The House That Jack Built

10. This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built…

Ralph Parrish did not like the way Calusa County was taking care of him.

The Indiana corn farmer had a lot of complaining to do about the jailhouse clothing he was wearing, and the jailhouse swill they were forcing him to eat, and the fact that he had to protect his ass day and night or he’d pretty soon be wearing dresses the way his dead faggot brother had. Those were Parrish’s exact words: “My dead faggot brother.”

Matthew was here at the county jail to ask Parrish about his dead brother and some of his friends. He had to wait until Parrish went through his roster of complaints, though, and then he had to wait further while Parrish told him he saw no reason for a law-abiding citizen to be kept behind bars without bail when no one had the slightest shred of evidence to prove he had committed a crime. Matthew explained that the State Attorney believed he had proof enough to convict Parrish for the crime of murder, fratricide no less, which a judge had considered heinous enough to cause him to deny bail. Parrish went on complaining for the next ten minutes. He was a man of the outdoors, used to the sun on his shoulders and back, used to working under an open sky. Confinement was taking its toll. Matthew listened patiently and sympathetically. Keeping the farmer under lock and key did. in fact, seem like cruel and unusual punishment. But someone had killed his brother. And the state believed he was the man.

“I hate this place,” he said in conclusion.

“I know,” Matthew said.

“Are we making any progress?”

“Maybe,” Matthew said, and filled him in on the most recent developments.

“I knew he’d go back to that house!” Parrish said. “He’s our man, Matthew. Find him and…”

“Yes, but that hasn’t been too easy so far,” Matthew said. “Does the name Arthur Hurley mean anything to you?”

“No. Who is he?”

“Someone who was watching your brother’s house. Together with a man named Billy Walker. Ring a bell?”

“No.”

“Do you know anything about these baby pictures Abbott mentioned?”

“No.”

“Anything about his daughter. Helen? Or her alleged mother. Elise Brechtmann?”

“I’ve never heard of either of them.”

“Brechtmann Beer? Golden Girl Beer?”

“I don’t drink beer.”

“Tell me, Mr. Parrish…”

“Gall me Ralph.”

“Ralph then. Why’d you buy the house here in Galusa?”

“I had plenty of money, my brother had nothing. I figured if I could help him…”

“No, that’s not what I meant. Seven years ago, you bought the house down here. Why?”

“I just told you. My brother needed…”

“But why Calusa? Why not Key West, or Miami, or Pahn…”

“Actually, my brother did spend some time in Key West, but he said it was a bit too fruity, even for him. He much preferred Calusa.”

“When was that?”

“Key West? It must have been during the Sixties sometime. When young people were roaming all over the country. All over the world, in fact. In tattered blue jeans, but with thousands of dollars in American Express checks in their pockets.”

“Was your brother one of those?”

“Yes. A plastic hippie.”

“How old was he then?”

“Well, let me think. This had to have been 1968, 1969 — he would’ve been twenty or so. Yes. Around twenty.”

“When he went to Key West?”

“Yes. Well, all over Florida.”

“Calusa?”

“Yes, Calusa.”

“Was he gay at the time?”

“He was gay before he left Indiana.”

“How long was he here in Calusa?”

“I have no idea. This must have been… well, let me see. I know he left home sometime in September, yes, it was the fall of 1968, and he wasn’t home for Christmas, so I know he was still here in Florida someplace, and I think… just a minute now… yes, now I remember. I sent him a birthday card here in Calusa. His twenty-first birthday. He was renting a house on Fatback Key, I sent it to him there. Yes. I’m sure of that.”

“When did he leave Calusa?”

“I don’t know exactly. I know he was in Woodstock during the summer of ’69, the big thing up there, the flower children thing, he sent me a card from Woodstock. And then he left for Europe sometime that fall, and he was there for almost a year, France, Italy, Greece, and then he went on to India…”

“When did he come back to the States?”

“In 1972.”

“Back to Indiana?”

