The House That Jack Built

9. This is the rat that ate the malt…

Irene McCauley had just got out of the shower when the telephone rang early that Thursday morning. Matthew was standing behind her, drying her back. Her eyes met his in the mirror. He kissed the side of her neck, threw the towel onto the counter, and then went into the bedroom to pick up the receiver.

It was Morrie Bloom.

“Matthew,” he said, “I have some police officers up here who tell me they were doing some work for Warren Chambers on this Parrish case. I’ve got to assume you authorized hiring them…”

“To sit the Parrish house, right, Morrie.”

“The Parrish house is a crime scene, Matthew.”

“Was a crime scene. My client owns that house.”

“Who says?”

“The mortgage holder. First Federal of Calusa. Ralph Parrish owns the house, Morrie. Bought it for his brother to live in, but he owned it. The point is, we were in that house with the owner’s permission.”

“You and half the Calusa P.D.”

“Only four cops, Morrie.”

“One of whom is now dead,” Bloom said.

“What?”

“You heard me. Charlie Macklin. Shot to death with a thirty-eight-caliber Smith and Wesson sometime last night. Body discovered this morning at six o’clock, when Nick Alston went to the house to relieve him.”

Matthew said nothing.

“You with me?” Morrie said.

“I’m with you.”

“Any ideas?”

“Yes. You might search that house from top to bottom for…”

“We already did that, Matthew. After the first murder.”

“Did you find any baby pictures?”

“Any what?”

“Baby pictures. Pictures of a baby nursing at her mother’s breast.”

“We weren’t looking for baby pictures, Matthew.”

“Look for them now.”

“It wasn’t baby pictures that put two holes in Macklin.”

“No, but it may have been someone looking for those pictures.”

“What do you know that I don’t know, Matthew?”

“Try the Calais Beach Castle, cabin number… hold it a minute, Morrie.” He covered the mouthpiece. Irene was at the bathroom sink, wearing a pair of bikini panties now, studying Matthew’s toothbrushes. “Is that crowd still in cabin number eleven?” he asked.

“The Hurley party?”

“Yes.”

“They were last night. Okay to use one of these?”

“Sure,” he said, and uncovered the mouthpiece. “We spotted two men watching the Parrish house,” he told Bloom. “Their names are Arthur Hurley and Billy Walker. You might look them up. Cabin number eleven at the Calais Beach Castle on Forty-one. Hurley has a record.”

“Thanks,” Morrie said. “Why are you telling me this, Matthew?”

“Because if one of them killed Jonathan Parrish, my client can go home to Indiana.”

“Right now I’m looking for who shot Charlie Macklin.”

“It may be one and the same person.”

“Maybe. Baby pictures, huh?”

“Baby pictures.”

“I’ll send some people to the house.”

“Let me know what you find.”

“Yeah,” Bloom said, and hung up.

Irene was bent over the sink, brushing her teeth. Matthew went to her, put his arms around her waist, hugged her close. They looked at themselves in the mirror.

“We look alike,” Irene said.

“We don’t look alike at all.”

“Yes, we do.”

“Why don’t we go back to bed?” Matthew said.

“Why don’t we?” she said.

They were in bed again when the telephone rang.

Irene looked at him.

“You’re busy all the time, aren’t you?” she said.

Matthew picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” he said.

“Matthew, it’s Warren. I’ve got an address for Anthony Holden. He runs a marina near the south bridge to Whisper, it’s called Captain Hook’s, don’t ask me why. What else do you need?”

“Check with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. I’m looking for anything on the birth of Helen Abbott in August of 1969.”

“Spell that, will you?”

“Two B’s, two T’s. Parents are Charles and Elise Abbott. There was also a nurse named Lucy Strong working there when the baby was born. If you can find her, that would be helpful.”

“Find her where?”

“In New York, I would guess.”

“Matthew, this was nineteen years ago.”

“I know. But give it a shot.”

“What if I do find her?”

“You may be flying up there.”

