Three Blind Mice

8

You came down into the marina on a dirt road behind the Toys “Я” Us warehouse off Henley Street on the South Tamiami Trail, skirting the Twin Tree Estates development along the wetlands bordering Willowbee Creek, the pampas grass moving gently in the welcome early-morning breeze. You saw first the fenced-in boats up on trailers under the storage sheds, their tin roofs rusting in the sunshine. Beyond the sheds was the asphalt-shingled house in which Charlie Stubbs lived with his wife and a pet golden retriever named Shadrach. The house was on the water, and it commanded a good view of the twenty-one slips he rented to boaters. On the night of August thirteenth, Stephen Leeds was supposed to have climbed onto a boat named Felicity at a slip numbered twelve and cruised off into the night to do multiple murder.

“We had three of them, one time,” Stubbs told Matthew. “A female named Meshach and another male named Abednego.”

He was bending over to stroke, tug, scratch, and twist the ear of the big golden, who sat loving it all, his tongue hanging out and his eyes closed, his giant lion paws solidly planted on the wooden planks of the dock. They were standing just outside the marina office. Through the open marina door, Matthew could see boat keys hanging on hooks, each key identified by a slip number crudely painted onto the wooden rack. He wondered if the office door had been locked on the night of the murders.

“This was when we were still living up north, you familiar with a little town in Vermont called West Dover? Pretty country up there, but you can freeze your butt in the wintertime. Me and my wife come down here in ’forty-seven, looking to buy ourselves a motel, ended up with a marina, didn’t know a damn thing about boats. Anyway, one winter up there in Vermont the two other ones disappeared, Meshach and Abednego. We figured some skier up from New York had kidnapped them, there’s a big market in pedigreed dogs, you know. They were beauties, too, the pair of them. Figured they’d been stolen. My wife was brokenhearted. She loved them dogs, especially the bitch. Anyway, come springtime, I get a call from the caretaker at one of the lodges up there, he tells me he was cleaning some fallen branches and such out of the lake, and he looked down and saw what he thought was a couple of deer on the bottom, but it turned out to be two big dogs. He knew to call me ’cause of the tags on their collars. It was them, all right. The way we figured it, they must’ve been playing on the ice, you know, just frisking, and crashed on through. Couldn’t find a way to get up again, couldn’t find their way out, you know. It must’ve been a bad way to die, don’t you think?”

Matthew wondered if there were any good ways to die.

“My wife loved them two dogs,” Stubbs said.

The way he said it, the forlorn sound of his voice, the way he kept working the dog’s ear, caused Matthew to believe that Stubbs himself had loved those dogs more than his wife had.

“Mr. Stubbs,” he said, “I’m sorry to bother you this way…”

“No bother at all.”

“But there are just a few more things I’d like to go over.”

“Sure.”

“First, can you tell me… those are boat keys, aren’t they? Hanging on the rack there inside the office door?”

“Yes, they are.”

“Identified by slip number, isn’t that right?”

“Twenty-one of them, that’s right.”

“Mr. Stubbs, was the office locked…”

“It was.”

“… on the night you saw Stephen Leeds take his boat out?”

“It’s locked every night. Owners have their own keys, all we keep in there’s the spares, for when we have to move the boats, one reason or another.”

“Then Stephen Leeds would’ve had his own key when he took the boat out that night?”

“Had to’ve had his own key. The spare was right there in the office, and the office was locked.”

“Mr. Stubbs, would you mind if I sent someone around to check the office doors and windows?”

“For what?”

“For signs of forced entry.”

“Be my guest,” Stubbs said, and shrugged. “Wasn’t anyone broke in there, though, I’d’ve noticed. What is it, boy?” he said to the dog. “You gettin’ hungry again? Your mama just fed you this morning, didn’t she? Old Shad here’d eat us out of house and home, we’d let him,” he said to Matthew, and then turned to the dog again and said, “Come on then, ’fore you die of starvation.”

He walked into the marina office, Matthew and the dog following. From a shelf in one of the wall cupboards, he took down a big bag of dog food and poured generously into a plastic cup bigger than the dog’s head.

“There you go, boy,” he said, and patted him on the head and watched appreciatively as the dog began eating. Outside, a fifty-foot Sea Ray with a sedan bridge was pulling into one of the slips. Stubbs turned his attention from the dog.

“Man there’s learning how to drive a boat, bangs my dock up every time he comes in. Watch him now.”

Matthew watched. There was on the captain’s face a look of panic Matthew had seen a hundred times before, a look that had been on his own face all too often. The look said that an irresistible force was about to strike an immovable object and there was nothing that could be done about it. Absolutely nothing. Twist the wheel, tug at the gearshift levers, pull back on the throttle, nothing could stop this damn boat from—

“There she goes,” Stubbs said, and winced.

The starboard side of the boat slammed into the slip piling, bounced off it with a thudding lurch. The captain threw his gears into reverse, panicked again, twisted the wheel in the wrong direction, and whapped into the piling yet another time. A young blond girl in a black bikini — either the captain’s daughter or his girlfriend, you never could tell down here in southwest Florida — stood on the bow trying to keep her balance as the boat whacked the piling once again. There was an astonished look on her face, as if she were trying to understand whether this was the way you were supposed to dock a boat. The captain finally got the boat alongside and yelled for the girl to jump ashore. She hesitated a moment, and then leaped the two feet to the dock, popping one of her breasts out of the scant bikini top, recovering it quickly and without embarrassment, and then bracing herself to catch the line the captain tossed to her.

