Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear

9

The photographer’s name was Edison Alva Farley, Jr., and he told Guthrie at once that he had been named after Thomas Alva Edison, the man who’d invented — among other things — the incandescent lightbulb and the motion picture camera.

Farley’s great-grandfather — John Winston Farley — was living in West Orange, New Jersey, when the great man moved his laboratory there in 1887. The two men became fast friends, and John Winston’s son Arthur — who was twelve at the time, but who would later become Farley’s grandfather — had idolized the inventor. At the turn of the century, when Arthur was twenty-five, his young wife Sarah gave birth to a baby boy whom they promptly named Edison Alva, avoiding the more obvious Thomas Alva Edison, which when attached to the family name would have become Thomas Alva Edison Farley, a somewhat cumbersome handle. The first Edison Alva Farley later grew up to be the father of the current Edison Alva Farley, Jr.

“Such are the wonders of naming babies in America,” Farley told Guthrie, “though everybody calls me Junior now.”

Guthrie, no stranger to the transmogrification of given names, not to mention surnames, took the photographer’s extended hand, and said, “Everybody calls me Guthrie now,” which was true.

“So what can I do for you?” Farley asked. “A passport photo? A portrait photo to send to your fiancée in Seoul?” and here he winked. Guthrie winked back, though he didn’t get the joke.

“What I need, actually,” Guthrie said, “is some information about a video you made back in March sometime.”

“Was this a wedding?” Farley asked. “A graduation?”

“No. This was a private session with a woman. Just her and the video camera.”

Farley looked at him.

“Would you remember making a video such as that?” Guthrie asked.

Guthrie already knew that last March Farley had shot a video of Lainie Commins, aka Lori Doone, in a half hour interlude that could have been construed as compromising, not to mention dirty. He gave Farley a little time to think things over. It was always best to get the percolator boiling before you started pouring the coffee.

There was, in fact, a percolator bubbling away on the little hot plate in one corner of Farley’s studio, though the photographer had not yet offered Guthrie a cup. The studio was in what was called a “cluster unit” on Wedley and Third, close to the Twin Forks Shopping Mall in “downtown” Calusa, such as it was. The mall had been a disaster. There was talk of turning it into a huge multilevel parking lot that would service the entire “downtown” area, though everyone in Calusa knew there was, in reality, no true “downtown” now that all the shopping had moved further south on the Trail into far more successful malls than Twin Forks.

The studio was somewhat small, as was true of most spaces in these beautifully but sparingly designed cluster buildings that had become the vogue over the past few years. One entire wall was composed of floor-to-ceiling windows that slid open onto an interior courtyard spilling good northern light. Another wall was covered with standing bookshelves that held an array of cameras, boxed film, and a stereo system complete with a tape deck, tuner, CD player, turntables for both 78 and 45 rpms, and a pair of giant speakers. Guthrie had never been in a photographer’s studio that didn’t have its share of very expensive stereo equipment. Many junkie burglars broke into photography studios not to steal the cameras, which were often etched for identification, but to steal the audio equipment, which was easier to fence. Along a third wall a battery of lights was set up to illuminate a seamless backdrop against which a stool was positioned.

“Does the name Lori Doone ring a familiar note?” Guthrie asked.

“Mr. Lamb, I do hundreds of videos,” Farley said impatiently. “I really can’t remember the names of all my subjects.”

Sounds like a ruling monarch, Guthrie thought, but did not say.

“During the Gulf War,” Farley went on, “I must have shot a hundred videos. In January of ′91, when things really heated up over there, I couldn’t keep count. I don’t know how they played them, they must’ve had VCRs there in the desert, to show them on, don’t you think? Otherwise why would all these women be coming to a professional photographer to have videos made? I had girls in here who wanted to talk sexy to their boyfriends on camera, wives who wanted to look glamorous for their men far far away, even mothers who wanted to send something more personal than a letter. I had all kinds coming to me.

“This wasn’t the Gulf War,” Guthrie said.

“I know. I’m only saying.”

“And Lori Doone didn’t come to you,” Guthrie said.

“She didn’t? Then why...?”

“You went to her.”

Farley looked at him again. Long and hard this time.

“Are you a policeman?” he asked, sounding suddenly cautious.

“No, I am not,” Guthrie said, and took out his wallet to show his private investigator’s ID card. “I’m working this privately,” he said, and winked as Farley had when he’d mentioned the future bride in Korea. “Anything we say is privileged and confidential.”

