Jack and the Beanstalk (Matthew Hope) (19 page)

“Yes, I know,” he said.

—according to her they’d been discussing the theft of cows.

“I’ve been giving a lot of thought to that telephone conversation,” Bloom said. “I’m not so sure they were talking about cows. Remember my first impression when I heard this kid had forty thousand in cash? I thought
dope
is what I thought, the kid was involved some way with dope. Okay, last October he gets a call from a guy with a Spanish accent—all your cocaine comes up from Colombia, Matthew, the dope heavies in Florida are mostly all Spanish. And the guy says how many and the kid says fifteen at thirty. Okay, Matthew, I know this is far out, I know it’s pretty
much off the wall. But the going rate for
good
cocaine in Miami is fifty grand a kilo. Okay. Suppose you could get
shitty
cocaine for
thirty
grand a kilo?”

“You think Jack McKinney was selling
cocaine
to this man? Instead of
cows
?”

“No, sir.”

“You just said...”

“I think it could’ve been the other way around, Matthew. The guy with the Spanish accent was selling the girl—”

“What girl?”

“The dope. Girl, coke, snow, nose candy, they’re all names for cocaine. ‘The brighter the blue, the better the girl’—you never heard that expression?”

“Never.”

“Your hotshot dope dealers’ll test the coke with cobalt thiocyanate to make sure it isn’t Johnson’s Baby Powder or something. If it turns blue, it’s the McCoy. The
really
pure stuff turns a
bright
blue. Live and learn,” he said.

“And that’s what you honestly think? That McKinney was buying cocaine from this guy with the Spanish accent?”

“It’s possible. Fifteen kilos of not very good dope. At thirty thousand bucks a throw.”

“That comes to four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“It does.”

“You think McKinney had that kind of money, huh?”

“If he was trafficking in dope, that’s peanuts.”

“Well,” I said.

“What does ‘well’ mean?”

“It means this all sounds like sheer speculation.”

“It is. That’s the business I’m in, Matthew. Speculation. Until all the pieces fall together, that’s all it is—speculation. What’d Mrs. McKinney have to say about her Spanish chiropractor?”

“She told me he’s Cuban.”

“You asked her?”

“Right after I met him. She was driving me over to my...”

“Oh,” Bloom said, “you
met
him?”

“Yes. His name is Ramon Alvarez.”

“How’d you happen to meet him?”

“I went to his office with her.”

“This morning?”

“Yes.”

“And in the car afterwards, you happened to ask her whether he was Cuban, is that right?”

“Well, I’d asked her last night if she knew—”

“Oh, you were with her last
night
, too?”

“Yes.”

There was a silence on the phone. I knew just what Bloom was thinking. Veronica had been with me last night, and she’d been with me again early this morning. Bloom was thinking just what Mrs. Martindale had thought.

“Did
she
come over for a swim, too?” he asked.

“She came over to talk.”

“About her chiropractor?”

“No. But during the course of the conversation, I asked if she knew anyone with a Spanish accent—”

“And she told you her chiropractor was Spanish.”

“No, she could only remember a Mexican cook who used to work for them.”

“She couldn’t remember her
chiropractor
?”

“Well, what she said, actually—”

“When was this? Last night, or in the car today?”

“In the car. She said she thought I’d meant anyone connected with the ranch. The chiropractor never occurred to her.”

“I don’t believe in chiropractors, do you?” Bloom said.

“Well, they seem to help people.”

“So let me get this straight. Last night, out of the blue, you happened to ask Mrs. McKinney if she knew anyone with a Spanish accent. And she told you—”

“Not out of the blue,” I said. “We were talking about her son’s murder, and I remembered Sunny telling me—”

“Is that what she came there to talk about? Her son’s murder?”

“Yes.”

“What’d she have to say about
that
?”

“She thought Jack knew the person he let into his apartment. Because there’s a peephole on the door. He would have seen who was outside. He wouldn’t have opened the door for a stranger.”

“That’s occurred to us,” Bloom said dryly. “Did it occur to Mrs. McKinney that the killer may have had a key?”

“Well...no. She didn’t say anything about a key.”

“The resident manager’s office has passkeys to every apartment in that condo,” Bloom said.

“Oh.”

“So it didn’t
have
to be a pal the kid let in. He didn’t have to
let
anyone in at all, in fact. The killer could have used a key.”

“She also mentioned a gun. Did you find a gun in that apartment, Morrie?”

“No. A gun? No.”

“Veronica says her son kept a gun.”

“Oh, it’s ‘Veronica’ now, is it?”

“Well...yes.”

“You’ve been busy, Matthew.”

I suddenly remembered something Bloom had said to me a long time ago. “Counselor,” he’d said, “it would be nice to have your word from this minute on that you won’t be running all over the city of Calusa questioning anybody you think might have some connection with this case.” He still referred to that case as
“the German dwarf mess.” I referred to it as “the Vicky Miller tragedy.” His warning back then had been prefaced by the word
counselor
, which in my profession was often used sarcastically by opposing courthouse attorneys. Cops used it the same way in their profession, I discovered that day, inflecting the word so that it seemed synonymous with
shyster
. I didn’t know now whether his comment about my having been busy referred to Veronica or simply to the fact that I’d been asking questions he felt I had no right to ask. Either way, it sounded like a reprimand. I said nothing. The silence on the line lengthened. I didn’t know now whether Bloom was thinking or sulking.

“Where’d he get this gun?” Bloom asked at last.

“A birthday present from his father.”

“His father’s been dead for two years now.”

“He gave it to him just before he died.”

“
Veronica
told you this?”

