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 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.”