Ed McBain_Matthew Hope 12

by Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear

“Yes, Calusa, Florida. What is this?” I ask, more forcefully this time. “Why are you asking me if I know my own name?”

  “You’ve been very sick,” Spinaldo says.

  There is now something close to unbridled joy on his face. I expect him to begin crying in ecstasy at any moment. I suddenly like him. And just as suddenly I remember. But not everything.

  “Did I get shot?”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “My chest hurts.”

  “Good.”

  “My shoulder, too.”

  “Very good.”

  I cannot imagine why he thinks hurting so much is good and very good. I do not realize that he’s telling me I’m feeling things again. He’s telling me I’m awake again. The problem is I don’t remember having been asleep. Euphemism of the week. Asleep. It will later be explained to me that sometime while I was in surgery and they were frantically trying to repair the ruptured blood vessels in my chest, I suffered cardiac arrest and…

  Well, what happened was my heart stopped for five minutes and forty seconds, and there was subsequent loss of blood to the brain…

  No blood was being pumped to the brain, you see.

  No blood was being circulated anywhere in my body.

  In short, I was in a coma for seven days, eleven hours, and fifteen minutes, after which time—and with a mighty leap, don’t forget—I sprang out of the pit.

  A different face suddenly appears above me.

  This one I know.

  This one I love.

  “Daddy,” she whispers.

  Joanna.

  My daughter. Blue eyes brimming with tears. Blond hair falling loose as she leans over the bed.

  “Oh Daddy”

  Nothing more. And hugs me close.

  And the nurse who’d earlier run to fetch the doctor cautions her not to knock over the stand holding the plastic bag of whatever the hell is dripping into my arm, I am beginning to feel crotchety already, you see, I want to put on my pants and get the hell out of here.

  But now there is yet another face, and I love this one, too, and Patricia leans over the bed, and kisses my cheek, eyes as blue as my daughter’s, shining and wet, hair as blond as my daughter’s, it occurs to me that I may have a thing for blue-eyed blondes.

  But, no, my former wife was a brunette, isn’t that so? And lo and behold, here she is now, right on cue, the once and future Susan Hope, leaning over me with a smile on her face and a whispered “Welcome back, Matthew,” which causes me to wonder where I’ve been because no one has yet explained to me that I’ve been in a coma, you see, although I am beginning to recall, vaguely, a bar someplace, I am waiting for someone in a bar, I leave the bar—and can remember nothing further.

  I feel suddenly exhausted.

  All at once, the room seems too noisy and too crowded and too active.

  I want everyone to go away.

  I want my pants back.

  I want to go home.

  I feel like crying.

  I want to go to sleep again.

  I have to pee.

  Something is starting in this room on this bright day in April.

  It is called recovery.

  It is called recuperation.

  Section 905.17 of the statutes plainly states that “no person shall be present at the sessions of the grand jury except the witness under examination, the state attorney, designated assistants as provided for in Section 27.18, the court reporter or stenographer, and the interpreter.”

  This means that a grand jury hearing is a nonconfrontational thing. No defense lawyers there. No cross-examination of the various witnesses. Just the state attorney munching on his own sweet ham sandwich. This further means that should an accused elect to testify, his or her lawyer cannot be present in the room. Which may explain why, in most cases, any good attorney will advise his client not to accept an invitation to go in there and face the music. I explained this to Lainie now, and she nodded gravely and said it seemed unfair. I told her that perhaps the word she was seeking was “Draconian.”

  I had picked her up at the County Jail after she’d changed back into civilian clothing, the jeans, T-shirt and sandals she’d thrown on last night when the police came to arrest her. I was driving her home to North Apple because we needed to talk further and also because she’d promised to show me the new stuffed animal she’d been sketching when the call from Brett Toland came last night. I was eager to see her drawings because her frame of mind was important to the events that had subsequently transpired. The important thing was that she’d been working on something new, you see. She was planning to move on, planning for the future. Contrary to her gloomy outlook at lunch, by the time she’d got back to her house, she’d come around to believing that Judge Santos would find in our favor and order the preliminary injunction we were seeking. There was no reason for her to have wanted Brett Toland dead. She hadn’t even been thinking of Brett when his call came later that night.

