Lassiter 06 - Fool Me Twice (12 page)

Abe Socolow motioned for me to sit down, or
maybe recline, in an uncomfortable black plastic chair shaped like
a tilde. On a glass coffee table were three stylish candles of
different lengths, propped in rough-hewn holders that looked like
black granite. Next to the candles was a heavy art book that I was
sure had never been opened by Blinky, unless he had started selling
fake van Goghs. I eased into the chair without slipping a disk, and
Socolow said, “So where the hell is he?”

“
Blinky?”

“
No, Judge
Crater.”

“
He’s not here? He’s not
dead?”

“
I’m going to ask you
again. Where is he?”

“
Abe, I think we’ve had
this conversation before.”

“
Yeah, except you left
something out.” He tossed a leather-bound pocket calendar on the
coffee table, then flipped it open. “Go ahead, look at
it.”

There it was, in Blinky’s
scrawl, on Sunday, June 26. Yesterday.
10-ish. Meet Jake
.

“
Ten-ish,” I said aloud.
“Sounds like Andre Agassi with a lisp.”

“
C’mon, Jake. You can do
better than that.”

Actually, I couldn’t. “What’re you driving
at?”

“
You told us you hadn’t
seen Baroso since Thursday.”

“
It’s the
truth.”

Socolow cleared his throat. He sounded like
a hungry pit bull. “You also told us you weren’t expecting anyone
last night.”

“
I wasn’t. Not at home,
anyway.”

The detective stirred on the sofa. “We could
bust you right now for obstruction.”

“
What good would that do?”
I asked.

Neither one answered me. They both wanted my
help, and jerking me around wasn’t going to get it. The detective
said, “We sent a squad car over here last night after you called
in. No one was home. The security guard says Baroso pulled out of
the garage sometime around eight or eight-thirty in his green Range
Rover and comes back maybe three hours later. A little while after
that, Baroso leaves again, burning rubber pulling out of the
garage, nearly sideswiping a car pulling in. We got a search
warrant this morning, and here we are.”

“
What’s the charge,” I
asked, “reckless driving?”

Socolow ignored the crack and said, “Here’s
how I see it. Baroso and Hornback come to your house, hoping you’ll
mediate a dispute. Baroso knows Hornback’s set to give a statement
and he’s prepared to pay to keep him quiet. But without you around
to referee, the negotiations don’t go so well, and Baroso ends up
slipping Hornback a Mickey, then strangling him. After stringing
him up, Baroso comes back here, gathers whatever he needs and
flees.”

“
Flees,” I repeated,
because the word always sounded silly to me.

“
Take a look around,”
Socolow said, seeming to wonder if I was mocking him. “Dirty dishes
still in the sink. Bedroom’s a mess, clothes tossed from the
closet, one suitcase opened but not packed. Toiletries are gone
from the bathroom, drawers with underwear and shirts mostly empty.
And the pocket calendar left behind. Nobody does that unless
they’re in a hell of a hurry.”

“
You’re too much,” I said.
“A guy’s a messy packer, and that’s your proof of murder. Unless
you’ve got a witness who eyeballed Blinky at my house, you’ve got
nothing, and you know you’ve got nothing. I’m surprised a judge
even gave you a search warrant on all that speculation.”

I watched the undertaker’s smile form at the
corner of Socolow’s mouth. He was thumbing through his notes. “You
have a neighbor named Phoebe Gethers at the intersection of Kumquat
and Solana. That’s right across the street from you, isn’t it,
Jake.”

He knew very well it was.

“
At about a quarter to
ten,” the detective said, “she’s sitting on her front porch, and a
taxi drops off a man at your house. She didn’t get a look at him,
but we check the cab companies, and a Haitian driver with no work
permit positively ID’s Hornback from a mug shot. A few minutes
later, your neighbor gets some houseguests and goes inside. More
guests arrive, and she’s back at the front door, letting them in.
She puts the time between ten and ten-fifteen, and now there’s what
she calls a Jeep sitting in front of your house. We show her some
pictures, and she ID’s it as a dark green or black Range Rover. By
the time you show up around eleven-thirty, the Range Rover’s gone,
and Hornback’s strung up with your tie. Basing it on body
temperature of the stiff, rigor mortis and livor mortis, the M.E.
puts time of death between nine and eleven p.m. Hornback was
rendered unconscious with barbiturates, then strangled.”