It seemed to me he put the same inflection on her name that he’d put on the word
counselor
all those years ago. I decided he
was
sulking, after all.

“Yes,” I said. “Veronica.”

“Where was this gun supposed to be?” Bloom asked.

“In his apartment. He took it with him when he moved off the ranch in June.”

“What
kind
of a gun, did she say?”

“A .38 Smith & Wesson.”

Bloom was silent for what seemed like a very long time.

“That’s very interesting,” he said at last.

“How so?”

“Because I’ve got here on my desk in front of me a report from Ballistics saying the gun that killed Burrill was a .38 Smith & Wesson. Now that is what I call an even
bigger
coincidence than the going rate for a kilo of coke. I think I better have another
talk with Mrs.
Veronica
McKinney, find out a little more about this gun her son owned. A birthday present, huh? They give nice birthday presents down here in sunny Florida. You don’t even have to register them, you can pick a gun off the shelf like it was a ripe banana.” He paused. “What else did she have to say?”

I debated telling him about her long-ago affair with Hamilton Jeffries, the veterinarian. I decided, perhaps wrongly, that revealing this would be unfair to her. Even though she’d told me about it
before
we’d gone to bed together, I nonetheless considered it pillow talk. And pillow talk, on
my
scale of values, rates almost as high as the privileged communication between an attorney and his client—which, in fact, we
also
were.

“Matthew? Did she say anything else?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Did she know about Burrill? His getting killed?”

“She didn’t seem to.”

“What do you suppose he was looking for?”

“Who?”

“Whoever shot Burrill.”

“
Was
he looking for something?”

“Well, you
saw
the place, didn’t you? Looked like a tornado went through there. Same as McKinney’s apartment, everything thrown upside down, mattresses tossed and slashed, drawers spilled all over the floor. Guy living like a Bowery bum, what the hell could he have been
hiding
in that pigsty? She said he couldn’t have been involved in dope, huh?”

It was sometimes difficult to follow Morris Bloom’s stream-of-consciousness meanderings. I gathered he was referring to Sunny McKinney and her brother, Jack.

“She didn’t think so,” I said.

“Because doesn’t it sound to
you
like dope?” Bloom said. “I mean, what
was
all that shit about ‘fifteen at thirty’? It sure
sounds
like the going price for a kilo of beat snow, doesn’t it? Thirty grand, something like that? Your really
good
stuff goes for fifty. You think Burrill and McKinney were running dope together? You think maybe
that’s
what the killer was looking for? Dope?”

“I don’t know.”

“Assuming it was the same guy who killed them both,” Bloom said. “The gun makes it look like there’s a real connection, doesn’t it?”

I realized that Bloom was thinking out loud. He no more needed me on the other end of the line than he needed a mirror. I suddenly knew what he and his wife talked about when they were alone together.

“Well, I’ll give her a ring,” he said, “the cow lady. Meanwhile, don’t forget we’re going to the gym today.”

“I have it on my calendar,” I said.

“See you at five,” Bloom said, and hung up.

I did not get back from the eleven o’clock closing at Calusa First until almost one o’clock. I asked Cynthia to phone out for a hot pastrami on rye and a bottle of Heineken beer, and I was just unwrapping the sandwich when Frank came into my office.

“Howdy, Tex,” he said.

I uncapped the beer.

“How are the deer and the antelope playing these days?” he asked.

I bit into the sandwich.

“I’m
sure
the
enormous
fee we’ll be earning on this McKinney shit will justify all the time you’re putting in on it,” he said. “Loomis called while you were out, wants you to get back to him.”

I nodded.

“Have you been stricken mute?” Frank said. “How’d the closing go?”

“Fine.”

“How’d you like my ten rules?”

“Fine.”

“They’re not supposed to be
trick
rules, you know.”

“Oh, I thought they were trick rules.”

“Lots of people think so.”

“Do you hand them out to lots of people?”

“Only those who need help desperately. The reason lots of people think they’re
trick
rules is because of the first two.”

“Which ones are those?”

“Always treat a lady like a hooker. Always treat a hooker like a lady.”

“Ah, yes,” I said.

“People automatically assume,” Frank said, “that in all the rules
following
those two, you’re supposed to substitute lady for hooker and hooker for lady. But that isn’t the case. In other words, where rule number five says, ‘Never try to buy a lady into bed,’ it doesn’t mean ‘Never try to buy a
hooker
into bed.’ It means just what it says. Lady.”

I looked at him.

“You’re not supposed to think that because you’re supposed to treat a hooker like a lady that where it says, ‘Never try to buy a
lady
into bed,’ it really means ‘Never try to buy a
hooker
into bed,’ which is how you’re supposed to treat a
lady
if you’re observing the first rule. Like a
hooker
. In which case, if you’re treating her like a
hooker
, you should never try to
talk
her into bed, the
lady
, and that’s wrong.”

“I see.”

“It can get complicated,” Frank said, “but it’s not meant to be tricky.”

“I’m glad you told me that.”

“Have you tried any of them yet?”

“I don’t know any hookers.”

“I don’t know any hookers, either,” he said, looking offended.

The buzzer on my desk sounded. It was Cynthia, telling me that Attorney Loomis was on five.

“Loomis,” I said to Frank, and took a swallow of beer.

“You
really
think I know hookers, don’t you?” he said, and shook his head and walked out of the office. I pressed the five button in the base of the phone.

“Hello, Mr. Loomis,” I said.

“Mr. Hope?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a pair of dead clients, don’t it?”

“Looks that way.”

“Which don’t change the situation none, the way I look at it.”