Ed McBain_Matthew Hope 12 (21 page)

Rolling the heads between his fingers the way Queeg rolled the stainless-steel marbles in
The Caine Mutiny
(but reforming smokers can be forgiven their little physical tics), Brett says that he suddenly remembered a hymn they used
to sing in church when he was a Baptist growing up in Overall Patches, Tennessee…

“Did he actually say that?”

“No, no. I don’t know
where
he was from in Tennessee. I just made that up.”

“But you’re not making up the rest of this, are you?”

“Of course not. I’m telling it just the way I remember it.”

The way
Brett
remembers it in that meeting last year is that one of the lines in the hymn was either “Gladly the cross I’d bear” or “Gladly
the cross I’ll bear,” either one of which referred to joyously carrying the cross for Jesus. It doesn’t matter what the line
actually was, he says, it’s an old hymn in public domain. The only thing that matters so far as Toyland is concerned was that
all the kids thought there was actually a cross-eyed bear named Gladly.

“What I’d like to do,” Brett says, “is come up with a cross-eyed teddy bear.”

Sucking on the mint, Bobby looks at him.

“A teddy bear with crossed eyes, okay?” Brett says.

“O-kay,” Bobby says slowly and skeptically.

“Which, when you put eyeglasses on him, the eyes get uncrossed.”

Bobby is beginning to get it.

“We tell the kids to kiss the bear on the nose and put the glasses on him, and all at once the bear’s eyes are straight,”
Brett says.

“How do we do that?” Bobby asks.

“I don’t know how we do it. Am I a designer? We have this cuddly little bear who happens to have a handicap…”

“Visually challenged,” Bobby says.

“Strabismally challenged,” Brett says, nodding. “It’s called strabismus. When you’re cockeyed.”

“Must be millions of kids in America who have to wear glasses,” Bobby says, sucking pensively on the mint now, beginning to
recognize the possibilities inherent in Brett’s brainstorm.

“And who
hate
wearing glasses,” Brett says. “This way we give them an
incentive
to wear glasses. Because they can see what the glasses do for the bear. The glasses
fix
the bear’s eyes.”

“I think it’s terrific,” Bobby says. “We’ll get endorsements from every optometry association in the world.”

“Who do we get to design her?”

“Lainie,” they both say at once.

Brett reaches for his phone.

Lainie has worn to work, on this insufferably hot day in September, a very short green mini, a darker green T-shirt with no
bra, strappy green sandals to match. The heart-shaped ring is on her right pinky. She is bare-legged, and her blond hair is
massed on top of her head, held up and away from her neck with a green plastic comb. She looks sticky and sweaty and somehow
desirable…

“Well, she’s a very sexy girl, you know,” Bobby says now.

…and vulnerable, her wandering eye giving her a slightly dazed appearance. Bobby is fearful at first that her own affliction
might cause her to bridle at the notion of a bear similarly handicapped, but, no, she takes to the idea at once, expanding
upon it, even making a few on-the-spot sketches of what the bear might look like with and without glasses.

“Does Toyland’s finished bear look anything like those first sketches she made?”

“I don’t remember what those sketches looked like.”

“Do you recall exactly how Brett proposed the idea to her?”

“He told her essentially what he’d told me.”

“Do you know exactly what her response was?”

“I told you. She was very enthusiastic.”

“Yes, but her exact words.”

“I don’t remember.”

There seemed to be a lot of things Bobby Diaz didn’t remember. I wondered if he was related to Rosa Lopez, who claimed she’d
seen O.J.’s Bronco parked on the street earlier than it could have been if he was out doing murder. Murders.

“How did the meeting end?”

“He told Lainie to get to work on it. Said he wanted drawings by the end of the month.”

“The end of last September?”

“Yes.”

“Working drawings?”

“I don’t remember if he said working drawings or not.”

“Did you see the drawings Lainie supposedly delivered by the end of the month?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you see
any
drawings Lainie delivered?”

“Well, I saw drawings. I don’t know if they were Lainie’s or not.”

“When did you first see these drawings?”

