"The questions," Kip interrupted. "Or if you want, we can finish this downtown."

I hushed the kid with what passes for a stern look. "Go ahead, Abe. Fire away."

"Where's your client?" Abe Socolow asked.

"Which one? I've got two or three, you know."

"Jake, don't jerk me around. Where's Louie Baroso?"

"I don't know," I answered, truthfully.

"When's the last time you saw him?"

"Three days ago."

I could have added, "in my office," but the question was when, not where, and I preach to my clients just to answer the question, no more, no less.

"Where?" Socolow asked.

"In my office."

"What was he doing there?"

"The usual, dropping ashes on the carpet, flirting with my secretary."

Socolow gave me a pained look. "Did he mention Kyle Hornback?"

"Yeah, he asked if he could use my house to kill Kyle, maybe add him to the living room furnishings along with the beanbag chair and lava lamp."

The muscular young detective looked up. "He said that?"

The major rubbed his forehead as if he had a migraine, and Abe stopped pacing and squarely faced me. "Jake, don't fuck with me, okay?"

"Yeah," Kip said in his tough-guy voice, or at least as tough as his eleven-year-old tenor could make it. "We can do this the easy way or the hard way, it's up to you, pal."

"What is it with you two?" Socolow demanded, scowling.

Just then, Kip leaned over and whispered something to me. I patted him on his goose-bumped arm, held his hand, and whispered something back. Abe Socolow's dark eyes shot me a question, so I answered. "He said you remind him of Frank Sinatra in The First Deadly Sin."

"Yeah?"

"And I told him Sinatra wore a better toupee."

"I don't wear a toupee."

"Really? No one can tell."

The major cleared his throat and said, "Mr. Lassiter, were you expecting any visitors here tonight?"

"No," I said, softly.

"Why did you leave the house?"

"Like I said before, I had to meet someone." When possible, I like telling cops the truth.

"Someone?"

"Call it a date if you like." Okay, okay, so it wasn't the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

"What was the lady's name?"

"I didn't say she was a lady." True enough. I also didn't say she was a she.

Socolow couldn't stand it. "Jake, what's her name, for chrissakes. We gotta establish your whereabouts, you know that."

"That could be embarrassing," I said. Still true. I should get a Boy Scout badge for this.

"Why? She married?"

I gave my best bashful grin. "You said it, Abe, not me."

I felt Kip's hand squeeze mine, but he didn't flinch, didn't say a word. What a trooper the kid was, and what a role model his old uncle Jake. In just a few hours, the kid learned how to drive recklessly, witnessed a grisly murder scene, drank his first beer, and watched his blood kin mislead the cops. And poor Granny was worried about a little spray-paint graffiti. If the kid hung out with me much longer, he'd be knocking off Wells Fargo trucks before he hit puberty.

Abe Socolow was prowling again. "When Baroso was in your office on Thursday ..."

Socolow let it hang there, but if he thought I'd start a narrative like some motor-mouth witness, he had a long wait. After a moment, he continued, "...what did you talk about?"

"C'mon, Abe. That's privileged, and you know it."

"Not if Baroso disclosed a plan to kill Kyle Hornback, it isn't.

"Hey, Abe. We've known each other a long time. If that had happened, don't you know I would have stopped him one way or another?"

"Yeah, I like to think so."

"Besides, Blinky Baroso isn't a killer. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn't have the physical ability to . . ." I gestured to a corner of the room, where the crime lab cops were taking the body temperature of the corpse. "Hornback must go about one eighty, one eighty-five," I continued. "Blinky couldn't benchpress a breadstick, much less strangle the guy and hoist him to the ceiling. You're looking for someone bigger and stronger, someone who's good with his hands."

"You're right," Socolow said, softly, "someone like you."

I made coffee for my guests while they waited for the assistant medical examiner, who either was lost or had other customers.

Take a number, there were three other homicide scenes ahead of ours, according to the younger detective.

While we waited, the female crime scene cops were smoking cigarettes, talking to each other about overtime and the supervisor who calls them babes. The detectives were scribbling in their little notebooks and whispering. Abe Socolow's face was set into its usual frown with an occasional glare thrown in for variety. "I suppose you know Hornback wanted to cut a deal before sentencing," he said.

"I figured."

"He was supposed to come in tomorrow with his lawyer. He had something to trade about your client, something that could make a bigger case, maybe involve the feds."

"Uh-huh."

"What do you know about it, Jake?"

"Nothing," I answered, which for once was entirely accurate. "I heard Hornback and Baroso exchange words in the courtroom at the end of the trial, and that's all I know. Blinky has another deal going out west, but I don't know the details, and I wouldn't tell you if I did. Besides, he assured me it's legitimate."

"And you believed him?"

"I've been trying to get him into something straight for years."

"I know that, Jake. You see the glimmer of good that's in all these jerkoffs. It's your flaw, your weakness. Can't you get it through your head that you can't make a citizen out of a wise guy? You can't change a lifetime of habits. Jeez, you'd think your days as a public defender would have taught you some cynicism.''

"They did. They made me cynical about cops, judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and defendants. They made me distrust the system and everyone in it. But I'm a cynic with hope."

"Me, too," he said, after a moment. "My hope is bigger prisons, longer sentences, fewer paroles."

I was willing to spar a couple more rounds with Abe, but my attention was distracted. Someone was pounding at the front door. It groaned, shuddered, and opened with a thud. The cops looked up excitedly, as if their suspect would walk into the room and surrender.

