Three Blind Mice

1

You woke up every morning on sodden sheets, the air heavy with moisture, the bloodred line of the thermometer already standing at seventy-five degrees, and you knew the temperature would climb high into the nineties before the day was done. In August, the heat was relentless.

It rained every afternoon, whether for five minutes or an hour. Torrents of rain spilling from a swollen black sky. The asphalt steamed under the onslaught of the rain. Great clouds of steam rising. But the rain cooled nothing, and the heat persisted.

There was no relief at night either. Even with the sun gone, the humidity was there, a twin to the heat. In August, there wasn’t a breath of air to be had anywhere in Florida, day or night. You suffered.

The room smelled of blood.

Blood wasn’t supposed to smell, but the aroma was palpable. Or maybe it was only the stink of torn yellow flesh. Outside in the palmettos, the insects chattered. Full moon tonight, a person could clearly read the dial of a watch in the moonspill. Eleven-twenty. And ticking. Waiting for Ho Dao Bat to get home from The Pagoda. Waiting to bid him good night.

The other two were already dead to the world.

A joke, grant me my little joke.

So solly, sleep tight.

Ho Dao Bat was next.

Dead on a hot, moist night in the middle of August. So solly, plick.

The house was in a section of Calusa known as Little Asia, so-named because of the many Orientals who’d settled here over the past several years. In a city not particularly famous for its hospitality to nonwhites, any Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese who came here invariably drifted to this area between Tango and Langhorn, just west of the Tamiami Trail. At the turn of the century there’d been only a whorehouse and a saloon on these two and a half acres of land. Now there were more than three dozen tiny wooden houses strewn among the palmettos. Brimming with Orientals. Night like tonight, they were all outdoors, vainly hoping for a breeze to remind them of a mountain village halfway across the world.

So solly, no bleeze.

Only knife.

See plitty knife?

The blade of the knife glittered in the moonlight spilling through the open window. The two little men lay dead and bleeding on the floor, one on either side of the bed closest to the door. Three single beds in this ground-floor room, the stink of yellow everywhere, the stink of red, the stink of blood. A calendar on the wall, pretty Chinese girl on it, wearing a kimono and smiling shyly over a fan. The kimono was red, the color of luck, the color of blood, where was Ho Dao Bat? The job would not be done until Ho got his.

Another look at the watch.

Eleven-thirty.

Come on. Ho. Come meet the knife.

Somewhere outside, there was laughter. Drifting on the stillness of the night, floating in through the window and into the room where the two men lay unhearing on the floor. A voice singsonged something unintelligible on the night, and there was more laughter, men and women laughing, foreigners from another world enjoying the steamy Florida night, come meet the knife. Ho, come say hello to the knife.

Waiting.

Time.

The buzz of a fly discovering the blood on the corpses.

Ho would be here soon. Ho Dao Bat, the third little man in the triumvirate. The leader. A follower tonight, in that the other two had already led the way to perdition, the other two were now on the floor waiting sightlessly and mutely for Ho to join them. Come on. Ho, come join the party, see how the other two are enjoying the food?

Another little joke, you must forgive me.

More flies now.

Buzzing in through the open window where a moment earlier there had been the rush of laughter and the babble of voices, a squadron of flies buzzing in and seeking the runway, circling the faces with their bleeding sockets, their bleeding towers. Fly One to Tower, request permission to land. The room buzzed with flies greedily drinking, a veritable fly frenzy, try that on your Asian tongue, try this, Ho Dao Bat!

And thrust the knife at the air.

This!

Again.

There were sudden footsteps on the gravel path outside.

Someone was approaching the front door.

Detective Morris Bloom stood tall and wrinkled and grizzled in the early-morning sunlight streaming into the room. No time to shave this morning, not when the seven a.m. call from downtown had reported three dead men in a room that reeked of ritual murder. No time to search in his closet for a freshly dry-cleaned suit. Time only to throw on a clean shirt and the rumpled seersucker draped over the chair near the dresser, time only to quickly knot a tie and then telephone Rawles to pass on the address of the crime scene.

