Jakie?”
“ It’s your case, Abe. You figure it out.”
“ Let’s see now. If Kyle had flipped, it wasn’t just Blinky who was at risk, was it? What about the company lawyer? Come on, Mr. Secretary-Treasurer and General Counsel. Want to bet that the motive is buried with all that fool’s gold in cowboy country?”
He aimed the damn cane at me.
“ Abe, I hope you’re prepared to use that thing. If not, I may just ram it up your tight ass.”
Socolow glared at me, but the detective growled and shifted in his chair. “There’s no need for that kind of talk. The state attorney doesn’t have to stand for it.”
“ It’s all right, Major,” Socolow said, pleased he’d gotten to me. “Jakie seldom hits anyone. Hell, he seldom hit anyone when he played ball.”
Still Socolow kept the cane leveled at my chest. He was enjoying this too much. I strained to keep my temper under control, my mind’s eye playing a little fantasy involving Socolow’s head and a heavy piece of polished wood.
“ You see, Major,” Socolow said, “I’ve come face-to-face with every category of miscreant known to the law, but essentially there are only two types, wicked scoundrels and foolish scoundrels. I fear that what you see at the end of my cane is nothing but a foolish scoundrel.”
I kept my voice low and didn’t raise an eyebrow. “At which end, Abe?”
CHAPTER 9
Sylvester Houston Conklin fell asleep in front of the television, watching Clint Eastwood blast five bad guys in a San Francisco diner. Earlier, Kip had put away a double portion of spaghetti and meatballs and a protein shake. Carbs and protein, I was bulking him up. Yesterday, it was brown rice, broiled fish, and raw vegetables for the fiber. I did the cooking, and he ate it all. As a reward, we split a sixteen-ounce Grolsch.
Now he was sacked out on the sofa, so I carried him upstairs to the second bedroom, his body warm in my arms. I tucked him in, pulling the sheet up under his chin, and pushed the blond bangs out of his eyes. I was starting to feel avuncular, if not downright fatherly.
Kip stirred, half opened his eyes, and said, “Did you really threaten to jam a cane up the state attorney’s ass?”
“ Guilty.”
“ He’s such a dweeb.”
“ A major dweeb,” I agreed. “You should have seen him prancing around with that cane, putting on a show.”
“ Like Raymond Burr in A Place in the Sun or Everett Sloane in The Lady from Shanghai.” He reached out from under the sheets and gave my arm a squeeze. “I really like your bedtime stories, Uncle Jake.”
“ And I really like having you here. Now it’s lights out.”
His eyes were closing again, and as they did, he pointed his index finger at me, as if holding a gun.
“ Go ahead,” he said, “make my day.”
“ Good night, Kip.”
He nodded off, and I puttered around in his room, gathering a pile of his shorts, socks, and T-shirts that had been balled up in a corner. Then I padded out, closing the door without a sound. I tossed the clothes into the washer and poured in a double dose of the detergent that is supposed to nuke grass stains into bright, sanitary molecules. Apparently, Kip had accomplished what none of a series of bright and attractive young women could manage: He had civilized me.
Even with the ceiling fan on high and a gentle breeze filtering through the open windows, it was sweltering in my subtropical bedroom. Most nights, I fall asleep to the muted slap of palm fronds against masonry and the occasional blare of a police siren just up Douglas Road in Coconut Grove. I am darn near the last Miamian without central air-conditioning, and I like it that way. The old coral rock house just off Kumquat sits in a neighborhood of delectable street names. Loquat, Avocado, and Cocoanut are just around the corner. My house is positioned on the tiny lot to take advantage of southeasterly winds and is shaded by live oak, chinaberry, and poinciana trees, but still, summer nights are hot and sticky.
I lay on my back, naked, listening to the whompeta-whompeta of the fan harmonizing with the chugita- chugita of the washing machine, feeling the sweat trickle down my chest. I dozed, dreaming a pastiche of unrelated scenes. An unshaven cowboy in a poncho silently rode a black horse across the high plains. Jo Jo Baroso sat on the black divan in her mother’s den, laughing gaily, but the laugh turned sinister and suddenly it was Abe Socolow laughing with all the charm of the Doberman pinscher he resembled.
Somebody said something, but who was it? Somebody complaining. You gotta do something about jour door, Jake. Sure, sure. I rolled onto my side and tried to chase the dreams. Somebody was smoking a cigarette. Dreaming now in smell-a-rama.
Suddenly, it was daytime, or was it? No, dawn doesn’t break with a hundred-fifty-watt blast in the face. I squinted into the glare.
“ You gotta start locking your door,’’ the voice said. The light clicked off. “Sorry to wake you, but I’m only out at night.’’
“ Blinky? Is that you?’’
Through a haze of cigarette smoke, a rotund form was backlit by the sodium vapor lights from outside my open window. “It ain’t Dracula,” Blinky Baroso said.
“ You son of a bitch,” I said. “You ungrateful, selfish son of a bitch. After all I’ve done for you…”
“ Hey, I said I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”
“ I don’t care about your waking me up. What the hell were you doing using my name for that treasure company?”
“ Jeez, Jake, you’re pissed about that?” he whined, sounding hurt. Like a lot of manipulators, Blinky had the ability to make his victim contrite for hurting his feelings. “Are you going to hold that against me now? I kind of thought you’d be flattered.”
“ Next time, flatter someone else.”
“ I meant to tell you, Jake, I really did. We needed to dress up the paperwork a little. I borrowed your good name, that’s all.”
“ Yeah, I want it back.”
“ C’mon, Jake, we’ll amend the papers, it’s no big deal.”
“ Maybe not to you, but the SEC and the Florida Bar might see it differently. To say nothing of Abe Socolow.”
He crushed out the cigarette in a commemorative Super Bowl VIII ashtray and sat on the edge of my bed, moving close to me. “Jake, I need help.”
“ Yeah, me too. Socolow thinks you had me kill Kyle Hornback, or maybe it was my own idea. I can’t even follow his reasoning.”
“ You’re joking.”
“ I’m not, and Abe never does.”
“ Jeez, you mean I’m a suspect.”
As usual, Blinky’s concerns were about number one. “That’s usually what happens when somebody runs from a murder scene,” I said. “What the hell were you doing here last night?”
“ I tried to get here before you left for the beach. See, I figured my phone was tapped, and whoever was listening would think we’d be on the wall over on Ocean Drive. I started that way, did a U-turn on the Venetian, and
