I was on my knees, now, vaguely aware of a voice above me and warm blood dripping onto me. "Where is he?"

I was dazed and didn't get it. "Who he?"

He grabbed me by the hair and pulled my head back. "Where's Baroso? Where's the little son of a bitch?"

"I don't know. Hurt, dead, I don't know."

He yanked harder on my hair. "The two of you screwed me good, didn't you, lawyer?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He dropped my head and called out, "Josefina, where's that low-life brother of yours?"

She was huddled on the bed, crying. "I don't know. Leave us alone." She gathered herself up and threw a pillow at him. It did about as much good as my left jabs. I was on all fours now, trying to get up, expecting another blow, but it didn't come. From above me, a booming voice: "Stay out of my affairs, lawyer! Stay out of my affairs, or you're a dead man. Do you understand?"

I must not have, because he lifted up a foot and stomped my right hand. I heard the knuckles fracture-the sound of a cue ball on a break-long before I felt the pain.

Chapter 12.

A Bumpy Night.

Kip watched in silent fascination as Doc Charlie Riggs mixed water with plaster for the cast.

"Does it hurt much?" Kip asked, gently touching my swollen hand.

"Only when I play 'Dueling Banjos.'

"Out of the way, Kip," Charlie advised, approaching with a strip of gauze soaked in dripping plaster, some of which had become affixed to his bushy beard. I was sprawled on the sofa in the pit-not a conversation pit, just a pit-of my living room, my arm slung onto the sailboard coffee table.

"You ever do this before?" I asked the doc, who was leaning over me, squinting through his lopsided eyeglasses.

He harrumphed. "You'll be my first patient who lived."

"Don't make promises you can't keep."

Kip leaned close as Charlie began wrapping my hand. "What's AMAL YNOT?" the kid asked.

I peered at the back of my hand through a nearly closed eye. The hand disappeared under the wet gauze. "The lasting impression of a Tony Lama boot, size sixteen, quadruple E."

"Bummer," Kip said. "The dude went ballistic, huh?" He ran a finger over bruises the color of ripe eggplants on my bare arms.

"Third and fourth metacarpals fractured, ligaments stretched, but not torn," Charlie Riggs announced. "Tylenol with codeine for the pain." He studied me a moment. "How do you feel?"

"Like I was blindsided by a Mack truck. Next time I run into that cowboy, I'm going to tear his heart out."

Charlie gave my hand a gentle squeeze and a jolt of electricity shot up my arm. "Not for a long time, my friend."

Charlie poked around for a while, shining a light in my eyes to check pupil dilation, taking my blood pressure, pinching and poking this part and that. When he was done, Kip nudged me and whispered, "You didn't thank the doc."

He was right. I was beginning to take my friend for granted, another of my failings, right up there with my inability to ward off bedroom attackers. My self-esteem was taking a beating, along with my body. "Thanks, Charlie. You're always there for me, and sometimes I don't show my appreciation."

He dismissed the idea with a wave of a pudgy hand. "Tacent satis laudant. Silence is praise enough."

Codeine took the pain away with a drowsy, cloudy half sleep. I awoke with a throbbing hand and a head filled with bowling balls that rolled whichever way I tilted. It was dark outside, and the mockingbird in the chinaberry tree was whistling for a mate.

Which made me think of Jo Jo Baroso. What did it mean, the friction of body parts and remembrance of old times, so rudely interrupted? I took two pills and started to drift off again, vaguely aware that Kip kept opening my bedroom door, looking in at me, during breaks between TV movies.

"Want to split a beer, Uncle Jake?" he asked during one of my periods of semi-consciousness. The aroma of home-delivery pizza entered the room with him. I thought he was doing well in the self-sufficiency department. Kids left on their own somehow manage. I ought to know.

I shook my head, and the effort made my head pound with a pain that kept time with my heartbeat. Kip came over and put a hand on my forehead, and for some reason I couldn't explain, tears came to my eyes and then sleep overtook me.

"You look like death warmed over." She opened the blinds with an irritating clackety-clack, and bright sun slanted through the window and across the bed. "Lord-y, you look even worse in the daylight."

I pried my eyes open and squinted into the glare, finding a silhouette of Granny Lassiter leaning over me. "Good morning to you, too, Florence Nightingale."

Granny clucked her disapproval and began straightening up the room, picking up perfectly clean T-shirts that happened to be crumpled into piles on the floor. She rearranged my stylish collection of Dolphins commemorative Super Bowl ashtrays, ran a finger over a chest of drawers, leaving a trail in the dust. "Brought you some white lightning," she said, hoisting a wicker picnic basket onto the bed. She pulled out a mason jar filled with a liquid that could power a Saturn rocket. "It'll stop the pain dead in its tracks."

"So will a coma," I said.

I took a sip and grimaced. Granny slipped downstairs into the kitchen, and at lunchtime reappeared with a bowl of steaming conch chowder and some grouper fillets cooked in coconut milk and lime juice. I ate, then dozed off again, just after she told me she was going to give Kip a haircut since I apparently hadn't thought about it.

It was late afternoon when two more visitors squeezed into my little bedroom. One had been there before. They both wore navy blue business suits, but the lady looked better in hers.

"Hello, Jo Jo," I said. "Abe, what brings you here? Find another corpse in my house?"

"Nah, but if you looked any worse ..."

