Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear

12

Warren was telling her the guy upstairs had a gun. Toots was translating what the guy upstairs was yelling. He wanted a poncho. He was getting soaked up there, bring him a fucking poncho. She was thinking if they took the guy out, she’d have a gun and eight kilos of coke.

The rain was one of those hard hasty squalls that came on you suddenly and made you think you were going to drown. They seemed worse when you were on a boat because suddenly the entire world was overwhelmed by water. Thing about them was that they didn’t last long. Even so, the guy upstairs kept yelling for a poncho. Bring me a fucking poncho, Luis!

Warren whispered the plan to her.

Fatback Key is in Calusa County, but it is not within the city limits of Calusa itself. Instead, it falls within the boundaries of Manakawa to the south. It is the wildest and narrowest of the county’s several keys, flanked on east and west by the Gulf and the bay, two bodies of water that during the hurricane season sometimes join over Westview Road, the two-lane blacktop that skewers Fatback north to south. The bridge connecting Fatback to the mainland is a humpback that can accommodate only one car at a time. Directly over the bridge is a large wooden signpost with two dozen arrows pointing off either left or right, the names of the key’s residents carved into the wooden arrows and then painted in with white. The name DEMMING was on one of those arrows; Patricia lived on Fatback. The name TOLAND was on another arrow.

Bobby Diaz had estimated that it was a forty-five minute drive from Sheila’s condo on Whisper to the Toland house on Fatback. Driving fast, in light off-season traffic, I made it from Diaz’s condo on Sabal in an hour and ten. I had not called ahead. I was hoping Etta Toland, a recent widow, would be home and not out dancing. There were lights on in the house, a sumptuous, architecturally pristine bayside mansion that opened westward past gulfside dunes to yet another glorious Calusa sunset. A greenish-black Infiniti was parked on the driveway’s white gravel. I parked the Acura alongside it. It was twenty minutes past seven.

I walked through the evengloam stillness of a lush tropical garden flanking the path to the front door. Somewhere a cardinal called. The light was fading fast. I rang a doorbell over the discreet brass escutcheon with the name Toland etched upon it in black script lettering. The cardinal fell silent. The sky over the Gulf turned purple and deep blue and blue-black and black. A single star appeared.

“Who is it?”

Etta’s voice behind the door.

“Matthew Hope. May I come in?”

There was a moment’s hesitation. Then:

“Is this allowed?”

“I believe so.”

“Just a minute.”

Silence.

At last the door opened.

Etta Toland was wearing a clay-spattered blue smock over jeans and sandals. Her sleek black hair was pulled to the back of her head, tied there with a short red ribbon. She had a towel in her hands, and she was still wiping the left hand clean when she opened the door. Rumor had it that she was a sculptor. Then again, in Calusa every other person you tripped over either sculpted or painted or wrote plays or...

“What is it, Mr. Hope?”

“I’m sorry if I’m inter—”

“You are.”

“May I come in?”

“Why?”

“There are some things we need to discuss.”

“I’m sure this isn’t permitted.”

Dark eyes angry and suspicious. Standing there in the doorway, head erect, shoulders back, barring entrance.

“I can come back with a subpoena for a deposition,” I said.

“Then maybe you ought to do that.”

“I’d prefer we talked informally.”

“All right,” she said, “come in.”

I stepped into the foyer. She closed and locked the door behind me. I was in a tiled entry that seemed an extension of the lush garden outside, tubbed flowering plants and trees everywhere, many of them taller than I was, some of them squatting low on the earth-colored floor. I followed her past a shallow pool in which golden carp swam, moved with her through wide windowed corridors toward where a light showed in the otherwise dim interior of the house.

Her studio — a huge room skylighted and windowed to show a star-drenched sky — faced eastward toward the bay. There were clay models of female nudes of various heights on stands and tables and platforms. The one she’d apparently been working on when I arrived was a life-size nude captured in midstride, arms swinging, left leg stepping out, right leg back. She began draping it with wet cloths. I had the sudden image of someone covering a birdcage at nightfall.

