The House That Jack Built

3. This is the priest all shaven and shorn that married the man all tattered and torn…

Warren’s input:

Scratch Ishtar Kabul.

Annie Lowell was an eighty-two-year-old woman who lived in a luxurious house on Fatback Key. Annie was not a fag hag as the term was commonly understood in the trade. But Henderson was her stockbroker, and she had made a great deal of money through his kind and expert offices, and she saw no reason why she shouldn’t allow him to use the guest house behind the main house every now and then, no questions asked.

Yes, she knew he sometimes used the guest house to entertain male acquaintances. Listen, Annie was eighty-two years old and she didn’t care who did what to whom so long as it didn’t frighten the horses. Annie could remember when there wasn’t even television. Annie did not think that whatever Henderson and his male acquaintances did in the guest house could be any worse than what was on television these days.

Then the big question.

Yes, she knew the man Henderson had been with on the morning of the murder.

His name was Martin Fein.

Who, of course, was Ishtar Kabul.

Howard the Duck in Arabic.

Scratch Ishtar Kabul.

Warren’s further input:

Leona Summerville had left her house on Peony Drive at eight o’clock last night, had driven in her green Jaguar to the home of a woman later identified as Mrs. Shirlee Horowitz (from letters in the mailbox Warren had perused this morning) where she remained for two and a half hours, going directly home from there to arrive on Peony Drive again at a quarter to eleven. Unless the lady was having a lesbian affair with Mrs. Horowitz — an unlikely possibility in that Warren had subsequently learned the woman was seventy-one years old, the wife of a retired gynecologist named Marc Horowitz, the mother of two children and grandmother to three, and the secretary of the League to Protect Florida Wildlife — Leona Summerville was so far clean.

All this from Warren at ten minutes past ten on a cold, bleak, wet Saturday morning.

In December of last year — when Matthew was still regularly dating his former wife, Susan — she’d asked if he thought Leona Summerville was having an affair.

“What?”

“Leona. I think she’s having an affair.”

“No.”

“Or looking for one. ”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“She dresses like a woman sending out signals.”

Pillow talk. Former husband, former wife renewing vows of undying love while wondering aloud about Leona’s faithfulness. It had been raining that night. It was raining this morning, too. Maybe it always rained in Calusa. All water under the bridge anyway, rain down the gutters; he had not seen Susan since just before Christmas.

Another video.

Sudden.

Shocking in its clarity.

Leaping unbidden onto the screen of his mind.

Two or three years ago perhaps, one of Calusa’s many charity balls. They are going in the Summervilles’ car, they are on the way to pick up — had he been dating Dana O’Brien at the time? Had it been Dana? No matter. Leona is wearing a slinky green gown that matches exactly the color of her Jaguar. Frank, in dinner jacket and black tie, is driving. The windshield wipers snick at the rain, rain, go away. The tires hiss on wet black asphalt.

Leona has joined Matthew in the backseat, trying to help him with his tie as Frank negotiates the car around the twists and turns of the slippery road.

She looks stunning.

Green gown molding her body like a patina of tarnished brass.

Sculpted hair settled like a sleek black helmet on her head.

A green feather in her hair, over one ear.

Green eye shadow.

Dark lashes.

Brown eyes luminous under the Jag’s courtesy light.

Brown eyes intent on his black silk tie and the hands working it.

Long red fingernails on those hands.

The light casting a pearly glow on the sloping tops of breasts scarcely contained in the gown’s flimsy top.

Hands working.

Knees touching his.

The electric feel of silk over nylon.

Knees moving away at once.

“There,” she says.

A Carly Simon mouth, widening over even white teeth.

He wonders who is fucking her.

The mouth widens, widens…

Click.

The time on the Ghia’s dashboard clock was a quarter to eleven.

As he drove the car into the driveway of St. Benedict’s church on Whisper Key, he suddenly wondered whether all marriages eventually ended in adultery.

