I was getting ready to leave, figuring I could call a carpenter to replace the door, when I saw the answering machine with its little green light. Seven calls, according to the digital message counter. I hit the playback button.
Three from me, the first one and the last two.
Two from the state attorney’s office: Call your secretary.
One from a solicitor for a charity.
And one from Gables Travel, the second message, which I figured to have come three or four days ago. “Your ticket will be waiting at the Continental desk at the airport tomorrow. Flight four-fifty-eight, Miami to Denver. Open return.”
I slept restlessly, dreaming of snow-covered mountains filled with buried treasure. I awoke early, squeezed a Key lime onto a fresh mango for breakfast, then drove to the office. I called my loyal secretary into my office, something that interfered with the filing of her three-inch stiletto-blade fingernails.
“ Cindy, help me.”
She waited. “It’s Jo Jo.”
Cindy stopped chewing her gum and twirled a finger through a knot of hair. “A cool customer. She was always one step ahead of you, but maybe that’s not saying much.”
“ What would it mean if, after she and I…ah…re-acquainted ourselves-”
“ You mean you jumped her bones, boss. C’mon, everybody knows you two were playing hide the sausage when her ex-dude showed up from the O.K. Corral.”
“ Yeah. Anyway, what would it mean if she doesn’t return my calls and then leaves town.”
“ She tell you where she went?”
“ No.”
“ She make any effort to hide where she went?”
“ Not exactly.”
“ Then it’s a toss-up. Either she doesn’t want anything to do with you, or she wants you to follow her.”
“ No. She told me not to follow her. I didn’t even know she was going anywhere, but that’s what she said. ‘Don’t follow me.
Cindy laughed. “That’s the clincher. She wants you on her trail. Otherwise, why would she say not to, I mean, you wouldn’t have known to follow her, unless she told you not to.”
“ I don’t get it. I really don’t.”
“ You don’t have to, just trust me.”
“ Look, Cindy, she must have gone back to Cimarron. So what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense. She wouldn’t want me around if she’s with him.”
“ Jefe, what you don’t know about women would fill Biscayne Bay. Women don’t communicate the same way as men, but of course, men don’t communicate at all. Even strong career women like Josefina Baroso don’t necessarily come out and say what they mean.”
“ Cindy, that’s downright sexist of you.”
“ No, it’s not. We’ve been taught how to act and how to speak. If we’re too direct, we’re ballbusters. If we don’t say a word, we don’t get anything. And where relationships are concerned, a woman falls back on her feminine wiles. If she just said, ‘Jake, I love you, I want you forever,’ what would you do?’’
“ Did you say ‘forever?’”
“ That’s what I mean. Your palms start to sweat. But if she let you know she was going back to an ex-lover, somebody you thought was bad news, what then?”
“ You tell me, Cindy. You’re the one who takes the tests in Cosmo when you’re supposed to be typing writs of replevin.”
“ Well, either you’d go home and drink a six-pack of that Dutch beer and maybe put your fist through the plaster, or you’d hop the first plane to go get her.”
“ How does she know which it is?”
“ She doesn’t. It’s a test. For both of you. She may be headed back to the cowboy, but she’s not sure about it. She wants you to go up there and drag her out by the hair. She wants you to stop her, to fight for her.”
“ I did that once and got my bell rung.”
“ You know what I mean. If the cowboy is professing his love, maybe she wants you to do the same thing, then she can choose.”
“ If that’s it, why not just say-”
Just then, the phone rang on my private line. Abe Socolow got right to the point. “We found Cimarron.”
The way he said it, my first thought was another body. There I go again. Why was I so morbid these days?
“ He’s sitting fat and happy on his ranch,” Socolow continued.
“ Great. Have him arrested.”
“ Yeah, well, the sheriffs deputies up there didn’t serve the arrest warrant. They just called him up and told him about it. Seems he’s a big deal in town. Anyway, he picked up the phone and called me. Says he’ll gladly face assault charges, or if you want, Jake, maybe go another couple of rounds.”
“ To hell with that. Next time, I’ll just shoot him in the kneecaps.”
“ Uh-huh. Well, he says he wants to file a complaint against you with my office.”
“ What for? I scuff his boots with my head?”
“ Grand larceny. Claims you and Blinky conspired to defraud him and the third-party investors in that treasure company. Something about selling the stock three or four times. Diluted his stock, claims Hornback was going to blow the whistle on both of you.”
“ I don’t know anything about it, Abe. If you’ve got proof, go ahead, take your best shot.”
“ Nah. I don’t believe it. Just want you to know. I figure you can explain everything.”
I didn’t like the way he said ‘everything.’ “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“ You still bank at Southern Federal, right?”
“ Yeah, what about it?”
“ We served a subpoena on their records custodian about an hour ago, so I gotta ask you about a cash deposit of seventy-five grand to your account last week.”
“ That’s got to be a mistake.”
“ Hey, Jackie, I’m looking at a photocopy of the deposit slip. Seventy-five thousand in cash last Thursday.”
“ Abe, stop and think about it. If the money was dirty, would I put it in the bank?”
“ How should I know? The only times I ever saw seventy-five grand in cash, it came from bad guys. Drug dealers, bookies, tax evaders. But maybe you’re only half-bad, Jake. Maybe you were going to declare taxes on it, claim it was a legal fee, so why not put it in the bank? Besides, I long ago gave up figuring out why you guys do what you do. ..”
You guys?
“…We’ve still got burglars going into tented homes being fumigated. Come morning, they’re just as dead as the termites. Last week, another Seven-Eleven robber shot himself in the dick. You’d think by now, these wise guys would stop shoving their guns down the front of their pants when they get outside. You know how much pressure it takes on the trigger to fire a cocked nine-millimeter?” Socolow barked his unpleasant laugh. “Is that what you did, Jakie. Shoot yourself in the dick?”
“ Abe, we’ve known each other a long time. You ever know me to steal anything?”
“ Don’t pull any of that auld lang syne shit on me. It doesn’t work.”
“ You didn’t answer my question.”
The line hummed, and I pictured Socolow scowling into the phone, his feet propped on his state-issued, green metal desk. “No, Jake. I’ve never known you to steal. Up till now. Or to kill, either, for that matter.”
“ What’s that supposed to mean?”
“ The grand jury meets this afternoon on the Hornback case.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “You didn’t hear it from me, but here’s the evidence that’ll be presented. On Sunday, June thirteenth, Kyle Lynn Hornback, a white male, age twenty-seven, was found swinging from a ceiling fan in a house belonging to one Jacob Lassiter, who reported the crime. From body temperature, livor mortis and rigor mortis, the medical examiner places the time of death between nine and eleven p.m. Mr. Lassiter was home early in the evening, but cannot account for his presence between ten and eleven-thirty, having claimed to be on Ocean Drive during that time, but there are no alibi witnesses, not even Kato Kaelin. Cause of death was asphyxiation as Mr. Hornback was strangled with a silk tie belonging to Mr. Lassiter. Toxicology showed a substantial quantity of phenobarbs in Mr. Hornback’s blood, and he may have been unconscious when strangled. The methyl methacrylate test revealed latent fingerprints on the face, neck, and arms of the decedent, and the latents matched those of Mr. Lassiter. You follow me, Jake?”