“Better go help him,” Stubbs said, “before that nitwit falls in the water.”

He stamped out of the office and walked swiftly to the dock. Gently, he said, “I’ll take that, miss,” and accepted the line from her and then swiftly and automatically looped it around the piling in a series of half-hitches. “Let me have the other one,” he called to the captain, and then went through the same routine on the port side of the boat.

“Think I’ll need lines aft?” the captain asked.

“ ’Less you want her banging around all day,” Stubbs said.

It took him some ten minutes to make the boat secure. The girl watched him all the while, trying to learn something. Matthew figured she was in her early twenties. Seven or eight years younger than Mai Chim. He wondered why Mai Chim had suddenly popped into his mind. Perhaps because the girl on the dock looked so indigenous to Florida, and Mai Chim looked like a total stranger.

Stubbs came stamping back up the dock. He looked at the captain and the girl as they walked off toward where their car was parked, and then he came back into the office again.

“He’d spend less time screwing that little girl and more time learning how to park, he’d be a better seaman all around,” Stubbs said. “First thing you learn when you come down from the north is there’s only two things to do here in Florida. Screw and drink. He’s from Michigan and he’s learned how to do both real well.”

Stubbs shook his head.

“When’s this door-and-window man gonna show up?” he asked.

“I’ll talk to him when I get back to the office,” Matthew said. “His name’s Warren Chambers, he was here…”

“Right, last week,” Stubbs said. “Nice young feller. Smart as a whip, too. Anybody gonna find anything here, it’ll be him. Look at that dog go, will you? Think he hadn’t been fed in a month.” He shook his head again and watched the dog in silent amazement. Then he looked up at Matthew and said, “Well, if that’s it, I got work to do.”

“Just one other thing,” Matthew said. “I wonder if you could listen to something for me.”

“Listen?”

“Yes, sir,” Matthew said, and took from his pocket the small Sony tape recorder he’d carried to the office yesterday.

“What is it?” Stubbs asked.

“A tape I made.”

He pressed the rewind button to make sure the tape was fully rewound, said, “Listen,” and then hit the play button. The tape began unreeling.

“Hello, this is Stephen Leeds,” a man’s voice said. “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.”

Stubbs looked at the recorder.

There was silence now.

The reel kept unreeling.

“Was that the man who called you last Monday night?” Matthew asked.

“Can you play it back for me?” Stubbs said.

“Happy to.”

Matthew rewound the tape. He hit the play button again.

“Hello, this is Stephen Leeds. I just wanted…”

“Sure as hell sounds like Mr. Leeds.”

“… 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.”

Stubbs was nodding now. “Yep,” he said, “that’s Mr. Leeds, all right.”

“That’s not what I asked you,” Matthew said. “I asked if that was the man who called you last Monday night.”

“Oh,” Stubbs said. “Play it again, willya?”

Matthew played it again.

“Hello, this is Stephen Leeds. I just wanted to tell you…”

“No,” Stubbs said.

Matthew stabbed at the stop button.

“That’s Mr. Leeds, all right,” Stubbs said, “but that ain’t the man who called me last Monday.”

At last, Matthew thought. One for our side.

More damn doors here than you could find in a Broadway farce. Windows, too. Everyplace you looked. A burglar’s paradise. You told your average junkie burglar there was a farm out here on Timucuan with no burglar alarm system and all these windows, he’d wet his pants in glee. Even your sophisticated burglar would appreciate a vacation from having to work so hard getting into a place.

Your junkie burglar went for the windows. All he knew was crack, man. Got to get the crack, man. Smash, grab, got to get the crack. Even if he knew how to pick a lock or loid a door, which he didn’t, he couldn’t waste time fooling around with such things. Easier to smash the window with a brick or a hammer, climb on in, take all the shiny stuff, and split to the crack house.

Your sophisticated burglar knew locks and alarms. There wasn’t a door he couldn’t open or an alarm he couldn’t circumvent. Break a window? No way. Everybody knew the sound of breaking glass. Guy asleep in his bed five miles away, snoring to beat the band, he hears breaking glass he jumps up in bed, knows right away something’s happening, reaches for the phone. You broke a window, it was like banging a pair of cymbals together, announcing to the world at large that a burglary was in progress. Your sophisticated burglar went in and out through doors. Warren had once read a book with that title. Doors. About a burglar. He forgot who wrote it.

Here at the Leeds farm, you didn’t have to be any kind of burglar to get in. A two-year-old kid still learning to walk could get into this house. Not a single one of the windows was locked. The front door and the two other doors on the entrance side of the house had Mickey Mouse locks on them, the kind with the little buttons you pushed in to lock them, what you usually saw on the inside of a bathroom door, worthless against forced entry. The sliding doors on the back of the house were equipped only with thumb locks fitted to their handles. You could open them from the outside with a screwdriver. Warren was looking for tool marks that would conclusively show forced entry, but he knew he wouldn’t find any. You didn’t need tools to get into this place. All you needed was determination. And not much of that, either.

He was trying a door he’d missed at the side of the house…

More damn doors.

… twisting the knob, unsurprised when the door opened without the slightest re—

“Help you?” the voice behind him said.

Warren turned.

He was looking at a very big, very good-looking white man in bib overalls and high-topped work shoes. Six feet two inches tall, he guessed. Two hundred and twenty pounds at least. Twenty-six, twenty-seven years old, in there. Bulging biceps showing where his short-sleeved blue denim shirt ended. Tattoo of a mermaid on his right forearm, all bare-breasted and scaly-bottomed. Shock of red hair hanging on his forehead. Glittering green eyes. A wide grin on his face. The grin was not friendly, but it was reasonable. It was saying a thief had been caught in the act. Maybe it was even saying a nigger had been caught in the act. Sometimes you couldn’t tell from grins alone, however reasonable they appeared. Not down here, anyway, where everyone was oh so friendly and polite.