“Oh, goody. New York in February. Anything else?”

“Yes. Please don’t call me for the next ten minutes,” Matthew said, and hung up.

“Braggart,” Irene said.

At ten minutes past eight that morning, the garage door to the house on Peony Drive swung up, and Frank Summerville backed a brown Mercedes Benz into the driveway. From where she sat parked diagonally across the street. Toots Kiley saw him reach up to the sun visor above his head. A remote control unit; the garage door swung down again. She started her car and drove off up the street. Five minutes later, she had circled the block and was parked again, in a different spot this time, near an undeveloped lot some five houses up from the Summerville house.

At eight-thirty sharp, Leona Summerville’s green Jaguar appeared at the mouth of the driveway. Leona looked left and right, and then made a right turn onto Peony and an immediate left onto Hibiscus Way. Toots did not follow her.

Instead, she got out of her car and walked toward the Summerville house. She was wearing a smart brown business suit over a white blouse. Low-heeled walking shoes. Taupe pantyhose. She looked like a real-estate agent.

There were no cars in the driveway of the Summerville house.

Toots walked directly to the front door and rang the bell.

She kept ringing the bell.

She was studying the lock.

No one answered the door.

She didn’t think anyone would.

The lock was a Mickey Mouse spring-bolt lock. A credit card was palmed in her right hand. It took her two minutes to loid the door. Her back was to the street. She rang the bell again, and then, as if shouting to someone inside, said, “It’s Martha Holloway!” and turned the doorknob and went in.

She locked the door from the inside.

She stood just inside the door, listening.

Not a sound.

This is known as Trespass, she thought. Chapter 810.08. Whoever, without being authorized, licensed, or invited, willfully enters or remains in any structure or conveyance. A misdemeanor of the second degree. Punishable by a term of imprisonment not exceeding sixty days.

I do not want to get caught inside here, she thought.

And immediately got to work.

There were three telephones in the house.

Toots planted a bug near each of the telephones.

One under the kitchen cabinet near the wall phone. Another behind the night table near the bedside phone. The third under the desk top near the study phone. The bugs she planted had nothing to do with the telephones. This was not a true wiretap that would record both ends of a phone conversation; she did not want to mess with taking the carbon mikes out of the phones and replacing them with her own mikes. Her bugs were small FM transmitters hooked into a voice-activated recording machine. If Leona made a phone call, they would pick up only her end of the conversation. They would also pick up any conversations that took place anywhere in the room. The battery-powered mikes had to be replaced every twenty-four hours. Which meant Toots had to risk coming in here again tomorrow morning. Which she’d have to do anyway. To listen to the tape and to decide whether she needed to record for another twenty-four hours. If there was anything useful on the tape, she’d simply pack her equipment and haul ass.

At five minutes to nine, while she was hiding her recorder on the top shelf of the bedroom closet, she heard a car in the driveway.

A rush of adrenaline, he’s back!

Or she is!

One of them forgot something!

Captain Hook’s Marina had a big billboard out front depicting a pirate who had a black patch instead of a right eye, and an iron hook instead of a right hand. Matthew’s grandmother used to tell him that when she was a kid growing up in Chicago she went to the movies every Saturday and one of the silent serials they showed was something called The Iron Claw. The piano player would accompany the kids in a little vamp before each chapter began, and the kids would chant over and over again, “Dah-dah-dah-dah-daht, the I-Yun Claw! Dah-dah-dah-dah-daht, the I-Yun Claw!” Matthew could remember his grandmother saying, “Oh, Matthew, it was soooo scary.” His kid sister Gloria thought it was disgusting, a person with an iron claw for a hand. Matthew thought it might be sort of neat; you could roast marshmallows on it. Gloria, who was in her pain-in-the-ass stage at the time, told Matthew that he was disgusting, too.

