Whomp. Another nail into the barrel. Whomp. Again, a high shot. Just what the hell was he doing?
I heard a tearing sound and looked up in time to be hit in the face with a dozen ears of field corn, kernels hard as pebbles, cobs heavy as nightsticks. And then another dozen, and then a deluge. Down they poured through a mesh screen at the bottom of the silo torn open by the nails.
I tried to scoot on hands and knees, but I slipped again, and the com continued to fall. I raised my arms above my head, but I was knocked off-balance and buried, facedown, as still it poured over me.
Air.
I couldn’t breathe.
I tried to inhale, but the weight of an elephant pressed down on my back. I wriggled to one side and took in a breath.
Dust.
I coughed and sputtered and struggled to gulp in air.
From somewhere I heard his muffled voice. “Lawyer eats all my corn, the animals will starve this winter.”
I squirmed some more, managed to take one breath, then was conscious of movement. Mine. I was being pulled backward by my ankles. Then I was hoisted up and over the crib railing and tossed to the floor. I was flat on my back, and in a moment, Cimarron was on top of me, sitting on my chest pinning my arms down at the wrists. He didn’t weigh any more than the Appaloosa. Then he released one of my wrists and slapped my face with an open palm, and then the back of his hand, his huge knuckles hitting me hard across the bridge of my nose.
He dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a handful of nails, placing them in his mouth. He loaded one into the gun, reached around my head and pulled at the top of my sweatshirt. I felt the cold metal of the gun barrel against my neck.
Whomp. A nail tore through my sweatshirt and into the floor.
“ Maybe the lawyer needs a haircut.” He loaded a nail, placed the barrel at the top of my skull, then slid it over the skull. Whomp. A nail skimmed my head and sunk into the floor, giving me a new part in my hair. He slid off me and placed the gun just below my crotch. Another nail in the barrel, another shot into the floor, close enough to make various parts of me retreat northward.
The rest was a blur. A nail that just missed my kneecap, another alongside my foot. One alongside each temple, the noise deafening. Finally, a last shot between my splayed fingers. Then he dropped the gun into the straw.
“ Josefina,” he called out. “I’m gittin’ tired of this. The fireplace is lit in the house. Take one of those branding irons in there and heat it up good. I’m going to show this fellow what we do with rapists out here.”
Her voice was a whisper. “Simmy, why not just finish it?”
He was sitting on my chest again, and I felt him turn to face her.
“ I don’t know about that.”
I stretched my right arm out as far as it would go. Beneath my hand, I felt something metallic.
“ I want him to suffer for what he did to you, but I’m not going to kill him. Scar him, maim him, put the fear into him so he never bothers you again, but I’ve never killed a man, and I won’t start now.”
“ If he lives and starts talking, it’ll just complicate things,” she said. “Keep it clean and simple.”
My hand had worked itself around the metallic piece, which was hot to the touch. I hadn’t used one since Hurricane Betsy lifted the shingles and tar paper off Granny’s roof with 140-mile-per-hour winds when I was still a kid. I was going to use it now. I didn’t know if the clip had a bullet left or if there was a nail in the barrel, but I had very little to lose in finding out.
I made a show of moving my left hand, just to distract Cimarron. He saw the movement and used his right hand to pin down my left. Then he smacked me in the face again with his free hand. In that instant, I came up with the stud gun.
Heavy sucker.
It took me a long second to get it pointed at his chest.
Too long.
His hand grabbed it underneath and swung it up. It was just passing his forehead when I squeezed the trigger. At the same moment, his left fist smashed straight into my chin. I wanted so to hear the thunk of carbon steel into flesh and bone, but all I heard was a metallic click followed by the crash of surf against rocks and the volcanic roar of exploding pain.
My last conscious thoughts were merely a series of sounds.
The sounds were far away and dreamlike, echoing against the dented tinplate of my skull. The world was spinning on a wobbly axis. Everything seemed so slow, except the hot ice pick of agony that flashed from jaw to brain.
Did I really hear anything through the fog? Yes, there it was: a thud, a grunt, a muffled whomp, and as I slipped into the cool quiet darkness, a hazy image of Blinky Baroso floated high above me, laughing, calling me something, a lousy judge of character. Finally, his voice faded, and I was swept away by a feeling of ultimate and unyielding dread.
CHAPTER 20
Jail food is to food as military music is to music.
Hard biscuits and fatty bacon and greasy meats. Maybe the idea was to induce cardiac arrest and save taxpayers money. The jailer was a potbellied, slack-jawed man of sixty who looked as if he’d been eating the jail hash for thirty years. He was a football fan, and when I told him I had chased the oblong spheroid for a living, he treated me with kindness and respect and brought me pizza and beer. Then I made the mistake of telling him I was now a lawyer. He shook his head sadly, spat on the floor, and said no wonder I ended up here.
Or was I a lawyer?
The Florida Bar had begun disbarment proceedings.
Judge T. Bone Coleridge had ordered me to show cause why Kip shouldn’t be transferred to the custody of the state H.R.S., and when I didn’t appear in court (having been unavoidably detained, as they say, in Colorado), he adjudged me in contempt of court. Actually, contempt was too mild a word for how I felt about the courts.
I was under indictment in Miami for first-degree murder of Kyle Hornback, local securities dealer. Yeah, that’s what the paper called him. It sounded better than con man, flimflam artist, swindler, extortionist, or racketeer. In death, we are all judged more kindly. The crueler the death, the kinder the obit.
I was under indictment in Aspen for second-degree murder in the brutal slaying of Kit Carson Cimarron, ranch owner and civic activist, according to the local weekly.
Civic activist? I suppose they’d call Bonnie and Clyde interstate bankers.
Completing the list of my legal troubles, I was also being dunned by a record club for three CDs I had never ordered. I wrote a couple of letters telling them what they could do with The Best of Jim Nabors , but their computer kept threatening my credit rating, heaven forbid.
Okay, so I was a little bitter, sitting in the Pitkin County Jail. Florida and Colorado were drawing straws to see who had the pleasure of providing me with room and board for the next twenty-five years or so, and in Florida’s case, maybe causing a brief power shortage in the immediate vicinity of Raiford Prison. Right now, Colorado had dibs on me under the ancient legal maxim, possession is nine tenths of the law. This was a matter of great consternation to Abe Socolow, who pointed out to a Colorado judge in typical lawyerly fashion that (a) I committed my vile deed in Florida prior to coming to Colorado; (b) Florida had charged me with an even more serious crime; and (c) Florida had indicted me first.
He really said a-b-c while making his argument. Lawyers tend to argue in threes, building to dramatic conclusions. Some lawyers get confused and say a-b-3. Once in a while, just to see if a judge is listening, I’ll sing out do-re-mi.
But now, I was just a spectator, wearing jail coveralls, sitting on a hard bench in the county courthouse,
