Ed McBain - The House That Jack Built

Go for the money.

Still Bloom.

Matthew brought up his knee. Not a moment’s hesitation, not a single thought about the worst kind of pain he could think of inflicting on another man, brought up the knee fast and hard, smashing it into Hurley’s groin. Hurley bellowed in pain, and then doubled over, clutching for his balls.

Put him away.

Bloom.

Matthew brought his knee up again. This time he was going for Hurley’s chin. This time he felt bone connecting with bone, knee against jaw, felt something snapping and knew damn well it wasn’t his knee. Hurley staggered back toward the edge of the platform. Matthew wielded his right arm like a mallet, swinging it in a wide arc, the fist smashing into Hurley’s left ear, knocking him into the tubular steel railing. Once more, Matthew thought, and brought his left fist up from somewhere down near his knees, all the power of his shoulder and arm behind a searing uppercut that caught Hurley on his broken jaw and sent him stumbling backward screaming in pain toward the steps, and then down the steps, his head crashing repeatedly against metal as he tumbled to the bottom. Matthew came down the steps after him, breathing hard, fists still clenched. But Hurley was lying quite still on the metal floor below.

Matthew unclenched his fists.

The door between the control panels opened.

“Mr. Hope?”

Curtis standing up there on the platform in his ridiculous yellow hat with the tangled red Bs.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “Miss Brechtmann has gone for the day.”

And then he noticed Hurley lying on the floor at Matthew’s feet.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

“Call the police,” Matthew said.

Warren took a taxi from the airport. The driver, a white man, drove all over the Bronx for close to half an hour, told Warren he didn’t know the Bronx too well. The fare came to sixty dollars and change. The driver looked at his palm when he realized Warren hadn’t tipped him. And then looked up at Warren. And looked down at the palm again.

“Let me have a receipt,” Warren said.

“Sure,” the driver said, and ripped a small slip of paper from the meter. Scowling now, he handed it to Warren.

“Got a problem?” Warren said.

“Yeah, I got a problem,” the driver said. “You’re stiffing me is the problem I got.”

“The problem I’ve got is the one I’m taking to the Hack Bureau,” Warren said. “Your number’s on the receipt here, and your name’s on the card right there on the dash. Albert F. Esposito. I’m sure somebody’ll be contacting you, Mr. Esposito.”

“You’re scaring me to death,” the driver said.

“Does the F stand for Frank, Mr. Esposito?”

“The F stands for Fuck You.”

“Have a nice day,” Warren said, and got out of the cab.

Cold as hell up here.

Never again would he complain about the lousy weather in Florida.

Dark, too, Dark even when he got off the plane. In Calusa at that time, it would’ve been twilight. Sky over the ocean turning red and then purple and then blue-black and then black. Up here it had been black already, even blacker now, only seven-thirty and black as midnight. Dirty snow was piled on either side of the walkway leading through the development’s maze of high-rise red-brick buildings. The snow made him feel colder. Looked like it was fixing to snow some more, too. He should have gone home for an overcoat before heading for the airport, but there weren’t too many nonstop flights out of Calusa these days.

On the phone, Lucy Strong had given him her address.

Shivering in the lightweight sports jacket he was wearing, he looked for it now.

Here she came, strutting out of the house in a smart linen suit and high-heeled tan pumps, opening the door to the Jag parked in the driveway, checking the street as she did. Looking for Warren. Looking for a beat-up old Ford. Instead, here was little old Toots in a beat-up old Chevy parked a good hundred yards from the house on the opposite side of the street. Leona Summerville got into the Jag and started the engine. Toots did not start the Chevy until the Jag was off and running.

Heading for her eight o’clock wildlife meeting, thank you, Brünnhilde, you have a good strong voice that carries far, and you also run one hell of a vacuum cleaner. Tomorrow morning, when everybody went off to work or exercise or wherever the hell they’d be going, Toots would break into the house again to check the tape recorder. This time, however, she’d get there at a little after nine , which was when Brünnhilde had come in this morning, and she’d make damn sure Brünnhilde’s car wasn’t parked outside.

Tonight, she would follow Leona Summerville to Mrs. Col-man’s house, wherever that might he, and she would pray that Leona wouldn’t lock the car while she was in there listening to plans on how to protect and preserve the rare Calusa Cooze.

Lucy Strong was quite impressed.

Man flying all the way up from Florida to talk to her.

She was a woman in her early fifties, looking a great deal younger — she told Warren — because she still led an active and rewarding life. Oh, yes. Still worked at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. Still worked on the maternity ward, loved babies, didn’t Warren just love babies?

Warren did not love babies, but he didn’t tell this to Lucy Strong.

He simply nodded and smiled.

He was wondering if it would start snowing again. He had already missed the last flight back to Calusa tonight, but he could still catch any one of several planes to Tampa. Provided Kennedy did not get snowed in. Warren hated snow. Snow was one of the reasons he’d left St. Louis. The other reason was St. Louis itself.

“So what is this all about?” Lucy asked. “This must be pretty important, a policeman flying all the way up from Miami.”

“Calusa, ma’am,” Warren said. “And I’m not a policeman.”

“What are you then? FBI?”

“No, ma’am. Definitely not FBI.” Not when impersonating a federal agent could get you three years in the slammer. “I’m a private investigator, ma’am. Doing research on a murder case for the attorney who’s…”

“That’s what made me think a policeman,” she said. “When you told me this was a murder case. On the phone.”

“Yes, ma’am, probably.”

“Or an FBI agent,” she said.

“Here’s my card,” he said, “I’m just a private detective.”

“I see,” she said, and took the card and looked at it and nodded, and then handed it back to him.

“Miss Strong,” he said, “on the telephone you told me you were there in the summer of 1969 when…”

“Yes, at Lenox Hill…”

“Yes, when a woman named Elise Abbott gave birth to…”

“Well, I wasn’t there the moment she gave birth.”

“No, what I meant…”

“I was on the maternity ward, yes. She was one of my patients. Elise Abbott.”

“This would have been in August of 1969.”

“Yes.”

“According to what I have, the baby was born on August nineteenth.”

“Well, as I say, I wasn’t there at the actual birth.”

“But Elise Abbott was one of your patients.”

“Oh, yes, I remember her very well. A beautiful young girl, but there was… such a… a sadness about her. I don’t know what it was. So young, so beautiful, why should she have been so sad? And married to such a handsome young man! Both of them blond, her with green eyes, him with blue. He was a good deal older than she was, an Englishman, you know. Spoke the way the English do, funny, you know? His name was Roger, I think. Or Nigel. Something like that.”

“How about Charles?”

“Charles? Well, yes, it could have been. Charles does sound English, doesn’t it? Their prince is named Charles, isn’t he?”