He got out of the car, grumbling at the rain, and then ran through the pelting downpour toward the rectory, up a crushed-gravel pathway past a large wooden cross on a berm planted with rain-stooped hibiscus bushes. The church — built in the Spanish-style architecture favored at the turn of the century — was situated directly on the Gulf of Mexico, dominating a point of land beyond which was an ominous gray sky and a roiling gray sea. The Parrish house was located not a hundred yards north of the church, occupying a much smaller plot of land, but facing the same turbulent sea; Matthew could see the house from where he stood in the pouring rain and lifted the knocker on the thick wooden door to the rectory behind the church. He was fifteen minutes early. He hoped Father Ambrose would answer the door before he dissolved.

The priest looked as if he had wandered out of The Name of the Rose.

He was wearing sandals and a brown caftan that could have passed for a cassock, a small polished wood-and-silver crucifix hanging on the front of it from a black silk cord. His shorn bald head was fringed with a halo of brown hair that matched his brown eyes. He had just finished shaving when he opened the door for Matthew; his face was littered with blood-stained scraps of toilet tissue. Matthew guessed he was in his late forties, but the bald head may have been misleading.

He offered Matthew a cup of coffee, which Matthew was immediately sorry he’d accepted; it tasted as if it had been laced with strychnine. Sitting in the snug, warm rectory lined with bookshelves containing theological works in dusty leather covers, a fire blazing in the small fireplace, the rain slithering along stained-glass windows, Father Ambrose told him what had happened on the morning of January thirtieth.

Rain.

The sound of rain drilling the cedar shakes on the rectory roof, awakening him long before dawn. In his narrow bed in his narrow cubicle, he listens to the sound of the rain and hopes it will end before tomorrow; attendance on Sundays always drops off when the weather is bad.

A gray dawn palely lights the small stained-glass window in his room.

He hears shouting.

Voices raised in shrill, shrieking anger.

He thinks at first — the shouting is so loud — he thinks it is coming from just outside his window, on the lawn someplace, or perhaps on the beach, teenagers sometimes drink beer on the beach and get rowdy. He stumbles out of bed in the near-gloom, slips into his sandals, throws on a Burberry raincoat over his under-shorts — he sleeps only in boxer undershorts — and goes out into the rectory proper, the room in which they are now sitting, moves directly to the front door, and throws it open to the howling storm.

He squints through the driving rain.

There is no one on the lawn.

No one on the beach, either.

But the voices persist, rising in renewed anger, drifting on the strong wind, slashing through the slashing rain.

The voices are coming from the Parrish house.

He knows a homosexual lives in that house. Sometimes, in fact, the midnight parties there get a bit loud. But this is something else again, this is not revelry he is hearing, this is rage. A rage as cold as the rain, he shivers at the sound of it. He cannot discern what the voices are saying, the words are tumbled on the wind, a jumble of accusation and denial, but even without a grasp of their meaning he can sense impending explosion in their force, and suddenly he crosses himself and mutters, “God save us.” For he knows with an immediate and frightening certainty that rage such as this can only terminate in violence greater than the violence of words alone.

Words.

Unintelligible on the wind, carried brokenly on the driving rain. Words pregnant with the threat of imminent horror.

And then a single understandable word.

Sharp. Clear. Unmistakable.

Knifing through the wind and the rain.

No!

And a scream.

A terrifying scream.

The fire suddenly crackled and spit. New wood.

Father Ambrose shook his head.

Matthew watched him.

And now the rectory sitting room was silent except for a low steady hiss from the fireplace and the steady pelting of the rain on the cedar-shingle roof

“Did you hear just that one scream?” Matthew asked. “Following the word ‘No’?”

“Just that one scream.”

Ralph Parrish had told Matthew he’d awakened to the sound of voices arguing, his brother screaming. And then he’d heard his brother—

“Did you hear anyone shouting, ‘I don’t have them, I don’t know where they are’?”

“The only word I could make out was the word ‘No.’ The other words…”

He shook his head again.

“Father Ambrose… you said when the voices awakened you…”

“No, the rain woke me up.”

“But later you heard these voices arguing…”

“Yes.”

“… and went to the rectory door and looked out at the lawn…”

“Yes.”

“And then looked out at the beach, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“I’m assuming you could see the beach from the rectory door.”

“Oh, yes.”

“And there was no one on the lawn, and no one on the beach.”

“No one.”

