The House That Jack Built

7. This is the dog that worried the cat…

Warren Chambers came to the office at a few minutes before nine on Wednesday morning. Matthew had just ordered coffee and a cheese Danish from the deli on Heron. He buzzed Cynthia and asked her to make that two orders.

Warren got straight to the point.

“I hired a woman named Toots Kiley,” he said, “used to work for Otto Samalson. She’s very good. Or at least was. She hasn’t been working for a while.”

“How come?”

“She was doing cocaine.”

“Terrific,” Matthew said.

“I think she’s clean now. I hope so, anyway. Matthew, this town ain’t overrun with fantastic investigators, believe me.”

“I know.”

“So let’s take a chance. If she doesn’t work out, I’ll absorb the loss, okay?”

“No, we’re in this together.”

“Thank you, but…”

“No buts.”

“We’ll argue it later, okay? Meanwhile, I’m hoping she’ll be all right. She worked with Otto when he broke that tax-shelter scam Gabel and Ward were running, do you remember that one?”

“No.”

“Three, four years ago. Otto’s client was a guy named Louis Horwitch…”

“Oh, yeah. A cattle thing, wasn’t it?”

“Close. It was oil wells.”

“Right.”

“Anyway, Otto and Toots worked that case together.”

“What’s her real name?”

“That’s it. Toots.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Warren shrugged. “So let’s see what happens, okay? As for the Brechtmann family,” he said, and reached into his jacket pocket just as the buzzer on Matthew’s desk sounded. He pressed a toggle.

“Yes?”

“Deli man’s here.”

“Send him in, Cynthia.”

The man from the deli came in with a paper bag containing two plastic cups of coffee, two cheese Danish, four packets of sugar, two plastic spoons, two plastic knives, and three paper napkins. Matthew paid and tipped him. The man said, “Thanks,” and went out.

“We shouldn’t be eating cheese,” Warren said, biting into the Danish. “Very high cholesterol level.”

“What’d you get on the Brechtmanns?” Matthew asked.

“Not much. Have you ever noticed what a Mickey Mouse library we have here in Calusa?” He wiped his hands on one of the paper napkins, reached into his jacket pocket again, and took out several folded lined yellow pages. He handed the top page to Matthew. “That’s the family tree,” he said. “For reference. I’ve only taken it back four generations. And I’ve only followed the branch that ended up here in Calusa.”

Matthew took the lined sheet of paper. He bit into his Danish. He sipped at his coffee. He looked at the handwritten page:

“Gottfried Brechtmann was a brewer in Munich,” Warren said. “He married Elise Meuhler, daughter of a local banker, and had two children by her — Anna and Jacob. Jacob’s the one who interests us. He’s the one who came to America.”

“When?”

“Turn of the century. 1901, to be exact. Came here with his wife, Charlotte — alleged to be a great beauty and something of a man-eater. Started the American branch of the Brechtmann Brewing Company.”

“Here in Calusa?”

“No, no. Brooklyn, New York. That was the first one. There are nine of them now, including the one here. I’ll get into that later, Matthew. Let’s concentrate on the family right now.”

“Okay.”

“In the year 1905, Jacob and Charlotte came to Calusa for a winter vacation. They both fell in love with the place and built a house here the following year, when their son Franz was born. The house is still here, Matthew, on Fatback Key.”

“I’ve been there.”

“It must be a beauty.”

“It is.”

“Okay, this is now 1906. The Brechtmanns move into their new house and Jacob begins construction on a second brewery. Here in Calusa. Twenty-seven years later, there are four breweries and Brechtmann is the twelfth largest brewer in America. At a swank party in Palm Beach, handsome young Franz meets an eighteen-year-old beauty newly arrived from Nazi Germany. Her name is Sophie Witte… are you following me, Matthew?”

“I’m following.”

“Okay, we are now down to Franz Brechtmann marrying Sophie Witte.”

“When was that?”

“1933.”

“And when was Elise born?”

“February of ’52. Sophie was thirty-seven years old.”

“Little late for childbearing.”

“Indeed. But she gave birth to a beautiful little girl nonetheless. So beautiful, in fact, that her proud father promptly named her after his grandmother, and then a few years later brought out a new beer with a label bearing a reasonable facsimile of his then two-year-old darling. Does the name Golden Girl mean anything to you? How about the slogan The Beautiful Beer’? You’ve got it, Matthew. This is the beer that catapulted Brechtmann from number twelve into one of the biggest breweries in America. It’s a shame old Jake wasn’t alive when his granddaughter was born. He’d have been proud of her beer-selling potential.”

