Ed McBain - Cinderella

“What for?” she said.

She was sitting Indian style on a chair at the kitchen table. Knees up, ankles crossed. Naked. High sweat-sheen on her skin.

“Put the dust in it,” he said.

“In where?” Omelia said. “The apple?”

“Right here in the hole,” he said.

“Gonna mess up real good blow,” she said.

“No, give it a good flavor.”

“Who told you that?”

“Trust me,” he said, and poured cocaine into the cored apple. He took a plastic straw from a glass on the counter. He stuck the straw into the apple and then handed the apple across the table to her.

He watched her sniffing coke.

Eyes closed.

Legs slightly parted.

“When you finish,” he said, “I’ll eat the apple.”

“We should put some of this in my hole,” she said, and looked up and giggled.

“You want to do that?” he said.

“Anythin’ you want, man. This is some shit you got here. Where you get such shit, man?”

“I have connections,” he said.

“ Purify my hole, shit like this.”

The telephone rang.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

“You better not be,” she said. “We got things to try , man.”

He walked into the library, closed the door behind him, and picked up the ringing phone. Through the window, he could see out over Biscayne Bay, southward to Soldier Key. The sky was clear and blue, but it would turn cloudy by afternoon, and then it would rain again.

“Hello?” he said.

“Luis?” the voice on the other end said.

“Yes?” he said.

“Ernesto.”

They talked for almost five minutes.

Their conversation was entirely in Spanish.

Ernesto reported that he and Domingo were now in Calusa and were staying at a motel called the Suncrest.

He said they now had seven different names for Jody Carmody, but they were pretty sure her real name was Jenny Santoro.

Luis asked if the name was Spanish, she hadn’t looked Spanish.

Ernesto told him it was Italian.

Luis said nothing to this. He did not like Italians. He equated Italians with the Mafia, and the Mafia with people who would kill him in a minute to get at his business.

Ernesto told him this was going to be a very difficult job. All these different names now, and nobody else to ask about her.

Luis told him to stay with it.

He told him to contact a man named Martin Klement at a restaurant named Springtime. In Calusa. Tell him they were looking to buy good cocaine. Tell him to ask around. Martin Klement.

Luis told Ernesto he wanted to hang the girl from the ceiling by her cunt. Put a hook in her cunt and hang her from the ceiling.

Well, we’ll do our best, Ernesto said.

Both men hung up. Luis went back into the kitchen, smiling like Bugs Bunny. Omelia was no longer sitting at the kitchen table. For a panicky moment, he thought. Not again. He thought this in Spanish. His heart was beating wildly.

“Baby?”

Her voice.

Distant. From the other end of the house.

“Come find me, baby,” she said.

He went to find her, wondering if she’d done with the cocaine what she said they should do with it.

At ten minutes to ten that Thursday morning, Cynthia Huellen buzzed Matthew from the front desk to say there was a girl here who wanted to talk to him about Otto Samalson. He asked her to send the girl in right away.

She was no more than seventeen, Matthew guessed, a carrot-topped, freckle-faced redhead wearing blue shorts and a white T-shirt. She came into the office and then stopped stock still inside the door, as though paralyzed. He thought for a moment she would turn and run right out again.

“Won’t you sit down?” he said, as gently as he could, and motioned to the chairs in front of his desk.

The girl looked terrified.

“Miss?” he said.

The girl nodded.

“Please sit down, won’t you?”

She moved crablike toward one of the chairs, sat in it, and then immediately and defensively folded her arms across her chest.

“I’m sorry,” Matthew said, “I didn’t get your name.”

“Kelly,” the girl squeaked, and cleared her throat. “Kelly O’Rourke.”

“How can I help you, Miss O’Rourke?” Matthew asked.

She stared at him, her eyes wide. He wondered if he had grown horns.

“Miss?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please relax.”

“I’m relaxed,” she said.

“I understand you want to talk to me about Otto Samalson.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What about him?”

“I read in the paper that he worked for you.”

“Well, he was doing some work for us, yes.”

“The paper said investigator with the firm of Summerville and Hope.”

“Yes, well, that wasn’t quite accurate,” Matthew said.

“That’s why I came here,” Kelly said, sounding disappointed, like a child who’d been promised the circus only to have it rain. “’Cause the paper said he worked for you.”

“Well, maybe I can help you, anyway,” Matthew said. “What was it you wanted to tell me?”

She hesitated.

Then she said, “I saw him.”

“When?” Matthew asked at once.

“Sunday night.”

“Where?”

“At the Seven-Eleven where I work. He came in and asked for a pack of cigarettes.”

“Where’s that?”

“On Forty-one. Just over the Whisper Key bridge.”

“Which bridge? North or south?”

“North.”

“What time was this?”

“About a quarter to eleven.”

“Are you sure it was him?”

“Yes, I recognized his picture in the paper. He seemed like a nice man.”

“He was,” Matthew said. “Did he say anything else?”

“Just that he didn’t need matches. When I handed him the cigarettes. Said he had a lighter, thanks.”

“Was he alone?”

“Yes.”

“Came in alone?”

“Yes.”

“Went out alone?”

“Yes. But...”

Matthew was writing. He looked up sharply.

“Yes?”

“I watched through the front window, you know? The big window? Because he was such a cute little man. And there was nothing to do, the place was empty.”

“And?”

“He got in his car, and started it, and backed out.”

“Yes, go ahead, Kelly.”

“This other car backed out right after him. Like it was waiting for him to pull out, you know? Backed out and followed him.”

“You’re sure it followed him?”

“Made the turn at the light, same as he did.”

“Heading in which direction?”

“South on Forty-one.”

“What kind of car was it, Kelly?”

“A black Toronado,” she said, “with red racing stripes and tinted windows.”

“Did you happen to notice the license plate?”

“No, I’m sorry. I would’ve looked if I’d known he was gonna get killed. But I didn’t know that.”

“Did you notice who was in the car?”

“No. I told you, the windows were tinted.”

“You couldn’t tell if it was one person... or two?”

“I couldn’t see in.”

“Anything else you can remember? Anything Mr. Samalson said or did?”

“Yes, sir,” Kelly said, and suddenly smiled. “He made a joke about my hair. He said it looked like my head was on fire.”

The moment she was gone, Matthew called Cooper Rawles at the Calusa PD He had first met Rawles when he was working on what the police files had labeled the Jack and the Beanstalk case but what Matthew would always remember as the Bullet in the Shoulder case. Unfortunately, the shoulder in question had been his, and the bullet had been traveling at enormous velocity, trailing fire and pain behind it.

Rawles had been there on that memorable night in August, upstairs with Bloom, questioning a suspect named Jack Crowell who’d made a break for it when the cops started demolishing his alibi. Crowell burst out of the front door of the building, barefoot and barechested, a gun in his right hand, shoving his way through the handful of people cluttered on the front steps, almost falling over the lap of a woman who sat Haitian-style, her knees wide, her dress tented over her crotch. Matthew, waiting outside on Bloom’s explicit instructions, heard Bloom’s voice shouting from inside the building — “Stop or I’ll shoot!” — and shoved himself off the fender of the car, moving to intercept Crowell, figuring Bloom was right behind him with his own gun, and never once stopping to think what might happen next.