Fool Me Twice

Chapter 8

After court, or apres cour, as one of my worldly partners insists on saying, I was back in the office, not answering my mail, when Abe Socolow called on my direct line. He barked out his usual greeting, which consisted of my last name in an accusing tone, then told me to get my ass over to Blinky Baroso’s apartment. I told him I’d do better than that: I’d bring all of me.

So I abandoned my stacks of opposing lawyers’ testy correspondence that begged for even more obnoxious responses. It is a game we play, scrivening abusive letters, insulting the other’s client in increasingly harsh terms until one or the other files suit. Once, in a petty dispute over a property line, H. T. Patterson wrote a twelve-page letter, accusing my client of everything from deceit, deception, and duplicity to being on the grassy knoll in Dallas. Pressed for time, I responded simply, “Fuck you; strong reply to follow.” As Goethe said, or was it Shula, “When ideas fail, words come in very handy.”

Before leaving, I checked on Kip who was installed in the conference room, a splendid place of dark wood, tinted glass and marble, all paid for by grateful, or at least, intimidated clients. Word had gotten back to me that the lad had been videotaping all the female employees in the office, telling them he was the casting director for Porky’s IV. No one seemed to mind until he asked the receptionist to take off her blouse for her audition. So I grounded him for the day, which he didn’t seem to mind, inasmuch as television came with the punishment.

My secretary, Cindy, and two young female paralegals were making a fuss over my ward, who sat in one of the leather swivel chairs, sneakers propped on the marble slab of a conference table, watching a black-and-white movie on the TV tastefully recessed into a teak wall unit. The women were feeding him doughnuts and sodas from the office kitchen and cooing about his blond hair and blue eyes.

“ 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 caf e 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 coraz o n?”

“ 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.”

“ That’s what I remember, that and your leaving me.”

“ I still care for you,” I told her, the words surprising me as much as her.

Her eyes measured me for just a moment. “Nostalgia, Jake. Don’t get carried away. Right now, you’re fantasizing about rekindling something that’s been burnt out a long time. It’s a way of reliving your youth.”

“ I wasn’t that young.”

“ You were playing ball and having fun, and your future seemed infinite. Whatever you think you’re feeling right now isn’t real.”

I tried to examine what I felt, real or not. It wasn’t easy. “What I’m feeling, what I’m wondering really, is if I stuck with your brother all these years just to maintain some connection with you.”

“ And now?”

“ I’m wondering if you want to give it another go.”

For a moment, her eyes softened. Thoughts seemed to race around in her head, but I couldn’t catch them. Her brow furrowed. She didn’t smile and she didn’t frown. She was processing information, computing what she needed and what she didn’t. And then the moment was gone. The thoughtful expression changed. It was almost as if she willed herself not to yield, not to show weakness, which to her, was any hint of emotion, other than one: anger. Her eyes shone with determination, and her voice was fire and steel.

“ Never, never, never. As far as I’m concerned, Jacob Lassiter, Esquire, you’re just the mouthpiece for that trashy brother of mine. You’re no better than he is. You’re the enemy, get it?”

Whew! From sunshine to squall in the blink of an eye. The suddenness and the fury shocked me.

“ I don’t get it,” I said.

She blew a puff of smoke in my face, which is a good trick against the wind. “You’re hopeless. Why don’t you do something useful like find my brother and bring him in?”

Before I could answer, I heard Abe Socolow calling from inside the living room. “Hey, Jake, c’mere.”

I think Socolow liked bossing me around. Maybe it compensated for the few times I beat him in court. I went back inside to let him insult me some more. Jo Jo followed a step behind, and I made a mental note to check for knife wounds later.

The file drawers from Blinky’s bedroom/office were stacked in the living room. Every drawer was open, and the contents were being searched by patient, if bored, cops. In the foyer, an antique milk can, lacquered bright orange, was turned upside down. A dozen carved wooden canes and shillelaghs along with a couple of umbrellas were spilled onto the floor. The canes weren’t just for show. Blinky used them after tearing up his knee crawling out of a Dumpster filled with credit card receipts.

Now Socolow marched around the living room, holding a handsome cherry cane with a large polished knob for a handle. The whole thing was fairly phallic, but I didn’t bother to share my thoughts with Socolow, who was gesturing at me with the damn thing.

“ You know what’s in those papers?” he said, pointing in the general direction of the cocktail table where he had spread out several thick, typewritten documents.

“ No, Abe. You tell me.”

He hunched over the table, leaning on the cane like a pettifogger out of Dickens. He ran a finger along the lines of a page, furrowing his brow.

“ You could read faster if you didn’t move your lips,” I told him, helpfully.

“ What the hell is Rocky Mountain Treasures, Inc.?”

“ A company Blinky formed,” I answered.

“ I can see that. What’s it do?”

“ Hunts for treasure.”

Socolow scowled. “Didn’t Baroso get indicted for something like that, selling stock in a deep-sea salvage company down in the Keys?”

“ Only civil suits, and that involved sunken Spanish galleons,” I corrected him. “This is all about gold and silver in the Colorado mountains.”