“Was there anyone on the beach after you heard the scream? Did you see anyone running away from the Parrish house?”

“I don’t think I checked the beach again. Not after I heard the scream.”

“What did you do?”

“I closed the rectory door. It was raining very hard. I was getting wet.”

“You closed the rectory door…”

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“I locked it.”

“Why did you lock it?”

“I was frightened.”

“But you didn’t call the police.”

“No.”

“You were frightened, but you didn’t call the police.”

“No.”

“Why not? You had just heard a violent argument, you had just heard a scream, you say you were frightened… but you didn’t call the police.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t want attention drawn to St. Benedict’s.”

“In what way would attention…?”

“There are homosexuals in my congregation, Mr. Hope. Our choir, our entire Music Department has a very high gay population. If there was some kind of trouble in the Parrish house up the beach, I didn’t want it reflecting on the law-abiding homosexuals in my parish.”

“So you remained silent.”

“Yes.”

“Until when? When did you go to the police?”

“I didn’t.”

“You didn’t? I was informed yesterday that the State Attorney intends calling you as a witness.”

“I was visited on Thursday by a detective from the Sheriffs Department. He was making what he called a routine canvass of the neighborhood. I couldn’t very well lie to him about what I’d heard on the morning of the murder.”

“Did he ask you specifically about what you’d heard on the morning of…?”

“No, his questions were general. He wanted to know if I’d seen or heard anything out of the ordinary.”

“On the morning of the murder?”

“Yes, and in the twenty-four hours preceding the murder.”

“Had you seen or heard anything out of the…?”

“The argument. I told him about the argument. And the scream.”

“I meant in the twenty-four hours preceding the murder.”

“No. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“You didn’t see anyone wearing black, did you?” Matthew asked. “Anywhere in the vicinity of the Parrish house?”

Father Ambrose looked up at him.

Matthew knew that look.

Recognition.

Gold.

“Did you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Did you see someone in black…?”

“No,” Father Ambrose said.

He watched the Karmann Ghia pulling out of the driveway, watched it as it disappeared into the falling rain. And then he watched only the rain, and wondered why he had not told Matthew Hope about the couple he’d married on the day before the murder.

Just passing through, the dark-haired man had said.

It looks like such a pretty old church, the little redhead had said.

Good a place as any to get married, the dark-haired man had said.

Bright sunny day, possibly the last one Calusa would see this winter. Sat out on the lawn behind the rectory. Chatting.

Dressed almost entirely in black.

Black jacket and trousers. Dark blue T-shirt, could’ve passed for black. Black loafers, no socks. The sleeve of the jacket was torn just above the right elbow. Tall white man in his forties, with a scruffy three-day growth of beard, looking tattered and travel-worn as he sat in the sunshine asking his innocent-sounding questions. Took off his jacket, it was that hot in the sun. The little redhead with him couldn’t have been older than twenty, twenty-one. Long rust-colored hair, blue eyes, freckled face. Wearing faded blue jeans, pale blue T-shirt, silver-studded belt, sandals. Both of them exceedingly nervous.

Well, they were always a bit nervous, making a commitment like this made them nervous. So they always asked a lot of questions. Or commented on how pretty the church was — it was an extraordinarily beautiful church, a medieval sort of jewel settled snugly in the sand, facing sunsets that set it aglow with a light that seemed God-inspired. The stained-glass windows were, in fact, medieval. Crafted by sixteenth-century artisans, they had been transported from a little village in Italy, the gift of a Whisper Key parishioner who’d made a fortune in aluminum siding back in his native Cleveland. The mahogany pews had been fashioned right here in Calusa, but they’d been stained and waxed and burnished over the years since the church was built to create a patina that seemed centuries old. So, yes, the church provided conversational fodder for young people — and sometimes older ones as well — who were nervous because they were there to bind themselves irrevocably, one to the other, in the eyes of God. Which is exactly how many of them put it. hi the eyes of God. Or in God’s eyes. Variations on a theme. Seeking God’s blessing.