“Mrs. Leeds knows I’m here,” Warren said at once.

“I’ll bet she does,” the man said.

“My name is Warren Chambers, I work for Matthew Hope, the lawyer who’s defending Mr. Leeds.”

The man kept looking at him, still grinning reasonably.

“Ask your boss,” Warren said.

“I will. Want to come along with me?”

The look added. Or I’ll break your arm.

Like two old buddies out for a short morning stroll, they ambled around to the back of the house together. Not half an hour earlier, Warren had talked to Jessica Leeds on the terrace here. She’d been having her morning coffee at a round glass-topped table overlooking the pool. Wearing a jungle-green nylon wrap, short nightgown under it. Barefooted. Legs crossed. She’d offered him a cup of coffee. He’d politely declined, saying he wanted to get to work right away. That was when he thought he’d be busy with tool marks. That was before he learned the house was a cracker box. Mrs. Leeds was no longer at the table. Even the breakfast things were gone.

“I spoke to her right here,” Warren said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m a private investigator,” Warren said. “Let me show you my license.”

“I’d sure like to see it,” the man said.

He watched Warren as he fished into his side pocket. His look said. You’d better not pull a knife or anything. All Warren pulled was a wallet. He opened it, found his plastic-encased ID card, and showed it to the guy in the overalls. The card, together with a class-A license to operate a private investigative agency in the state of Florida, had cost him a hundred bucks and was renewable each year at midnight on the thirtieth day of June. He had also posted a five-thousand-dollar bond for the privilege of being allowed to investigate and to gather information on a wide range of matters, public or private. The guy in the overalls seemed singularly unimpressed.

“Why were you going in the house?” he asked evenly.

A field nigger’s supposed to stay in the fields, his look said. Only a house nigger’s allowed to go in the house.

“I wasn’t going in the house,” Warren said. “I was trying the door. May I have that back, please?”

The guy in the overalls handed the card back.

“Why were you trying the door if you weren’t going in the house?” he asked reasonably. His reasonable grin was back, too. Warren was already figuring out his defense. With somebody this size, you went immediately for the balls.

“I’m checking for forced entry,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

“We’re trying to find out if someone got in here on the night of the murders.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Look, get Mrs. Leeds, will you? She’ll straighten this out in a…”

“Oh, I’m sure she will. But I think maybe I ought to get the cops instead, don’t you?”

“Sure, do that,” Warren said, and sighed heavily.

“Ned?”

Her voice. Our Lady of Redemption. Calling from inside the house.

“What’s the trouble, Ned?”

“No trouble at all,” he called over his shoulder.

Ned. Perfect name for an asshole in bib overalls. What’s the trouble, Ned? No trouble at all. Just going to break this man’s arm, is all.

“Mrs. Leeds?” Warren called. “Can you please come out here a minute?”

Silence from within.

Had she forgotten the private investigator was here?

Had she mistaken him for someone here to cut back the palms? Do your trees, lady? Ten bucks a tree? Well, okay then, my second price is six-fifty.

“Just a moment,” she said.

They waited.

Ned grinning.

Warren looking out over the fields.

It did not take a moment, it took more like ten moments. When finally she appeared, she was wearing tailored jeans and an emerald-green T-shirt that echoed the color of her eyes. Green was the lady’s color, Warren guessed. He also figured that the reason she’d taken so long was that she’d been dressing. But she was still barefooted. And there was no bra under the thin cotton shirt.

“Did you need some help?” she asked him.

Paraphrasing what young Ned here had asked not ten minutes ago.

“Ned thinks I’m a burglar,” Warren said.

“Oh?”

She seemed amused.

Green eyes twinkling, smile forming on her lips.

“Saw him trying the side door,” Ned said.

“I knew he was here, Ned.”

“Well, just thought I’d make sure,” he said, and shrugged. “Strange man trying a door to the house.”

Strange black man was what he meant.

“This is Warren Chambers,” Jessica said. “Ned Weaver.”

“Delighted to meet you,” Warren said, but did not offer his hand. Neither did Weaver.

“Warren’s trying to find out if anyone broke into the house,” Jessica explained.

“Tell me, Mrs. Leeds,” Warren said, “do you ever lock any doors around here?”

“We’re safe here in the country,” she said. “Aren’t we, Ned?”

Something passed between them.

A look?

No, nothing quite that blatant.

Something, though.

“Very safe,” Weaver said.

The something again.

Ineffable.

But there.

All at once, Warren wondered if young Ned here was diddling the farmer’s wife.

The eye contact — or whatever it had been — between Jessica and Weaver broke like delicate crystal. Weaver brushed the lock of hair from his eyes, the mermaid on his forearm catching the sun as if she were breaking the surface of shining water. Warren glanced at the tattoo. Weaver caught the glance.

“Nice tattoo,” Warren said.

“Thanks,” Weaver said.

The eyes grazed again, his and hers, green brushing green, touching, veering away.

Press it, Warren thought.

“Navy?” he asked.

“Nope,” Weaver said.

“I’ve always wanted a tattoo,” Warren said. “Did you get that here in Calusa?”

“San Diego,” Weaver said.

But not Navy, Warren thought.