“No. San Francisco and Los Angeles and San Diego and some time in Mexico, he loved traveling. And then New York, he lived in New York for a long time. And then from there to Calusa.”

“Which was when?”

“Well, when I bought the house on Whisper Key.”

“For him to live in.”

“Yes.”

“In 1981.”

“Yes.”

“Did your brother ever mention a man named Anthony Holden?”

“No, I don’t recall that name.”

“He used to work for the Brechtmann brewery. He was the purchasing agent there in 1982. Holden. Anthony Holden.”

“I’m sorry.”

“This would have been a year after you purchased the house.”

“Yes. But I really don’t remember ever hearing of him.”

“Did your brother ever mention any of his friends to you?”

“Well, yes, I suppose so. We corresponded regularly, and occasionally I came down here, or he’d come to Indiana…”

“Did you ever meet Anthony Holden down here?”

“No, not that I recall.”

“But you did meet some of your brother’s friends on the occasions when you were here.”

“Yes.”

“But none of them were Anthony Holden.”

“No.”

“And he never mentioned the name in any of his letters.”

“Never. Not to my recollection.”

“How about Elise Brechtmann?”

“No. I told you earlier…”

“Could she have been someone your brother met on his first visit to Florida?”

“I have no idea.”

“Were you corresponding back then as well? In ’68 and ’69?”

“Not too often. In fact, it sometimes seemed as if Jonathan had dropped into a black hole. I wouldn’t hear anything for months, and then suddenly I’d get a postcard from some like village in Iran…”

“But while he was here in Florida? Did he write to you then?”

“Occasionally.”

“You knew where he was staying. In Calusa, I mean. You said you sent him a birthday card…”

“Yes.”

“Had you written to him at that address before?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Did he write back?”

“I really don’t remember.”

“But in any case, if he did write back, he never mentioned anyone named Elise Brechtmann.”

“Not to my knowledge. Matthew… my brother was homosexual from the time he was fifteen. I really don’t think he’d be writing to me about a girl. He had no interest whatever in the opposite sex, believe me.”

“A man named Anthony Holden seems to think Elise Brechtmann was one of your brother’s friends.”

Parrish was shaking his head.

“A very good friend, in fact.”

He was still shaking his head.

“But you’ve never heard of her.”

“Never.”

Matthew sighed deeply.

Billy was packing.

Every now and then, he glanced over to where Helen lay on the floor against the wall, whimpering.

He wanted to get out of here very fast.

He wanted to get very far away from Calusa and Arthur Hurley and the woman who lay there bleeding against the wall.

Artie had taken the car, he’d have to call a taxi to take him to the airport. Get the hell out of here fast.

He threw a stack of undershorts into his valise and then looked over toward the wall again.

Her hand came up.

Grabbing for the wall.

And then trailed limply down the wall.

Blood followed her hand, streaking the wall.

When Matthew got back to the office at a little past two, Cynthia handed him a handful of messages. The only call he returned was the one from Morrie Bloom.

“Morrie,” he said, “it’s me.”

“Hello, Matthew,” Bloom said. “Two things. We questioned Hurley and his pal Walker, and we let them go. We had nothing to hold them on, and besides I really think they were telling the truth about not going inside that house.”

“Okay.”

“Second, I had a team of men going over every inch of that house since I spoke to you early this morning, and I mean going over it, Matthew. They just got back here a little while ago. They found some photographs in a shoebox in the upstairs bedroom but none of them are baby pictures, just Parrish and some of his playmates cavorting on the beach. So it looks like if somebody went in that house looking for baby pictures, then he found them, Matthew, ’cause they sure as hell ain’t there anymore.”

“Okay, Morrie, thank you.”

“You got any other ideas?”

“Not at the moment. Are you helping me with my case, Morrie?”

“I am a seeker of justice and truth,” Bloom said.

Matthew smiled.

“Me, too,” he said.

“Keep in touch, okay?” Bloom said, and hung up.

