Three Blind Mice

11

His scale this morning had read a hundred and eighty-two pounds; he’d been hoping for a hundred and eighty. He’d swum another hundred laps before breakfast, and now, at twenty minutes to eight, he was in his tennis whites and ready to drive to the club, feeling somewhat more fit than he had last Saturday, when Kit Howell had taught his devastating left-handed lesson.

There was something immensely satisfying about getting up at the crack of dawn, awake with the sun and the birds, and breakfasting before there was any sound of life in the streets. The front lawn was sparkling with dew as he backed the rented car out of the garage. There went Mrs. Hedges across the street, walking in her robe to get the newspaper from the mailbox. A wave. Morning, Mrs. Hedges. Morning, Mr. Hope. Long pink robe, floppy pink slippers, he wondered what Patricia Demming looked like at a quarter to eight in the morning. If she looked terrific sopping wet in the rain or dripping sweat in a running suit, how bad could she look in the morning? Don’t you ever sleep? she’d asked him. But that was before Frank Bannion’s skull got crushed with something blunt.

There was a peaceful calm to the club’s parking lot. Matthew wondered if the early-morning players walking from their automobiles had read the headlines today. He wondered if they even knew who Frank Bannion was. The morning was sunny and bright after yesterday’s rain, not too terribly hot as yet, it was going to be a lovely day. Who wanted to think about dead investigators on a day like today? He wondered if Patricia Demming was thinking about her dead investigator. He wondered if she still thought a copycat murderer was on the loose while Stephen Leeds languished in jail.

He went into the men’s locker room to pee one last time, washed his hands afterward at the sink, looked at himself in the mirror, and thought. You can do it, Hope. You can beat Kit Howell. He nodded at his own image, dried his hands, picked up his racket, and strode confidently to the teaching court.

“The trouble with your game,” Kit was saying, “is that you don’t plan ahead. You have to plan at least two, three moves ahead. Otherwise, you’ll always be surprised by what happens.”

“Six-love was a big surprise, all right,” Matthew said.

They were sitting in the club’s coffee shop, a screened-in area adjacent to the swimming pool. This was Saturday morning, the pool was full of squealing kids. Most of the men hadn’t yet come in from their early-morning doubles games, the shop was full of women waiting to play. On Saturdays and Sundays, men were given preference for morning court time. Unless a woman could prove she was a working woman. Nine to five. Like Patricia Demming. Don’t you ever sleep?

Matthew, and at least a dozen other men he could name, had voted against the proposed rule, but the majority had prevailed. His former wife, Susan, nonetheless decided that Calusa Bath and Racquet was an overtly sexist club and switched her membership to the Sabal Key Club, even though it meant a fifteen-minute-longer drive from the house he once had shared with her. Her protest seemed mild; there were some women in Calusa who would tear out your throat if you so much as opened a door for them.

When Matthew was a little boy, his mother had taught him to open doors for women. Ladies, she’d called them. Another taboo, he guessed, the word ladies. She’d said it was good manners to open a door for a lady. She said gentlemen opened doors for ladies. Nowadays only sexist pigs opened doors for women. When was the second stage going to get here, Betty?

Everywhere around him and Kit, there was female conversation, bright and lively at this hour of the morning, punctuated with laughter. He realized with a start that half the young mothers sitting here, chatting and laughing over their coffee cups, could beat him one-to-one on a tennis court. Or was this a sexist observation, too? The hell with it, he thought; it’s too damn dangerous to live in these trigger-happy times.

“If you plan only for the moment,” Kit was saying, “you’ll…”

“Who says I plan at all?” Matthew said.

“Well, you’ve got to have some kind of plan,” Kit said, surprised.

“Not very often.”

“At least in that split second before you hit the ball.”

“Well, yes.”

“You’ve got some idea of where you’re trying to place it, haven’t you?”

“Yes. Not that it always goes there.”

“I understand that. But what I’m saying is you’ve got to think of the game as a logical succession of shots. If you hit the ball to a specific place, there should be only one possible shot I can make to return it, and you should know where that place has to be, and you should be waiting there for the ball. And because I’m where I am, then your plan should include where you’ve got to return it so I can’t get to it, do you follow me?”

“Yes. But I have enough trouble just getting the ball back. Without having to worry two shots ahead.”

“That’s exactly my point. You’re having trouble getting it back because I do have a plan. I hit the ball here, you have to return it here,” he said, using the tabletop as a court, moving the tip of his index finger back and forth across it. “You don’t have a choice. You either return the ball the only way it can be returned, or you’ll miss it entirely. So it comes back here,” he said, using his finger again, “and I’m waiting for it, so I hit it here, where you can’t possibly get to it. But let’s say you do manage to get all the way cross-court in time,” he said, moving his finger swiftly to the other side of the table, “and you reach the ball, you actually get your racket on it. The only place you can possibly hit it — because the ball is here on your backhand — is down the line. And I’m waiting for it because I know that’s your only possible shot. So I drill it to the other side of the court, and the point is mine.”