“Big Marine base there, right?” he said. “San Diego?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Weaver said. “I’ve never been in the service.”

Which left only one other thing Warren could think of.

“You’ll excuse me, won’t you?” Jessica said, and turned and went back into the house.

“I just want to check a few more doors,” Warren said to her green-shirted back.

“I got work, too,” Weaver said, and left him standing there in the sun, still wondering.

Patricia Demming was sitting in Matthew’s outer office when he got back at three that afternoon. She was wearing a dark-blue tropical suit with a white silk blouse and medium-heeled blue leather pumps. She was thumbing through what looked like the Calusa telephone directory but which was only Vogue’s Fall Preview issue. The window behind her was running with rainsnakes. The rains had returned, and with them the Assistant State Attorney. She put down the oversized magazine.

“Hi,” she said, and smiled. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Matthew remembered how Andrew Holmes had described her courtroom style: flamboyant, seductive, aggressive, unrelenting, and unforgiving. He wondered what she was doing here.

“Come on in,” he said.

“Sure.”

She rose, smoothed her skirt, followed him past Cynthia Huellen’s desk — Cynthia giving her the once-over as she went by — and then down the corridor to Matthew’s office.

“Have a seat,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“Coffee?” he asked. “Soft drink? Anything?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“So,” he said.

“So,” she said.

“To what do I owe the honor?”

Patricia crossed her legs. Blue pantyhose. Sleek legs. Long blond hair, electric blue eyes. A beautiful woman altogether.

“I thought you might be ready to talk a deal,” she said.

Matthew looked at her.

“Am I wrong?”

“You are wrong,” he said.

“That’s not the impression I got.”

“From whom?”

“I won’t play games, okay? Morris Bloom told me you’d discussed the case with him…”

“I didn’t discuss a deal.”

“I know that. But he told you that I might be ready to make one, isn’t that so?”

“He mentioned something like that, yes. We’re friends.”

“I know that, too.”

“He was afraid I might not have a case.”

“Didn’t want to see his friend get burned by the Wicked Witch of the West, huh?”

“He never once called you that.”

“But you know the nickname, don’t you?”

“I’ve heard it.”

“Because you had someone research me, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And you learned that my first job was in Los Angeles with Dolman, Ruggiero…”

“Yes.”

“… where I was called the Wicked Witch of the West.”

“Apparently.”

“Because I was such a mean bitch,” Patricia said, and smiled. “I’ve had you researched, too, by the way. I can tell you anything you want to know about yourself.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Graduate of Northwestern, where you also got your law degree, married quite young to a nice Chicago girl, divorced her several years ago, picked up again with her sometime later, ended it yet again sometime after that. You’ve got a fourteen-year-old daughter who’s said to be a quote Brainy Beauty unquote and who now attends a private school in Massachusetts. You came to the practice of criminal law rather late in your career, having specialized before then in real estate, divorce, and what-have-you.”

“Right, what-have-you,” Matthew said.

“Right. But from what I understand, you’ve had a remarkable string of successes till now…”

Matthew did not miss the “till now.”

“… defending murderers like Stephen Leeds.”

“Objection,” he said, and smiled.

“Sustained,” she said, and returned the smile. “In fact, there are people in town who say you’re even better than Benny Weiss.”

“I take that as a compliment.”

“You should. He’s a shark. But so am I.”

“So I understand.”

“In which case, you should consider yourself fortunate,” she said.

“About what?”

“My presence here. To offer you a deal.”

“My man’s innocent.”

“No, no, Matthew.”

“Yes, yes, Patricia.”

“Ah, he remembers my name. Hear me, will you, please? You know what I’ve got, you’ve seen all the discovery material.”

“Yes.”

“Well, now I’ve got even more.”

“Want to tell me?”

“Sure. I’ve got a witness who saw Leeds parking his boat at a restaurant named Kickers…”

“I’m assuming I’ll be receiving…”

“Yes, all in due course, name, statement, bra size,” she said, and rolled her big blue eyes. “She also saw Leeds getting into the car one of my Vietnamese witnesses described. A green Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme.”

“He didn’t know the make.”

“But he described it accurately otherwise.”

“No, he wasn’t sure about the color, either.”

“He said dark blue or green. And my new witness nailed it as green.”

“Did she also nail that nonexistent license plate?”

Patricia looked at him.

“There’s no such plate in the state of Florida,” he said.

“I assume you’ve checked.”

“Oh, yes.”

“You’re better than I thought,” she said.

“I try,” he said.

“But I’ve still got enough to cook him.”

“Maybe.”

“Take my deal, Matthew.”

“Why? If your case is so wonderful…”

“I want to save the state money.”

“Please,” he said. “No bullshit.”

“Okay. Skye wants this one put away fast.”

“Why?”

“Ask him.”

“Me? I’m still waiting for the morning edition to break.”

“Here’s the deal,” she said. “You plead your man guilty to…”

“I don’t even want to hear it.”

“Come on, Matthew,” she said, and smiled again. “I got caught in the rain walking over here, the least you can do is hear me out.”

“You always seem to be getting caught in the rain.”

“Bad failing, I know. What do you say? Give me a break, huh?”

Blue eyes wide. Little Miss Innocence.

“If I hear your deal, I’d be obliged to report it to my client.”

“If you know I’m ready to deal, you’re obliged to report that, too.”

Matthew looked at her.

“Let me hear it,” he said.

“You plead him guilty to three counts of murder one, we agree to waive the penalty proceeding.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning your man gets life and becomes eligible for parole in twenty-five years.”

“Times three,” Matthew said.

