Ed McBain_Matthew Hope 12 (9 page)

She has been aboard this boat many times before, for cocktail parties, small dinner parties, casual lunches, an occasional
sail out on the Gulf. The saloon below is furnished with comfortable couches, and glass-fronted lockers that enclose a television
set, a VCR, and a CD player. The dining table seats ten comfortably, and whenever she’s been here for dinner or lunch, it
has been set with Wedgwood china, Waterford crystal, and damask napkins. The boat is truly luxurious, with Oriental rugs covering
the teak decks, and framed Currier & Ives sailing prints hanging on the paneled bulkheads.

In the past, she has felt more comfortable in the informal cockpit area, and she’s happy he has chosen this space for their
meeting now. Brett is barefoot. She remembers that he once asked a state senator’s wife to take off her smart linen pumps
for fear she might damage his precious teak decks. “Sit,” he says, “please,” and indicates with an open-hand gesture one of
the cushioned banquettes. She eases in behind the teak table, seeing now that the bottles on it are Johnnie Walker Black,
Canadian Club, and Stolichnaya. She also notices a small white porcelain bowl with wedges of lime in it. Brett sits on the
cushioned banquette on the other side of the table.

“So,” he asks, “what to drink?”

“Do you have any Perrier?”

“Oh, come on, Lainie,” he says, smiling. “I promise you’ll want to celebrate.”

“We’ll see,” she says, and returns the smile.

He is being his most charming self, which can be charming indeed. Again, she finds herself wishing this will truly be the
end of all the turmoil and strife.

“Perrier? Really?” he says.

“Really,” she says. “Perrier.”

One more time, she thinks, and they’ll send me a case every week for the rest of my life.

“Perrier it is,” he says, and slides out from behind the table, and surefootedly slips down the ladder. She hears him rummaging
below—the galley is modern and spacious, with Corian work surfaces and a four-burner stove, an oven, a microwave, a trash
compactor, a freezer and she forgets how many cubic feet of refrigeration, had he once said sixty? Eighty? A lot, that was
for sure. He was searching now in one of the fridges for the Perrier she’d requested, and she hears him cursing when something
clatters to the deck, and then there’s some muttering below, and finally he comes up the ladder again with a green bottle
clutched in one hand and a blue-black automatic pistol in the other.

She looks at the gun.

“Some people tried to come aboard last week,” he says in explanation, and places the gun on the table alongside the bowl of
sliced limes.

“What people?” she asks.

“Two wetbacks,” he says.

Meaning Cubans, she surmises.

“What’d they want?”

“They said they were looking for work. Wanted to know if I was taking on hands.
Por favor,
are you takin on some hanns,
señor,
” he says in bad imitation. “Have to be careful these days. Too many boats are being hijacked.”

“From a marina dock?”

“Why not?”

“Is that thing loaded?”

“Oh yes,” he says. “Sure you don’t want a little vodka in this?” he asks, pouring into one of the tumblers.

“Just ice and a lime,” she says.

Her artist’s eyes are studying the color scheme on the table. The green of the Perrier bottle and the limes, the bone white
of the bowl, the amber whiskey in two of the bottles, the black label on the Scotch echoing the black cap on the other bottle,
the red and black label on the Stoli, the blue-black dullness of the Colt automatic.

Brett pours himself a hefty blast of Johnnie on the rocks.

“To our future,” he says, and clinks his glass against hers. She remembers that it’s bad luck to toast with a nonalcoholic
beverage. But the moment has passed, the glasses have been touched, the toast has been uttered. Still, she does not drink
just yet, hoping to put some distance between the bad-luck toast and the act itself, waiting first for him to take a long
swallow of Scotch, and then waiting another decent interval to take the curse off before she herself sips some of the sparkling
water.

“So what’s the offer?” she asks.

“To the point,” he says.

“Directly to the point,” she says.

“Good old Lainie.”

“Let me hear it.”

At first, the offer sounds terrific.