  Her house on North Apple looked exactly as she’d described it to the Court yesterday morning. I parked my car under a huge shade tree which I could not identify, and looked up to make sure there weren’t any birds in it. The car I drive is a slate-blue Acura Legend which Patricia ran into just before our first meeting. She claims I will never forgive her for that. Maybe I won’t. Rudyard Kipling once wrote, “And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.” I don’t smoke, but I love that car. Not as much as I love Patricia, he was quick to amend. But I still didn’t want birds shitting all over its hood and its roof.

  I followed Lainie up the path to the low cinder-block structure, and then into the house itself. She showed me around briefly, asked if I wanted a cold drink—it was only three-thirty, so I guessed she meant a soft drink—and we each went into the studio carrying a beaded glass of lemonade afloat with ice cubes. I felt as if I’d been in this house before, this work space before. She threw a light switch. The fluorescents came on over the long drawing table she’d described at the hearing, illuminating her sketches for Kinky Turtle. She pointed out the date she’d penciled into the lower right-hand corner of each drawing, just below her signature. Unless she’d altered the notations, the drawings had, in fact, been made yesterday.

  “Tell me everything that happened last night,” I said.

  “From when to when?”

  “From when Brett called to the last time you saw him alive.”

  It occurs to me as she speaks that she would make a compelling witness if ever we decide to put her on the stand. Her eyeglasses do nothing to correct that wandering right eye. But the visual defect gives her a somewhat startled look that attracts unwavering attention. As beautiful as she is, it is the imperfect eye that lends to her otherwise flawless features a skewed look that is totally compelling.

  Sitting on a stool in jeans, T-shirt and sandals, hands in her lap, she tells me she was in the studio working on the sketches when the telephone rang…

  “What time was this?”

  “Around nine o’clock.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because when we were later talking about my going over there…”

  Brett is calling to invite her to his boat.

  “What for?” she asks him.

  “I want to discuss a settlement,” he says.

  “Then call my lawyer,” she says.

  “I don’t want to drag the lawyers in just yet, Lainie.”

  “Brett,” she says, “the lawyers are already in.”

  “The lawyers are why we have this problem, Lainie. All lawyers should be shot, Lainie. I want to discuss this face-to-face, just you and me. “You’re familiar with the toy business, you’ll understand the significance of what I want to suggest.”

  “Okay, try me,” she says.

  “Not on the phone.”

  “Why not?”

  “Lainie, trust me, my proposal…”

  “Trust you, Brett?”

  “I know we’ve had our differences…”

  �
�Differences? You stole my fucking bear!”

  “I’m willing to grant there are similarities between your design and ours. But what I’m about to propose…”

  “Propose it to Matthew Hope.”

  “Lainie, I promise you this won’t compromise your case at all. This isn’t a trick. I know you’ve been made aware of the fact that if money alone could repair your injuries…”

  “Forget money, Brett. If you’re about to…”

  “No, I’m not offering a cash settlement.”

  “What are you offering?”

  “Come to the boat.”

  “No. Call Hope. Make your offer to him.”

  “Lainie, please. For old times’ sake. Please. I promise you this is a solution. You won’t be disappointed. Come here and let me talk to you.”

  She hesitates.

  “Where’s here?” she asks.

  “The yacht club.”

  “Which one?”

  “Silver Creek. You’ve been here.”

  “You’re there now?”

  “On the boat.”

  “Is Etta with you?”

  “No, but she’s aware of what I’m about to propose. We’re absolutely in agreement on it. How long will it take you to get here?”

  She looks at her watch.

  “An hour? Depending on traffic?”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  “Brett…?”

  “Yes, Lainie?”

  “This better be good.”

