Fool Me Twice

by Paul Levine

  Cimarron ran out the rest of the high balls and was focusing on the eight.

  “I still don’t get you,” I said. “I mean, what are you doing as partners with Blinky Baroso?”

  He lifted his head and looked at me with one eye squinted shut. “What are you doing as his lawyer?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Hah!” He nailed the eight on a line and clunked it into a corner pocket.

  Kip made a sucking sound on the straw in his root beer. “You shoot a mean game of pool, fat man.”

  Cimarron turned toward him, either puzzled or angry, I couldn’t tell which.

  “Paul Newman,” Kip explained.

  “My first deal with Baroso was strictly legitimate,” Cimarron said, turning back to me. “Sunken treasure in the Keys. There was no need to oversubscribe the stock. Hell, I’d been the majority shareholder in the company that had located the wrecks. I’d been to the old naval library in Madrid, had examined the manifests of the ship. I knew every gold bar on her, every piece of jewelry. But we ran out of cash before we could salvage. It was so damn foolish of Baroso, but he just didn’t believe we’d find her. I would have never done business with him again if I hadn’t gotten involved with Josefina.”

  Funny. I probably would have stopped representing Blinky except for her. “She encouraged you?”

  “Josefina thought I could straighten him out, just like she thought you could.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Maybe so, but I went back to Baroso when I needed to raise cash for the new operation up here. I’ve got land, and I’ve got maps and claims, but I needed the start-up money. I told him, no funny business, and he said not to worry, he’d get his lawyer to handle the money. He wouldn’t make a move without his lawyer, good old reliable Jake Lassiter, that’s what he said.”

  “Good old reliable Nathan…Nathan, Nathan Detroit,” Kip sang out.

  “Well, that’s news to me,” I told Cimarron, ignoring Kip. “I defended Blinky in his criminal cases, but I never had anything to do with the business. You could have called me. You could have checked it out.”

  “Sure I could have done a lot of things, but I wanted the deal. I told myself I did it for the money he could raise, but lately I think I did it for Josefina. Anyway, that’s what happened. I checked you out with her, and she said you were all right. I didn’t even mind the fact that the two of you had a past. With me, business comes first. Anyway, my lawyers here set everything up, reasonable finder’s fees for the promoters, stock subscription agreements, two million dollars’ key man life insurance on Baroso and me, restrictions on selling any of our shares, except to each other. Everything was in order.”

  “For what, to find buried treasure? To chase stories told by drunks and braggarts. If your maps were real, these mountains would be crawling with technicians from major companies. The place would be swarming with helicopters and laser beams.”

  “Are you calling me a fool?” His voice had lost its hospitality.

  “No, I just think when you stumbled over a bag of twenty-dollar gold pieces, it addled your brain. This new project will turn out just like the Silver Queen. These poor slobs who bought shares would lose their money either way, whether Blinky stole it or not.”

  “You know, once in a bar down in Carbondale, a man called me crazy. I was standing there having a beer, minding my own business, and this fellow—drove a semi for a living—came up to me. ‘You’re that big bastard chasing after Coronado’s gold, ain’t you?’ I just ignored him, but he kept coming after me, pointing at me, telling his friends I was the biggest fool in the county. He was about your size, maybe a little smaller through the shoulders. Finally, I just picked him up by the collar and lifted him off his feet. Had a ceiling fan in there, and it bashed him across the ear. ‘Course the blades stopped then, so I let him down, then hoisted him back up, about a dozen times till he had blood running out his nose and each of his ears.”

  “You’re partial to ceiling fans, aren’t you, Cimarron? You ever tell Abe Socolow that story?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Kyle Hornback.”

  “You think I killed him?”

  “Well I know I didn’t.”

  “Think about it, Lassiter. Hornback came clean with me. Admitted they’d been selling the same stock three or four times. Why would I kill him?”

  “That’s why.”

  “No, you got me wrong. I was indebted to him. By nature, I’m not a violent man.”