“Fill me in on the company,” Matthew said.

According to Warren, the Brechtmann Brewing Company now owned breweries in nine states. The original Brooklyn brewery packaged five million bottles and nine million cans of beer a day. The Calusa brewery — smallest of all the Brechtmann breweries, although it sat on two hundred and fifty acres of land off the Tamiami Trail — itself shipped close to two million barrels a year. In addition, the company brewed non-beer beverages, and it owned yeast plants, malting plants, metal-container plants, and several agricultural facilities where it grew and processed the corn and barley essential to the brewing of beer.

Again according to Warren, the company’s gross sales for the last fiscal year were five and a half billion dollars, a 7.6 percent increase over the year before. Its net income was three hundred and sixty-four million dollars, a gain of forty-two million dollars over the previous year. Over the past eight years, Brechtmann’s earnings per share had grown at an average annual compound rate of more than sixteen percent. The company founded by Jacob Brechtmann in the year 1901 had survived his death in 1945, and his son’s death only five years ago. It continued to flourish under the leadership of Sophie Brechtmann, who at the age of seventy-three was now the company’s single largest stockholder. The company’s CEO was her daughter Elise, thirty-six years old now, whose little-girl face still adorned the label of the beer that had been named after her, the beer that had truly made the Brechtmann family fortune.

“Good work,” Matthew said.

“It’s a start,” Warren said. “I want to do some more digging.”

“For what?”

“Dirt,” Warren said.

Matthew hated hospitals.

He had hated them ever since the death of Susan’s mother. Fifty-six years old when she died. Never smoked a cigarette in her life, but her lungs were riddled with cancer. When the doctors performed the biopsy, they closed her up again at once, said there was nothing they could do for her.

It was Susan’s brother who made the decision not to tell her she was dying.

Matthew had disliked him before then, but that was when he began hating him.

Because, you see… she was a marvelous woman who could have accepted the news, who would in fact have welcomed the opportunity to die with at least some measure of dignity. Instead… ah, Jesus.

He could remember going to the hospital one afternoon. His mother-in-law was propped against the pillows, her head turned to one side, where sunlight was streaming through the Venetian blinds. She had Susan’s features and coloring exactly, the same dark eyes and chestnut hair, the full, pouting mouth showing age wrinkles around its edges now, the good jaw and neck, the skin sagging somewhat — she’d been a beauty in her day, and she looked beautiful still, though ravaged with disease and rapidly dying. She was weeping when Matthew came into the room. He sat beside the bed. He said, “Mom, what’s the matter? What is it?”

She took his hand between hers. She said, “Matthew, please tell them I’m trying.”

“Tell who, Mom?”

“The doctors.”

“What do you mean?”

“They think I’m not trying. I really am, I really do want to get better. I just haven’t got the strength, Matthew.”

“I’ll talk to them,” he said.

He found one of the doctors in the corridor later that day. He asked him what he’d told her. The doctor said it had been the family’s decision—

“I’m the goddamn family, too,” Matthew said. “What did you tell her?”

“I was merely trying to reassure her, Mr. Hope.”

“About what?”

“I told her she would get well. That if she tried hard enough…”

“That’s a lie.”

“It was the family’s decision…”

“No matter how hard she tries, she’s going to die.”

“Mr. Hope, really, I feel you should discuss this with your brother-in-law. I was trying to help her maintain her spirit, that’s all.”

She died the following week.

She never knew she was dying.

Matthew suspected it came as a total surprise to her when she drew her last breath. He kept thinking of her that way; as dying in surprise. He’d loved her a lot, that woman. He still missed her. Perhaps she was one of the reasons he’d married Susan.

The smells of a hospital.

Cloyingly antiseptic.

The sounds.

Electronic monitors beeping. Address systems paging doctors urgently wanted. Nurses addressing patients in tones better suited for infants.

Charles Abbott was in a semiprivate room on the fourth floor of Calusa Memorial Hospital. The nurse at the desk in the corridor told Matthew that he had been there since the twenty-first day of December last year, a total of fifty-two days so far, which was a long time for anyone except a terminally ill patient to be in a hospital, but—

“He was in coma for almost a month,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “You should’ve seen him when he got here.”

