The House That Jack Built

8. This is the cat that killed the rat…

There were times when Warren Chambers felt that everything in Calusa was Mickey Mouse.

Take the morgue.

Not the morgue at Calusa’s Good Samaritan Hospital, which Warren had never had the privilege of seeing, but the morgue at the Calusa Herald-Tribune where — at nine o’clock that Wednesday night — he and Toots Kiley tried to assemble some data on the Brechtmann family.

Now normally, if you ran a newspaper morgue the way it should be run, everything on any given topic was in a master file, with duplicates of individual stories in appropriate subfiles.

As, for example, take Warren Chambers.

There was not, in fact, a file on Warren — master or otherwise — in the Herald-Tribune’s morgue. But if there’d been such a file, it probably would have been labeled chambers, warren, and there’d be everything anyone ever wanted to know about him in that file — where he was born, what his parents’ names were, where he’d lived, his various occupations over the years, and so on, right up to the present. A complete dossier on Warren Chambers. Anything about him that had ever appeared in the newspaper, right there in the master file.

But this primary source would also generate copies that filtered down into various other files. For example, if there was a story about Warren having worked for the St. Louis PD., then a copy of that story would pop up in the file labeled ST. LOUIS and also the file labeled POLICE. The main file was like a smash-hit sitcom. It generated spinoffs. But you didn’t have to look through all the spinoff files to understand what the initial programming had been. You just went back to the smash-hit CHAMBERS, WARREN file.

Well, in this Mickey Mouse morgue in the Mickey Mouse city of Calusa, Florida, there were no master files on anyone in the Brechtmann family.

Nothing.

Zilch.

Nothing on BRECHTMANN, JACOB, who’d opened the city’s one and only brewery and built Calusa’s most luxurious private dwelling.

Nothing on BRECHTMANN, CHARLOTTE, the great beauty Jake married and carried to Calusa.

Nothing on their son BRECHTMANN, FRANZ, who’d married Sophie.

Nothing on BRECHTMANN, SOPHIE, either.

Or BRECHTMANN, ELISE.

Who, according to Sophie Brechtmann, was the end of the Brechtmann line here in America, in that Elise was as yet unmarried and still childless.

But who, according to Abbott pere et fille, was the mother of Helen Abbott, now the proper heiress to the Brechtmann fortune.

There was no file labeled ABBOTT, HELEN.

There was a file labeled SINATRA, FRANK.

Who did not live in the city of Calusa, Florida.

Warren shook his head. So did Toots. It was going to be a long night.

The man who’d let them into the morgue was a reporter Warren knew. He told Warren that if anyone asked them what they were doing there, they should say they were researching a story for Andy Marquez. That was the reporter’s name. So now, at nine o’clock on a Tuesday night, with lightning flashes intermittently streaking the sky beyond the high windows, distant thunder indicating rain over Sarasota or yet farther north, Warren and Toots tried to get a handle on the newspaper’s filing system because they knew for damn sure there had to be something on one of the most prominent families in Calusa.

“How about we look under ‘Breweries’?” Toots said.

“Yeah,” Warren said, and they went together to the “B” files. “Where’d she take you this afternoon?” he asked.

“To a gun shop,” Toots said.

“What?”

“Yeah. Our lady bought a gun. At least circumstantially. She spent a half-hour, forty-five minutes in a place called Bobby’s Gun Exchange, on the Trail and West Cedar. Came out carrying a wrapped package, I have to assume it was a gun.”

“Why the hell would she buy a gun?”

“Maybe she plans to shoot somebody.”

“God, I hope not,” Warren said. “Nothing under ‘Breweries.’ What the hell kind of a newspaper is this?”

“Try under ‘Beer,’” Toots said.

“Yeah,” Warren said. “What time did you tuck her in?”

“I waited outside the house till her husband got home. At least, I assume it was her husband. He let himself in with a key.”

“What was he driving?”

“Brown Mercedes.”

“Yeah, Frank Summerville,” Warren said.

There was nothing under BEER.

“Jesus,” Warren said.

“Try ‘Alcoholic Beverages,’” Toots said.

“This is worse than the Yellow Pages,” Warren said.

