“Nothing’s hanging in the balance for Toyland,” Lainie said. “This is just another product for them. They’ll put it out in time for Christmas, if it catches on, great, if it doesn’t there’ll be another toy next Christmas and another one after that. But this is my future we’re talking about here. If Gladly makes it...”
“I understand, Lainie. But there’s no reason to...”
“No, I don’t think you...”
“...believe Santos will decide for the Tolands. Really. His caution isn’t unusual. There are factors he still has to consider, you know...”
“What factors?”
“Well, aside from deciding whether there was copying...”
“He doesn’t think there was. He said...”
“I know what he said.”
“He said he had to be certain in his own mind that Gladly really was copied.”
“Yes, but I think he knows...”
“How can you know what he...?”
“He dismissed that nonsense about Nettleton copying the eyeglasses, didn’t he?”
“That doesn’t mean he thinks their fucking bear was copied from mine.”
“Well, maybe not yet.”
“Maybe not ever.”
“The point is, Lainie, there’s more to this than whether or not there was just copying.”
“Yeah.”
Picking at her fries disconsolately. As far as she was concerned, Santos had already decided, and the case was lost. One eye on me, the other wandering elsewhere. Dipping a fry in the ketchup on her plate. Fine sheen of perspiration on her tanned face, the New Yorker’s air-conditioning unit had probably come from Pyongyang, too. Lifting the fry to her lips.
“What he’ll be considering in the next week or so...”
“He said the end of the month.”
“Well, he’s shooting for the twenty-ninth at the very latest. What he’ll be considering is whether we’d be likely to prevail on the merits should this thing ever come to trial.”
“Is that a possibility?”
“Oh, sure. He may, in fact, order a trial.”
“There goes Christmas,” Lainie said.
“No, no. If he goes that route, he’d probably ask for an immediate trial. He knows the importance of Christmas, he’s stated that several...”
“How immediate? Any delay would put me out of the running for Christmas. Matthew, you don’t understand how important this is to me.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t,” she insisted, and put down her fork, and looked across the table, her right eye focusing for a moment before it wandered away again. I imagined her as a four-year-old girl enduring her first strabotomy. And then another one a year after that. The failure of both operations. At their first meeting, she’d told me she had cried night after night after night, wanting to be like all the other little girls, and knowing she never would. She seemed ready to begin crying again now. “I know Gladly is a winner,” she said. “And I know her time is now.” Talking about the bear as if it were a real person. “Not next year or the year after that, but now. Why do you think Mattell and Ideal are so interested? Because of my good looks?” She was, in fact, quite beautiful. “They know Gladly’ll sell in the millions. That bear is my future, Matthew. That bear is my life.”
And did begin crying.
I told her that I wasn’t at all convinced Santos had already made his decision. Told her the judge would be considering other things besides the copying. For example, as I’d started to tell her a moment ago, Santos would be considering whether we were likely to succeed on the merits should the case eventually go to trial. Considering, too, whether deciding for the Tolands would cause irreparable harm to Lainie...
“It would only ruin my entire life,” she said, sobbing.
“...or whether money alone could repair your injuries.”
“I wouldn’t take a million dollars...”
“Good, because if you were willing to accept a cash settlement...”
“For Gladly? Never.”
“...there’d be no grounds for enjoining them.”
“I told you no. She’s mine.”
Again sounding as if she were talking about a living human being and not a stuffed animal.
“Good,” I said.
“Yeah, good. What’s so good about it?”
She dried her eyes with a paper napkin. She looked across the table at me. Green eyes shining. Trying to focus. Losing the battle. Right eye wandering. Oddly, I felt like taking her in my arms, comforting her as I would a child.
“Everything’ll be fine,” I said. “Don’t worry. Please.”
She nodded.
On Wednesday morning, the first thing I heard on Channel 8, the local television station, was that Brett Toland had been shot to death aboard his yacht late last night, and that a former employee named Elaine Commins had been charged with his murder and taken into custody early this morning.
2
I hate the sight of women in jailhouse threads.
Even more so than with men, the clothes seem to rob them of all humanity. Lainie Commins was wearing on this Wednesday morning a shapeless blue smock with the words CALUSA COUNTY JAIL stenciled over the breast pocket. White gym socks. Laceless black shoes. No lipstick, no eye shadow. They had confiscated the heart-shaped Victorian ring for safekeeping. Only the eyeglasses were her own. Everything else she had on, right down to her underwear, belonged to the county. Even her tan seemed to have been confiscated by the authorities; under the harsh, overhead fluorescent lights, she looked pale and somehow faded. She hadn’t sent for me, but I was here, and she seemed glad to see me.
“I thought you might need help in finding a good criminal lawyer,” I said.
“I want you to represent me,” she said.
“I wouldn’t advise that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I lost the only murder case I ever tried.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“I would hope not. But...”
“And I’m happy with the way you’ve been handling the copyright case.”
I looked at her.
“Lainie,” I said, “copyright infringement isn’t murder. “You’ve been charged with murder in the first degree, and in Florida...”
“I didn’t murder anyone.”
“...that’s a capital felony.”
“So they told me.”
“Who told you?”
“The detectives who arrested me.”
“When was that?”
“After they took me downtown. Before they started questioning me.”
“Had they informed you of your rights by then?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Had they informed you of your right to a lawyer?”
“Yes. I didn’t think I’d need one. It was all too ridiculous. I thought I’d be out of there in a minute. I don’t even own a gun. That wasn’t my gun. I was on the boat for no more than...”
“You were on the boat?”
“Yes.”
“Last night?”
“Yes. But only for a little while.”
“How short a while?”
“Half an hour? No more than that. I didn’t kill Brett, I didn’t even know he was dead until they came to my house and arrested me. Matthew, I want someone I know and trust to defend me, I want you, Matthew. Please help me. I didn’t murder Brett Toland.”