Ed McBain_Matthew Hope 12 (13 page)

“You may well ask why.

Because if I myself tried Lainie’s case and called the Apostle Bartholomew to the stand and started questioning him about
what he’d said on the tape, he might very well answer, “I never said that.” In which case, I would play the tape to refresh
his memory. But suppose he then said, “That’s not my voice on that there tape”—who would be able to testify to the contrary?
Under the Disciplinary Rules—what we refer to in the trade as DR 5-101—an advocate cannot be called as a witness. So Folger
would need no prompting to ask, as the Constable of France had once asked a lowly messenger, “Who hath measured the ground?”

Hence the presence of Andrew Holmes.

Whichever one of us ended up actually trying the case, the other could be called as a witness to the whys, whens, hows and
wherefores of the taping.

The tape recorder sat in the center of the coffee table.

The three of us sat around the table in uncomfortable director’s chairs with faded green canvas backs and seats. We were in
the backyard, such as it was, of Harrod’s mobile home in a park thronged with similar homes just off Timucuan Point Road.

In the state of Florida, people who own so-called mobile homes pay no state, city, county, or school taxes. All they have
to do is buy a license under Article VII—titled “Finance and Taxation”—of the Constitution of the State of Florida, wherein
“Motor vehicles, boats, airplanes, trailers, trailer coaches and mobile homes, as defined by law, shall be subject to a license
tax for their operation in the amounts and for the purposes prescribed by law, but shall not be subject to ad valorem taxes.”

The license, under Chapter 320.08 of the Motor Vehicle Licenses section, costs twenty dollars flat for a mobile home not exceeding
thirty-five feet in length, twenty-five dollars flat for a mobile home over thirty-five feet in length but not exceeding forty
feet, and escalating on up to fifty dollars flat for a mobile home over sixty-five feet in length. Even if the tires have
been removed from the vehicles, even if the vehicles are sitting on concrete pads, even if water and electricity have been
connected to the vehicles, they are still considered “mobile” homes so long as they are not “permanently affixed” to the land.

What annoys many residents of Calusa is that people who own mobile homes are permitted to vote, even though they pay no taxes.
To many residents of Calusa, these frankly ugly aluminum monsters are a blight on the land, especially when the land happens
to be choice river-front property purchased long before anyone knew it would one day become valuable.

Harrod clearly appreciated his protected status as a mobile home owner. He clearly appreciated his tiny fenced backyard and
the distant glimpses it afforded of the Cottonmouth River, which meandered through the metallic maze like the snake after
which it had been named, sunlight glinting off its scaly waters. He seemed to appreciate as well all the attention being lavished
on him this afternoon, two lawyers in suits and ties, tape recorder ready to preserve his precious words for posterity.

He was a blue-eyed, white-haired, somewhat grizzled man in his late sixties, who—like so many other senior citizens down here
on the white sand shores of the Gulf—had retired some ten years ago, only to realize that doing nothing was the equivalent
of being dead. I had read somewhere that George Burns’s nephew had once told him he was thinking of retiring, and Burns had
said, “What will you do with yourself?” His nephew had responded, “I’ll play golf all the time.” Burns thought about this
for a moment, and then said, “Lou, playing golf is good only if you’ve got something
else
to do.”

Harrod had taken a job as a security guard.

Which is how he happened to be there this past Tuesday night when Lainie Commins drove into the parking lot of the Silver
Creek Yacht Club at a little before ten
P.M.

“How did you know the time?” I asked.

“Just let me see if we’re getting this,” Andrew said, and pressed the STOP button and then the
REW
button, and played back Harrod’s opening words. Andrew’s suit was the color of wheat. His tie was a green that matched the
faded backs and seats of the director’s chairs upon which we were sitting. He was twenty-nine years old, and he had dark curly
hair and brown eyes and an aquiline nose, which meant it was curving like an eagle’s beak, and an androgynous mouth, which
meant it had both male and female characteristics, with a thin upper lip and a pouting lower one. Black-rimmed eyeglasses
gave him a scholarly look, which was entirely appropriate in that he’d been editor of the
Law Review
at U Mich, and had graduated third in his class.

