"This nephew of yours is the sweetest little thing," said Cindy, who, like her boss, will do anything to avoid sitting at her desk. "He's going to be a real lady killer."

"James Cagney, 1933," the kid said, his mouth covered with powdered sugar.

"Huh?" Cindy looked confused. It was not an entirely unfamiliar expression. She'd been my secretary back in the P.D.'s office and was a tad unconventional for a downtown law firm with offices thirty-two stories above Biscayne Bay. She wore miniskirts and orange lipstick and had three-inch fingernails painted different colors with sparkles embedded in the polish. Her typing sounded like a chef chopping vegetables at a Japanese steak house.

"Look, Cindy, I gotta go. If it's not too much trouble, how 'bout typing some pleadings this afternoon? I'll be back later for Little Lord Fauntleroy."

"Freddie Bartholomew," Kip said, without taking his eyes from the set. "Ricky Schroder in the TV remake."

The Olds was right where I left it, which is always a fifty-fifty proposition in a county where a hundred cars are stolen each day. Some are stripped for parts, some are taken by freighter for sale in the islands, and some turn up, repainted, as local taxicabs. I had parked next to a powder blue SL 300, the Mercedes convertible. My lead gas-guzzling monster made the little German car look feminine and petite.

I eased out of the parking garage and onto Biscayne Boulevard. It's our showcase downtown street, running along the bay. There's a wide median with towering palm trees where hookers, muggers, and transvestites gather, though they're generally shooed out of there just before the Orange Bowl Parade. The boulevard intersects with Flagler Street, which runs due west past the county courthouse and provides an entertaining walk among street peddlers, panhandlers, and tourists chattering in a dozen languages, none of them English.

Today, I had a short drive north past Bayfront Park, where the multimillion-dollar Claude and Mildred Pepper Fountain sits idle and dry because the city can't pay for the electricity to run it. Just past the park is Bayside, an outdoor mall of T-shirt shops and rum-punch booths. On the west side of the boulevard used to be the Coppertone sign with the dog pulling down the little girl's swimsuit. It's gone, now, along with the old library they knocked down to redo the park. Gone too are the Columbus and McAllister hotels that were bought by some Saudis, then flattened, and a few other local institutions, including The Miami News, Eastern Airlines, and Pan Am. Things change, but seldom for the better.

In four minutes I was on the Venetian Causeway, the bridge across the man-made islands to Miami Beach. Blinky lived on the first island past the tollgate in one of those step-back high rises that looks like a pre-Columbian pyramid. I had been there before, but never with a police escort. Two uniformed Miami cops were in the lobby. Another stood by the elevator and pushed number ten for me. Yet another opened the door to the apartment and ushered me inside.

The apartment was done in white and black. White walls with postmodern paintings, white marble floor, black furniture. Blinky was smart enough not to decorate it himself, or it would have tended toward heavy red velvet.

Abe Socolow and his buddy, the Anglo homicide detective, were sitting on a black leather sofa in the living room. Through an open sliding glass door, I saw a woman standing on the balcony, her back to me. I recognized the long, dark hair and angular frame of Josefina Jovita Baroso.

No one was talking. They had been here for a while. It gave off the feel of a homicide scene, and I was sure I'd be ushered into another room for a gander at Blinky's body. The air-conditioning was turned up high, and I shivered in my seersucker suit. Cops sometimes try to chill down homicide scenes. They're not immune to the smells any more than the rest of us. But I didn't detect the sticky-sweet scent of fresh blood or the rot of decaying flesh, and Blinky, I remembered, kept his thermostat at sixty, lest he sweat through his silk undershorts.

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 naivete. 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 cafe 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 ..."

Had there been a subtle shift in tone?

"...You have a certain easygoing charm and affability. Your eyes crinkle when you smile, and doubtless, there are numerous women who find you irresistible, chief among them I suspect are cocktail waitresses, South Beach models, and bubble-brained cheerleaders."

Somehow, I heard a "but" coming.

"But if you think a smile and a laugh can get you inside my panty hose, you'd better think again, buster."

"Buster? Whatever happened to mi corazon?"

"What happened between us is ancient history. I swear I barely remember it."

"I don't believe you."

"Really, what do you remember?"

"A lot of caring," I said, "a lot of moist heat."

"Anything else?"

"Squabbles, lots of squabbles."