Ed McBain - Three Blind Mice

The marina is off Henley Street, just past the big Toys “Я” Us warehouse. You go down the Trail heading south, and you make a right on Henley and follow it around past Twin Tree Estates, and then you take the little dirt cutoff leading down to the creek. Charlie Stubbs calls his marina Riverview, but it’s really on a little creek, is all it is, leading out to the Intercoastal. Willowbee Creek, it’s called. Sometimes the water’s so shallow you can’t get anything but a raft up it. Got to check the tides, give Charlie a call, ask him how it looks, can you move a boat up the creek? No such problem now when it’s just quit raining, and the tide’s coming in, and the draft on his boat is only three feet four inches.

The boat is a thirty-nine-foot Mainship Mediterranean. Powered with a pair of freshwater-cooled Crusader inboards, the Med is capable of doing almost thirty miles an hour, but Leeds has never pushed it that far. He loves this boat almost as much as he loves the Caddy. To him, the boat spells luxury. Well, it should spell luxury, it cost him close to $145,000. The Caddy is a comfortable old shoe, but the boat is a diamond-studded glass slipper.

It is one of those afternoons.

Matthew knows just what Leeds is talking about; he himself has been out on a boat on a day like the one Leeds is now describing, the sky a soft powder blue, the water still and smooth and golden green, a bird crying somewhere off to the right, shattering the silence, the cry echoing, drifting, and at last fading entirely. And all is still again. There is only the sound of the boat’s idling engines.

Mangroves line the shore on either side of the creek, reflecting in the water. Beyond these, receding into the landscape, there are palmettos, a scattering of sabal palms, a hummock of oaks trailing moss. The boat glides. A great blue heron stalks the edges of the shore, delicately lifting one spindly leg after the other. There are signs on slanted wooden posts in the water, no wake. Gliding. Gliding, idle SPEED ONLY. The Burma-Shave signs of boaters everywhere in America.

Leeds stands at the helm, a grin on his face. He is wearing jeans and a T-shirt, Top-Siders and a nylon mesh cap that was part of a giveaway two, maybe three years ago, when the Brechtmann Beer people down here were making a big push for their new Golden Girl Light. The cap is yellow, with a pair of interlocking red B’s — for Brechtmann Brewing — back to back in a circle above the peak. The cap is perfect for boating, Leeds wears it every time he goes out. If it’s a chilly day, he also wears a yellow windbreaker he bought at Sears. It is not a chilly day today. It is a normal day for August, insufferably hot and humid. But out here on the water, it is also heartachingly beautiful.

He hates to take the boat back in.

He cruises all the way up to Calusa Bay, moves slowly under the big bridge there, and makes a wide arcing turn on virtually deserted water. He feels utterly alone in the world. Alone with God. Who is being exceedingly good to him. And he forgets, for a little while at least, that there is anything in the world but peace and solitude.

He gets back to the marina at twenty past six and then drives the Maserati out to the farm again. He arrives there at a quarter to seven, somewhere around that time. Pete is just coming in from the fields, he waves hello from the tractor and Leeds waves hello back. Pete Reagan — no relation to the former president, whom Leeds hates , by the way — is his foreman, one of the thirty-six regulars employed by Leeds and his wife, an indispensable part of what has become a vast and very profitable operation since the death of Osmond Leeds six years ago.

For dinner that night, Jessie has asked their housekeeper/cook, Allie — who is Pete’s wife — to prepare steamed lobster, corn on the cob, and a mixed salad. The corn comes right from their own farm, as does the lettuce in the salad, but none of these is a cash crop like the tomatoes that are also in the salad. They sit down to dinner on the screened patio overlooking the pool. It is still stiflingly hot, but the water promises relief if the heat and humidity become unbearable, and the icy-cold beer in tall, frosted steins does much to dissuade thoughts of the weather. Besides, Leeds feels — and Jessie agrees with him on this point — that lobsters demand to be eaten outdoors at a long wooden table.

It is still a good day for Stephen Leeds.

God is still being good to him.

“When did you go out on the boat again?” Matthew asked.

“The boat? What do you mean?”

“What time that night did you go out on the boat again?”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t drive over to Riverview…”

“No.”

“… in your wife’s car…”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Didn’t you call Charlie Stubbs…?”

“Charlie? No. Why would I call him?”

“To tell him you’d be taking the boat out for a moonlight spin…?

“A moonlight spin ?”

“A moonlight spin, yes. That’s what Charlie Stubbs says you…”

“He’s mistaken.”

“You didn’t call him?”

“I did not call him.”

“You didn’t ask him not to worry if he heard someone starting the boat…”

“I just told you I didn’t call him.”

“He says you called around nine.”

“No, I was already in bed by then.”

“He says you arrived at the marina around ten-thirty…”

“I told you, he’s mistaken. Or lying, either one. Jessie and I had an after-dinner drink, and then we got into bed and turned on the video. I must’ve fallen asleep watching it because the next thing I knew…”

There is a loud knocking at the door. And the bell is ringing. The knocking and the ringing overlap. Leeds struggles up out of sleep, opens his eyes to see Jessie putting on a robe. Sunlight is streaming through the bedroom window. The ringing and the knocking suddenly stop. As Jessie rushes out of the room, he hears voices from below. And then Allie calling up the steps, “Missus? It’s the police.”

Two of them, one bigger than the other.

A black cop and a white cop.

Is this your wallet? Is this your wallet? Is this your wallet? Is this your wallet?

It is his wallet.

It is indeed his wallet.

God has stopped being good to Stephen Leeds.

The detective’s name was Frank Bannion, and he’d been working out of the State Attorney’s office for the past three years now. Prior to that he’d worked for the Calusa P.D., and before that he’d been a uniformed cop and then a detective-sergeant in Detroit. He told all the other detectives on the S.A.’s squad that he had once done research for Elmore Leonard back in Detroit. What happened, actually, was that Leonard was hanging around the station house asking questions, soaking up atmosphere for one of his books, and he asked Bannion a few questions, and Bannion gave him a few answers. So now Bannion walked around as if he’d co-authored the damn thing with his good old buddy Dutch.

Bannion was also proud of the fact that he still had his own teeth and his own hair. He told anyone who would listen that all the men in his family — his father, his brothers, his cousins on his father’s side — had lost their hair and their teeth by the time they were forty. Bannion was forty-two years old and he still had his own teeth and his own hair. He attributed this to the fact that he had once bit a burglar on the ass. The burglar was going out the window when Bannion grabbed him and bit him. He had pictures of his teeth marks on the burglar’s ass as proof because the defense attorney had tried to get the case kicked out by showing Bannion had used unnecessary force.

Bannion was telling Patricia Demming what he had learned out at the Riverview Marina. Patricia had sent him there because Stephen Leeds had suggested to arresting detectives Bloom and Rawles that perhaps he’d left his wallet on the boat when he’d taken it out on the afternoon of the murders. Patricia wanted to find out if Leeds had truly been out on the boat. Because (A) if he hadn’t, then he couldn’t possibly have dropped his wallet there, and (B) if he hadn’t, then he was lying, and if he was lying about one thing then he could be lying about everything. Or so she would try to convince a jury.