Ed McBain: The House That Jack Built

Hands on the clock straight up now.

One of the ground-level office doors opened. A nurse in white skirts, a little white cap, white pantyhose and flat white rubber-soled shoes came out and began walking toward a little red Toyota. She looked up at the sky, shrugged, got into the car, started it, and drove off.

Toots waited.

Leona tossed her cigarette out the window.

The door to the office opened again.

A tall dark-haired man wearing eyeglasses and a blue suit stepped out, checked the parking lot, spotted the green Jag, and walked toward it.

Dr. Livingston, Toots thought. I presume.

Livingston, if that’s who he was, checked the lot again as he approached the Jag. He opened the door on the passenger side, got in immediately, and closed the door behind him.

“Let’s get the hell away from here,” he said.

Toots smiled.

The bug was working fine.

It was easy when there were only two people. Monitor a bug with four or five people in a room, you could go crazy trying to figure which voice was which. This one was simple. Only two people, one male, one female. Vive la différence .

“All right, Lee, what’s the big urgency?”

Toots guessed he called her Lee. Term of endearment, she guessed. Lee.

“I hate it when you call me Lee.”

Ooops.

“Oh, I’m SOFIA, I didn’t realize…”

“My name is Leona.”

“Yes, Leona , I said I was sorry.”

Silence.

“So here we are. what’s the big urgency?”

“I wanted to say goodbye properly.”

“I thought that’s what last night was all about. Saying goodbye properly Leona, if you intend to…”

“No, I…”

“… drag this thing out forever…”

“No. I know you want to end it.”

“I’ve already ended it, Leona.”

“Yes, I know. But I haven’t. Not yet. Not properly.”

“Where are we going?”

She was making a left turn into the parking lot of the Haley Municipal Arena. The big billboard out front advertised an automobile show coming next week. Trucks, Cars, Tractors.

“We can talk here.”

“We can talk on the road , too. I don’t see why…”

“I don’t like to talk and drive at the same time.”

Toots followed them in.

Several cars parked in the lot. Employees, Toots guessed. A yellow pickup truck with a golden retriever sitting behind the wheel. Man in coveralls walking diagonally across the lot toward the Motor Vehicles Bureau across the street from the arena.

Leona stopped the car.

Toots swung around the lot, drove all the way around the arena, and then parked facing the Jag, some three rows away from it. Risky, maybe, but she wanted to catch every word of this on tape, and if she pulled too close behind them, she might have attracted even more attention. A car parked in plain sight wouldn’t be a suspicious car. She hoped.

“All right, let’s talk.” The doctor’s voice again. “You said you wanted to talk, so let’s…”

And a sudden silence.

Toots turned toward the recorder, thinking there’d been some kind of failure. The reels were still turning, the speaker switch was in the ON position.

“What’s that, Leona?”

The man’s voice. The doctor. Wade Livingston. Whoever the hell. Toots had heard voices like that before. A man trying to sound calm while he was on the thin boil of panic.

“What does it look like?”

Uh-oh, Toots thought.

“It looks like a gun, Leona. put it away right this minute.”

Toughing it out. But the panic bubbling up now.

“No, I want to end this properly.”

Holy shit, Toots thought, she’s going to shoot him!

“You said you wanted to end it. Wade, so let’s end it.”

Toots was already halfway out of the car.

She ran straight for the driver’s side. Neither of them saw her coming. The man, the doctor. Wade Livingston, whoever the hell, was fumbling to open the door on his side, and Leona was holding the gun in both hands now, the way she’d probably seen lady cops on television doing it, and Toots thought Oh, Jesus, don’t shoot him, and grabbed the handle on the Jag’s door and yanked it open, and though she’d never met the lady face to face, she yelled her first name, “Leona!” and then yelled, “Don’t!” and then reached out for her shoulder and pulled her toward her, and hoped the gun wouldn’t go off accidentally and put a big hole in the doctor’s head.

“Toots Kiley,” she said. “Give me the gun.”

She held out her hand. The gun was shaking in Leona’s fist.

“Give it to me, okay, Leona?”

On the other side of the car. Wade Livingston was backed against the door, watching in seeming fascination.

“Who are you?” Leona said.

“I told you. Toots Kiley. Let me have the piece, please.”

Leona hesitated.

“Come on, Leona,” Toots said. “There are better ways, believe me.”

Leona looked into her eyes.

“I mean it,” Toots said.

Leona kept looking into her eyes.

“Okay?” Toots said.

Leona nodded and handed her the gun.

“Good,” Toots said. “Thank you.”

“Are you a police officer?” the doctor said. “If so, I’d like to bring charges against…”

“You think your wife would like that?” Toots asked, taking a shot in the dark.

The doctor’s face went pale.

“I didn’t think so,” Toots said.

The mist on the water was beginning to tear away in tatters. Matthew could almost see the horizon now. Elise sat beside her mother, drained by her bitter diatribe and her equally bitter confession of murder. She had equated her love for Jonathan Parrish with a film of dubious intent, and now she sat with her hands clasped between her mother’s as if the frames of that film were flickering on the screen of her mind all over again.

“Miss Brechtmann,” Bloom said, “I ask you now, did you go back to the Parrish house at any time after the day of the murder?”

A policeman’s voice. Flat. Unemotional.

“I did.”

“For what purpose, please?”

“To look for the photographs.”

“Was there anyone in the house when you went there?”

“You know there was.”

“Miss Brechtmann, could I now have the weapon and the photographs specified in the search warrant? ”

“I’ll show you where they are,” she said, and rose, and slipped her hands from between her mother’s, and then patted her mother’s hands and said, “Its all right. Mama. Really”

She turned to where Matthew was standing beside Bloom.

The sun was almost coming through now.

The panes of glass on the French doors were almost alive with light.

“Nobody counted,” she said, and smiled.

She was looking directly at Matthew. Perhaps because Bloom was a policeman from whom she felt she could expect no compassion. Perhaps because she included her mother among those who had not counted. Looking at Matthew. the smile on her face.

“Do you see?” she said.

“No. I’m sorry, I…”

“The baby was born in August,” she said.

“Yes?”

The smile still on her face.

“I was with Abbott shortly after Christmas. The end of December. Do you see now?”

Her mother was staring at her.

Matthew already knew what she was saying. Matthew had already done the counting.

“The baby wasn’t premature,” Elise said.

“Elise. what are you…?”

“I got pregnant in November, the baby was right on time.”

“What?”

“The baby was Jonathan’s.”

Sophie Brechtmann brought her hand to her mouth.

“He never knew, isn’t that rich? The night I went to tell him… well, you see, that was the night he chose to… to… to tell me it would never work, that was the night he said… goodbye.’ Elise shrugged. She was still smiling. “So I went to Abbott’s shabby little room. In anger and in… in…”