The questions they asked had very little to do with the ceremony they were seeking. They wanted to know about the weather in Calusa, those who were passing through, those who had spotted this perfectly beautiful little medieval sort of jewel of a church settled snugly in the sand. Was it always this hot here? Or this rainy? Or this cold? Or this windy? Or this lovely? Or they wanted to know where they could enjoy a good celebratory dinner tonight, was there a very nice romantic place anywhere in town, you know, candlelight and wine, where they could seriously and in solitude reflect upon the enormously serious step they’d taken and toast their future together, was there such a place in town? Father Ambrose usually sent them to the Orchid Room at the Adler Hotel.

So yes, there were always the questions, always the comments, always the brittle chatter to cover the nervousness.

This was an enormous step for a couple to be taking.

This was commitment.

This was a solemn ceremony performed in the eyes of God.

He had married them at four o’clock on the afternoon of January twenty-ninth.

The day before the murder.

Married them in the little chapel off the rectory.

Both of them on their knees before the altar.

The one in black and the little redhead.

“Dear friends in Christ,” he’d said. “As you know, you are about to enter into a union which is most sacred and most serious, a union which was established by God himself. And because God himself is its author, marriage is of its very nature a holy institution, requiring of those who enter into it a complete and unreserved giving of self. This union, then, is most serious because it will bind you together for life in a relationship so close and so intimate that it will profoundly influence your whole future.

“That future, with its hopes and disappointments, its successes and its failures, its pleasures and its pains, its joys and its sorrows, is hidden from your eyes. You know that these elements are mingled in every life and are to be expected in your own. And so, not knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and health, until death…”

They were alone in the chapel, the three of them.

No one there to object to the union.

Late-afternoon sunshine streaming through the stained-glass windows.

Father Ambrose looked down at the one in black.

“Do you, Arthur Nelson Hurley, take this person as your wedded spouse to live together in the state of holy matrimony, to love, honor and cherish in health, sickness, prosperity and adversity, forsaking all others so long as you both shall live?”

“I do,” he said.

Father Ambrose looked down at the little redhead.

“Do you, William Harold Walker…?”

You had to change the ceremony for them, of course.

Had to delete any words that might imply or even suggest that the act was a legally binding one. You also had to cut out all the words applying to gender, although some of them insisted you referred to one of them as “man” and the other as “wife,” rather than both as the androgynous “spouse.”

Over the years, though. Father Ambrose had evolved a ceremony that seemed to work for the participants. He thought of himself as one of the participants. Never mind Rome, the hell with Rome. Rome didn’t know what he was doing down here in this remote little corner of Florida, and he guessed they never would find out — not from him, anyway. The way Father Ambrose looked at it, if two men wanted to get married, then by God he would marry them. Two women, the same thing. Two alligators, two snakes, two warthogs, two chickens, two of any of the creatures the good Lord had made, if they wanted to get married. Father Ambrose would offer them the comfort of the holy sacrament and the hell with Rome.

He was fond of telling any homosexuals who found their way to St. Benedict’s the joke about the Catholic priest, did they know the joke? Well, this pair of homosexuals wants to get married, and they go first to a rabbi who says no, he won’t marry them, and then to a Protestant minister who says no, he won’t marry them, and finally to a Catholic priest who says, “Sure, I’ll marry you, what do they know about true love?”

The joke usually put his customers at ease, they were always very nervous when they arrived, and self-conscious, as if they were attempting to do something ridiculous and might therefore become the objects of laughter or even scorn. The joke, of course, implied that the Catholic priest was himself homosexual, a not farfetched surmise, but that was neither here nor there, since Father Ambrose was as straight as an arrow and always had been. His one and only sexual experience had, in fact, been with a girl. A long time ago, before his mother decided he had a calling to the priestly vocation. And yes, thank you, he’d enjoyed it, but his love for God was all-consuming, and he had not for a single moment looked back with longing on that afternoon of utter bliss he’d shared with fifteen-year-old Molly Pierson on the roof of a Chicago tenement, long, long ago. Occasionally, though, he wondered if Molly herself had ever married.

Never a week went by, even in the off-season, that someone didn’t knock on the rectory door and ask for Father Ambrose. Usually a pair of men. Now and then women. Women didn’t seem to need the church’s blessing, he didn’t know why. Maybe women didn’t need anyone’s blessing, maybe they knew they were God’s chosen and didn’t have to do a damn thing to prove it.

