Ed McBain: The House That Jack Built

The Corvette nosed through the night like a submarine, running silent, running black, running fast.

Heading toward Sarasota.

Whenever oncoming headlights struck the car’s windshield, Toots saw the silhouettes of two heads, one male, one female. The woman’s head — Leona’s — was turned in profile toward the man’s.

Picking up speed now as the traffic thinned on the outskirts of the city.

Toots’s dashboard clock read a quarter to ten.

Five minutes later, the Corvette pulled into a roadside motel called CaluSara, presumably because it was midway between Calusa and Sarasota. Toots drove right on by. Kept driving for half a mile, made a left turn into a hot-dog joint, moved out onto 41 again, and approached the motel from the opposite direction. Made a cautious left turn into the motel parking lot. The black Corvette was parked outside room 27. Nobody in the car now.

Toots drove past it.

There was an MD plate on it.

Toots memorized the number.

She drove all the way to the far end of the lot, and then turned the car so that it was facing 41.

She wrote down the number.

Her dashboard clock read ten o’clock sharp.

At twenty minutes past ten, Leona and her doctor friend — else how come the MD plates? — came out of the room and walked swiftly to the Corvette.

Doors slammed.

The car started.

Toots followed them back to the E.G. Daniels parking lot, where Leona got into her own car and then drove directly home.

Toots wondered why Leona — with the alibi of a wildlife meeting tucked safely in her bonnet — had squandered the night on a quickie.

Warren was appalled.

“You did what ?” he said into the telephone.

Toots told him again about the bugs she’d planted in the Summerville house and in Leona’s car. She seemed very proud of herself.

“You are not to go back inside that house again,” Warren said.

“I have to go back in. The recorder…”

“I don’t care if the recorder rots and rusts on that shelf, you are not to go back inside that house again, do you understand me?”

There was a long silence on the line.

“Grunt once if you heard me,” Warren said.

He was very tired. He would never be able to understand why a snowstorm in Denver could cause departure delays in New York. It simply did not make sense to him. If an airplane got snowed in out there in Colorado, why should that affect a flight going from New York to Tampa? Did the airline have only one plane? Did they use that same plane for all their flights? In which case, snow in the Rockies would naturally cause a three-hour delay on the Eastern seaboard.

Warren had got to Tampa at two in the morning.

It had taken the taxi another hour and a half to get him to Calusa.

At a quarter to four, he called Matthew, waking him up to tell him what he had learned from Lucy Strong. Matthew was pleased that Warren had called him in the wee small hours of the morning. He thanked Warren profusely. Warren then called Toots, who did not like being awakened at ten minutes to four in the morning. Maybe that was why she immediately told him shed broken into the Summerville house and planted a few hundred bugs inside there.

He waited.

“Toots?” he said.

“Yeah.”

Petulantly.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“I thought you’d be pleased,” she said.

“No, I am not pleased.” he said. “You are not to go back in there for those tapes.”

“Those tapes might tell us who the doctor is. Save us the trouble of…”

“What doctor?”

“She got in a car with MD plates last night. A black Corvette. They drove to a motel called CaluSara, spent almost a halt-hour in there together.”

“MD plates, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you get the number?”

“Of course.”

“Let me have it. I’ll ask one of my cop friends to run it past Motor Vehicles. Did you check the motel register?”

“How could I do that?”

“I’ll teach you sometime. Because maybe this doctor was Wade Livingston, hmm? Though I’m sure he wouldn’t have registered under his own name.”

“Who’s Wade Livingston?”

“An OB-GYN with offices at the Bayou Professional Building, 837 West Bayou Boulevard. Leona visited him on Monday.”

“He makes motel calls?” loots said.

Warren chuckled.

“But today’s Friday,” he said. “And on…”

“The twelfth of February, in fact,” Toots said.

“Correct. Lincoln’s birthday, in fact.”

“Very early on Lincoln’s birthday, in fact,” Toots said.

“In any event,” Warren said, “on Fridays, the lady has a two o’clock aerobics class at The Body Works on Magnolia, two blocks west of the Cockatoo Restaurant on Forty-one. Please be there.”

“I planned to be outside her house at eight.”

“Fine.”

“That was before I got a call at four in the morning.”

Warren looked at his watch.

“It’s only five to four,” he said.

“Better yet,” she said, and hung up.

At ten o’clock that Friday morning, Matthew went back to the Brechtmann house. A fine mist was rising from the water. The mist obscured the sky so that the house seemed rooted not on the ground but instead appeared a part of the mist itself, cloud-borne, ephemeral.

The security guard at the gate recognized Matthew.

Karl Hitler, jug ears, a little black mustache, black hair trimmed close to his head, brown eyes spaced too closely together.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “how can I help you?”

He made it sound sarcastic.

“Would you tell Miss Brechtmann that Matthew Hope is here to see her?”

“Why, certainly.”

Still sounding sarcastic.

He pressed the button on his intercom.

“Yes?”

The old woman’s voice. Sophie Brechtmann.

“Mrs. Brechtmann, there’s a Matthew Hope here to see your daughter, ma’am.”

“Miss Brechtmann has already left for the brewery,” Sophie said.

“Mrs. Brechtmann?” Matthew said to the intercom.

Silence.

“Mrs. Brechtmann?” he said again.

“Yes, Mr. Hope?”

“Mrs. Brechtmann, I had an appointment with your daughter yesterday afternoon, but we…”

“My daughter’s affairs are her own,” Sophie said. “She is not here, Mr. Hope. She left for the brewery at a little past…”

“I called the brewery before coming here, Mrs. Brechtmann. They told me your daughter wasn’t expected today.”

Silence.

“Mrs. Brechtmann?”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to talk to your daughter.”

“Good day, Mr. Hope.”

And a click on the speaker.

“Beat it, pal,” Karl said.

“I’ll be back,” Matthew said.

At twenty minutes to eleven that Friday morning, Leona placed a call from the telephone in the master bedroom. She did not know that there was an FM transmitter behind the night table not three feet from where she sat on the edge of the bed. The transmitter batteries were extremely weak by then, but there must have been at least enough power left to activate the tape recorder in the closet across the room; its reels began moving the moment she spoke.

“Dr. Livingston, please,” she said.

A pause.

“Mrs. Summerville.”

Another pause.

“Wade, it’s me.”

This sentence alone, in a court of law, would have been enough to convince a judge that Leona Summerville and Dr. Wade Livingston were intimately involved.

“Wade, have you given any further…?”

A long silence. Then:

“I’m sorry. Wade, but…”

Another silence.

“Yes, Wade.”

Silence.

“Wade, I have to see you again. I know, but… uh-huh. Uh-huh. But I have to talk to you. Uh-huh. Wade… uh-huh. Wade, I’ll come by at noon. When your nurse goes to lunch. I’ll be waiting outside for you. Wade, all you have to… Wade, please listen to me. After all this time, you can at least… no. Wade, please don’t! If you hang up, I’ll only call back. Listen to me, okay? Please listen to me. I’ll be parked outside the office, all you have to do is walk to the… I just want to talk to you. Ten minutes. Can you spare me ten minutes? That’s all I ask of you, ten minutes. Thank you, Wade. Thank you very much, darling. I’ll see you at a little after twelve. Thank you. And Wade…?”