Ed McBain_Matthew Hope 12 (10 page)

A light snapped on.

She squinted her eyes against it.

She could now see that a low wall divided the sleeping area from what appeared to be a dining area with leatherette banquettes
around a Formica-topped table, and then another low wall separated this area from the food preparation area—well, a small
kitchen
actually, well, a
galley,
she guessed you called it. So what this appeared to be was a single somewhat smallish section of the boat, what you might
call a cabin, she supposed, divided by these very low walls, these bulkheads, and through the cabin came Warren, waltzing
on over and ducking his head because of the low ceiling, or overhead, she
hated
boats.

“Okay, what is this?” she asked.

“What is what?”

“Why am I chained to the wall? Where’d you get the hardware?” she asked, rattling the handcuff on her wrist.

“St. Louis P.D.”

“You still got the key?”

“Yes, I’ve…”

“Then unlock it,” she said, and shook her wrist again.

“Sorry, Toots.”

“Well, first we’ve got the B&E,” she said, “I figure that for a good fifteen years. And then we’ve got the kidnapping…”

“False imprisonment,” he said.

“Thank you. Which should add another five to your tab. So how about unlocking these cuffs right this fucking minute and turning
this barge around and taking me back home, and we’ll forget the whole thing, okay?”

“No,” he said. “Sorry.”

“I ask again, Warren. What is this?”

“It’s cold turkey,” Warren said.

At nine o’clock that Friday morning, the fifteenth day of September, the grand jury listened to the witnesses Pete Folger
had invited to testify on behalf of the people of the state of Florida. At six minutes before noon, the jurors returned a
true bill signed by the jury foreman and requesting the state attorney to file an indictment for first-degree murder.

Folger called me in my office ten minutes later. He told me he’d got the true bill he was seeking, and said he was now going
to ask that bail be denied my client, and that she be taken into custody. He also mentioned that as a matter of courtesy he
would have someone in his office type up a list of the witnesses who’d testified today, in the hope that I would talk to them
myself, as soon as possible, and then be willing to discuss a deal that would save his office a lot of time and the state
a huge electricity bill.

I called Lainie to tell her the bad news and to advise that I’d be requesting bail be continued as set…

“Do you think it will be?”

“Yes, I feel certain it will.”

“Good, because I’ve been invited to a party,” she said. “All at once, I’m a celebrity.”

“Don’t say a word about the case.”

“Of course not.”

“They’ll want to know. Just tell them your lawyer says you can’t discuss anything about it. If they persist, walk away.”

“I will. Thank you, Matthew.”

“The state attorney’s already mentioned a deal. I think that’s a good sign.”

“Why do we need a deal?” she asked.

“We don’t.”

“I didn’t kill him,” she said.

“I know you didn’t.”

“
Do
you know?”

“Yes, I do. Where’s your party?”

“On the Rosenberg yacht,” she said.

“Small world,” I said.

She had heard him banging around in the galley as she lay on the foam mattress that had no sheet on it, trying to keep her
skirt tucked around her legs, everything feeling sticky with salt, she hated boats, her right arm extended uncomfortably behind
her head, the wrist handcuffed to what she now realized was some sort of stainless-steel grab rail bolted to the bulkhead.
When she sat up, she could see him standing at the small stove on the port side of the boat, to the left of the ladder leading
below. Cooking smells filled the vessel.

He finally brought in some scrambled eggs and browned sausage and whole-wheat toast and coffee, carrying everything in on
a tray which he put down on the berth in front of her.

The first thing she said was, “Who’s driving this thing?”

“We’re drifting.”

“Won’t we run into something?”

“We’re thirty miles out. There’s nothing anywhere near us.”

“Take off the cuff.”

“No,” he said.

“How can I eat with my hand chained to the wall?”

“Use your left hand. Or I can feed you if you like.”

“I don’t need your help,” she said, and picked up the fork with her left hand and began eating, sitting with her legs crossed
Indian fashion on the berth. He watched her.

“You’re making a mistake, you know,” she said.

“Am I?”

“Yes, Warren. I’m still clean.”

“No, you’re not,” he said.