"Deus miseratur!" Charlie Riggs proclaimed. "Now where's the corpus delicti?"

Chapter 7.

The Bates Motel.

The State of Florida versus Sylvester Houston Conklin," the bailiff announced. "Adjudicatory hearing."

"C'mon," Kip said, nudging me. "That's us."

I gave him a look.

"My mom loves Sly Stallone," he explained. "I was born in Houston, and best she knows, my dad's name was Conklin."

The bailiff called out the case again, louder this time, and we hustled from the small gallery toward the bench. Earlier that morning, I had told Kip, or Sylvester Houston, to put on his Sunday best, which he interpreted to mean his Reebok high tops without socks, jeans with holes in the knees, and a T-shirt that celebrated "The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh." I wore a seersucker suit in a half-successful effort to look like a Southern gentleman.

We were in the courtroom of the Honorable T. Bone Coleridge, longtime Dade County Juvenile Court judge and Bull Gator in the University of Florida Alumni Society. He was, as far as I knew, the only judge in the state to wear orange and blue robes. His chambers were festooned with autographed footballs, photos of His Honor with various coaches and athletes, and memorabilia ranging from shoulder pads and helmets to the jockstrap Steve Spurrier wore the day he clinched the Heisman Trophy.

The Juvenile Courthouse, a concrete block affair with open walkways surrounding a cheerless concrete courtyard, sits on northwest Twenty-seventh Avenue in what police maps used to call the Central Negro District. It is a neighborhood of pawnshops and used car lots, lumberyards, and hubcap bazaars. About a block away is a gun shop with a pass-through window, like a hoagie stand in South Philadelphia. I had parked in a public lot surrounded by a razor-wire-topped fence. I took Kip by the hand, which felt small and moist, and led him through the maze of administrative buildings into the courthouse.

"Afternoon, numbah fifty-eight," the judge greeted me, in homage to my short but unspectacular career on the football field. "Don't see you much in kiddie court."

"Good afternoon, Your Honor," I acknowledged, bowing my head slightly. Like most lawyers, I would curtsy or kiss the hem of a judge's robe to help win a case.

"Say, Jake, what do you think of my dog-ass Gators this fall?"

"I think they'll play eleven games, twelve if they go to a bowl."

"Ah believe those boys will go all the way," the judge opined, as he did each summer. "Sugar Bowl and a numbah one ranking." It galled him that the University of Miami had won four national championships while his alma mater had failed to notch even one. "Now, let's see what roguery brings you here today."

The judge hunched over the bench and riffled through a court file. He had a bulbous nose lined with purple veins, a large bald head that reflected the overhead lighting, and he carried close to three hundred pounds on a five-eight frame. He liked to let people think he played football in college, but according to an ancient yearbook some lawyer friends passed around, the closest he got to the end zone was as a cheerleader. The judge, still peering into the file, made a tsk-tsk-tsking sound. Part of the role, as played by T. Bone, was to scare kids straight. "Malicious mischief!" he thundered, lifting his large head and glaring at Kip. "Trespassing and willful destruction of property. Serious charges, one and all. Son, how do you plead?"

I was ready to say "not guilty," but my half-pint client was too quick for me.

"Hey, Judge," he called out, "when you go through the metal detector downstairs, what goes off first, the lead in your ass or the shit in your brains?"

The judge turned red.

I was speechless.

Kip smiled a sinister grin I hadn't seen before. It didn't even look like him. Which made me think it wasn't him at all. I was tossing around that idea, but the judge's booming voice interrupted my train of thought.

"Young man, you're in direct contempt of court! Ah'm looking at your face, and it's got Youth Hall written all over it. Jake, you got yourself a real in-cor-rigible here."

"Your Honor," I responded, "that wasn't him talking."

"What are you saying, that Ah cain't believe my ears?"

"No, just that he didn't have control over what he said."

"Why not? Is he on ecstasy or crack? Is he one of those dopeheads who puke on my Dodge in the parking lot?"

"Your Honor, I believe what the boy said was from a movie." I turned to Kip, my eyes pleading. "Isn't that it, Sylvester?"

"Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2," Kip declared, proudly. "It just sort of popped into my head."

"That's part of our defense, Your Honor," I volunteered, making it up as I went along.

"Jake, that dog won't hunt. You know me, Ah'm just a simple country lawyer who's now a simple country judge ..."

Four million people from Miami to Palm Beach, and we still have judges chewing straw and handing out that aw-shucks routine.

"...and while I may not read everything in the law books," he continued, gesturing to a shelf of pristine copies of the Southern Reporter, "Ah believe there are only three possible pleas-guilty, not guilty, and nolo con-ten-dere ..."

He made the last plea sound like the title of a Tony Bennett song.

"...unless you're claiming the boy's incompetent. You'all looking for a competency hearing, Jake?"

"Respectfully, Your Honor," I said, employing a term lawyers use to mean just the opposite, "we plead not guilty and seek an immediate adjudicatory hearing, and while the facts of the incident may not be in dispute, there are certain mitigating factors, including the defendant's age, lack of prior record, and psychological considerations we'll be asking the court to consider."

Judge T. Bone Coleridge exhaled a guttural snort. "Ten-minute recess. Then strap on your helmets 'cause we're gonna try this case."

I adhered to the first rule of courtroom recesses: I took a pee, because you don't know when you'll have a chance for the next one. Then I used a pay phone to call Doc Riggs and find out if the autopsy report on Kyle Hornback was finished.