They found a thick folder labeled ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES.

“Bingo,” Warren said, and carried the folder to a long table positioned between the windows and the filing cabinets. There were two green-shaded lights over the table. Lightning flashed outside. There was a rumble of thunder that sounded somewhat closer. The room felt cozy. They sat side by side and began leafing through the clippings in the folder.

There was no chronological order to the file.

“This is impossible,” Warren said.

“Infuriating,” Toots said.

They found a June 10, 1935, story about the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous in New York City.

They found a May 16, 1985, story about the Soviet Union cutting production of vodka, raising the drinking age from eighteen to twenty-one, and banning the sale of liquor before two RM. on workdays.

They found an obviously misfiled story about the drug-overdose death of John Belushi on March 5, 1982.

They found an October 7, 1913, article about the death of the brewer Adolphus Busch.

There was a December 5, 1933, story about the jubilant repeal of the 18th Amendment.

And a January 16, 1920, article announcing the official start of National Prohibition.

And a November 23, 1921, piece about the Anti-Beer Bill, which made it illegal for doctors to prescribe beer for medicinal purposes.

And…

“I can’t believe it!” Warren said.

A front-page story dated September 14, 1906.

The headline read:

The subhead read:

The story told all about the new brewery on U.S. 41 and explained that it was not expected to raise local employment levels by very much since the actual brewing of beer was not a labor-intensive industry, and since management would still be operating out of the New York office. But the city of Calusa was nonetheless proud to have been chosen as the site of the first Brechtmann brewery outside of New York, and equally proud to welcome the Brechtmann family as neighbors. The article went on to describe the “beauteous European beauty Charlotte Brechtmann” and the “exquisite Spanish-style estate” the Brechtmanns had built on Fatback Key. It discreetly mentioned that Mrs. Brechtmann was expecting her first child in November.

There was nothing else about the Brechtmanns in the ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES folder.

“Where do we go from here?” Warren asked.

“Try ‘Births’,” Toots said.

There were eight folders labeled birth announcements.

Each of them was at least four inches thick.

“Please let them be chronological,” Warren said.

They were.

They knew that the birth of Franz Brechtmann had been expected in November of 1906; the ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES file had told them so. And there he was, the little darling, in an article clipped from the Society Page of the Calusa Herald-Tribune for November 19, 1906. Franz Eberhard Brechtmann, to be exact — named after Charlotte’s father, or so the article reported.

“Now try ‘Obituaries’,” Toots said.

There was a flash of lightning very close by, followed immediately by an enormous thunderclap and instant darkness.

“Shit,” Warren said.

They waited in the darkness.

The lights came on again.

And immediately went off again.

“Shit,” Warren said again.

In the darkness, they could hear the rain pelting the windowpanes. Another flash of lightning. More thunder.

“I hate Florida,” Toots said.

They waited.

The lights came on again some three minutes later. It was still raining heavily. The green shades on the lights, the amber spill on the tabletop caused the room to appear protected, safe from the furious rain and the thunder and lightning. Somehow, it made them want to whisper.

Warren went to the uppermost “O” file and yanked open the drawer.

The drawer contained nothing but obituary notices.

As did the drawer below it.

And the one below that.

“We’ll be here all night,” Toots said.

“No, he died five years ago,” Warren said.

“How do you know?”

“The library.”

They found the notice of Franz Eberhard Brechtmann’s death on the front page of the Herald-Tribune for April 19, 1983. The headline on the story was set in the same size type as the headline on the lead story about the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. The juxtaposition of the two headlines was perhaps unfortunate. Side by side, they read:

Joined at the hip this way, the headlines made it sound as if Franz Eberhard Brechtmann had been killed in the attack. Instead, he had died in his own bed, of natural causes. If read yet another way, the combined headlines made it sound as if Brechtmann had been drunk when he died: Bombed Beer Baron Dies. Instead, he’d been cold sober, having retired early after a light dinner the night before.

The subheads, also printed side by side in the same-size type, were equally confusing. They read:

“This is some newspaper,” Warren said.

They turned to where the story was continued on the Obituary Page.