The two detectives stood side by side in the sunlight. Across the room, the Medical Examiner kept trying to shoo the flies away from the corpses. It was a thankless job. Rawles looked bandbox fresh. Tan tropical suit, pale lemon-colored shirt, striped brown and gold tie, dark brown loafers. He resembled a stylish cop on the defunct Miami Vice, but this was Calusa, on the opposite coast.

Rawles was bigger and heavier than Bloom. Some six feet four inches tall and weighing in at two forty, he was the kind of mountainous black man people down here crossed the street to avoid. Bloom, at six one and two twenty, with a broken nose and the oversized knuckles of a streetfighter, wasn’t the kind of person you’d care to meet in a dark alley, either. Together, they made a formidable pair, except that it was almost impossible for them to play good cop/bad cop since they both looked like bad cops. Well, perhaps there was a slight difference. In Bloom’s dark and somber eyes, there was always a look of ineffable sadness, an unfortunate failing for a police detective.

“Mighty pretty,” Rawles said.

He was not normally given to irony, but the bodies across the room demanded a certain dryness of humor. Either that, or you went outside to throw up. The only time he had thrown up recently was on a rough cruise to romantic Bermuda, which he’d taken with a girl who worked as a legal stenographer at the courthouse. Bloom, on the other hand, had been married for a good long time now and did not take too many cruises to romantic Bermuda. The last time he’d thrown up was Saturday night, when he’d eaten a bad fish at Marina Lou’s. This was now Tuesday morning, and he felt like throwing up again.

The three men across the room had had their throats slit.

And their eyes gouged out.

And their penises cut off and stuffed into their mouths.

Rawles had seen things like this in the jungles of Vietnam. The Cong had done things like this to the grunts in Vietnam. It was he who’d suggested that maybe these were intra-racial murders. This being an Asian community and all, and the way the bodies had been mutilated. Alex McReady, the sergeant who’d first responded to the radio call from the car patroling Charlie sector, was of the opinion that these were drug-related murders, probably Jamaican in origin. The Jamaican posses that had filtered into some parts of Florida were particularly vicious in their killing techniques. And it was a known fact that in their homelands, Asians smoked dope as a matter of course.

Bloom wondered about the validity of this. To him, this business did not seem drug-related, Jamaican or otherwise. Rawles may have had a point about it being linked to something in the community, but then again you did not have to be Asian to do unspeakable things to a fellow human being, dead or alive.

He walked over to where the M.E. was closing his satchel. Flies swarmed up around the M.E.’s head as he got to his feet. Both men shooed them away.

“For the record,” the M.E. said, “as if you didn’t know, all three had their jugulars severed. The eyes and the rest of it undoubtedly came later.”

“Skilled or what?”

“The surgery, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“A butcher. By the way, I found all but one of the eyes. They’re in ajar there on the windowsill. You might want to send them along with the bodies.”

Bloom wanted to throw up all over again.

“Take a look at this,” Rawles said, coming over.

He was holding a man’s leather billfold in his hand.

The telephone was ringing when Matthew Hope got out of the shower that Thursday morning. He wrapped a towel around his waist, said, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” and rushed dripping wet into the bedroom. He picked up the receiver just as the answering machine clicked in.

“Hello, you’ve reached 349-3777,” his voice said. “If you’ll…”

“Hang on,” he said, “I’m here.”

“… leave a message…”

“I’m here,” he said.

“… when you hear the beep…”

Damn machine, he thought.

“… I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you for calling.”

“I’m still here,” he said. “Please hang on.”

The machine beeped.

“Hello?” he said.

“Dad?”

He visualized her on the other end of the line. Long and lanky and bursting with adolescent energy, hair a brighter gold after a summer in the sun, eyes as blue as a Caribbean lagoon. His daughter, Joanna. Who wanted to be a brain surgeon and who practiced tying knots inside matchboxes. Joanna. Whom he loved to death.

“Hi, honey,” he said, beaming. “I was going to call you later today. How are…?”

“Promises, promises,” she said.

An impish grin on her mouth, no doubt, promises, promises. Fourteen years old and already sounding like a stand-up comic.