“…little before ten,” Harrod’s voice said.

“How did you know the time?” my voice asked.

“Okay,” Andrew said, and simultaneously pressed the
PLAY
and
REC
buttons.

“I looked at my watch,” Harrod said.

“How come?”

“Dining room quits serving at eleven-thirty. I wondered who might be coming in so late.”

“Tell me where you were,” I said.

“Little booth at the entrance to the club. I sit in there checking the cars as they come in. People on foot, too, some of
the time.”

“Is there a barrier?”

“No, I just stop them and either wave them on or tell them to back on up and turn around.”

“Is there a light in the booth?”

“There is.”

“Was the light on this past Tuesday night?”

“It was.”

“Tell me what you saw at a little before ten that night, Mr. Harrod.”

“White Geo driving up to the booth, woman behind the wheel.”

“Can you describe this woman?”

“She was Lainie Commins.”

“Did you know Lainie Commins at the time?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then how…?”

“I asked her what her name was and she told me it was Lainie Commins and said she was there to see Mr. Toland. Brett Toland,
that is. Who was killed that night.”

“She gave you her name and also Mr. Toland’s name?”

“Yes. That’s what they usually do. If they’re here to join somebody for dinner, or to go on one of the boats. The boats sometimes
give cocktail parties, fifty, sixty people invited to them, it gets hard keeping track. I’ll tell you the truth, there’s no
way I can really
double
-check with the person who’s the member. I just keep my eye on a guest, make sure they’re going where they
said
they were going, the dining room, or one of the boats.”

“What did this woman who said she was Lainie Commins…?”

“Oh, she was Lainie Commins, all right. I seen her since, identified her picture at the hearing, in fact. She was Lainie Commins,
no question.”

“What’d she look like?”

“Blond hair, eyeglasses, wearing a white shirt with a blue scarf had some kind of anchor design on it.”

“What color?”

“I told you. Blue.”

“The anchors, I mean.”

“Oh. Red.”

“Was she wearing slacks or a skirt?”

“Couldn’t see. She was inside the car.”

“Where’d she park the car?”

“Near the lamppost at the far end of the lot.”

“Did you see her when she got out of the car?”

“Yes, but I don’t remember whether she had on slacks or a skirt.”

“But you were watching her.”

“Yes. Wanted to make sure she was going to the Toland boat, like she said.”

“How was she wearing her hair?”

“What do you mean?”

“Loose? Up? Tied back?”

“Oh. Loose.”

“But you didn’t notice whether she was wearing slacks or a skirt.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Watched her as she got out of the car…”

“Yes.”

“What’d she do then?”

“Went to the walkway along the dock, started looking for the Toland boat.
Toy Boat,
she’s called.”

“You were watching Ms. Commins all this time?”

“Watching her.”

“Did she find the boat?”

“She found it. Stopped at the gangway, looked up at the boat, then yelled out ‘Hello?’ Like a question, you know. Hello? When
she didn’t see anybody on deck.”

“You could see all this from the booth?”

“I could.”

“How far away from the boat were you?”

“Fifty, sixty feet?”

“Light on in the booth, dark outside, but you could see…”

“There were lights along the dockside walk. And in the saloon. I could see her plain as day.”

“But you didn’t notice whether she was wearing slacks or a skirt.”

“Didn’t notice that, no. Not a leg man, myself,” he said, and smiled. I smiled, too. So did Andrew.

“What happened then?”

“She yelled out his name. Mr. Toland’s. Like a question again. Brett? And he came up out of the saloon and she went aboard.”

“Then what?”

“Don’t know. Soon as I saw she was expected, I went back to my own business.”

“Which was what?”

“Watching television. I have a little Sony in the booth, I watch television when it’s slow.”

“What were you watching?”

“Dateline.”

“This was now what time?”

“Oh, ten after ten. A quarter past?”

“Did you see Ms. Commins when she left the boat?”

“No, I did not.”

“You wouldn’t know whether
Dateline
was still on when she left the boat, would you?”

