Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

And when Matthew did remember where Kit’s damn backhand was, served his hardest serve to that backhand, watched it zipping over the net at what had to be three thousand miles an hour, low and hard and to the right-hand corner for the deuce court or the midline for the ad court, a serve worthy of the men’s singles at Wimbledon, Kit just stood there cool and tall and tanned and blond in his still-immaculate whites, bouncing, and setting himself, and bringing back his racket in that fierce one-handed grip, and whaaaaap , those zinging strings collided with that yellow ball and it came roaring back over the net like an express train racing down the middle of the track, making Matthew want to get out of its way before it tore his head off, trying to walk around it so he could lay his forehand on it, getting caught in the middle instead, pulling his racket in close against his chest and watching the ball go past to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where it sent up another small triumphant puff of grey dust just inside the baseline.

By the end of the hour, Matthew was exhausted. His shirt was drenched with sweat, his hair was wet and plastered to his forehead, his face was red, his tennis shoes were grey, and he felt as if he’d lost five of the ten pounds he’d gained in Italy. He was shaking hands with Kit over the net when he spotted a woman who looked very much like Jessica Leeds approaching the fenced-in teaching court, and then blinked when he realized it was Jessica, and suddenly felt even sweatier and smellier and stubblier and shoddier and shabbier and more showerless than he’d felt a moment earlier. As his client’s beautiful redheaded wife approached the court in a pleated skirt that showed her long legs to splendid advantage, crisp white cotton shirt with a Head logo just over the left breast, smiling and waving to another woman as she came closer, Matthew wished a spaceship would swoop down and carry him off to Mars.

And then he wondered what the hell she was doing out here on the Saturday after her husband had been charged with murder, wondered about the propriety of her playing tennis while he languished in jail, wondered if anyone from the Calusa Herald-Tribune was out here today, wondered if mention of her appearance would be printed in tomorrow’s morning edition, wondered if her being here could possibly hurt his case, such as it was, wondered why she hadn’t first discussed with him the advisability of this, wondered too damn many things in the several moments it took her to reach the gate in the fence and unlatch it and open it. “Hello, Mr. Hope,” she said, and smiled. “Looks like Kit gave you a workout.”

“Yes,” Matthew said.

“He played a good game,” Kit said.

Praise from the Thunder God.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Jessica said.

“No problem,” Kit said.

“Nice seeing you, Mrs. Leeds,” Matthew said, and then to Kit, “Thanks, Kit, see you next week.”

“Look forward to it, Mr. Hope.”

Matthew put his racket into its cover, zipped it up, draped his towel around his neck, and started off toward the men’s locker room. Behind him, he could hear the steady cadences of Kit and Jessica warming up, the solid thwack of racket against ball, the softer thud of the ball bouncing on the court’s synthetic surface. He wondered again if it was wise of her to have come here. But here she was, for better or for worse, and there was nothing to be done about it now.

He headed for the showers.

“It sounds like you’ve picked yourself another winner, doesn’t it?” Frank said sourly.

They were in his office at Summerville and Hope, a comer office befitting his position as senior partner of the firm, although he was only two years older than Matthew. Frank did not like having to work on a Saturday. Neither did he like what Warren Chambers had just told them. Apparently, a man named Charlie Stubbs — who owned a marina called Riverview on Willowbee Creek — had seen Stephen Leeds driving up in a red Maserati at ten-thirty on the night of the murders.

“Unless he was mistaken,” Matthew said.

“It is not likely that anyone could mistakenly identify a red Maserati or a red anything ,” Frank said, and rose from behind his desk, and came around it, and walked toward where Matthew was sitting, and pointed his forefinger at him like a prosecutor about to badger a hostile witness. “Certainly not on a clear moonlit night,” he said. “Which means that your man was out of the house at ten-thirty and not home asleep as he claims he was.”

“My partner’s playing devil’s advocate,” Matthew explained to Warren.

“I’m doing nothing of the sort,” Frank said. “I’m advising you to drop the case right this instant. Your man is as guilty as homemade sin.”

Frank Summerville often got his Southern expressions wrong; this one should have been as ugly as homemade sin. But he was a transplanted New Yorker who still had trouble with local dialect and custom and who spoke constantly about going back one day to the only real city in the entire world. London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, all were penny-ante burgs to Frank Summerville’s New York frame of mind. Calusa? Don’t even ask. A fly speck on a pile of elephant dung was Calusa, Florida. A city with cultural pretensions, a lousy climate for most of the year, and a population composed of eighty percent rednecks and nineteen point ninety-nine percent immigrants from the Midwest. He hated Calusa. Hated, too, what it did to people. Thinned the blood and addled the brain.

“How’s his eyesight?” Matthew asked.

“He wasn’t wearing glasses, if that’s what you mean,” Warren said. “And he was able to read what was on that license plate.”

“Which was?”

“JESSIE 1.”

“Worse and worse,” Frank said, shaking his head. “His wife’s name. Worse and worse.”

There were people who said that Matthew and his partner looked alike. It was true that they both had dark hair and brown eyes, but aside from that—

Matthew was thirty-eight, Frank had just turned forty. Matthew was an even six feet tall and weighed a hundred and eighty-seven, with his new Italian pounds; his partner was five-nine and a half and weighed a hundred and sixty. Matthew’s face was long and narrow, what Frank called a “fox face,” in contrast to his own full, round “pig face.” Moreover, Matthew was originally from Chicago — which Frank would not even admit was the Second City. To him, there were no second cities; there was only New York and then every other city in the world.

“Why would he have driven his wife’s car over there?” Matthew asked.

“Because he was out doing murder is why,” Frank said.

“If he was out on his boat,” Matthew said, “then he wasn’t out doing murder in Little Asia.”

“Unless he parked the boat, and got off the boat, and then went to do murder,” Frank said, jabbing his finger at the air again.

“Why?” Warren said.

“Why? Because they raped his wife, why do you think why?”

“ Why ,” Warren repeated, “would he go clear around his ass to scratch his elbow?”

“Meaning why didn’t he drive straight to Little Asia?” Matthew said. “Why all the hugger-mugger with the boat?”

“He was going out to kill three people,” Frank said. “Did you want him to leave a trail even a Boy Scout could follow?”

“He did that anyway,” Matthew said. “A red Maserati with his wife’s name on the plate? That’s leaving a trail, Frank. That’s leaving a highly visible trail.”

“No, that’s leaving an alibi ,” Frank said. “You said it yourself, not a minute ago. If he was out on that boat, then he couldn’t have been over in Little Asia committing murder.”