Cynthia buzzed almost immediately.

“It’s Warren,” she said. “He’s at the airport.”

“What line?”

“Five.”

Matthew punched the five-button.

“Yes, Warren?”

“Matthew, there’s a two-thirteen I can catch to New York. That gives me eight minutes. I located a woman named Lucy Strong, she’s black like me, Matthew, she loved my voice on the phone. I think she’s in her fifties, it sounded like, and she was a nurse on the maternity ward when a woman named Elise Abbott was there in the summer of sixty-nine. She remembers a man taking pictures, but she didn’t want to tell me anything else on the phone, even if I am black, because she’s afraid she might get in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Matthew, it doesn’t matter what kind of trouble, I’ve got six minutes to buy a ticket and get on that plane. Black people are always afraid of getting in some kind of trouble, that’s the way Whitey trained us. Do I go to New York or not?”

“Go,” Matthew said.

“I’ll call you later,” Warren said, and hung up.

“Billy,” she said.

He looked toward the wall.

“Help me,” she said.

He said nothing.

He went to the closet and took from the rack the only suit he owned, and he carried that to the valise without looking at Helen all crumpled against the wall. He folded the suit neatly into the valise, and then went back to the dresser to collect the two dress shirts he’d put in the top drawer.

“Billy?” she said.

He didn’t answer her.

“Is he gone, Billy?”

He put the two dress shirts into the valise on top of his folded suit jacket. Button-down collars on those shirts, the kind Yuppies wore.

“Billy, you have to help me.”

“I don’t have to do nothin’,” he said.

“Billy, please.”

He went back to the dresser.

Checked all the drawers to make sure none of his stuff was still in them. Rummaged through Helen’s panties and bras, a few of her sweaters and blouses, couldn’t find anything belonging to him.

“Billy?”

“Shut up,” he said.

“Billy… I’m bleeding real bad.”

He closed the valise, snapped the locks shut.

“I have to get to a hospital,” she said.

The telephone rang. He picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Walker?”

The good-looking broad who ran the place.

“Yeah?”

“Your taxi’s here, sir.”

“I’ll be right up, ask him to wait.”

He put the phone back on the cradle.

“Billy?”

“Shut up,” he said.

“Help me. Please.”

Like fun, he thought.

“Billy?” she said.

Help you and that fucking lunatic’ll come after me!

“Billy?” she said.

But he was already gone.

Names stenciled in black on the concrete curbing for each parking space.

FRANK SUMMERVILLE and alongside that MATTHEW HOPE.

A brown Mercedes Benz in the Summerville space.

Tan Karmann Ghia in the Hope space.

The blue Honda was parked across the street. Hurley sat behind the wheel, watching the building. Summerville and Hope. Law Offices. 333 Heron Street. At a little before two-thirty. Hurley saw him coming out of the building and walking toward the Ghia.

Good, he thought. Now we’re in the open, Mr. Hope. Now we see where you’re going and we take care of you, Mr. Hope, we dance you around the block, sweetheart, we take you out.

He nodded curtly and started the car.

First the police coming by shortly after she’d got back here this morning, driving off with the two men. Then both of them coming back in a taxi around twelve-thirty or thereabouts. Then the older one driving off in the Honda at a little past one. And now the young one going off in a taxi. Which left only the pregnant girl over there in the cabin.

Irene looked at the motel register again.

Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Hurley.

Mr. William Harold Walker.

Said he was the girl’s brother.

In this business, you didn’t ask too many questions. Not if you wanted to make a living. Rented them the cabin at the going rate for three, wouldn’t have cared if they were planning a circus in there, two of them on a pregnant woman, one on top, one underneath, in this business it was Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies. Yes, sir, Mr. Hurley, I hope you and your wife and your brother-in-law enjoy the accommodations, you can get a good hearty breakfast in the diner across 41. Let them come, do what they had to do, and then let them go. No skin off Irene’s nose. This was a business.