Matthew didn’t think he looked so hot now, either.

He lay in bed with casts on both arms and both legs, his face looking lumpy and discolored, his right eye half-closed. Across the room, the curtain was drawn around the other bed. From behind the curtain, Matthew could hear a man groaning.

Hospitals.

He introduced himself to Abbott and told him why he was there.

“Who?” Abbott said.

Trace of a British accent even in that single word.

“Jonathan Parrish,” Matthew said.

“Never heard of him.”

“Two people you know were watching his house.”

“And what two people is that?”

“Billy Walker and Arthur Hurley.”

“Don’t know them, either,” Abbott said.

“I think you do, sir,” Matthew said. “They’re here in Calusa with your daughter.”

“All right, say I know them. What about it?”

“Why were they watching the Parrish house, can you tell me?”

“I have no idea.”

“What does Jonathan Parrish have to do with Sophie Brechtmann?”

“Did she send you here?” Abbott said at once.

“No. As I told you, I’m representing a man charged with murder. I’m trying to…”

“Then how do you know her name? What do you want here, Mr. Hope?”

“I told you…”

“Or was it Elise who sent you?”

“I’ve never met Elise Brechtmann.”

“But you have met Sophie, eh?”

“I have.”

“Did she tell you how to find me?”

“No, your daughter did.”

“What?”

“Indirectly. She told me you were hospitalized. I simply called every hospital in…”

“Did she tell you how come I’m in hospital?”

“No, sir.”

“Because four men came at me with baseball bats.”

“When was this, Mr. Abbott?”

“December twenty-first, two days after I went to see Sophie. Remarkable coincidence, what? They must’ve been following me. I come out of this bar on Palmetto and suddenly they’re all over me. Four of them. With baseball bats.”

“Did you recognize any of them?”

“No. Four hired goons is all.”

“Did you report this to the police?”

“Didn’t have to report it. The cops came about the same time the ambulance did.”

“Then the police know what happened to you.”

“If you’re thinking they’ll ever catch those goons, forget it. Elise would’ve known better than to use local talent.”

“Elise?”

“Sure. It had to be Elise who sent those gorillas after me. The old lady doesn’t favor such tactics.”

“Are you saying Elise Brechtmann hired four men to…?”

“Is what I’m saying. I went to see Sophie on the nineteenth. Soon as I left, she must’ve talked to Elise. So Elise got worried, and bingo! On the twenty-first, I’m in the hospital with a fractured skull, a concussion, eight broken ribs, compound fractures of both arms and both legs, a broken nose, a broken collarbone and six missing teeth — all courtesy of little Golden Girl. You say you’ve never met her, eh?”

“Never.”

“A beautiful woman, Elise. All those goddamn Aryan genes, I suppose. Sophie’s a fat old lady now, but back when I was working on the estate, she was a good-looking woman, too. In her fifties at the time, but still taking good care of herself, swam thirty, forty laps a day, looked ten years younger than she was. Her hair was still blond, too, must’ve started going gray all at…”

“This was when?”

“I started driving for them back in ’62. I was twenty-two years old, came here to Florida from California. I had good references. I used to work for some of the stars out there. Mr. Brechtmann hired me right off. Elise was still a little girl then. Ten years old when I started working there. Long blonde hair, green eyes — well, you’ve seen the Golden Girl Beer label, haven’t you? Image of Elise. I haven’t seen her since 1969, when Helen was born — but there was an article about the company in Time magazine last August, showed a picture of her with the blonde hair cut very short, almost like a man’s, but still with those green cat eyes. Helen looks a lot the way her mother looked when she was a girl. Except for the eyes. Helen’s eyes are blue. Well, so are mine. I guess blue is dominant over green, wouldn’t you think? Moves like her mother, too. Same walk. Like a cat. Well, she’s pregnant now, so it’s difficult to tell, pregnant women waddle, don’t they? But normally, she moves with a sort of jungle glide, do you know? Like a big cat on the hunt, stalking. Just like Elise. Something like that’s inherited, I should think.”

“You’re saying that Elise is Helen’s mother.”

“Is what I’m saying.”

“Sophie Brechtmann doesn’t seem to think so.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“That’s what she told me.”

“What a lying old biddy,” Abbott said, and shook his bandaged head in amazement. “She knows damn well what happened. Why else would she have paid me all that money?”

The man behind the curtain groaned.

