Ed McBain - The House That Jack Built

He wondered why.

He did not know that she’d been in there twice today.

The first time had been to study the Florida Statutes.

The second time had been to hide the .22-caliber Colt Cobra she’d bought at Bobby’s Gun Exchange.

Sitting the Parrish house was getting to be a pain in the ass.

Literally.

There wasn’t a comfortable chair in the joint. Not a chair you could sit in and still see through the windows, anyway. There was a big comfortable easy chair downstairs, but you sank into it and couldn’t see a thing, and also it was too heavy to lug all the way up here to the second floor of the house.

Officer Charles Macklin was ready to tell Warren Chambers to shove the job.

It was now a little past midnight, rain making the night look darker and colder than it actually was, rain drumming on the roof, rain lashing the windows, rain sweeping in sheets across the asphalt road on the entrance side of the house, rain pelting the beach on the deck side.

Charlie knew that rain kept the bad guys inside.

That was a fact of police work.

Nobody liked to work when it was raining, not even thieves.

You gave your average cheap thief a choice whether he wanted to do a job in good weather or when it was raining, he’d nine times out often pick the good weather. It only stood to reason. Who the hell wanted to get wet, thief or not? You come out of a house with a television set you just burgled, you got soaked before you could get it in the car. The television, too. Both of you got soaking wet. You come out of a liquor store you just held up, you’re liable to slip on a wet sidewalk and break your leg before you even reach the car. You jump on a girl in the park, you’re planning to rape her, it starts raining on your dick, you get your balls all wet, too, it wasn’t worth the trouble. If you were any kind of thief whatever, it simply did not pay to work in the rain.

So what the hell was he doing here on a rainy night?

There wasn’t nobody going to try breaking into this house on a rainy night, no matter what was hidden inside here.

Charlie didn’t know that somebody was already inside here.

“I was really disappointed when you didn’t call,” Irene said.

She was curled up in one of Matthew’s living-room chairs, legs tucked under her. Short black skirt, red scoop-necked blouse. Black high-heeled sandals, ankle-strapped. Red Lucite, art-deco earrings inlaid with sterling silver. Shiny brown hair combed sleek and straight to her shoulders, bangs running wild on her forehead. Blue eyes watching him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have called, I know. It’s just… I’m working a murder case, and things started…”

“Oh my, murder,” she said.

And smiled.

And sipped at her drink. Gin and bitters. Enough bitters to give it an orange color, she’d told him. On the rocks, please. He’d never known anyone in his life who’d drunk gin and bitters.

Rain streaked the sliding glass doors.

He had turned on the pool lights, and through the doors he could see rain riddling the surface of the water, pockmarking the blue. The palm trees swayed in the wind, rattling their fronds like dancers shaking maracas.

“Are you a cop?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “A lawyer. I’m representing a man charged with murder.”

“Do you enjoy murder cases?” she asked.

“This one, yes,” he said.

“Why this one, in particular?”

“Maybe because it’s so difficult,” he said. “Keeps me on my toes.”

“Difficult how?”

“Well… people telling contradictory stories, for example. It’s hard to know who’s telling the truth.”

“About what?”

“About anything ,” he said. “Yes, she’s your granddaughter, no, she’s not. Yes, there’s proof, but we haven’t got it yet. Yes, there are pictures, but the dead man took them. Like that.”

Irene blinked.

“Pictures?” she said.

“Baby pictures.”

“Ahh, baby pictures,” Irene said.

“Are the pictures inside the Parrish house? Were they really taken by…?”

“Is there a church involved? ”

“A church?”

“You said the parish house.”

“ Jonathan Parrish. The victim.”

“Oh, is that the case?”

“That’s the case.”

“I read about it.”

“Actually, a church is involved. St. Benedict’s. Where the priest probably lied to me.”

“About what?”

“About the man in black.”

“Oh my,” Irene said. “Missing baby pictures, and a lying priest, and a man in black and everything. Just like Agatha Christie.”

“God forbid,” Matthew said, and pulled a face.

“I have a good idea,” Irene said, and put down her drink.

“What’s that?” Matthew said.

“Why don’t we turn out everything but the pool lights…”

“Okay,” Matthew said.

“… and then make love.”

He looked at her.

“I don’t have herpes or AIDS,” she said.

“I don’t, either,” Matthew said.

“I haven’t been to bed with any high-risk people,” she said.

“Me neither.”

“That I know of,” she said. “I mean, I may get a call tomorrow from a hooker my late husband laid in San Francisco ten years ago, and she’ll tell me she used to live with a homosexual guy that was involved with a bisexual girl that used to live with a lesbian junkie that just died of AIDS…”

“I know,” Matthew said. “It gets to be ‛The House That Jack Built,’ doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said.

They were both silent for several moments. There was only the sound of the rain.

“So what do we do?” she said.

“What we did when we were seventeen.”

“Won’t that spoil it for you?”

“It didn’t when I was seventeen.”

“Then come kiss me,” she said.

Under the green-shaded lights in the Calusa Herald-Tribunes morgue, the rain slithering down the windowpanes, Warren and Toots found the first mention of the case in the file folder labeled LEGAL NOTICES. They tracked it from there to the front page of the paper for November 10, 1982. Like teenagers sharing a comic book, heads close together, they read the story:

Anthony Holden — Purchasing Agent for Agricultural Commodities in the Calusa Branch of the Brechtmann Brewing Company — had been summarily fired by Elise Brechtmann, the company’s Chief Executive Officer since July of the preceding year. A reporter had called the brewery and asked Elise herself why she’d fired a man who’d been with them for twenty-two years.

“He stole a fortune from us,” she said. “Anthony Holden is a crook.”

Warren raised his eyebrows. So did Toots.

Elise Brechtmann had made an exceptionally reckless accusation at a time when caution might have been the byword: In the state of Florida, Grand Larceny was a first-degree felony punishable by a max of fifteen years.

Unfortunately, the newspaper had quoted her exactly.

And three days later The New York Times carried the same quote.

Little did Elise know that the Calusa P.D.’s White Collar Crime Division would decide after investigation that there was no evidence of criminal intent. Which meant that perhaps Anthony Holden was not a crook. Which, to Holden’s way of thinking (and presumably his lawyer’s as well) was good and sufficient reason to bring suit for libel.

“This is beginning to get good,” Warren said.

It was just beginning to get good when the telephone rang.

Matthew picked up the receiver. The bedside clock read a quarter past one.

“Hello?” he said.

“Matthew, it’s Warren.”

“Hello, Warren,” he said.