Ed McBain_Matthew Hope 12 (16 page)

Stowing the buckets and mops at once, they offered us a light lunch, and sat with us around a cockpit table under blue canvas,
all of us chatting idly like good old friends, eating the delicious shrimp salad Brenda had prepared, sipping at iced tea
in tall glasses afloat with lemon wedges. Jerry told us that he, too, was a lawyer. Brenda said that she’d been a legal secretary
before they married, yet another revolting development. Too much expertise here, I was thinking. Andrew later told me he was
thinking the same thing.

They told us they’d bought two apartments in their condo at a bargain price three years ago, and had broken through the walls
to make one huge apartment overlooking the Atlantic. The
Banner Year,
as they called their boat, had been purchased after Jerry’s firm won a huge class-action suit and declared extravagant Christmas
bonuses. They had been all over the state of Florida with it, had even jumped off to Bimini one fall—but that was another
story.

“We hit a hurricane,” Brenda said.

“Wouldn’t want to experience
that
again,” Jerry said.

Brenda served little cookies with chocolate sprinkles on them.

She poured more iced tea.

It was time to get to work.

“As I told you on the phone,” I said, “all we want to know…”

“Sure, let’s cut to the chase,” Jerry said. “Did the S.A. offer you a deal?”

“He suggested we might want to make one after listening to his witnesses.”

“Might be a good idea,” Jerry said.

“Okay to turn this on?” Andrew asked.

“Sure,” Jerry said.

“I hate the way my voice sounds on tape,” Brenda said, and rolled her eyes. She had moved out into the sun. The three of us
were still under the Bimini top, but she was now sitting aft of us, her face and the sloping tops of her breasts tilted up
to the sun.

Andrew hit the REC and
PLAY
buttons. The tape began unreeling.

“What I figure he was trying to do,” Jerry said, “was …”

“Who do you mean?” I asked.

“Folger. Your state attorney. Aside from establishing that we heard shots, of course…”

This was not heartening news.

“…was establish a timetable. I could tell by the questions he asked me…”

“And me, too,” Brenda said.

“…that he had other witnesses who’d seen the accused on the boat before we came along.”

“How could you determine that?”

“Well, he asked if we’d seen a security guard in the booth near the gate, for example, so I figured…”

“Me, too,” Brenda said.

“…that the guard had some significance. So what could the significance be if the guard hadn’t seen the accused going aboard
the boat where later we heard the shots?”

Shots again.

Witnesses to the shooting.

“He also asked…” Brenda said.

“Folger,” Jerry said.

“…whether we’d seen a sailboat coming in under power and tying up in slip number twelve, I think it was…”

“Twelve,” Jerry affirmed with a nod. “Which was another link in the time sequence, I figured.”

“Like whoever was on that sailboat must’ve seen the accused before we came along,” Brenda said.

“Folger was trying to establish that the accused was still on the Toland boat when we heard the shots,” Jerry said.

I bit the bullet, so to speak.

“What shots?” I asked.

“Well, gunshots,” he said.

“What time was this?”

“Around twenty to twelve.”

“Tuesday night,” Brenda said, nodding.

“This past Tuesday night. The twelfth,” Jerry said.

“Eleven-forty
P.M.
,” Brenda said, nodding again.

“You heard these shots coming from the Toland boat?”

“Oh yes.”

“Yes.”

“What were you doing near the Toland boat?”

“Walking toward where we’d parked the
Banner Year.
”

“We were staying a few nights,” Brenda said.

“Sleeping on the boat.”

“Came over through Lake Okeechobee…”

“Spent a night in Clewiston…”

“Went down the Caloosahatchee to Punta Rosa…”

“And then took the Intercoastal north to Calusa.”

“We’ve got courtesy privileges at Silver Creek.”

“Got there around seven that night,” Brenda said.

“Showered ashore…”

“Got all tarted up…”

“Went in for dinner around nine.”

“They stop serving at ten-thirty.”

“Dining room closes an hour later.”

“I had a delicious broiled lobster,” Brenda said.

“I had the red snapper.”