Abbott glanced at the curtain.

When he spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper.

“Haifa million dollars,” he said.

Matthew looked at him.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Paid me half a million dollars.”

“I thought she’d refused to pay you anything at all. She told me…”

“That’s right, she wouldn’t give me a nickel when I went to see her ’round Christmastime, had her man throw me off the grounds, in fact. I’m talking about then. I’m talking about 1969, when Elise was pregnant and Sophie was frantic.”

“Tell me about it,” Matthew said.

“How can that help me?” Abbott said.

“How can it hurt you?” Matthew said.

Abbott looked at him.

“I’m trying to save a man’s life,” Matthew said.

“This has nothing to do with your client.”

“Maybe it does. Let me hear it, okay?”

Abbott kept looking at him.

“Sure,” he said at last, and shrugged. “Why the hell not?”

January of 1969.

In California, Governor Ronald Reagan asks the state legislature to drive criminal anarchists and latter-day Fascists off the campuses.

In Los Angeles, the trial of Bobby Kennedy’s assassin begins.

In Paris, a Vietcong flag is placed on the steeple of Notre Dame.

And in Calusa, Florida, a girl who will not be seventeen until next month, a sixteen-year-old girl with long blonde hair and pale green eyes comes to the room over the garage on the Brechtmann estate and tells the Brechtmann chauffeur that she is pregnant with his child.

Legalized abortion in the United States is still four years away.

It is a bit past eleven o’clock at night.

Twenty-nine-year-old Charles Abbott is watching the news on television.

He is learning that Lyndon Baines Johnson has just sold the rights to his memoirs for one and a half million dollars.

Immediately he wonders how much the Brechtmanns will be willing to pay for his memoirs, Charles Abbott’s memoirs.

He is willing to tell them — or anyone, for that matter — everything that happened in December of last year. Everything. Oh, such sweet memories.

Sixteen-year-old Elise coming to his room in the middle of the night.

Sixteen-year-old Elise in tears.

Sixteen-year-old Elise in his arms.

Never ask a beautiful young lady why she’s in tears or why she’s suddenly in your arms. He learned that in London. Never ask. Merely kiss away the tears and unbutton the blouse, and let those lovely breasts spill into your hands, and kiss the pink schoolgirl nipples and raise the skirt over pale white thighs and lower the white cotton knickers and let old John Peter find his own stiff way to where it’s oh so warm and wet.

Now, at the end of January, the chicks have come home to roost, mate, the girl is here in tears again to tell you she’s missed her period, the one due around the middle of the month, she is sure she’s pregnant and she doesn’t know what to do about it, she knows her parents will kill her.

“Now, now,” Abbott tells her.

He is thinking of all the ways to spend the money he is going to get from the Brechtmann family.

He is thinking that what he has to sell is worth at least a hundred grand.

At least as much as it would be worth to any enterprising news magazine in the United States.

He can see the headlines now:

What? The Golden Girl pregnant? Franz Brechtmann’s darling little girl pregnant? The girl on the label of the Beautiful Beer? As pregnant as a common tart? The chauffeur the father, no less? Oh my my my my my, quel scandale, quelle médisance! Enough to make people stop drinking beer altogether!

He does not go to the family at once, suspecting the girl — being so young and all — has merely panicked. A single missed period needn’t necessarily indicate pregnancy. He waits. And in February, when Elise tells him she has now missed two periods, they go together to her mother.

Sophie.

Calm, beautiful, sensible, slender Sophie.

“I fear the lass is in a family way,” Abbott tells her.

Or words to that effect.

Sophie’s blue eyes immediately dart to her daughter’s belly; she does not seem to be showing yet.

“Is this true?” Sophie asks.

Elise nods.

“How could you have been so stupid?” her mother says.

Abbott clucks his tongue sympathetically.

Sophie’s eyes meet his. Murder hangs electrically on the air between them. Abbott suddenly wonders if he’s made a mistake coming to the mother. Perhaps the father would have been safer.

The Brechtmanns are Catholic; abortion is out of the question, even though surgeons’ scalpels are available for a price in Denmark or the Virgin Islands. But even if they were willing to compromise their faith, there would be the danger of a leak, the original scandal escalating geometrically, the Brechtmann family taking their pregnant Golden Girl outside of the United States for an abortion that is illegal here. No. Abortion is not a viable option.

Elise must have the baby.