“I mean it,” he said. “I’ve got a ten o’clock meeting with a potential client, but I planned to…”

“Still chasing ambulances. Dad?”

The grin again, he was certain of that.

“I gather you’re enjoying your summer,” he said.

“I adore it up here,” she said. “But there are no boys, Dad.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Well, there are two of them. One’s a nerd and the other is twelve. I met a nice girl, though. Her name is Avery, which I think is sort of neat, and she’s on her high-school swimming team in New York. Did you know they had swimming teams in New York? I didn’t. She’s teaching me a lot of things I didn’t know, as for example how to swim in very choppy water. Do you know how cold the water is up here? Well, she’s in the ocean every day for at least an hour, and it doesn’t faze her at all. Waves chopping everywhere around her, she’s an actual shark, Dad, you should see her. Avery Curtis, remember that name, she’s going to win Olympic gold medals one day. Also, she’s a Libra, her birthday’s the fifteenth of October.”

“Birth date of great men,” Matthew said, but did not amplify.

“Mom says to tell you hello, she’s making pancakes.”

“Tell her hello back.”

“Would you like to talk to her?”

“Sure,” Matthew said, “why not?”

“Just a sec.”

Susan Hope, Matthew’s former wife. Dark, brooding eyes in an oval face, brown hair cut in a wedge, a full, pouting mouth that gave an impression of a sullen, spoiled, defiant beauty. To their mutual surprise and delight, he had begun dating her again some years after the divorce. But that was in another country, he thought now, and besides the wench is dead. The other country had been right here in old Calusa, Florida, but it had seemed like shining new terrain, a pristine landscape glistening with promise. And the wench wasn’t really dead, merely gone from his life again. For now, at any rate. Matthew was not the sort of man who took bets on the future. Not concerning Susan, anyway. Not after the tempestuous rekindling of their passion years after the divorce.

“Hello?” she said.

Susan Hope.

“Hi,” he said. “I hear you’re making pancakes.”

“Terrific, huh?” she said, and he visualized her pulling a face. Cooking had never been Susan’s favorite pastime.

“How’s the summer going?” he asked.

“No boys,” she said.

“Pity.”

“Mmm. Why don’t you come up for a weekend? The house is huge.”

“Too dangerous,” he said.

“Who says?”

“You.”

“True.”

“We’d fight in front of the child.”

“Probably.”

“For sure.”

“I sometimes miss you,” she said.

“Me, too.”

“Not often, but sometimes.”

“Me, too.”

“I think it’s sad we can’t get along for any reasonable amount of time.”

“Yes.”

“But I guess it’s better this way.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you think?”

“I do. What’s bothering you, Susan?”

“I don’t know. But we did have some good times together. And this doesn’t seem like a vacation house with just me and Joanna in it.”

“Well,” he said.

“So if you should find yourself up in old Cape Cod one of these days…”

“I don’t think I will.”

“You could get to see me making pancakes.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m wearing only high heels and an apron.”

“Sure,” he said.

But the words had their desired effect. He immediately conjured her in high white patent-leather pumps, a short white apron tied at the waist, the bib partially exposing her breasts, the tails of the sash hanging down over her naked buttocks. She also had a spatula in her hand.

“Put Joanna back on,” he said.

“Chicken,” she said, but he knew she was smiling.

He was smiling, too.

“Did you two get it all out of your systems again?” Joanna asked.

“None of your business.”

“I’ll never understand either of you.”

“Yes, you will,” Matthew promised. “When you’re sixty years old and we’re both dead.”

“Don’t even joke about it!” she said.

“Honey, I have to get dressed, I’ll call you this afternoon, okay?”

“No, Avery and I are going to this dumb social in the vain hope some new boys’ll show up. I’m beginning to think the twelve-year-old is kind of cute, can you believe it?”

“I’m beginning to think you’re kind of cute,” Matthew said.

“Sweet talker,” she said.

Grinning again, he guessed. Like her mother.

“Honey, goodbye,” he said. “I’ll call whenever.”

“Love you, Dad.”

“Love you, too,” he said, and hung up and looked at the dresser clock.

Frantically, he began dressing.