Just then, Kip stuck his court-ordered video camera through the open door. "I told John Law he couldn't come in without a warrant, but Granny said it was okay. Did I do right, Uncle Jake?"

"You done good, kid," I said, trying to sound like Jimmy Cagney, "but next time, give him a fatal case of lead poisoning, see?

Kip lowered the camera, winked, and shot a pretend gun at Abe Socolow, who seemed distressed at my felonious advice. Jo Jo came over to the bed, leaned down and kissed me on the forehead, or rather, on a purple welt on my forehead. Kip walked in and sort of hung around in the corner, taping the scene for a documentary, My Uncle, the Punching Bag.

"I brought you something," Socolow said, tossing a bag onto the bed.

I smelled the garlic bagels before I opened the bag. "Thanks, Abe. Better than serving an indictment. I guess you believe me now."

"About what?"

"That I didn't kill Hornback or Blinky. That crazy cowboy Cimarron did, and he tried to kill me, or at least, threatened to."

Socolow reached into the bag, pulled out one of my bagels and started chewing. "Doesn't fit. If Cimarron killed Blinky, why'd he ask you where he was?"

I shot a look at Jo Jo.

"I'm sorry, Jake. I gave a statement. I had to tell Abe what Simmy said."

I turned back to Socolow. "I don't know why he asked. Maybe it doesn't make any sense, but look at the facts. There are four people involved in Rocky Mountain Treasures. One is dead, one is missing and presumed dead, one just got the crap kicked out of him by the fourth one. C'mon, Abe, it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes ..."

"Maybe you're right, but maybe not. You know as well as I do that when you're dealing with circumstantial evidence, you've got to rule out the possibility of any other set of facts. Who's to say that you and Cimarron aren't involved in a power struggle for that treasure company? Maybe the other two just got in the way. Or maybe Hornback sided with Cimarron, and you had him taken out, and Blinky sided with you, and Cimarron took him out. Or vice versa, or a hundred other scenarios I haven't thought of."

"Abe! I'm not in a power struggle with the cowboy. I never even knew the guy existed. I never asked to be in that company. I was just dragged into it."

Socolow seemed to think about it. He gave the impression of engaging in quiet, deductive reasoning, but after a moment, he said, "You got any cream cheese?"

"No. Abe, you're giving me a headache. What are you doing about Cimarron?"

"No way we can charge him with murder, but if you and Josefina give a sworn statement, we'll file a direct information for aggravated assault and trespass. You want us to charge him?"

"Yes," I said.

"No," Jo Jo said.

"Well, I'm sure pleased the two of you are back together," Socolow said. "Just like old times. Maybe I ought to leave the room and let you hash this out." He stood up and started for the door. "You think your granny brought any of that Key lime pie with her?"

When he was gone, Jo Jo shot a nervous look toward Kip, who was sitting in the corner.

"It's okay," I said. "Kip and I are covered by the uncle-nephew privilege."

"There's no such thing," she told me. Turning back to the kid, she said, "Would you turn off the camera please?"

"I will if you say, 'Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night.'

She looked puzzled.

"An audition," I explained. "He's looking for a new Bette Davis."

"Jake," she said, giving me a no-nonsense look I remembered so well, "this is serious."

"Okay, Kip. It's a wrap. I'm closing down production. You can stay and listen but keep quiet."

He grumbled but turned off the camera.

Jo Jo waited a moment, then said, "Simmy called me this morning."

"Great, where is he?"

"Didn't say. He apologized, said he lost his head, but it was a combination of things. Jealousy at finding you in my bed, anger at Luis, frustration with the company."

"Okay, he's got problems, and he works them out by using my head for punting practice. I hope you told him that the next time I see him, I going to even things up."

"No, I didn't tell him that," Jo Jo said, evenly. "Mostly, I listened. He kept repeating what he said the other night, that Blinky had double-crossed him, and you must have been in on it. Then, he told me he wanted me back. He didn't realize it before, but he wants to start again."

"Yeah, well tell him to take a number. I'm first in line."

"Oh, Jake. I don't know what to do. I really don't. A week ago, I had no one, and now, two men want me."

"Like Katharine Hepburn in The Rainmaker," Kip said.

"Hey, kid," I said, "how 'bout going downstairs and keep an eye on the D.A."

"Why? Is this where it gets X-rated?"

I shooed him out, and we were alone. "Jo Jo, my head is spinning when it isn't throbbing. Two nights ago, we made love, and it was a ten on the Richter scale. We turned back the clock. Then we get a visit from a maniac the size of a missile silo, a guy who may have killed your brother, and now you're telling me you're thinking about going back to him. Is that what I'm hearing?"

Her dark eyes were moist. "I don't know, Jake. I just don't know. It's so much more complicated than you realize. Luis didn't tell you everything, and neither did I."

"I'm listening," I said.

But she wasn't talking.

"Jo Jo!"

"I'm so sorry Luis got you involved in this. Maybe it's not too late to get you out. Please, Jake, let it drop. Let me handle it. I have things I've got to do. Don't follow me. And someday I hope you'll forgive me."

She bolted from the room, and I heard her blue patent leather pumps beating a staccato retreat down the stairs. I wanted to chase after her, but I couldn't. I wanted to call out to her, to ask her more questions.

Starting with one...

Forgive you for what?

And backing up a bit...

Follow you where?

And maybe most important...

Get me out of what?

Which was the most difficult of all, because if you don't know what you're involved in, how the heck are you going to get out?

Chapter 13.