The marina billboard was visible as you came off the bridge from the mainland. This huge pirate with his iron hook. The lettering over his three-cornered hat. Captain Hook’s Marina. You drove off the bridge and past a shopping mall that was built like a Cape Cod village transplanted to Florida — whoever had dreamed up that one — and then doubled back on a mostly dirt road that ran past the mall, paralleling the bridge, past the back side of the billboard, and then dead-ended at the marina.

Boats stacked under a shed with a tin roof. Boats in the water. Most of them powerboats. A sign pointing to the marina office. Rickety docks with gasoline pumps on them. A ramshackle building with a smaller wooden sign that was a replica of the billboard announcing the marina. Beyond the main office the sky was gray with the promise of more rain. The water looked choppy. Matthew opened a screen door and stepped into a large cluttered room.

Boat keys hanging on a plywood board to his right. Little plastic float attached to each key. The float came apart; you kept your boat registration inside it. Virgin white line wound on spools. Unopened cartons containing portable toilets. Anchors of various sizes and shapes. Life preservers and throw rings. Cans of motor oil. Brass polish. Bottles of teak oil. Tools. Peaked caps, some blue, some white, some labeled “Captain,” others labeled “First Mate.” Flares. Charts. Boating shoes. A metal desk covered with papers, a wooden chair behind it. A calendar on the wall showed a blonde in cutoff jeans and nothing else, hanging to a sailboat’s rigging. A big Evinrude engine was on the floor across the room, its parts scattered everywhere around it.

A young man in a grease-stained tank-top undershirt and blue jeans was squatting over the engine, a screwdriver in his hands. He looked up when Matthew came in.

“Help you?” he said.

“I’m looking for Anthony Holden,” Matthew said.

The young man studied him suspiciously. Matthew — seersucker suit, white shirt, blue tie, black shoes, blue socks — looked out of place in a marina.

“In reference to?” he said.

Extremely tanned despite all the rain these past several weeks. Flinty blue eyes. Muscular arms and chest bulging in the tank-top shirt. Toothpick in his mouth.

“In reference to a lawsuit,” Matthew said. “Where can I find him?”

“Somebody suing Tony?”

“No, this was a long time ago,” Matthew said. He took a card out of his wallet. “Here’s my card,” he said. “You might want to give it to Mr. Holden, if you know where he is.”

The young man took the card in his greasy right hand. He studied it. He turned it over to see if there was anything on the back of it.

“Hope, huh?” he said.

“Hope.”

“Matthew, huh?”

“Matthew Hope.”

“Are you famous or something?”

“Hardly.”

“The name sounds familiar.”

“It’s a common name.”

“I’ll tell him you’re here,” the young man said, and went to a closed door at the far end of the large room.

He was gone for about five minutes.

When he came back, he said, “Go right on in.”

“Thank you,” Matthew said.

He went to the door, opened it, and stepped into a small office.

The man behind the desk weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds. The man behind the desk had blond hair cut in the style of a Roman emperor, ringlets curling on his forehead and over his ears. The man behind the desk was wearing a shirt open to his waist. A gold medallion hung on his chest. The man behind the desk had rings on all his fingers. His fingernails were painted a screaming scarlet.

The man behind the desk was as gay as a tulip.

“Mrs. Summerville! It’s me! Katie!”

On the shelf above Toots’s head, the reels on the tape recorder began whirring, activated by the woman’s voice.

Good, it works, she thought.

“Mrs. Summerville? Are you here?”

Silence.

The housekeeper, she thought.

Terrific.

She’ll be here all day cleaning.

So how do I get out of this closet?

“Mr. Holden?” Matthew said.

Holden rose from behind his desk. Fifty — two or — three years old, big as a Buddha, he waddled toward Matthew, wide trousers flapping, sandals slapping on the wooden floor, pudgy hand extended, welcoming smile on his face.

“Mr. Hope,” he said, “a pleasure.”

Matthew took his hand. A moist, flabby handshake.

“Mr. Holden, I’m representing a man named Ralph Parrish, who’s…”

“Yes, I know. I read all about it in the papers. Am I involved somehow?”

A flirtatiously impish look that managed to convey two separate reactions:

Me? Involved in a murder?” How absurd!