Matthew had never met a man who looked comfortable in jailhouse threads. Stephen Leeds did not look comfortable in them now. A well-built blond man, six feet four inches tall and weighing some two hundred pounds, he seemed straitjacketed in the undersized denim garments the city had provided. Bail had been denied because of the heinous nature of the crimes. He would be dressed this way for quite some time.

This was the sixteenth day of August, two days after Charlie car had responded to a call from a Chinese dishwasher who had stopped by at 1211 Tango to pick up his three friends so they could all drive to work together.

“Did you kill them?” Matthew asked.

“No,” Leeds said.

“At the trial, you threatened to kill them.”

“That was at the trial. That was right after the verdict was read. I was angry. People say things when they’re angry.”

“Dangerous thing to say. That you’d kill them.”

“I realize that now.”

“But now you say you didn’t. Kill them.”

“That’s right.”

“Any idea who might have killed them?”

“No.”

“You didn’t hire someone to kill them, did you?”

“No.”

“Or ask anyone — out of friendship, or debt, or for whatever possible reason — to kill them for you?”

“No. I had nothing to do with killing them.”

“You’re sure about that, are you?”

“Positive.”

“Tell me where you were on Monday night. The night of the murders.”

“At home. With my wife.”

“Anyone else there? Besides the two of you?”

“No. Why? Won’t her word be good enough?”

“She’s your wife,” Matthew said simply.

Studying the man. Trying to find innocence or guilt in those blue eyes of his. He would not represent him if he thought he was guilty. As simple as that. In this world, there were enough lawyers willing to represent murderers and thieves. Matthew Hope was not one of them. Nor would he ever be.

“You realize how this looks, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Your wallet is found at the scene of the crime…”

“I don’t know how it got there.”

“But it’s unmistakably yours, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Your driver’s license is in it…”

“Yes.”

“Your credit cards…”

“Yes.”

“Unmistakably yours. The State Attorney could make a case on that alone. Your wallet found on the floor in a room where three men accused of raping your wife…”

“I wasn’t anywhere near…”

“… and later acquitted…”

“But they did it.”

“Not according to the jury.”

“The jury was wrong. They raped her.”

“Whether they did or not is academic. Last Friday, all three of them were acquitted. And last Friday, you jumped to your feet and threatened to kill them, in the presence of hundreds of witnesses. And Monday night, they were, in fact, killed. And your wallet was found at the scene.”

“Yes.”

“So why should I defend you?”

“Because I’m innocent,” Leeds said.

Eyes as clear as still water. Sitting on the edge of his narrow cot, looking up into Matthew’s face. Matthew standing opposite him, against the white wall of the cell covered with graffiti left by the army of prisoners who’d been here before Leeds. Innocent or guilty? Decide. Because once you agreed to take it on, you were committed to it, you owed.

“Any idea how your wallet got in that room?”

“No.”

“Had you missed your wallet at any time Monday?”

“No.”

“When’s the last time you saw it?”

“I don’t remember.”

“When’s the last time you used money that day? Or a credit card?”

“I guess… while I was renting the video.”

“When was that?”

“On my way home to the farm. I’m a farmer.”

An understatement. Leeds had inherited three thousand acres of rich farmland on Timucuan Point Road from his father, Osgood, who’d died six years ago. He was the grandson of Roger Leeds, who — as one of the first settlers here in southwest Florida — had bought up hundreds of thousands of acres when land was still going for peanuts. The family still owned trailer parks in Tampa and choice sections of real estate in downtown Calusa.

“I was visiting my broker,” Leeds said. “He has an office on Lime.”

“Small world,” Matthew said, and smiled. “So do I.”

“I go there every day.”

“Yes, so do I.”

“For an hour or so,” Leeds added.

Explaining the meaning of the word rich.

Matthew got back to why he was here.

“What time did you see your broker on Monday?” he asked.

“Around three. Jessie asked me to pick up a movie on the way home…”

Jessica Leeds. Who had called Matthew late yesterday, after the grand jury had brought in a true bill and the judge had denied bail. Telling him she’d heard he was the best criminal lawyer in Calusa — a premise Benny Weiss may have hotly contested — and asking if he would defend her husband. Which was why he was here this morning.

