Ed McBain: The House That Jack Built

“There’s no priest on the list I got.”

“Then maybe he’s a new witness. Ask the S.A., he’ll give you his name. He’s the priest at St. Benedict’s. He heard them yelling. They woke him up with their yelling.”

“They woke him up.”

“Yes.”

“They were yelling loud enough to wake him up.”

“Yes.”

“Did he call the police?”

“No.”

“He heard yelling, but he didn’t call the police,” Matthew said.

He was thinking priests wore black.

He was thinking maybe Ishtar Kabul was clean, whoever the hell he’d been sleeping with on the morning of the murder.

“Look, you’ll get his name from the S.A.,” Bloom said, “you can talk to him yourself. What I’m saying, I’m saying this is open and shut. A violent argument witnessed by twelve people. More screaming the next morning, only this time the guy who hears it is a priest , Matthew, try to discredit a priest’s testimony. And here’s your farmer client with bloody clothes and the murder weapon in his hand. Tell me something, will you please?”

“What?”

“Why did you take this case?”

The rain drilled relentlessly on the roof of Warren Chambers’s four-year-old dark gray Ford. Ideal car for a private eye. Shabby, fading, perfectly camouflaged at night, hardly noticeable during the day, no flashy Corvette or Alfa Romeo, not in this profession, man, even if you could afford one.

His appointment with Charles Henderson — the man with whom Ishtar Kabul claimed to have been in bed on the morning of the murder — was for six o’clock tonight. On the phone, Warren had identified himself as Harold Long of the Prudential and had told Henderson that he’d been named as one of the beneficiaries in an insurance policy. There was not a man or woman on earth who would refuse to see someone coming around to give away money.

It was now three in the afternoon and Warren was watching the front plate-glass window of what had once been a beachwear shop but was now an aerobics studio. The plate-glass window was painted over red and the words The Body Works were lettered onto it in pink. Leona Summerville, carrying a black umbrella and wearing yellow tights, a black leotard, and black aerobics shoes, had gone into The Body Works at one forty-five. He had watched her running across the mall from where she’d parked her green Jaguar, dodging puddles, the black leotard riding high on the yellow tights and showing a lot of ass, and he had thought she didn’t look at all like a woman in need of any body work, but perhaps she’d been a three-hundred-pound midget before she started coming here.

Axiom of the trade: If a fat married woman suddenly starts losing weight, she is having an affair.

He wondered how long she’d be jumping around in there.

He looked at his watch.

Two minutes past three.

My how the time did fly when you were having a good time.

After his phone call to Henderson at eleven, he had driven over to the address Matthew had given him, just to check out the Summerville house, get the feel of the place, see how many vehicles were usually parked outside, the gardener, the maid, the pool man, whoever, get some idea of who came and went legitimately. He’d been surprised on his second pass of the house when the lady herself backed out of the garage in the green Jag, there had to be a God. He followed her first to a beauty salon on Lucy’s Circle where she spent an hour and a half in her exercise clothes and a blue smock getting her hair cut.

Second axiom of the trade: If a married woman suddenly changes her hair style, she is sucking some stranger’s cock.

Leona Summerville drove next to a soup-and-sandwich shop on the mainland where, still in the exercise clothes, she took a table near the window and sat eating what looked like yogurt, staring out at the rain distractedly, her eyes sweeping the gray Ford once, and causing Warren to think he’d been made the first day on the job.

It was almost one-thirty when she finished eating.

Some men entering the shop turned to look at her as she came out.

Small wonder.

That high-cut leotard showing half her ass.

He thought he saw her smile.

Lots of married women, when they started having an affair, they began to think of themselves as infinitely more desirable. You saw a married woman flashing a lot of leg, or walking with a bouncy little wiggle, you knew she was thinking of herself as sexy and seductive, you knew she was thinking that if one stranger wanted to fuck her, then surely all strangers wanted to fuck her. Third axiom of the trade.

Warren was full of axioms today.

The work brought them out.

The moment she came out of the shop, she ran to a phone booth, didn’t even bother opening the umbrella, just ran through the rain to the nearest phone booth, as if she’d been thinking about this call all the while she’d been eating her yogurt and staring at the rain.

When a married woman started making phone calls from a public booth, watch out, mister. Axiom number…

He watched her.

Turned her back to the traffic on the road.

Inserted a coin.

Dialed a number by heart.

Leaned in close to the mouthpiece.

Smiled.

Talked rapidly.

Nodded.

Hung up.

Came out into the rain again, no longer smiling, opened the umbrella this time, and ran to where she’d parked the Jag. Closed the umbrella, got into the car. Started it. Looked at her watch. Nodded again, and then drove to the mall and The Body Works.

She was still inside there.

Quarter past three now, how the hell long did these sessions take?

The door opened.

A flurry of women in leotards, tights, leg warmers.

Ooooo, it’s still raining…

See you tomorrow, Betty…

Call me, Fran…

And Leona Summerville appeared in the doorframe in yellow and black, grimacing at the rain. Her umbrella snapped open like a spinnaker. She rushed for her car, long antelope strides, yellow legs flashing like streaks of sunshine in the pervading gloom.

Now we see who she called, Warren thought, and started the Ford.

“She went straight home,” Warren told Matthew on the phone. “I stayed outside there till five-thirty, when Frank got home. She didn’t budge from the house.”

“Okay, good,” Matthew said.

“You want me to pick up on her later tonight? I’m on my way now to see Charlie Henderson, find out who was doing what to whom while Parrish was getting himself juked. But if you can find out whether she plans to go out tonight, I can maybe be waiting when she leaves.”

“I’ll check with Frank,” Matthew said.

“Does he want me to catch her?” Warren asked.

“He simply wants to know.”

“An axiom of the trade…” Warren started, and caught himself.

“Yes, what?”

“A guy puts a detective on his wife, Matthew, he already knows she’s fucking around. That’s an axiom of the trade.”

“Well… let’s see,” Matthew said.

“I’ll call you when I finish with Henderson.”

“I’ll be home,” Matthew said.

“Talk to you,” Warren said, and hung up.

Charles Henderson was a stockbroker with the firm of Lloyd, Mallory, Forbes on Main Street in downtown Calusa. He was the only employee still there when Warren arrived at ten minutes to six. He explained to Warren that he himself usually went home at five-thirty; the exchange closed in New York at four, and the firm’s switchboard shut down at five, so there was no sense hanging around.

“Unless, of course, someone has named me a beneficiary in his insurance policy,” he said, and grinned.

He was a tall, thin man in his early forties, Warren guessed, prematurely white hair, blue eyes, a deep suntan. A framed photograph on his desk showed a woman and two little girls, presumably his wife and daughters. He was dressed as conservatively as a member of Parliament, and he had no speech or body mannerisms that would indicate he was homosexual. But Ishtar Kabul had said he was in bed with Henderson on the morning of January thirtieth.