But—

Matthew Hope had been interested in these people.

This morning, when she was still at his house, he’d received a phone call from someone, and then he’d asked about the crowd in cabin number eleven, the Hurley party, and then he’d told whoever was on the other end of the line that Hurley and Walker had been spotted watching the Parrish house and that it might be a good idea to look them up, and oh, by the way, Hurley has a record.

And then he’d said one of them might have killed Jonathan Parrish, or words to that effect, and next thing you knew the cops were on her doorstep — well, not exactly the very next thing, since it had taken her and Matthew a little while to make love again. But soon after she’d got back to the motel, here came the cops, and off they went with both of them, one of whom had a record.

She wondered why the cops had let them go.

Especially the one with the record.

She wondered if she should call Matthew to tell him the cops had let them go.

A man with a record.

Tell Matthew they were both gone now. Hurley gone in the Honda, Walker off in a taxi. Carrying a suitcase. When he called the office, he said he needed a taxi. She asked him if he wanted any particular company. He said he didn’t care, so long as they could get him to the airport. So William Walker was gone for sure, and only God knew where Arthur Hurley was, though she suspected he’d be back to pick up his pregnant wife if, in fact, she was his wife. Irene had once rented a cabin to a pregnant one-legged woman and her husband, supposedly, but it turned out they were a working girl and her pimp. The lady turned a trick an hour, regular cavalcade of cars pulling into the parking lot every hour on the hour. When the couple checked out a week later, they probably went to Lake Como, Italy, for a vacation. In this business you never knew what—

The telephone rang.

Irene glanced at the switchboard.

Unit number eleven.

“Office,” she said, “good afternoon.”

An odd sound on the other end of the line.

“Hello?” Irene said.

The sound again.

Wet. And gurgling.

“Mrs. Hurley?” Irene said. “Is that you?”

And then her voice.

A single word.

“Please.”

The man who came through the door in the walnut-paneled wall behind the receptionist’s desk smiled and extended his hand.

“Mr. Hope?” he said. “I’m Henry Curtis, Miss Brechtmann’s secretary.”

“Nice to meet you,” Matthew said, and shook hands with him.

Curtis looked at the card Matthew had given the receptionist.

“Summerville and Hope,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You’re an attorney.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Has someone found another snake in our beer?” Curtis asked, smiling.

Matthew wondered why he thought a snake in their beer was comical.

“Or a rusty nail? Or a nest of scorpions? Or a used condom?”

He glanced quickly toward the reception desk, where a gray-haired woman sat doing a crossword puzzle.

“We have a battery of attorneys who do nothing but defend the company against claims of foreign objects found floating in our beer. One of these days, someone’s going to claim he spotted the Loch Ness monster in one of our bottles,” Curtis said, and smiled again.

Matthew suddenly liked him.

“I know you have an appointment…” Curtis said.

“Yes. I spoke to Miss Brechtmann on the phone earlier to…”

“Yes, I know. But I’m afraid her meeting’s running a little long. She asked me to make you comfortable while you wait.”

“How long will she be, do you know?”

“Oh, it shouldn’t take too long,” Curtis said. “I thought I might show you through the brewery…”

“That long, huh?”

“Well, however long, it’ll help pass the time. Unless you’d prefer reading back issues of trade journals.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I didn’t think you would. Mrs. Hoskins,” he said, “we’ll be walking through. Send someone to find us when Miss Brechtmann is free, would you?”

“Yes, Mr. Curtis,” the woman said, and went back to her crossword puzzle.

Irene opened the door with her passkey.

At first she didn’t see anyone.

“Mrs. Hurley?” she said.

No answer.

“Mrs. Hurley, where…?”

The phone was on a night table alongside the bed farthest from the door. The receiver was off the cradle. Irene walked quickly across the room and around the bed, and saw—

“Oh, Jesus,” she said.

The girl was lying in a puddle of blood.