The article gave a summary of his life. Childhood in Calusa, schooling at Choate and later Harvard, frequent trips abroad with his beautiful wife, Sophie, and his daughter, Elise, who had been the inspiration for Brechtmann’s best-selling Golden Girl Beer. A picture of the beer’s label was implanted in the center of the column. Blonde, light-eyed kid, maybe three years old, smiling at all those beer drinkers out there. The story went on to mention the many years of guidance and support Brechtmann had given to the restoration of Calusa’s art museum, the Ca D’Ped. It mentioned, too, his extraordinarily generous contributions to a wide variety of charitable causes. It quoted Jacob Brechtmann, the founder of the company, who in 1934 — when his son took over as CEO — said, “I took it safely through Prohibition, my son can take it from here.”

Franz Brechtmann had indeed taken it from there.

In 1934, when he was twenty-eight years old, and despite his father’s bravado, the company had only barely survived the Volstead Act. In the years between then and 1981, when at the age of seventy-five he turned over the CEO post to his then twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Franz had built six more breweries and had taken the company to its leading position among the world’s top beermakers. The article reported that this hadn’t been a simple task. In 1941, when America entered the war against Germany, anti-German feeling had erupted all over the nation, and anything sounding even remotely German was virtually boycotted. The sales of the Brechtmann company’s beers plummeted until well after the war. In fact, it was not until 1954, when Franz created the new beer inspired by his then two-year-old daughter, that the company’s fortunes took an upswing. Since then, the only serious threat to its stability occurred five months ago, not long after Elise became CEO. It was then that internal problems led to charges and countercharges—

“Here it is,” Warren said.

“Here’s what?” Toots said.

“The dirt.”

But that’s all there was.

The paragraph merely ended with a seeming afterthought stating that everything was settled satisfactorily out of court and the company rose to even greater heights in the hierarchy of beer-makers. The story concluded with the information that the deceased was survived by his wife, Sophie, and his daughter, Elise, and that services in Calusa would be private.

“Damn it,” Warren said. “Where do we look now?”

“For what?” Toots said.

“For these internal problems and these charges and countercharges that were settled out of court.”

“Let me think,” Toots said.

Warren watched her thinking.

“How about ‘Legal Notices’?” she said.

Matthew blinked at the bedside clock. Ten minutes to midnight. And the telephone was ringing. Joanna! Something had happened to his daughter up there in Vermont. The school’s headmistress was calling to…

“Hello?”

“Matthew?”

A woman’s voice.

“Yes?”

“It’s Irene.”

“Who?”

“McCauley.”

“I’m sorry, who…?”

“The motel,” she said. “Irene McCauley.”

“Oh. Oh, hi! Listen, I’m sorry I sounded so…”

“No, that’s okay. You were probably asleep.”

“Well, in fact, I was.”

“Me, too. But then I woke up, and I thought I’d see if you were in the phone book. And you were.”

“Yes.”

“So here I am.”

“So hello.”

“Hello. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“No, hey, that’s okay, really.”

“How are you?”

“Fine. Just fine. And you?”

“Okay.”

Silence. Then:

“I was hoping you’d call,” she said.

“I was going to. But things started piling up, and I…”

“That’s okay, I’m not one to stand on ceremony.”

“So I see.”

Another silence. Then:

“Shall I come over there?”

“What?” Matthew said.

“Do you want me to come over? I’d invite you here, but really, this place is a dump. Well, you saw it.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, you saw it? Or yes, it’s a dump? Or yes, come on over.”

“Yes, all three.”

“Good,” Irene said. “Give me directions.”

Lying beside his wife Leona at a little before midnight, Frank wondered what she’d been doing in his study. There was nothing in there that could be of any possible use to a woman having an affair. No appointment calendar she could check to find out when he’d be where. No loose cash she could pilfer to buy lacy hooker underwear like the ones he’d found in her dresser. Nothing she could use. So why had she gone in there?

He knew she’d been in there sometime today.

But why?

