Leon picked up on the first ring.
“I’m on my way to see Mrs. Vargas,” I said. “Is she going to be home now?”
“Alex, what are you talking about? You can’t do that.”
“I’m doing it, Leon. You’re the guy who spent the last few weeks following her around, so I’m sure you know her routine. Will she be there?”
“I can’t tell you that, Alex. I’d be crossing a line here.”
“What about Vargas? Will he be there?”
“I can’t tell you that, either.”
“You’re just looking out for your client,” I said. “If he’s there, it could get ugly. You want me to have to hit him in the head again?”
“I knew that must have been you…He wouldn’t say so, but I knew it.”
“Just tell me who’s gonna be there.”
“Vargas shouldn’t be there for a couple more hours,” he said. “He should be at the store. He only goes down three days a week now. It’s such a long drive.”
“Okay, so his wife is there alone. That’s good.”
“I wouldn’t assume she’s alone, Alex. I’m afraid that when she knows her husband isn’t going to be home…”
“Relax,” I said. “I know Swanson isn’t there right now.”
“Alex, what are you doing?”
“I’m just driving around, asking people questions. What are you doing? How come you’re not tailing her anymore?”
“Vargas sort of lost interest in that. He seems to have his mind on other things right now.”
“Yeah, I bet. And you’re just sitting by the phone, waiting for him to call you?”
“I don’t deserve that, Alex. I’ve been helping you out here. I didn’t have to do that.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’s been kind of a long day.”
“Just don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
“Too late,” I said. I hung up.
I came down off the hill, heading northeast to the river. There were golfers putting on the green as I passed, and then I saw Vargas’s house. A blue Miata was in the driveway. I parked behind it.
When I rang the doorbell, I expected to hear my little friend start barking, but the sound never came. Cynthia Vargas answered the door and stood there looking at me, with no Chihuahua running around at her feet.
“What is it?” she said, holding her cigarette out just so. She squinted a little, the kind of look a smoker gives you when she’s annoyed at you and the smoke is in her eyes at the same time. She was blonde, perfectly put together, just what you’d shop for in a second wife. Vargas had already done it once, and now Swanson was apparently looking to pick up her option. It wouldn’t have bothered me a bit if I hadn’t just spent the only decent thirty minutes of the day in the company of Swanson’s wife.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” I said. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
“Uh-huh?” She took a drag off her cigarette.
“I was wondering if I could bother you with a couple of questions.”
“Don’t tell me,” she said. She looked me up and down. “Your name is Alex McKnight.”
“I think we spoke on the phone the other night.”
“Yeah, and you were here for the poker game,” she said. “You were one of the hostages.”
“I don’t know if I’d say we were hostages. They just encouraged us to stay out of their way…”
“Come on in,” she said. “You want a beer or something?”
I very much did. But I took a pass.
She walked right through the house, out onto the back deck. I assumed I was supposed to follow her. It was my second back deck of the day, and the second time I was spending time with another man’s wife. This time felt a lot different. Mrs. Vargas still looked a little flushed and untucked, like maybe she’d spent the whole afternoon with her underwear hanging from the chandelier.
She sat down on a recliner, put her cigarette out in the ashtray on the table next to it. She was facing west, where even at seven o’clock in the evening the sun still hung high over the horizon. She put her sunglasses on. “Sit down,” she said.
I pulled another recliner over and sat down on the end of it. I wasn’t about to recline. As I looked west, I noticed the cardboard still covering the broken window on the second floor.
“I don’t see your dog anywhere,” I said. “Usually he’s so glad to see me.”
“That’s not my dog,” she said. “That’s Win’s dog. He even takes it to work with him.”
“That’s funny. He told us a few times it was your dog.”
“He tried to give me that dog the same day he bought me that stupid little car out there.”
“Mrs. Vargas, I won’t take much of your time. I just need to ask you something.”
“You’re friends with those three men who got arrested,” she said. She looked out at the river.
“Yes, how did you know?”