  “You could have fooled me. What the hell were you doing in Jo Jo’s house when you tap-danced on my forehead?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. “Have you ever been so angry you could have killed someone?”

  I didn’t think he wanted an answer, so I didn’t disappoint him.

  “Anger beyond anything you’d ever known,” he continued. “I was enraged at Baroso, at Josefina, at you, a man I’d never seen. And at me, too. I’d been taken by that slippery son of a bitch the second time. You know the expression ‘fool me once, shame on you.’

  “Fool me twice, shame on me,” I said.

  “No. Fool me twice, you’re dead. I’d been made a fool by Baroso and you, and there you were with Josefina. Like I said, Hornback told me what they’d been up to, and I advised him to go to the authorities. Send Baroso to jail, let the chips fall where they may.”

  “So who killed him?”

  “I figured you did. You’re the guy who cooked the books. Your dick was on the chopping block.”

  “Cimarron, let me try this one time in simple, straightforward English. I’m Blinky’s lawyer, that’s all. I didn’t cook the books, hoodwink the investors, or steal the money. And I sure as hell didn’t kill anybody.”

  “So you say, but your client sold the outside stock three times over, and the money is missing. There’s a hundred fifty thousand in money I put up that was taken from the company account the day before Baroso disappeared. Socolow tells me half that amount showed up in your bank account in Miami.”

  “Like I told Socolow, I don’t know anything about the deposit, except I didn’t make it.”

  “Who did?”

  “Probably Blinky, but if he’s dead, we may never know.”

  “I’d bet you a hundred head of Hereford he’s sitting by a swimming pool somewhere with about one-point-nine million of investors’ money. I figure the two of you plan to split it.”

  “You’re wrong again,” I told him.

  “That’s what Josefina tells me, and so far, I’ve been listening. That’s why I didn’t throw you in the Roaring Fork when you showed up here. I’ve been listening real good ‘cause I love that woman and respect her, too. I’ll be honest with you. She doesn’t know what to do. She’s been sleeping in the guest room, and we’ve been like brother and sister since she got back. She wanted to see if we could be friends first, then lovers again. But she’s got you on her mind.”

  “I knew her before you did.”

  “You lost her. She came to me. She’s mine.”

  I laughed at him, and he didn’t like it. I didn’t care. “Maybe the word hasn’t gotten all the way to the Rockies, but a woman’s not a mining claim. You don’t own her.”

  “She belongs here just like my heifers and my horses, and I’m not going to lose her.”

  “Hey, pal, that’s her choice, not yours.”

  “That’s right, but she’s going to make that choice without any interference from you.”

  “What’s the matter, can’t stand the competition?”

  “Lassiter, I promised Josefina I wouldn’t hurt you if you showed up here, even though you stole my money and tried to steal my lady.”

  “Hey, I didn’t—”

  “Shut up, lawyer, or football player, or skier, or whatever other fool thing you are. I’ve fulfilled my promise. I told Josefina I’d offer you a drink and have a little chat and not muss up your hair, though if you must know, I’ve got an itch to kick your fa
ce in. Now, here’s the way it is. You’re going to get the hell off my property, and out of Pitkin County, and out of the state of Colorado because—”

  “This territory ain’t big enough for the two of us,” Kip chimed in.

  “Because if you don’t,” Cimarron said evenly, “I’m going to bust you up.”

  “If that’s supposed to scare me, you better try again,” I said. “We’re all going to die, and soon, in a celestial blink of an eye, so there’s no use being scared. You come at me, and I’ll do what I have to do. I’ll chop you in half with an ax if I have to.”

  “I’m only going to tell you this once, Lassiter. You come sniffing around Josefina, I mean if you’re in the same area code, I’m going to break you like a twig.”

  With that, he split his pool cue in two. He didn’t break it across his knee or muscle it with two hands. He just held it in one hand, his thumb straight up the shaft, and he snapped it clean in two.

  Like a twig.

  CHAPTER 17

  ALL ANGERED UP

  I’m confused.”

  “Why, Uncle Jake?”