“So I stopped by at the video store…”

“Which one?”

“Video Town? Video World? They all sound the same to me. It’s on the Trail, near Lloyd. Just before the cutoff to the Whisper Key Bridge.”

“Which video did you rent?”

“Casablanca. Jessie loves those old movies. We watched it together that night. After dinner.”

“Did you leave the house at any time that night?”

“No.”

“What time did you go to bed that night?”

“Around eight-thirty.”

“Isn’t that early?”

“We got into bed to watch the movie.”

“You didn’t sleep in your clothes, did you?”

“No. My clothes? Of course not. My clothes?”

“You undressed before you went to bed, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What’d you do with your wallet?”

“Well, I… I suppose I…”

Matthew watched him. Sudden uncertainty. A simple act someone performs every day of the week. Uncertain about it now because his life might depend upon what had happened to that wallet. In the state of Florida, the penalty for first-degree murder was death in the electric chair. Matthew waited.

“I normally put it on the dresser,” Leeds said. “With my keys and my change. I guess I did the same thing that night.”

“But you’re not sure.”

“Well, actually, I’m not. Because…”

Again, a slight hesitation. Then:

“I was out on the boat that afternoon, and I may have left it there.”

“The boat?”

“Yes, I own a thirty-nine-foot Med. I took it out for a spin before dinner that night.”

“And you think you may have left the wallet on the boat?”

“Possibly.”

“Have you done that before?”

“I sometimes stow it below. So it won’t accidentally fall in the water.”

“But have you ever left it on the boat before?”

“Only on one other occasion.”

“You forgot your wallet on the boat?”

“Yes.”

“And you think you may have done that Monday night?”

“Well, yes. And someone probably took it from the boat. Otherwise, how could it have…?”

“When did you discover it was missing?”

“Tuesday morning. When the police showed it to me. When they came to the house.”

“What time was that?”

“At about nine. They showed me the wallet and asked me if it was mine, and when I said it was they asked me to come downtown with them.”

“Which you did, of course.”

“Yes.”

“Without any resistance.”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Leeds, are you familiar with the area of Calusa known as Little Asia?”

“I am.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“When they were arrested.”

“Who?”

“The three men who raped Jessie.”

“Do you know where 1211 Tango Avenue is?”

“Yes.”

“Is that where you went when these men were arrested?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re familiar with the address.”

“Yes.”

“Familiar with the house.”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever been inside that house?”

“No. All I did was drive by. To see where they lived. To see where those animals lived.”

“You were not in that house on the night of the murders?”

“I was not.”

“Or at any time before the murders?”

“I was not.”

“How old are you, Mr. Leeds?”

“Forty-one.”

“Were you ever in the armed forces?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“During the Vietnam War.”

“Were you in combat?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever witness bodies mutilated the way the bodies of these three victims were mutilated?”

“They got what they deserved.”

“But did you ever…?”

“I resent your calling them victims! They raped my wife! Whoever killed them should get a medal!”

Blue eyes shooting laser beams, lips skinned back over even white teeth, fists clenched. Put him on the witness chair, have him say what he just said, and the next chair he’d be sitting in would be wired.

“Mr. Leeds, in combat, did you ever…?”

“Yes, I saw American soldiers in the same condition.”

“Eyes gouged out…”

“Yes.”

“Genitals…”

“Yes. Or the trigger finger. The gooks used to cut off trigger fingers, as a warning. And sometimes tongues. We’d find corpses with their tongues cut out.” He hesitated and then said, “We did the same thing to them. A guy in my company made a necklace out of gook ears. He used to wear the necklace into combat.”

“Did you ever do anything like that?”

“Never.”

“Are you sure?”

“I never did anything like that. It was bad enough without doing anything like that.”

There was a long silence.

In the corridor outside the cell, Matthew could hear two policemen talking. One of them laughed.

“Mr. Leeds,” he said.

Looking directly into his eyes again. Searching those eyes. Had the man killed his wife’s accused rapists? In order to correct what he’d perceived as a miscarriage of justice? Or had his wallet been planted at the scene of murders that had been committed for whatever other reason or reasons, by whichever other person or persons?

