“Well, yes.”
Chopsticks moving in a rhythmic flow from platter to mouth, grains of fried rice falling back onto the pepper steak. A gulp of tea. Food was of prime importance here, never mind the incriminating tape he had turned over to his boss. Never mind that, technically, he was an accomplice in the crime of extortion in that he had suggested how the tape might be used.
“Did Brett look at the tape then and there?”
“No”
“When did he look at it, would you know?”
“I have no idea.”
According to Lainie, Brett had called her at nine that night, to invite her to the boat to discuss a settlement. The so-called settlement had later turned into a blackmail attempt...
——And warned me that unless I dropped the infringement suit, all of kiddieland would learn about that tape.
——And out the window goes your teddy bear.
——No. Out the window goes my life.
...which was good enough reason to commit murder.
“By the way...”
Shoveling pepper steak into his mouth.
“...I didn’t see Brett again after I left his office.”
“What time was that?”
“Three o’clock. And I can tell you exactly where I was that night. In case that’s of interest to you.”
“Just as a matter of curiosity,” I said.
“Just as a matter of curiosity, I was in bed with a woman named Sheila Lockhart in her condo on Whisper Key. She’s free, white, and twenty-one, and she has nothing to hide. We were together all night long, ask her. I left the condo at eight the next morning.”
“What were you wearing?”
“What?”
“What were you wearing, Mr. Diaz.”
“Just what I’m wearing now, with a different shirt.”
“I suppose she’ll confirm that, too.”
“Ask her,” Bobby said, and shrugged. “Waitress,” he said, and signaled to a pretty little Chinese girl in a green silk Suzie Wong dress slit to her thigh. “Could I get some more hot tea, please?”
The waitress scurried off.
We sat silently for a moment.
“What deal did you make, Bobby?”
“Deal? What deal?”
“That’s my question.”
“I didn’t make any deal.”
“You told me yesterday that the bear design was yours...”
“You keep getting that mixed up.”
“Was that the deal? You show Brett how to solve all his problems...”
“Hey, all I did was hand him a tape.”
“...and in return, he gives you credit for the bear’s design? Was that it?”
The waitress was back with his tea.
Bobby poured himself a fresh cup.
Drank.
Peered at me over the cup he was holding in both hands.
“I don’t need credit for anything anybody else designed,” he said. “I have enough credits of my own.”
“Then what were you looking for? Money?”
“I’ve been working for Toyland for almost fifteen years,” he said. “If I could help the Tolands in any way...”
“Including extortion?”
“Come on, what extortion? Besides, I didn’t even know what his reaction was going to be, you want the truth.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I told him Lainie was on that tape. For all I know, he might have been offended.”
“I still don’t know what...”
“I didn’t know how he’d take it. I didn’t know whether something was still going on between them.”
I looked at him.
“Whether they still had a thing going, you know?” he said.
One of the men was talking in English now, just outside the bathroom door. She guessed Warren was sitting on the lounge diagonally across from the bathroom. She knew it was just a matter of time before someone had to pee. She had no idea what they would do when they discovered the bathroom door was locked.
“Where are we headed?”
Warren’s voice.
“Well, señor, you don nee to know that, do you?”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do, señor. Because people will be contacting me, and I’ll have to give them my location. This isn’t my boat. The owner will be calling. On the radio.”
“Then we will ha to break the radio.”
“Then the owner will call the Coast Guard. He loves this boat.”
“Then you will juss ha to lie to him.”
They argued back and forth, Warren trying to find out where they were taking the boat, the man stating over and over again that if the owner of the boat happened to radio, Warren would just have to tell him he was sitting in the water, drifting, the way he’d been when they boarded an hour or so ago. She gathered they had tied Warren’s hands and feet — he asked the man once to at least untie his feet, he wasn’t about to go jumping overboard — and then dragged him down below here and tossed him on the lounge. Well, she guessed the lounge. That was where his voice seemed to be coming from. The other man’s voice came and went, back and forth, fading, rising, as if he were alternately pacing and then either leaning against the sink or sitting momentarily on one of the banquettes opposite the lounge, or even leaning against the bathroom door as he had not a moment ago, the door creaking against his weight, she’d backed away startled.
She kept wondering if she should slide open the window above the sink, remove the screen, and climb out onto the narrow deck that ran the full length of the boat, fore and aft. The deck outside the bathroom window was what, a foot wide? Broadening to some three feet or so up front. She could step out the window and move toward the rear of the boat, get to the steering wheel, clobber him with her high-heeled shoe, whatever. But the second man had to be up there, didn’t he? Driving the boat? This wasn’t the fucking Queen Mary, this was a little thirty-foot boat you could see from front to back of it in a single glance. The wheel was immediately aft of the bathroom. He’d hear her sliding open the window. Hear her taking off the screen. Be watching for her the minute she climbed through onto the deck.
But what if someone wanted to use the bathroom first?
Only in books and movies did nobody ever have to pee.
She came walking up North Apple with her head bent, studying the leaf-covered sidewalk ahead of her. She was wearing a short white beach coat over a green tank top swimsuit and white sandals. A white tote was slung over her shoulder. It jostled her right hip as she came steadily toward where I was waiting outside her house. I had not called ahead. I wanted to surprise her.
Still not seeing me, she stopped on the sidewalk and dug into the tote for her keys, and then, raising her head as she started toward the house again, spotted me standing at the curb in my seersucker suit. She hesitated only a moment, and then came toward me.
“Hello, Matthew,” she said.
“Lainie.”
“I was at the beach.”
“Your neighbor told me.”
“Such a lovely day.”
As she unlocked the door, I noticed that she hadn’t worn the Victorian ring to the beach. We went into the house where first she put down the tote and took off the beach coat, and then checked her answering machine for messages.
“Lainie,” I said, “we have to talk.”
“My, so serious,” she said. “I’m all sandy. May I shower first?”
“I’d rather we...”
But she was already sliding open one of the glass doors that led to the back of the house where a small patio gathered dappled sunlight in a clearing under the dense overhead growth. An outdoor shower was set up at one end of the patio. It consisted of a simple wooden stall with a plastic curtain hanging from a rod. The curtain was translucent, patterned with great big white daisies, pulled back now to reveal shower head and knobs on one wall, soap dish below them. A white bath towel rested on a painted blue stool just to the left of the stall. Lainie reached in, turned on the cold water, fiddled with the hot water knob till the mix suited her, and then kicked off her sandals, stepped into the stall, and pulled the plastic curtain closed behind her. I could see her feet below the bottom of the curtain. The green bathing suit dropped to the floor of the stall. Everything behind the daisy-splashed curtain was a blur of flesh-colored movement.