Ed McBain - The House That Jack Built

Beside him, Irene rolled over and reached for a package of cigarettes. A match flared in the darkness.

“I know it’s late,” Warren said.

“No, that’s okay.”

“But I thought you might want to get rolling on this first thing tomorrow morning.”

“What’ve you got, Warren?”

“I don’t know what the Brechtmann family has to do with all this, but you told me earlier today that Parrish is supposed to have taken some pictures of Elise and her baby…”

“According to Abbott…”

“Yes, I…”

“… who may not be telling the truth.”

“I realize that.”

Irene let out a stream of smoke.

Matthew put his free hand on her naked thigh.

“But the Brechtmanns had a lot of trouble in 1982, which they agreed to settle out of court, and I’m wondering now why they don’t just pay Abbott the two dollars and send him on his way.”

“Abbott’s asking for a million.”

“In 1982, the tab was fifty-seven million,” Warren said.

“Fill me in,” Matthew said. His hand was still on Irene’s thigh. She moved slightly, turning, making herself more accessible.

Warren told him about Elise Brechtmann firing Anthony Holden in November of 1982.

“Claimed he was stealing from the company. Exact quote: ‘He stole a fortune from us. Anthony Holden is a crook.’”

“Wow,” Matthew said.

“Wow,” Irene whispered, but only because his hand had wandered higher on her thigh.

“Okay. A week later, Holden brings suit. You know where we found this, by the way?”

“Where?”

“In a file marked ‘Libel,’ can you believe it? Anyway, he asked for seven million dollars in compensatory damages. His salary with Brechtmann was stated as being two hundred thousand dollars a year plus stock options. He claimed that when Elise Brechtmann called him a crook, she caused the loss of future earnings potential.”

“She probably did,” Matthew said.

“He also claimed fifty million dollars in punitive damages.”

“I’m not surprised,” Matthew said. “Punitive damages are a sort of civil fine intended to discourage a defendant from doing the same thing all over again. To be meaningful, they have to be related to the wealth of the defendant.”

“Right. Holden claimed that when it came to getting another job in the brewing industry. Elise had effectively killed him.”

“Are those his words?”

“In a newspaper interview, yes. You want the exact quote?”

“Please.”

“ Calusa Herald-Tribune , November 18, 1982. ‘Elise Brechtmann has killed me. In this business, or any other business, if you label a man a crook, he’s dead.’”

“Which was the basis of his suit.”

“Exactly.”

“Which you say was settled out of court.”

“Yes.”

“For how much?”

“I don’t know. Where do you think we should look next?”

“What?”

“They’ve got a funny filing system up here.”

“Where are you?”

“At the Herald-Trib’s morgue. We looked under ‘Settlements,’ but all we got was a lot of stuff about the Calusa Indians and the first Spanish explorers. We looked under ‘Claims’ and ‘Arbitration’ and ‘Disposition’ and even ‘Satisfaction.’ There was only one clipping under ‘Satisfaction.’ A review of the Rolling Stones record.”

“Why don’t you call it quits, Warren? If you can get me an address for Holden…”

“I don’t even know if he’s still in Calusa. This was a long time ago.”

“Give it a try okay? If you find anything, you can call me at the office in the morning.”

“Right.”

“Good night, Warren,” Matthew said, and put the receiver back on the cradle, and turned toward Irene.

“Are you always this busy?” she asked, and stubbed out her cigarette.

Leona lay awake in the dark, listening to Frank’s gentle snoring beside her, wondering if the black man who’d been following her had been hired by Matthew. No sign of him today. Remarkable coincidence. Talk to your good friend Matthew over a few drinks on Monday, come Wednesday and the man following you has disappeared.

She hadn’t expected that to be the result.

She’d asked to see Matthew only so that he’d soothe Frank’s ruffled feathers if indeed there was any soothing to be done. Your wife having an affair? Don’t be ridiculous, Frank. I can tell you on the highest authority that such a notion is absurd.

Couldn’t have Frank suspecting anything.

Not now.

Couldn’t afford a showdown.

Couldn’t risk any sort of discussion about it, any confrontation, any attempt on his part to stop her from doing what she now knew she had to do.

The gun was hidden where he’d never dream of looking for it.

In his own lair. The counselor’s den. Remove the copy of Corbin on Contracts from the shelf, and you’d find a .22-caliber Colt Cobra behind it.

If he found the gun, she would say she’d felt they needed protection. Too many burglaries in the neighborhood, too much dope moving across Florida from the East Coast, too many changes in the past several years, nothing the same anymore. See, Frank, here are the cartridges, right behind these volumes of Black’s Law Dictionary . He would ask why she hadn’t discussed this with him first, the purchase of a gun and bullets, so many bullets, and she would — but this was idiotic.

He would never find the gun.

The dust on those volumes was a quarter-inch thick, he hadn’t once looked at them since his second year of law school.

He would never find it.

And after the deed was done—

If it were done when ’tis done,

Then ’twere well it were done quickly.

A handsome young English major named Salvatore Agnotti had played Macbeth to her Lady Macbeth at Hunter College in the fall of 1968. She was twenty years old then, and he was twenty-one. She could still remember…

Ahh, the innocence of those days.

“Was the hope drunk wherein you dress’d yourself?”

And both of them bursting into laughter. They could not get past that line for the longest time. Was the hope drunk wherein you dress’d yourself? She’d try it a dozen different ways. Was the hope drunk? Was the hope drunk? Was the hope drunk ? Sal breaking apart almost the moment the words started from her mouth. She bursting into laughter not an instant later. Both of them giggling helplessly. Fat Professor Lydia Endicott, Speech and Dramatics, watching them patiently, “Come on, kids, let’s do it, huh?”

And finally getting it right, oh, the joy of that wonderful speech, the venom in those lines!

“Was the hope drunk wherein you dress’d yourself? Hath it slept since? And wakes it now to look so green and pale at what it did so freely?”

Sal always flinched an instant before she delivered the next line. She began looking for the flinch as an unwritten cue.

“From this time such I account thy love!”

There was another stumbling block later on in the scene.

“I have given suck…”

And Sal would fall apart, and Leona would fall apart, and even Professor Endicott would begin laughing. In the empty auditorium the three of them giggled and giggled for five, ten, sometimes fifteen minutes at a time, I have given suck , and whap, both of them rolling around on the floor, and Professor Endicott falling out of her seat.

But later…

In performance…

Sal watching her with something close to awe on his face as she gave that part of the speech, as though truly frightened by the fearsome woman this college girl had become.

“I have given suck, and know how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, have pluck’d the nipple from his boneless gums and dash’d the brains out… had I so sworn as you have done to this.”