Part 73 (2/2)

'Suit yourself.'

'This jeweler,' I went on. 'The way it looks, he started seeing Kim as a john. But something happened. One way or another, he fell for her.'

'These things happen.'

'They do indeed. Anyway, he fell in love. Meanwhile, some people got in touch with him. They had some precious stones that never went through Customs and that they had no bill of sale for. Emeralds. Colombian emeralds. Real quality stuff.'

'Matt, would you please tell me why in the h.e.l.l you're telling me all this?'

'It makes an interesting story.'

'You're not just telling me, you're telling the whole room. Do you know what you're doing?'

I looked at him.

'Okay,' he said, after a moment. 'Bryna, pay attention, darling. The crazy man wants to talk about emeralds.'

'Kim's boyfriend was going to be the middleman, handling the sale of the emeralds for the men who'd brought them into the country. He did this sort of thing before, made a few dollars for himself. But now he was in love with an expensive lady and he had a reason to want some real money. So he tried a cross.'

'How?'

'I don't know. Maybe he switched some stones. Maybe he held out. Maybe he decided to grab the whole bundle and run with it. He must have told Kim something because on the strength of it she told Chance she wanted out. She wasn't going to be turning tricks anymore. If I were going to guess, I'd say he did a switch and went out of the country to unload the good stuff. Kim got herself free of Chance while he was gone, and when he got back it was going to be Happily Ever After time. But he never came back.'

'If he never came back, who killed her?'

'The people he crossed. They decoyed her to that room at the Galaxy Downtowner. She probably thought she was going to be meeting him there. She wasn't hooking anymore, she wouldn't have gone to a hotel room to meet a john. In fact she'd never been much on hotel tricks. But suppose she gets a call from somebody who says he's a friend and the boyfriend's afraid to come to her place because he thinks he's being followed, so would she please meet him at the hotel?'

'And she went.'

'Sure she went. She got all dressed up, she wore the presents he gave her, the mink jacket and the emerald ring. The jacket wasn't worth a fortune because the guy wasn't rich, he didn't have money to burn, but he could give her a terrific emerald because the emeralds didn't cost him anything. He was in the business, he could take one of those smuggled stones and have it set in a ring for her.'

'So she went over and got killed.'

'Right.'

Danny Boy drank some vodka. 'Why? You figure they killed her to get the ring back?'

'No. They killed her to kill her.'

'Why?'

'Because they were Colombians,' I said, 'and that's how they do it. When they have a reason to hit somebody they go for the whole family.'

'Jesus.'

'Maybe they figure it's a deterrent,' I said. 'I could see where it might be. The cases make the papers pretty regularly, especially in Miami. A whole family gets waxed because somebody burned somebody else in a c.o.ke deal. Colombia's a rich little country. They've got the best coffee, the best marijuana, the best cocaine.'

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