“Mm,” Farley said, not winking back, and managing to convey in that single mutter an iciness as vast as a Norwegian fjord.

“Perhaps I can refresh your memory,” Guthrie said.

“I wish you would.”

“Lori Doone was modeling lingerie at a place called Silken Secrets on the South Trail?”

Ending his sentence in a question mark. The prod.

“Don’t know it,” Farley said.

“Last March?”

“Last March or anytime.”

“You came in one night...”

“I did not.”

“...and asked her if she’d care to pose in her lingerie for a video you were making? You said you’d pay her...”

“People pay me for making videos, not the other way around.”

“Pay her a thousand dollars,” Guthrie went on, undaunted, “if she’d...”

“Ridiculous.”

“...masturbate for the camera for a half hour.”

“You have the wrong...”

“While you taped her.”

“I’m sorry, your information is wrong.”

“There are three other girls on the tape, Mr. Farley.”

“I don’t know anything about such a tape.”

“I have their names. They all work for Buttercup Enterprises. I can track them down.”

Farley said nothing for several moments. At last, he said, “What are you looking for, Mr. Lamb?”

“I told you. Information.”

“Gee, and here I thought it might be money.”

“Wrong.”

“What kind of information?”

“How many copies of that tape did you make? How many did you sell? And have you still got the master?”

“None of that is any of your business.”

“Right, it isn’t. Miss Doone says one of the girls on that tape is only sixteen years old.”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Oh, you remember the tape now?”

“How much are you looking for, Mr. Lamb?”

“Say that one more time, and I’ll find it insulting.”

Farley looked at him.

Guthrie nodded encouragingly.

Farley kept looking at him.

At last, he sighed.

Guthrie waited.

“I made and sold fifty copies,” he said at last.

“For how much a copy?”

“Twenty bucks. Which was very reasonable for an hour-long video.”

“I feel certain.”

“Of professional quality.”

“Who’s complaining?”

“I am. I expected to sell five hundred.”

“You made only fifty copies, but you expected...”

“I made copies as the orders came in. Stupid I may be, but dumb I’m not. I had a four-thousand-dollar initial investment, a thousand to each of the girls who posed. Plus the cost of the raw stock. And my time. And the black vinyl cases. I printed the photo insert for the cover myself. Even so, you add all that up, I was maybe in for five thousand bucks. I figured if I could sell five hundred copies of the tape, that would’ve been a hundred-percent return. Espresso joints make ten times that.”

“Who’d you sell the tapes to?”

“Who knows? I took ads in all the girlie mags. That’s right, I forgot the cost of the goddamn ads. I was probably in for six, seven thousand. Man.”

“Sell any of these copies to locals?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, did you or didn’t you?”

“I’d have to look at my files. I’m pretty sure most of the responses came from states where there’s more livestock than people. You’d be surprised what evil lurks in the heartland.”

“How’d you like to cut your losses?” Guthrie asked.

“How so?”

“Sell me the master at cost.”

“Nossir.”

“How much then?”

“Seven grand.”

“Why do I keep thinking of that sixteen-year-old?”

“Nobody on that tape is sixteen.”

“Try a girl named Candi Lane.”

“Seven sounds reasonable.”

“Five sounds even more reasonable.”

“Make it six.”

“Done.”

“Cash.”

“Forget it.”

“Is she really only sixteen?” Farley asked.

“I didn’t know how high I could go,” Guthrie told me, “and I didn’t want to lose it by having to check with you first.”

I was wondering what he’d have done if it had been his own money.

“That’s fine,” I said. “I told you to get the master, and you got the master.”

I still hadn’t heard that there were fifty copies out there.

I heard that now.

“Yeah,” Guthrie said, and shrugged.

Six thousand dollars, I was thinking. With fifty copies still out there alive and kicking.

“Twenty bucks a throw, he got for them,” Guthrie said.

“Should have met us first,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Could’ve sold us the whole batch, plus the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“I thought six was a bargain,” Guthrie said, somewhat petulantly. “This tape ever showed up in court, Miss Commins would’ve sizzled.”

“What if one of the copies shows up in court?”

“That isn’t likely.”

“It’s possible.”

“Anything’s possible. Genghis Khan could show up in court. But it isn’t likely. Especially since only one of the tapes is in Calusa.”

“What are you saying.”

“I’m saying only one of the copies is here in Calusa.”

