“I mailed it, to Rio. Some of it I mailed, some of it I FedExed, to different hotels, to be held in care of. You know, in care of me. When I get there, I ask at the front desk, they got any mail for me, I pick it up.”

“You put more than $140,000 in the mail?”

“I didn’t want them to find all that on me if they did a search when I was getting on the plane.”

I had a sinking feeling. We were going to be returning to Bullock’s place with very bad news.

“Can’t you tell Mr. Bullock I’m sorry? I’ll make this right. I’ll go to Rio, go to all the hotels where I sent the money, and I’ll send it all back. I can put all the cash in a bank, then send him a certified check.”

Trimble looked at me, shook his head, then tossed a pair of pants at Eddie’s face. “You’re going to have to explain this to Mr. Bullock yourself. Get dressed.”

Eddie eased himself off the bed, winced when he put his foot on the carpet. “I really do think all my toes are broken,” he said. “Could we stop at the hospital on the way, get somebody to look at this? Or, I know, I know. Listen, couldn’t you tell him you couldn’t find me? You do that, and I’ll send you the money. You can have it all. Mr. Bullock doesn’t ever have to know. You could come to Rio with me, I’ll take you to the hotels. They’re all five-star, we could hang out awhile, at each one. Get ourselves some girls, have a party. But it’s all yours, you don’t want to pay for my room, that’s cool, that’s okay, I understand. I mean, if you could spare me a couple thou, that’d be great, but the rest, it would be yours.” To me, he said, “You can have some, too, I mean, if that’s okay with Detective Trimble.”

And back to Trimble: “You know what Bullock is going to do to me. You can’t just let that happen. You can’t take me back there. You know what he’ll do to me. He won’t be at all understanding. You know he’ll kill me.”

Trimble closed his eyes a moment in frustration. “Get dressed, Eddie. We’re going for a ride.”

He turned away from Eddie, pulled me aside. “This is gonna be ugly. We’ve got no drugs, we’ve got no money, and he—”

Eddie was running for the sliding glass door to the balcony. He hobbled a bit, trying to keep the weight off his bad foot, flung the door open, and in a second his hands were on the railing, and he was over it like it was a vaulting horse.