He heard footsteps outside on the covered walkway that led past the apartments. High heels clicking. Lady must’ve got all dolled up to go do her marketing, he wondered where she was shopping these days.
Footfalls stopped just outside the door.
She was home.
He picked up the bottle, gently lifted the chair out of the way.
Set it down well clear of the door.
Key sliding into the keyway now.
Uncapped the bottle.
Reached into his pocket.
Lock turning, tumblers falling.
He backed against the wall to the side of the door.
Braced himself.
The door opened. She closed it behind her. Locked it. Was reaching for the light switch...
“Hello, Toots,” he said.
“Warren?” she said, turning toward him, and he clamped the chloroform-soaked pad over her face.
3
She opened her eyes.
The room was pitching and rolling, took her a minute to realize she was on a boat, and that her right wrist was handcuffed to something bolted to the wall or the bulkhead or whatever they called it. It was dark in the V-shaped space where she was lying on her back, she figured she was up front in the boat, the space coming to a kind of a point this way. Some sort of foam mattress under her, this had to be a sleeping compartment.
She remembered Warren all at once, standing there in the dark inside the door to her apartment and she called his name sharply — “Warren?” — like an angry mother or older sister screaming for a rotten kid to get here right this fucking minute if he knew what was good for him, handcuffing her to the wall this way. But nobody came, and all at once she wondered if it was, in fact, Warren driving the boat and not some fisherman he’d hired to take her to Mexico and sell her into prostitution.
The boat was moving, that was for sure, so there had to be someone up there, or out there, or wherever the steering wheel was, if that’s what you called it, she hadn’t been on too many boats in her lifetime. She brought her left wrist close to her face in the dark and looked at the luminous dial of her watch, ten minutes past two, where the hell were they?
“Warren?” she called again, same imperious Get-Your-Ass-in-Here tone, and this time she heard a sound from what she guessed was the back of the boat, the rear, the aft, whatever, and she heard footfalls coming down what she supposed were steps, a ladder, and then through the boat toward where she was sitting up now, short skirt hiked kind of high on her legs, still wearing all her clothes, she noticed, including her high-heeled shoes.
A light snapped on.
She squinted her eyes against it.
She could now see that a low wall divided the sleeping area from what appeared to be a dining area with leatherette banquettes around a Formica-topped table, and then another low wall separated this area from the food preparation area — well, a small kitchen actually, well, a galley, she guessed you called it. So what this appeared to be was a single somewhat smallish section of the boat, what you might call a cabin, she supposed, divided by these very low walls, these bulkheads, and through the cabin came Warren, waltzing on over and ducking his head because of the low ceiling, or overhead, she hated boats.
“Okay, what is this?” she asked.
“What is what?”
“Why am I chained to the wall? Where’d you get the hardware?” she asked, rattling the handcuff on her wrist.
“St. Louis P.D.”
“You still got the key?”
“Yes, I’ve...”
“Then unlock it,” she said, and shook her wrist again.
“Sorry, Toots.”
“Well, first we’ve got the B&E,” she said, “I figure that for a good fifteen years. And then we’ve got the kidnapping... ”
“False imprisonment,” he said.
“Thank you. Which should add another five to your tab. So how about unlocking these cuffs right this fucking minute and turning this barge around and taking me back home, and we’ll forget the whole thing, okay?”
“No,” he said. “Sorry.”
“I ask again, Warren. What is this?”
“It’s cold turkey,” Warren said.
At nine o’clock that Friday morning, the fifteenth day of September, the grand jury listened to the witnesses Pete Folger had invited to testify on behalf of the people of the state of Florida. At six minutes before noon, the jurors returned a true bill signed by the jury foreman and requesting the state attorney to file an indictment for first-degree murder.
Folger called me in my office ten minutes later. He told me he’d got the true bill he was seeking, and said he was now going to ask that bail be denied my client, and that she be taken into custody. He also mentioned that as a matter of courtesy he would have someone in his office type up a list of the witnesses who’d testified today, in the hope that I would talk to them myself, as soon as possible, and then be willing to discuss a deal that would save his office a lot of time and the state a huge electricity bill.
I called Lainie to tell her the bad news and to advise that I’d be requesting bail be continued as set...
“Do you think it will be?”
“Yes, I feel certain it will.”
“Good, because I’ve been invited to a party,” she said. “All at once, I’m a celebrity.”
“Don’t say a word about the case.”
“Of course not.”
“They’ll want to know. Just tell them your lawyer says you can’t discuss anything about it. If they persist, walk away.”
“I will. Thank you, Matthew.”
“The state attorney’s already mentioned a deal. I think that’s a good sign.”
“Why do we need a deal?” she asked.
“We don’t.”
“I didn’t kill him,” she said.
“I know you didn’t.”
“Do you know?”
“Yes, I do. Where’s your party?”
“On the Rosenberg yacht,” she said.
“Small world,” I said.
She had heard him banging around in the galley as she lay on the foam mattress that had no sheet on it, trying to keep her skirt tucked around her legs, everything feeling sticky with salt, she hated boats, her right arm extended uncomfortably behind her head, the wrist handcuffed to what she now realized was some sort of stainless-steel grab rail bolted to the bulkhead. When she sat up, she could see him standing at the small stove on the port side of the boat, to the left of the ladder leading below. Cooking smells filled the vessel.
He finally brought in some scrambled eggs and browned sausage and whole-wheat toast and coffee, carrying everything in on a tray which he put down on the berth in front of her.
The first thing she said was, “Who’s driving this thing?”
“We’re drifting.”
“Won’t we run into something?”
“We’re thirty miles out. There’s nothing anywhere near us.”
“Take off the cuff.”
“No,” he said.
“How can I eat with my hand chained to the wall?”
“Use your left hand. Or I can feed you if you like.”
“I don’t need your help,” she said, and picked up the fork with her left hand and began eating, sitting with her legs crossed Indian fashion on the berth. He watched her.