Knock, knock on the rectory door. Hello, we were just passing by, saw this lovely church, thought it might be a good place to get married. They’d heard about him, of course, the baldheaded priest who was willing to marry gays, his name was common currency in the homosexual communities of most American cities. He supposed sooner or later Rome would find out. Hell with Rome. Until then…

The looks on their faces when he said the words “And may God bless your union.”

Beatific.

The joy he himself felt, knowing he was bringing such pleasure, his anointed thumb making the sign of the cross first on one forehead and then the other, And may God bless your union.

Joy.

Exaltation.

But those two…

The one in black and the little redhead…

They had left him with a curious feeling of unease. He had felt for a fleeting instant that perhaps they hadn’t been homosexual at all, that perhaps the entire exercise had been a mockery. But for what purpose and to what end?

And then he remembered the questions they’d asked. While they were still sitting on the lawn chatting. Before he’d performed the ceremony.

Questions that had seemed pointed.

Well, not at first.

Merely inquiring at first about the availability of beachfront property here in Calusa.

Now that we’re about to take the big step, time to think about really settling down someplace. Seems like a nice community here, Calusa does.

This from the one all in black.

Do you think there might still be any property left on the beach?

This from the little redhead, all bright-eyed and blushing.

And then zeroing in on the Parrish house.

How about the house next door, for example? Do you think it might be for sale? Do you know who owns it? Do you think he might be interested in selling it? Would you know the owner’s name? How do you spell that last name? And it’s Jonathan, you say? Jonathan Parrish? Does he live there alone?

All this from the one in black.

He tried to remember now everything he’d told them about Jonathan Parrish, tried to remember at which point they’d seemed to lose interest and stopped asking questions.

He wished it would stop raining.

The thought of them coming back in the rain frightened him.

The two men sitting with Warren Chambers could have been nothing but cops. Or rednecks. Or both. They were both. Warren guessed neither of them liked the idea of taking orders from a nigger, but the pay was good. The one with the blue eyes was called Charlie. The one with the brown eyes was called Nick. Aside from the color of their eyes, they could have been twins. Massive shoulders and chests, thick wrists and hamlike hands. Colonel Oliver North expressions on their faces: arrogant, surly, self-righteous, challenging, self-satisfied, and smug. Warren would rather have been working with a pair of alligators, but it was tough to find experienced surveillance help down here in the boonies. Four cops in all on a daily round-the-clock basis. Six-hour shifts. Charlie had worked the six a.m. to twelve noon this morning. Nick had just come off the noon-to-six p.m.

They were sitting in a bar called Curley’s, off Route 41, near the South Dixie Mall. Warren was the only black man in the place. This was not unusual for Calusa, Florida, but Warren guessed Charlie and Nick were uncomfortable sitting here drinking with a nigger, even though he was paying for the drinks.

“We think somebody’s casin’ the house for a hit,” Charlie said.

“Pretty much what we sep’ately come to conclude,” Nick said.

They even sounded like twins.

“Have you talked to the other two?” Warren asked.

“Yeah, they ain’t seen nothin’ ‘spicious. This is just today we got all this activity.”

“This car goin’ by, two men in it.”

“Driver dressed all in black.”

“The other one with red hair.”

“When was this?”

“On my shift,” Charlie said, “the car first come by around ten o’clock, musta been.”

“What kind of car?”

“Blue Honda Civic.”

“Florida plates?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Rental?”

“Nope. You gettin’ ahead of me. Chambers. You want to hear what you payin’ for or you want to run off at the mouth?”

Knock all your fucking pearly white teeth out of your mouth, Warren thought.

“Sure, go ahead,” he said.

“Made a pass at the house, drove off in the rain, pulled in the church driveway down the road, made a U-turn in it, come on up past the house again. Made a slower pass this time, checkin’ it out, casin’ it real careful.”

“This was about what time now? Ten after ten? Ten-fifteen?”

“In there. ”

“Did the car stop?”

“Nope. Just drifted on by, slow and easy, both of them all eyes.”