But at the same time:

Me? Involved in a murder? How exciting!

“Are you?” Matthew asked.

“Well, I would hardly think so. Then again, here you are. And I have to wonder why.”

“Mr. Holden, some six years ago…”

“Oh dear, that,” Holden said, and waved it away with one pudgy hand.

“Your abrupt dismissal from the company…”

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently.

“Your subsequent suit for libel…”

“And defamation,” Holden said.

“Which was settled out of court.”

“Well, of course. For five hundred thou, enough to buy me a nice marina, thank you. La Cerveza Grande knew she was in trouble, making such absurd claims to the press. I’d have turned that brewery into a parking lot if she hadn’t settled.”

“By La Cerveza Grande…”

“The Big Beer, as our beloved CEO was familiarly known. Or, alternately, in straightforward English, the Blonde Bitch. Elise Brechtmann.”

“Who fired you.”

“Indeed.”

“Why?”

“The real reason or the good reason?”

“Both, if you will.”

“Why should I tell you anything at all?”

“You don’t have to. But I can always ask for…”

“Yes, yes, depositions, how boring.”

“They are.”

“How well I know,” Holden said, and sighed. “There were more damn depositions…” He sighed again. “She said I was stealing from the company. That was the good reason for firing me.”

“Stealing what?”

“What does one steal, Mr. Hope? Paper clips? Rubber bands? Come now. Money, of course. Huge sums of money.”

“How?”

“The brewing of beer doesn’t take very many people, you know. Twenty men on the day shift, fifteen on the afternoon shift, and fifteen on the midnight shift. Plus two supervisors and a general foreman on each shift. Forty, forty-five people tops — to turn out two million barrels of beer annually. That is what one might call low overhead, hmmm? At least insofar as labor is concerned.”

“I would say so, yes. What does that have to do with…?”

“Management is something else. By the time I started working for Brechtmann, there were seven breweries all over the country, with local management teams for each brew en. I was purchasing agent down here. Which is what caused all the brouhaha. Would you like a beer?”

“Thank you, no.”

“I’ll have one, if you don’t mind.” Holden said, and moved to a refrigerator across the room. Trousers as wide as pajama bottoms, flapping as he walked. He opened the refrigerator door. “Developed a taste for it while I was working for Brechtmann. Comes in handy when one deals with rough trade.” he said, and took a can out of the refrigerator. He closed the door, popped the can, tilted it to his mouth, drank. “I adore the foam,” he said.

Matthew said nothing.

“Are you married?” Holden asked him.

“Divorced.”

“Gay?”

“Straight.”

“Pity,” Holden said. “Where were we?”

“You were purchasing agent for…”

“Yes. And the purchasing agent in a brewery is responsible for purchasing the ingredients that go into making beer.”

“Naturally.”

“Of course. And the chief ingredients that go into making beer are malt, hops, and either rice or corn.”

“Uh-huh,” Matthew said.

“Do you know what malt is?”

“No.”

“Or hops?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Hardly anyone does. Hops are the dried ripe flowers of the hop plant, which is a sort of twining vine. They contain a bitter, aromatic oil. While I was working for Brechtmann, I bought my hops from Washington, Idaho, Oregon, even Poland and Czechoslovakia. It’s the mixture of different hops in various quantities that give different beers their distinctive flavors. The recipe for Golden Girl Beer was a secret. I knew that secret because I knew which hops I was buying and in what quantities.”

He stole the secret, Matthew thought. That’s why she fired him. He stole the secret recipe and sold it to Anheuser-Busch or Pabst or Miller…

“I didn’t steal the secret, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Holden said. “I didn’t steal anything, as a matter of fact.”

“But Elise Brechtmann claimed you did.”

“Well, of course!” Eyebrows rocketing onto his forehead. “What else would one expect from a bitch of her magnitude?”

“Claimed you stole huge sums of money from her, isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“The malt.”

“I’m sorry, what…?”