“You make it sound easy,” Matthew said.

“It is easy, if you have a plan,” Kit said. “It’s like chess, in a way. The best player is the one who can think the most moves ahead. Tennis is less predictable, of course, the moves aren’t fixed in tennis… well, maybe that’s the wrong comparison, chess. Tennis is more like a battle. You don’t just return fire haphazardly unless you suddenly find yourself in deep shit, excuse me. But if this is a planned maneuver, if for example you know where the enemy is out there, and you know approximately how many of them there are, then you can situate your platoon so that this specific fire forces this specific response,” again moving his finger across the table, “while you’re all the while moving your people to another position,” the finger moving again, “so they can lob in a mortar from the left, or rush the flank from the right, or whatever. It’s all a matter of calculating what choices, if any, the enemy has for his response, and then being ready for those choices so you can step in and cream him. A plan,” Kit said. “Simple.”

“Sure,” Matthew said.

“I mean it. Figure out a plan for next Saturday, okay? Work it out on paper, if you have to. Your shot, and where you think it’ll land on my side of the net, and what my possible responses might be, and where you’d have to be standing to be ready for my return, and where you’ll put the next shot to take advantage of my position on the court, and so on. Figure a plan for maybe five or six shots ahead, okay, and we’ll try it next week.”

“Okay,” Matthew said dubiously.

“It’ll work, wait and see,” Kit said, and smiled and looked at his watch. “I have to go,” he said. “Next Saturday at eight, okay?”

“See you,” Matthew said.

The call came at a little before ten that morning, while he was in the shower. He climbed out of the tub, wrapped a towel around his waist, went running into the study, and picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” he said.

“Matthew?”

“Yes?”

“Patricia Demming,” she said.

“Naturally,” he said. “I’m dripping wet.”

“Sorry, is this a bad time, have you seen the papers this morning?”

“Yes.”

“What’d you think?”

He hesitated. She was the enemy, and this morning Kit had taught him a few things about dealing effectively with the enemy, either on a tennis court or a battlefield. Moreover, when the lady who was trying to cook your client called at ten in the morning wanting to know what you’d thought about the murder of her investigator…

“What’d you think?” he asked.

Lob a mortar from the left, he thought. Then hit the ball to her backhand and when she returned it down the line, smash it cross-court to where she wasn’t.

“I’d like to talk to you,” she said, surprising him completely. “Can you meet me at my office in an hour or so?”

“All right.”

“Thanks, Matthew,” she said, and hung up.

Matthew wondered what her game plan was.

On the baseball field adjoining the renovated motel that now served as the State Attorney’s office complex, some kids were playing pickup ball. Their voices carried on the stillness of the Saturday morning air, floating out over the ballpark fence and drifting in over the motel courtyard. In the tick of an instant, the voices carried Matthew back to Chicago. The house the family had lived in, the school he’d gone to, the park he and his sister had played in as children, all appeared in his mind like browning snapshots in an old album. He had not spoken to his sister in more than a month now. He realized all at once how much he missed her. The voices from the ballpark soared up over the fence. Summer voices. Baseball voices. He sighed as if burdened and walked quickly toward Patricia’s unit.

It was still relatively cool for this time of day, but the air conditioning was on in her office. She was dressed casually: jeans, sandals, a white T-shirt, her long blond hair pulled back into a ponytail. This was her day off, the State Attorney’s offices were officially closed for the weekend. Except for the two of them, the place was empty. It felt strange being here without typewriters clacking and phones ringing, people running around with papers in blue legal binders.

“I’d have asked you to my house,” she said, “but I’m being painted.”

“407 Ocean,” he said. “Fatback Key.”

“Good memory,” she said.

“It’s a shorter ride here.”

“Whisper’s much closer, that’s true.”

“But Fatback’s much nicer.”

“Well, I’m not so sure.”

“Wilder, anyway.”

“Still a bit wilder, yes,” she admitted. “More Florida.”

A common expression down here. More Florida. Meaning as yet unspoiled. Florida as it used to be. People down here were always sighing for the Florida that used to be. Hoping to find it somewhere. But it wasn’t here anymore. Not even in the Everglades. Maybe no place in America was “here” anymore.

“I need your help,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“This isn’t a trick, Matthew.”

He waited.

“I’ve never been as confused about a case in my life,” she said.

He kept waiting.

“If I’ve already got the real killer in jail,” she said, “then he’s a very stupid man. But if the real killer is still out there, he’s very stupid, too.”

“He’s out there, I’m sure of that,” Matthew said.

“Then why is he still killing people? We’ve already charged someone, why doesn’t he just leave well enough alone?”

“Nobody says a killer has to be a nuclear physicist.”

“Granted. My point is…”

“I understand your point.”

“If he’s already home free…”

“He may not think so.”