“Where were you?”

“Inside the house.”

He saw Warren’s expression.

“Anything wrong with that?”

“Not if it doesn’t bother you.”

“It’s where I been settin’, too,” Nick said. “On my shift.”

“Fine. ”

“Anybody gives us static, we show the potsie, tell ‘em Calusa ED. planted us. ”

“Fine by me,” Warren said.

“ ‘Cause you looked a little troubled by it,” Charlie said.

“No, no.”

“I mean, you want us to see anybody comes in that house, best way to do it is to be inside the house our ownselves, ain’t that right?”

“Seems like the best way to me,” Warren said.

Break your fucking redneck nose in six places, he thought.

“So this was around ten, ten-fifteen,” he said, “when the car made a second pass.”

“Yeah,” Charlie said. “In there.”

“And you were where inside the house?”

“Upstairs bedroom. You get a good view of the road and also the beach if you change windows every now and then. On’y problem is there’s no air conditioning, and it gets hot as hell up there.”

“Even with this friggin’ rain,” Nick said.

Warren had noticed that redneck law-enforcement officers rarely used hard-core profanity. Redneck law-enforcement officers would shoot you as soon as look at you, but they always tiptoed politely around obscenity.

“When’s the next time the car came by?” Warren asked.

“Around twenty of twelve,” Charlie said. “Not only come by, but parked across the street.”

“Sat there how long?” Warren asked.

“Still there when I come to relieve,” Nick said. “Twelve noon.”

“Uh-oh,” Warren said.

“No, no,” Nick said.

“I knew what was happenin’,” Charlie said. “I was watchin’ the whole action from the upstairs window.”

Warren was still worried.

“We ain’t amateurs,” Charlie said, reading his face.

“I hope not,” Warren said. “But what I see right now is two people casin’ a house where one guy is staring down at them from an upstairs window and a second guy is about to walk in the front door.”

“Nobody saw me at the window,” Charlie said.

“And I spotted the car right off,” Nick said. “I cruised on by, mindin’ my own business.”

“Did they keep sitting there?”

“All day long,” Charlie said.

“And you’re telling me they didn’t know you were in that house?”

“That’s what I’m telling you. Nobody made me.”

“What’d you do, Nick? Keep driving back and forth till they made the car, too?”

“I tole you nobody made me,” Charlie said angrily.

“Me, neither,” Nick said. “I never even went by the house after that first pass. I parked up at Pelican Reef, walked up the beach, and went in the house by the back door. Relieved Charlie must’ve been about twenty to one.”

“Was the Honda still parked there?”

“Still there.”

“What time did it leave?”

“Bit after five o’clock.”

“The two of them sat watching the house all that time, huh?”

“Watching it, yeah,” Nick said.

“Fiddling with maps, like they were trying to figure out where in hell they were,” Charlie said, “but watching the house.”

“Why do you figure they watched it for such a long time?” Warren asked.

“Not ‘cause they made either of us,” Charlie said, “if that’s what you’re suggestin’.”

“My guess is they were clockin’ traffic,” Nick said. “Tryna figger out who’s goin’ in and out of the house at what times. On’y the house is empty, so what they got was no traffic at all.”

“Unless they spotted you going in from the beach side.”

“No, they were in the car when Nick relieved me,” Charlie said. “You beginnin’ to irritate me, Chambers. You don’t think we can do this friggin’ sissy job, then get yourself somebody else. Ain’t many people I know’d be willin’ to sit in a empty house all day for a shitty ten bucks an hour.”

“A shitty ten bucks, huh?” Warren said.

“I get fifteen when I supervise traffic up the country club,” Charlie said. “When they havin’ a dance up there.”

“How many times a week do you do that?” Warren said.

“Well…”

“Well, my ass,” Warren said. “You’re getting sixty bucks a day here, seven days a week, which where I come from is four-twenty a week, which is probably more than you’re making on the force. Moonlighting never paid so good, and you know it.”

“Well, maybe that’s true,” Charlie said. “But that don’t mean we have to take no shit about bein’ made by two hippie assholes in a Honda. We ain’t amateurs. Chambers. If you thought we was amateurs, you shouldn’ta hired us.”

