A Dozen Deadly Thoughts.

I went back to work, shuffling papers, pleading out first-timers for stern lectures and probation because the prisons were too crowded to house my fallen angels. Weeks passed with no news. Metro police could not find the moose disguised as a cowboy and finally asked for help from the sheriff s department in Pitkin County, Colorado, on the theory that Cimarron had gone home.

Our local cops seemed to be happy to lateral the ball. In a county with a murder a day and a hundred stolen cars a week, arresting a guy for assault was not the highest priority. Especially when the word I was getting from the state attorney's office was that Socolow considered the whole thing a lovers' triangle where nobody got killed. In other words, no big deal, a couple of guys trading punches over a woman. I didn't see it that way, but then I was the guy whose ears rang for a week.

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 & 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.

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."