“Mr. Leeds, tell me again that you didn’t kill those three men.”

“I didn’t.”

“Say the whole thing.”

“I did not kill those three men.”

In Calusa, Florida, during the summer months, a person was lucky to get off with only two showers and two shirt changes a day. On particularly sticky days, three was the rule. One at home in the morning, another at the office after lunch, and a third at home again, at the end of the working day. In the shower that evening, Matthew wondered if he’d made the right decision.

The rain had started, it always came sometime during the afternoon, you could set your calendar by it, if not your watch. A torrential downpour, as always. Florida never did anything half-heartedly. When the wind blew, it blew at hurricane force. When the sun decided to shine, it cooked you to a crisp. And when the rains came, they came — in bucketsful.

Probably shouldn’t even be in the shower, he thought. Lightning bolt’ll come in through the window and sizzle me on the spot. Benny Weiss would secretly chuckle over the freak accident and then express deep public sorrow. State Attorney Skye Bannister would tell the press that Hope had been a worthy opponent, credit to the community, tremendous loss, a good lawyer and a good man. His former wife, Susan, would weep huge crocodile tears. The several women he’d known since the divorce would come to the funeral wearing black. They would toss tear-stained red roses onto his coffin. Alas, poor Matthew, I knew him well. Struck by lightning in his prime.

Alas, poor Matthew.

Especially if he’d made the wrong decision today.

He turned on the needle spray. Washed away the soap and the grime. Tried to wash away the lingering doubts as well. The man’s knowledge of the crime scene, his wallet in the room, his brutalizing experience in Vietnam, his rage over what had happened to his wife, his public expression of that rage in the form of a death threat directed at all three men — put all of that in Skye’s hands, and the state would one day have a big electric bill.

He turned off the shower.

Climbed out of the tub, reached for a towel, caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the sink, and shook his head in disapproval. He’d gained ten pounds on his recent trip to Italy. It showed, too. Six feet tall, you’d think a few extra pounds might have distributed themselves more evenly over all that length. But no, they’d gathered exclusively around his middle, that’s where they were, all ten of them. Why did men and women gain weight in different places? For men, it was always the middle. For women, it was the ass. A phenomenon of nature. His face looked the way it had before he’d made the trip, though, a narrow fox face with dark brown eyes that matched the hair now clinging wetly to his forehead. In a world of spectacularly handsome men, Matthew considered himself only so-so. Ma che posso fare? he thought, and grinned at his own image in the mirror.

When he’d returned to the office on Monday, he’d said, “Well, I’m back.”

His partner, Frank, had said, “Some of us didn’t even know you were gone.”

That was on Monday.

And yesterday, Jessica Leeds had called.

Welcome home, and once more unto the breach, dear…

There was the sound of screeching brakes on the street outside. And then a tremendous bang. Something hitting something. Metal against metal. He grabbed for the white terry robe hanging on the back of the door, pulled it on, and ran barefooted out of the bathroom and through the house and into the street. He had left his new Acura Legend at the curb. Instead of pulling it into the garage. Because he knew he’d be going out again tonight, and he didn’t want to go to all the trouble of…

Brand new.

$30,000 on the hoof.

He’d taken delivery on it two weeks ago, just before he’d left for Venice. A replacement for the Karmann Ghia he’d been driving for God knew how many years. Low and sleek and smoky blue, with leather seats, and a sun roof, and a computer that told you when your gas tank was almost empty. When you hit the pedal on that baby, you zoomed from zero to sixty in eight seconds flat, a rocket to the moon.

“Oh dear,” the woman said, getting out of the little red Volkswagen that had smashed into the left rear fender of the brand-new smoky-blue Acura that had cost Matthew thirty grand two weeks ago.

He came thundering down the walk from the front door to the curb, fuming, wanting to strangle her even if she was tall and leggy and blond and beautiful and blue-eyed and standing without an umbrella in the pouring rain. She looked now from the fender of the Acura to the grille of the VW, and then to the skid marks on the wet asphalt. The marks clearly defined the course her little car had taken before wreaking its havoc. She shook her head as if amazed by the wonder of it all. Red silk dress to match the car, red high-heeled shoes, rain spattering the roadway, rain pelting everywhere around her, long blond hair getting wetter and wetter and wetter, Matthew was glad he was wearing a terry robe.