What he’s proposing is that instead of Toyland coming out in competition with whoever decides to manufacture
her
bear—Ideal or Mattel, either one, he has ears all over the trade, and he knows there’s keen interest at each company…

“Which I think is wonderful for you, Lainie, you’re so talented, and it’s time you were rewarded for the hard years of apprenticeship
you’ve put in…”

Which appraisal she doesn’t quite accept since she’s had half a dozen toys already produced and
marketed,
for Christ’s sake, and that ain’t no
apprenticeship,
thank you. But she says nothing, just listens for now, sipping at her Perrier, watching him across the table as he pours
more Scotch over the ice in his glass.

He tells her that he recognizes a bidding situation might very well develop between Ideal and Mattel, which is why he’s willing
now to make a preemptive offer that he hopes she’ll consider satisfactory. What he’s suggesting…

She leans forward expectantly. In periods of stress, the eye seems to wander mercilessly. She can feel the tug of the muscle
shortened twice by surgery. The eye is losing the battle yet another time.

“Here’s what we want to do, Lainie. Toyland is willing to manufacture your bear, using your copyrighted design and your trademarked
name…”

She recognizes this as a victory.

“…and compensating you by way of a substantial advance against generous royalties…”

“How substantial? How generous?”

“To be mutually agreed upon, Lainie. I promise you, no one’s trying to take advantage of you here.”

“You’ll call the bear Gladly?”

“Just as you have it.”

“My design? For the bear
and
the eyeglasses?”

“Exactly to your specifications.”

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch. I just don’t want to have to go through this whole damn mess, Lainie.”

Which means he believes Santos will decide against him.

“So if you think what I’m suggesting is something doable,” he says, “maybe you can have Matthew call my attorney…”

She notices that he does not refer to him familiarly as “Sidney,” he is now merely “my attorney,” perhaps because he’s concluded
the infringement case is already lost…

“…so they can work out the advance and the royalties, and prepare transfers of copyright and trademark. How does that sound?”

“Transfers?”

“Yes. Toyland would want an outright assignment of all rights to the bear and its name.”

“Outright?”

“Which, I’m sure, any other company would insist on.”

“An outright assignment of all rights?”

“Forever,” Brett says.

“Forever,” she repeats.

“Yes. Well, Lainie, I’m sure this doesn’t come as a surprise to you. If we’re to try making a success of the bear, we’d have
to be certain beforehand that we have the irrevocable right to manufacture it for the life of the copyright.”

“I was thinking more in terms of a licensing agreement.”

“A transfer, an assignment, a license, all the same thing.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’m sure neither Ideal nor Mattel would sign a limited licensing agreement.”

“It sounds to me as if they might.”

She is lying. The feelers from both companies have been tentative pending resolution of the copyright problem.

“Well, perhaps so, who knows, stranger things have happened. But we’re willing to go a long way on royalties, Lainie, and
on subsidiary rights to…”

“What do you mean, a long way?”

“Escalation clauses should the bear really take off. Bonuses premised on performance. A huge share of subsidiary rights…”

“Like what?”

“Who knows? A television show? A movie? Whatever. The percentages would be heavily loaded in your favor.”

“What sort of control would I have, Brett?”

“We would guarantee the quality of the product.”

“But what
control
would I have?”

“I think you know what the Toyland logo stands for. Besides, your compensation would ensure optimum performance on our part.”

Which sounds like double-talk to her.

“How does it sound to you in general outline?” Brett asks.

“I’m not sure. I’ll have to discuss it with Matthew,” she says, and puts down her glass, and is sliding her way out of the
banquette when Brett puts his hand on her arm.

“Lainie,” he says, “I wish we could shake hands on this tonight.”

“No, I can’t. Not until I talk to him.”

“Santos has promised a decision by the twenty-second.”

“Well, he’s shooting for that.”

“End of the month, for sure. “You can lose, you know.”

“Then why are you offering a deal?”

“I want things to be the way they were between you and the company.”

“Maybe they will. Let me talk to Matthew.”

“When will you do that?”

“I’ll try him when I get home.”

“Will you let me know?”

“As soon as we’ve discussed it.”

He extends his hand. She takes it. They shake hands. The forty-five is lying on the table, alongside the bowl of limes.

