“Watched her as she got out of the car...”
“Yes.”
“What’d she do then?”
“Went to the walkway along the dock, started looking for the Toland boat. Toy Boat, she’s called.”
“You were watching Ms. Commins all this time?”
“Watching her.”
“Did she find the boat?”
“She found it. Stopped at the gangway, looked up at the boat, then yelled out ‘Hello?’ Like a question, you know. Hello? When she didn’t see anybody on deck.”
“You could see all this from the booth?”
“I could.”
“How far away from the boat were you?”
“Fifty, sixty feet?”
“Light on in the booth, dark outside, but you could see...”
“There were lights along the dockside walk. And in the saloon. I could see her plain as day.”
“But you didn’t notice whether she was wearing slacks or a skirt.”
“Didn’t notice that, no. Not a leg man, myself,” he said, and smiled. I smiled, too. So did Andrew.
“What happened then?”
“She yelled out his name. Mr. Toland’s. Like a question again. Brett? And he came up out of the saloon and she went aboard.”
“Then what?”
“Don’t know. Soon as I saw she was expected, I went back to my own business.”
“Which was what?”
“Watching television. I have a little Sony in the booth, I watch television when it’s slow.”
“What were you watching?”
“Dateline.”
“This was now what time?”
“Oh, ten after ten. A quarter past?”
“Did you see Ms. Commins when she left the boat?”
“No, I did not.”
“You wouldn’t know whether Dateline was still on when she left the boat, would you?”
“Goes off at eleven, it’s an hour-long show. Dining room closes at eleven-thirty, which is when I go home. Night watchman comes on then.”
“Does he sit in the booth, too?”
“No, he patrols the docks, the dining room, the whole area. There’s no traffic after the dining room closes.”
“You didn’t happen to see Ms. Commins coming off the boat at about ten-thirty?”
“No, I did not.”
“Didn’t happen to see her driving out of the parking lot a few minutes after that?”
“No, I did not.”
“How come? You were sitting right there in the booth...”
“I didn’t see nobody come off that boat at ten-thirty,” Harrod said. “And I didn’t see the white Geo leaving the lot at that time, neither.”
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.
“Thank you, Mr. Harrod,” I said. “We appreciate your time.”
“Hello, you’ve reached Warren Chambers Investigations. I’ll be out of town for the next week or so, but if you leave a message I’ll get back to you as soon as I return.”
No clue as to when Warren had recorded the message.
Same message on the machine at his home number.
I tried Toots again.
“Hello, I’m away from the phone just now, but if you’ll leave a message at the beep I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks. Bye.”
Which meant that Andrew and I had to keep our four o’clock appointment with a tape recorder and a man named Charles Werner.
When you’re a member of the police force, you see all kinds of things, people doing all kinds of things. You answer a Family Dispute call, you go in, find a man in his undershorts, woman wearing nothing but panties, man yelling she threw hot grits on his head, woman yelling he’s full of shit, you see all kinds of things. It’s like a police officer isn’t a human being anymore the minute he puts on the uniform. He becomes just the uniform, nothing inside it. Woman ain’t ashamed to be seen wearing only her panties, big fat woman with breasts hanging down to her navel, you aren’t human to her, you’re just the Man come to see to this little dispute here, you’re just an anonymous part of the system, not a human being at all, just the Man.
You see a dead person laying in his own blood in the street, people screaming and crying all around him, you tell them to back off, go home, ain’t nothing to see here, let’s go, let’s break it up now, you’re not a human being same as the ones screaming and yelling, you’re just the Man. And you’re not supposed to be affected by the blood underfoot swarming with flies, or the brain matter spattered all over the fender of the car, or the fact that the kid laying there with his skull open is only fourteen years old, you’re the Man come to set it all straight.
On Amberjack’s boat here in the middle of the Gulf, Warren Chambers was the Man again. The Man come to see about this little matter of Toots Kiley’s addiction, the Man come to set it all straight. So it didn’t matter he had to take the handcuffs off and lead her to the head and stand outside the door where he could hear her peeing behind it. There was no more embarrassment here than there’d been with the fat lady in her panties, he was just the Man here to settle this thing, the Man here to get her sober again. Wasn’t anybody behind that door pissing, wasn’t anybody outside here listening. The lady in there was invisible, and the Man outside here was anonymous.
“I still don’t know how to flush this fucking thing,” Toots said from behind the door.
“You finished in there?”
“I’m finished.”
“I’ll show you again. Unlock the door.”
She unlocked the door. Stood by the sink in the small compartment, washing her hands while he demonstrated the use of the flush yet another time, not that she seemed too interested in learning about it. The thing wasn’t working properly, anyway, he’d never been on a goddamn boat that had a toilet worth a damn. He had to run the pump over and over again till he finally got water in the bowl. Toots dried her hands on a paper towel, and was about to toss it in the toilet when he gave her a look would kill a charging rhino. She wadded the towel and dropped it in the sink. He picked it up, opened the door under the sink, tossed the towel into a metal basket fastened to the inside of the door, closed the door again, and took the handcuffs from the pocket of his windbreaker.
“Come on,” she said, “we don’t need those.”
“I don’t want you hitting me upside the head,” he said.
“What good would that do? I don’t know how to run a boat.”
“Even so.”
“Come on, Warr. I’m not a desperado.”
“Not yet.”
“I’m not hooked. You’re making a mistake. You see me clawing at the walls?”
“Bulkheads.”
“You see me?”
“That’s not what happens, Toots.”
“That crack you found, somebody was trying to make me look bad, that’s all.”
“Sure.”
“Come on, let me go upstairs, get some air. You keep me chained to the wall like an animal I’m liable to go crazy.”
“I don’t want you jumping overboard.”
“Why would I do that?”
“You’ve kicked it before, Toots. You know exactly what you’re liable to do.”
“I can’t swim. Why would I jump overboard?”
“Gets too bad.”
“It’s not going to get bad. How many times do I have to tell you I’m...”
“How do you feel now?”
“Terrific. How do I look?”
She put her hands on her hips, lifted her chin like a model, turned to him in profile, took in a deep breath. She was wearing the same short black skirt she’d had on when he’d snatched her from the condo on Thursday night, wrinkled now, that and the thin yellow blouse, also wrinkled, her legs bare, the high-heeled black shoes up forward where she was handcuffed to the wall when she wasn’t complaining about the toilet facilities.