  “Coming up here, I thought Cimarron was either a thief or a killer or both.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, he’s rough around the edges, all right, and he’s got a temper. But he’s not the thug I thought he was. He’s Kiwanis man of the year or something, and he really believes this buried treasure stuff.”

  “So?”

  “Whoa! Is this thing rocking or what?”

  “Take it easy, Uncle Jake. It’s just the wind.”

  “There it goes again. Hey, I even close my eyes on a ski lift.”

  We were riding to the top of Aspen Mountain—or Ajax, if you prefer—on the Silver Queen gondola. Yeah, that’s the name, in case I wasn’t already dwelling on Cimarron’s stories. Suspended from a cable, our enclosed car was a good fifty feet above the top of a strand of healthy spruce trees that were a good eighty feet tall themselves. Strong wind gusts pushed us from side to side. Below, some hikers took the hard way, straight up the steep face of the ski slopes, now green with thick grass and spotted with yellow sunflowers. Behind us, the town of Aspen faded away. To our left were the snowcapped mountains leading to the Continental Divide.

  “We should have gotten some aerobic exercise by hiking up,” I said, gripping the handrail with whitened knuckles.

  “Uncle Jake, are you afraid of heights like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo?”

  “I wouldn’t say afraid. More like concerned. I’m concerned about heights.”

  We were slowing down, approaching the port at the top of the mountain. “Something else, too. Cimarron really thinks I conspired with Blinky to defraud him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can tell, Kippers. This is what I do for a living. I ask questions and listen to the answers, and I watch. Boy, do I watch. There are some very good liars and some people who can delude themselves into believing anything they want. They’re hell on polygraphs, juries, and spouses. But this guy didn’t tell a fib, not one I could catch.”

  The gondola bucked into a V-shaped catching device, slowed down, and the door automatically slid open. We stepped out, and a middle-aged couple bundled into ski jackets climbed in. It had been sunny and in the mid-seventies in town. It was still sunny up here, but a stiff wind was blowing, and the temperature had plummeted twenty degrees.

  I followed Kip, who can sense the proximity of food, and we headed to the snack bar where he ordered a hot chocolate and a cheeseburger. We sat at an outdoor table, looking down into the valley.

  “The other thing, unless he’s the world’s greatest actor, Cimarron really thinks I killed Hornback.”

  “So what? You didn’t, did you, Uncle Jake?”

  “Of course not. But what it means is that Cimarron didn’t kill him, either.”

  “So who did? And what happened to Mr. Baroso?”

  “Kip my boy, that’s what we’re going to find out.”

  While Kip was chomping his burger, I found a pay phone and dialed a familiar number, putting the charge on a credit card. When he answered, barking his last name, I said, “Hello, Abe, coerce any confessions today?”

  “Jake! Jake, goddamnit, where are you? No, strike that. I know where you are. You’re harassing my witness. Cimarron called me less than an hour ago. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Seeking the truth, Abe, just like Charlie Riggs always taught me.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re a fleeing felon, evading arrest, surreptitiously departing the jurisdiction after I cut you a break. You’re obstructing justice and threatening witnesses.”

  “That’s bull.”

  “Yeah, on this very day, did you or did you not threaten to take a hatchet to my last living witness?”

  “I think I said ax.”

  “Damn you! Do I have to put guards around Cimarron?”

  “Nah, he does a pretty good job of protecting himself. “

  Socolow snorted, the wet sound of a dolphin clearing its blowhole. “Jake, you know I’m sitting on a sealed indictment, naming you for the murder of Kyle Hornback.”

  “I figured.”

  “I can courier it to the Aspen police. We’d have you extradited in a week.”

  “Give me a couple of days, Abe. I’ll call you.”

  “What! You think this is like scheduling lunch? You’ve been indicted for murder one, a capital fucking crime. It took the grand jury about fifteen minutes. Can you get that through your thick skull?”