“Oh dear,” she said, “that’s right. There are three separate counts, aren’t there?”

As if just discovering this.

“But we can always stipulate that the sentences be served concurrently, can’t we?” she said, and smiled.

“Uh-huh,” he said.

“Which would make him eligible in twenty-five, wouldn’t it? How does that appeal to you, Matthew?”

“What makes you think a judge would grant a proceeding waiver?”

“The State Attorney herself pleading clemency for the defendant? Reeling off mitigating circumstances? No significant history of prior criminal activity… under the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance… oh, yes, it would fly, Matthew.”

“Maybe,” he said.

“I could make it fly, believe me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m good, Matthew.”

“And modest, too.”

“Tell your client, okay?”

“That you’re good?”

“No, that I’m offering him an opportunity to breathe fresh air again before he’s an old man.”

“In twenty-five years, he will be an old man.”

“Which is better than being a dead man.”

“Unless he’s innocent,” Matthew said.

Stephen Leeds was eating his dinner when Matthew got there that evening. In the Calusa jail, they served dinner at five-thirty. Lights-out was at nine.

“The routine gets to you more than anything else,” Leeds said.

He was moving some amorphous-looking stuff around on his tray. It stuck to his fork like glue. “You’d think in jail,” he said, “they’d figure since there’s nothing to do, they might as well let you go to bed late, sleep late in the morning. But, no, there has to be a routine. So they turn the lights out at nine, and they wake you up at six. On the farm, the only people who are up at that hour are the people who work for me. Look at this stuff, will you?”

He held up the fork.

The Thing From Another Planet clung to it tenaciously. It was green. It might have been spinach.

“One of the prisoners here, he’s been in and out of jail all his life,” Leeds said, “he told me they’re only allowed three dollars and sixty-five cents a meal. That’s what the city gives them to spend. What can you get for three sixty-five nowadays? Look at this stuff,” he said again, and put down the fork. It seemed to move across the tray of its own volition, but perhaps he’d only set it down crookedly.

“My stockbroker was here yesterday,” he said. “He comes every day, just the way I used to go to his office every day. Except that he can only come see me during visiting hours, which are from eleven to twelve in the morning and three to four in the afternoon. The routine again, right? You can come anytime you want, of course, but you’re my attorney. Bernie usually comes in the morning, before lunch. Lunch is at least edible. They get it from McDonald’s, there’s no way anyone can screw up a hamburger and fries. Breakfast isn’t bad, either. But dinner? Look at it,” he said again, and shook his head.

Matthew looked at it.

The fork seemed to be corroding.

But perhaps it had been rusty to begin with.

“Anyway, Bernie comes here, and we discuss my portfolio,” Leeds said. “But it isn’t the same as when I was going there every afternoon at two, two-thirty, it just isn’t the same. I sit there listening to him telling me how Motorola is doing now that they’re supplying telephones to Japanese car makers, and I wonder if I’ll ever make a call from a car telephone again. There’s a telephone in the Caddy, I had it installed after I had a flat out near Ananburg one night, not a garage open, not a phone booth anywhere on Timucuan, I figured the hell with this. Had a phone put in the next morning. Bernie sits there and tells me about car telephones, and I’m wondering if they’ll let me make a last call from the electric chair.”

“You’re not going to the electric chair,” Matthew said.

This would have been a good time to tell him about the deal Patricia Demming had offered, but he held back because his man was talking and he wanted to keep him talking. When they talked, they sometimes came up with something they hadn’t thought of earlier, information that often could blow the prosecution’s case out of the water. Matthew hoped Leeds would come up with that elusive something now. Let him talk, let him ramble, and meanwhile listen hard. Benny Weiss had taught him this. But that was before they’d become such fierce competitors.

“I keep forgetting things,” Leeds said. “From my real life. The routine here becomes a life in itself, you see. So you remember things from this life — wakeup at six, roll call at six-ten, showers at six-fifteen, breakfast at seven, exercise in the yard at eight, and so on — but you start to forget the important things, the things from your real life. I’ve been meaning to tell Jessie for the past three days now that my car is ready. The Caddy. It was supposed to be ready Monday morning, and this is already late Wednesday, three days have gone by. But I keep forgetting to tell her. Somebody’s got to pick it up, either her or Ned. I don’t want it sitting there at the garage, it might get banged up or vandalized. There’s a lot of that stuff going on in Calusa these days, there’s dope everywhere in America, and where there’s dope, there’s crime. Did you ever think it would come to this? Did you ever in a million years imagine an America that could sink so deep into the slime? It makes me ashamed. It makes me want to cry.”

He fell suddenly silent.

It seemed possible that he would, in fact, begin crying in the very next moment.

Keep them talking, Benny Weiss had advised Matthew.

And if they stop talking, prod them.

“I played that voice tape for Stubbs early this morning,” he said. “He told me it wasn’t the voice he’d heard on the telephone the night of the murders. Which confirms that someone else took your boat out. Or at least that someone else called to say he was taking the boat out.”

“Which still doesn’t distance me too very far from the chair, does it?” Leeds said. He was on the edge of tears now. Keep him talking, Matthew thought. Listen for that one sharp note sounding in the mist.

“Who knows where you keep your boat?” he asked.

“Dozens of people.”

“Tell me about each and every one of them.”

“All of our friends know the marina I use,” Leeds said. “Most of them have been on the boat with us. But none of them would set me up for murder.”

“How do you know?”

“A person knows his friends. They’re not his friends if he doesn’t know them.”

