told me. Turning back to the kid, she said, “Would you turn off the camera please?”
“I will if you say, ‘Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.’
She looked puzzled.
“An audition,” I explained. “He’s looking for a new Bette Davis.”
“Jake,” she said, giving me a no-nonsense look I remembered so well, “this is serious.”
“Okay, Kip. It’s a wrap. I’m closing down production. You can stay and listen but keep quiet.”
He grumbled but turned off the camera.
Jo Jo waited a moment, then said, “Simmy called me this morning.”
“Great, where is he?”
“Didn’t say. He apologized, said he lost his head, but it was a combination of things. Jealousy at finding you in my bed, anger at Luis, frustration with the company.”
“Okay, he’s got problems, and he works them out by using my head for punting practice. I hope you told him that the next time I see him, I going to even things up.”
“No, I didn’t tell him that,” Jo Jo said, evenly. “Mostly, I listened. He kept repeating what he said the other night, that Blinky had double-crossed him, and you must have been in on it. Then, he told me he wanted me back. He didn’t realize it before, but he wants to start again.”
“Yeah, well tell him to take a number. I’m first in line.”
“Oh, Jake. I don’t know what to do. I really don’t. A week ago, I had no one, and now, two men want me.”
“Like Katharine Hepburn in The Rainmaker,” Kip said.
“Hey, kid,” I said, “how ‘bout going downstairs and keep an eye on the D.A.”
“Why? Is this where it gets X-rated?”
I shooed him out, and we were alone. “Jo Jo, my head is spinning when it isn’t throbbing. Two nights ago, we made love, and it was a ten on the Richter scale. We turned back the clock. Then we get a visit from a maniac the size of a missile silo, a guy who may have killed your brother, and now you’re telling me you’re thinking about going back to him. Is that what I’m hearing?”
Her dark eyes were moist. “I don’t know, Jake. I just don’t know. It’s so much more complicated than you realize. Luis didn’t tell you everything, and neither did I.”
“I’m listening,” I said.
But she wasn’t talking.
“Jo Jo!”
“I’m so sorry Luis got you involved in this. Maybe it’s not too late to get you out. Please, Jake, let it drop. Let me handle it. I have things I’ve got to do. Don’t follow me. And someday I hope you’ll forgive me.”
She bolted from the room, and I heard her blue patent leather pumps beating a staccato retreat down the stairs. I wanted to chase after her, but I couldn’t. I wanted to call out to her, to ask her more questions.
Starting with one...
Forgive you for what?
And backing up a bit...
Follow you where?
And maybe most important...
Get me out of what?
Which was the most difficult of all, because if you don’t know what you’re involved in, how the heck are you going to get out?
&nb
sp; Chapter 13
A Dozen Deadly Thoughts
I went back to work, shuffling papers, pleading out first-timers for stern lectures and probation because the prisons
were too crowded to house my fallen angels. Weeks passed with no news. Metro police could not find the moose disguised as a cowboy and finally asked for help from the sheriff s department in Pitkin County, Colorado, on the theory that Cimarron had gone home.
Our local cops seemed to be happy to lateral the ball. In a county with a murder a day and a hundred stolen cars a week, arresting a guy for assault was not the highest priority. Especially when the word I was getting from the state attorney’s office was that Socolow considered the whole thing a lovers’ triangle where nobody got killed. In other words, no big deal, a couple of guys trading punches over a woman. I didn’t see it that way, but then I was the guy whose ears rang for a week.
Maybe the case embarrassed Socolow. After all, Jo Jo Baroso was on his staff. Who needs the sly remarks and elbow-in-the-ribs jokes about the lady prosecutor con dos amantes in the bedroom?
Anyway, that’s what I was thinking because Socolow was more aloof than usual. He stopped returning my calls. He let it get around town that I was either a witness or a suspect in more cases than I was a lawyer. Then I noticed a gray Dodge behind me on the way home from the office, and again the next day on the way to the courthouse. I wouldn’t have paid attention, except each day, the Dodge changed lanes suddenly to keep me in sight. Two men were in the front seat, but I couldn’t make out their features. On South Miami Avenue headed north from Coconut Grove, I pulled into the Vizcaya parking lot and let the car go by, checking the license number. As I figured, state-owned. Either Socolow had me under surveillance, or the governor was tracking me down to offer a judgeship.
Abe Socolow.
We had known each other since I squeaked through the bar exam and landed a job in the P.D.’s office. He was a young assistant state attorney, whose enthusiasm had not yet been sharpened into cynicism. He prosecuted shoplifters, check bouncers, and drunk drivers with equal vigor, and I defended them with creativity. He usually won, but that’s the way it works in the den of iniquity (and inequity) of the Metro Justice Building. Other defense lawyers considered Socolow dour and mean-spirited. I always liked him, admired his fighting spirit, even found him funny in a hard-assed way. Years ago, in an arson case, I asked for a continuance because my client was in the hospital.
“What’s wrong with him?” the judge asked.
“Probably smoke inhalation,” Socolow said.
Socolow worked long hours, took on difficult cases, and his career soared. Felony division within a year, major crimes the next, public corruption unit, then capital cases. He became state attorney by default when Nick Wolf, his predecessor, took a fall for playing footsie with drug dealers.
My career was different. It started slow, then tapered off. When I realized that virtually all my clients were guilty— though not always with what they were charged—some of the air went out of me. If I was going to rescue the flotsam and jetsam of the sewage pipe we call the justice system, I might as well get paid for it. I went downtown to Harman & Fox, an old-line firm that represents insurance companies and banks. The crusty coots there wanted someone who could try a tough case without peeing his pants, and as a concession to my past, allowed me to handle criminal cases, though I suspect they wish they had a back door for my clients to enter and leave.