“Finished a bottle of really good Chardonnay.”

“Headed back for the boat around eleven-thirty, I guess it was.”

“Just ambling back to the boat,” Brenda said.

“Just taking our good sweet time.”

“Nowhere to go but to bed.”

There are cars moving out of the parking lot as they enter it at the dining room end. Late diners like themselves heading
home. Headlights blinding them as they move toward the waterfront planking that runs past the boats parked in their slips.
The activity is short-lived. The sound of automobile engines dies on the still September night.

Now there is only the sound of water lapping at dock pilings and boats. The occasional sound of a lanyard clanking against
a mast. Marina sounds. The sounds boat people love.

The walkway is lighted with low all-weather mushroom-shaped lamps that illuminate the path and cast some reflection onto the
tethered vessels bobbing dockside. The Bannerman boat is in slip number three. As they recall it again now,
Toy Boat
was tied up at slip number five that night. This would make Werner’s recollection of the geography accurate. He had told
us he’d tied up his boat at slip number twelve, some six or seven boats down the line from the Tolands.

The cockpit lights are still on as the Bannermans, arm in arm, approach the luxury yawl. There is no one sitting at the cockpit
table now, but there are lights burning in the saloon. It has taken them ten minutes or so, looking over all the parked boats,
admiring some, dismissing others, to amble their way from the dining room to this point just abreast of the Toland boat. It
is twenty minutes to twelve when…

“We heard shots.”

“Three gunshots.”

I looked at them both. Not many people know what gunshots sound like. It is not like in the movies. In the movies, even the
smallest caliber gun sounds like a mortar shell exploding an inch from your ear. I am not an expert on
all
guns, but I do know what an Iver Johnson .22-caliber Trailsman Snub revolver sounds like when it is fired three times from
a car parked at the curb, the first bullet taking me in the shoulder, the second taking me in the chest, the third going Christ
knew where because by then I didn’t even
hear
that next shot, possibly because I was suddenly gushing blood and screaming in pain and falling into a deep black hole in
the sidewalk. The sound of the gun that catapulted me into an eight-day coma was nothing more than a small
pop,
an insignificant
crack.

“What’d these gunshots sound like?” I asked casually.

“We know guns,” Jerry said.

“We keep guns.”

“We go to the range every Saturday.”

“We know what a gun sounds like.”

“These weren’t backfires.”

“They were gunshots.”

“Coming from the saloon of the Toland yawl,” Jerry said.

“Three shots,” Brenda said.

“What’d you do?” Andrew asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you say you heard three gunshots…”

“We did.”

“So what’d you do?”

“Went back to our boat. Went to bed.”

“Didn’t report the shots to anyone?” I asked.

“Nope,” Jerry said.

“Why not?”

“None of our business.”

“When
did
you come forward?”

“When we heard this man had got killed.”

“Brett Toland.”

“We called the S.A.’s Office right away, volunteered what we knew.”

“Which was that you’d heard three shots coming from the Toland boat at eleven-forty last Tuesday night.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Did the state attorney ask why you didn’t report those shots?”

“He did.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“That we weren’t eager to confront anyone who had a gun in his hand.”

“Is there a telephone on your boat?”

“A radio.”

“Why didn’t you use the radio to report …?”

“We didn’t want to get involved.”

“But you’re involved now. You’re a witness in a…”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters to Lainie Commins. If you’d reported those shots when you heard them, someone might have apprehended whoever…”

“We didn’t say anything that linked those shots to Ms. Commins,” Jerry said.

“We didn’t
see
her on the boat, so how could we have implicated her in any way?” Brenda asked.

“My guess is they’ve got someone who can place her there around the time we heard the shots,” Jerry said. “That’s why the
careful timetable. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes. But if you’d reported those shots
immediately
…”

“No, we couldn’t do that,” Jerry said.

“Why not?”

“We just couldn’t,” Brenda said.

“Why not?” I asked again.

“We didn’t want anyone rummaging around.”

“Rummaging around?”

“
Our
boat.”

I looked at them both again.

“Why didn’t you want anyone on your boat?” I asked.