Irene stepped around her and picked up the telephone receiver.

Hurley read the sign and then walked right on past it and through the gate. Way to do it with signs, you ignored them completely. You didn’t stop and read them carefully as if this was the first time you were here, you just took them in with a single glance and then ignored them. Of course you were authorized personnel, and you were going beyond this point and beyond any fucking point you felt like.

Another sign. Red letters on a white background. Place was full of signs. He ignored this one, too, because he didn’t plan to be working around the grain-unloading area or any damn area. All he planned to do was find Mr. Matthew Hope, who had disappeared inside here someplace. And when he found him—

White letters on a red background this time. More damn signs in this place. He was walking through a large open outdoor space adjacent to the parking lot and separated from it by a cyclone fence with an open, unlocked gate in it. The parking lot had been full of signs advising that only employees of the Brechtmann Brewing Company could park here, but he’d ignored those signs, and then ignored the sign on the cyclone fence, and was now ignoring every sign in sight. All he wanted to do was walk past these railroad cars, and get inside where—

Jesus!

Matthew Hope himself coming out of the building and—

Hurley ducked behind the closest railroad car.

“This is where our grain comes in,” Curtis said. “The malt and the corn. The cars you see out here each hold about two hundred thousand pounds. Hoses suck the grain up to the fifth floor, where it’s crushed and then transported to the scale room where it’s weighed. Right now, these cars are bringing in malt.”

“From where?”

“The Midwest, mostly. Want to see how we brew the stuff?”

Matthew looked at his watch.

“Don’t worry, they’ll let us know when she’s free,” Curtis said.

Hurley waited until the door to the building had closed behind them. He walked out swiftly from behind the railroad car, up the concrete steps, opened the door, and caught sight of them just as they entered the elevator at the far end of the corridor. He watched the floor indicator. Two, three…

The needle stopped at four.

He pressed the button alongside the doors. A sign on the doors read:

The stainless steel doors opened.

Same sign inside the elevator.

Made him feel like lighting a cigarette.

He pressed the button for the fifth floor.

“We store the malt here on the fourth floor,” Curtis said. “These bins hold a hundred thousand pounds each.”

“Uh-huh,” Matthew said.

“Downstairs was the beginning, if you will. Where the malt came in. Beginning, middle, and end, right? Up here is a sort of intermission, the malt just lying here until the actual brewing process begins. Now we’ll go downstairs again, and I’ll show you the middle.”

“The middle, uh-huh.”

“The mashing and cooking.”

“Uh-huh, mashing and cooking.”

“To get the wort we need.”

“The what? ”

“The wort. W-O-R-T. It’s this sugary sort of solution that we send to the brew kettles.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

Never get off at the same floor. Do that and you ran the risk of your man standing there staring you in the face when the elevator doors opened. Always go to the floor above, take the steps down — the way Hurley was doing now — open your door cautiously, take a peek around it, see what was happening. No surprises. Hurley hated surprises.

A huge, plastic numeral four, white on a black field, alongside the stainless-steel door. Same grain-hazard warning sign on the door. White on red. He put his ear to the door. Nothing but the thrumming of heavy machinery somewhere in the building. He took the knob in his hand. Twisted it slowly. Opened the door just a crack—

And saw them getting back into the elevator!

What?

Hurley hated surprises.

He kept the door cracked just a jot until the elevator doors closed behind them. He came out onto the floor. Just these huge metal bins. Not a soul anywhere in sight. Didn’t anyone work here?

Indicator over the elevator. Dropping. Three, two…

And stopping on the first floor.

He went back to the staircase and started downstairs.

A glistening stainless-steel tank some twelve feet in diameter. Capping the tank, a domed copper top. The tank and its domed top resembled a diving bell that had mistakenly surfaced inside the building. Set into the copper top was a circular opening some three feet in diameter. A steel-rimmed, thick glass lid on hinges was folded back against the sloping side of the dome. The lid resembled an oversized porthole cover. The opening in the tank was protected by a steel safety guard in the shape of a cross, quartering the space into pie-shaped wedges so that no one but a very small midget could accidentally fall into the tank. Steam billowed up out of the tank.

