“ This territory ain’t big enough for the two of us,” Kip chimed in.
“ Because if you don’t,” Cimarron said evenly, “I’m going to bust you up.”
“ If that’s supposed to scare me, you better try again,” I said. “We’re all going to die, and soon, in a celestial blink of an eye, so there’s no use being scared. You come at me, and I’ll do what I have to do. I’ll chop you in half with an ax if I have to.”
“ I’m only going to tell you this once, Lassiter. You come sniffing around Josefina, I mean if you’re in the same area code, I’m going to break you like a twig.”
With that, he split his pool cue in two. He didn’t break it across his knee or muscle it with two hands. He just held it in one hand, his thumb straight up the shaft, and he snapped it clean in two.
Like a twig.
CHAPTER 17
I’m confused.”
“ Why, Uncle Jake?”
“ Coming up here, I thought Cimarron was either a thief or a killer or both.”
“ Yeah?”
“ Well, he’s rough around the edges, all right, and he’s got a temper. But he’s not the thug I thought he was. He’s Kiwanis man of the year or something, and he really believes this buried treasure stuff.”
“ So?”
“ Whoa! Is this thing rocking or what?”
“ Take it easy, Uncle Jake. It’s just the wind.”
“ There it goes again. Hey, I even close my eyes on a ski lift.”
We were riding to the top of Aspen Mountain-or Ajax, if you prefer-on the Silver Queen gondola. Yeah, that’s the name, in case I wasn’t already dwelling on Cimarron’s stories. Suspended from a cable, our enclosed car was a good fifty feet above the top of a strand of healthy spruce trees that were a good eighty feet tall themselves. Strong wind gusts pushed us from side to side. Below, some hikers took the hard way, straight up the steep face of the ski slopes, now green with thick grass and spotted with yellow sunflowers. Behind us, the town of Aspen faded away. To our left were the snowcapped mountains leading to the Continental Divide.
“ We should have gotten some aerobic exercise by hiking up,” I said, gripping the handrail with whitened knuckles.
“ Uncle Jake, are you afraid of heights like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo?”
“ I wouldn’t say afraid. More like concerned. I’m concerned about heights.”
We were slowing down, approaching the port at the top of the mountain. “Something else, too. Cimarron really thinks I conspired with Blinky to defraud him.”
“ How do you know?”
“ I can tell, Kippers. This is what I do for a living. I ask questions and listen to the answers, and I watch. Boy, do I watch. There are some very good liars and some people who can delude themselves into believing anything they want. They’re hell on polygraphs, juries, and spouses. But this guy didn’t tell a fib, not one I could catch.”
The gondola bucked into a V-shaped catching device, slowed down, and the door automatically slid open. We stepped out, and a middle-aged couple bundled into ski jackets climbed in. It had been sunny and in the mid-seventies in town. It was still sunny up here, but a stiff wind was blowing, and the temperature had plummeted twenty degrees.
I followed Kip, who can sense the proximity of food, and we headed to the snack bar where he ordered a hot chocolate and a cheeseburger. We sat at an outdoor table, looking down into the valley.
“ The other thing, unless he’s the world’s greatest actor, Cimarron really thinks I killed Hornback.”
“ So what? You didn’t, did you, Uncle Jake?”
“ Of course not. But what it means is that Cimarron didn’t kill him, either.”
“ So who did? And what happened to Mr. Baroso?”
“ Kip my boy, that’s what we’re going to find out.”
While Kip was chomping his burger, I found a pay phone and dialed a familiar number, putting the charge on a credit card. When he answered, barking his last name, I said, “Hello, Abe, coerce any confessions today?”
“ Jake! Jake, goddamnit, where are you? No, strike that. I know where you are. You’re harassing my witness. Cimarron called me less than an hour ago. What do you think you’re doing?”
“ Seeking the truth, Abe, just like Charlie Riggs always taught me.”
“ No, you’re not. You’re a fleeing felon, evading arrest, surreptitiously departing the jurisdiction after I cut you a break. You’re obstructing justice and threatening witnesses.”
“ That’s bull.”
“ Yeah, on this very day, did you or did you not threaten to take a hatchet to my last living witness?”
“ I think I said ax.”
“ Damn you! Do I have to put guards around Cimarron?”
“ Nah, he does a pretty good job of protecting himself. “
Socolow snorted, the wet sound of a dolphin clearing its blowhole. “Jake, you know I’m sitting on a sealed indictment, naming you for the murder of Kyle Hornback.”
“ I figured.”
“ I can courier it to the Aspen police. We’d have you extradited in a week.”
“ Give me a couple of days, Abe. I’ll call you.”
“ What! You think this is like scheduling lunch? You’ve been indicted for murder one, a capital fucking crime. It took the grand jury about fifteen minutes. Can you get that through your thick skull?”
“ Listen to me, Abe. I’m standing on top of a mountain at maybe eleven thousand feet. In the winter, it’s one of the best ski slopes in the country. In the summer, it’s filled with hikers and picnickers. Abe, have you ever seen a columbine?”
“ A what?”
“ A wildflower that grows up here. Some are yellow, like buttercups. Some are lavender. Anyway, the mountain is blazing with wildflowers now. In the winter, there’s six feet of snow, and under the ground, winter or summer, under my feet right now are mine shafts and tunnels. Dozens of them, hell, hundreds of them, and there’s still silver in there, and maybe buried treasure and who knows what?”
“ Jake, what the hell are you talking about?”
“ I don’t think Cimarron killed Hornback.”
“ Neither do I. Neither do twenty-three members of the grand jury. So now, it’s unanimous.”
“ But it’s so screwy, Abe. Cimarron’s the one who had the motive. Hornback and Blinky cheated him, and the guy’s got a fearsome temper. I’ve got a couple of mending metacarpals to prove it. Blinky cheated him twice, and Cimarron told me he’d kill a man for that. Something else, Abe. Cimarron and Blinky had two-million-dollar key man insurance policies on each other’s lives. That would just about cover the amount of money Cimarron thinks Blinky stole.”
“ What are you saying, that Cimarron didn’t kill Hornback, but he killed Baroso?”
“ He had the motive, but I still don’t think so. I just have this feeling about Cimarron, that he really sees himself as the victim and Blinky and me as the bad guys. I don’t think he killed anyone.”
“ You’re not helping your case any. If Cimarron didn’t do it, who did?”
“ I don’t know, but whoever’s setting me up has got to be the one
…”
A thought was racing around the perimeter of my brain. I struggled to get a rope around it and bring it in.
“…Abe, that deposit into my account, where’d it come from?”
“ Wire transfer from the Rocky Mountain corporate account at Florida Southern Bank.”
“ Who authorized it?”
“ You did, dummy! That’s the nail in the coffin.”
“ I didn’t. I couldn’t have. I had no signatory powers over the account. I never even knew what bank it was in.”
“ Nice try, Jake, but you filled out a signature card when the account was opened, and the signature on the wire transfer request matched.”
“ Abe, I’m telling you I never signed any card or transfer request or anything. If they match, it’s only because the same forger did them both. I was set up the day the Rocky Mountain Treasures bank account was opened.”
“ Pretty farfetched, Jake.”