“
So where was Blinky
between eight and ten?” I asked.

Socolow grunted. “Who knows and who cares!
He was at your house when it counted.”

“
I care because Blinky’s
not a murderer.”

“
Jake’s right, for once.”
It was Jo Jo Baroso, coming through the balcony door. Behind her,
one of the cruise ships was headed out Government Cut toward the
Caribbean. My brother is not emotionally or physically
capable.”

The sister to the rescue, I didn’t expect
it.

“
As I see it,” she
continued, “Luis brought some muscle with him. When Kyle wouldn’t
agree to whatever deal Luis wanted to cut, the muscle did the dirty
work.”

Oh boy, with a sister like this, who needs a
prosecutor? But then, the sister is a prosecutor. I looked back at
Socolow and said, “Okay, I get the picture. After ten minutes of
detective work, it’s the collective wisdom of the police and the
state attorney’s office that this case is solved.”

“
Hey, Jake,” Socolow said,
with a smile I now recognized as a sneer in sheep’s clothing, “it
wasn’t that hard. You know the three elements of every prosecution,
don’t you?”

“
Sure. Perjury, coercion,
and pure dumb luck.”

“
Motive, opportunity, and
means,” Socolow corrected me. “Baroso knew Hornback was going to
flip. There’s the motive. We can tie the two of them together in
your house, at least circumstantially. That’s the opportunity. As
Josefina suggests, the means were undoubtedly provided by hired
muscle.”

“
Undoubtedly,” I said, with
as much sarcasm as possible. “Of course, your security guard didn’t
see a third party with Blinky, and Phoebe didn’t report another car
at my house, and even if it was Blinky’s Range Rover, you have no
one eyeballing him, and the three of you are so far off base about
the kind of person Blinky Baroso is that I don’t even know why I’m
arguing with you.”

I was getting aggravated, so I stood up and
paced. Sometimes, the hardest thing to do is sit still. In court, I
have a tendency to prowl when the opposition is doing the
questioning. To fight the urge, I imagine myself chained to my
chair. Here the chains were broken, but Blinky’s living room felt
like a cage. Something wasn’t making sense, but I didn’t know what.
After a moment, I stopped pacing and turned back to Socolow. “Why
are you telling me all this? What do you want from me?”

“
We figure Baroso will
contact you,” he said.

“
Yeah, clients occasionally
call their lawyers, so what?”

“
When he does, call
me.”

I started to say something, but Socolow
raised his hand as a teacher might to an unruly student. “Now,
before you shout attorney-client privilege, hear me out. He killed
Hornback, or he knows who did, and either way, I want to talk to
him. So, get his story and see if you can bring him in.”

I gave Socolow a look that asked what’s in
it for my client.

“
A voluntary surrender and
things will go easier for him,” Socolow said. “Maybe the muscle was
just supposed to muss up Hornback, and he went too far. If your
client surrenders, I wouldn’t fight a reasonable bail request. If
he makes us bring him in, he can sit in county jail until his case
is called. He’ll have the jailhouse pallor and bum haircut that’ll
tell the jury he’s right out of the can.”

“
What if he didn’t kill
Hornback and doesn’t know who did?” I asked.

“
Then he’s got nothing to
worry about, does he?” Abe Socolow answered.

***

Jo Jo Baroso walked back onto the balcony
and lit a cigarette. I don’t know if statistics bear it out, but it
seems more women than men are smoking these days. I’m not sure why,
and any speculation would sound like male chauvinism, something I
gave up along with bell bottoms and muttonchop sideburns. Male or
female, smoking is something I’ve never understood. Not that I’m a
health nut. Sure, I pour skim milk over my granola with mangoes.
And I’ve cut back on the saturated fats and cholesterol, limiting
my cheeseburgers (with a chocolate shake, double fries on the side)
to days with an “r” in them.