“I overheard Win talking about you on the phone. You’re the one they didn’t get.”
“They didn’t ‘get’ anybody, ma’am. The whole thing is a mistake.”
“These friends of yours, you know for a fact they had nothing to do with this.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“So you’re here to ask me if I did it.”
She caught me by surprise with that one. “I’m just trying to find out the truth,” I said.
“My lawyer just called me,” she said. “Right before you got here. He said you dropped in on him.”
“Is that what you call him? Your lawyer?”
She pushed her sunglasses down and looked over them at me. “Perhaps it was a mistake to let you come in,” she said. “You seemed like a gentleman, but I was obviously mistaken.”
“I apologize.”
She put her glasses back up and looked out at the river again. “He told me you might drop by. He seems to think you’d be very persistent about it. That’s why I thought I should just talk to you straight away, save us both some trouble.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Have you ever been to Bay Harbor, Alex?”
“As a matter of fact, I have.”
“Let me ask you a question. If you had a really nice six-thousand-square-foot house there, would you sell it and move up here?”
“I don’t think I can answer that. I wouldn’t be living in Bay Harbor to begin with.”
“Did he tell you about his idea of building a new development up here?”
“He did mention that.”
“Of course he did. It’s all he ever talks about. What do you think of his big idea?”
“I honestly hope he doesn’t do it.”
“He thinks people with lots of money will move up here,” she said. “Can you believe that? Actually live here instead of in Bay Harbor?”
There was an uncomfortable silence. I wasn’t sure what to say next. “The safe up in that room…” I finally said.
“Yes, I knew all about it,” she said. “What kind of an idiot doesn’t know about a safe in her own house?”
“Did you know the combination?”
She pushed her sunglasses down again. “No.”
“Did you know what was in it?”
She raised one eyebrow at me. “Please. What do you keep in a safe?”
“It could have been a lot of things.”
“With Win, it’s either money or those ridiculous artifacts,” she said. “He wouldn’t keep the artifacts in the safe, because then he couldn’t drag everybody up there to show them off.”
“You don’t seem to share his interests.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” she said. “So I hired three goons to break in and trash his precious collection, steal his money while they’re at it. Not so much because I’d get part of it, but just to take it away from him. All because I hate him so much, because I want to hurt him in any way I can. Is that what you’re getting at, Mr. McKnight? I think I’m being pretty straight with you. I wish you’d return the favor.”
“You’re telling me you had nothing to do with it.”
“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. And you know what? The more I think of it, the more I wish I had done it. I mean, what’s he doing, keeping all that money up there in the safe? Now it’s all gone, my husband has turned psychotic, and I can’t even sleep at night because I’m waiting for those men to break in here again.”
She picked up her pack of cigarettes, shook another one out.
“God, I hate this place,” she said. “You don’t know how much I hate this place.”
I didn’t get a chance to say anything to that. The next sound I heard was a small dog barking. The sound got louder and louder. Then the back door opened and Miata was all over me. I took a cushion off the recliner and tried to use it as a shield. It only worked so well-I could still feel the dog’s teeth tearing through the skin on my fingers.
“Isn’t this cozy?” Vargas said as he stepped through the doorway. The welt on his forehead had turned every color of the rainbow. “I thought that might be your truck outside, McKnight. Who else would drive something like that?”
“You’re home early,” Mrs. Vargas said. She didn’t turn to look at him.
“Yes, the husband has come home unexpectedly,” he said. “Oldest trick in the book. But I certainly wasn’t expecting to find him here. You’re really working your way down the social ladder, Cynthia.”
She lifted one hand and showed him the back of her middle finger. Meanwhile, the dog kept dancing around me, looking for an opening. At that moment I could have drop-kicked him all the way to Canada.
“Will you please put this dog away?” I said.
“Why should I?” Vargas said. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”
“Put the dog away and I’ll tell you.”
“Miata, come here,” he said.
The dog didn’t want to back down. He had drawn blood and now he wanted to finish me off.