“ Yeah, that’s what it says here under ‘corporate mission.’ Socolow began turning pages, again, reading aloud now. “‘The company will use its best efforts and employ the latest sophisticated technology to locate and reclaim one or more of the following: the Arapaho Princess Treasure, the Golden Mummy, the Treasure of Apache Gulch, La Caverna de Oro, the Lost Dutchman mine, the Purgatory Canyon Treasure, Moccasin Bill’s Lost Mine, the Lost Gulch mine, the Devil’s Head Treasure.’ “Socolow closed the folder and looked up at me. “Hey, Jake, what are you doing involved in this wild West shit?”

“ What do you mean?”

Now he was looking at the corporate minute book. “Says here you’re a ten percent shareholder…”

“ That’s right.”

“ And secretary treasurer of the company.”

“ What?”

“ Plus general counsel.”

“ What?” I said again.

“ You heard me. Your bio is in the prospectus that goes to potential investors. You’re described as one of the leading trial lawyers in Florida. Who wrote that, your granny?”

“ I don’t know anything about it,” I said, honestly. “Blinky gave me the stock in lieu of a fee, but I never agreed to be a corporate officer or to let my name be used. You know I’d never subject myself to liability like that.”

Socolow was back in the file again, still leaning on his cane. “Blinky’s bio says nothing about his criminal record or the lawsuits against him. What do they call that in securities law, Jake?”

“ A material omission of fact,” I said.

“ Right. The feds would be real interested in that, wouldn’t they? Maybe a 10 (b) (S) violation. What else do we have here?” He turned over a few more pages. “The corporation issued one hundred shares of stock, twenty to Louis Baroso, ten to Jacob Lassiter, and seventy to Kit Carson Cimarron.”

“ Who?”

“ Just what I was going to ask you, Jake.”

“ Damned if I know. Sounds like a cowboy.”

Socolow closed the folders, looked at the detective, at Jo Jo Baroso, and back at me. He didn’t say anything. He was into his genius-at-work mode. He started pacing, the cane clacking against the tile. At the moment, he was probably the most irritating person on the planet. He stopped at the sliding glass door to the balcony and seemed to study the smooth waters of Government Cut. To the south, cars were streaming across the newly renovated MacArthur Causeway, and below us, the fronds of the palm trees swayed gently in the breeze. Finally, he turned and faced me. “Jake, I’ll bet you all the gold in Apache Gulch that Kyle Hornback was going to sing about Rocky Mountain Treasures, Inc. Maybe it’s a little farther from home, but it’s just another of Blinky’s scams. Now, as for you, I know you step over the line once in a while, but I gotta tell you, I’m real disappointed.”

“ Abe, listen to me, I-”

“ Lemme finish. The way I see it, Blinky figured he’d worn out his welcome down here. Kyle was doing his selling up there, and this Carson probably put up the money and added some local credibility. That left you to handle legal problems.”

“ Abe, you’re not listening. I never agreed to represent the company or be an officer. I didn’t ask for the stock, and I didn’t write the prospectus. As far as I know, the company’s legitimate, but even if it’s not, where’s the proof Blinky killed Kyle. “

“ Who’s talking about Blinky? I’m starting to agree with you. Baroso’s not a tough guy, at least not without someone to back him up.”

“ Like who, or is it whom?”

“ How about the guy who owned the house where the decedent was killed, the guy whose tie was the murder weapon, whose prints are on the body, and who just happened to discover the body and call the cops?”

“ Are you nuts? Why would I kill Kyle Hornback?”

“ Ah, motive,” Socolow said in that infuriating tone intended to indicate his intellectual prowess. “The missing ingredient. If I nailed down the motive, Jakie my boy, I’d be in front of the grand jury quicker than you can say life without parole. But I’m getting warm, aren’t I? It’s got to do with Rocky Mountain Treasures, doesn’t it, Jakie?”

“ It’s your case, Abe. You figure it out.”

“ Let’s see now. If Kyle had flipped, it wasn’t just Blinky who was at risk, was it? What about the company lawyer? Come on, Mr. Secretary-Treasurer and General Counsel. Want to bet that the motive is buried with all that fool’s gold in cowboy country?”

He aimed the damn cane at me.

“ Abe, I hope you’re prepared to use that thing. If not, I may just ram it up your tight ass.”

Socolow glared at me, but the detective growled and shifted in his chair. “There’s no need for that kind of talk. The state attorney doesn’t have to stand for it.”

“ It’s all right, Major,” Socolow said, pleased he’d gotten to me. “Jakie seldom hits anyone. Hell, he seldom hit anyone when he played ball.”

Still Socolow kept the cane leveled at my chest. He was enjoying this too much. I strained to keep my temper under control, my mind’s eye playing a little fantasy involving Socolow’s head and a heavy piece of polished wood.

“ You see, Major,” Socolow said, “I’ve come face-to-face with every category of miscreant known to the law, but essentially there are only two types, wicked scoundrels and foolish scoundrels. I fear that what you see at the end of my cane is nothing but a foolish scoundrel.”

I kept my voice low and didn’t raise an eyebrow. “At which end, Abe?”