“Well, I really don’t know where you’re getting your information, but I can promise you…”

“I found some empty crack vials in your bathroom trash basket,” he said.

“Why’d you go to my apartment in the first place?”

“I guess I know the signs of cocaine addiction, Toots.”

“You had no right.”

“I’m your friend.”

“Sure, chained to the wall.”

“Would you stay on this boat otherwise?”

“Warren, you have to let me go. Really.”

“No.”

“Warren, I don’t need anyone to look after me, really. I’m a big girl now.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought, too, Toots.”

“I’m
not
doing drugs again,” she said. “Do you think I’m crazy? Those were
perfume
samples. The vials look…”

“Sure.”

“…just like crack vials.”

“How about the ones I found in your handbag?”

“I don’t know what you found in my handbag. You had no right going through my handbag. You have no right doing
any
of this. What’d you find in my handbag that gives you the right to…?”

“Crack vials, Toots.”

“I told you. Perfume samples…”

“With rocks in them.”

“You’re mistaken.”

“No, Toots, I’m not mistaken. I know what crack rocks look like.”

“Someone must’ve…”

“How about the pipe?”

“Was there a pipe, too? Someone must’ve dropped all that stuff in my bag. People do all sorts of…”

“Sure.”

“…crazy things. To make a person look bad. Or just cheap. Anyway, you had no right. When did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Go through my bag.”

“Last night. Right after I got you on the boat.”

“You have no right doing
any
of this. Whose boat is it, anyway?”

“Friend of mine’s.”

“Keeping me prisoner this way. No right at all. He’ll be in trouble, too, you know.”

“Nobody’s in trouble but you, Toots. That’s why I’m here.”

“I don’t need you here, Warren. All I need you to…”

“No.”

“I’m not doing dope. I don’t need a guardian. I don’t need a warden. I don’t need you to look
after
me, Warren. All I need you to do is take off these fucking
cuffs
!”

“No.”

“Warren, I have to be left alone to do what I want to do.”

“I won’t let you do crack, Toots.”

“I will do
exactly
what I…”

“No.”

“Then I’m going to scream.”

“Go ahead, scream.”

“The Coast Guard will come.”

“Ain’t nobody here but us chickens, boss,” he said.

She began screaming.

The boat was a seventy-five-foot Burger worth about four million dollars, large enough to accommodate, without crowding, the
two dozen guests who stood talking and sipping cocktails on the aft deck as the sun began its slow descent into the Gulf of
Mexico.

The boat was named
Sea Sybil,
after one of its owners, Sybil Rosenberg, whose husband was the attorney David Rosenberg, who was senior partner in the firm
of Rosenberg, Katlowitz and Frank, all of whom made a lot more money than I did. In Calusa, Florida, everybody knew how much
money everybody else made. There were a lot of moneyed people down here in this Paradise by the Sea, this Athens of Southwest
Florida. Most of the money came from Canada or the Middle West; that was because if you drew a zigzagging line south from
Toronto, it would pass through Cleveland and Pittsburgh and then hit Calusa before heading for Havana.

Coincidence, or perhaps fate, had thrown Lainie and me together on the same boat for the same sunset bash. Being out on bail
could turn into a pleasant pastime in a small town, even if you’d been charged with slaying your mama, your papa, and your
pet parakeet. As Calusa’s latest Accused Murderess celebrity, I supposed she would be much in demand in the weeks and months
to come, and I knew I couldn’t confine her to her home or be with her at every function she attended, monitoring every word
she muttered. Clearly the center of attention in a circle of sunset watchers on the starboard side of the boat, all of whom
seemed eager to know what it felt like to be accused of
murdering
someone, for God’s sake, she successfully fended off any attempt to learn what had happened or not happened on Brett Toland’s
yawl.

As for me, everyone kept asking how I was feeling.

Everyone kept asking what it had felt like.

This evening, I was lying.

It was a way of creating my own fun. I used to do that even
before
I’d got shot one dark and stormless night. I hated cocktail parties, especially sunset cocktail parties, especially sunset
cocktail parties on boats. I sometimes felt that the moneyed people who moved down here from unspeakable climes like those
in Minneapolis or Milwaukee or South Bend did so only because they liked to look at sunsets.