“How do you know that?”

“I got a list from Farley.”

“A list of what?”

“The people who ordered the tape from him. Guys from all over the country. Even some women. Only one of the customers was from Calusa.”

“May I see the list?”

“Certainly,” Guthrie said, and took several stapled and folded sheets of paper from his inside jacket pocket. “I highlighted the one we’re interested in.”

I looked down the first page of typewritten names and addresses. Some twenty or so. None of them highlighted.

“It’s on the third page,” Guthrie said.

I flipped to the third page.

“Near the top,” he said.

The name was highlighted in yellow.

“Some Spanish guy,” Guthrie said.

Robert Ernesto Diaz.

Evensong II was one of the older low-rise condominiums on Sabal Key, built some twenty years ago when restrictions were still in force and before builders began reaching for the sky. Clustered around a man-made cove and canals that afforded entrance to the Intercoastal, the shingled two-story buildings in their wooded setting looked cloistered and serene, an image reinforced by the boats bobbing beside the canal docks and in the cove. A breeze was blowing in off the water. A white heron delicately picked its way along the border of the walk leading to unit 21. It took sudden startled flight as I approached. I had called ahead. Bobby Diaz was expecting me.

He told me at once that he had an early dinner date and he hoped we could make this fast. His urgency gained credibility by the fact that one side of his face was covered with lather, and he was wearing only a towel. He showed me into the living room, told me to make myself a drink if I cared for one, and then said he wouldn’t be long.

His apartment overlooked the condo swimming pool. Young girls in thong bikinis lay on poolside lounges or splashed in the water. An old man wearing red boxer trunks sat on the edge of the pool, his legs dangling in the water, watching the girls. I watched them, too. Diaz was back in ten minutes, buttoning a cream-colored sports shirt, tucking it into trousers the color of bran. He had trimmed his black mustache and neatly shaved the rest of his face. His long black hair, still wet from the shower, was combed straight back from his forehead. His dark eyes looked suspicious, but the wary look fled before his welcoming smile.

“No drink?” he said. “Can I make you one?”

“Well, this won’t take a minute,” I said. “I know you’re in a hurry.”

“Always time for a drink,” he said.

“Are you having one?”

“Sure. What’ll it be?”

“Little Scotch on the rocks would be fine,” I said.

I would have preferred a Beefeater martini with a couple of olives, but Diaz had a dinner date and I had questions to ask. He poured Johnnie Black over a handful of ice cubes, handed the glass to me, and then mixed himself a gin and tonic.

“Cheers,” he said.

“Cheers.”

We drank. Outside at the pool, one of the girls trilled a laugh that sounded like a kingfisher running a river. Diaz sat opposite me on a blue sofa against a white wall. The condo was furnished sparingly in severe modern upholstered in varying tones of blue and green. Throw pillows and paintings echoed splashes of complementary colors. Even the wedge of lime floating in his drink seemed part of the overall design.

“What’s this all about?” he asked.

“Lainie,” I said.

“So you told me on the phone. But what now?”

“A video,” I said, and watched him.

Nothing showed on his face.

“Something titled Idle Hands.

Still no sign of recognition.

I opened my briefcase. I removed from it a glossy black-and-white photograph I’d had made by a commercial photographer three blocks from my office. It showed the cover art for the video. Lainie’s hands caressing the crotch of the white panties, the Victorian ring, the title.

“Recognize this?” I asked, and handed the photograph to him.

He took it in his right hand.

Studied it.

“Forgive the photo,” I said, “but at some point I may have to introduce the actual video in evidence.”

Which was bullshit.

“Am I supposed to know something about this?” Diaz asked, looking genuinely puzzled.

“You’re supposed to have ordered it from a company named Video Trends.”

“Ordered what?”

“The video.”

“I ordered a video?”

“Titled Idle Hands and starring four women performing respectively as Lori Doone, Candi Lane, Vicki Held, and Dierdre Starr.”

“I thought you said this was about Lainie.”

“It is. She used the name Lori Doone. It’s a porn flick, Mr. Diaz.”

“A porn flick, I see.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re saying I ordered this video from...”

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

“Well, I never heard of this video.”

“The man who did the photography...”

“I’m sorry, but I never heard of it. That’s that.”

“Then how’d your name get on the list of people who’d ordered the video from him?”

“I have no idea. Anyway, I didn’t know it was against the law to buy a pornographic video.”