“Well, I did hire you.”

“So then get off our backs, huh?” Nick said. “We doin’ the job, man.”

There was a long silence.

“You think we can maybe get another beer here?” Charlie said.

Warren signaled for the waitress to bring another round. The beers came some five minutes later. The waitress was a dark-haired girl wearing a very short mini. When she left the table, Charlie said, “Like to get me a little bit of that, man.”

“Slide my hand right up that leg of hers,” Nick said.

“Right under that skirt,” Charlie said.

“Find somethin’ real sweet under that skirt,” Nick said, and licked his lips.

“Why’d you call them hippies?” Warren said.

“We talkin’ pussy here, he’s talkin’ hippies,” Charlie said, and shook his head. “Muss be somethin’ wrong with the man.”

Warren guessed he’d been accepted as one of the gang. A redneck didn’t discuss white pussy with a black man unless he thought they were good ole buddies. Either that, or the black man was being set up for a kick in the balls. Warren didn’t think this was the old Let’s-Walk-the-Nigger-Round-the-Block ploy. He suspected his little lecture about the hourly wage had turned them around. Told them he knew he was paying top dollar and expected top-dollar work in return. Touched on their sense of pride. Maybe they weren’t amateurs, after all.

“Why hippies?” he asked again.

“The one dressed in black looked like he’d been sleepin’ in his clothes for a month,” Charlie said. “Had a earring in his left ear. Long black hair. Forty years old, a total friggin’ hippie asshole.”

“Twenty years too late,” Nick said, and shook his head.

“The other one, too,” Charlie said. “Long red hair, wearin’ clothes he picked outa some trash bin.”

“Fine pair of friggin’ hippie housebreakers,” Nick said.

“You said they were clocking traffic,” Warren said. “When do you figure they’ll make their move?”

“Hey, he’s askin’ us our advice,” Charlie said.

“I’ll be damned,” Nick said. “He’s askin’ the amateurs their advice.”

But both of them were smiling.

“If they sat out there from eleven-thirty…”

“Eleven-forty,” Charlie said.

“Eleven-forty till five o’clock…”

“Bit past five.”

“Then chances are that’s when they plan to hit, don’t you think? Say between noon and five o’clock?”

“Well, maybe so,” Charlie said.

He was still smiling.

“Between noon and five tomorrow, am I right?” Warren said.

“Could be,” Nick said.

He was smiling, too.

“So what’s funny?” Warren said.

“Well, what we figured…”

“This was before we knew they were gonna sit out there so long, but it still holds…”

“What we figured…”

“This was when I come in the back way to relieve Charlie, and we were both watchin’ that Honda from the upstairs window…”

“Without nobody makin’ us, Chambers, ‘cause we were usin’ the old Hole-in-the-Shade trick…”

“What we figured was if these two hippie assholes were watchin’ that house there with such great interest…”

“Sittin’ out there like they owned the friggin’ street…”

“Not scared anybody was gonna see them payin’ so much ‘tention to the premises there…”

“Why, what we figured was maybe they’d be so engrossed in they own activity, they wouldn’t notice nobody comin’ up the street behind the car and checkin’ out the license tag.”

“So when I relieved Charlie here, what he done was walk up the beach to Pelican Reef, and then come back down the street and glom the tag on the car…”

“Wrote it down later,” Charlie said.

“Checked it through Motor Vehicles, too,” Nick said.

“Wouldn’t you just know it?” Charlie said, grinning. “I come up with a name an’ a address for the man owns that car.”

“Registered in St. Pete,” Nick said.

“Which means they’re out-of-towners maybe staying in some motel down here…”

“Which means we got a shot at findin’ ‘em even if they don’t bust into the Parrish house…”

“Unless they’re sleepin’ on the beach, which judgin’ from the looks of them is a good possibility.”

“What’s his name?” Warren asked.

“Arthur Nelson Hurley,” Charlie said, “Now whether that’s the one all in black or the redheaded one, I couldn’t tell you.” His grin widened. “That’s ‘cause I’m juss a li’l ole amateur, you see.”

“Let’s call that li’l girl back here for some more beer,” Nick said.