“But why would he play against such odds?”

“Maybe he’s worried.”

“About what? A witness who didn’t even see the right license plate?”

“But maybe Trinh was close enough. Maybe the killer was worried about that.”

“This is all arguendo, you realize.”

“I realize.”

“Because I’m not admitting there is a killer out there.”

“Right, we’re just exploring the possibility.”

“And I’ll be getting to your man in a minute.”

“I figured.”

“But let’s say, arguendo, that we’ve made a mistake, okay? We’ve got the wrong man. Arguendo.”

“Arguendo.”

“And let’s say, I’ll even give you this, let’s say he was worried about Trinh having seen that license-plate number, and he went out to kill him. Witnesses are killed all the time, you know…”

“Yes.”

“… so it’s not an unlikely scenario. But if he thought we were in possession of the right number, why didn’t he just get the hell out of town before we pounced on him? Why kill Trinh? That doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“And why go after Bannion next? An investigator for the S.A.’s office? That doesn’t make sense, either. The man would have to be crazy.”

“Maybe he is.”

“So I can’t find any reasons out there, Matthew. It all seems too… suicidal. We’ve already got a man in jail for the crimes, why cast doubt on the case? Which brings me to Leeds.”

“Leeds is in jail, you just said so. He’s not out on the streets murder—”

“His wife isn’t in jail, Matthew. And his brother-in-law isn’t in jail, either. Who happens to have a record, did you know that?”

“Yes, I know it.”

“Nice family.”

“They’re not related by blood, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

“Cheap shot, forget it. What I am suggesting…”

“Don’t say it, Patricia.”

“Hear me out, we’re exploring.”

“All right, explore. Cautiously.”

“Let’s say Leeds is guilty of the crimes as charged. Let’s say, further…”

“Maybe we ought to quit right there.”

“We are not in a fucking courtroom, Matthew!”

He looked at her.

“Okay?” she said.

“Okay,” he said.

“Good. Let’s say Leeds realizes he hasn’t got a chance of beating the rap… no reflection on your ability…”

“Thanks.”

“… but he’s seen what we’ve got, and he’s read the writing on the wall, and he knows the next stop is the electric chair. Okay,” she said, and nodded, and began nibbling her lip. She was reaching for ideas, he realized, searching her mind, her brow furrowed, actually trying to dope this thing out. He suddenly trusted her. To a degree.

“Let’s say his wife is still furious about the bum verdict the jury brought in. By the way, Matthew, we tried our best on that one. She was raped, no question about it. And we indicted the right people for the crime. It was just her tough luck — and ours — to come up against a bleeding-heart jury.”

Matthew nodded. “Let me hear the rest,” he said.

“The rest is the brother-in-law. Weaver. Who’s done hard time and who knows a trick or two about hurting people. He’s never gone the distance, true, but that’s an easy step to take, isn’t it? If you’ve already tried to kill someone, then actually killing someone is a breeze.”

“Maybe.”

“Trust me on that.”

“Okay.”

“So Leeds has an angry wife and a violent brother-in-law. And if he can get them to…”

“You’re saying…”

“I’m saying he could have engineered those murders from his jail cell.”

“But he didn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“Have you asked him?”

“No.”

“Then you don’t know for sure.”

“He’s innocent of the first murders. Why would he…?”

“Because the state doesn’t believe he’s innocent, Matthew, the state has him behind bars, the state’s going to try him for three counts of murder!”

“The state’s wrong.”

“Yes, Matthew, the state’s wrong, I’m wrong, you’re the only one who’s right. But you’re not listening.”

“Oh, I’m listening, all right.”

“Isn’t it at least conceivable?”

“No, damn it!”

“Then convince me.”

“One,” Matthew said, “there’s no love lost between Leeds and his brother-in-law. The very notion of Weaver doing a favor for him is ridiculous. No less a favor like murdering two people.”

“How about the wife?”

“She weighs what? A hundred and twenty pounds, max? Can you imagine her and Bannion…?”

“Okay,” Patricia said.

“Which is the second thing. I guess you noticed that Bannion wasn’t killed with a knife.”

“Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Counselor.”

“If your theory’s going to hold…”

“Yes, yes, I see where you’re going. In fact, it’s a good point.”

“Thank you.”

“In fact… maybe more than just good.”

She was nibbling her Hp again. He had to remember this habit for when the case eventually came to trial, if it ever came to trial. Whenever she started nibbling her lip, she was searching for something. And when she found it…

“Bannion had to’ve surprised him,” she said.

Her eyes met Matthew’s.

“The killer,” she said.

Their eyes held. Blue locked into brown.

“Because otherwise…,” she said.

“He’d have used a knife,” Matthew said.

Charlie Stubbs was working on a boat engine when Warren got to the marina at a little before noon that day.

“Just about to take my lunch break,” he said. “You’da missed me again.”