  She looks at me over her lemonade glass. I think she can sense my disapproval because she says nothing for a moment, and when she does speak it is only to explain what she’d started to tell me earlier, about knowing the time of Brett’s call because she’d looked at her watch in order to estimate how long it would take for her to dress and…

  “Yes, I realize. How long did it take you to get there?”

  “You’re thinking I shouldn’t have gone, right?”

  “Why did you go?”

  “Old times’ sake,” she says, and shrugs. Brett’s exact words on the phone. “We did work together for a long time, there was a history there. And I thought he might actually be ready to offer something that would simplify matters. No one likes lawsuits, Matthew.”

  Graciously, she did not add “No one likes lawyers, either.”

  “What time did you get to the club?”

  “Around ten o’clock.”

  “Silver Creek? On the river and Polk?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’d you get there?”

  “I drove.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “A white Geo.”

  “Anyone know the exact time you arrived?”

  “Well, Brett.”

  “Unreliable witness. Dead, you know.”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Dead nonetheless.”

  “Stop acting so pissed off.”

  “You should have stuck to your guns, Lainie. You were right telling him to come to me with his offer. Why’d you change your mind?”

  “I told you.”

  “You weren’t so concerned about ‘old times’ when you brought the copyright suit.”

  “All right, damn it, I was afraid we’d lose it, all right?”

  “That’s not what you told me ten minutes ago. You told me you were feeling confident…”

  “I was lying. I was scared shitless. I was sure Santos would eventually tell the Tolands to go right ahead with their bear.”

  “Then what was all that business about Kinky?”

  “I was working on Kinky when the phone rang. As insurance. For when Santos decided against me.”

  “In other words, your frame of mind was anything but confident, isn’t that right?”

  “Whose side are you on, Matthew?”

  “I can’t help you if you lie to me, Lainie.”

  I’m sorry.

  Head bent. Little cockeyed girl in tight jeans and braless T-shirt, staring down at the hands in her lap now. Lemonade on the drawing table, alongside her “insurance” sketches for a new stuffed animal.

  “All right, what happened next?”

  She does not answer for a moment. She keeps staring at her hands. Then she sighs heavily, and looks up at me. Bee-stung lips slightly parted. I suddenly think it’s a long time since Patricia and I made love. I put the thought out of my mind. It occurs to me that Lainie fully understands her cockeyed appeal to men. It further occurs to me that I had better be careful here.

  “Have you ever been aboard Toy Boat?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “Well, she’s a marvelous rig, as Brett calls her, making her sound like a little runabout, when she’s actually a ninety-four-foot gaff-rigged yawl with three beautifully outfitted double staterooms and a crew cabin forward…”

  Walkway lights illuminate the dockside area, and there is a single lamppost at the far end of the parking lot, where Lainie parks the Geo. She has dressed casually but elegantly for this meeting, perhaps because she knows the boat, and doesn’t want to be intimidated by its teaked and varnished grandeur, or possibly because she truly believes Brett may be about to offer a real solution to their problem, in which case she wants to look and feel festive when they break out the celebratory champagne. So she’s wearing white-laced, blue Top-Siders—she knows the rules of boating—with flaring, bell-bottomed, blue silk slacks and a white silk boat-necked shirt over which she’s thrown a blue scarf in a tiny red-anchor print. The red frames of her eyeglasses are the color of her lipstick. The gold of the heart-shaped pinky ring echoes her blond hair, worn loose tonight. The hair catches glints of light from the lamppost as she steps out of the car and strides toward the Toland boat. She feels hopeful. She sometimes thinks her entire life, from the moment she learned her eyes weren’t like those of other little girls, has been one long battle—but now there may be a happy ending in sight.

  There are lights burning in the saloon.

  From the bottom of the gangway, she calls, “Hello?” Silence.

  “Brett?” she calls.