“Mrs. Toland,” I said, “Bobby Diaz told me he was here on the night Brett was killed. Is that correct?”

“Is it correct that he told you? Or is it correct that he was here?”

“Etta,” I said, “let’s not play games. I think you killed your husband.”

“Do you?”

One eyebrow arching over a dark, almond-shaped eye. The Dragon Lady. Calm and cool and spattered with clay, her hands deftly draping rags over the clay figure that stood almost as tall as she did.

“Diaz came here looking for a videocassette, didn’t he?”

“Did he?”

Same cool look. Hands working as busily as Lainie’s had on the tape in question.

“Which you found in an upstairs safe.”

“Did I?”

Infuriatingly cool. Hands wrapping the clay in the wet cloths. Wrapping the arms of the nascent torso, and the legs, and the breasts, and the head. Wrapping. Studiously wrapping. Studiously ignoring me. Icily ignoring me.

“You watched the tape together,” I said.

No answer now. Her entire attention focused on the clay model, wrapping it like a mummy, wet cloths enveloping it, enclosing it, smothering it.

“You confirmed that one of the women on the tape was Lainie Commins.”

Still no answer. Still working. She dipped her hands into a basin of muddy clay water on a table beside the platform. Rinsed them. Dried them on a clay-smeared towel. Folded the towel neatly. Placed it on the table beside the platform bearing the mummy-wrapped woman in full stride. Turned away from basin and towel and mummy and me. Began walking out of the studio.

“Etta,” I said.

“I think we’re finished here, Mr. Hope.”

“It was Matthew once.”

“When we were friends.”

“Etta, what did you do after Diaz left here that night?”

No answer. Still walking toward the studio’s open entrance frame, a woman in full stride, like the piece she’d been sculpting.

“Etta, he left here at about ten to eleven. What did you do then?”

“I went to sleep.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think.”

“It does if I can prove you were on that boat the night your husband was killed.”

“I was on the boat that night. After he was killed. I found his body, remember, Mr. Hope?”

“Did you go back to the boat after that night?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Then how did the cassette get there?”

She stopped just inside the doorless frame. Thought it over for a moment or two. Turned to me.

“Bobby took it with him,” she said.

“No, he didn’t.”

“That’s his word against mine.”

“Not if he wasn’t on the boat that night.”

“Then he must have been.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Still his word against mine,” she said again, and shrugged airily, and was turning toward the open door frame again when I said, “The cassette holder was empty at eleven-thirty.”

She hesitated again.

Stopped in midmotion, partially turned toward me, partially turned toward the door frame and the immense house beyond.

“So?” she said.

“Bobby was on his way back to Whisper Key at that time. He got there shortly before midnight. I have a witness to that effect. He couldn’t have been on the boat after Lainie left it. And the cassette holder was empty at that time.”

“Who says?”

“Lainie says.”

“Lainie killed him.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No. The cassette was here in this house at ten minutes to eleven. Lainie never had it in her possession. Eight days after the murder, I found it on the boat. You just told me you never went back to the boat. So how...?”

“I also told you Bobby took the cassette with him when he left here that night.”

“I don’t think so, Etta. I think you carried that cassette to the boat. I don’t know why you did that. Maybe you’d like to tell me.”

“Please, this is absurd.”

“No, Etta. I think you went to the boat to confront your husband. I think you...”

“I think you should leave.”

“I have a witness who saw you,” I said.

She looked at me.

“Going aboard at a quarter past eleven.”

She kept looking at me.

“Do I have to get a court order for a lineup?” I asked.

And suddenly she was weeping.

The first thing Juan saw was her blond hair.

Squinting through the torrential rain, barely able to see the boat’s running lights, he clung fiercely to the wheel and yelled again for Luis to bring him a fucking poncho. White fisherman’s shirt plastered to his big barrel chest now, pistol tucked into the waistband of his soaking-wet chinos, he yelled “Luis!” again, and saw the blond head coming up from below.

Warren was sliding open the bathroom window.

Juan’s mouth fell open.

Truly fell open.

