Ed McBain - The House That Jack Built

“Right. No lingering glances, Matthew, or covert touches, or…”

“I wouldn’t even ask you to dance.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Good. I’m sorry, Matthew, but he’s very jealous.”

“I understand. Thank you for calling, Marcie.”

“And don’t come sit at our table to chat,” Marcie said.

“Would I do that?”

“Because he’s got antennae, Matthew.”

“Is he a cockroach?” Matthew asked.

“I’m telling you he can detect signals.”

“No sitting, no chatting, no looking, no touching, no dancing, I’ve got it,” Matthew said. “I never knew you at all, right?”

“Well, you don’t have to go that far, but…”

“Marcie… I won’t be at the ball.”

“What?”

“I won’t be there, Marcie. You can relax.”

“But you said…”

“No, Marcie. You have nothing to worry about. I’ll be sitting home all by myself this Saturday night, all alone…”

“Oh, stop it, Matthew.”

“Sipping martinis and staring out at the rain…”

“Goodbye, Matthew, I have to run.”

“Goodbye, Marcie,” he said, and hung up.

He sat scowling at the receiver, realizing all at once that he was still extremely angry with her for having dropped him so perfunctorily.

I love you, Matthew Hope, she had said.

New Year’s Eve.

I love you, Matthew Hope.

Bullshit, he thought.

Leona Summerville walked and moved like a panther in heat.

Getting out of her Jaguar in the George Brothers parking lot, she exposed enough leg to attract the attention of four teenage boys trying to load a crated washing machine into the back of a pickup truck. One of the boys shouted, “Hey, Mama!” and another called, “What’s your name, honey?”

Leona smiled.

As she was entering the revolving doors to the department store, a man came through from the other side, and then went around yet another time, following her back into the store. The man stood shaking his head in amazement, hands on his hips, watching Leona as she swiveled her way across the store toward the escalator. As Warren came through the doors, the man turned to him and said, “Mmmm- mmmm ,” and still shaking his head, left the store. Warren moved swiftly across the store, stepped onto the escalator while Leona was still on it, glanced upward, and then turned away in embarrassment when he realized he could see her panties under the short skirt she was wearing.

She got off the escalator on the second floor, and he followed her into the lingerie department — what George Brothers here in downtown Calusa called Intimate Apparel, this on a sign with a mauve background and avocado-green script lettering. Leona walked directly under the sign and past a female mannequin wearing a black bra, a black garter belt, a pair of black net stockings, and a pair of black panties cut high on the thigh and unfortunately showing the joining of the mannequin’s legs and torso, which made her look like a reassembled double amputee.

Intimate Apparel.

A great many people had difficulty spelling the word “apparel.” You asked them to spell it without looking at it, they came up with the oddest combinations of p’s and I’s. Not Warren. “Apparel” was a word that had come up frequently while he was typing up reports for the St. Louis PD.; superior officers always wanted to know what kind of damn apparel a person had been wearing.

Leona was wearing a pale blue denim miniskirt with a partially unzipped, big brass zipper on the left thigh. The skirt, together with high-heeled white sandals, gave her a long, barelegged, girlish look. A cutoff white T-shirt made her look like a woman with exuberant breasts and erect nipples, maybe because she wasn’t wearing any bra under it.

Warren may have been wrong about the significance of sudden weight losses or new hair styles or public telephone calls, but he did not think he was wrong about a flimsy T-shirt and no bra on a lady as well put together as Leona Summerville. If this lady was his wife, he would not have let her out of the house dressed this way. Not even if he was with her. Not even if she was handcuffed to his left wrist.

If this lady was not having an affair, Warren would swim the Gulf of Mexico to Corpus Christi, Texas.

Warren was willing to swear a deposition this very moment that this woman was having an affair.

She was looking at a red garter belt now.

Across the store, Warren busied himself fingering the lace on the bottom of a half-slip.

And now she was looking at red net stockings.

Yessir, Warren thought. This lady—

And now she was looking at him.

His heart leaped into his throat.

Eyes meeting his.

Faintly quizzical expression on her face.

He turned away at once.

But she had made him.

Never in his goddamn life, never ! Tailing hoods in St. Louis, guys who had radar could smell cops if they were anywhere within a mile’s distance, never! And here, in a backwater little Florida town, he gets made by a housewife who’s fucking around!

Jesus!

“Hello?”

“Yes, is this the Albemarle Motel?”

“It is.”

Lizzie Borden had stayed at the Albemarle Hotel on her visit to London in the year 1890. Andrew Holmes knew such things.

“Is a Mr. Hurley staying with you?”

“Hurley?”

“Arthur Nelson Hurley.”

“Second,” the man on the other end said.

Andrew waited.

Corner of Piccadilly and Albemarle. He was tempted to ask the person at the other end of the line if he knew there’d once been an Albemarle Hotel in London.

“Nobody by that name registered here,” the man said.

“Can you tell me if he might have been registered in the past few days?”

“No,” the man said, and hung up.

There.

Sitting in the gray Ford.

Tall black man built like a basketball player, wearing dark glasses, chino slacks, and a tan cotton sweater with the sleeves shoved up to the elbows. The same man who’d been in the lingerie department. Left the moment she’d looked at him, but here he was again, waiting outside the store.

The rain had let up a little.

Without bothering to open her umbrella, Leona walked swiftly to the Jag, dodging puddles, unlocked the door on the driver’s side, got in, let down the window, threw the umbrella onto the backseat and then started the car.

And listened.

Behind her, two lanes back and three cars over, she heard the Ford starting.

She backed the Jag out of her space, her eyes on the rearview mirror, and then turned into the lane leading to the parking-lot exit on Main Street. She looked into the mirror again. The gray Ford was just turning in behind her.

She made a right turn onto Main Street.

The Ford made a right turn behind her.

Okay, she thought, let’s really check it out.

For the next ten minutes, she led the Ford through a series of lefts and rights through downtown Calusa, and then south on the Tamiami Trail all the way to Manakawa, and then back north to Calusa again. The Ford stayed behind her all the way.

She had read about rapists, even murderers, who followed their victims for days.

She wondered if she should stop the nearest police car. tell the officer she was being followed.

Oddly, she wasn’t frightened.

She was only annoyed.

The dashboard clock read ten minutes to twelve.

She did not need this inconvenience.

She checked her own wristwatch.

She wondered if she should call, cancel.

Instead, she headed west on Bayou Boulevard, the Ford a discreet five cars behind her, and then pulled into the parking lot of the Bayou Professional Building. She looked into the rearview mirror. The Ford was still cruising, searching for a parking space.