He knew every inch of that study. The study was his cocoon. Came home from work sometimes to find the house empty, he’d mix himself a silver bullet and sit in the big padded leather chair in the study, sipping at the drink, listening to the palm fronds whispering outside the high windows, surrounded by the books he loved. The cleaning woman did the study every Thursday. She was due tomorrow, it was still only two minutes to midnight on the luminous bedside clock, still today, Wednesday, the tenth day of February. No cleaning lady in there today. But someone had gone in there while he was at the office. And since only two people lived in this house, and since he wasn’t the one who’d been in there, it had to have been his darling wife, Leona.

He wondered why.

He did not know that she’d been in there twice today.

The first time had been to study the Florida Statutes.

The second time had been to hide the .22-caliber Colt Cobra she’d bought at Bobby’s Gun Exchange.

Sitting the Parrish house was getting to be a pain in the ass.

Literally.

There wasn’t a comfortable chair in the joint. Not a chair you could sit in and still see through the windows, anyway. There was a big comfortable easy chair downstairs, but you sank into it and couldn’t see a thing, and also it was too heavy to lug all the way up here to the second floor of the house.

Officer Charles Macklin was ready to tell Warren Chambers to shove the job.

It was now a little past midnight, rain making the night look darker and colder than it actually was, rain drumming on the roof, rain lashing the windows, rain sweeping in sheets across the asphalt road on the entrance side of the house, rain pelting the beach on the deck side.

Charlie knew that rain kept the bad guys inside.

That was a fact of police work.

Nobody liked to work when it was raining, not even thieves.

You gave your average cheap thief a choice whether he wanted to do a job in good weather or when it was raining, he’d nine times out often pick the good weather. It only stood to reason. Who the hell wanted to get wet, thief or not? You come out of a house with a television set you just burgled, you got soaked before you could get it in the car. The television, too. Both of you got soaking wet. You come out of a liquor store you just held up, you’re liable to slip on a wet sidewalk and break your leg before you even reach the car. You jump on a girl in the park, you’re planning to rape her, it starts raining on your dick, you get your balls all wet, too, it wasn’t worth the trouble. If you were any kind of thief whatever, it simply did not pay to work in the rain.

So what the hell was he doing here on a rainy night?

There wasn’t nobody going to try breaking into this house on a rainy night, no matter what was hidden inside here.

Charlie didn’t know that somebody was already inside here.

“I was really disappointed when you didn’t call,” Irene said.

She was curled up in one of Matthew’s living-room chairs, legs tucked under her. Short black skirt, red scoop-necked blouse. Black high-heeled sandals, ankle-strapped. Red Lucite, art-deco earrings inlaid with sterling silver. Shiny brown hair combed sleek and straight to her shoulders, bangs running wild on her forehead. Blue eyes watching him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have called, I know. It’s just… I’m working a murder case, and things started…”

“Oh my, murder,” she said.

And smiled.

And sipped at her drink. Gin and bitters. Enough bitters to give it an orange color, she’d told him. On the rocks, please. He’d never known anyone in his life who’d drunk gin and bitters.

Rain streaked the sliding glass doors.

He had turned on the pool lights, and through the doors he could see rain riddling the surface of the water, pockmarking the blue. The palm trees swayed in the wind, rattling their fronds like dancers shaking maracas.

“Are you a cop?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “A lawyer. I’m representing a man charged with murder.”

“Do you enjoy murder cases?” she asked.

“This one, yes,” he said.

“Why this one, in particular?”

“Maybe because it’s so difficult,” he said. “Keeps me on my toes.”

“Difficult how?”

“Well… people telling contradictory stories, for example. It’s hard to know who’s telling the truth.”

“About what?”

“About anything,” he said. “Yes, she’s your granddaughter, no, she’s not. Yes, there’s proof, but we haven’t got it yet. Yes, there are pictures, but the dead man took them. Like that.”

Irene blinked.

“Pictures?” she said.

“Baby pictures.”

“Ahh, baby pictures,” Irene said.

“Are the pictures inside the Parrish house? Were they really taken by…?”

“Is there a church involved? ”

“A church?”

“You said the parish house.”

“Jonathan Parrish. The victim.”

“Oh, is that the case?”

“That’s the case.”

“I read about it.”

“Actually, a church is involved. St. Benedict’s. Where the priest probably lied to me.”