“I’m awfully sorry,” she said.

“Sorry, my ass,” he said.

“I didn’t want to hit the cat,” she said.

“What cat?” he said.

And anyway, he thought, hit the damn cat! And was immediately sorry. A cat he had loved with all his heart had long ago been hit by a car — and killed. So no, he would not have preferred her hitting the cat instead of his brand-new low, sleek, smoky-blue automobile, but Jesus!

“He ran out into the road,” she said, still talking about the damn cat. “I hit the brake and… I’m sorry. Really. I am.”

Brand new, he was thinking.

Thirty thousand dollars.

“I’m an attorney,” she said, “I know what we have to…”

“So am I,” he said.

“Well, good, that should make it simple. Can I please see your driver’s license… or some… your insurance card… some identifi…”

“Are you okay?” he asked at once.

“Yes, I’m fine. Thank you. A little wet, but fine.”

“Would you like to come inside? We can exchange all the…”

“No, thank you, I’m due at a party.”

“I thought… out of the rain…”

“Well, I can’t get any wetter, can I?” she said.

She was, in fact, thoroughly wet. Dress soaked through to the skin. This was the scene where they’re in Africa, he thought, and the gorgeous starlet falls in a pool near a waterfall, and when she gets out of the water you can see her nipples through her wet clothes. Matthew could see her nipples through the wet red dress. He looked away.

“Why don’t we… uh… at least get in the car, okay? Out of the rain. Really. There’s no sense standing here in the rain. The papers’ll get all wet.”

“Yes, you’re right,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

He went around the VW to the door on the driver’s side of the Acura, and was starting to open the door when he realized…

“It’s locked,” he said. “My keys are in the house. My wallet, too.”

I normally put it on the dresser. With my keys and my change.

“Well, okay,” she said, and reached down to take off first one shoe and then the other. “These are totally ruined,” she said as she followed him to the house, walking barefooted through the puddles that had gathered on the walk, a shoe in each hand. “Brand new,” she said. “Two hundred dollars.”

Brand new, he thought.

And took another look at where the VW had its nose buried in the Acura’s fender. Shaking his head, he opened the door of the house and stepped aside to let her by.

“Come in,” he said. “Please.”

And realized by the sound of his voice that he hadn’t quite succeeded in quashing his anger.

She caught the tone.

“I really am sorry,” she said.

She looked like a drowned rat. Hair hanging straggly and limp on either side of her face, mascara running under her blue eyes, dress hanging on her like a sack. He felt a sudden wave of sympathy.

“It was an accident,” he said gently. “Accidents happen.”

“Oh shit!” she said.

He looked at her, startled.

“My purse is in the car. With my driver’s license in it. And my insurance stuff is in the glove compartment.”

“I’ll go get it,” he said.

“No, don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’m soaking wet as it is.”

“So am I.”

“Well, that’s true, but…”

“I’ll be right back,” he said, and went out into the rain again.

He shook his head as he came around the rear fender of the Acura where the VW was still snuggled up against it, brand new, he thought. On the passenger seat he found a beaded red handbag, and in the glove compartment he found a folder containing, among other papers, the car’s registration and insurance card. He came out into the rain again, the terry robe soaked through now, his hair plastered to his head, this was truly ridiculous.

She was standing just inside the door to the house when he came in. As if afraid of intruding further on his privacy. He placed a call to the police, reporting the accident, and then they exchanged driver’s licenses and insurance cards, which is when he learned that her name was Patricia Demming, and that she was thirty-six years old, and that she lived at 407 Ocean, which was on Fatback Key.

It had stopped raining by the time the police car arrived. One uniformed officer in it; in Calusa the police patrolled solo. They gave him all the details of the accident, and then they ascertained that Patricia Demming’s car was still drivable, and Matthew watched her as she backed its nose out of his fender and drove off up the street to her party.

Brand new, he thought again.