“Miata, come here,” he said.
The dog didn’t want to back down. He had drawn blood and now he wanted to finish me off.
“Miata, get over here.” Vargas scooped up the dog and put one finger on its nose when he kept barking at me. “Just take it easy,” he said. “Let him speak. Then you’ll get to watch me take him apart. He won’t get away this time. When I’m done I’ll let you piss on his face.”
“All right, enough,” I said. “I came to ask your wife a couple of questions. That’s all. Whoever took you down took down my friends at the same time. I want to find out who did this. I should think you’d want to find out, too.”
“That’s what you think, huh?”
“Yeah, and you know what? The fact that you don’t seem to want to find out is kind of interesting in itself. You should be dying to find out who did this, Vargas. You should be way ahead of me. Or at least have Leon working on it for you.”
I was running out of ideas. It was time to try something desperate.
“Instead,” I went on, “what are you doing? You’ve got somebody breaking into my cabin? Jackie’s house? Gill’s house? What’s the point of that, anyway?”
“What? Breaking into where?”
“Whoever it is, you should tell him to stop smoking those stupid little cigars. I can’t stand the smell of those things.”
“McKnight, what in holy hell are you talking about?”
It sounded real. If I was going to keep following my gut, I’d have to guess he honestly didn’t know. After running around all day long, hitting dead ends, now I was down to my last chance. I had one more card to play before folding.
“Maybe it was you,” I said. “Maybe you set this up yourself.”
“McKnight, you’re insane,” he said. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“Now that would be interesting,” his wife said. She finally sat up and turned around to look at us. “He robs himself. Now all the money is gone…”
“Except it’s not really gone,” I said. “It’s just not on the table anymore, should anyone happen to call him on it. Like a divorce lawyer.”
His bald head turned a shade redder.
“Just speaking hypothetically,” I said.
“So why would he destroy his own room?” she said.
“Just for show,” I said. “To make sure nobody thought he was behind it himself.”
“The old red herring game,” she said. “I can see him thinking that way.”
“Of course, you realize one of those men turned up dead today. I hope your husband realizes that this whole thing is getting a little out of hand.”
“Who’s dead?” Vargas said. He looked genuinely surprised.
“One of the men who broke in here,” I said. “Did you kill him yourself? He was shot in the back.”
“That does sound like him,” she said.
“That’s enough out of you,” he said. “Why don’t you go put some more makeup on? I think you missed a spot.”
“Not a chance,” she said. “This is just getting interesting. Now you’re on the hook for murder.”
“I don’t have to stand here in my own house and listen to this.”
“What about your friends?” she said to me. “Why would he set them up like that?”
“Because they’re the only people who knew about the safe,” I said. “He had to set up somebody to take the blame.”
“It’s too risky,” she said. “And it’s not even necessary. He’s the one who’s telling everybody that nobody else knew about the safe. All he has to do is say, ‘Oh, I just remembered. I think I might have mentioned it in a bar that one night. God knows who could have heard me.’ He doesn’t need to set up anybody.”
“That’s true,” I said. “You seem to have a talent for this.”
“Are you two about done?” Vargas said.
“Almost,” I said. “We just need to know why you went out of your way to set up Jackie, Bennett, and Gill. It’s gotta be something personal. Some kind of vendetta you’ve got against those three guys.”
Vargas looked at both of us. He held the dog in his right arm, and slowly scratched behind its ears with a fingernail. “McKnight,” he finally said, “can I ask you one question?”
“Go ahead.”
“If you really think I set those guys up, here’s what I want to know…How did I do it?”
“That’s an easy one,” I said.
“Then tell me,” he said. “Put yourself in my place, and take it step by step. I want to set these guys up to take the fall for this break-in. How do I do it?”
I thought about it for a moment. I wanted to put it together in the right order, so he couldn’t find any holes in it. I wanted it all to come out perfectly, thinking maybe then he’d get that sick look on his face, knowing that I had him nailed. He’d probably drop the dog, make a run for it. I’d chase him. Or call the police. Either way, the whole thing would be over.
He didn’t give me the chance. Instead, he turned and put the dog down inside the house, and then slid the glass door closed before he could escape. “Never mind, McKnight. I think we’ve heard enough. Now, how about our rematch? This time you don’t get to use a fire extinguisher.”
“Vargas, there’s no reason for this.”
“Oh yes, I think there is.” He came toward me, in the same pose I had seen on the boat, his hands poised more like a magician than a boxer, his left foot poised just off the ground. It would have looked pretty damned ridiculous if I wasn’t standing there wondering just how good he really was.
It didn’t take long to find out. He faked a left and then hit me in the body with his right hand, knocking the wind out of me. Then he spun around and caught me in the side of the head with his foot. It knocked me off my feet and made my head feel like a giant bell that wouldn’t stop ringing.
I rolled away from him, got on my feet, and spent the next few seconds trying to catch my breath and avoid another one of his spinning back kicks. One more of those and I’d be laid out for good.
Meanwhile, his wife had finally found a reason to get out of her chair. She stood against the railing, watching us with a sort of rapt fascination. The dog kept barking and clawing at the inside of the glass door.
Vargas slipped a few more punches in, sending me backward against the rail. I went into my own version of Ali’s rope-a-dope, ducking as many of the heavy blows as I could, and waiting for some kind of idea to come to me.
He finally got a little lazy, figuring maybe I was dead meat at that point. I popped him a couple of times, a left to the body and then a right to the chin. He shook that off, stepped back a few feet, and then launched himself into one more spinning back kick, this one being the coup de grace that would knock me right over the railing. I had this one timed, though, and as his foot sailed over my head I gave him a kick of my own, a good old-fashioned boot right in the jewels. It folded him in half.
He went down and made some ugly noises as he rolled around on the deck. I stood there looking at him, ready for the unlikely event of him actually standing up again. When it didn’t happen, I checked out the damage to my face. My jaw was sore as hell, both eyes were already starting to go a little puffy, my lip was split and bleeding down my chin, and my right ear was still ringing. Aside from that I had never felt better.
Mrs. Vargas was still standing there, her arms folded around herself. She was watching her husband roll around on the deck. The look on her face was now a combination of shock and physical satisfaction so pure I felt like I should offer her a cigarette.
“I’ll let myself out,” I said.
That broke the spell. She looked at me and tried to say something. “Oh,” she finally said. “Oh. Yes. My God.”
“You’d better go fill the tub,” I said. The way he kept rolling around, holding his groin, it almost made me feel sorry for him. “When he gets up, make sure he goes and sits in it. If he complains, just grab him right in the shorts and pull.”
I was about to open the glass door, saw the dog ready to jump out of its skin at me and thought better of it.