“That’s the last time I saw him alive,” she tells me.

Warren sat in the dark, waiting for her to get home. This was not going to be a kidnapping, per se. In Florida law, the term
“kidnapping” was defined as “forcibly, secretly, or by threat confining, abducting, or imprisoning another person against
his will and without lawful authority…”

All of which Warren planned to do.

“With intent to…”

And these were the key words.

“With intent to hold for ransom or reward or as a shield or hostage, or to commit or facilitate commission of any felony,
or to inflict bodily harm or to terrorize the victim or another person, or to interfere with the performance of any government
or political function.”

None of which Warren planned to do.

So what this would be was false imprisonment, which was defined in the statutes as “forcibly, by threat, or secretly confining,
abducting, imprisoning or restraining another person without lawful authority and against his will…”

And here’s where the difference came in.

“With any purpose
other
than those referred to in Section 787.01,” which was the kidnapping section of the statutes.

Add to that the B&E, because he had once again unlawfully forced the door to her apartment the moment he saw her driving off
in her faded green Chevy at ten o’clock tonight. He sat just inside that door now, where he could hear her key the moment
she inserted it in the keyway. He had dragged a chair in from the kitchen and had placed it just to the side of the door,
the bottle sitting on the floor beside him, the cap on it.

Somewhere outside, church bells began bonging the hour.

In the stillness of the apartment, he listened.

Eleven
P.M.

He checked his watch.

He was two minutes fast.

Or the church was two minutes slow.

Or maybe it took two minutes for the bells to ring eleven times. This made him wonder if any clock in the world was precise.
Because in the second it took for the sweep hand to move to the next number, wasn’t the second already gone? Or if a digital
watch read 11:02:31, as his watch now read, wasn’t it already
past
11:02:31 by the time the…well, there it was already 11:02:32, forget it, 11:02:33, 11:02:34, damn metaphysics could drive
a person nuts.

He heard footsteps outside on the covered walkway that led past the apartments. High heels clicking. Lady must’ve got all
dolled up to go do her marketing, he wondered where she was shopping these days.

Footfalls stopped just outside the door.

She was home.

He picked up the bottle, gently lifted the chair out of the way.

Set it down well clear of the door.

Key sliding into the keyway now.

Uncapped the bottle.

Reached into his pocket.

Lock turning, tumblers falling.

He backed against the wall to the side of the door.

Braced himself.

The door opened. She closed it behind her. Locked it. Was reaching for the light switch…

“Hello, Toots,” he said.

“Warren?” she said, turning toward him, and he clamped the chloroform-soaked pad over her face.

S
he opened her eyes.

The room was pitching and rolling, took her a minute to realize she was on a boat, and that her right wrist was handcuffed
to something bolted to the wall or the bulkhead or whatever they called it. It was dark in the V-shaped space where she was
lying on her back, she figured she was up front in the boat, the space coming to a kind of a point this way. Some sort of
foam mattress under her, this had to be a sleeping compartment.

She remembered Warren all at once, standing there in the dark inside the door to her apartment and she called his name sharply—”Warren?”—like
an angry mother or older sister screaming for a rotten kid to get here right this fucking minute if he knew what was good
for him, handcuffing her to the wall this way. But nobody came, and all at once she wondered if it
was,
in fact, Warren driving the boat and not some fisherman he’d hired to take her to Mexico and sell her into prostitution.

The boat was moving, that was for sure, so there had to be
someone
up there, or out there, or wherever the steering wheel was, if that’s what you called it, she hadn’t been on too many boats
in her lifetime. She brought her left wrist close to her face in the dark and looked at the luminous dial of her watch, ten
minutes past two, where the hell were they?

“Warren?”
she called again, same imperious Get-Your-Ass-in-Here tone, and this time she heard a sound from what she guessed was the
back of the boat, the rear, the
aft,
what
ever,
and she heard footfalls coming down what she supposed were steps, a ladder, and then through the boat toward where she was
sitting up now, short skirt hiked kind of high on her legs, still wearing all her clothes, she noticed, including her high-heeled
shoes.