Ed McBain - The House That Jack Built

“I know that. Do your best.”

“I will. Matthew…?”

“Yes?”

“Does the name Wade Livingston mean anything to you?”

“Yes. He’s a doctor. Why?”

“A gynecologist. Leona went to see him this afternoon.”

“So?”

“So nothing,” Warren said. “Maybe she’s pregnant.”

“Or maybe she went for her yearly checkup.”

“Maybe. I tracked her home after the visit, waited around outside her house till around four-thirty, when she left for Marina Lou’s.”

“Then that was your car I spotted.”

“Some private eye, huh?”

“Warren, I’m going to need whatever you can get me on the Brechtmann family.”

“The beer people?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. How soon?”

“I plan to go there tomorrow, if they’ll see me.”

“By ‘they’?”

“Sophie or Elise, either one.”

“I’ll get to work right away. Anything else?”

“Yes. I went to see Arthur Hurley.”

“I wish you hadn’t done that, Matthew.”

“Why?”

“He’s got a record as long as my arm.”

“How do you know?”

“One of my cop people ran him through the computer. How’d you find him?”

“By calling around. He’s staying at the Calais Beach Castle with a young blonde named Helen Abbott, and a guy named Billy Walker. You might ask your cop people to run a few more computer…”

“I will.”

“And let me know who’ll be tailing Leona, okay?”

“ If I find someone.”

“Find someone, Warren.”

“Someone good this time, huh?”

“You said it, not me.”

“Matthew…?”

“Yes?”

“You have no idea how glad I am that you’re not…”

“Yes?”

“Never mind,” Warren said. “Talk to you,” he said, and hung up.

Soaping herself in the shower, her hands gliding over her belly and her breasts, Helen Abbott wondered if they weren’t all just kidding themselves. Never mind truth, never mind justice, truth and justice had nothing whatever to do with a million dollars.

She believed her father had told her the truth, and if there was any justice at all in this world, then the Brechtmann family would realize she deserved everything she was asking. But where was it written? That truth had to be rewarded? Or that justice would triumph?

All those years.

Her father keeping the secret.

Until he suddenly decided he’d kept it too damn long.

Told her all about it then.

And went to see her grandmother.

Came back empty-handed.

This was just before Christmas. By then, she’d known Art for almost six months. Met him in July. Him and Billy sitting in a St. Pete bar where her and another girl had gone. Odd-looking pair, Art a good twenty years older than Billy, looked more like his father than his good old buddy. Turned out they’d met each other in prison. Used to be cellmates at Union C.I., up in Raiford.

This excited her a little.

Art being a convict. Well, an ex-convict. Told her him and Billy had just got out that very week. Told her he’d been locked up for attacking a man with a broken beer bottle. Almost killed him, he told her.

This excited her, too.

The sense of violence about him.

Said he hadn’t had a woman for too long a time. Asked if she’d like to help him change that sad predicament. Turned out Billy and her girlfriend were hitting it off, too. The four of them went back to her place, smoked a little dope, drank some wine, ended up in bed, her and Art in the queen-sized bed in the bedroom, Billy and Wanda on the hideaway bed in the living room.

After her father got beat up and sent to the hospital, she told Art all about him having gone to see the Brechtmanns.

“No shit?” he said. “The beer people? I drink their beer all the time. That’s terrific beer, Brechtmann’s. Why’d he go see them?”

She told him why.

Art listened very carefully.

“There can be a lot of money in this,” he said.

And kept listening.

And then he explained that her father had made a mistake, approaching the family on a wing and a prayer, it was no wonder they’d told him to fuck off. What Helen had to do, she had to go back to that house, but this time she had to have cards she could play, here’s my hand, this ain’t bullshit, my dears, this is true and you know it’s true, and I think I’m worth a million fucking bucks! So how about it?

She went to the house in January.

Art had found out about the pictures by then and she thought it’d be enough to just mention them. Without actually having them in her hand. Just tell them she knew all about the pictures. Knew all about the beads.

She was scared to death when she got there.

Big old house on the Gulf, iron gates surrounding it, she’d announced herself to the security guard, told the man she was Helen Abbott, here to see either Sophie or Elise Brechtmann. Fine high wind blowing that day, this was just last month, around the end of the month, her long blonde hair dancing on the wind, her palms sweating.

Gate man pressed a button on the intercom.

“Yes, Karl?”

A woman’s voice on the speaker.

“Mrs. Brechtmann, I’ve got a girl here wants to see either you or your daughter, her name’s Helen Abbott.”

A silence.

Then her grandmother’s voice on the speaker again.

“Show her in.”

And Helen knew in that instant that her father had told her the truth.

They were drinking coffee and eating bagels in a Sabal Key joint called The Miami Deli. It was eight o’clock on Tuesday morning, the ninth day of February — and the sun was shining. This was akin to a religious miracle. Everyone in the place was grinning at the February sunshine that streamed in through the windows facing the beach road. Convertible automobiles with their tops down flashed by in the February sunshine outside. It was like Florida again.

The woman sitting with Warren Chambers was twenty-six years old, a tall, slender, suntanned blonde with frizzied hair and dark brown eyes. She was wearing a white T-shirt, cutoff blue jeans, and sandals. She looked like a beach bum. But she was a private eye. Her name was Toots Kiley.

“Where’d you learn your trade?” Warren asked her.

“From Otto Samalson. And May Hennessy.”

“Who’s May?”

“Chinese woman used to work for him. She went back to China after he got killed. Did you know Otto?”

“Only by reputation.”

“One of the best,” Toots said.

“How about you?”

“I’m pretty good,” she said, and shrugged. “Otto taught me a lot.”

“How long were you with him?”

“Six years. Started working for him when I came down from Illinois.”

“And quit when?”

“Got fired , you mean.”

“When?”

“Two years ago.”

“Why?”

“You know why, or you wouldn’t be asking.”

There was a long silence at the table. Warren picked up his cup, sipped at the coffee.

“Who nicknamed you Toots?” he asked.

“It’s not a nickname,” she said.

“That’s your real name? Toots?”

“Toots, yeah.”

“Your parents named you Toots ?”

“My father did.”

“How come?”

“He loves the harmonica.”

Warren looked at her.

“He named me after Toots Thielemans, best harmonica player in the world. Listen, I was lucky. He could’ve named me Borah.”

“Is that another harmonica player? Borah?”

“You mean you never heard of Borah Minevitch?”

“Never.”

“Borah Minevitch and the Harmonica Rascals?”