“It isn’t.”

“Then what the hell... excuse me, Mr. Hope, but I still don’t know what you’re doing here.”

“If we can get past...”

“There’s nothing to get past. You’ve got the wrong person. I didn’t order a video from any magazine, and I don’t know how...”

“Who mentioned a magazine?”

“What?”

“I didn’t say anything about a magazine.”

“Well, I... I just assumed that someone advertising a pornographic video would...”

“I didn’t say anything about anyone advertising it, either.”

We looked at each other.

“Okay?” I said. “Can we at least get past this part of it?”

“Depends on which part we go to next.”

“Did you at any time own a video titled Idle Hands?”

“I did.”

“Okay.”

“So?”

“Did you ever watch it?”

“I did.”

“Did you recognize Lainie Commins as one of the performers in that video?”

“I did.”

“When was this?”

“When I first received it. A week or so ago.”

“Would you remember the exact date?”

“Well, yes. But only because it got here on my birthday.”

“Nice present.”

“Better than a tie.”

“When was that, Mr. Diaz? Your birthday?”

“The eleventh.”

“Of September?”

“Yes. September eleventh.”

“The day before Brett Toland got killed.”

“Well... yes. I suppose it was. I recognized the ring the minute I looked at the cover. Lainie wore it all the time. I thought, Hey, what’s this?”

“So you knew it was Lainie even before...”

“Well, let’s say I suspected it. Then when I watched it, of course...”

“When was that?”

“That night.”

“The night of the eleventh.”

“Yes. UPS delivered it that afternoon, it was waiting in the manager’s office when I got home from work.”

“So you watched it that night.”

“Yes.”

“The eleventh of September...”

“I’m sure it was.”

“And recognized Lainie Commins that same night.”

“Yes.”

“What did you do then?”

“I went to sleep.”

“What I mean, Mr. Diaz, is when did you tell Brett Toland you’d seen Lainie Commins performing in a porn flick?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you know what I mean.”

“I never told Brett about it.”

“Then how’d the tape get in his possession?”

“I have no idea.”

“You didn’t give it to him?”

“Never even mentioned it to him.”

“Do you still have the tape?”

“I’m sure I do.”

“May I see it?”

“I’m not sure I know where it is.”

“Could you look for it?”

“I’d be happy to. But as I told you...”

“I know. An early dinner date.”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Diaz,” I said, rising and putting my empty glass down on the coffee table, “here’s what I think. I think you called Brett Toland the minute you spotted Lainie on that tape...

“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t.”

“I think you told him he had nothing to worry about anymore because...”

“He had nothing to worry about, anyway. The bear was ours. Lainie stole it.”

“How’d that happen to come to mind just now, Mr. Diaz?”

“What?”

“How’d you happen to make that connection?”

“Because the only thing Brett had to worry about was Lainie’s false claim.”

“So now he didn’t have to worry about that anymore, did he? Because you had a tape of Lainie Commins masturbating.”

“Please.”

“Well, isn’t that what she was doing, Mr. Diaz?”

“Well, sure, but...”

“What’s the matter? Does the word bother you?”

“No, but...”

“Does the act bother you?”

“No, but...”

“You’re the one who ordered that tape, you know?”

“I realize that. But what an adult does privately...”

“Ah.”

“...isn’t always a suitable matter for discussion.”

“Do you think Mr. and Mrs. America would buy a teddy bear from someone who’d masturbated in a porn flick?”

“I don’t know what Mr. and Mrs. America would buy.”

“Well, you design toys for Mr. and Mrs. America, don’t you?”

“I design toys for children.”

“The children of Mr. and Mrs. America.”

“I’m telling you I never once discussed this with Brett Toland.”

“Never told him you’d watched Lainie Commins masturbating on your birthday?”

“My birthday was a coincidence.”

“Never called and said, ‘Hey, Brett, guess what’?”

“Never.”

“Never gave him that tape.”

“Never.”

“Never told him he now had a bargaining tool...”

“Never! He didn’t need a bargaining tool. Lainie stole my design for that bear, the bear was ours!”

“What?”

“I said...”

“No, no, just a minute, Mr. Diaz. The last time we...”

“Look, this is ridiculous, Mr. Hope. Truly. I never gave that tape to Brett, I never discussed...”

“Forget the tape! The last time we spoke, you told me Lainie delivered working drawings of the bear...”