“The crux of the matter. It was her claim, you see, that I was eating the company’s malt — so to speak.”

“I still don’t know what malt is.”

“Brewer’s malt. Or barley malt, take your choice, they’re both the same thing. Essential to the brewing process. Steeped from raw barley, I won’t go into the details because they’re too tiresome, really. Suffice it to say that without barley malt, there ain’t no beer, Mr. Hope. So now we get to the basis of La Cerveza Grande’s charge.”

“Which was?”

“Patience, Mr. Hope,” Holden said, and sighed. He sipped at his beer. He looked at the can. “There was a time,” he said, “when I detested the aroma of malt. Ah, well.” He took another sip of beer. “When I was working for Brechtmann,” he said, “we owned malthouses that supplied thirty percent of our malt needs. But thirty percent wasn’t a hundred percent, and so I had to go to outside maltsters to buy the other seventy percent we needed. You have to understand how much malt we used, Mr. Hope, and how-much it cost us.”

“How much did you use?”

“To brew the two million barrels of beer we shipped each year, we needed sixty-three million pounds of malt.”

“That is a lot of malt,” Matthew said.

“Indeed,” Holden said.

“And what did all that malt cost you?”

“Prices per bushel change all the time,” Holden said. “But back in 1981 I’d say we were spending something like five million dollars annually for the malt we were getting from outside sources.”

“Five million,” Matthew said.

“Give or take.” Holden smiled. “According to Elise, it was mostly take.”

“How? She claimed you were stealing, but how?”

“Kickbacks.”

“From whom?”

“The various maltsters I dealt with.”

“How large a kickback?”

“Fifty cents a bushel.”

“Is that a lot?”

“There are thirty-four pounds of malt in a bushel. You figure it out, Mr. Hope.”

“No, you figure it out.”

“We used sixty-three million pounds of malt a year. Divide that by thirty-four pounds per bushel, and you get one million, eight hundred and fifty thousand bushels, something close to that.”

“At a fifty-cent kickback per bushel.”

“So Elise claimed.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“I wish I had it.” Holden said.

“What proof did she have for this claim?”

“None. Not a shred.”

“Yet she fired you, and told the newspaper…”

“A crazy woman,” Holden said, shaking his head.

“Why’d she fire you, Mr. Holden? You said there was a good reason and a real reason. What was the real reason?”

“You mean you didn’t notice?” Holden said, and smiled. “I’m gay.”

“She fired you because…?”

“Because my lover happened to be a very good friend of hers.”

“And who was that?”

“Jonathan Parrish.”

“According to this, you’ve been a very bad boy,” Bloom said.

He was sitting behind the desk in his office, tapping a copy of Arthur Hurley’s rap sheet. Bloom’s partner. Cooper Rawles, was sitting on the edge of the desk. Rawles was at least six feet two inches tall, and he weighed a possible two-forty. He had wide shoulders, a barrel chest, and massive hands. He did not look like a person to mess with. The man Arthur Hurley had attacked with a broken beer bottle eight years ago had been black. Cooper Rawles was black, too.

“That was then, and this is now,” Hurley said.

“You’re a good boy now, is that it?” Rawles said.

Hurley looked at him as if a cockroach had spoken.

“Answer me, Artie,” Rawles said. “Are you a good boy now?”

“What am I doing here?” Hurley asked Bloom. “Are you charging me with something?”

“You want us to charge you with something?” Bloom asked.

“I want to know…”

“Give me something to charge him with. Coop,” Bloom said.

“How about using obscenity to the police officer who…?”

“He had no right arresting me in the…”

“Who says you were arrested?” Bloom asked. “All the officer did was ask you politely to come down here for some questioning.”

“And that’s not arresting me, huh!’ What do you call it? A field investigation?”

“No, it’s not a…”

“I’m in custody is what I am. In which case, you better read me Miranda, and you better get a lawyer for me.”

“You’re not in custody,” Bloom said.