The parts of the engine were scattered all about him on the concrete floor of the tin-roofed shed adjacent to the office. Rods, pistons, valves, roller tappets, rocker arms, camshaft, crank — Warren wondered how he’d ever put all those pieces together again. He himself had never been good at assembling jigsaw puzzles.

“Had to go to a funeral up in Brandentown yesterday,” Stubbs said. “Which is why I wasn’t here when you stopped by.”

“Your son told me,” Warren said.

“All that rain yesterday, perfect day for a funeral, wasn’t it?”

“If you’ve got to have one, I suppose you ought to have rain to go with it,” Warren said.

“Seems like more and more of my friends are having them all the time,” Stubbs said. “With or without rain. Seems like the current thing to do, have yourself a little funeral.”

He was wiping his grease-stained hands on what looked like a pair of torn lady’s bloomers. Not panties. Bloomers. Very large bloomers. Warren had never met Stubbs’s wife, but if the bloomers were any indication…

“Man who got buried yesterday moved down here to Florida ’cause he was afraid he’d catch pneumonia and die up there in Cleveland, easy to get a bronchial disease where the climate’s so harsh. Either that, or he’d slip on the ice and land on his spine, be an invalid for life, something like that. He was scared to death of all the terrible things can happen to you up north. Get mugged by a street gang, something like that. Get shot by accident in a dope war, something like that. It’s terrible, the things that can happen to you up north. But you know how he died down here?”

Warren shook his head.

“He drowned,” Stubbs said.

He tossed the soiled bloomers into a gasoline drum, said, “Guess this engine’ll keep for a while,” and walked Warren down toward the docks. “There’s Mr. Leeds’s boat right there,” he said. “Felicity. Slip number twelve. Ain’t been a soul on her since that night he took her out.”

“You’re still pretty sure it was him, huh?” Warren said.

“Well, no, I’m not at all sure anymore,” Stubbs said. “Not after Mr. Hope played that tape for me. Because it sure as hell wasn’t that voice I heard on the telephone. So I got to figuring maybe it wasn’t Mr. Leeds going out on the boat neither. Sure looked like him, though. I got to tell you, it’s puzzling.”

“Maybe this’ll help,” Warren said, and took a tiny tape cassette out of his pocket and held it up between his thumb and forefinger.

“Not another one,” Stubbs said.

“If it’s no trouble,” Warren said, and took a microcassette recorder from his other pocket. He was wearing a floppy sports jacket made out of handkerchief-weight Irish linen, guaranteed to wrinkle under even the best of conditions. The jacket was pink. His Miami Vice look. It had wide lapels and deep pockets. He had ordered it from a store in New York, and it had just arrived yesterday. He could not wait for Fiona to see it. The recorder was a Realistic Micro-27, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, capable of playing tapes recorded on his answering machine. He opened the load panel and snapped in the tape.

“Few key words I want you to listen for,” he said. “Little moonlight spin, and alarmed, and thirty. All those words were used by the man who called you, do you remember?”

“Sort of,” Stubbs said.

“Well, what he said was, ‘I just wanted to tell you I’ll be taking the boat out again for a little moonlight spin, around ten, ten-thirty, and I don’t want you to be alarmed if you hear me out there on the dock.’ Do you remember that?”

“I guess,” Stubbs said.

“What you’re going to hear won’t be that whole thing,” Warren said, “so just listen for the key words, all right? Little moonlight spin, alarmed, and thirty. This’II be a bit more difficult than what Mr. Hope played for you.”

“Sounds that way,” Stubbs said, and looked at the recorder suspiciously.

“But if you want to hear anything again, I can stop the tape whenever you say. Let me know when you’re ready, okay?”

“I’m ready now,” Stubbs said.

Warren hit the play button.

The telephone conversation with Ned Weaver had been a stop-and-go, fits-and-starts, tooth-pulling battle to get him to say some of the words the caller had used on the night of the murders. Warren wasn’t too sure about the word thirty, but he was hoping that at least the words alarmed and little moonlight spin were distinctive enough to allow for positive identification.

Weaver did not say the words little moonlight spin until thirty-two seconds of tape had elapsed.

“Play that back,” Stubbs said.

Warren rewound the tape and then played the conversation again:

Mr. Weaver, had you ever known Mr. Leeds to take his boat out for a little moonlight spin?

A what?

A little moonlight spin.

Sure. All the time.

You understand what I mean, don’t you?

Sure. A little moonlight spin.

Warren hit the stop button.

“Recognize the voice?” he asked.

“I can’t say for sure. Let me hear some more.”

Warren started the tape again. It was not until twenty-seven seconds later that Weaver said the word alarmed.

Stubbs squinted at the tape recorder.

Six seconds later, Weaver said the word again,

“Play that section back for me,” Stubbs said.

Warren played it back:

But when there wasn’t a moon, if he took the boat out for a little moonlight spin when there wasn’t a moon — would that have alarmed you?