“I’ll want a list of their names anyway. Before I leave. All the people who’ve been on the boat or who know where you keep it.”

“Sure,” Leeds said. But there was total despair in his voice; he was thinking this would be a worthless exercise.

“My investigator tells me you can get into your house with a can opener. Correction. Even without a can opener. Were all the entrance doors locked on the night of the murders?”

“I don’t know.”

Again the sound of defeat. They were already strapping him into the chair. A man with a black hood over his head was standing near the wall, his arms folded across his chest, waiting to step into the other room where he would look through a glass panel and throw the switch.

“Do you normally lock the doors before you go to sleep?” Matthew asked.

“Not always. We’re in the country, there’s never been any trouble out there. Besides, Ned sleeps in the guesthouse just down the road, he’d hear anything that…”

“Ned?”

“Jessie’s brother. Our manager. Ned Weaver.”

“Your manager is…?”

“Yes, my brother-in-law. My wife’s maiden name was Weaver. Jessie Weaver. Ned’s been working for us ever since…”

There was a slight pause. Hardly long enough to notice — unless you were listening for that single sharp, piercing note.

“.. last summer,” Leeds said.

Matthew looked at him.

Their eyes met.

What? Matthew thought.

What’s here?

“So you feel it isn’t necessary to lock the doors,” he said. “With your brother-in-law living in the guesthouse.”

“He’s a very big man,” Leeds said.

“How far away is the guesthouse?”

“Down the end of the road.”

“How far is that?”

“Two, three hundred yards.”

“Then… if the doors were unlocked… someone could have got in, isn’t that so? Without Ned hearing them?”

“Well, I suppose so. But you don’t think something like that’s going to happen, you know. Someone breaking into the house…”

“Or just walking in, actually, if the doors were unlocked.”

“Yes, but you don’t think of that out in the country.”

“I suppose not. Mr. Leeds, when you took your car in for service… the Cadillac…”

“Yes?”

“Did you leave them your keys?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Which keys?”

“Well, my key chain.”

“Were your house keys on that chain?”

“Well… come to think of it, yes, I suppose they were.”

“You left your house keys at the garage?”

“Well… yes. I’ve been taking it to the same place for the past God knows how long. I trust those people completely.”

“You trust them with your house keys?”

“I’m sure Jimmy doesn’t leave keys out in the open. I’m sure he’s got this metal box he puts them in. Hanging on the wall. With a lock on it.”

“Jimmy who?”

“Farrell. He owns the garage.”

“What’s the name of the garage?”

“Silvercrest Shell. On the Trail near the Silvercrest Mall.”

“Any other keys on that ring? Beside your car keys and your house keys?”

“Well, the keys to Jessie’s car, too, I guess.”

Matthew looked at him.

“It’s a hard ring to get keys on and off of,” Leeds said.

Matthew kept looking at him.

“Well, it is.”

“So what we’ve got here,” Matthew said, “is a situation where anyone could have taken those keys from the garage…”

“No, I’m sure Jimmy locks them up.”

“But if someone did get hold of them, he could have got into your house even if the doors were locked…”

“Well, yes, I…”

“… and then driven away in your wife’s Maserati.”

“Yes. I suppose so.”

“How many people knew you’d taken your car in for service?”

“I really don’t know. I spoke about it, I guess…”

“To friends?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“I really do want that list, Mr. Leeds. Who else would have known?”

“Well, everyone on the farm. The people who work for me. They’d have known the Caddy was gone. But I don’t think they’d have known where it was. The garage I took it to. They couldn’t have known that.”

“Your boat key wasn’t on that key ring, was it?”

“No, no.”

“I didn’t think it’d be. What have you got? One of these little flotation key chains…?”

“Yes, shaped like a buoy…”

“The kind that comes apart?”

“Yes.”

“So you can put your registration inside it.”

“Yes. Red and white.”

“Mine’s green and white. Where do you keep that key, Mr. Leeds?”

“In my study. At the farm.”

“Where is that? The study?”

“Just to the left of the entrance door. You take two steps down, and you’re in the study.”

“And the key would be where?”

“On a brass key holder fastened to the wall. Alongside the door leading out to the garage. We keep the car keys on it and also the boat keys.”

“Any spares to that boat key?”

“One.”

“Where?”

“At the marina. In case they have to move the boat.”

“And those are the only boat keys? The one on the wall in your study and the one at the marina?”

“Yes.”

“After you took the boat out on the afternoon of the murders… did you put that key back in your study?”

“Yes.”

“Would you know if it’s still there?”

“How could I? I was arrested the next morning.”

“Would Jessica know where to find that key if I asked her?”

“I’m sure she would. It’s right on the wall.”

“Who else knows where you keep that key?”

“You have to understand…”

“Yes?”

“Whenever we invited friends on the boat, they’d come to the farm first. We’d gather there, do you see?”

“Yes?”

“And the last thing I’d do before we left for the marina was take that key off the wall. I’m sure any number of people saw where I kept it. It wasn’t a secret. It was just the key to the boat.” Leeds shrugged. “I mean… you don’t expect something like this to happen.”

“No, you don’t,” Matthew said.

You don’t expect murder to happen, he thought. Only when it happens do the keys to a boat and a house and a red Maserati become important. Only when it happens do you realize that any number of people could have gained entrance to a house as accessible as the Gulf of Mexico. And taken a boat key and a car key from that house. And driven off to the Riverview Marina in the red Maserati Stubbs later saw. Any number of people. Which was the same thing as saying anybody. And when you had anybody, you had nobody.

Matthew sighed heavily.