“Good,” Hurley said, and stood up. “In which case. I’ll just run a…”

“Sit down,” Rawles said.

“Why? Your friend here said I’m not…”

“Sit the fuck down!” Rawles said.

Hurley glared at him.

“I think you’d better sit down,” Bloom said softly.

“What comes next?” Hurley said, sitting. “The rubber hose?”

“For a man who didn’t do anything,” Bloom said, “you certainly are defensive.”

“Maybe I spent too much time in jail for things I didn’t do,” Hurley said.

“That’s right,” Rawles said. “Everybody in jail is innocent.”

“Not everybody.”

“Just you.”

“A couple of times, that’s right. A couple of times, I really was innocent. I didn’t do a fucking thing, and there I was in jail.”

“What a shame,” Rawles said.

“Sure, it’s supposed to be justice,” Hurley said. “And I didn’t do anything now, either.”

“Nobody said you did anything,” Bloom said. “We just want to talk to you.”

“I guess you want to talk to Billy, too, huh? You dragged him in, too, I guess you want to talk to him. Where you got him? In the other room? Asking him the same questions you’re asking me, checkin’ our stories?”

“Have we asked you any questions yet?” Rawles said.

“No, but…”

“Then shut the fuck up.”

“Why? Your partner just said I didn’t do anything, hi which case…”

“In which case, shut the fuck up,” Rawles said.

“If I didn’t do anything, what is it I’m supposed not to have done?”

“You’re supposed not to have murdered a police officer,” Bloom said.

“Oh, shit,” Hurley said, “is that what you’re trying to hang on me? Jesus, let me out of here.”

“Sit down,” Rawles said.

“Nossir, you better read me my rights right this fucking minute. This is a cop got killed, you better read me my rights and get me a lawyer. You better tell Billy, too. You better tell him a cop got boxed. Man, this is serious. This is very serious here.”

“Sit down,” Rawles said.

“Sit down,” Bloom said.

“I didn’t kill any fucking cop,” Hurley said. “You think I’m an amateur?”

“Who said you killed a cop?”

“Am I hearing things then? I thought somebody said a police officer…”

“I said you didn’t kill a police officer,” Bloom said.

“Sure, bullshit,” Hurley said.

“Why were you watching the Parrish house?” Rawles said.

“Oh, so that’s it,” Hurley said.

“You were watching the Parrish house, right?”

“That’s right, and somebody was in that house, and I wasn’t going in till they got out. So what is this? Was it a cop inside that house? Did a cop get killed inside that house?”

“You seem to know an awful lot about what was inside that house or not inside it,” Bloom said.

“I know a plant when I see one, and this was a plant. I see a guy peeking around the window shade, I don’t have to be a genius to know it’s a plant. So it was a cop in there, hull? And he got cooled, right? Well, it wasn’t me who did it. It wasn’t Billy, either.”

“Why were you watching the house?” Rawles asked.

Same question. When a thief didn’t answer a question, there was a reason. Thieves were as good as movie stars at not answering questions. You asked a famous actress, “Is it true you’ll be leaving Dynasty next year?” she answered, “The weather in Southern California is so beautiful.” You asked a thief, “What are you doing with these burglars’ tools in your hand?” he answered, “My mother has angina pectoris.” Movie stars and thieves were identical in the way they handled questions they didn’t want to answer. All a cop or a reporter could do was ask the same question all over again.

“Why were you watching the house?”

This time from Bloom.

Ask it often enough, maybe come Christmas you’d get a straight answer.

“First tell me was a cop killed inside there,” Hurley said.

“Yes,” Bloom said.

Rawles looked at him.

Bloom shrugged.

The shrug said, “Let’s play it straight, see what we get from him.”

Rawles grimaced.

The grimace said, “He’s a fuckin’ thief, we’ll get lies from him no matter how we play it.”

Hurley nodded.

“So I was right,” he said. “A cop did get killed inside that house.”

“Yes,” Bloom said.

Rawles sighed and shook his head.

“When was this?” Hurley asked.