“The temperature in there is something like a hundred and seventy degrees Fahrenheit,” Curtis said.

He was wearing a yellow cloth cap with a pair of red Bs intertwined on its crown, the distinctive Brechtmann Brewing colophon. He had given Matthew a yellow paper cap with the same red colophon on it, in obedience to a sign that warned:

Matthew felt like a jackass in the paper hat.

The room containing the mash tank was stiflingly hot.

Several control panels at the far end of the room were studded with switches and toggles and red lights and green lights and temperature valves — but no one seemed to be monitoring them. The room was empty except for Curtis and Matthew, who stood on the raised metal platform that ran alongside the tank. Matthew remembered Anthony Holden telling him there were only fifteen men on the afternoon shift. Divide those fifteen men by the five floors in the building…

“This safety guard lifts out,” Curtis said, “if you’d like to take a peek inside here.”

Matthew did not want to take a peek inside there.

But Curtis was already lifting out the heavy, cross-shaped guard. With some difficulty, he set it on its side on the floor of the platform, peeked into the tank himself, and then stepped back for Matthew to take a look.

“This batch we’re brewing is Golden Girl,” he said, “that’s our premium beer. Which means it contains the highest percentage of the choicer two-row barley malt.”

“As opposed to what?” Matthew said.

“Why, the six-row,” Curtis said, sounding surprised. “There’s a price difference of at least a dollar a bushel. We brew Golden Girl with more of the two-row. Our other beers have some of the two-row in them, but they’re mostly six-row. The process is exactly the same, of course. Malt and water in the mash tank — which is what this is — and corn and water in the cooker over there.”

Matthew looked over there. Another huge stainless-steel tank. No dome on this one. Only what looked like a shining copper conning tower. The entire room seemed nautical to him.

“We bring both to a boil,” Curtis said, “and then pump the corn and water into the mash tank with the malt. Take a look inside here.”

Matthew took a look inside. He saw a bubbling, boiling brownish solution. Rising steam hit his face. The smell was of hot beer. No, not quite beer. Primitive beer. Fetal beer. An overpowering aroma that made his nostrils and his throat feel congested. He remembered what Anthony Holden had told him: “There was a time when I detested the aroma of malt.”

A stainless-steel door set between the two control panels at the far end of the platform opened. A man wearing a yellow hat with the intertwined B-B colophon on it stepped out onto the platform.

“Hank?” he said.

“Yes?” Curtis said.

“Telephone.”

“Thank you.” He turned to Matthew. “Back in a minute,” he said.

Mathew nodded.

Curtis walked to the end of the platform. He followed the other man out, and closed the door behind him.

Matthew was alone in the room.

He took another peek into the mash tank.

Hope.

Standing alone near a big stainless-steel tank.

Just a glimpse of him through the partially open door.

Hurley opened the door wider.

Some kind of stench hit his nostrils. He winced.

There was no one in the room with Hope, this whole fucking place was deserted. The door was on floor level. All he had to do was walk past the big tank to the right of the door, and then across the room to where metal steps with a tubular steel railing painted yellow led up to the platform where Hope was standing near the other tank.

Leaning over the tank.

Looking into a hole in the tank’s top.

Hurley stepped into the room. He moved swiftly but silently. Past the first tank, crossing to the steps, metal floor, metal steps, grabbed the yellow railing in his left hand, started climbing, six steps up to the platform, Hope still with his back to him.

He thought Here we go, counselor!

And shoved out at him with both hands.

The shove came as a total surprise.

Matthew brought his hands up at once, pushing out at the copper dome of the tank and then starting to turn, only to feel hands on his back again, shoving at him again, pushing him toward the three-foot wide opening in the tank and the boiling brown mixture of malt, corn, and water below him.