Alarmed me?

Yes. Would that have alarmed you?

Nope.

How come? You know what I’m saying, don’t you?

Sure. Would I be alarmed.

Yes. Him being out in the dark and all.

Man knows how to —

Warren stopped the tape.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“That’s not the man who called,” Stubbs said.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. The man who called had a funny way of saying that word. Alarmed. I didn’t think of it at the time, maybe because he told me he was Mr. Leeds, but listening to that tape… this man just doesn’t say that word the same way. Alarmed. I can’t do it the way the man on the phone did, but…”

“Well, was it some kind of accent? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, no.”

“Like a Spanish accent?”

“No.”

“Or an English accent?”

“No, nothing like…”

“French?”

“No, nothing foreign at all. I wish I could do it for you, but I’m no good at that sort of thing. It just sounded… different. The way he said that word. Alarmed.”

“Not the way this man on the tape said it, huh?”

“No, not at all like that.”

Wonderful, Warren thought.

“He sounded like somebody famous,” Stubbs said, “I wish I could remember who.”

“Yours is the rental car, right, sir?” the valet said.

“Yes,” Matthew said.

The kid’s a mind reader, he thought. There was nothing on the Ford to identify it as a rental, not a bumper sticker, not a windshield decal, not anything.

“They all know it’s a rental,” he said to Mai Chim. “It’s the mystery of the ages.”

“Maybe there’s something on the keys,” she said.

“Must be.”

But the man at the body shop this past Monday hadn’t seen the keys.

Who’s driving the rental?

Was what the man had said.

Could you please move it? I gotta get a car out.

Mai Chim was wearing a short beige skirt and a cream-colored, long-sleeved silk blouse buttoned up the front, the top two buttons undone to show a pearl necklace. High-heeled shoes, long legs bare; this was summertime in old Calusa and the formality of pantyhose or stockings seemed foolish in such withering heat. She had been chatty and relaxed all through dinner, perhaps because she’d drunk two tropical-looking, fruity confections laced liberally with rum, and had also shared with Matthew a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Dreamily, she looked out over the water now, her arm looped through his, her head on his shoulder, watching the lights of the boats cruising past on Calusa Bay.

The valet pulled the rented Ford up, hopped out, ran around to the passenger side, and opened the door for her.

“Thank you,” she said, and got into the car. Her skirt rode up onto her thighs. She made no motion to lower it.

Matthew gave the valet a dollar and came around to the driver’s side.

“Thank you, sir,” the valet said, and turned to a grey-haired man coming out of the restaurant. “Yours is the Lincoln, right, sir?” he said, doing his mind-reader act again.

Matthew closed the car door and immediately snapped on the overhead light. Reaching down for the keys, he looked at the plastic tag attached to them. Sure enough, the name of the rental company was on it. Which still didn’t explain the man at the body shop.

Who’s driving the rental?

“I hate mysteries,” he said to Mai Chim, and turned off the light.

“I hate raccoons,” she said mysteriously.

He wondered if she was slightly drunk.

“We didn’t have raccoons in Vietnam. We had a lot of animals, but not raccoons.”

Matthew drove the car around the circle in front of the restaurant entrance and then headed out toward the main road. One of the valets had switched the radio to another station. He hated when they did that. It conjured images of strangers sitting in his car listening to the radio and wearing out the battery while he was having dinner. He hit the button for the jazz station he normally listened to, the only jazz station in Calusa.

“Do you like jazz?” he asked.

“What’s jazz?” she said.

“What we’re listening to,” he said.

She listened.

Gerry Mulligan.

“Yes,” she said and nodded somewhat vaguely. “In Vietnam, there was only rock,” she said. “The streets of Saigon were full of rock music. I hate rock,” she said. “I hate raccoons, too. Raccoons look like big rats, don’t you think?”

“Only down here,” he said. “Up north they look cute and furry.”

“Perhaps I should move up north,” she said.

The word perhaps came out somewhat slurred.

“Lots of good cities up north,” he said.

She nodded again and then fell silent, as if seriously considering the move. “My father hated soldiers,” she said abruptly. The word soldiers also seemed a little thick. “Which meant he hated all men,” she said. “Because in Vietnam, that’s all there was. Soldiers. Our soldiers, their soldiers, your soldiers.” Having a lot of trouble with that word soldiers. “My father wouldn’t let a soldier come near me. He once got into a fight with an American corporal who smiled at me. That’s all he did was smile. My father actually hit the man. My father, can you imagine? This skinny little man, hitting this big, husky soldier. The soldier laughed.”

Soldier again. Tough word to wrap her tongue around.

“Could we go to my apartment, please?” she asked.

They drove in silence.

The sound of Mulligan’s saxophone flooded the automobile. Matthew was thinking he’d love to know how to play saxophone like that.

“I was afraid of them,” Mai Chim said. “Soldiers. My father taught me to fear them. He said they would rape me. They raped many Vietnamese girls, the soldiers. I was afraid they would rape me, too.”