“I found myself staring into the face of God,” I said.

“What did she look like?” Aggie Pratt asked.

A long time ago, I had enjoyed—if that was the appropriate word—an extramarital love affair with Aggie. In fact, Aggie was
the reason Susan and I had ended our marriage. I don’t think I liked myself very much back then, but that was all in the past,
merely yet another sun dropping into yet another vast body of water.

Aggie had eventually divorced her then husband Gerald, and was now married to a man named Louis Pratt who published the
Calusa Herald-Tribune;
I still had difficulty remembering that she was now Mrs. Pratt. She looked very good to me tonight, causing me to wonder
what was happening to me. Gray eyes glowing in the fading light of the sinking sun, faint smile on her generous mouth as she
made her little God-Is-a-Woman joke, long black hair (Aggie’s, not God’s) combed straight and sleek as Cleopatra’s, short
black, scoop-necked cocktail dress exposing treasures I recalled fondly but only vaguely.

Patricia Demming stood beside me in the ring of people wanting to know what
God
had looked like, for God’s sake! I couldn’t tell from the expression on her face whether or not she knew I was putting them
on. Maybe she thought a vision of the Almighty actually had appeared to me one night while I was adrift in limbo. Her red
dress—her favorite color, by the way—was also extravagantly low cut, considering the fact that she was supposed to be a staid
and serious assistant state attorney, albeit beautiful and buxom and not in any courtroom at the moment, its daring bodice
revealing yet
more
treasures I could scarcely remember, where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

“Actually he was a man,” I said, “and he looked like Joe DiMaggio,” winging it.

My former wife Susan was also here aboard the
Sea Sybil
—large boat, small town. As the sun plunked into the Gulf, she and all the assembled guests ooohed and ahhhed the obligatory
squeals of delight. She was wearing tonight an extremely short, moss-green cocktail dress that showcased spectacular legs
I remembered quite well, thank you, though I wouldn’t have wished her to notice me noticing them. The sky suddenly turned
a sexy velvety violet—what the hell
was
happening to me?

“What did you and God talk about?” Aggie asked.

“Sex,” I said, and my eyes met Patricia’s, who was the only one who didn’t laugh at the remark.

“Do people even
think
about sex when they’re in coma?” a woman named Andrea Lang asked, and Susan responded—with all the authority of someone who’d
been married to the apparent subject in question for, lo, those many years—”Matthew
always
thinks about sex,” which comment did not sit at all well with Patricia, who turned away and joined the cluster of satellites
around Lainie. Thinking better of it an instant later—she was, after all, an S.A. even though one of her colleagues would
be trying the case—she sauntered over to the bar and extended her glass to the man behind it. A few moments later, Lainie
walked over to where I was now standing alone, I sure know how to clear a room.

She was wearing a short, peach-colored, rayon dress cut fore and aft in plunging Vs, with flaring pleats created by a knotted
tie at the back. Drop earrings with red tourmaline stones. Victorian seal ring once again on her right pinky. High-heeled
open-toed sandals with red straps. Long blond hair pulled back into a ponytail fastened with a barrette fashioned from tiny
seashells. Rimless eyeglasses that lent a touch of the schoolmarm to an otherwise sophisticated look. Right eye askew behind
them.

“When do you expect that witness list?” she asked.

“Tomorrow morning.”

“What then?”

“We’ll see.”

“Will you call me?”

“I’ll call you,” I promised.

We sounded like spies.

She couldn’t believe she was hooked again.

Toots Kiley.

That’s m’name, folks, she thought. Daughter of James Kiley, who’d heroically named her after Toots Thielemans, best harmonica
player in the world, take it or leave it. Nor is Toots a nickname, folks, remember that, it is a proud and proper given name.
Toots. To rhyme with “puts” and not “boots,” as if you didn’t know. But enough already, she thought. You’re a fucking crackhead,
Toots.

A cop had got her started the first time, that had been the irony of it.

Same cop got her started all over again
this
time, that was the same irony all over again.