A bad situation can only get worse.

Morris Bloom’s words.

The words of a streetwise cop who had seen it all and heard—

A hand clutched into the collar at the back of Matthew’s jacket. A violent shove from behind. Matthew’s forehead banged against the opening’s rim. His dumb paper hat fell off his head and into the boiling brew below. Whoever was behind him was trying to lift him now, trying to force him through the opening into the tank.

Don’t wait. Make your move, make it fast.

Bloom again.

Matthew clenched his right fist. Like the drive-arm on the wheel of a steam-powered locomotive, his right elbow shot back blindly and desperately — and connected with something soft. He heard an ooof sound, tried to twist away from the hands still forcing him toward the gaping opening in the tank, feet shuffling, feet behind him, heels against toes, steam enveloping his head, the sickening smell of fermenting malt. He raised his left foot some four inches off the platform, brought the heel down sharply, connected only with metal, raised it again, down again, and this time hammered home on something soft, and this time heard a yell of pain behind him, and felt an immediate loosening of the hands clutching his jacket.

He twisted away at once.

Hurley.

Arthur Nelson Hurley, rage and pain mingled on his face, murder in his eyes.

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?”

“Yes,” Warren said.

“Charles Abbott,” Lucy said, and nodded. “Yes, that sounds right.”

“Was it Mr. Abbott who took those pictures we talked about on the phone?”

“Oh, no.”

“You said a man had…”

“Yes, but not her husband. I thought it was her brother. The same coloring, you know. The blond hair and the blue eyes. Sometimes a woman will marry a man who looks just like her father or her brother, have you ever noticed that? I see a lot of it at the hospital. The girl’s father’ll come to visit, and he’s a dead ringer for the husband. It’s amazing.”

“This man who took the pictures… are you saying he resembled Charles Abbott?”

“No, no. Just that they were both blond and blue-eyed.”

“How old was he? ”

“The one who took the pictures?”

“Yes.”

“Young. Twenty? Twenty-one? Young.”

“When was this?”

“A few days after the baby was born, I think. She was nursing the baby, I remember. Which I thought was a little odd, even if he was her brother. I mean, her breast exposed and all. Very casual about it. The baby lying on her breast, nursing. I just came in on them, just checking, you know, making sure everything was all right in the room, and there he was with the camera to his eye, taking pictures. Baby on her mother’s breast, nursing, the cutest little thing, her little hand resting on the breast, the little bracelet on it. I told him to stop taking those pictures right that minute! I don’t know how many he’d taken by then, but he was using a flash attachment, and I thought it might harm the baby’s eyes or something. You can’t be too careful when they’re that young, you know. He was very nice about it, of course, a nice young man. He put the camera away, introduced himself, a perfect gentleman.”

“What was his name?”

“Jonathan Parrish. Same as I told that other fellow who was up here last month.”

“What other fellow?”

“Man named Arthur Hurley. He was very surprised to learn about those pictures.”

“I’ll b&t he was,” Warren said. “But you say the baby was wearing jewelry, huh?”

“No, no. Jewelry? What do you mean?”

“I thought you said she had…”

“Jewelry? How could a baby be wearing…?”

“You said there was a bracelet…”

“Oh. Yes.”

“On her…”

“Yes, her wrist. But that wasn’t jewelry.”

“A bracelet wasn’t…”

“Not jewelry at all.”

“Then what was it?”

“Identification.”

“Identification?”

“Yes. The baby’s name. Spelled out on the beads.”

“Beads?”

“Yes. They used to string these little beads and put them on a baby’s wrist.”

“What kind of beads?”

“Little white beads with blue letters on them. Nowadays they use a plastic strip with the name on it. But back then, it was beads. Ask your mama. I’ll bet she still has your baby beads.”

“I’ll bet she does,” Warren said.

He was thinking he could not wait to tell this to Matthew.

The moment Toots saw Leona getting out of her car, she knew she wasn’t going to lock it.