“No, you must have misunder—”

“I didn’t misunderstand you, and I didn’t misunderstand Brett, and I didn’t misunderstand Etta, either. All of you said the idea for the bear was Brett’s and that he’d assigned its design to Lainie while she was still working for Toyland. Isn’t that what all of you said? You were there at the meeting, Mr. Diaz, isn’t that what you told me? You were there when Brett gave Lainie his brilliant idea and asked her to design the cross-eyed bear and its corrective eyeglasses. You were there, Mr. Diaz. You told me you were there!”

“Yes, I was.”

“Okay. And you also told me she delivered working drawings of the bear by the end of last September...”

“That’s where you’ve got it wrong.”

“Oh? What have I got wrong?”

“I told you I saw some drawings...”

“Yes?”

“...but I didn’t know if they were Lainie’s.”

“Then whose drawings...?”

“Sketches, actually.”

“Sketches?”

“Yes. Of a bear with glasses.”

“Well, who did you think made these drawings, these sketches, whatever the hell they were?”

“I thought maybe Brett did.”

“I see, you thought maybe Brett did. So the bear was Brett’s idea, and these sketches you saw were maybe Brett’s, so Lainie’s out of the picture altogether, right? She never did design the bear while she was working for Toyland, is that what you’re saying now?”

“I’m saying...”

“No, no, Mr. Diaz, you’re saying now what you didn’t say earlier. You told me you saw working drawings before you...”

“I told you I didn’t know if they were working drawings.”

“Then what the hell were they?”

“Sketches.”

“When did you see working drawings?”

“I told you I didn’t remember when I saw working drawings.”

“Okay, Mr. Diaz, flat out. A few minutes ago you said Lainie stole your design for that bear.” I looked him dead in the eye.”What design?”

“I said she stole our bear. The bear she designed for Toyland.”

“No, that’s not what you said.”

“Are you telling me what I said?”

“Yes.”

“You’re wrong. Mr. Hope, I have a date at the Plum Garden at six-thirty. It will take me half an hour to get there, and it’s now five to six. If you’ll excuse me...”

“Sure,” I said, and gingerly picked up the photograph and dropped it into my briefcase.

Dr. Abner Gaines was sitting on a high stool drawn up to a counter upon which were microscopes, test tubes, pipettes, Bunsen burners and a dozen other scientific measuring tools and instruments I could not have named if you pulled me apart on a rack or burned me at the stake. As sole proprietor and principal analyst at Forensics Plus, the private lab with which I had worked on several other cases, Ab was a scientist with exacting standards and meticulous work habits, a faultless professionalism belied by his uncombed hair, his nicotine-stained fingers, his rumpled trousers and unshined shoes, and an allegedly white lab smock stained with the residue of God knew how many previous tests here at this very same counter.

He was expecting me, and so he greeted me with his customary gruffness and the impatient air of a very busy professor who had very little time to spend with inquisitive students. Actually, he was a very busy professor at the University of South Florida.

I tented a handkerchief over my hand, and showed him the black-and-white glossy of the dancing fingers on the white silken crotch of the Victorian-ringed lady on the Idle Hands cassette box. I showed him the actual black vinyl cassette box, with the original color photograph on its front cover, and then I opened the case to reveal the cassette within.

“There should be one set of fingerprints on the photograph,” I told him. “I’m looking for a match with anything on the cassette or its case.”

“When?” Ab asked me.

“Yesterday,” I said.

“Tomorrow,” he said.

I went back to the boat again that night.

The yellow CRIME SCENE tapes were down, there was nothing to prevent me from going up the gangway and onto the boat itself, but I simply stood there on the dock, looking at her. If I’d ever known the lines that follow “I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,” I’ve forgotten them since the coma. I’ve forgotten a lot of things since the coma. I was dressed in the colors of the night. Black denims and black loafers and a black T-shirt and a black windbreaker. A mild breeze blew in off the water, riffling my hair. Sniffing the salt air that spanked in off the Gulf, I think I realized something of what John Masefield must have felt when he wrote his poem. Toy Boat’s outline was sharp against a moonlit, midnight sky. A man had been killed aboard this boat. And my client had been with him on the night he’d died.

I wished she hadn’t posed for a pornographic tape.

But she had.

I wished Brett Toland hadn’t tried to use that tape in a blatant blackmail attempt.

But according to my client, he had.

Two bullets in the head.

But she kept insisting she wasn’t the one who’d killed him.