“About what?”

“About the man in black.”

“Oh my,” Irene said. “Missing baby pictures, and a lying priest, and a man in black and everything. Just like Agatha Christie.”

“God forbid,” Matthew said, and pulled a face.

“I have a good idea,” Irene said, and put down her drink.

“What’s that?” Matthew said.

“Why don’t we turn out everything but the pool lights…”

“Okay,” Matthew said.

“… and then make love.”

He looked at her.

“I don’t have herpes or AIDS,” she said.

“I don’t, either,” Matthew said.

“I haven’t been to bed with any high-risk people,” she said.

“Me neither.”

“That I know of,” she said. “I mean, I may get a call tomorrow from a hooker my late husband laid in San Francisco ten years ago, and she’ll tell me she used to live with a homosexual guy that was involved with a bisexual girl that used to live with a lesbian junkie that just died of AIDS…”

“I know,” Matthew said. “It gets to be ‛The House That Jack Built,’ doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said.

They were both silent for several moments. There was only the sound of the rain.

“So what do we do?” she said.

“What we did when we were seventeen.”

“Won’t that spoil it for you?”

“It didn’t when I was seventeen.”

“Then come kiss me,” she said.

Under the green-shaded lights in the Calusa Herald-Tribunes morgue, the rain slithering down the windowpanes, Warren and Toots found the first mention of the case in the file folder labeled LEGAL NOTICES. They tracked it from there to the front page of the paper for November 10, 1982. Like teenagers sharing a comic book, heads close together, they read the story:

Anthony Holden — Purchasing Agent for Agricultural Commodities in the Calusa Branch of the Brechtmann Brewing Company — had been summarily fired by Elise Brechtmann, the company’s Chief Executive Officer since July of the preceding year. A reporter had called the brewery and asked Elise herself why she’d fired a man who’d been with them for twenty-two years.

“He stole a fortune from us,” she said. “Anthony Holden is a crook.”

Warren raised his eyebrows. So did Toots.

Elise Brechtmann had made an exceptionally reckless accusation at a time when caution might have been the byword: In the state of Florida, Grand Larceny was a first-degree felony punishable by a max of fifteen years.

Unfortunately, the newspaper had quoted her exactly.

And three days later The New York Times carried the same quote.

Little did Elise know that the Calusa P.D.’s White Collar Crime Division would decide after investigation that there was no evidence of criminal intent. Which meant that perhaps Anthony Holden was not a crook. Which, to Holden’s way of thinking (and presumably his lawyer’s as well) was good and sufficient reason to bring suit for libel.

“This is beginning to get good,” Warren said.

It was just beginning to get good when the telephone rang.

Matthew picked up the receiver. The bedside clock read a quarter past one.

“Hello?” he said.

“Matthew, it’s Warren.”

“Hello, Warren,” he said.

Beside him, Irene rolled over and reached for a package of cigarettes. A match flared in the darkness.

“I know it’s late,” Warren said.

“No, that’s okay.”

“But I thought you might want to get rolling on this first thing tomorrow morning.”

“What’ve you got, Warren?”

“I don’t know what the Brechtmann family has to do with all this, but you told me earlier today that Parrish is supposed to have taken some pictures of Elise and her baby…”

“According to Abbott…”

“Yes, I…”

“… who may not be telling the truth.”

“I realize that.”

Irene let out a stream of smoke.

Matthew put his free hand on her naked thigh.

“But the Brechtmanns had a lot of trouble in 1982, which they agreed to settle out of court, and I’m wondering now why they don’t just pay Abbott the two dollars and send him on his way.”

“Abbott’s asking for a million.”

“In 1982, the tab was fifty-seven million,” Warren said.

“Fill me in,” Matthew said. His hand was still on Irene’s thigh. She moved slightly, turning, making herself more accessible.

Warren told him about Elise Brechtmann firing Anthony Holden in November of 1982.

“Claimed he was stealing from the company. Exact quote: ‘He stole a fortune from us. Anthony Holden is a crook.’”

“Wow,” Matthew said.

“Wow,” Irene whispered, but only because his hand had wandered higher on her thigh.

