Ed McBain - Cinderella

In the safe, she spots six more bags.

He tells her he just keeps it around to entertain his friends.

She is very happy he is such a fine entertainer. She tells him he ought to go into the catering business.

He is having a jolly old time, Amaros, introducing this nice little girl from Minnesota to all the wicked, wicked ways of the big bad world. He shows her a movie starring Johnny Holmes, the porn star with the enormous cock, and asks Kim who’s bigger, him or Johnny Holmes. She says Oh, you , my dear, without question, which isn’t really a lie because he is in fact rather well hung for such a short guy.

So the idea is for Jenny to go to this same Kasbah Lounge and sit at the bar there drinking something purple or pink, waiting for her dream boy to walk in one night, after which she will catch his eye and play the innocent little girl from Dubuque, Iowa. He will whisk her away to his castle on Key Biscayne, and he will open the safe and take out a bag of coke and do his Brighter-the-Blue trick and show her his Johnny Holmes movie and his own humongous weapon and she will put a little bit of chloral hydrate in his drink and knock him out and run off with the rest of the stuff in the safe, how does that sound to Jenny?

Jenny thinks it sounds terrific.

Because to her this is still the way out.

This was now like the last week in March when they were planning this.

Matthew was still steaming.

Back some time ago, before they’d got to know each other better, he’d had the same kind of confrontation with Bloom. Twice, in fact. The first time was while Bloom was investigating the murder of Vicky Miller and the kidnapping of her daughter, Allison. Bloom had told him — on the phone, in much the same way Rawles had told him on the phone — to bug off. What he’d said, actually, was:

“Counselor” (and the word counselor rankled because it was more often than not used sarcastically even among contesting attorneys in a courtroom) “it would be nice to have your word that from this minute on you won’t be running all over the city of Calusa questioning anybody you think might have some connection with this case, as I would hate to have the blood of a six-year-old girl on my hands if I were you, Counselor.”

Matthew had said, “Stop talking to me as if I’m a fucking Los Angeles private eye.”

That was the first time Bloom had felt it necessary to chastise Matthew. The second time was more recently. It had, in fact, been shortly before Matthew took the bullet in his shoulder. And yesterday morning was the third time, only it hadn’t been Bloom, a friend , delivering the warning, it had been a detective Matthew knew only casually. And he was still annoyed. He had not, to his knowledge, done anything to jeopardize or compromise the police investigation into the death of Otto Samalson. He had not spirited away evidence, he had not forewarned witnesses or suspects, he had done nothing whatever to warrant Rawles’s blunt reprimand. “You’ve been busy.” It occurred to him that Bloom had once used those exact words. With much the same sarcastic lilt. “You’ve been busy.” Maybe all cops said “You’ve been busy” when they meant “Fuck off.” And the reprimand was even more annoying because Matthew had been calling to give the man information , the make and color of the automobile that had followed Otto out of the Seven-Eleven parking lot last Sunday night. Matthew hadn’t sought this information, it had come to him. And he had immediately turned it over to the police. And had been told not to talk to anyone else. He was tempted to call Grown-ups Inc. and ask them to please get Rawles off his back.

Grown-ups Inc.

Another game he and Susan had invented. Long long ago. When they were still in love. On the way to her house that Friday afternoon, he thought about that game. And wondered if Susan remembered it.

His annoyance began to dissipate as he drove out toward Stone Crab Key. It was impossible to stay angry on a day like today. A day like today reminded him of a Chicago summer. The sky clear and piercingly blue, the sun shining, the temperature back to what it should have been in June, a pleasant eighty degrees at 5:35 P.M. (or so his car radio had just informed him), the humidity a comfortable forty-two percent. Driving westward across the Cortez Causeway, Calusa Bay billowing with sails on either side of the bridge, he thought for perhaps the thousandth time how wonderful it was to be living down here. And thought of the plans he’d made for himself and Joanna this weekend. And grinned from ear to ear.

He felt peculiar going up to the front door of the house he used to live in. Usually, he parked at the curb and tooted the horn and Joanna popped out a moment later. Today, he went up the walk, and rang the front doorbell, and looked over at the orange trees he himself had planted six years ago, and wondered if old Reggie Soames still lived next door, and rang the bell again, and Susan’s voice came from the back of the house, where the master bedroom was, “Matthew? Is that you?” She sounded surprised. Had she forgotten she’d invited him for a drink?

“Yes!” he called back. “Am I early?”

A long silence. Then:

“The door’s open, come in.”

He twisted the doorknob, and the door sure enough wasn’t locked, and he walked into a living room he remembered, different furniture in it now, she’d completely redecorated after she kicked him out, but familiar nonetheless. He’d been in this house only once since that night two years ago. He stood in the living room now, and looked out through the sliding glass doors to where he used to dock his sailboat. The Windbag . He had named it over Susan’s protests. She hated sailing and had wanted to call it The Wet Blanket . The boat had cost seven thousand dollars used, which hadn’t been bad for a twenty-five-footer that slept four comfortably. The boat and the Karmann Ghia he still drove were virtually the only two things he’d got out of the divorce. Susan had got everything else: the house, the Mercedes-Benz, his daughter, his clock collection, everything. Matthew had the Karmann Ghia repainted and sold the boat a month after the final decree. Oddly, he hadn’t been sailing since.

“Matthew,” Susan called, “fix yourself something, will you? I’ll be right out.”

“Where’s Joanna?” he shouted, but got no answer. He went to the bar, found it still well-stocked, poured himself a Canadian Club on the rocks, shouted “Can I fix you something?” and was surprised when he heard her voice behind him, almost at his shoulder, saying, I’m here, don’t yell.”

He turned.

She was wearing a white terry robe.

Her hair was wet.

She was smiling.

No lipstick on her mouth.

No makeup at all.

Susan fresh from the shower and smelling of soap.

“Hi,” she said, “didn’t Joanna call you?”

“No,” he said, puzzled. “Why? Is something wrong?”

“Well, that depends. Damn it, she promised.”

“What is it?”

“Well... she’s on her way to Palm Beach.”

“She’s on her way to where ?” Matthew said. He was almost amused. This was beginning to sound like the old Susan. Keep the kid away from him any which way possible, make Life with Father as difficult as...

“This wasn’t my idea,” she said at once, “I promise you, Matthew. She called me from Diana Silver’s house all excited because Diana’s parents were going to Palm Beach for the weekend, and they’d invited her along, and she wanted to know could she go with them. This was eleven o’clock or so, I would have called you myself, but I was already late for an appointment, and I had an open house to set up and a hundred other things to do. I told her to call you and get your permission. When I got back here tonight, there was a note on the kitchen table saying she’d be home late Sunday night. I assumed she’d called you and you’d said it was okay.”