Ed McBain: The House That Jack Built

Title over: DECEMBER, 1968…

… to make love to a stranger. In retribution for Jonathan’s abrupt dismissal of her. Here in tears, here in anger and in shame, here to make love — no, not love. Certainly not love . Never again will sixteen-year-old Elise Brechtmann, star of this tedious little low-budget film, make love to any man. She is here to fuck and to be fucked. By the chauffeur. A man in her father’s employ. A menial. She weeps into his shoulder as he claims her.

Fast forward.

Skip the boring months of her pregnancy and the frightening, painful delivery, cut to the goddamn chase. She has grown used to pain ever since Jonathan closed the door on their dream, the dream that still seeps unbidden into her mind, awake or asleep, these two beautiful people moving gracefully through life together, the dream that can never be, he can never be satisfied by a girl, a woman, a female, dig?

So she is understandably surprised (the camera moves in for a close shot of her utterly astonished face) when a few days after she gives birth, who should show up at the hospital but the Indiana Kid himself! Fresh from the recent festivities at Woodstock, he is sporting long blond hair and a long blond beard and feathers and beads, oh, how her girlish heart flutters!

He says he wants to take pictures of her and the baby.

He has taken at least a dozen of them when the nurse comes in and asks him to stop.

He kisses Elise on the cheek when he leaves an hour later.

A brotherly kiss.

He promises to send her prints of the pictures.

And is gone.

She is crying again. The pain, the pain.

He never sends the pictures.

She does not see him again until…

Title over: OCTOBER, 1981.

Twelve years later. Twelve long years , kiddies!

A montage of shots.

In the foreground, Jonathan Parrish on the Whisper Key beach. In the background, the house his brother has bought for him to live in. Jonathan Parrish is back in town, and up to his old tricks, moving into Calusa’s growing gay community, discreetly to be sure, but not so discreetly as to hide his escapades from the all-seeing, all-knowing Elise Brechtmann, the writer, director, and star of this shabby little R-rated flick. Elise still nurtures the dream, you see, she still lives in the land of Might Have Been. It seems to her sometimes that her life is defined by loss. The loss of Jonathan, the loss of the baby, the loss of her father. Loss and pain, this is a three-handkerchief movie, folks.

When she discovers that Jonathan is having an affair with the blatant homosexual who is Brechtmann’s purchasing agent, she decides to put an end to it at once. To protect Jonathan, you see. Because she knows what kind of a man Holden is, knows all about his unwholesome past, the hordes of younger men he’s used and abused. She would, in fact, have fired him long ago were it not for a company policy initiated by her own father that guaranteed tenure to employees who’d been there for fifteen years or longer. But tenure does not apply to thieves. She concocts the story that he’s been stealing from the company, goes so far as to falsify documents showing he’s been receiving kickbacks, and is startled out of her wits (another close shot of her face, green eyes opened wide, mouth agape) when Holden sues for libel and defamation.

She learns later that the suit was suggested to Holden by Guess Who?

(Close shot of Jonathan Parrish, grinning into camera, pointing a prankish finger at himself. He is holding in his other hand a cane that looks remarkably like a phallus.)

She settles out of court.

She is beginning to hate Jonathan Parrish.

But now, she must deal with him yet another time.

On this cold rainy morning at the end of January…

It is, in fact, the thirtieth day of the month, but there are no titles, she does not need titles to remember the morning she put him out of her life forever…

Jonathan…

Jonathan…

She walks up the beach toward his house, dressed in somber black, black in mourning for her lost innocence, her lost love, her lost child, black against the falling gray of the rain and the gray of the sky.

He is at the kitchen counter when she comes in.

He does not look as if he has slept much the night before.

He is cutting a grapefruit in two with a chefs knife.

He explains that he had a dreadful argument with his brother. He tells her he feels rotten. He asks her if she wants half of this thing. She shakes her head no. Some coffee? No. Thank you.

He makes a comment which to her sounds faggoty but which probably isn’t, something about it being a bit early for a social visit, isn’t it, one eyebrow arched toward the clock on the wall, dawn breaks grayly on the horizon.

“I came for the pictures,” she says.

“What pictures? What are you talking about?”

“The pictures you took of us. Me and the baby.”

“God, that was centuries ago.”

“Jonathan, I need them. Are they here?”

“Who remembers?”

“Do you have them?”

“Really, Elise…”

“Try to remember.”

A look comes over his face. She has seen this look before. She knows exactly what this look means. It is a look compounded of opportunity and greed.

“How much are they worth to you?” he asks.

“You son of a bitch!” she says.

“Oh my, such language.”

“You have them, don’t you?”

Her voice rising.

“If I do, how much will you pay for them?”

“You son of a bitch bastard!”

Louder now.

“How much, Elise?”

“You fucking cocksucker fag !”

Shrieking the words.

And reaching for the knife on the countertop.

“No!” he shouts.

And screams.

Like a woman.

And then he shouts, “Put that down!”

She comes at him with the knife.

“I don’t have them!” he shouts. “I don’t know where they are!”

She does not believe him, she no longer cares where the fucking pictures are, she is consumed by rage. She knows only that this is the man who has caused her so much pain over so many years, the man who could never be satisfied by girls, women, females, dig ? the man who not moments before has betrayed her yet another time. As she lunges toward him, her green eyes slitted, her lips skinned back over clenched white teeth, the knife in her hand becomes for her what he has always wanted and what she has never been able to give him. With all her might, she sticks it into him, glittering and stiff.

He screams.

And then he is silent.

All is silent.

She lets go of the knife. He sinks to the floor.

At first she thinks she is wet with his blood below.

But it is not his blood.

She runs off into the rain.

Toots was watching when she came out of the house at a quarter to twelve.

Leona was wearing black leotards and tights. Black pumps with a French heel. A black shoulder bag slung over one shoulder. Black Reeboks laced together and slung over the other shoulder. She tossed the Reeboks and the bag onto the front seat of the Jag and then got in herself.

Toots stayed a block and a half behind her.

Followed her up 41, turned when she did onto Bayou Boulevard.

Still with her when she parked the car in front of the Bayou Professional Building, 837 West Bayou Boulevard. Two-story, white clapboard building dead ahead. Doctors’ shingles alongside doors in the wall. One of the shingles read WADE LIVINGSTON, M.D. Must be the place. Toots thought.

She waited.

In the Jag up ahead, Leona lighted a cigarette.

Toots’s dashboard clock read three minutes to twelve.

Short nervous puffs of smoke came from the window on the driver’s side of the Jag.