“Okay. A week later, Holden brings suit. You know where we found this, by the way?”

“Where?”

“In a file marked ‘Libel,’ can you believe it? Anyway, he asked for seven million dollars in compensatory damages. His salary with Brechtmann was stated as being two hundred thousand dollars a year plus stock options. He claimed that when Elise Brechtmann called him a crook, she caused the loss of future earnings potential.”

“She probably did,” Matthew said.

“He also claimed fifty million dollars in punitive damages.”

“I’m not surprised,” Matthew said. “Punitive damages are a sort of civil fine intended to discourage a defendant from doing the same thing all over again. To be meaningful, they have to be related to the wealth of the defendant.”

“Right. Holden claimed that when it came to getting another job in the brewing industry. Elise had effectively killed him.”

“Are those his words?”

“In a newspaper interview, yes. You want the exact quote?”

“Please.”

“Calusa Herald-Tribune, November 18, 1982. ‘Elise Brechtmann has killed me. In this business, or any other business, if you label a man a crook, he’s dead.’”

“Which was the basis of his suit.”

“Exactly.”

“Which you say was settled out of court.”

“Yes.”

“For how much?”

“I don’t know. Where do you think we should look next?”

“What?”

“They’ve got a funny filing system up here.”

“Where are you?”

“At the Herald-Trib’s morgue. We looked under ‘Settlements,’ but all we got was a lot of stuff about the Calusa Indians and the first Spanish explorers. We looked under ‘Claims’ and ‘Arbitration’ and ‘Disposition’ and even ‘Satisfaction.’ There was only one clipping under ‘Satisfaction.’ A review of the Rolling Stones record.”

“Why don’t you call it quits, Warren? If you can get me an address for Holden…”

“I don’t even know if he’s still in Calusa. This was a long time ago.”

“Give it a try okay? If you find anything, you can call me at the office in the morning.”

“Right.”

“Good night, Warren,” Matthew said, and put the receiver back on the cradle, and turned toward Irene.

“Are you always this busy?” she asked, and stubbed out her cigarette.

Leona lay awake in the dark, listening to Frank’s gentle snoring beside her, wondering if the black man who’d been following her had been hired by Matthew. No sign of him today. Remarkable coincidence. Talk to your good friend Matthew over a few drinks on Monday, come Wednesday and the man following you has disappeared.

She hadn’t expected that to be the result.

She’d asked to see Matthew only so that he’d soothe Frank’s ruffled feathers if indeed there was any soothing to be done. Your wife having an affair? Don’t be ridiculous, Frank. I can tell you on the highest authority that such a notion is absurd.

Couldn’t have Frank suspecting anything.

Not now.

Couldn’t afford a showdown.

Couldn’t risk any sort of discussion about it, any confrontation, any attempt on his part to stop her from doing what she now knew she had to do.

The gun was hidden where he’d never dream of looking for it.

In his own lair. The counselor’s den. Remove the copy of Corbin on Contracts from the shelf, and you’d find a .22-caliber Colt Cobra behind it.

If he found the gun, she would say she’d felt they needed protection. Too many burglaries in the neighborhood, too much dope moving across Florida from the East Coast, too many changes in the past several years, nothing the same anymore. See, Frank, here are the cartridges, right behind these volumes of Black’s Law Dictionary. He would ask why she hadn’t discussed this with him first, the purchase of a gun and bullets, so many bullets, and she would — but this was idiotic.

He would never find the gun.

The dust on those volumes was a quarter-inch thick, he hadn’t once looked at them since his second year of law school.

He would never find it.

And after the deed was done—

If it were done when ’tis done,

Then ’twere well it were done quickly.

A handsome young English major named Salvatore Agnotti had played Macbeth to her Lady Macbeth at Hunter College in the fall of 1968. She was twenty years old then, and he was twenty-one. She could still remember…

Ahh, the innocence of those days.

“Was the hope drunk wherein you dress’d yourself?”

And both of them bursting into laughter. They could not get past that line for the longest time. Was the hope drunk wherein you dress’d yourself? She’d try it a dozen different ways. Was the hope drunk? Was the hope drunk? Was the hope drunk? Sal breaking apart almost the moment the words started from her mouth. She bursting into laughter not an instant later. Both of them giggling helplessly. Fat Professor Lydia Endicott, Speech and Dramatics, watching them patiently, “Come on, kids, let’s do it, huh?”

