It was nearly eleven, so I said to hell with it and walked back to my car, which still had its aerial, hubcaps, and AM radio intact. It occurred to me that Blinky might have gotten mixed up. Ever since the trial, he had been in a daze. He might be at my house, probably waiting on the front porch, cursing me. Hitting seventy on the brief stretch of the interstate, I was back on Kumquat Street in the Grove in fourteen minutes.
I parked under the chinaberry tree, same as always. The moon was higher in the sky now, the night warm and muggy, no trace of an oceanfront breeze here. I listened for the warbling of my mockingbird. He is my bird the way the raccoon who knocks over my garbage cans is my raccoon. But the mocker usually is perched in my marlberry bush, singing nighttime songs. Mimus polyglottos, Doc Riggs calls him, mimic of many tongues. He’s not much to look at, sort of a battleship gray with white wing patches, but like the bobwhite, nighthawk, and whippoorwill, he’s got a voice.
As I approached the front porch, I heard a sound from the hibiscus hedge, or maybe I sensed movement there. It could have been a variety of nighttime animals, including Peifidus nocturnus, who might be waiting to mug an honest citizen such as myself. I’m as brave as the next guy, and I don’t mind a fair fight, but a punk kid with a semiautomatic could tattoo a ring around my heart before I got off a punch, so I hurried to the front door.
The sound was barely more than a squeak. “Uncle Jake.”
I turned and ran back to the hedge. Huddled in the dirt, hidden by leaves and floppy red flowers was the boy in the Dolphins jersey. I reached down to him, and he crawled into my arms. “Uncle Jake, you’re home.”
He was crying, his tears tracking down grimy cheeks.
I was stunned. “What the hell’s going on?”
He pointed toward the house, his hand shaking. “I woke up and heard voices downstairs. Then, somebody came up the steps. Slow, like he was listening for something. I got so scared, I crawled under the bed. Somebody opened my door, looked in, and closed it. Then he went into your bedroom. I heard sounds in there, but I just stayed under the bed. He went downstairs again, and I heard voices, real soft, then a noise like furniture being moved. Uncle Jake, I was so scared…”
I squeezed him in my arms. “Kip, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you. I’ll never do it again, but you were dreaming, that’s all. No one was in the house. You’ve seen too many of those movies where maniacs with razors go after the kids.”
He was shaking his head. “Honest, Uncle Jake. You gotta believe me. After a while, I heard the front door close, so I sneaked to the stairs. Then I saw it. Even though it was dark, I knew what it was.”
“ What?”
Again, he pointed at the house with a shaky hand. “I didn’t want to go out through the front. I just couldn’t go into the room, so I ran back to my bedroom, climbed out the window, and crossed the roof to the tree in back.”
“ You came down the tree? Why?”
He started crying again.
“ Hey, Kip. Everything’s okay. Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll go in the house together.”
He shook his head and squeezed me tighter.
“ Okay, Kippers, I’ll go in. Will you wait for me?”
He nodded and wiped his nose on the sleeve of my old jersey. I carried him to the car and put him in the front seat. He sat there, rocking back and forth, hugging his knees. I went back to the porch, hit the front door with a solid shoulder and barged in. Moonlight slanted through the windows and lit the room in ashen grays. It was silent, except for the whompeta-whompeta of the ceiling fan. Which seemed to whomp slower than usual.
I saw it then, or sensed it.
A shadow, a shape, a movement.
I looked up. A dark silhouette flew just over my head.
A whirling, twirling, unidentifiable mass.
My first impression was that someone had leapt off the landing of the stairs at me, like a cowboy in a Western. I ducked and head-rolled on the old pine floor, coming up in a crouch, adrenaline pumping, knees bent, legs spread, fists clenched.
My second impression was different. There were two of us in the room, all right, but one of us was dead.
He was suspended from the ceiling fan and looked like one of those circus performers on the high rings, spinning dizzying circles. The body swung at a forty-five-degree angle from the ceiling, circling above me in endless, hypnotic motion. The legs were straight out, the arms flung back from the centrifugal force. In the moonlight, the shadow danced crazily across the floor and up the wall.
A jumble of emotions. On South Beach, I had the strange sensation that something was wrong. Blinky was usually late, but he always shows. Tonight he had been afraid of something, someone. What, who?
I felt my heart beating and beating hard. I tried to calm myself down and think. What to do first? Cut him down, call the police, take care of Kip? They don’t train you for this stuff, not in three-a-day practices in August, and not in night law school in September.
Now my mind was tearing along at a speed I couldn’t control. Flashes of overlapping thoughts and unanswered questions kept jolting me with each spin of the body. Who killed Blinky Baroso and why, and had the killer been looking for me? I said a silent prayer of thanks that Kip was unhurt.
I duck-walked out from under the body and got to the wall, reaching for the light switch. Overhead, three spots flashed on. I squinted through the glare and saw how he was fastened to the motor housing of the fan. What looked like a bolt of colorful silk cloth was digging into his neck and tied to something, a wire coat hanger maybe, that was attached to the fan.
In the brightness, I could see his eyes were bulging open, and his tongue, black and swollen, stuck out the side of his mouth. And I could see something else, too.
It wasn’t Blinky Baroso.
Chapter 6
I called Charlie Riggs first, getting a recording that informed me he had gone fishing, telling all his friends, “ Vive valeque.” I should have figured he was still in the Keys. Granny never complained when I headed north early, leaving Charlie behind to keep her company. I think it was Father Andrew Greeley, with the aid of the Gallup Poll, who determined that couples in their sixties have the best sex. Something to look forward to.
Granny answered on the second ring, and I pictured her rolling over in bed and handing the phone to my old friend. Charlie said he’d get here in an hour-fifteen if his old Chew pickup didn’t throw a rod.
Next, I called Miami Homicide where I am known, but not necessarily liked. A woman with a faint Cuban accent took down the information, calmly checking the address three times, and politely asking me not to leave the premises. From her tone, she might have been taking an order for a pizza with anchovies, but that’s the way cops act, particularly in a city where homicides are as plentiful as mosquitoes. Next I called Abe Socolow at home, figuring if I hadn’t, the cops would have, and Abe’s the kind of guy who remembers the small stuff.
At first, I tried not to touch anything, having been educated by television that I might foul up the crime scene with my fingerprints. Once every hundred years or so, a crime will be solved by finding an unknown assailant’s fingerprints at the scene. Usually, fingerprints merely corroborate what everyone already knows: Three witnesses in the liquor store identify the gunman, and a fingerprint specialist confirms his prints are on the gun dropped at the scene.
Then, I remembered Kip was still in the car. I didn’t want him to see the body a second time, so I hit the switch for the fan, went into the kitchen, hauled out a high stool, and climbed up until I was looking straight into the face of a dead man. A thin copper wire circled his neck and was looped through the motor housing of the fan. But that’s not what killed him. The bright splash of cloth was an imported silk tie knotted by someone unfamiliar with the double Windsor. The knot dug deeply into the neck, just below the Adam’s apple.