So Abe Socolow was an old foe. Strange that I had begun to think of him as an old friend. Is my life so empty that I concocted a kinship out of an adversarial relationship? Maybe, but what a depressing thought.
Now what was Socolow doing? He was a real pro who wouldn’t let old times get in the way of a case. He could bring me bagels one day and have me tailed the next.
And on the third day, maybe get a warrant to tap my phones.
And on the fourth day, get the grand jury to indict me for murder.
And so on until he rested. At which time I’d have to present my case.
So here I was sinking into paranoia, shooting glances at my rearview mirror, listening for buzzes on my phone line. There is no worse fear for a defense lawyer than to believe the government is listening to his telephone calls. Well, maybe one. A few years ago, the feds tried to seize lawyers’ fees on the theory they were clients’ ill-gotten gains, something that shook the defense bar down to its Gucci loafers. The lawyers weren’t concerned about their fees, of course. No, not at all. As I recall the high-falutin’ argument, my brethren were all lathered up about the government tampering with the constitutional right of counsel. And if you believe that, I’ll sell you some of Blinky Baroso’s waterfront property.
The state has awesome powers when it decides to use them, and right now, it was using the power of intimidation. I wouldn’t talk to my clients on the phone, except to remind them of the importance of testifying truthfully.
Even when clients came to the office, I was worried they might be wired. A carelessly misspoken line could be interpreted as suborning perjury or obstructing justice.
So I was testy, suspicious, and tweaked out, to use Kip’s phrase. Mostly, though, I couldn’t focus. It didn’t help that Jo Jo Baroso failed to return my phone calls for a week. When I tried the state attorney’s office, I got her voice mail. At her cottage, the answering machine kept picking up.
On a hunch, I had Cindy call The Miami Herald as one Josefina Jovita Baroso, asking why her paper hadn’t been delivered. Because, the circulation clerk said, the computer said you stopped the paper indefinitely three days ago.
Okay, she has a right not to read the paper.
Or to leave town.
Maybe a quick vacation. And what right do I have to complain, just because we had a quick roll in the sack?
I kept telling myself these things. Then I asked Cindy to run to the courthouse and check out the property tax rolls, a task that conflicted with an appointment to dye her hair the color of blue steel .38. She came back with information on a twenty-seven-acre parcel just off Old Cutler Road that years ago was a tropical fruit plantation and now is zoned for three-acre homesites, though the only building is a former caretaker’s cottage. The owner, according to the computer printout, is one K. C. Cimarron, Roaring Fork Road, Basalt, Colorado.
Oh.
So the tough guy is her landlord.
And former lover.
Who wants her back.
And she’s gone to who knows where.
I left the office and put the top down on the Olds 442. In late afternoon, the sun was slanting hard from a cloudless summer sky, and the breeze was a blast furnace of noxious fumes. I headed down U.S. 1 to LeJeune, took a left, passed Merrie Christmas Park, rounded the circle with the statue honoring the Barefoot Mailman, and drove under an umbrella of banyan trees down Old Cutler Road, a winding two-lane strip of asphalt that hugs the shoreline of Biscayne Bay.
I got to the plantation around six o’clock. The same No trespassing sign at the front gate, the same stunted trees and rotting fruit, the same cottage, this time dark and empty.
I went around to the back and tried the porch door. Nothing doing. I circled the cottage, nudging the windows. Still nothing. The screen door in front was locked with a simple hook from the inside.
Strange.
That could only be done if you’re in the house. Once you leave, the screen door stays unlocked.
My first thought was one of sheer terror. Images of the strangled Kyle Hornback, the missing Blinky, the attack by Cimarron.
A dozen deadly thoughts ricocheted through my mind. Jo Jo must be inside the house, her body broken and bloodied. What a fool I had been. I hadn’t protected her from Cimarron, and now I was overcome with equal portions of dread, grief, and guilt.
I yanked open the screen door, tearing the hook out of the soft wood. My hand was still in the cast, but my shoulder was fine, except for old scar tissue. I knocked the door off its hinges in three tries.
; Inside it was hot, stuffy, and silent, except for a lone horsefly that buzzed and banged against a window. There were women’s magazines on the wicker coffee table. In the kitchen, a clean cup and saucer sat in a drying rack in the sink. In the small bedroom, all was neat and tidy, the bed made, the pillows fluffed.
There was no body, of course.
The porch door was locked. I knew that. I had tried it from the outside. I looked out the window at the tire tracks in the brown grass in the shade of a Key lime tree. That’s where Jo Jo parked her car. I knew that, too. But I had forgotten, or hadn’t put it all together. A stupid little mistake, leaping to conclusions. Jo Jo left the house by the porch door, leaving the front screen door locked. What was wrong with me, anyway? I was jumpy, irrational, using bad judgment.
I was getting ready to leave, figuring I could call a carpenter to replace the door, when I saw the answering machine with its little green light. Seven calls, according to the digital message counter. I hit the playback button.
Three from me, the first one and the last two.
Two from the state attorney’s office: Call your secretary.
One from a solicitor for a charity.
And one from Gables Travel, the second message, which I figured to have come three or four days ago. “Your ticket will be waiting at the Continental desk at the airport tomorrow. Flight four-fifty-eight, Miami to Denver. Open return.”
***
I slept restlessly, dreaming of snow-covered mountains filled with buried treasure. I awoke early, squeezed a Key lime onto a fresh mango for breakfast, then drove to the office. I called my loyal secretary into my office, something that interfered with the filing of her three-inch stiletto-blade fingernails.
“Cindy, help me.”
She waited. “It’s Jo Jo.”
Cindy stopped chewing her gum and twirled a finger through a knot of hair. “A cool customer. She was always one step ahead of you, but maybe that’s not saying much.”