Ed McBain_Matthew Hope 12 (19 page)

“But he forgot your scarf, is that it?”

“I guess we both did.”

“When did you discover you’d left it on the boat?” I asked.

“When the police wanted to know about it.”

“What time was that?”

“When they came to the house.”

“Were you asleep when they came to the house?”

“Yes.”

“What time was that?”

“Six in the morning.”

“So you’d been asleep…what time did you say you went to bed?”

“I didn’t. It was around eleven-thirty.”

“So you’d had six and a half hours sleep by the time the police came to see you.”

“Yes. Six, six and a half.”

“Didn’t miss the scarf when you got home, huh?” Frank asked.

“I guess not.”

“Didn’t notice you’d left it behind.”

“No.”

“How come?”

“I guess I’d had a little to drink.”

“You told me you were drinking Perrier,” I said.

“I also had a vodka-tonic.”

“When was that?”

“After Brett made his proposal.”

“Thought it was a good proposal, did you?” Frank asked.

“I thought it sounded good, yes. I wanted to check it with Matthew, but it sounded good to me, yes.”

“But you didn’t call Matthew when you got home.”

“It was late.”

“Eleven o’clock.”

“Yes.”

“And you were in bed by eleven-thirty.”

“Yes.”

“How many drinks did you have?” I asked. “On the boat.”

“Just one. Well, maybe a bit more than one. I think Brett freshened it for me. Poured a little more vodka into the glass.”

“You didn’t tell me any of this.”

“I didn’t think it was important.”

“Is there anything else you didn’t tell me?”

“Nothing else. I didn’t kill him. And besides, I thought you guys were my lawyers.”

“We are,” I said.

“Then stop
yelling
at me!”

“Lainie, did you go below at any time last Tuesday night?”

“No.”

“Not the saloon…”

“No.”

“Not the master stateroom…”

“No. I told you. We sat on deck, in the cockpit, till I left the boat.”

“Without your scarf,” Frank said.

“Yes, without my goddamn
scarf
!” she said.

“Did anyone see you leaving the boat?”

“How would I know?”

“Did
you
see anyone?”

“Yes, I saw the man in the booth as I drove out.”

“He says he didn’t see you.”

“Then he must be blind. I drove right by him.”

“See anyone else?”

“People coming out of the restaurant.”

“Did you know any of them?”

“No. I mean, how could I tell? I was just driving around the oval, they were just people.”

“So you drove past the guard booth…”

“Yes.”

“Say anything to the guard?”

“No.”

“He say anything to you?”

“No.”

“Wave at you? Anything like that?”

“No.”

“And then you came around the oval in front of the restaurant…”

“Yes.”

“And saw these people coming out…”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“I drove to the pillars at the club entrance and made a left turn onto Silver…oh, wait a minute.”

We waited.

“That’s right,” she said.

“What’s right?”

“I almost hit this car parked on the side of the road.”

“What road?”

“Silver Creek. To the right of the entrance. I was making a left turn out of the club, and this car was parked just beyond
the stone pillar on the right there. I guess I was cutting the corner too tight. I almost hit it.”

“What kind of car?”

“I don’t know. It was dark.”

“What color?”

“I don’t know. I almost didn’t
see
it. The headlights were off, it was just parked there.”

“Anybody in it?”

“No one.”

“Did you notice the license plate?”

“No. It was all very dark. I started to make the turn and saw the car and realized how close it was. I just yanked the wheel
over and drove on by. I may have yelled something, too, I don’t remember.”

“Like what?”

“Like you
jackass,
you
jerk,
something like that.”

“But if no one was in the car…”

“I know, it was just a reaction.”

“This was at ten-thirty, correct?” Frank asked.

“Yes. Ten-thirty. Yes.”

“Did you see anyone wandering on foot in the parking lot at that time? While you were driving out?”

He was thinking the same thing I was. First, why would anyone park a car just outside the club entrance when there was a parking
lot inside those stone pillars? And next, where was the person who’d left the car there? The Bannermans had heard shots at
eleven-forty that night. If someone had been prowling the lot an hour or so earlier…

“
Did
you see anyone?” I asked.