He watched her coming up from below, slow languid glide up the ladder, tight black skirt and black high-heeled shoes, wrinkled yellow blouse, where the hell had she come from?

Warren was crawling out onto the narrow deck outside the window. Rain beating down everywhere around him. Gripping the stainless-steel grab rail as he ducked low and crawled back toward the wheel.

“How you doin, man?” Toots said in the sultriest voice she could muster, considering that she could see the outline of the nine-millimeter gun where the guy’s shirt was plastered to his belly. Big Glock on a big bearded guy who could tear her in half even without the piece. She wanted that gun. She wanted the eight keys of cocaine. That was the only thing on her mind right now. Take the guy out, get hold of the gun, find the coke.

He was turned toward her now, away from the wheel. Never mind the wheel, never mind the boat, or the storm or anything but the beautiful blonde slithering toward him through the rain like some kind of wet sea serpent, Come to me, baby.

Warren was coming to him, too, baby.

But Toots kept her eye on Juanito here, sidling toward him, not giving him the slightest hint that Warren was about to drop in uninvited, licking her lips instead, narrowing her eyes like some kind of screen siren of the thirties, Sí, come to me, querido, Warren almost in place, lust and greed and sheer joyous amazement at his good fortune all shining together in Juanito’s eyes as he lurched toward her through the driving rain. A moment too late, he realized that someone had dropped into the cockpit behind him. He was starting to turn when Warren’s clenched fist smashed a hammerblow to the base of his skull. Stunned, stumbling forward, belatedly realizing he’d been tricked, he grabbed for Toots and she said, “Sí, muchacho,” and took him into her embrace and brought her knee up into his groin.

He went for the nine.

Doubled over in pain, yelping in Spanish, he fumbled under the wet shirt for the stock of the gun, but Warren was on him now, grabbing him in a choke hold he’d learned on the St. Louis P.D., dragging him down to the deck, and then releasing him suddenly, kicking him unceremoniously in the head, and then kicking him once again for good measure. Juan was out of it.

Toots knelt and yanked the nine from his belt.

“Good,” Warren said.

“Where’d they stash the shit?” Toots asked, and leveled the gun at him.

Skye Bannister himself, the elected state attorney for the Twelfth Judicial District of the State of Florida, was present at the deposition I took at ten o’clock that Thursday night in my office on Heron Street. Also there were Assistant State Attorney Peter Folger, my partner Frank Summerville, and Sidney Brackett, the very same copyright attorney who was defending the infringement case for the Tolands. Why she had called him, rather than a criminal lawyer, was beyond me. But she was here to confess — or so she’d led me to believe — so perhaps she just wanted to get it over and done with.

Skye Bannister does not like me, nor does he like the fact that I am romantically involved with one of his best prosecutors. What Skye does like is the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, and there are frequent recurring rumors that he will run for that office in the next election, or the one after that, or the one after that. Meanwhile, he is still here, and he is still a blond blue-eyed pain in the ass who looks a lot like Dan Quayle. Given that Brackett looked like a pudgier Newt Gingrich and Folger a skinnier Phil Gramm, all we needed was a video technician who looked like Bob Dole, but unfortunately the technician was a woman, and she looked like a beautiful redhead in her twenties who was pissed off because she’d been called at home while she was watching television.

Etta Toland kept weeping intermittently as she was sworn in. I led her swiftly through the preliminaries of identifying herself, asked her to tell me where she lived, asked if she and I hadn’t had a lengthy conversation at that same address earlier tonight, and then asked if she’d be willing to repeat for me and for the camera — in the presence of her attorney and the gentlemen from the State Attorney’s Office — essentially what she’d told me earlier. She said she had no objections.

Brackett sighed.

Etta dabbed at her eyes.

She had changed her clothes before we’d left the house on Fatback, and was wearing now a pair of simple tailored slacks, a beige blouse to match, and low-heeled pumps. Her black hair was combed sleek and straight to her shoulders. Her eyes, wet with tears, looked luminous and large. The redhead looked at her watch. We began.

Q: To begin with, can you tell me whether or not you were present when your husband called Lainie Commins and asked her to meet him on your boat?

A: I was.

