Maybe the case embarrassed Socolow. After all, Jo Jo Baroso was on his staff. Who needs the sly remarks and elbow-in-the-ribs jokes about the lady prosecutor con dos amantes in the bedroom?
Anyway, that’s what I was thinking because Socolow was more aloof than usual. He stopped returning my calls. He let it get around town that I was either a witness or a suspect in more cases than I was a lawyer. Then I noticed a gray Dodge behind me on the way home from the office, and again the next day on the way to the courthouse. I wouldn’t have paid attention, except each day, the Dodge changed lanes suddenly to keep me in sight. Two men were in the front seat, but I couldn’t make out their features. On South Miami Avenue headed north from Coconut Grove, I pulled into the Vizcaya parking lot and let the car go by, checking the license number. As I figured, state-owned. Either Socolow had me under surveillance, or the governor was tracking me down to offer a judgeship.
Abe Socolow.
We had known each other since I squeaked through the bar exam and landed a job in the P.D.’s office. He was a young assistant state attorney, whose enthusiasm had not yet been sharpened into cynicism. He prosecuted shoplifters, check bouncers, and drunk drivers with equal vigor, and I defended them with creativity. He usually won, but that’s the way it works in the den of iniquity (and inequity) of the Metro Justice Building. Other defense lawyers considered Socolow dour and mean-spirited. I always liked him, admired his fighting spirit, even found him funny in a hard-assed way. Years ago, in an arson case, I asked for a continuance because my client was in the hospital.
“ What’s wrong with him?” the judge asked.
“ Probably smoke inhalation,” Socolow said.
Socolow worked long hours, took on difficult cases, and his career soared. Felony division within a year, major crimes the next, public corruption unit, then capital cases. He became state attorney by default when Nick Wolf, his predecessor, took a fall for playing footsie with drug dealers.
My career was different. It started slow, then tapered off. When I realized that virtually all my clients were guilty- though not always with what they were charged-some of the air went out of me. If I was going to rescue the flotsam and jetsam of the sewage pipe we call the justice system, I might as well get paid for it. I went downtown to Harman amp; Fox, an old-line firm that represents insurance companies and banks. The crusty coots there wanted someone who could try a tough case without peeing his pants, and as a concession to my past, allowed me to handle criminal cases, though I suspect they wish they had a back door for my clients to enter and leave.
So Abe Socolow was an old foe. Strange that I had begun to think of him as an old friend. Is my life so empty that I concocted a kinship out of an adversarial relationship? Maybe, but what a depressing thought.
Now what was Socolow doing? He was a real pro who wouldn’t let old times get in the way of a case. He could bring me bagels one day and have me tailed the next.
And on the third day, maybe get a warrant to tap my phones.
And on the fourth day, get the grand jury to indict me for murder.
And so on until he rested. At which time I’d have to present my case.
So here I was sinking into paranoia, shooting glances at my rearview mirror, listening for buzzes on my phone line. There is no worse fear for a defense lawyer than to believe the government is listening to his telephone calls. Well, maybe one. A few years ago, the feds tried to seize lawyers’ fees on the theory they were clients’ ill-gotten gains, something that shook the defense bar down to its Gucci loafers. The lawyers weren’t concerned about their fees, of course. No, not at all. As I recall the high-falutin’ argument, my brethren were all lathered up about the government tampering with the constitutional right of counsel. And if you believe that, I’ll sell you some of Blinky Baroso’s waterfront property.
The state has awesome powers when it decides to use them, and right now, it was using the power of intimidation. I wouldn’t talk to my clients on the phone, except to remind them of the importance of testifying truthfully.
Even when clients came to the office, I was worried they might be wired. A carelessly misspoken line could be interpreted as suborning perjury or obstructing justice.
So I was testy, suspicious, and tweaked out, to use Kip’s phrase. Mostly, though, I couldn’t focus. It didn’t help that Jo Jo Baroso failed to return my phone calls for a week. When I tried the state attorney’s office, I got her voice mail. At her cottage, the answering machine kept picking up.
On a hunch, I had Cindy call The Miami Herald as one Josefina Jovita Baroso, asking why her paper hadn’t been delivered. Because, the circulation clerk said, the computer said you stopped the paper indefinitely three days ago.
Okay, she has a right not to read the paper.
Or to leave town.
Maybe a quick vacation. And what right do I have to complain, just because we had a quick roll in the sack?
I kept telling myself these things. Then I asked Cindy to run to the courthouse and check out the property tax rolls, a task that conflicted with an appointment to dye her hair the color of blue steel . 38. She came back with information on a twenty-seven-acre parcel just off Old Cutler Road that years ago was a tropical fruit plantation and now is zoned for three-acre homesites, though the only building is a former caretaker’s cottage. The owner, according to the computer printout, is one K. C. Cimarron, Roaring Fork Road, Basalt, Colorado.
Oh.
So the tough guy is her landlord.
And former lover.
Who wants her back.
And she’s gone to who knows where.
I left the office and put the top down on the Olds 442. In late afternoon, the sun was slanting hard from a cloudless summer sky, and the breeze was a blast furnace of noxious fumes. I headed down U.S. 1 to LeJeune, took a left, passed Merrie Christmas Park, rounded the circle with the statue honoring the Barefoot Mailman, and drove under an umbrella of banyan trees down Old Cutler Road, a winding two-lane strip of asphalt that hugs the shoreline of Biscayne Bay.
I got to the plantation around six o’clock. The same No trespassing sign at the front gate, the same stunted trees and rotting fruit, the same cottage, this time dark and empty.
I went around to the back and tried the porch door. Nothing doing. I circled the cottage, nudging the windows. Still nothing. The screen door in front was locked with a simple hook from the inside.
Strange.
That could only be done if you’re in the house. Once you leave, the screen door stays unlocked.
My first thought was one of sheer terror. Images of the strangled Kyle Hornback, the missing Blinky, the attack by Cimarron.
A dozen deadly thoughts ricocheted through my mind. Jo Jo must be inside the house, her body broken and bloodied. What a fool I had been. I hadn’t protected her from Cimarron, and now I was overcome with equal portions of dread, grief, and guilt.
I yanked open the screen door, tearing the hook out of the soft wood. My hand was still in the cast, but my shoulder was fine, except for old scar tissue. I knocked the door off its hinges in three tries.
Inside it was hot, stuffy, and silent, except for a lone horsefly that buzzed and banged against a window. There were women’s magazines on the wicker coffee table. In the kitchen, a clean cup and saucer sat in a drying rack in the sink. In the small bedroom, all was neat and tidy, the bed made, the pillows fluffed.
There was no body, of course.
The porch door was locked. I knew that. I had tried it from the outside. I looked out the window at the tire tracks in the brown grass in the shade of a Key lime tree. That’s where Jo Jo parked her car. I knew that, too. But I had forgotten, or hadn’t put it all together. A stupid little mistake, leaping to conclusions. Jo Jo left the house by the porch door, leaving the front screen door locked. What was wrong with me, anyway? I was jumpy, irrational, using bad judgment.