Everything that goes around comes around, he thought.

Vietnamese girls being raped by American soldiers.

An American woman being raped by three Vietnamese men.

“But I’m not afraid of you,” she said.

“Good,” he said.

But he was thinking, Not so good. He was thinking she’d had too much to drink, and if what she’d told him earlier was true, he didn’t want to be the one who made love to her for the first time, not while she was drunk or close to it. Oscar Peterson’s piano burst into the rented Ford like a mortar explosion. He thought suddenly of Chicago and the backseat of his father’s steamy Oldsmobile where a sixteen-year-old girl named Joy Patterson lay back with her eyes closed and her breath heavy with the smell of booze, and her legs spread, either really drunk or feigning drunkenness while he explored the ribbed tops of her nylon stockings and the soft white thighs above them, and drew back his trembling hand when at last it touched the silken secret patch of her undefended panties. Pulled it back with the certain knowledge that if Joy was drunk, then this was rape.

If he made love to Mai Chim tonight, it would be rape.

Everything that goes around comes around.

They had reached the condo she lived in on Sabal Key. Zoning restrictions out here, since changed, had kept the condos at a maximum five-story height. You could actually see the ocean beyond them. He pulled into a space marked visitors and turned off the ignition and the lights.

“Will you come up for a night hat?” she asked.

This was not inebriation, this was merely an unfamiliarity with the language. And where there is no common language, she’d said, there is suspicion. And mistakes. Many mistakes. On both sides. He wondered if he was about to make a mistake now. But he thought of something else she’d said, the last time he’d seen her, Is that why you want to go to bed with me? Because I’m Asian? And he wondered about that, too, while the question hung between them in the silence of the rented car, Will you come up for a night hat?, and he thought. No, Mai Chim, I don’t think I’ll come up for a night hat, not tonight while you’re feeling all that booze and maybe not any night because yes, I think maybe that’s why I do want to go to bed with you, only because you’re Asian and I’ve never been to bed with an Asian. And that’s no reason to go to bed with anyone, not if I plan to look at myself in the mirror tomorrow morning.

“I have an early day tomorrow,” he said. “Can I take a rain check?”

A puzzled look crossed her face. She was unfamiliar with the expression.

“Rain check,” he said, and smiled. “That means some other time.”

She kept looking into his face.

“I’ll walk you up,” he said gently.

He came around to the other side of the car, opened the door for her, and then offered her his hand. She came out of the car unsteadily, looking a trifle disoriented and somewhat surprised to find herself home already. He put his arm around her to support her. She leaned into him.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

At the front door, she searched in her handbag for a key, inserted it in the lock, turned to him, looked up into his face again, and said, “Will there really be some other time, Matthew?”

“I hope so,” he said.

And wondered if he meant it.

Warren’s car was sitting at the curb outside his house. Warren was sitting behind the wheel, asleep. The window on the driver’s side was down. Matthew reached in and gently touched his shoulder. Warren jumped up with a start, his hand going under his jacket to a shoulder holster. A very large pistol suddenly appeared in his hand.

“Hey!” Matthew shouted, and backed off.

“Sorry, you scared me.”

“I scared you, huh?”

Warren bolstered the pistol and got out of the car. They went up the front walk together. Matthew unlocked the door and snapped on the lights.

“Something to drink?” he asked.

“A little scotch, please, no ice,” Warren said. “Can I use your phone a minute?”

“Sure. On the wall there.”

Matthew looked at the clock. A quarter past ten. He wondered if he should call Mai Chim, apologize or something. But for what? At the kitchen counter, Warren was already dialing. Matthew went to the dropleaf bar, lowered the front panel, and poured some Black Label into a low glass. He wondered if he felt like a martini. He wondered if he’d done the right thing tonight. Warren was talking to someone named Fiona. Matthew wondered if she was black. Fiona? Could be Irish. Fiona was an Irish name, wasn’t it? He wondered if Warren was sleeping with her. If she was Irish, if she was white, was Warren sleeping with her only because she was white? He wondered. Back in Chicago…

Back in Chicago, in his high-school English class, there’d been a gloriously beautiful black girl named Ophelia Blair. And he’d taken her to the movies one night, and for ice-cream sodas later, and then he’d led her into his father’s multipurpose Oldsmobile, and he’d driven her to a deserted stretch of road near the football field and plied her with kisses, his hand fumbling under her skirt, pleading with her to let him “do it” because he’d never in his life “done it” with a black girl.

Never mind that at the age of seventeen he’d never done it with a white girl, either. His supreme argument was that she was black and he was white and oh what a glorious adventure awaited them if only she’d allow him, a latter-day Stanley exploring Africa, to lower her panties and spread her lovely legs. It never occurred to him that he was reducing her to anonymity, denying her very Ophelia-ness, equating her with any other black girl in the world, expressing desire for her only because she was black and not merely herself, whoever that might have been, the person he had not taken the slightest amount of trouble to know. He was baffled when she pulled down her skirt and tucked her breasts back into her brassiere and buttoned her blouse, and asked him very softly to take her home, please. He asked her out a dozen times after that, and she always refused politely.