“Mr. Leeds,” he said, “Patricia Demming came to…”

“Patricia Demming?”

“The State Attorney who’s…”

“Oh, yes.”

“She offered a deal,” Matthew said. “I’m obliged to tell you what the offer was.”

Leeds nodded, said nothing.

“You plead guilty to three counts of murder one…”

“I didn’t kill those men,” Leeds said.

“You plead guilty and the state will consolidate the three indictments and ask for a waiver of the penalty proceeding.”

“What does that mean?”

“They’ll agree to life imprisonment. If the judge goes for it.”

“I didn’t kill those men.”

“You’d be eligible for parole in twenty-five years.”

“I’d be sixty-six years old.”

“You’d be alive.”

“But I didn’t kill those men.”

“What shall I tell her?”

“Tell her to go to hell.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Matthew said. “Thank you.”

From a phone booth outside the Calusa Safety Building, Matthew dialed the State Attorney’s office number from memory and asked for Patricia Demming. It was several moments before her voice came on the line.

“Hi,” she said pleasantly.

“Hello, Patricia,” he said. “I just talked to my client.”

“And?”

“He says to tell you he didn’t kill those men. He doesn’t want your deal.”

“I’m sorry he feels that way,” she said.

She did sound genuinely sorry.

“It’s not what he feels,” Matthew said, “it’s what he knows. He did not kill those men.”

“We think otherwise,” Patricia said.

“Yes, that’s why there are courts of law,” Matthew said.

“Well, fine,” she said, her voice going suddenly harsh. “You prove it in a court of law, okay?”

“You’ve got it backward, Patricia. You’re the one who has to prove…”

“Which I will,” she said. “Goodbye, Matthew.”

There was a click on the line. Matthew looked at his watch. He opened the telephone directory hanging from a plastic-shielded metal cord — miraculously still here in this day and age of pointless vandalism — found the number for Silvercrest Shell, deposited a quarter, and dialed it. The young kid who answered the phone told him that Jimmy Farrell was gone for the day and wouldn’t be back till tomorrow morning. Matthew left his name and said he’d call again.

He looked through the directory again.

He dug into his pocket for another quarter.

He hesitated.

What the hell, he thought, and dialed.

The old man was in the habit of taking a little stroll after dinner. Tradition. Gobble your rice, vegetables, and fish, and then take a little stroll along the levee. Look off to the mountains beyond Saigon. Except that this was Calusa, Florida, and the nearest mountains were in North Carolina. Plenty of water, though. If you walked the block and a half from Little Asia to the Tamiami Trail, and then took a left and followed U.S. 41 where it curved northward past the Memorial Gardens, you suddenly caught a view of Calusa Bay that was enough to make your heart stop dead. Sailboats out there on the water or in the slips at Marina Lou’s, the Sabal Key Causeway stretching out toward the barrier islands and the Gulf, the setting sun staining the sky and the burgeoning massed clouds — breathtaking.

The old man had to die.

Tonight.

“Actually, I was glad you called,” Mai Chim said.

“I’m glad you weren’t busy,” Matthew said.

“Oh, I’m never busy,” she said.

They were sitting at a window table in Marina Lou’s, not four or five blocks from where Trinh Mang Due was walking northward on U.S. 41, his hands behind his back, his head turned to the left as he looked out over the bay, a wistful smile on his face. Matthew and Mai Chim were looking out over this same vista, the short peninsula of the city park in the near distance, the bay beyond festooned with the colors of sunset and busy with evening boat traffic. The sun was just dipping behind the nearest barrier island, man-made Flamingo Key. Within the half hour, darkness would claim the bay and the night.

Matthew was wearing one of his Third World Outfits, the label his partner Frank gave to the assorted cotton trousers and shirts he bought in a shop not far from the house he was renting. Made in Guatemala, or Korea, or Malaysia, or Taiwan, the clothes were casual and lightweight, perfect for the summer heat. They were also loose-fitting and therefore perfect for a man who’d gained ten pounds stuffing his face with pasta in Venice, Florence, and Rome. This morning the scale showed that Matthew had lost two of those excess pounds. He hoped to get down to his fighting weight within the next two weeks. Tonight he had ordered a simple grilled fish. Low in cholesterol, fat, and calories.

Mai Chim was digging into a steak the size of her native country. She was wearing a pink skirt, low white sandals, and a pastel blue blouse cut in a V over her breasts. Her long black hair fell loose on either side of her face. Long silver earrings dangled from her ears. A thick silver bracelet circled her right wrist. She looked very American and very Asian. She also looked very beautiful. And she was eating like a truck driver. Her appetite continued to astonish him. But what astonished him even more was the fact that she was so slender. He wondered if she ate anything at all when she wasn’t with him. He wondered, too, what she’d meant about never being busy. A woman as beautiful as she was?

“It took me a long time to learn how to use a knife and fork,” she said. “I’ve learned pretty well, don’t you think?”

Commenting on her own voracious appetite, making a joke about it. He suddenly wondered if she’d ever gone hungry in Vietnam. Or afterward.

“I’m a pig, I know,” she said cheerfully, and forked another slice of steak into her mouth. Chewing, she said, “I was going to call you, in fact.”

“Oh?” Matthew said. “Why?”

“To teach you some Vietnamese,” she said, and smiled mysteriously.

The old man had been off by only a hair, but it wouldn’t be long before someone got him talking about that license plate he’d seen, got him rambling, and bingo! Someone would make the connection.

Seeing the car hadn’t been part of the plan.

