Ed McBain - The House That Jack Built

There was the sound of muffled waves nudging an unseen shore, and then the unmistakable aroma of salt and sea wafted through the open windows.

Florida.

Matthew smiled.

And eased the car around another bend in the road.

The Brechtmann house came suddenly into view.

It sat in majestic splendor some fifty feet back from a magnificent vista of the Gulf, the waters on this clear sunny day shading from an emerald green in the shallows to a cobalt blue in the deep beyond. Most of the sand on the southern end of Fatback Key had been washed away in last September’s hurricane, but the Brechtmann beach had been spared, seeming proof that the rich only got richer. According to Warren’s report, the Spanish-style mansion had been standing on this very spot since sometime around the turn of the century, when Jacob Brechtmann — then twenty-eight years old — carried his seventeen-year-old bride, Charlotte, to Calusa, where he gifted her with the house and erected a new brewery somewhat smaller than the one he already owned in Brooklyn.

The house had withstood at least five hundred hurricanes since it had been built, and it was still here, a seemingly permanent monument to Jacob Brechtmann’s moneymaking prowess and his expansionist bent.

Matthew parked the Ghia, got out of the car. and walked to the front door.

Leona supposed she still loved that about him. his dedication to the law. Tell Frank he could no longer practice law, and he would cease to exist. The law was his life. In his study here at home, bookshelves lined three of the walls. They contained rows and rows of books concerning the law. There were windows set above the topmost shelves, creating a clerestory effect. Sunlight slanted through the windows. Dust motes from a Charles Dickens novel lazily floated on the air. Leona could imagine a bewigged British barrister sitting behind Frank’s massive desk, pondering a brief, Big Ben tolling a quarter past the hour. Eleven-fifteen. Tooled black leather set into the desk’s richly burnished mahogany top. A brass lamp with a green glass shade. A lawyer’s room. Her husband’s room at home. She felt like an intruder.

She went to the bookshelves, searching.

Last year’s Florida Statutes.

He had brought them home from the office when the new ones arrived.

They would have to do.

She pulled the index volume from the shelf, began leafing through it, found the page she wanted, ran her finger down it:

GUARDIANS AND WARDS…

GUARDS…

GUEST GAMES…

GUIDE MERIDIAN…

GULF COUNTY…

GUNPOWDER…

GUNS…

See: WEAPONS AND FIREARMS

She kept flipping through pages:

MUNICIPALITIES…

PROBATE CODE…

RACING…

SCHOOLS…

SWAMPLANDS…

WILDLIFE…

Oops, too far.

She began leafing backward.

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES…

WEATHER MODIFICATION…

WEAPONS AND FIREARMS

Good.

The index directed her to Chapter 790. She took down the volume marked chapters 561–960. She sat behind Frank’s desk again and turned on the lamp with the green globe. Light spilled onto the tooled-leather top. She opened the book.

At first she thought she might have difficulty.

Subsection 790.05 read: “Whoever shall carry around with him, or have in his manual possession, in any county of this state, any pistol, electric weapon or device, or Winchester rifle or other repeating rifle without having a license…”

Damn it, she would need a license!

“… from the county commissioners of the respective counties of this state shall be guilty of a misdemeanor of the second degree.”

Damn it!

How was that possible?

In the state of Florida ?

She continued reading.

And under subsection 790.25 — Lawful ownership, possession, and use of firearms and other weapons — she found:

“EXCEPTIONS — The provisions of ss. 790.05 and 790.06 shall not apply in the following instances and, despite said sections, it shall be lawful for the following persons to own, possess, and lawfully use firearms and other weapons, ammunition, and supplies for lawful purposes…”

Leona held her breath.

Under the long list of persons excepted from the licensing sections, she found at last:

“A person possessing arms at his home or place of business.”

Which she guessed made it legal for just about anybody in the state of Florida to own a gun.

And in case the section had not made its point, it finally concluded with the words:

“CONSTRUCTION — This act shall be liberally construed to carry out the declaration of policy herein and in favor of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes. This act shall be supplemental and additional to the existing rights to bear arms now guaranteed by law and decision of the courts of Florida, and nothing herein shall impair or diminish any of such rights. This act shall supersede any law, ordinance, or regulation in conflict herewith.”

The hypocrisy of the law astonished Leona.

But it also delighted her.

Because now she knew she could go into a gun shop without a license and buy a perfectly legal lethal weapon.

Sophie Brechtmann was a fat lady with a hearing aid that wasn’t working. She took the button out of her ear, shook it. She shook the battery case. She put the button back in her ear, adjusted the volume control.

“There’s something wrong with it,” she explained to Matthew. “You’ll simply have to speak very loud.”

She must have been a blonde in her youth. There were still the faintest of blond streaks in her otherwise gray hair. She must have been pretty, too. Never beautiful, but perhaps pretty in a gemütlich sort of way. Never slender, but perhaps not as fat as she was now, pleasantly plump perhaps, even zaftig . Perhaps there still resided within this cow of a woman the attractive young girl who had won the heart of Franz Brechtmann more than half a century ago. Perhaps. If so, it was nothing more than a shadow now, or — more accurately — a shade, a ghost. Only the piercing blue eyes seemed youthful. The rest — the corpulent body in the severe black dress, the bloated arms and legs, the pasty, puffed face, the hard line of her mouth — seemed to have been old always.

He searched those eyes.

Helen Abbott’s eyes exactly.

“So,” she said. “What’s this about, Mr. Hope? On the phone, you said I might have information that could help your client. A murder case, you said.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

They were sitting in a sun-washed alcove off the larger living room, the room’s French doors open to the beach and the overwhelming view of the Gulf. The day was magnificent. A day for celebration. But Sophie Brechtmann was dressed in the raiments of mourning.

“I must tell you at once,” she said, “that I do not admire men who defend criminals.”

“My client…”

“Especially murderers,” she said.

“I would not have taken the case if I thought my client was guilty,” Matthew said.

“I imagine all criminal lawyers say that,” Sophie said.

“Perhaps they do. I happen to mean it.”

“Perhaps you do,” Sophie said drily. “I’ll give you fifteen minutes to tell me what you didn’t tell me on the phone.”

“We’re trying to find a person my client saw on the morning of the murder.”

“What?”

“A person my client saw…”

“Yes, what about him?”

“He may be the murderer…”

“Unless your client is.”

“No, my client isn’t,” Matthew said gently. “But even if this person isn’t the murderer…”

“What?”

“I said if the person my client saw isn’t the murderer…”

“Yes, yes, get on with it,” Sophie said.