And finally getting it right, oh, the joy of that wonderful speech, the venom in those lines!

“Was the hope drunk wherein you dress’d yourself? Hath it slept since? And wakes it now to look so green and pale at what it did so freely?”

Sal always flinched an instant before she delivered the next line. She began looking for the flinch as an unwritten cue.

“From this time such I account thy love!”

There was another stumbling block later on in the scene.

“I have given suck…”

And Sal would fall apart, and Leona would fall apart, and even Professor Endicott would begin laughing. In the empty auditorium the three of them giggled and giggled for five, ten, sometimes fifteen minutes at a time, I have given suck, and whap, both of them rolling around on the floor, and Professor Endicott falling out of her seat.

But later…

In performance…

Sal watching her with something close to awe on his face as she gave that part of the speech, as though truly frightened by the fearsome woman this college girl had become.

“I have given suck, and know how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face, have pluck’d the nipple from his boneless gums and dash’d the brains out… had I so sworn as you have done to this.”

Jesus.

She had sworn to herself these twenty years later to do this thing she had to do.

“Bring forth men-children only,” her Macbeth had told her all those years ago, “for thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males!”

Sal Agnotti. Sweet-faced Sal, trying to look regal and stern behind the fake beard, sweet, blue-eyed Sal, so young, so innocent.

Sometime soon… unless the situation changed dramatically tomorrow night…

Sometime soon… she would commit murder.

If she could summon up the strength, and the will, and the courage.

But screw your courage to the…

“Screw your courage!” Sal shouted the first time she said that line in rehearsal. Waiting in the bushes for her. Probably planned the ambush with fat professor Endicott, quaking there in her seat while Leona collapsed in helpless gales of laughter. After that, she could never get past the line without falling apart. Until, of course, it took. The line took, the words took, the meaning took, Shakespeare took, and she gave her fearful king the pep talk he needed: “But screw your courage to the sticking place, and we’ll not fail!”

She could not afford to fail.

She’d be sitting there with a .22-caliber pistol in her fist, no one to whisper words of encouragement in her ear, no one there to give her a pep talk, just little Leona all by her lonesome with the gun pointed at his head or his heart, little Leona hoping she could somehow find the courage to squeeze the trigger.

She wondered where the sticking place was.

If only she knew where the sticking place was.

God help me, she thought, I’m about to commit murder.

Charlie heard something downstairs.

He turned immediately from the window.

He listened.

Someone moving around down there in the darkness.

He got out of his chair, eased the .38 out of its holster, and tiptoed toward the steps. A board squeaked under his weight. He stopped dead in his tracks, listening again. No change in the activity downstairs. Somebody still busy down there.

He started down the steps.

Faint light coming from the living room below.

No house lights on, had to be somebody with a flashlight. Maybe even a penlight, it was that dim.

Halfway down the stairs now.

Tense, the way he always got when something was about to go down. Tight feeling in his chest. Blood racing. Gun trembling just the tiniest bit in his right hand. Holding his breath, almost. Five steps down to the level below. Four now. Three. Two. One.

He stepped around the edge of the wall enclosing the stairwell, stepped into the living room itself, the kitchen on his right, scanned the room with his eyes and his gun hand, eyes sweeping, gun sweeping, past the bookcase and the rattan chairs and the sofa, settling on the figure all in black hunched over the desk against the far wall, penlight lying on the desk top, black-gloved hands going through papers and—

Sensing something.

Suddenly turning.

Looking straight at him.

And then reaching for something on the desktop.

“Freeze!” Charlie shouted.

Too late.

It came up off the desktop too quickly, gripped firmly in the gloved hand, the right hand, the barrel glinting for a moment as it passed the spray of illumination from the propped penlight, and then there was a flash of light from the muzzle and the shocking explosion of the gun and the instant searing pain in Charlie’s shoulder and another muzzle flash and this time there was only the numbing pain of a nail being driven into his forehead and then nothing.