Free Ed McBain_Matthew Hope 12 by Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear Page A

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