“Before we made up the prototype.”

“When was that exactly?”

“When I saw the drawings? Or when we made the bear?”

“The drawings.”

“I don’t remember.”

“When did you have a finished bear?”

“The prototype?”

“Yes.”

“In May sometime.”

“This past May.”

“Yes. We had a working model by the fifteenth.”

I remembered that Lainie claimed to have designed
her
bear in April.

“Lainie Commins left Toyland in January, isn’t that so?”

“Yes, I believe that’s when it was.”

“Did she discuss this with you?”

“What? Leaving Toyland?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, you’re Toyland’s design chief, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“And she was working in the design department…”

“Yes.”

“So didn’t she tell you she was leaving?”

“Well, yes, I’m sure she did. I thought you meant did we discuss
why
she was leaving, or what she planned to do
next,
or…”

“Well, did you?”

“I told you. I don’t remember.”

“Did you ever see her again? After she left Toyland?”

Diaz hesitated.

“Did you?” I asked.

“I don’t remember,” he said.

Which in Spanish was
No me acuerdo.

Which, according to O.J.’s Dream Team, meant “No” in many Spanish dialects like Rosa Lopez’s.

Oh?

Sí.

The way Guthrie looked at it, women’s lib was the biggest con mankind had ever foisted on the female gender. First we—meaning
Guthrie and every other conniving male in America—convinced women that they deserved the same sexual freedom men had enjoyed
for centuries. This sounded good to the feminists. Why
should
men be the only ones to decide when sex was appropriate or indicated? Why shouldn’t women be the aggressors whenever they
felt like it? Why shouldn’t
women
demand sex when they wanted it, initiate it when they wanted it, be the equals of men in every respect as concerned sex.

Men like Guthrie were very sympathetic to these attitudes and ideals.

Men like Guthrie agreed it was definitely unfair that for all these eons women had been used and/or abused sexually but had
never been granted the opportunity of calling the shots themselves. Men like Guthrie agreed that this was a despicable situation.
In repentance, they were willing to do everything within their power to see to it that women enjoyed equal sexual rights.
This meant that women could introduce the sex act, and encourage the sex act, and follow through on the sex act, all without
stigma, humiliation or disapprobation. Women thought this was terrific. Freedom at last. Men thought it was terrific, too,
because it meant they were getting laid a lot more often with a lot less hassle.

And since there was now nothing wrong with going to bed with a man whenever the spirit moved one, so to speak, then why not
take the liberation a step further and move
in
with a man who pleased a person spiritually and sexually besides? Why not indeed? Men encouraged this new notion. Whereas
back in the Dark Ages, a man couldn’t get into a woman’s pants, so to speak, without pledging his troth to her and perhaps
not even then, now it became possible for a man and a woman to live together on a sort of trial basis, which—if it worked
out—might lead to marriage. But now that women had liberated themselves, there was no need for them even to be
thinking
about old-fashioned, restraining concepts like marriage. It was perfectly okay to share an apartment and incidentally to
share the rent and the bills and everything else that went along with living together,
vive la liberté! Et I’égalité, aussi.

Guthrie was all for women’s lib.

He also thought it was wonderful that women now felt so confident and secure that they could walk in the street practically
naked or else wearing only clothes they used to wear
under
their clothes. Pick up a fashion magazine like
Vogue
or
Elle
or
Harper’s Bazaar
and you saw pictures of women wearing practically nothing at all, which only a few years ago would have got the publisher
of
Penthouse
arrested, but which nowadays was an expression of female freedom, more power to them, and God bless them all.

The manager of the Silver Creek Yacht Club was a redhead named Holly Hunnicutt, which name Guthrie found provocative, and
she was wearing a suit that looked like the sort frails used to wear when Guthrie was plying his trade back in the Big Bad
Apple, a pale pastel-blue number with huge lapels and big breast pockets, you should pardon the expression. She was wearing
the jacket over a short tight skirt, no stockings, just suntanned legs. Whenever she uncrossed those legs you could see Miami
on a clear day. Under the jacket, she was wearing nothing but herself so that whenever she leaned over her desk, you could
see Mount St. Helens in Washington even on a rainy day. Guthrie Lamb felt as if he were back in the pulp magazines again,
the
days
of the pulp magazines, that is.