I kept staring at the boat, perhaps willing it to yield its secrets. As I listened to the high clinking sound of halyards striking metal masts, the lines came to me. “And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by.” Progress.

“Help you, sir?”

The voice startled me. I wheeled away from the dock, my fists clenched, the hair at the back of my neck bristling. I was expecting my cowboys, the twin horrors that come in the dead of night and strike terror to the heart, my nightmare apparitions. But I was looking instead at a rotund little man wearing gray polyester slacks and a blue T-shirt bearing a logo, in white, that read SILVER CREEK YACHT CLUB. He was carrying a flashlight in his left hand, its beam casting a small circle at his feet. In the moonlight, I could make out a round face and a white mustache. Blue cap with a long bill. Nothing menacing about the face. Nothing even mildly challenging.

“I’m the defense attorney on the Toland murder case,” I said. “I just wanted to see the boat again.”

“We get lots of sightseers,” he said.

“Matthew Hope,” I said, and extended my hand.

“Henry Karp,” he said.

We shook hands.

A cloud scudded past the moon, darkening the dockside area. It passed in an instant. We stood looking out over the water. A Florida night. Silver wavelets dancing in the moonlight. Boat sounds all around us. Insects in the tall grass. September sounds.

“Almost didn’t see you,” Karp said. “The black.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Quiet night, ain’t it?”

“Very.”

“Almost always like this. I don’t mind it. Quiet like now, you can hear the sounds. I like nighttime sounds.”

“So do I.”

“You think she done it?”

“No,” I said.

“Me, neither,” he said. “Did they ever find The Shadow?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The man I told them about.”

“What man?”

“The one I saw going aboard the boat here. I told them all about it.”

“Told who?”

“The detectives from the State Attorney’s Office.”

There is nothing that compels a state attorney to follow a lead that will not support his version of events and take his case where he does not wish it to go. On the other hand, it is his constitutional obligation to disclose any evidence that might support the innocence of the accused. If what Henry Karp was telling me was true, I could very well argue during trial that the police had been sitting on exculpatory evidence that was not turned over to me during disclosure and that this, Your Honor, warranted immediate dismissal of the case. The judge would undoubtedly give a variation of the “Now, now, counselor” speech, advising me that he would admonish the prosecutor for his oversight, and if I needed further time to find a witness, he would give me, oh, “What would you say is fair, Mr. Hope? Two weeks? Three weeks? Would that be a sufficient amount of time?”

I would not, of course, argue for dismissal unless I had already attempted, and failed, to find the man Henry Karp was now describing to me, in which case an additional two or three weeks would be redundant. I intended to put Guthrie Lamb on this immediately, or at least as soon as Karp finished his description, which was turning out to be sketchy at best.

What he saw was a man who looked like the pulp magazine hero called The Shadow, wearing black trousers and a black cape and a black slouch hat pulled down over his eyes, moving out of the shadows and onto the Toland boat.

“That’s why I call him The Shadow,” Karp said. “Cause he looked like The Shadow and he came out of the shadows.”

“From where?”

“The parking lot. Moved across the lot and went straight to the boat. Cape flying behind him. Hat pulled low.”

“Did you see his face?”

“No, I was down the other end of the lot. He went up the gangway, was out of sight by the time I came abreast of the boat.”

“What time was this?”

“Around a quarter past eleven. I’m supposed to relieve at eleven-thirty, but I got there a little early that night.”

A quarter past eleven. Twenty-five minutes before the Bannermans heard shots coming from the Toland boat.

“Before you spotted him, did you happen to see a car pulling into the parking lot?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Did you hear a car door opening and closing?”

“No.”

“You just saw this man...”

“The Shadow.”

“On foot, coming across the parking lot...”

“And going on the boat, yes.”

“Did you see him leaving the boat at any time?”

“No, I didn’t. I move all over the grounds, you see. I don’t cover just the marina. I have regular rounds I make all around the club.”

“Were you still in the parking lot at eleven-forty?”

“No, I wasn’t. I was back behind the main clubhouse by then.”

“Did you hear any shots coming from the marina?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“And you say you told all this to some detectives from the State Attorney’s Office?”

“Yes, I did.”

“When was this? When they talked to you?”

“Day after the murder. I figured I was giving them a good lead, you know? Seeing a man go aboard the boat.”

“Did they think so?”

“They said they’d look into it.”

“Ever get back to you?”