“All of a sudden he’s the cop!” Rawles said angrily. “He’s the one asking questions.”

“It was last night,” Bloom said.

“For Christ’s sake, Morrie…”

“I was nowhere near the Parrish house last night,” Hurley said.

“Then where were you?”

“Home in bed with my girlfriend. Who by the way is pregnant.”

“We send lots of guys to jail who have pregnant girlfriends,” Rawles said.

“No kidding?”

“In case you expected us to break into tears or anything.”

“No, I didn’t expect that, don’t worry.”

“What’s her name? Bloom asked.

“Helen Abbott. Call her right this minute, go ahead. She’s back at the motel, she doesn’t know why you picked up me and Billy. Ask her where I was last night, whatever time the cop got killed, go ahead, ask her. Pick up the phone and ask her. She’ll tell you I was home in bed with her.”

“What time was this?”

“Was what?”

“That you were with her. From what time to what time?”

“All night.”

“From what time to what time?”

“What time did the cop get killed?”

“Answer the fucking question,” Rawles shouted.

“Listen, you,” Hurley said, “I’m answering these questions voluntarily, you don’t have to…”

“From what time to what time?” Rawles said.

“We got back from supper it must’ve been nine o’clock. We watched some television and went to sleep. Billy was in the same room, in the other bed. You ask him where we were all last night, he’ll tell you. Ask them both. There wasn’t any one of us anywhere near that Parrish house last night.”

“What time did you go to breakfast this morning?” Bloom asked.

“Around eight o’clock.”

“All three of you?”

“All three of us.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Burger King.”

“Why were you watching the Parrish house?”

Fourth time around.

“Helen’s grandmother says she doesn’t believe us,” Hurley said.

Which was the same as saying “The weather in Southern California is so beautiful.” Or “My mother has angina pectoris.”

Both cops looked at him.

“Which is bullshit, of course,” Hurley said.

“Just what I was thinking,” Rawles said.

“I mean, her saying she doesn’t believe us. She knows we’re telling the truth.”

“About what?”

“That Helen is her granddaughter. The point is, we need proof.”

“Proof,” Bloom said.

“Yeah.”

“Of what?”

“That she’s the granddaughter.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Which the baby pictures would prove,” Hurley said.

“Uh-huh.”

“We think maybe they’re inside the Parrish house. Which is why we were watching the house. But we weren’t going in there when we knew there was somebody already in there.”

“What baby pictures?” Rawles asked.

“Helen’s. Her pictures when she was a baby. With her mother, you know? Helen and her mother.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Pictures of them both together. So the grandmother can’t say this girl nursing the baby isn’t her daughter. Because she is. I mean, there’s her picture, her face. Which means Helen is telling the truth. Which the grandmother knows anyway. But that’s the proof we needed. The pictures. And we thought they were inside that house. Which is why we were watching the house.”

“But you didn’t go inside there, huh?” Bloom asked.

“No way,” Hurley said. “With somebody sitting it? No way.”

The cops looked at each other.

“What do you think?” Bloom asked.

“It’s dumb enough to be true,” Rawles said.

Vacuum cleaner going now.

The housekeeper was in the living room.

Toots’s mind raced like sixty. Carpet here in the master bedroom, extending clear into the closet. Meant she’d be vacuuming in here, too. Maybe she wouldn’t open the closet door. But suppose she did? Hang up something that came back from the cleaner’s, put away a pair of shoes or a robe someone had left under a chair or draped over it, any number of reasons she might come into this closet and find a frizzied, twenty-six-year-old blonde wetting her pants. Had to get out of here before she came in. But how?

The telephone rang.

On the shelf above her head, there was a tiny click. The sound of the ringing phone had triggered the mechanism. The recorder reels began whirring. The vacuum cleaner suddenly stopped.

“Coming!” the housekeeper yelled to the phone.

Toots was out of the closet in a wink.