Holly Hunnicutt was too young to know what pulp magazines were. Guthrie guessed she was twenty-two, twenty-three years old,
managing this swank yacht club here in one of Calusa’s more desirable areas, close to Manakawa County and Fatback Key. Guthrie
himself lived in a rooming house not too far from Newtown, one of the city’s worst areas. He was wondering if Holly Hunnicutt—God,
that name!—might be interested in one day visiting his cozy little room at the Palm Court, as it was aptly called since there
were four spindly palm trees out front. Show her his newspaper clippings or something. His private-eye license. Which some
people found quite impressive. Meanwhile, he was asking her whether anyone on Tuesday of last week had reported an outage
of the light on top of the right-hand pillar at the entrance to the club.

“No, I don’t believe so.”

“Then the light was on that night?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Is there any way you could check?”

“Well, I guess I could call the electrician…”

“Yes, please do,” Guthrie said, and flashed his dazzling smile which had cost him twelve thousand dollars for implants, not
to mention the time and the pain. Holly found the dental work impressive, he guessed. At least she smiled back at him and
bent over her desk to punch a few buttons on the phone, causing her jacket to fall somewhat open again, which Guthrie, gentleman
that he was, pretended not to notice.

Holly spent a few moments on the phone with someone named Gus, which was a good name for an electrician, as opposed to a private
investigator, who should have a classy name like Guthrie, Guthrie felt. During that time, she ascertained that Gus had not
in recent weeks changed any lightbulbs on either of the two pillars at the club’s entrance, and unless they had burned out
last night after he’d gone home, they were still working. If she liked, he could circumvent the timer on the lights—which
was set to go off at seven twenty-nine
P.M.
sunset in Calusa these days—and see if the lights came on now, which according to Guthrie’s watch was three-twenty
P.M.
Guthrie heard all of this because Gus the electrician was on the speakerphone. He heard Holly, in person, tell him “No, that
won’t be necessary,” and then she hit a button on her phone, and Gus disappeared, and she crossed her long sleek legs and
settled back in the big leather chair behind her desk, and smiled, and asked, “How else can I help you, Mr. Lamb?” which Guthrie
felt was provocative, but did not say.

“I’d like to talk to any of your employees who were working here last Tuesday night, the twelfth,” Guthrie said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Very good,” Guthrie said, and smiled. “I hate mysteries as much as you do. What I’m trying to learn is whether any of them
might have noticed a car parked just outside the entrance pillars last Tuesday night. On the right-hand side. Facing the club,
that is. As you go in. Did you, for example, happen to notice such a car?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Which narrows the field,” Guthrie said, and smiled again.

But not considerably.

It turned out that the yacht club employed forty people, among whom, and in addition to Holly Hunnicutt herself, were an assistant
club manager, a dockmaster and two dockhands, three security guards and a night watchman, an electrician—Gus, of course—four
maintenance men, a restaurant manager and assistant manager, a bartender, a hostess, ten waiters and/or waitresses, a chef,
three assistant chefs, two dishwashers and four busboys. Not all of these people had been working last Tuesday night. Two
had called in sick, and one had gone back to Cuba.

Of the remaining thirty-seven, only ten had seen a car parked on the shoulder outside the club, but not at the hour Lainie
Commins had specified. The time estimates varied, but they were consistent in being somewhere between eleven-thirty and midnight,
rather than the ten-thirty Lainie had reported as the time she’d driven out of the club.

A waiter and a waitress who’d seen the car were reluctant to say so because they’d been outside necking, when they should
have been in the restaurant helping to set up for Wednesday’s lunch. In any case, neither of them was of much help in identifying
the car because they were otherwise busily occupied. The waiter seemed to remember pressing the waitress against the car as
he fumbled under her skirt. She seemed to remember something hard, cold and metallic against her buttocks, but she may have
been understandably confused.