The car was supposed to remain the big secret, pick it up at Kickers, drive it to Little Asia, park it in the shadows under the big pepper trees lining the street, and then go in all yellow and bright to do bloody murder. The car wasn’t meant to be seen. Only the yellow jacket and hat. In and out, slit your throats, good night, boys, sleep tight. Put out your eyes, cut off your cocks, oh what a horrible sight.

But the old man had seen the license plate.

Seen it wrong, as it happened, but seen it nonetheless, close but no cigar. So now the old man had to go. No witness, no license plate, no tracing it back to you know who. Goodbye and good luck, please give my regards to your recently departed countrymen.

There.

Walking past the marina entrance now.

Getting dark out there on the bay.

Wait.

Wait for blackness.

“Do you remember my telling you about diacritical markings?” Mai Chim said.

“Yes. The cedilla and the umlaut.”

“Which, by the way, I looked up. And you were right, that’s what they are.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, you told me. But I thought our marks would be easier to understand if you could see them. Some of them, anyway. So I Xeroxed the Vietnamese alphabet from an old grammar I have. Which is why I was going to call you,” she said, and smiled. “Would you care to have a look?”

On her tongue, the words care to have a look seemed foreign somehow. Just a trifle off the money.

“Sure,” he said.

She put down her fork and knife and reached for the handbag hanging over the back of her chair. She unclasped the bag, took out a folded sheet of paper, unfolded it, said, “I copied it at work,” and handed it to him:

The alphabet seemed foreign, too, just a trifle off, even though the letters were written just as in English. Perhaps the marks accounted for that.

“Of course, this only shows the basic order,” she said. “There are also marks for tonal distinctions. I can draw them for you, if you like, but they would only look like chicken tracks.”

“Hen tracks,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s a very complicated language, I told you. A million marks in it. Well, not that many. But plenty. You can keep that, if you like.”

“Thank you,” he said, and refolded it and slipped it into his pocket.

“For your next visit to Saigon,” she said, and rolled her eyes heavenward to show how remote a possibility this was. She picked up her utensils again, cut another slice of steak, and was raising it to her mouth when she asked with sudden and genuine concern, “Is the fish okay?”

Okay.

The way she said it.

The lilt of it.

A bit strange. A bit foreign. Like everything else about her.

“Only so-so,” Matthew said. “My partner says it’s impossible to get a good fish anywhere in Florida. The boats have to go out too far for it, and by the time they come back in, the fish isn’t really fresh anymore. So speaks the oracle.”

“I never eat fish here,” she said. “In Vietnam, I ate fish all the time, but never here. The fish is not so good here. I think your partner is right.”

“So do I, actually. But please don’t tell him.”

“Do you like him, your partner?”

“Oh, yes. Very much.”

“Is he married?”

“Yes.”

“Happily?”

“Well… let’s say they’re still working on it.”

“Were you happily married?”

“No.”

“Which is why you got divorced.”

“Actually, it was more complicated than that.”

“That means there was another woman.”

“Yes.”

“And is there a woman now? In your life?”

“No one serious.”

“Someone unserious?”

“Just a few women I enjoy seeing.”

She had finished her steak and now she placed her fork and knife horizontally on her plate, the way someone had undoubtedly taught her to do here in America, and sat sipping her beer and looking out over the bay, where the sky had turned a violent purple. In moments, the sun would drop into the sea, and it would be dark. She was silent for what seemed a long time, the color of the sky growing steadily deeper behind her.

“You see,” she said at last, still staring out over the blackening water, “I’ve been wondering why you called.”

“Because I wanted to know you better,” he said.

She nodded.

And was silent again.

And then she turned to him and said, “Does that mean you want to go to bed with me?”

Her gaze demanded honesty.

He risked honesty.

“I guess so,” he said. “Eventually.”

“When is eventually?” she asked. “Tonight? Tomorrow? Next month? Next year?”

“Whenever,” he said. “If ever.”

“And when is that?”

“Only if and when we both want to.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“Then we won’t.”

“And then we’ll never get to know each other better.”

“No, I didn’t say that.”

“I’m Asian,” she said.

“I know.”

“Is that why you want to go to bed with me? Because I’m Asian?”

“I haven’t asked you to go to bed with me,” he said. “I asked you to dinner. And that had nothing to do with your being Asian.”

“Because there are men who want to go to bed with me for that reason alone, you know. The fact that I’m Asian.”

He felt as if he’d been led down a jungle path by a beautiful woman who’d suddenly turned Vietcong, raising her hands high over her head to reveal primed hand grenades tucked under her arms.

He said nothing.

“I hope that isn’t the case with you,” she said.

He still said nothing.

“Because I’ve never been to bed with anyone in my life,” she said, and turned away again as blackness completely devoured the bay.

The old man was standing by the sidewalk railing some ten feet from the street lamp, looking out over the boats in their marina slips. On one of the boats, someone was playing a ukulele. The instrument sounded tinny on the night, something from another time and place, like the old man himself. There were lights on many of the boats. The lights reflected in the black water. There were soft voices on the night. The ukulele kept plinking its notes onto the sticky night air. The old man stood listening in seeming fascination, his head bent. Then, at last, he turned away from the railing and began moving away from the lamppost…

This way, come on.

… his hands behind his back again, head still bent, leaning slightly forward, moving well beyond the marina’s lighted orbit…

Yes, come on.

… coming closer and closer, the street lamp behind him now, the sidewalk ahead of him as black as the night, moving into the blackness of the night, moving into the blackness where the knife waited, where the knife…

Yes!