  “Lainie?” a voice says, and she sees Brett coming topside from the short ladder leading below. He is wearing white cotton slacks and a loose-fitting white buttonless cotton top slashed in a V over his chest. He hits a switch someplace on his right and light spills onto the cushioned cockpit area where she now sees that a bucket of ice, a pair of tumblers, and several bottles of liquor—she cannot read the labels yet—have been set out on the teak table. “Come aboard,” he calls. “I’m so glad you decided to come.”

  She has been aboard this boat many times before, for cocktail parties, small dinner parties, casual lunches, an occasional sail out on the Gulf. The saloon below is furnished with comfortable couches, and glass-fronted lockers that enclose a television set, a VCR, and a CD player. The dining table seats ten comfortably, and whenever she’s been here for dinner or lunch, it has been set with Wedgwood china, Waterford crystal, and damask napkins. The boat is truly luxurious, with Oriental rugs covering the teak decks, and framed Currier & Ives sailing prints hanging on the paneled bulkheads.

  In the past, she has felt more comfortable in the informal cockpit area, and she’s happy he has chosen this space for their meeting now. Brett is barefoot. She remembers that he once asked a state senator’s wife to take off her smart linen pumps for fear she might damage his precious teak decks. “Sit,” he says, “please,” and indicates with an open-hand gesture one of the cushioned banquettes. She eases in behind the teak table, seeing now that the bottles on it are Johnnie Walker Black, Canadian Club, and Stolichnaya. She also notices a small white porcelain bowl with wedges of lime in it. Brett sits on the cushioned banquette on the other side of the table.

  “So,” he asks, “what to drink?”

  “Do you have any Perrier?”

  “Oh, come on, Lainie,” he says, smiling. “I promise you’ll want to celebrate.”

  “We’ll see,” she says, and returns the smile.

  H
e is being his most charming self, which can be charming indeed. Again, she finds herself wishing this will truly be the end of all the turmoil and strife.

  “Perrier? Really?” he says.

  “Really,” she says. “Perrier.”

  One more time, she thinks, and they’ll send me a case every week for the rest of my life.

  “Perrier it is,” he says, and slides out from behind the table, and surefootedly slips down the ladder. She hears him rummaging below—the galley is modern and spacious, with Corian work surfaces and a four-burner stove, an oven, a microwave, a trash compactor, a freezer and she forgets how many cubic feet of refrigeration, had he once said sixty? Eighty? A lot, that was for sure. He was searching now in one of the fridges for the Perrier she’d requested, and she hears him cursing when something clatters to the deck, and then there’s some muttering below, and finally he comes up the ladder again with a green bottle clutched in one hand and a blue-black automatic pistol in the other.

  She looks at the gun.

  “Some people tried to come aboard last week,” he says in explanation, and places the gun on the table alongside the bowl of sliced limes.

  “What people?” she asks.

  “Two wetbacks,” he says.

  Meaning Cubans, she surmises.

  “What’d they want?”

  “They said they were looking for work. Wanted to know if I was taking on hands. Por favor, are you takin on some hanns, señor,” he says in bad imitation. “Have to be careful these days. Too many boats are being hijacked.”

  “From a marina dock?”

  “Why not?”

  “Is that thing loaded?”

  “Oh yes,” he says. “Sure you don’t want a little vodka in this?” he asks, pouring into one of the tumblers.

  “Just ice and a lime,” she says.

  Her artist’s eyes are studying the color scheme on the table. The green of the Perrier bottle and the limes, the bone white of the bowl, the amber whiskey in two of the bottles, the black label on the Scotch echoing the black cap on the other bottle, the red and black label on the Stoli, the blue-black dullness of the Colt automatic.

  Brett pours himself a hefty blast of Johnnie on the rocks.

  “To our future,” he says, and clinks his glass against hers. She remembers that it’s bad luck to toast with a nonalcoholic beverage. But the moment has passed, the glasses have been touched, the toast has been uttered. Still, she does not drink just yet, hoping to put some distance between the bad-luck toast and the act itself, waiting first for him to take a long swallow of Scotch, and then waiting another decent interval to take the curse off before she herself sips some of the sparkling water.