“Who says?”
“Lainie says.”
“Lainie killed him.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No. The cassette was here in this house at ten minutes to eleven. Lainie never had it in her possession. Eight days after the murder, I found it on the boat. You just told me you never went back to the boat. So how...?”
“I also told you Bobby took the cassette with him when he left here that night.”
“I don’t think so, Etta. I think you carried that cassette to the boat. I don’t know why you did that. Maybe you’d like to tell me.”
“Please, this is absurd.”
“No, Etta. I think you went to the boat to confront your husband. I think you...”
“I think you should leave.”
“I have a witness who saw you,” I said.
She looked at me.
“Going aboard at a quarter past eleven.”
She kept looking at me.
“Do I have to get a court order for a lineup?” I asked.
And suddenly she was weeping.
The first thing Juan saw was her blond hair.
Squinting through the torrential rain, barely able to see the boat’s running lights, he clung fiercely to the wheel and yelled again for Luis to bring him a fucking poncho. White fisherman’s shirt plastered to his big barrel chest now, pistol tucked into the waistband of his soaking-wet chinos, he yelled “Luis!” again, and saw the blond head coming up from below.
Warren was sliding open the bathroom window.
Juan’s mouth fell open.
Truly fell open.
He watched her coming up from below, slow languid glide up the ladder, tight black skirt and black high-heeled shoes, wrinkled yellow blouse, where the hell had she come from?
Warren was crawling out onto the narrow deck outside the window. Rain beating down everywhere around him. Gripping the stainless-steel grab rail as he ducked low and crawled back toward the wheel.
“How you doin, man?” Toots said in the sultriest voice she could muster, considering that she could see the outline of the nine-millimeter gun where the guy’s shirt was plastered to his belly. Big Glock on a big bearded guy who could tear her in half even without the piece. She wanted that gun. She wanted the eight keys of cocaine. That was the only thing on her mind right now. Take the guy out, get hold of the gun, find the coke.
He was turned toward her now, away from the wheel. Never mind the wheel, never mind the boat, or the storm or anything but the beautiful blonde slithering toward him through the rain like some kind of wet sea serpent, Come to me, baby.
Warren was coming to him, too, baby.
But Toots kept her eye on Juanito here, sidling toward him, not giving him the slightest hint that Warren was about to drop in uninvited, licking her lips instead, narrowing her eyes like some kind of screen siren of the thirties, Sí, come to me, querido, Warren almost in place, lust and greed and sheer joyous amazement at his good fortune all shining together in Juanito’s eyes as he lurched toward her through the driving rain. A moment too late, he realized that someone had dropped into the cockpit behind him. He was starting to turn when Warren’s clenched fist smashed a hammerblow to the base of his skull. Stunned, stumbling forward, belatedly realizing he’d been tricked, he grabbed for Toots and she said, “Sí, muchacho,” and took him into her embrace and brought her knee up into his groin.
He went for the nine.
Doubled over in pain, yelping in Spanish, he fumbled under the wet shirt for the stock of the gun, but Warren was on him now, grabbing him in a choke hold he’d learned on the St. Louis P.D., dragging him down to the deck, and then releasing him suddenly, kicking him unceremoniously in the head, and then kicking him once again for good measure. Juan was out of it.
Toots knelt and yanked the nine from his belt.
“Good,” Warren said.
“Where’d they stash the shit?” Toots asked, and leveled the gun at him.
Skye Bannister himself, the elected state attorney for the Twelfth Judicial District of the State of Florida, was present at the deposition I took at ten o’clock that Thursday night in my office on Heron Street. Also there were Assistant State Attorney Peter Folger, my partner Frank Summerville, and Sidney Brackett, the very same copyright attorney who was defending the infringement case for the Tolands. Why she had called him, rather than a criminal lawyer, was beyond me. But she was here to confess — or so she’d led me to believe — so perhaps she just wanted to get it over and done with.
Skye Bannister does not like me, nor does he like the fact that I am romantically involved with one of his best prosecutors. What Skye does like is the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, and there are frequent recurring rumors that he will run for that office in the next election, or the one after that, or the one after that. Meanwhile, he is still here, and he is still a blond blue-eyed pain in the ass who looks a lot like Dan Quayle. Given that Brackett looked like a pudgier Newt Gingrich and Folger a skinnier Phil Gramm, all we needed was a video technician who looked like Bob Dole, but unfortunately the technician was a woman, and she looked like a beautiful redhead in her twenties who was pissed off because she’d been called at home while she was watching television.
Etta Toland kept weeping intermittently as she was sworn in. I led her swiftly through the preliminaries of identifying herself, asked her to tell me where she lived, asked if she and I hadn’t had a lengthy conversation at that same address earlier tonight, and then asked if she’d be willing to repeat for me and for the camera — in the presence of her attorney and the gentlemen from the State Attorney’s Office — essentially what she’d told me earlier. She said she had no objections.
Brackett sighed.
Etta dabbed at her eyes.
She had changed her clothes before we’d left the house on Fatback, and was wearing now a pair of simple tailored slacks, a beige blouse to match, and low-heeled pumps. Her black hair was combed sleek and straight to her shoulders. Her eyes, wet with tears, looked luminous and large. The redhead looked at her watch. We began.
Q: To begin with, can you tell me whether or not you were present when your husband called Lainie Commins and asked her to meet him on your boat?
A: I was.
Q: What time was it that he called her?
A: At about nine o’clock.
Q: Did he call from the house?
A: Yes.
Q: In an earlier deposition, you said that he’d called her from the boat. Are you revising that now?
A: He called her from the house.
Q: Did you have opportunity to overhear that conversation?
A: I heard what he said to her.
Q: And what was that?
A: He told her he wanted to discuss a settlement. Said he didn’t want to drag lawyers in just yet. Wanted to discuss this face-to-face, just the two of them. But not on the phone. He said he wasn’t going to compromise her case at all, this wasn’t a trick.
Q: Did he say he was already on the boat?
A: Yes.
Q: Then he was lying.
A: Yes. He wanted to lend urgency to it. Wanted to make it seem he was already there waiting, eager to make a deal. She agreed to meet him, said it would take her an hour or so to get there.
Q: You didn’t hear her say that, did you?
A: No. Brett repeated it to me. Before he left the house.
Q: What time did he leave the house?
A: A few minutes after the phone call. Nine-fifteen? Thereabouts.
Q: How long does it take from your house on Fatback to the Silver Creek Yacht Club?
A: Ten, fifteen minutes. Depending on traffic.
Q: So he would have been there no later than... well... say, nine-thirty?