“Goes off at eleven, it’s an hour-long show. Dining room closes at eleven-thirty, which is when I go home. Night watchman
comes on then.”

“Does
he
sit in the booth, too?”

“No, he patrols the docks, the dining room, the whole area. There’s no traffic after the dining room closes.”

“You didn’t happen to see Ms. Commins coming off the boat at about ten-thirty?”

“No, I did not.”

“Didn’t happen to see her driving out of the parking lot a few minutes after that?”

“No, I did not.”

“How come? You were sitting right there in the booth…”

“I didn’t see nobody come off that boat at ten-thirty,” Harrod said. “And I didn’t see the white Geo leaving the lot at that
time, neither.”

You were on the
boat?

Yes.

Last
night?

Yes. But only for a little while.

How short a while?

Half an hour? No more than that.

“Thank you, Mr. Harrod,” I said. “We appreciate your time.”

“Hello, you’ve reached Warren Chambers Investigations. I’ll be out of town for the next week or so, but if you leave a message
I’ll get back to you as soon as I return.”

No clue as to when Warren had recorded the message.

Same message on the machine at his home number.

I tried Toots again.

“Hello, I’m away from the phone just now, but if you’ll leave a message at the beep I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
Thanks. Bye.”

Which meant that Andrew and I had to keep our four o’clock appointment with a tape recorder and a man named Charles Werner.

When you’re a member of the police force, you see all kinds of things, people doing all kinds of things. You answer a Family
Dispute call, you go in, find a man in his undershorts, woman wearing nothing but panties, man yelling she threw hot grits
on his head, woman yelling he’s full of shit, you see all kinds of things. It’s like a police officer isn’t a human being
anymore the minute he puts on the uniform. He becomes
just
the uniform, nothing inside it. Woman ain’t ashamed to be seen wearing only her panties, big fat woman with breasts hanging
down to her navel, you aren’t human to her, you’re just the Man come to see to this little dispute here, you’re just an anonymous
part of the system, not a human being at all, just the Man.

You see a dead person laying in his own blood in the street, people screaming and crying all around him, you tell them to
back off, go home, ain’t nothing to see here, let’s go, let’s break it up now, you’re not a human being same as the ones screaming
and yelling, you’re just the Man. And you’re not supposed to be affected by the blood underfoot swarming with flies, or the
brain matter spattered all over the fender of the car, or the fact that the kid laying there with his skull open is only fourteen
years old, you’re the Man come to set it all straight.

On Amberjack’s boat here in the middle of the Gulf, Warren Chambers was the Man again. The Man come to see about this little
matter of Toots Kiley’s addiction, the Man come to set it all straight. So it didn’t matter he had to take the handcuffs off
and lead her to the head and stand outside the door where he could hear her peeing behind it. There was no more embarrassment
here than there’d been with the fat lady in her panties, he was just the Man here to settle this thing, the Man here to get
her sober again. Wasn’t anybody behind that door pissing, wasn’t anybody outside here listening. The lady in there was invisible,
and the Man outside here was anonymous.

“I
still
don’t know how to flush this fucking thing,” Toots said from behind the door.

“You finished in there?”

“I’m finished.”

“I’ll show you again. Unlock the door.”

She unlocked the door. Stood by the sink in the small compartment, washing her hands while he demonstrated the use of the
flush yet another time, not that she seemed too interested in learning about it. The thing wasn’t working properly, anyway,
he’d never been on a goddamn boat that had a toilet worth a damn. He had to run the pump over and over again till he finally
got water in the bowl. Toots dried her hands on a paper towel, and was about to toss it in the toilet when he gave her a look
would kill a charging rhino. She wadded the towel and dropped it in the sink. He picked it up, opened the door under the sink,
tossed the towel into a metal basket fastened to the inside of the door, closed the door again, and took the handcuffs from
the pocket of his windbreaker.

“Come on,” she said, “we don’t need those.”

“I don’t want you hitting me upside the head,” he said.

“What good would that do? I don’t know how to run a boat.”