“Nobody,” Lainie said.

H
e kept remembering what Amberjack had told him about keeping an eye on the weather. Warren didn’t want to get caught out here
on a small craft some thirty miles from shore in case any storm was on the way. Not much traffic out here, just your occasional
fishing boat and now and then a big motor cruiser passing by in the distance. But the way he figured it, all of these boat
people knew more about weather than he did, so as long as there was
anybody
out here, he didn’t feel foolhardy. Minute he saw any boats heading in, he’d be right behind them. Meanwhile, if there was
any danger he expected he’d begin hearing Coast Guard advisories on the weather channels.

A big storm was already raging belowdecks, however, and her name was Toots, who’d come past being irritable and jumpy and
quivery, all of which he’d expected in the twenty-four to thirty-six hours following her last hit on the pipe, whenever that
had been. The symptoms always outlasted the initial big crash every crackhead experienced sooner or later, one time or another.
So she’d come past the inconceivable craving during the first three days, and she’d also come past the insomnia and fatigue
and now he could hear her below, crying hysterically again, today was going to be one fine clambake, Clyde. This was now Tuesday
morning, so assuming she’d scored Thursday night sometime, it was now Crash-Plus-Four-Days and…what? Ten, twelve hours? He’d
tried giving her some breakfast ten minutes ago, she’d knocked the tray out of his hands, spattered eggs and coffee all over
Amberjacks spanking-clean bulkheads and deck. She’d been like this since late last night, these crazy mood swings, fine one
minute, screaming and yelling the next.

Made a man want to start smoking again.

What worried her most was that she’d remain this way forever. Like when she was a little girl and she made a funny face and
her mother warned her she’d freeze that way. She didn’t think she could bear this forever. Last time she’d kicked the habit,
it hadn’t been this bad. Then again, cocaine wasn’t crack, well yes it was, well no it
wasn’t
! Whatever the fuck it was, she could not endure the thought that her present condition might turn out to be something permanent,
she might be trapped eternally on this roller coaster that kept plunging her into hell through flames and then leveled off
onto a grassy plain in a shaded valley before it started its climb again which was when she wanted to scream and scream and
scream.

The last time around, when she was on cocaine but not freebase, she’d done whatever had to be done to get the white powder.
Whatever. Anything. You named it, she would do it. Yessir, whatever you say. You, too, ma’am, this is Tootsie La Cokie, didn’t
you know? I will eat your pussy, suck your cock, take you in my ear, my nose, my armpit, my ass, wherever you want to put
it, whenever you’d like it, I’ll do it if you just give me the candy or the money to buy it.

She was sure he still had the stuff hidden somewhere on the boat.

Thing to do was to get it from him.

Convince him to give it to her.

Any which way he wanted.

The man’s name was Guthrie Lamb.

He was telling me he’d been a famous private detective for more years than I’d been on earth, having started his agency back
in 1952, when he used to operate out of New York City. He had moved down here twenty years ago, which accounted for his longevity
and good health at the age of sixty-something.

He did, in fact, look entirely fit.

I had no way of knowing what he might have looked like when he first put in an appearance as a Famous Detective, to hear him
tell it. But he was still a tall, youthful-looking, wide-shouldered man who, I guessed, was capable of handling himself in
any situation calling for physical exertion. In fact, if ever I ran into my cowboys again, I would not have minded Guthrie
Lamb at my side—particularly since he seemed to be carrying a very large gun in a highly visible shoulder holster. His eyes
were a pale blue, but they appeared deeper against the pristine white of his hair and his eyebrows. He had a wide glittering
smile. I wondered if his teeth were capped.

I had called him early this morning because there was no way on earth I could raise either Warren or Toots on the telephone,
and the last time I’d done my own legwork, I’d got myself shot, thanks. There were three other private detective agencies
in town, none of them any good, and Benny Weiss had recommended Mr. Lamb highly. There were rumors in town that he had changed
his name from Giovanni Lambino or Limbono or Lumbini or something like that, but why this should have been anyone’s business
but his own was quite beyond me. It certainly wasn’t
my
business. My business was finding out if anyone at the Silver Creek Yacht Club had on last Tuesday night noticed a car parked
just beyond the pillar on the right-hand side of the entrance gate.