Q: What time was it that he called her?

A: At about nine o’clock.

Q: Did he call from the house?

A: Yes.

Q: In an earlier deposition, you said that he’d called her from the boat. Are you revising that now?

A: He called her from the house.

Q: Did you have opportunity to overhear that conversation?

A: I heard what he said to her.

Q: And what was that?

A: He told her he wanted to discuss a settlement. Said he didn’t want to drag lawyers in just yet. Wanted to discuss this face-to-face, just the two of them. But not on the phone. He said he wasn’t going to compromise her case at all, this wasn’t a trick.

Q: Did he say he was already on the boat?

A: Yes.

Q: Then he was lying.

A: Yes. He wanted to lend urgency to it. Wanted to make it seem he was already there waiting, eager to make a deal. She agreed to meet him, said it would take her an hour or so to get there.

Q: You didn’t hear her say that, did you?

A: No. Brett repeated it to me. Before he left the house.

Q: What time did he leave the house?

A: A few minutes after the phone call. Nine-fifteen? Thereabouts.

Q: How long does it take from your house on Fatback to the Silver Creek Yacht Club?

A: Ten, fifteen minutes. Depending on traffic.

Q: So he would have been there no later than... well... say, nine-thirty?

A: I would say so.

Q: Mrs. Toland, you told me earlier tonight, did you not, that a man named Bobby Diaz came to your house on the night of the murder...

A: Yes.

Q: Sometime after your husband left for the boat.

A: Yes.

Q: At around ten that night, isn’t that so?

A: Yes.

Q: Can you tell me who Bobby Diaz is?

A: Design chief for Toyland.

Q: Was he aware of the infringement suit Lainie Commins had brought against the firm?

A: He was.

Q: Did the matter of this suit come up at all while he was in your house that night?

A: It did.

Q: Can you tell us what was said about it?

A: He said he’d given Brett a videotape.

Q: What sort of video?

A: A pornographic tape.

Q: Did it have a title?

A: Idle Hands. It’s four women masturbating. Lainie Commins is one of the women on the tape.

Q: How did Bobby happen to give this tape to your husband?

A: He said it would help him win his case. He wanted a finder’s fee for it. Ten percent of whatever we grossed on the teddy bear.

Q: By the teddy bear...

A: Gladys. Our bear. The one Lainie claims we stole from her.

Q: Had your husband agreed to give Bobby this ten percent?

A: No. That’s why he was there. He wanted the tape back.

Q: Did you know anything about this tape before he mentioned it to you?

A: Nothing.

Q: Had you ever seen it?

A: Never.

Q: Ever watched it?

A: Never.

Q: Did you even know of its existence?

A: No, I did not know of its existence.

She began crying again. The Republican look-alikes looked patient and supportive. The angry redhead looked bored. I offered Etta a box of Kleenex. She blew her nose, dabbed at her eyes, wiped her cheeks. She brushed a strand of hair back from her face. She raised her chin. Her eyes met mine. They were clear and intent and alert. We resumed.

Q: Did Bobby Diaz ask you to look for that tape?

A: He did.

Q: And did you conduct a search for it?

A: Yes, I did.

Q: Did you eventually find it?

A: Yes. In our bedroom safe. Just the cassette. The case was gone.

Q: What time was it when you found the tape?

A: About a quarter to eleven.

Q: Then what?

A: We watched a little of it. To make sure it was the right one. Because the case was missing, you see. The black vinyl case they come in. There was no way of identifying it.

Q: Was it the correct tape?

A: Yes. Lainie was on it.

Q: You watched it for how long?

A: Oh, no more than a minute.

Q: Then what happened?

A: Bobby wanted it back. I told him I wouldn’t give it to him. Because I thought maybe Brett had paid him for it, after all, and this was just some kind of trick.

Q: What did he say to that?

A: Nothing. He just left.

I looked at her.

The room was silent except for the whirring of the video camera. I glanced at Frank. His nod was almost imperceptible.

“Mrs. Toland,” I said, “excuse me, but didn’t you tell me earlier tonight that your refusal to give Diaz...?”

