Matthew looked at it.
The fork seemed to be corroding.
But perhaps it had been rusty to begin with.
“Anyway, Bernie comes here, and we discuss my portfolio,” Leeds said. “But it isn’t the same as when I was going there every afternoon at two, two-thirty, it just isn’t the same. I sit there listening to him telling me how Motorola is doing now that they’re supplying telephones to Japanese car makers, and I wonder if I’ll ever make a call from a car telephone again. There’s a telephone in the Caddy, I had it installed after I had a flat out near Ananburg one night, not a garage open, not a phone booth anywhere on Timucuan, I figured the hell with this. Had a phone put in the next morning. Bernie sits there and tells me about car telephones, and I’m wondering if they’ll let me make a last call from the electric chair.”
“You’re not going to the electric chair,” Matthew said.
This would have been a good time to tell him about the deal Patricia Demming had offered, but he held back because his man was talking and he wanted to keep him talking. When they talked, they sometimes came up with something they hadn’t thought of earlier, information that often could blow the prosecution’s case out of the water. Matthew hoped Leeds would come up with that elusive something now. Let him talk, let him ramble, and meanwhile listen hard. Benny Weiss had taught him this. But that was before they’d become such fierce competitors.
“I keep forgetting things,” Leeds said. “From my real life. The routine here becomes a life in itself, you see. So you remember things from this life — wakeup at six, roll call at six-ten, showers at six-fifteen, breakfast at seven, exercise in the yard at eight, and so on — but you start to forget the important things, the things from your real life. I’ve been meaning to tell Jessie for the past three days now that my car is ready. The Caddy. It was supposed to be ready Monday morning, and this is already late Wednesday, three days have gone by. But I keep forgetting to tell her. Somebody’s got to pick it up, either her or Ned. I don’t want it sitting there at the garage, it might get banged up or vandalized. There’s a lot of that stuff going on in Calusa these days, there’s dope everywhere in America, and where there’s dope, there’s crime. Did you ever think it would come to this? Did you ever in a million years imagine an America that could sink so deep into the slime? It makes me ashamed. It makes me want to cry.”
He fell suddenly silent.
It seemed possible that he would, in fact, begin crying in the very next moment.
Keep them talking, Benny Weiss had advised Matthew.
And if they stop talking, prod them.
“I played that voice tape for Stubbs early this morning,” he said. “He told me it wasn’t the voice he’d heard on the telephone the night of the murders. Which confirms that someone else took your boat out. Or at least that someone else called to say he was taking the boat out.”
“Which still doesn’t distance me too very far from the chair, does it?” Leeds said. He was on the edge of tears now. Keep him talking, Matthew thought. Listen for that one sharp note sounding in the mist.
“Who knows where you keep your boat?” he asked.
“Dozens of people.”
“Tell me about each and every one of them.”
“All of our friends know the marina I use,” Leeds said. “Most of them have been on the boat with us. But none of them would set me up for murder.”
“How do you know?”
“A person knows his friends. They’re not his friends if he doesn’t know them.”
“I’ll want a list of their names anyway. Before I leave. All the people who’ve been on the boat or who know where you keep it.”
“Sure,” Leeds said. But there was total despair in his voice; he was thinking this would be a worthless exercise.
“My investigator tells me you can get into your house with a can opener. Correction. Even without a can opener. Were all the entrance doors locked on the night of the murders?”
“I don’t know.”
Again the sound of defeat. They were already strapping him into the chair. A man with a black hood over his head was standing near the wall, his arms folded across his chest, waiting to step into the other room where he would look through a glass panel and throw the switch.
“Do you normally lock the doors before you go to sleep?” Matthew asked.
“Not always. We’re in the country, there’s never been any trouble out there. Besides, Ned sleeps in the guesthouse just down the road, he’d hear anything that…”
“Ned?”
“Jessie’s brother. Our manager. Ned Weaver.”
“Your manager is…?”
“Yes, my brother-in-law. My wife’s maiden name was Weaver. Jessie Weaver. Ned’s been working for us ever since…”
There was a slight pause. Hardly long enough to notice — unless you were listening for that single sharp, piercing note.
“.. last summer,” Leeds said.
Matthew looked at him.
Their eyes met.
What? Matthew thought.
What’s here?
“So you feel it isn’t necessary to lock the doors,” he said. “With your brother-in-law living in the guesthouse.”
“He’s a very big man,” Leeds said.
“How far away is the guesthouse?”
“Down the end of the road.”
“How far is that?”
“Two, three hundred yards.”
“Then… if the doors were unlocked… someone could have got in, isn’t that so? Without Ned hearing them?”
“Well, I suppose so. But you don’t think something like that’s going to happen, you know. Someone breaking into the house…”
“Or just walking in, actually, if the doors were unlocked.”
“Yes, but you don’t think of that out in the country.”
“I suppose not. Mr. Leeds, when you took your car in for service… the Cadillac…”
“Yes?”
“Did you leave them your keys?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Which keys?”
“Well, my key chain.”
“Were your house keys on that chain?”
“Well… come to think of it, yes, I suppose they were.”
“You left your house keys at the garage?”
“Well… yes. I’ve been taking it to the same place for the past God knows how long. I trust those people completely.”
“You trust them with your house keys?”
“I’m sure Jimmy doesn’t leave keys out in the open. I’m sure he’s got this metal box he puts them in. Hanging on the wall. With a lock on it.”
“Jimmy who?”
“Farrell. He owns the garage.”
“What’s the name of the garage?”
“Silvercrest Shell. On the Trail near the Silvercrest Mall.”
“Any other keys on that ring? Beside your car keys and your house keys?”
“Well, the keys to Jessie’s car, too, I guess.”
Matthew looked at him.
“It’s a hard ring to get keys on and off of,” Leeds said.
Matthew kept looking at him.
“Well, it is.”
“So what we’ve got here,” Matthew said, “is a situation where anyone could have taken those keys from the garage…”
“No, I’m sure Jimmy locks them up.”
“But if someone did get hold of them, he could have got into your house even if the doors were locked…”