“Turn that thing off,” Jerry said, and nodded toward the recorder.

Andrew hit the
STOP
button.

Jerry looked at his wife.

Brenda nodded okay.

“We had a little pot aboard,” Jerry said.

“Marijuana,” Brenda said, explaining to the two squares in the seersucker suits.

“Just a few ounces,” Jerry said.

“For recreational use,” Brenda said.

“We were on vacation.”

“Just the two of us on the boat.”

“Just a little for our own use.”

“Not enough to hurt anybody.”

Except Lainie Commins, I thought.

E
tta Toland arrived at 333 Heron Street at the stroke of ten on Monday morning. She was dressed casually—disdainfully, my partner
Frank later said—in jeans, a loose-fitting, tunic-style, melon-colored blouse, low-heeled very strappy sandals, and a brown
leather belt with a handcrafted brass buckle in the shape of a lion’s head. Her shoulder-length black hair was pulled to the
back of her head and fastened there with a brass barrette. She wore no lipstick. The lids over her dark almond-shaped eyes
were subtly tinted with a tan liner. It was obvious that she expected to get the hell out of here as fast as she could and
get on with the more important business in her life.

This was for real.

This was under oath.

Her personal attorney, Sidney Brackett, was there in my office and so was a woman from the State Attorney’s Office, presumably
to protect Etta’s rights, though depositions are customarily open-ended and nonleading, and no one does any cross-examination.
I expected that if I asked Etta to reveal anything that constituted privileged communication—as, for example, a conversation
between her and her psychiatrist, if she had one—I would at once hear from either Brackett or Mrs. Hampton, which was the
ASA’s name, Helen Hampton. But I didn’t intend to tread any dangerous ground, and my partner Frank was there to nudge me in
case I did.

I should tell you that people say Frank and I look alike, though I have never been able to see the slightest resemblance.
I am thirty-eight years old and Frank is forty. I am an even six feet tall and I weigh a hundred and eighty-five pounds. Frank
is five-nine and a half and he weighs a hundred and sixty. My face is long and narrow, what Frank calls a “fox face.” By contrast,
he calls himself a “pig face.” There are also “rhino faces” and “turtle faces” in the system of categorization he invented.
I am originally from Chicago, he is from New York. We both have black hair and brown eyes, true, and we both have corner offices
at Summerville and Hope, but that’s
all
we have in common.

Frank has been nicer to me since I survived becoming a vegetable.

Everybody
has been nicer to me, in fact.

In fact, that’s precisely the goddamn trouble.

Neither Frank nor I knew anything Etta Toland had told the grand jury. Like most depositions, this was a fact-finding exploration,
or, if you prefer, a fishing expedition. But we could assume, as had the pot-smoking lawyer-boater Jerry Bannerman, that Assistant
State Attorney Peter Folger had used Etta to establish yet another time sequence in the inexorable order that linked Lainie
Commins to the murder of Brett Toland. Since the Bannermans had testified to hearing shots at eleven-forty on the night of
September twelfth, I figured that was a good enough place to start, so I asked Etta where she’d been at about that time.

“Home,” she said. “Waiting for Brett’s call.”

“You were expecting your husband to call you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know where he was?”

“Yes, he was aboard
Toy Boat.
With Lainie Commins.”

“Why were you expecting him to call?”

“To tell me how it had gone.”

“How what had gone?”

“His meeting with Lainie. He asked her to come to the boat so he could offer a solution to our problem.”

“By problem…”

“Her suit for a permanent injunction.”

“What was the nature of this solution, can you tell me, Mrs. Toland?”

“He offered to buy her off.”

“Buy her off?”

“He offered a cash settlement if she would drop her claim.”

“A cash settlement?” I said, surprised.

“Yes. Five thousand dollars.”

“Are you saying your husband offered Ms. Commins…?”

“I don’t know if he actually ever
made
the offer. She may have shot him first, for all I know. I never saw him again after he left the house, you see. Or spoke
to him, for that matter. But that’s what he was planning, yes. That’s what he and I had discussed.”