“Miata, get over here.” Vargas scooped up the dog and put one finger on its nose when he kept barking at me. “Just take it easy,” he said. “Let him speak. Then you’ll get to watch me take him apart. He won’t get away this time. When I’m done I’ll let you piss on his face.”
“All right, enough,” I said. “I came to ask your wife a couple of questions. That’s all. Whoever took you down took down my friends at the same time. I want to find out who did this. I should think you’d want to find out, too.”
“That’s what you think, huh?”
“Yeah, and you know what? The fact that you don’t seem to want to find out is kind of interesting in itself. You should be dying to find out who did this, Vargas. You should be way ahead of me. Or at least have Leon working on it for you.”
I was running out of ideas. It was time to try something desperate.
“Instead,” I went on, “what are you doing? You’ve got somebody breaking into my cabin? Jackie’s house? Gill’s house? What’s the point of that, anyway?”
“What? Breaking into where?”
“Whoever it is, you should tell him to stop smoking those stupid little cigars. I can’t stand the smell of those things.”
“McKnight, what in holy hell are you talking about?”
It sounded real. If I was going to keep following my gut, I’d have to guess he honestly didn’t know. After running around all day long, hitting dead ends, now I was down to my last chance. I had one more card to play before folding.
“Maybe it was you,” I said. “Maybe you set this up yourself.”
“McKnight, you’re insane,” he said. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“Now that would be interesting,” his wife said. She finally sat up and turned around to look at us. “He robs himself. Now all the money is gone…”
“Except it’s not really gone,” I said. “It’s just not on the table anymore, should anyone happen to call him on it. Like a divorce lawyer.”
His bald head turned a shade redder.
“Just speaking hypothetically,” I said.
“So why would he destroy his own room?” she said.
“Just for show,” I said. “To make sure nobody thought he was behind it himself.”
“The old red herring game,” she said. “I can see him thinking that way.”
“Of course, you realize one of those men turned up dead today. I hope your husband realizes that this whole thing is getting a little out of hand.”
“Who’s dead?” Vargas said. He looked genuinely surprised.
“One of the men who broke in here,” I said. “Did you kill him yourself? He was shot in the back.”
“That does sound like him,” she said.
“That’s enough out of you,” he said. “Why don’t you go put some more makeup on? I think you missed a spot.”
“Not a chance,” she said. “This is just getting interesting. Now you’re on the hook for murder.”
“I don’t have to stand here in my own house and listen to this.”
“What about your friends?” she said to me. “Why would he set them up like that?”
“Because they’re the only people who knew about the safe,” I said. “He had to set up somebody to take the blame.”
“It’s too risky,” she said. “And it’s not even necessary. He’s the one who’s telling everybody that nobody else knew about the safe. All he has to do is say, ‘Oh, I just remembered. I think I might have mentioned it in a bar that one night. God knows who could have heard me.’ He doesn’t need to set up anybody.”
“That’s true,” I said. “You seem to have a talent for this.”
“Are you two about done?” Vargas said.
“Almost,” I said. “We just need to know why you went out of your way to set up Jackie, Bennett, and Gill. It’s gotta be something personal. Some kind of vendetta you’ve got against those three guys.”
Vargas looked at both of us. He held the dog in his right arm, and slowly scratched behind its ears with a fingernail. “McKnight,” he finally said, “can I ask you one question?”
“Go ahead.”
“If you really think I set those guys up, here’s what I want to know…How did I do it?”
“That’s an easy one,” I said.
“Then tell me,” he said. “Put yourself in my place, and take it step by step. I want to set these guys up to take the fall for this break-in. How do I do it?”
I thought about it for a moment. I wanted to put it together in the right order, so he couldn’t find any holes in it. I wanted it all to come out perfectly, thinking maybe then he’d get that sick look on his face, knowing that I had him nailed. He’d probably drop the dog, make a run for it. I’d chase him. Or call the police. Either way, the whole thing would be over.