“I told you earlier tonight exactly what I’m telling you now.”

“Didn’t you tell me that he...?”

“I told you that he left the house.”

“Didn’t he say something to you before he left the house?”

“Yes, he said good night.”

“What else did he say?”

“Nothing.”

“Didn’t he tell you that until this past Christmas, your husband was having an affair with Lainie Commins?”

“No, he did not.”

“And wasn’t it this that caused you to...?”

“Do I have to answer any more questions?” she asked, and turned to Brackett.

“Not if you don’t choose to,” he said.

“I don’t choose to,” she said.

“Where?” Toots said. “Where’d they put it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Warren said.

“The eight keys, Warren. Where?”

“I don’t know anything about...”

“I was in the john when they came aboard with it. Where’d they put it?”

“I never saw it.”

“Warren, I’m going to shoot you.”

“Go ahead.”

“You know where that coke is, Warren.”

“This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

“Tell me, or I’ll shoot you.”

“You see this man here?” Warren said, and jerked his head toward where Juan lay motionless and silent on the deck. “Three minutes after they came aboard, he hit me with that gun you’re holding in your hand there. I never saw anybody bringing any dope onto this boat.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“Fuck you, then, I’ll find it myself.”

“Go right ahead.”

She went down the ladder. The rain kept pouring down. He shook his head, sighed, and went to the wheel. He could hear her storming around belowdecks, banging cabinet doors, tossing around pots and pans, whatever. He sighed again. Some ten minutes later, she came topside again.

“Where is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

She began searching through the storage bins on either side of the boat, tossing aside life jackets and lines, rags, a billed cap. Lifted the lid to the bait locker. Felt around under the ice and the beer cans. Warren held the boat steady. The rain kept slashing the deck. She came to where he was sitting, gestured with the gun toward the closed compartment under the dash, just above his knees.

“Move,” she said.

“It won’t drive itself,” he said.

“Then open that.”

He thumbed the button in the drop-front lid. The lid fell open. He saw at once a yellow oilskin-wrapped package wedged inside the compartment among the charts and a flashlight and a cigar box and a whistle.

Eight keys, she’d said. Two point two pounds to a kilo, ask any schoolboy. Seventeen and a half pounds of the white lady, give or take.

“Give it to me,” she said.

“No,” he said, and slammed the compartment shut, and raised his knee against it as if to tell her it was going to stay shut. Right knee wedged against the drop-front lid. Rain sweeping in over the boat, slicing back to where they stood side by side, the gun steady in Toots’s hand, and the wheel steady in his.

“Warren,” she said, “this isn’t a joke here.”

“I know that, Toots.”

“Then move away.”

“No.”

“Warren, I need that.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Don’t tell me what I fucking need or don’t need!

“Toots...”

“Don’t force me to hurt you, Warren!”

She peered at him through the fiercely falling rain, her eyes squinted, her hair plastered to her head, her clothes drenched, water streaming down her face. He wasn’t sure whether that was just rain on her face or whether she was also crying. He didn’t think she would shoot him, but he wasn’t sure of that, either. The gun was trembling in her fist.

“Warren...” she said, “please.”

“Toots...”

“Please, Warren...”

“Toots...”

“Please.”

He sighed heavily.

He thumbed open the compartment. Reached in. Took out the package wrapped in yellow oilskin. Slammed the compartment shut. She realized what he was about to do even as he started doing it. She reached for him as he turned, reached for the package in his hands, was still reaching for it as it left his hands, reaching across him to rescue it, salvage it, snatch it from the rain and the night as he hurled it over the side of the boat into the sea.

Her shoulders slumped. She stared disconsolately into the rain and suddenly began crying. He rose and put his arm around her. Still holding the wheel with his free hand, he pulled her gently close to him.

“Toots,” he said, “let’s go home now, okay?”

She could not stop sobbing.

“Toots? Can we go home now?” he said.

Deep wracking sobs that broke his heart.

“Okay, Toots? Can we please go home?”

She nodded weakly.

“Toots? Okay?”

She nodded again.

He held her close in the rain.