Slithering herself cautiously and minutely around the door-jamb, a snake or a roach couldn’t have done it better, one eye and a nose showing, part of her chin maybe, housekeeper’s fat ass swinging down the carpeted corridor toward the wall phone over the kitchen’s passthrough counter. Toots stepped into the corridor. Housekeeper reaching for the phone. Don’t turn this way, Toots thought, and tried to orient herself. Open door to a second bedroom across the hall, street side of the house. The garage would be…

“Hello?”

A glance toward the kitchen. Housekeeper leaning on the counter, big fat ass mooning the dining room.

“Yes, this is the Summerville residence.”

The garage would be near the kitchen. No way to get to the garage without passing Brunnhilde.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Summerville isn’t here just now. May I take a message, please?”

Study across the hall was worthless. Dead end room, high windows.

“Yes, Mrs. Horowitz, I’ll remind her. A meeting tonight, yes. Could you spell that, please?”

But maybe…

“The league to what?”

Run across the hall, pop into the study. Stay in there till Brunnhilde vacuumed her way up the corridor and into the master bedroom, then run like hell for the front door.

“Florida wildlife, yes, ma’am. The league to protect Florida wildlife, yes, ma’am, I’ve got it. And the meeting is tonight. Yes, ma’am. Mrs. Colman’s house. Yes, ma’am. Eight o’clock. Yes, ma’am, I’ve written it all down. I’ll leave the message right here by the phone in case she’s not back by the time I leave. Yes, ma’am, thank you.”

Click of the receiver being replaced on the hook.

The housekeeper came up the corridor and switched on the vacuum cleaner. She vacuumed her way past the study and the second bedroom and then vacuumed herself into the master bedroom.

And opened the closet door.

And vacuumed around the shoe racks there.

Toots Kiley was already across the hall in the study.

Two minutes later, she was out the front door and walking very quickly toward where she’d parked the Chevy.

“How’re we supposed to get back to the motel?” Billy wanted to know.

“We take a bus,” Hurley said.

“They got buses in this two-bit town?”

“I saw buses,” Hurley said.

It was a long walk to U.S. 41. It was almost twelve noon, the day cloudy and uncertain, the temperature hovering around seventy degrees Fahrenheit, twenty-one centigrade.

“This means we zeroed out, you realize that?” Billy said.

“Yeah,” Hurley said.

“I mean, we steered wide of the murder rap, but we both told them about the pictures…”

“Yeah.”

“I mean we had to.”

“I know.”

“Otherwise why were we watching the house? To kill a fuckin’ cop was inside there?”

“I know, I know.”

“So we had to tell them about the pictures.”

“Nobody’s blaming you.”

“Who’s saying anybody’s blaming me? I’m saying unless we told them about the pictures, they’d have been all over us about the dead cop. ’Cause they knew we were casing the Parrish house.”

“Yeah. And you know where they got that, don’t you?”

“Where?”

“From that fuckin’ mouse-fart lawyer who came to the motel.”

“Right, I didn’t think of that. It had to be him.”

“Of course it was him.”

“But what I’m saying, we can forget all about those pictures now. ’Cause the cops’ll go in there with a hundred guys, they’ll toss everything in the house, they’ll find the pictures. And without the pictures, the old lady’ll keep telling us to fuck off, and that’s that. The deal is blown, Artie, we’re finished here in this shit town.”

“Yeah,” Hurley said.

But he was thinking they weren’t quite finished.

The first thing he had to do was teach little Miss Helen Abbott with her big fuckin’ belly not to be so quick about letting strange lawyers in and telling them the secrets of the universe. That was the first thing. Teach her what it meant to keep her mouth shut about important matters, knock out all her fuckin’ teeth if that was the way to teach her.

The next thing to do was to locate Mr. Matthew Hope and let him know that you don’t fuck with Arthur Hurley.

You don’t go to the police and blab that Arthur Hurley was watching a house where a cop got killed, you don’t fuck Arthur Hurley out of a million bucks because you got a big fuckin’ lawyer mouth, you don’t do that to Arthur Hurley, man.

You just don’t.