He didn’t give me the chance. Instead, he turned and put the dog down inside the house, and then slid the glass door closed before he could escape. “Never mind, McKnight. I think we’ve heard enough. Now, how about our rematch? This time you don’t get to use a fire extinguisher.”
“Vargas, there’s no reason for this.”
“Oh yes, I think there is.” He came toward me, in the same pose I had seen on the boat, his hands poised more like a magician than a boxer, his left foot poised just off the ground. It would have looked pretty damned ridiculous if I wasn’t standing there wondering just how good he really was.
It didn’t take long to find out. He faked a left and then hit me in the body with his right hand, knocking the wind out of me. Then he spun around and caught me in the side of the head with his foot. It knocked me off my feet and made my head feel like a giant bell that wouldn’t stop ringing.
I rolled away from him, got on my feet, and spent the next few seconds trying to catch my breath and avoid another one of his spinning back kicks. One more of those and I’d be laid out for good.
Meanwhile, his wife had finally found a reason to get out of her chair. She stood against the railing, watching us with a sort of rapt fascination. The dog kept barking and clawing at the inside of the glass door.
Vargas slipped a few more punches in, sending me backward against the rail. I went into my own version of Ali’s rope-a-dope, ducking as many of the heavy blows as I could, and waiting for some kind of idea to come to me.
He finally got a little lazy, figuring maybe I was dead meat at that point. I popped him a couple of times, a left to the body and then a right to the chin. He shook that off, stepped back a few feet, and then launched himself into one more spinning back kick, this one being the coup de grace that would knock me right over the railing. I had this one timed, though, and as his foot sailed over my head I gave him a kick of my own, a good old-fashioned boot right in the jewels. It folded him in half.
He went down and made some ugly noises as he rolled around on the deck. I stood there looking at him, ready for the unlikely event of him actually standing up again. When it didn’t happen, I checked out the damage to my face. My jaw was sore as hell, both eyes were already starting to go a little puffy, my lip was split and bleeding down my chin, and my right ear was still ringing. Aside from that I had never felt better.
Mrs. Vargas was still standing there, her arms folded around herself. She was watching her husband roll around on the deck. The look on her face was now a combination of shock and physical satisfaction so pure I felt like I should offer her a cigarette.
“I’ll let myself out,” I said.
That broke the spell. She looked at me and tried to say something. “Oh,” she finally said. “Oh. Yes. My God.”
“You’d better go fill the tub,” I said. The way he kept rolling around, holding his groin, it almost made me feel sorry for him. “When he gets up, make sure he goes and sits in it. If he complains, just grab him right in the shorts and pull.”
I was about to open the glass door, saw the dog ready to jump out of its skin at me and thought better of it. I went down the stairs instead, passing right under the broken window. There were still shards of glass on the ground, glittering in the last sunlight of the day. I went around the house to the front, got in my truck, and took a quick look at my face in the rearview mirror.
Bad idea.
I wiped the blood off my chin, thinking this was getting better by the minute. What a great day this was turning out to be.
Sometimes when you think about something too hard, you can’t really see it anymore. Then you put it in the back of your mind for a few minutes, like when someone happens to be beating the living shit out of you. When you bring it back out, you see something you didn’t see before. It all comes together.
Or in this case, it all falls apart. It falls apart like that old Indian oar he had up in that room of his-worthless to begin with, and so fragile, as soon as you touched it, it broke into a million pieces.
When Vargas asked me to explain how he did it, that was the first time I looked at it from his point of view-him or whoever it was who supposedly set this up. It didn’t work. Son of a bitch, it didn’t even begin to work.
Maven was right. That was the worst thing. Maven telling me that I was the one with the personal bias, that I was the one not seeing it clearly-goddamn it to hell, he was absolutely right.
My hands were still trembling as I grabbed the steering wheel. The adrenaline was still pumping through my bloodstream. I felt like killing somebody.
“Here I come,” I said. “I hope you’re ready for me.”
Everything that had happened, it all went back to one man. I pulled out of the driveway and gunned it, heading right toward him.