“No.”

“You wouldn’t happen to remember their names, would you?”

“No, I’m sorry. But one of them had a knife scar on his right cheek.”

The lights were on in Lainie’s studio when I got there at ten minutes to one that morning. I had called ahead from the car phone, and I knew she was expecting me, and so I was surprised to find her in a robe and slippers. She told me she’d been getting ready for bed when I called, and apologized for looking so “casual.” We went into the main section of the house, where she turned on a living room lamp, offered me a drink, which I declined, and then poured herself a glass of white wine. I sat on a sofa upholstered in a nubby white fabric. She sat opposite me in a matching armchair. When she crossed her legs, the lacy hem of a short blue nightgown showed momentarily.

“Lainie,” I said, “when you left the parking lot at ten-thirty that night...”

“Or thereabouts,” she said.

“You saw a car parked just outside the entrance pillars, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t see anyone in the car.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“And you’re sure you didn’t see anyone walking around in the parking lot?”

“Positive. Well, just the people coming out of the restaurant.”

“Yes, but aside from them.”

“No one.”

“No one lurking in the shadows? Someone who might have been watching the boat? Waiting for you to leave?”

“I wish I could tell you I had.”

“Someone who looked like The Shadow?”

“Who’s The Shadow?”

“A magazine character. And radio. And a bad movie.”

“I never heard of him.”

“A man wearing a black cape. And a black slouch hat.”

“No. A black cape? No. I didn’t see anyone like that.”

“Lainie, there’s a gap of about an hour and a half between the time you left the boat and the time Etta Toland found the body. If we can place someone else on that boat after you left...”

“I understand the importance. But I didn’t see anyone.”

He had allowed her to use the bathroom again, and now they stood topside, the boat drifting on a mild chop, its running lights showing its position to nothing but a starlit night, not another vessel in sight for as far as the eye could see. They were silent for a very long time.

At last she said, “I’m sorry.”

He said nothing.

“I don’t know how it happened, Warr, I really don’t. I hate myself for letting it happen again.”

He still said nothing, grateful that she was at last admitting she was hooked again, but knowing this was only the beginning, and the hard part lay ahead. Back in St. Louis, Warren had seen too many of them lose the battle, over and over again. Relapse was the technical term for it. Again and again and again. And kicking the habit seemed so very simple at first because what the dealers told you was partially true, cocaine wasn’t addictive. Hey, man, this ain’t heroin, this ain’t morphine, this ain’t no downer like Seconal or Tuinal, this ain’t no tranq like Valium or Xanax, this ain’t even a Miller Lite, man, ain’t no way you gonna get hooked on this shit, man.

True.

Cocaine wasn’t physically addicting.

The lie was in the claim that there was no way this shit could harm you, man, nothing to fear, man, quit anytime you want, man, no pain, no strain. And even this was partially true because when you quit cocaine — when you tried to quit cocaine — you didn’t experience any of the physical symptoms that accompanied withdrawal from the opoids or the tranquilizers or even alcohol. There was no shaking, no sweating, no vomiting, no muscle twitching...

“Did you know...?” he started, and then shook his head and cut himself off.

“What?” she asked.

The night black and silent around them.

“Never mind.”

“Say,” she said.

“Did you know where the expression ‘kicking the habit’ comes from?”

“No. Where?”

“When you’re quitting the opoids, you lie there in your own sweat, and your legs start twitching involuntarily, like they’re kicking out. So it became kicking the habit.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah,” he said, and the night enveloped them again.

No muscle twitching when you quit — tried to quit cocaine — no gooseflesh either, no appearance of a plucked turkey, which is where the expression “cold turkey” came from, such a weird and wonderful vocabulary for the horrors of hell, did she know the origin of that one? He didn’t ask.

Thing the man selling poison in a vial forgot to mention was that cocaine was psychologically and emotionally addicting, concepts too lofty for anyone to comprehend, anyway, when what we are selling here is a substance that will make you feel like God.

Oh yes.

So when you quit cocaine — tried to quit cocaine — you were trying to forget that for the last little while, or the last longer while, you were God. No physical symptoms of withdrawal. Just madness.

He was here to see her through the early madness.

Keep her here on this fucking boat while her depression was keenest and the desire to kill herself was strongest. Nobody ever kicked cocaine on a boat. Nobody ever kicked it on the street, either. Later there would be choices for her to make. For now...

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

And he believed she was.