Can a suitable marriage be arranged with someone?

Elise has only just turned seventeen. Announce a sudden marriage and tongues would wag, and again there would be the danger of a greater scandal that could wreck the image of Golden Girl Beer. Taint the beer’s image and the company will suffer tremendously. It is as simple as that.

Abbott is the easiest part of all this.

Merely pay him off and kiss him off.

Unless…

Mmmm.

Pay him enough and perhaps…

Why not?

Pay him for giving the baby a name. Pay him for taking the baby with him and disappearing from their lives forever.

“Tell me, Mr. Abbott, would that be worth half a million dollars to you?”

Half a million dollars is more than Abbott has ever dreamed of in his entire life. He does not even argue the price, fool that he is, fearful that Sophie will rescind the offer if he attempts to bargain with her.

In that same month of February 1969, Sophie tells her husband that she is taking Elise to Europe for the school break in March — “Some spring skiing in Zürs and Lecht, a little shopping in Paris and London.” She prays her husband will not decide to join them. But she knows he will be occupied for the next several months with the construction of yet another brewery, his ninth, in Denver.

The European trip becomes an extended one.

In April, Sophie cables St. Mark’s in Calusa to tell them that a tutor is helping Elise with her studies. The school is appalled. An absentee student? What kind of nonsense is this? But the Brechtmanns are rich and powerful, and nice customs curtsy to great kings, hmmm?

At the beginning of May, in a telephone conversation with her husband, Sophie tells him that they will probably stay abroad throughout the spring and summer; it gets so beastly hot in Florida, and anyway Franz is thoroughly occupied with the new brewery. When Franz says he thinks he may be able to get away for a week or so around the middle of the month, she almost panics. “Why, darling,” she says, “that would be wonderful!” And is relieved beyond measure when he calls the following week to say there are problems in Denver and he won’t be able to come over after all.

She gives a great deal of thought to logistics.

Should the baby be born in Europe or in the States?

If in Europe, the disappearing act will be complete.

But Abbott adamantly refuses to leave America. Sophie suspects there is a European past he has fled and is still fleeing, and she pursues the matter no further.

In June. Abbott meets the now visibly pregnant Elise in New-York and takes her to an obstetrician-gynecologist highly recommended by a vague friend in London. Abbott tells him that he and his wife have just come from England, in fact, and need someone to look after Elise and to deliver her baby when the time comes. Abbott says he has no medical insurance in America as yet. but he’ll pay the doctor in cash, in advance if the doctor so wishes. The doctor says, “No. no, don’t be ridiculous, a personal check will do.”

Two months later, Helen Abbott is born at Lenox Hill Hospital, on Seventy-seventh Street and Park Avenue.

“August of 1969,” Abbott said. “Two days after Woodstock.”

“Which would have made it…?”

“The nineteenth.”

“Were you there when she was born?” Matthew asked.

“Yes.”

“Was Sophie Brechtmann?”

“No.”

“You’re saying Sophie was not present when her daughter gave…?”

“She was in New York, yes. but she never came to the hospital. The seventeen-year-old girl I checked into Lenox Hill wasn’t Elise Brechtmann, you see. She was Elise Abbott. My wife. Mrs. Charles Abbott.”

“Then you’re saying…”

“No.”

“You’re not saying…?”

“I’m not saying Elise is or ever was my wife. Do you have any children, Mr. Hope?”

“I do.”

“When your wife gave birth, did anyone ask to see your marriage certificate?”

“Well, no. But my wife’s gynecologist knew she was…”

“Did she show him a marriage certificate?”

“No, I don’t think so. I guess not.”

“Well, the doctor we went to in New York never asked for one, either. We presented ourselves as married, and that was that. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Abbott. Period. Sophie had set up a checking account for us in New York. We paid all the doctor’s fees from that account, all the hospital costs as well. The names printed on our checks were Charles Abbott/Elise Abbott. And when my daughter was born, the hospital records listed her as Helen Abbott.”

“No trace of Elise Brechtmann anywhere along the line. How did you expect to prove…?”

“I wasn’t thinking of proving anything back then, Mr. Hope. I was doing what I’d been paid to do. See Elise through the birth, take the baby off her hands, move out of her life. That’s just what I did. Went back to California. Raised Helen to be a fine young woman.”

Matthew said nothing.

“And then it occurred to me that they’d cheated me all those years ago. That the secret was worth more than they’d paid me.”

