came to your place, but I was running late, and you’d already left.”
“ Who’s tapping your phone? What’s it all about?”
“ I don’t know, but before Hornback was killed, I was being followed. I’m sure of it.”
In the darkness, I sensed Blinky tremble. “Anyway, I got in, just like now, by putting my weight against the front door. It was dark inside, but I could see something spinning around. I didn’t know what the hell it was, so I turned on a light. Jesus Cristo, I nearly fainted. Then I nearly puked. I’ve never seen anything like that, ever. I turned off the light and ran out. I thought the killer might be in the house, might be after me. I went home, grabbed some things, and got out of there. Last night, I slept in the Rover out on Virginia Key.”
He leaned closer on the bed, giving me a whiff of cigarette breath mixed with stale sweat. “Jake, who would have done such a thing?”
“ Whoa. Back up. What was Kyle doing here?”
“ Dunno, exactly. Maybe he was killed someplace else and dumped there, like to implicate us.”
“ No. A neighbor saw him arrive by taxi. Whoever killed him drugged him first with a fast-acting barbiturate, then strangled him and strung him up.”
I got out of bed and pulled on a pair of faded blue gym shorts with the Penn State logo. Then I moved toward the window and inhaled the night air. It was heavy with jasmine, which was an improvement.
“ What was Kyle doing here?” I asked for the second time. “Was he coming to see you or me? Did he know you were going to be here, and who else knew?”
“ A lot of questions.”
“ And the big one, who wanted him dead?”
“ Besides me?” Blinky asked softly.
I let it sink in a moment before responding. “No, let’s start with you.”
“ Sure, I thought about it, acing him, but it was just wishful thinking, of course.”
“ Of course.”
“ I mean, he was going to rat. He had an appointment to see Socolow today, did you know that?”
“ I did, but how did you?”
“ Kyle told me.”
Ah. “When?”
“ Yesterday morning.”
Blinky seemed to want to say more, but he stopped. Maybe he wanted me to drag it out of him. “Yesterday morning,” I said. Sometimes, if you repeat a witness’s statement, it’s like priming the pump, and the words will just start flowing.
“ Yeah,” Blinky said. “I was home reading the Sunday papers when he called. He told me he was going in first thing in the morning to see Socolow unless he could get some satisfaction from me.”
“ Satisfaction meaning bucks.”
“ Mucho bucks. Five hundred thousand of them.”
I let out a whistle. “To which you said?”
“ I asked him if he’d take a check. Then I told him, ‘?Chingate! Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.’ After I calmed down, I told him I’d get back to him with something, you know, a counteroffer, after I had a chance to think about it.”
“ And talk to your lawyer,” I said, filling in the gaps.
“ Yeah.”
“ And you told him you were seeing me that evening.”
Blinky paused before nodding yes. He pulled another cigarette from somewhere and lit it, the tip glowing in the darkened room. “Yeah, I told him. But I never said where, and I never invited him over for espresso and pastelitos.”
I cocked my head in what is supposed to be an inquisitive, if not accusing, look.
“ Honest, Jake. Why would I want him around? I needed to talk to you. Hell, I figured Kyle would be wired the next time he saw me. They’d try to bust me for subornation of perjury or obstruction of justice if I bought him off. I needed some advice from you before talking to him.’’
We both stayed quiet a moment, and I thought about it. Who wanted Kyle Hornback dead? Besides Blinky. And who wanted to frame Blinky and maybe me? The ceiling fan continued its endless circles, slashing the plumes of cigarette smoke like a whirling saber. The washing machine had long since ended its cycles, and outside my window, a mockingbird was singing its early-morning song in the mulberry bush.
“ Who’s Kit Carson Cimarron?” I asked.
In the gun-metal gray light of a new day, Blinky was smiling a rueful smile. “Now that,” he said, “is a long story.”
A pink glow was spreading in the eastern sky as we reconvened in the kitchen. I made Blinky cafe con leche and squeezed some fresh grapefruit juice for myself. He asked me to scramble four eggs, and I told him secretary- treasurers of major corporations do no such thing. But I made rye toast, which he wolfed down with cream cheese and guava preserves that Granny had made, or “put up,” as she would say. I microwaved last night’s spaghetti and meatballs for my breakfast.
“ Kit Carson Cimarron,” Blinky said, chewing his toast, seeming to enjoy the sound of the name. “You know how you dumped Josie?”
“ That’s a little strong,” I said. “We split up, that’s all.”
“ Yeah, yeah, you broke up. Well, I was there. You dropped her like a bad habit, not that I blame you. Afterward, she moped around for a year.”
“ Okay, have it your way. What’s that got to do with Cimarron?”
“ You ought to ask Josie.”
“ She knows him? When Socolow mentioned Cimarron’s name, Jo Jo didn’t blink an eye.”
“ Yeah, well she isn’t about to admit that she was almost Mrs. K. C. Cimarron of Pitkin County, Colorado.”
“ What!”
“ Left her at the altar, or the stable actually, since they were going to get married on his ranch. Broke her heart, Jake, or would have, if she had one. You know, the only two men I ever introduced to my sister are you and Cimarron, and from each of you, she got nothing but pain.”
“ That sounds like something she would say.”
“ Verdad. I’m just repeating her words.”
“ Tell me more about him.”
“ He was rich, but leveraged up to his ten-gallon hat in oil-and gas-drilling loans in the eighties, and when the bottom fell out of the market, he lost everything, except his ranch in Colorado. Anyway, he’d dumped her by then, and there hasn’t been anyone else in her life since.”
“ You introduced them,” I said, which was really a question.
“ We’d done some business,” Blinky continued, “when he still had a seven-figure line of credit. He picked up the financing on the salvage operation in the Keys. Paid for the equipment, the divers, the marketing. I was the brains, he was the bank.”
I was about to insult the intelligence of the banker, but Blinky kept talking, “Shit, you should have seen him. He comes down to Sugarloaf Key wearing those hand-stitched cowboy boots and a silver belt buckle must have weighed twenty pounds. He’s even bigger than you, and he’s got on a black cowboy hat with a feather stuck in it, so with the boots and the hat, he’s about seven feet tall, and he’s buying the crew drinks with hundred-dollar bills off a wad he carries in his boots.”
“ Jo Jo fell in love with this guy?” I said in disbelief.
“ El amor es ciego. Love is blind, my friend.”
“ You got sued in the Keys deal.”
“ Right, but not indicted, thanks to Kit. He saved my ass.”
“ What happened?”