“What kind of car?” Lamb asked me.

“I don’t know.”

“What color?”

“She couldn’t tell.”

“No light at the gate?”

“She said it was dark.”

“Have you ever been there at night?”

“Yes, but I never noticed.”

“Well, I’ll check it. Usually, if there are pillars, there are lights on top of them.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe one of them was burned out.”

“Maybe.”

“So we’ll see. What time was this supposed to be? When she saw the car.”

“Ten-thirty.”

“Drove through the gate, you say, and was making a left turn…”

“Yes.”

“When she noticed the parked car and swerved away from it.”

“That’s what she told me.”

“Well, let me see who saw what out there. Did we discuss my rates?”

“I’m assuming they’re standard.”

“What’s standard by you?”

“Forty-five an hour plus expenses.”

“I usually get fifty.”

“That’s high.”

“Expertise,” Lamb said.

“I pay Warren Chambers forty-five an hour and he’s the best in the business.”

“I’m better,” Lamb said, and grinned like a shark.

When she called to him from below, her voice was so soft he almost didn’t hear her. The boat was drifting, drifting, he hadn’t
put a hook down, there was nothing to hit out here, nothing to run into, just a huge circle of water wherever you looked.
Faint breeze blowing, a few white-caps out there, fishing boat far out on the horizon to the west, where Corpus Christi, Texas,
was the next stop.

“Warren?”

Almost a whisper.

“Yes?”

“Can you come down here, please?”

He went to the ladder, took a step down, bent, and peered into the boat. She was sitting on the bunk up forward, wrist in
the handcuff fastened to the grab rail on her right, legs over the side of the bunk, ankles crossed. The high-heeled pumps
that matched the short black skirt were on the deck. He went down the ladder.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“That’s okay,” he said.

“I shouldn’t have knocked that tray out of your hands.”

“Well, listen.”

“Really, I hate being this way,” she said, and smiled. “Besides, now I’m hungry.”

“I’ll fix you something,” he said, and went to the stove.

“If you have some cereal, that’ll be good enough.”

“No eggs?”

“I’m not sure I can keep them down.”

“That’s not supposed to be one of the symptoms.”

“It’s the boat rocking.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry I lied to you, Warren.”

“Did you?”

“Well, sure, you know I did. You’re right, I’m hooked. Or
was.
I know I’ll be thanking you for this when it’s all over.”

“No need for that.”

He was standing at the countertop alongside the stove now, shaking cornflakes from their box into a plastic bowl. He poured
milk over them, found a tablespoon in the utensil drawer, put bowl and spoon on a tray and carried it to the bunk.

“Some coffee?” he said. “I can heat it up again.”

“I’d like that,” she said.

He went back to the stove, turned on the gas under the coffeepot. Blue flame licked at its bottom. The boat rocked gently.

“Boy, it’s funny the way this comes in waves,” she said.

“Bit of a chop today,” he agreed, nodding.

“No, I mean the craving for it. You think it’s gone, and then all at once it’s back again.” She shoveled a spoonful of flakes
into her mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. Shifted her weight on the bank. “What’d you do with my stash?” she asked.

“The jumbos I found in your apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Deep-sixed them.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did, Toots.”

“Terrible waste.”

“Not the way I look at it.”

“I’d love one of those rocks right this minute,” she said, and looked at him.

“I can’t help you,” he said. “They’re on the bottom of the ocean.”

“I don’t believe you, Warren.”

“I’m telling you.”

She shifted her weight again. He realized all at once that her legs were bare. She’d taken off her panty hose. He saw them
crumpled against the bulkhead now, a wad of sand-colored nylon.

“I keep wondering where I’d be if I was a vial of crack,” she said. “Did you used to play that when you were a kid, Warren?”