“So you came back to Calusa.”

“Right you are. Just before Christmas. Showed up on Sophie’s doorstep…”

“And asked her for a million bucks.”

“And ended up in the hospital for my trouble. Because Elise must’ve got worried, you see. Must’ve thought Oh Cod, here he is, back again after all these years, here comes the same threat to the company. So she had me taken care of, sent a goon squad after me to help me change my tune.”

He nodded bitterly.

“But I’m going to get that money, Mr. Hope, you mark my words. Art Hurley went up to Lenox Hill looking for proof. And he found a nurse there who was working on the maternity ward when Helen was born. And now we have all the proof we need.”

“What sort of proof?”

“Photographs. Lucy was there when they were taken.”

“Lucy?”

“The nurse.”

“Lucy what?”

“Strong. Lucy Strong.”

“Photographs of what?”

“Elise and the baby. The baby lying on Elise’s breast. Elise nursing the baby. The baby’s hand on Elise’s breast.”

“Has Sophie Brechtmann seen these photographs?”

“Not yet.”

“Why haven’t you shown them to her?”

“Because we haven’t got them yet.”

“Who has them?”

“The man who took them.”

“And who was that?”

“Someone named Jonathan Parrish,” Abbott said.

Leona got out of the green Jag, locked the car behind her, and walked toward the front door of the shop. The plate-glass window was lettered with the words:

She took a deep breath, reached for the doorknob, turned it, and entered the shop. A bell over the door tinkled. A man standing at the rear of the shop turned toward her. He did not look at all like the sort of person one would expect to find in a store selling guns. This was not your macho, suntanned gunslinger, oh, no. This was, instead, a chubby little man wearing chinos and a short-sleeved sports shirt, a wide toothy grin on his face as he turned toward the door.

There were guns everywhere Leona looked.

Rifles and shotguns on three walls of the shop. Handguns in cases along two of the walls. More handguns in a center case with an aisle on either side of it.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” the man said, moving behind the counter toward her. “I’m Bobby Newkes, this is my shop. May I help you choose a weapon?”

The word almost threw her. Weapon. Yes, she was here to buy a weapon. But naming it so openly seemed somehow to define without question its lethal properties. Weapon. She was surrounded in this shop by instruments of death.

“Yes, thank you,” she said, and moved toward the counter.

“What sort of gun did you have in mind, ma’am?” Newkes asked.

She did not know how far she needed to go in order to present an image of a law-abiding citizen as defined by Florida’s gun laws. Did she have to tell this man she planned to use the gun for target practice? Or hunting in the woods? She had looked at only last year’s statutes; the most recent law made it possible for virtually anyone to carry even a hidden pistol. Not knowing this, she smiled nervously and said, “I really don’t know. I’ve never owned a gun.”

“Well, were you thinking of a rifle? Something like the Remington here on the wall? Or the Springfield?”

“No, actually…”

“A shotgun were you thinking of?”

“No. A smaller gun.”

“Ah. A handgun.”

“Yes. A handgun.”

“Well, let’s take a look in this case here,” Newkes said, “all kinds of pistols in this case. What we’ve got here is Colts and Llamas, Rugers and Savages, Steyrs and Derringers…”

“Are those guns?”

“Yes, ma’am, the names of guns is what those are. Bernadellis and Crosmans, Smith and Wessons…”

“What’s this gun here?” she asked. “This one.”

She tapped her finger on the glass case.

“The one here in the bottom row?” Newkes said.

“No, just above. And to the left. Yes. That one.”

“That one’s what we call a snubbie, ma’am, because of the way the barrel is shaped. That model is an Iver Johnson Trailsman Snub, which a lot of women at twenty-five ounces find a bit heavy. There are lots of pistols have a lighter u eight, you might find ’em more suitable to your needs. Did you just want to keep this in your home, ma’am? For protection? Or were you planning on carrying it about with you? ”

“Just to keep at home,” Leona said, and cleared her throat.

“Not a bad idea these days,” Newkes said. “Here’s a nice lightweight gun, this Llama here, their Airlite model. It’s an automatic pistol, weighs only seventeen ounces, has a magazine capacity of nine shots. Or, you know, if you just plan to keep this in a drawer in your bedside table, weight possibly won’t matter to you, and you’ve got a nice automatic here in the Walther P-38. Weighs twenty-seven and a half ounces, has a magazine capacity of eight shots. Beautiful gun. This gun right here.”