Chicago.

A long time ago.

He had not made that same mistake tonight.

He had not denied Mai Chim her selfness.

But he wondered if she realized this.

“Whenever I’m done here, Fiona,” Warren said into the phone.

Fiona.

White? Black? Vietnamese?

Ophelia Blair had been very black, a truly beautiful girl. He wondered where she was now, what she was doing. He suspected she had grown up to be an extravagantly beautiful woman. He imagined her living in a luxurious home on Lake Shore Drive. She would be hostessing a formal dinner party, the men in tuxedos, the women in long, shimmering gowns. Ophelia Blair. Who, once upon a time, he’d hurt severely.

He turned his back toward the kitchen counter, where Warren was still on the telephone, and began mixing himself a martini. Had he similarly and stupidly and for exactly the opposite reason hurt Mai Chim tonight? Had he made yet another damn mistake? In trying to do the right thing, had he done the absolutely wrong thing? He dropped an olive into the glass. And another one.

“Warren,” he said, “are you almost finished there?”

“Right this second,” Warren said, and then, into the phone, “See you later,” and hung up.

“There’s one call I have to make,” Matthew said, and carried his martini to the telephone in the study. He took a sip of the drink, pulled the phone to him, and dialed Mai Chim’s number. She answered on the fourth ring.

“Hello?” she said.

“Mai Chim?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Matthew.”

“Oh, hello, Matthew.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she said. “But drunk.”

“Well, maybe a little tipsy.”

“What’s that? Tipsy?”

“Drunk,” he said.

They both laughed.

And suddenly the laughter stopped. And there was silence on the line.

“Thank you for not hurting me,” she said.

He wondered if she knew what she was saying. Wondered if the English word hurt meant to her what it meant to him. Because he felt he had hurt her. Stupidly and foolishly hurt her.

And where there is no common language, there is suspicion. And mistakes. Many mistakes. On both sides.

“Matthew, did someone pay the check?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “You did.”

“Oh, thank God, I couldn’t remember. I thought, oh boy, he’s my guest and I let him pay for it.”

Oh boy. So alien on her tongue. So completely charming.

“I drank too much,” she said. “I’m not used to drinking so much.”

“Please don’t worry about it,” he said.

“I was so afraid, you see.”

He said nothing.

“It was that I thought… if I drink a little, I won’t be so afraid. Of soldiers,” she said.

Soldiers. No thickness of the tongue this time. No slurring. Soldiers.

“Men,” she said softly, and fell silent.

They were both silent.

“We’ll try again,” he said at last.

“Yes, some other time,” she said.

“When we really know each other better,” he said.

“Will we ever know each other better?” she asked.

“I hope so,” he said, and this time he meant it. “I don’t want this to be…”

“Yes, just white and Asian,” she said, and he wondered if they didn’t already know each other much better than they suspected.

“I’ll call you soon,” he said.

“You must come for your raincoat,” she said.

“Rain check,” he said, and smiled.

“Yes, rain check,” she said.

“Sleep well,” he said.

“I still dream of helicopters,” she said.

There was a click on the line.

He picked up the martini glass and went out into the kitchen. Warren was still at the kitchen counter. The glass of scotch was now in his right hand.

“Learning your p’s and q’s?” he asked.

“What?” Matthew said.

Warren indicated the slip of paper tacked to the small cork bulletin board near the phone:

“Oh,” Matthew said. “That’s the Vietnamese alphabet.”

“It’s missing a lot of letters, did you notice that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“That’s why I’m a detective and you’re not. There’s no F, J, or W. No Z, either. But there are three A’s, two D’s and E’s, three O’s, two U’s, and a partridge in a pear tree. What do you call these funny little marks?”

“Diacritical.”

“That serious, huh?” Warren said, and raised his glass in a toast. “We struck out, Matthew,” he said, and drank. “Ahhhh,” he said, “delicious. Weaver isn’t the man who made that phone call.”

“Cheers,” Matthew said sourly, and raised his own glass in a toast. He drank, looked into the glass appreciatively, and then said, “Who’s Fiona?”

“Fiona Gill,” Warren said. “Lady who works in the Tax Collector’s office. She’s the one who told me we had a bad make on that license plate.”

“White? Black?”

“Black. Why?”

“Just wondered.”

“You seeing a black lady?” Warren asked.

“No, no.”

“Sounds like it.”

“No.”

But close, Matthew thought.

