Ed McBain - Cinderella

Jimmy was Larkin’s younger brother.

Jimmy was here to ask if Larkin could let him and some friends of his use one of the boats for a little trip they had to make on Friday, the twentieth of June. The kind of boat Jimmy had in mind was a cigarette. Which could outrun the Coast Guard, if Larkin followed his drift. Larkin followed his drift perfectly, not for nothing were they brothers. Jimmy and his friends were expecting another shipment, of what Larkin didn’t want to know. Larkin made a point of never asking Jimmy about business. That way, Larkin stayed clean. Every once in a while, Jimmy asked him for the use of a boat. Larkin always said what he said now.

“If somebody accidentally left the keys in one of the boats, and somebody came in and used it, I wouldn’t know anything about it. It comes back safe and sound, that’s terrific. It gets blown out of the water, I didn’t even know it was gone.”

“Yeah, that’s cool,” Jimmy said.

Forty-two years old, Larkin thought, and he looks like a fat spic, and he buys his clothes in the discount joints lining 41, and he still talks like a teenager. Yeah, that’s cool. Jesus!

“Then we pick it up that night sometime, that’s cool with you, huh?”

“If I don’t know anything about it,” Larkin said.

“But the keys’ll be in one of the cigarettes, huh?”

“It’s possible keys could get left in a boat by mistake.”

“Sure, I dig,” Jimmy said.

I dig , Larkin thought. Jesus!

The men sat in the sunshine drinking beer.

“I hear you’re searchin’ for some broad,” Jimmy said.

Larkin looked at him.

“A Miami hooker,” Jimmy said.

Larkin said nothing.

“Stole your watch,” Jimmy said.

“Where’d you hear that?” Larkin said.

“You remember Jackie? Jackie Pasconi, his mother used to run the candy store downstairs when we were kids in New York? Jackie? Pasconi? Whose brother got stabbed up in Attica? Don’t you remember Jackie?”

“What about him?”

“What he does sometimes, he works — he used to work — for this guy got shot here last Sunday. This Jewish guy, I forget his name. Jackie done work for him in Miami.”

“What kind of work?”

“Like listening around, you know? Like a snitch, sort of, but not really, ’cause this wasn’t for the cops, it was for this Jewish private eye, what the fuck’s his name, I can’t think of his name right now.”

“Samalson,” Larkin said.

“Yeah, right, Samuelson.”

“So?” Larkin said.

“So I run into Jackie at the dogs, he starts tellin’ me my brother hired this private eye to find this hooker ran off with his solid gold Rolex, that’s what Jackie tells me.”

Larkin looked at him again.

“Is it true?” Jimmy asked. “That a hooker took you for five bills plus the gold Rolex?”

“No, I didn’t pay her nothing,” Larkin said. “I didn’t even know she was a pro.”

“But she got your watch though.”

“Yeah.”

“Walked off with the watch, huh?”

“It was on the dresser.”

“You musta been sleeping, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“This was when, in the morning?”

“Yeah.”

“She was gone when you woke up, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“With the watch.”

“Yeah.”

“So why’d you go to a private eye? Whyn’t you come to me? I’m your brother, I coulda taken care of this for you.”

“Well.”

“Better’n any fuckin’ private eye, that’s for sure. Who got himself killed, by the way.”

“Well.”

“You think she mighta done it?”

“I know she did,” Larkin said.

“Killed him? No shit?”

“No, no, I thought you meant—”

“Oh, the watch, sure. But you don’t think she killed him, huh?”

“Who the fuck knows what she did,” Larkin said.

One thing he knew for sure, she’d stolen his watch. The other thing he knew for sure... well, the other thing was something he hadn’t even told Samalson, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell his brother, either. Nor anybody. Ever. Fucking little bitch! He wondered now, sitting in the sunshine on the foredeck of a sleek Constellation with his fat brother Jimmy Legs the Accountant in his polyester suit, wondered if maybe she had killed Samalson. Because suppose Samalson was getting close? And suppose she knew this was something more than a solid gold Rolex, this was something could get a pretty girl’s face rearranged in a way you’d never recognize her again. And suppose she knew the minute Samalson zeroed in she’d be having company who didn’t want to hear no shit about what a big gorgeous cock you got, honey. It was possible. Desperate people did desperate things.

“You want me to go on the earie?” his brother asked.

“What?” Larkin said.

“You want me to listen around, see I can get a line on her? Bust her fuckin’ head and get the watch back for you?”

“You’ve got other things to do,” Larkin said.

“No, I ain’t too busy just now,” Jimmy said. “You want me to, or not?”

“Well, I’d like to find her,” Larkin said.

“Then consider it done,” Jimmy said. “What’s her name?”

“Angela West. That’s the name she gave me. But I don’t think that’s her real name.”

“You got a picture of her?”

“I gave it to Samalson.”

“Then tell me what she looks like.”

“Blonde hair, blue eyes, about five feet nine inches tall...”

“How old?”

“Twenty-two, twenty-three. Tits out to here, legs that won’t quit...”

“They’ll quit when I find her,” Jimmy said.

What he told her, he said there was dope in the house there.

Coke in the house, he said it had to be worth on the street something like seven hundred and fifty K. Six kilos of pure, something like that. This customer of his had seen them — half a dozen of those white plastic bags — when he opened the safe. Well, seven including the one that was already open and on the dresser. Figure he’d already used a few bags, or sold them off, whatever, so say there were still four in the house, maybe three, shit, even two would make it worthwhile.

You came away with two kilos of pure, that was a bit more than seventy ounces, you stepped on it till you got it to street strength, you could ask a hundred and a quarter a gram . Something like twenty-eight grams to the ounce, you multiplied that by your seventy ounces, you got nineteen hundred and sixty grams times a hundred and twenty-five bucks, you came away with two hundred and forty-five thousand bucks, almost a quarter of a million, that’s if there was only two kilos in the house.

You could add, say, another hundred and a quarter, give or take, for every kilo you came away with. Come out of there with four kilos, for example, you had half a million bucks right there in your hand. You were talking two point two pounds per kilo. You were talking carrying eight, ten pounds the most in your tote bag when you left the house. Walk away with it, disappear in the night.

She told him it sounded dangerous.

Also, how did he know this customer of his wasn’t full of shit?

He said For Christ’s sake, I’ve known her for ages, she’s a hooker same as you, she had no reason to lie to me, she was just telling me an interesting story .

Listening to him tell her all this, she was thinking amateurs shouldn’t fuck around with dope deals.

She told him she knew a hooker in LA, a working girl like herself, who got involved bringing dope in on an airplane. They were paying her fifty thousand bucks to bring the dope in from Antigua where it had come from London by way of Marseilles. All she had to do was carry in this false bottom bag with the dope in it. So they brought out the police dogs that day, and she was now doing twenty in San Quentin, and the guys who hired her were still having a nice time on their yacht on the French Riviera. Amateurs shouldn’t fuck around with dope deals, she told him.