Ed McBain - Cinderella

“What do you want?” she said. “Who are you?”

“Ernesto,” he said, smiling. And then, indicating his pal, “Domingo.”

The one with the knife said nothing, and he didn’t smile, either. He was the one who bothered her.

“So what do you want here?” she said. She was frightened — two strange spics in her house, a knife that looked like a saber — but she was also annoyed. Come home after a day with Mickey Mouse, you wanted to grab a beer, change into some shorts and sandals. She was living in this really tiny place — closet-sized living room, kitchen too small even for roaches, a bedroom the size of a shoebox — six miles from Disney World, where she worked as a ticket taker for Jungle Cruise. She did not like working for Disney World, and she didn’t like Orlando, Florida, either, but she kept telling herself this was only temporary. Florida was supposed to be water and boats, not the middle of a damn desert like Orlando. Wasn’t for Disney World, nobody would’ve ever heard of Orlando. Orlando sounded like some kind of magician doing tricks in a sideshow. And now , ladies and germs, we are proud to introduce the Great Or- lan -do! Plus his two assistants, Ernesto and Domingo, who will show you how to break and enter a small apartment without using brute force. “How’d you get in here?” she asked Ernesto.

“Jenny Santoro,” he said. “Your sister.”

Accent you could cut with a machete. Jenny came out “Henny” and sister came out “seest’.”

“What about her?” Kate said. “Jenny, you mean? What about her?”

“Where is she?”

“How the hell do I know?” she said, and was starting to walk into the kitchen when Domingo stepped into her path.

“I’m only going for a beer,” she said. “You want a beer? Una cerveza ,” she said. “You want one?” She turned to Ernesto. “How about you? You want a beer?”

“I want to know where your sister is. Jenny Santoro. That is her name?”

“Give or take,” Kate said, thinking Jenny, Henny, six of one, half a dozen of the other. She went to the refrigerator, opened the door, took out a bottle of Bud, twisted off the cap, and drank straight from the bottle. “And she’s not my sister , she’s my stepsister. Mi hermana política. ”

Not many Anglos knew the Spanish word for stepsister. Ernesto looked at her admiringly and then said, “Usted habla español correctamente.”

“I picked some up in Puerto Rico,” Kate said in English — no sense showing off and making mistakes. “I used to be a cocktail waitress in a casino down there.”

Ernesto nodded. Domingo was looking her over, appraising her legs, her ass, her breasts, his eyes roaming insolently. Ernesto hoped Domingo wouldn’t cut her the way he had the other one. He was thinking she had no idea her sister was dead. Maybe this could be useful, her ignorance. He didn’t know how yet, but he thought perhaps it could be.

“You have two sisters, verdad ?” he said, testing her.

“Two,” she said, nodding. “But only one of them’s my real sister. Mi propia hermana . Alice. She lives in Miami Beach. The other one, I don’t know where she is. Last I heard, it was LA. Why?” she said, and looked first at one and then at the other.

“We have to find your hermana política ,” Ernesto said.

“That’s the one in LA. Have you tried LA?” she asked, making a joke — LA was so far away — but nobody smiled. “I haven’t seen her in six years, it has to be. She left Miami when she was sixteen, went to New Orleans, I heard, and then Houston, and then LA is what my mother told me. Seven years, in fact.”

“Where does your mother live?” Ernesto asked.

“In Venice.”

The two men looked at each other.

“Not Venice, Italy ,” Kate said. “Venice, Florida . Near Sarasota. About fifteen, twenty miles south of Sarasota.”

“Does she know where your sister is?”

“Jenny? I got no idea.”

“But she was the one who told you Jenny was in Los Angeles, verdad ?”

“Yes,” she said. He pronounced it so pretty. Los Angeles . The Spanish way. Los to rhyme with “gross,” the first syllable of Angeles sounding like “ahn,” all of it so pretty. But the other one had a knife.

“Did she also tell you when your sister was in Houston?”

“I guess it was her told me, yes,” Kate said.

“Your mother, verdad ?”

“Yes.”

“Whose name is?”

“Annie.”

“Carmody?”

“No, Santoro. She remarried. I told you, Jenny’s my—”

“And she lives where? Your mother?”

“I told you where.”

“Venice, you said.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have the address?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Will you give it to me, please?” Ernesto said.

Kate looked at the knife in Domingo’s hand.

“Yes,” she said, and went into the bedroom for her address book.

Ernesto gestured with his head for Domingo to follow her. Domingo went into the bedroom. The telephone was on the bedside night table, and Kate was sitting on the edge of the bed, leafing through her address book when he came into the room. The telephone rang as he walked through the door. Without once thinking they might not want her to answer the phone, she picked up the receiver.

“Hello?” she said.

Domingo came across the room at once.

“Katie?”

“Yes?”

He was standing in front of her now.

“It’s Mother.”

“Oh, hi, Mom,” she said, and covered the mouthpiece. “My mother,” she said to Domingo. She uncovered the mouthpiece and was about to say that two men were here asking for her address when her mother said, “Alice is dead.”

“What?” she said.

“Alice. She was killed yesterday in Miami Beach.”

“Oh my God!” Kate said.

“She was stabbed,” her mother said, and suddenly the phone was trembling in Kate’s hand. “The police called me five minutes ago. Took them all that time to locate me. Because my name is different, you know? My last name. They think it was drug-related. They really don’t know, Katie. They see an addict, they automatically figure drug-related.”

“Oh God, Mom,” Kate said.

She got up suddenly, moving away from Domingo, trying to find some room for herself in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, Domingo still there crowding her, the open knife in his right hand.

“I have to go to Miami to identify the body,” her mother said. “Can you meet me there?”

“When?” Kate asked.

Domingo was watching her, listening to her end of the conversation.

“I thought I’d drive over there tonight. They’re holding her body in the morgue, they need a positive ID.”

“I... uh... I don’t know, Mom. I have to go to work tomorrow, tomorrow’s a workday. If you can handle it alone...”

“This is your sister ,” her mother said.

“I know she’s my sister...”

Domingo looked suddenly alert.

“So?” her mother said.

“I’ll have to call you back later,” Kate said.

“I’m going to need help with the funeral arrangements, too.”

“Let me see what I can do about work, okay, Mom? Can I call you back?”

“I won’t be leaving for a while yet.”

“All right, I’ll get back to you,” she said, and put the receiver back on the cradle.

Ernesto was standing in the doorway to the room. She wondered how long he’d been there.

“Your mother?” he said.

“Yes.”

“What did she want?”

Kate hesitated.

“Yes?” Ernesto said.

“She... she...”