I believe in moderation,
not fanaticism. In my younger days, I would close every after-hours
bar in the eastern division of the AFC. Yeah, even Buffalo. Some
guys work hard and play hard. I played hard and played hard. I was
a step too slow and often injured. Coaches, like generals, have
great tolerance for other people’s pain. In one snowy game against
the Patriots, I dislocated a shoulder making a tackle on a kickoff.
To pop it back into place, the trainer handed me a cinder block and
let go. Gravity and Xylocaine got me back in the game. The shoulder
still
clickety-clacks
on the few occasions I comb my hair.

It’s the nineties, and
recklessness—booze, drugs, and casual sex—is out. Caution is in. I
know this is true. There’s a chart in
USA
Today
to prove it. So now, I don’t drink
and drive, sleep around, or draw to an inside straight. I’m still
not quite housebroken, but I’ve left some of the wildness behind. I
take fewer chances. Where I used to spin the wheel and choose red
or black—what difference did it make?—now, I stay out of the
casino. I am convinced, you see, that sooner or later, the ball
will plop into double zero.

***

Two policemen I didn’t know showed up.
Without excusing himself, Socolow, the detective, and the policemen
disappeared into a back bedroom Blinky uses as an office. A woman
cop in uniform came in from the elevator pushing what looked like a
bellman’s cart. I heard drawers opening and closing and what
sounded like furniture being moved.

I walked onto the balcony, standing to the
ocean side— windward—of Jo Jo Baroso’s smoke plumes. The bridge was
up on the Venetian Causeway as a forty-something-foot sloop sailed
through, heeling slightly in the easterly. Three gulls lazily rode
the updrafts, singing their gull songs.

“
He’s really fooled you,
hasn’t he?” Jo Jo said.

“
Abe?”

“
My brother!”

“
I just don’t think he’s
capable of murder, in person or with help.

“
That’s not what I mean.
He’s charmed you.”

“
He’s a charming rogue,” I
admitted.

Behind the city, the sky was streaked with
scarlet at the horizon, and the sun was setting over the
Everglades. “You’ve gotten him out of trouble so many times, you,
of all people must know what he’s really like.”

“
Blinky’s a dreamer. You
remember the Miami Ski Mountain deal? He ordered three hundred
million cubic yards of limestone to build a mountain along Dixie
Highway.”

“
I remember. He tried to
sell stock in a ski lift. Even the most gullible figured you
couldn’t keep snow from melting in the tropics.”

“
My point is, Blinky
believed it. He spent ten grand on the drawings.”

“
His overhead, just
overhead. How could he sucker the rubes without some slick
displays?”

“
You won’t cut him a break
will you?”

“
He doesn’t deserve
one.”

“
You are a tough customer,”
I told her.

She studied me a moment. Her gaze seemed to
look back over the years, or maybe I was imagining it. “You know
what infuriates me about you, Jake?”

‘‘
Virtually
everything.’’

“
Your naïveté. You see life
like an overgrown Boy Scout. I bet you help little old ladies
across the street.”

“
Yep, and sometimes tall,
young ones.” In the blush of the sunset, her dark complexion glowed
the color of
caf
é
au lait
. I
gave her my crooked grin and looked straight in those dark, velvet
eyes.

Josefina Jovita Baroso didn’t melt.
She didn’t faint. She narrowed her eyes just a bit to
appraise me, and finally said, “You’re still a damned attractive
man, Jake Lassiter.”

Now, that was a switch.

“
You have presence,” she
went on, “and you manage to project strength and warmth at the same
time. You have a full crop of hair that looks like a wheat field
that needs cutting, a tan that reveals you spend too much time at
the beach, and your size is most appealing. Thank God you don’t
wear those suits with the padded shoulders or you wouldn’t be able
to fit through doorways.”

I was beginning to enjoy this.

“
You are sentimental to a
fault, which causes you to have terrible judgment about people. You
are bright enough, I suppose, though I doubt anyone ever considered
you brilliant, unless it was one of your teammates whose jersey
number approximated his IQ. You are a nonconformist, which makes
your choice of professions somewhat curious. As far as your
lawyering is concerned, while perhaps not technically unethical, it
is amoral, at the very least ...”