In American movies, Asian women were permissible substitutes for black women. The white hero was allowed to have a meaningful love affair with an Asian woman, but never with a black woman. This was how courageous American film producers broke the taboo. It was okay for the hero to kiss an Asian woman but if he kissed a black woman, watch it, mister. As for a black man kissing a white woman, that was science fiction. Matthew wondered what it would be like to kiss Mai Chim. Maybe he could get some brave Hollywood movie producer to film their first kiss. Tastefully, of course.

“Want to share the joke?” Warren said, and Matthew realized he was smiling.

“I’m just a little tired,” he said. “What else did Stubbs tell you?”

“Only that the man on the phone sounded famous.”

“Famous?”

“Famous. When he said the word alarmed.”

“How do famous people say alarmed?” Matthew asked.

“You got me, pal,” Warren said, and sighed heavily. “I’d better be on my way, Fiona’s expecting me.” He hesitated, and then said, “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about anything?”

“No, thanks a lot.”

“If you change your mind, here’s where I’ll be,” Warren said, and wrote a number onto the pad under the phone. He drained the glass, shook hands with Matthew, and went out. Matthew could hear him starting the Buick outside. In a little while, the sound of its engine faded on the night. Now there was only the hum of the air conditioner. He carried his glass to the counter, sat on one of the stools, and looked at the number Warren had written for him:

The 381 prefix told him that Fiona lived on the mainland. He tore the page from the pad and tacked it to the bulletin board, just under the alphabet Mai Chim had Xeroxed for him. When he was in college at Northwestern, a friend of his began dating a Chinese girl whose father ran a restaurant on La Salle. The guy’s name was Nathan Feinstein, the girl’s name was Melissa Chong. Nathan and Melissa shared what Nathan called an Eemie-Wess relationship, which was shorter and easier to say than an East-Meets-West relationship, a tongue-twister on anybody’s lips.

Matthew picked up the pencil alongside the pad and wrote:

He looked at the hyphenated word. It conjured a multimillion-dollar film starring Le Mai Chim and Matthew Hope — not necessarily in that order. The first scene would open with a shot of a green Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme parked under a pepper tree outside Little Asia in lovely downtown Calusa. A couple would be necking on the front seat. They would be our hero and heroine, Leslie Storm and Lotus Blossom Wong, as their names were in the picture. The camera would cut away from a close shot of their torridly joined lips to an antiseptic close shot of an orange-and-white Florida license plate over the rear bumper. The numbers and letters on that plate would read 2AB 39C.

On the pad, Matthew wrote:

He looked at what he’d written. And then he wrote it again:

And again and again and again and again…

And kept writing it over and over again, faster and faster and faster until the last several times he wrote it…

… the numeral 2 resembled…

There’s no F, J, or W. No Z, either.

His eyes darted to the alphabet pinned to the board.

No Z in it. But a 2 in the language, for sure, Oh, yes, our numbers are Arabic. No Z, but a 2! And if you were seeing a Z through a screen door at night, and you didn’t know what the hell a Z looked like in the first place, then you could easily mistake it for a 2! Ike and Mike, they look alike, a Z and a 2! Trinh had seen ZAB 39C, but his eye and his brain had automatically translated it into something familiar, 2AB 39C.

Matthew yanked the receiver from its cradle and dialed the number Warren had left him. It rang once, twice…

“Hello?”

“Miss Gill?”

“Yes?”

“This is Matthew Hope…”

“Yes, Mr. Hope.”

“I’m sorry to be calling at this hour…”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Is Warren there yet?”

“No, he isn’t.”

“I wonder if you’d ask him to call when he… as a matter of fact, maybe you can help me.”

“Happy to.”

“Are there any license plates in Florida that begin with the letter Z?”

“Oh, yes,” Fiona said, “Y and Z both. Those are the letters we set aside for rental cars.”

“Rental cars?”

A rental car, he thought. A goddamn rental car! No wonder the killer had to…

“Hertz, Avis, Dollar, what-have-you,” Fiona said. “The plates on all those cars begin with either a Y or a Z. Check it out.”

“I will,” he said. “Thank you very much. Miss Gill, I really appreciate this.”

“Not at all,” she said. “Did you still want Warren to call you?”

“Not unless he wants to.”

“I’ll tell him. Good night,” she said.

“Good night,” he said, and put the receiver back on the cradle.

A rental car, he thought. That’s how those mind readers knew what I was driving, they looked at the license plate. He pulled the telephone directory to him, opened it to the yellow pages, and was running his finger down the page with the listings for Automobile Renting & Leasing when the phone rang. He picked up the receiver.

“Warren?” he said.

“Mr. Hope?” a man’s voice said.

“Yes, who’s this, please?”

“Charlie Stubbs. I’m sorry to be bothering you at home, but I tried to reach that other feller and there’s no answer there. I remember now who that voice sounded like. Remember I said it sounded like somebody famous? Or did he tell you?”

“Yes, he told me.”

“Well, I remember who it was.”

“Who was it, Mr. Stubbs?”

“John F. Kennedy,” Stubbs said.