Most people — even down here in sunny Florida — if they parked the car in a parking lot outside a movie theater or a mall, or if they left it parked at the curb outside a restaurant or a store, they locked it. But rarely did they lock the car when they parked it outside the house of a friend or a relative. Parking outside these houses was cozy and safe. But if these people knew how many cars were stolen each year outside the safe, cozy house of a dear friend or a cherished relative they’d have locked the car fore and aft, top and bottom, and they’d have left a two-thousand-pound gorilla sitting behind the wheel growling.

Toots knew how to get into a locked car.

She even knew how to start one without a key.

But all that took time.

Besides which, she didn’t particularly feel like getting busted for a car thief. A car thief could spend a lot of time in jail. Judges in the state of Florida did not look kindly upon car thieves because a great many expensive Cadillacs and Mercedes and BMWs and Jags were stolen to order down here and then shipped up north for redistribution hither and yon across these United States. Toots shuddered when she thought of some redneck trooper from the Sheriffs Department cruising on up and saying, “Excuse me, Miss, but why are you working on that window with a wire hanger?”

She was glad that Leona had left the door unlocked.

Glad when she saw Leona walking away from the car without so much as a backward glance or a fond fare-thee-well.

The name on the mailbox outside the house was COLMAN.

The time on Toots’s dashboard clock was three minutes to eight.

The meeting of the League to Protect Florida Wildlife was scheduled to begin at eight o’clock.

Toots waited until a quarter past eight, and then she approached the green Jag, looked up and down the street, and swiftly opened the door on the driver’s side.

She reached under the dash at once, and pulled the hood release, lever.

She closed the car door, looked up and down the street again, walked to the front of the car. unsnapped the hood, and lifted it.

It took her three minutes to splice her wires into the car’s electrical system.

It took another three minutes to run them back to the panel behind the dash and feed them through into the car.

Her heart was racing.

Gently she lowered the hood, pressed firmly down on it to lock it, and then got back into the car.

She fished under the dashboard for the ends of her wires.

She attached them to the tiny microphone and fastened it in place under the center of the dash.

Unlike the FM transmitters she had planted m the Summerville house, the bug shed just planted would not require a battery change every day; the battery it used for its power was the cars own. In dense city traffic — which one sometimes ran into in Calusa at the height of the season — the effective transmitting range of the bug was a bit more than a block. On the open road. Toots could figure on at least a quarter of a mile.

She did not get a chance to test the equipment until a bit more than an hour later.

Leona Summerville left the meeting at nine thirty-seven by Toots’s dashboard clock. When she got into the Jag, the receiver in Toots’s car picked up the sound of the door closing. When she started the car, the receiver picked up this. too. Several seconds later, when Leona turned on her radio. Toots heard a disc jockey doing a commercial, his voice coming over sharp and clear. She smiled; the bug was working. She smiled again when the music began; the DJ was playing one of her favorite songs, the theme from The Summer of ’42.

Leona seemed in a hurry to get someplace, driving far too fast for a residential neighborhood. Good. Toots thought. Let’s get there. When the Jag hit U.S. 41. Toots closed in behind it. She dropped back a bit when Leona pulled into the parking lot at Southway Mall. Kept driving through the lot to the very end, and then swung around to the back of the E.G. Daniels department store. Toots eased up on the accelerator. The store’s own lot back here. Not as well lighted as the main lot out front. Haifa dozen of the store’s huge delivery trucks angle-parked against the rear wall of the building. Near one of the trucks, parked in its shadow, a black Corvette.

Leona was parking her car.

Toots drove on by.

She caught just a glimpse of a man sitting at the wheel of the Corvette.

In the rearview mirror, she saw Leona running toward the Corvette, skirts flying.

She drove the Chevy around toward the front of the store, circled back, and picked up the Corvette just as it came around the side of the building. She did not close on it too quickly. Kept her distance. But she didn’t want to lose it, either.

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.