“What’s a magazine?” Leona asked.

“A magazine?” Newkes said, and blinked. “Well, it’s this… well, let me show you.”

He slid open the back of the case, reached into it, and took out the gun he’d just mentioned. “You see, there’s this magazine, what we sometimes call a clip, it’s this thing here in the handle of the gun…”

He pressed something or did something that caused a sort of drawer to slide out of the handle.

“… with all these bullets in it. This is only on an automatic, mind you. Your revolvers don’t have magazines, they load in the cylinder… well, you see this gun here in the case?”

“This one?”

“Yes, that’s a thirty-two-caliber Smith and Wesson Terrier, a very nice gun by the way, you might want to consider it. Do you see that cylinder there?”

“Here?”

“You’re pointin’ right at it, that’s it. That’s where you load your bullets on a revolver. You put ’em in there one by one. With your automatic, you just slide the magazine in, and the job’s finished. Revolvers or automatics, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other. I’ve had women whose preference runs to either. Solely a matter of taste.”

“I still like the way this one looks,” Leona said.

“The Iver Johnson. That’s a nice weapon, ma’am, and it also comes in the thirty-two-caliber and the twenty-two long rifle, if that’s…”

“No, I don’t want a rifle.”

“No, ma’am, I’m not talking about a rifle as such, I’m talking about the caliber of bullet, what we call a twenty-two long rifle. In that particular model, the gun has an eight-shot cylinder capacity.”

“How many shots does it have in the model here?”

“This is the Sixty-six, this model, it’s got a five-shot capacity.”

“Mmm,” Leona said.

“If you’re thinking of a revolver, ma’am… you seem to be leaning toward a revolver…”

“Well, this is a nice-looking gun.”

“Yes, ma’am, it is, and a fine gun, too. But I’ll tell you what I really like in a revolver, and that’s a gun here in the center case, ma’am, let me just come around the counter and show you.”

He walked to the end of the counter closest to the door, came around it, and then moved into the aisle on the right-hand side of the center case. He took a ring of keys from his pocket, found the one he wanted, unlocked the case, and slid back a portion of the glass top.

“This here’s a Colt Cobra,” he said, taking the gun out of the case. “It’s a part-aluminum version of the Detective Special. The difference is the Special weighs twenty-one ounces and the Cobra weighs only fifteen, which makes it nice for a woman to handle. It’s got a six-shot capacity, and it also comes in a twenty-two-caliber model. You ever decide to do any game hunting sometime in the future, this is your ideal gun, ’cause it can be special-ordered with a five-inch barrel.”

“It does look very nice,” she said.

“It is nice, ma’am. Would you care to hold it?”

“Could I?”

“Certainly. It’s not loaded, you don’t have to worry.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, take a look for yourself,” he said, and snapped out the cylinder. “Nothing in it, ma’am. Perfectly safe.”

She took the gun in her hand.

The walnut stock felt cool to the touch. The barrel glinted under the overhead lights. She trained the gun on the front door. Her finger was inside the trigger guard. She tightened her finger on the trigger. There was a small click.

She could imagine herself using this gun.

Shooting this gun.

Killing someone with this gun.

“I’ll take it,” she said.

From where she sat hunched behind the wheel of the tired green Chevy, Toots Kiley saw her coming out of the gun shop with a package in her hands.

She turned the key in the ignition, starting the car before Leona had taken three steps from the front door

On a tail, a suspect didn’t pay much attention to a car starting before he’d climbed into his own car. But if he got into his car, and started it, and all of a sudden another car started up and began moving, this was likely to attract attention. Toots was playing it the way Otto had taught her. Spot your suspect, start your car, back out of your space, let her think you’re on your way out. No way you could be following her, you simply had no interest in her at all. Until you picked her up again a few blocks down the line.

Otto knew everything there was to know about surveillance work.

He also knew everything there was to know about cocaine.

Come back when you’ve kicked it, he’d told Toots. I can’t use you the way you are now.

She’d kicked it.

But meanwhile he’d got himself killed.

Toots drove to another part of the lot, made a turn, came circling back to where she’d been parked. Leona Summerville was taking a long time starting her car. Toots made yet another circle. On her third pass, Leona had finally got the Jag moving. Toots dropped in behind her.

She was wondering why Leona had purchased a gun.