  “Listen to me, Abe. I’m standing on top of a mountain at maybe eleven thousand feet. In the winter, it’s one of the best ski slopes in the country. In the summer, it’s filled with hikers and picnickers. Abe, have you ever seen a columbine?”

  “A what?”

  “A wildflower that grows up here. Some are yellow, like buttercups. Some are lavender. Anyway, the mountain is blazing with wildflowers now. In the winter, there’s six feet of snow, and under the ground, winter or summer, under my feet right now are mine shafts and tunnels. Dozens of them, hell, hundreds of them, and there’s still silver in there, and maybe buried treasure and who knows what?”

  “Jake, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “I don’t think Cimarron killed Hornback.”

  “Neither do I. Neither do twenty-three members of the grand jury. So now, it’s unanimous.”

  “But it’s so screwy, Abe. Cimarron’s the one who had the motive. Hornback and Blinky cheated him, and the guy’s got a fearsome temper. I’ve got a couple of mending metacarpals to prove it. Blinky cheated him twice, and Cimarron told me he’d kill a man for that. Something else, Abe. Cimarron and Blinky had two-million-dollar key man insurance policies on each other’s lives. That would just about cover the amount of money Cimarron thinks Blinky stole.”

  “What are you saying, that Cimarron didn’t kill Hornback, but he killed Baroso?”

  “He had the motive, but I still don’t think so. I just have this feeling about Cimarron, that he really sees himself as the victim and Blinky and me as the bad guys. I don’t think he killed anyone.”

  “You’re not helping your case any. If Cimarron didn’t do it, who did?”

  “I don’t know, but whoever’s setting me up has got to be the one ...”

  A thought was racing around the perimeter of my brain. I struggled to get a rope around it and bring it in.

  “...Abe, that deposit into my account, where’d it come from?”

  “Wire transfer from the Rocky Mountain corporate account at Florida Southern Bank.”

  “Who authorized it?”

  “You did, dummy! That’s the nail in the coffin.”

  “I didn’t. I couldn’t have. I had no signatory powers over the account. I never even knew what bank it was in.”

  “Nice try, Jake, but you filled out a signature card when the account was opened, and the signature on the wire transfer request matched.”

  “Abe, I’m telling you I never si
gned any card or transfer request or anything. If they match, it’s only because the same forger did them both. I was set up the day the Rocky Mountain Treasures bank account was opened.”

  “Pretty farfetched, Jake.”

  “Who opened the corporate account?”

  I heard a rustling of papers at the other end of the line. “Louis X. Baroso, last December nineteenth.”

  “Blinky. Of course, who else would it be?”

  “A week later, he mailed in a signature card signed by Cimarron and you.”

  “No, forged by Blinky.”

  “So you say. Well, we can have a handwriting expert take a look at it.”

  I was still chasing the shadow of an idea. “They still needed my bank account number.”

  “What?”

  “Abe, the night Hornback was killed, Kip said someone came up to my bedroom.”

  “Right. That’s where they got your necktie.”

  “They got more than that. There’s a desk in my bedroom by the window. In the middle drawer, along with last year’s Christmas cards, is my checkbook. Abe, I want you to dust for prints. There shouldn’t be any latents, except mine.”

  “You expect to find Blinky’s greasy thumb? Did he kill Hornback, too? As I recall, you’re the one who said he wasn’t capable.”

  “Abe, this is really getting complicated.”

  “You’re trying too hard. Come on in, Jake. You’re just going to make it worse for yourself.”

  “Worse! How?”

  There was a faint buzzing on the long-distance line. “I don’t know,” Abe Socolow said, “but I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

  ***

  The ride down the mountain seemed to take longer, but that’s always the way it is when you’re in a hurry. I had parked the car on Durant Street near the Little Nell Hotel, and I told Kip to hustle. He did, and we both hopped into the rental convertible without opening the doors.

  I drove north on Spring Street to Main, turned left, passed the courthouse, the old Hotel Jerome, the Sardy House, and the Christmas Inn, turned right on Third Street and parked just behind the music tent. It hadn’t taken five minutes, one of the joys of small towns.