Could borrow a dented red Subaru from a friend of his, could dress in tropical beige threads made him look like a visiting real estate salesman or a banker come to call, he still looked out of place in this shitty run-down condo where the only tenants were white. So he came cautiously down that long second-floor corridor with the sun hitting the rippled overhang at an angle that cast the plastic’s sickly green color onto the corridor floor and the lower part of the white wall, and he prayed none of the doors along that wall would open, prayed no one would step out to challenge him. He was a black man about to stealthily break and enter a structure or conveyance without consent of the owner or occupant, but he wasn’t a burglar, and he didn’t choose to be mistaken for one.
Warren was carrying in his wallet a laminated card that had been issued in accordance with Chapter 493 of the Florida Statutes, and which gave its recipient the right to investigate and gather information on a great many criminal and noncriminal matters listed in detail in the statute. He took that card from his wallet now, and used it to loid the lock on the door to unit 24, her unit, sliding it deftly between doorjamb and Mickey Mouse spring latch, forcing the latch back until he felt the door give, and then easing himself into the unit and closing the door behind him at once.
His heart was pounding hard.
Sidney Brackett was asking Lainie if it wasn’t true that she had developed the idea for her so-called original bear Gladly while, in fact, she was still working at Toyland, Toyland. Lainie was vehemently denying this. Sitting at the defense table, Brett and Etta Toland sat calmly watching the proceedings, secure in the knowledge that Brackett would impeach my first witness and get this whole damned thing kicked summarily out of court.
Brett was forty-four years old, elegantly tailored in a blue blazer and gray slacks, white shirt open at the throat, no tie, shoes invisible under the table — but I guessed they were tasseled loafers — suntanned face exploiting eyes as blue as glare ice, thick blond hair casually styled. He sat holding his wife’s left hand in his own right hand. Together, they presented the very image of solidarity against this impostor named Lainie Commins.
In Calusa society, such as it was, they were familiarly known as Lord and Lady Toland, though neither was either British or aristocratic. Host and hostess supreme — I remembered an outdoor party where Japanese lanterns festooned the lawn of their multimillion-dollar beachfront home, and goldfish swam in tiny bowls at the more than fifty outdoor tables, and the then governor of the state of Florida was in attendance — invitations to their extravaganzas were sought like tickets to the Super Bowl, though I’d personally felt somewhat uncomfortable in such resplendent digs, perhaps because I’d grown up poor in Chicago; maybe a person can never put poverty behind him.
Etta Toland...
Ett and Brett, they were called by close friends who cherished the Tolands, and their Fatback Key mansion, and their parties, and their tennis court and swimming pool, and their ninety-four-foot yawl named Toy Boat, and their private jet that didn’t have a name though both jet and yacht had painted respectively on fuselage and transom the logo of their toy company, two dolls sitting with legs extended and heads together, the boy with blond hair, the girl with black hair, each smiling radiantly. This same logo was on the little round tag attached to the second teddy bear on Matthew’s table, little boy and girl with TOYLAND in a semicircle above their heads, and another TOYLAND in a semicircle below their legs, TOYLAND, TOYLAND, for Toland, Toland, here now to defend themselves against Lainie Commins’s charges of copyright and trademark infringement.
Thirty-seven-year-old Etta had hair as black as that on the little grinning girl-doll in the company logo, worn straight and sleek and to the shoulders. High sculpted cheekbones, very dark almond-shaped eyes, and a generous mouth glossed with blood-red lipstick collaborated with the straight, lustrous, jet-black hair to give her a somewhat Oriental appearance, although her maiden name was Henrietta Becherer, and her forebears were German — a fact that didn’t stop competitors and/or detractors from labeling her “The Dragon Lady.” Rumor had it that Brett had met her at a toy fair in Frankfurt, where she’d been pitching at the Gebrüder Hermann booth. On this hot Tuesday morning in September, she looked cool, self-possessed, businesslike and yet utterly feminine in a glen-plaid silk suit the color of twilight, worn with a dusky blue silk shirt open at the throat over a medallion print scarf. Above the left hand clutched in her husband’s right, a gold cuff link showed where her jacket sleeve ended.
“Do you remember which toys you were working on during your employment?” Brackett asked.
“Do you mean at Toyland?”
“Yes. That was... how long did you say you’d worked there, Miss Commins?”
“I left them in January. I’d been working there for three years by then.”
“This past January?”
“Yes.”
“Worked for them for three years.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember which toys you designed for them during those three years?”
“I remember all of them.”
“Wasn’t the idea for Gladly suggested to you...?”
“No, it was not.”
“Your Honor, may I finish my question?”
“Yes, go ahead. Please listen to the complete question before answering, Miss Commins.”
“I thought he was finished, “Your Honor.”
“Let’s just get on with it,” Santos said impatiently.
“Isn’t it true that the idea for Gladly was suggested to you by Mr. Toland...?”
“No, that isn’t true.”
“Miss Commins, let him finish, please.”
“Suggested to you by Mr. Toland at a meeting one afternoon during the month of September last year?”
“No.”
“While you were still in the employ of...?”
“No.”
“...Toyland, Toyland, isn’t that true, Miss Commins?”
“No, it is not true.”
“Isn’t it true that this original idea of yours was, in fact, Mr. Toland’s?”
“No.”
“Didn’t Mr. Toland ask you to work up some sketches on the idea?”
“No.”
“Aren’t the sketches you showed to the court identical to the sketches you made and delivered to Mr. Toland several weeks after that September meeting?”
“No. I made those sketches this past April. In my studio on North Apple Street.”
“Oh yes, I’m sure you did.”
“Objection,” I said.
“Sustained. We can do without the editorials, Mr. Brackett.”
“No further questions,” Brackett said.
Warren debated opening the door again, ramming a toothpick into the keyway, snapping it off close to the lock. Anyone trying to unlock the door from the outside would try to shove a key in, meet resistance, make a hell of a clicking racket pushing against the broken-off wood. Great little burglar alarm for anybody inside who shouldn’t be in there. Trouble was, she knew the toothpick trick as well as he did, she’d know immediately there was somebody in her digs. He’d be lucky she didn’t pull a piece, blow off the lock, and then shoot at anything that moved, blowing off his head in the bargain.
He locked the door.
Looked around.
The place was dim. White metal blinds drawn against the sun at the far end of the room. Sofa against what was apparently a window wall, sunlight seeping around the edges of the blinds. Sofa upholstered in a white fabric with great big red what looked like hibiscus blossoms printed on it. His eyes were getting accustomed to the gloom. The place looked a mess. Clothes strewn all over the floor, empty soda pop bottles and cans, cigarette butts brimming in ashtrays — he hadn’t known she’d started smoking again, a bad sign. He wondered if the place always looked like a shithouse, or was it just now? On the street outside, he heard a passing automobile. And another. He waited in the semidark stillness of the one room. Just that single window in the entire place, at the far end, the only source of light, and it covered with a blind. Figured the sofa had to open into a bed, else where was she sleeping?