Ed McBain - Cinderella

“She’ll be shopping around looking for a buyer, am I right?” he said to Domingo. He said this in Spanish. Whenever the two were alone together, they spoke Spanish.

Domingo said, “Maybe she plans to snort the whole four keys all by herself.”

Ernesto said, “That isn’t why a person steals four keys of coke, to snort them. A person steals four keys to sell them is what a person does.”

Domingo said, “Maybe, but even so I think it’s risky to say we’re looking for big cocaine. We don’t know what the narcotics situation is here in Calusa.”

It looked to him like a very clean town on the surface, but in Spanish there was a proverb that said, Las apariencias engañan . In English, this meant, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” Domingo didn’t know what was going on here in the city of Calusa, Florida. Perhaps it was a very strict town, policewise, in which case they could find the Law on their motel doorstep if word got around that they were looking to buy dope in quantity.

On the other hand, it could very well be the kind of town where you could buy four keys of coke right on Main Street, in which case somebody already had the trade nailed down and they might not like the idea of two Miami Beach dudes strolling in talking a big dope deal.

“These are all things to be considered,” Domingo said, “if a person is interested in staying alive and staying out of jail.”

Actually, the most recent figures from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement didn’t mention anything about narcotics in Calusa County or in the city of Calusa itself. It reported that the crime rate in the entire state of Florida had begun to climb again only recently, after two years of decline, and it defined “crime rate” as the number of “serious” crimes committed per 100,000 people. Serious crimes included murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. Selling four keys of cocaine on Main Street either wasn’t a serious crime or else the FDLE had no figures on it. In any case, there were 13,236 serious crimes committed in Calusa County in the year just past, an increase of 11 percent over the 11,928 reported during the year before that. Sixteen murders, most of them involving people who knew each other, had been committed in the county during the past year. Rapes went up from 97 to 127. There were similar increases in every category except auto thefts.

Calusa County Sheriff Alan Huxtable said that rapid population growth might have accounted for the increase in the number of crimes. He also pointed out that completion of the interstate highway might have been another contributing factor.

“We’ve traced some of these crimes back to I-75,” he said. “People come into Calusa to commit a crime, and then go back into the other counties. The interstate just brings a lot of undesirable people through.”

Ernesto and Domingo hadn’t read the newspaper article in which Sheriff Huxtable was quoted, otherwise they might have taken offense. They did not consider themselves undesirable people. They were here, in fact, looking for an undesirable person who had stolen four keys of cocaine from their employer, taken the stuff out of Dade County, in fact, and into Calusa County, where for all they knew it had already been sold to someone who’d already run it up to New York in the back of a pickup truck carrying lettuce and tomatoes.

Ernesto and Domingo were merely two righteous citizens trying to correct an outrageous wrong.

It didn’t sound like a warning until a moment before he walked out of Matthew’s office.

At the start of their conversation — this was at ten-fifteen on Monday and Matthew was feeling too good to be bothered by anyone or anything — Daniel Nettington was quietly telling him that he’d been visited by a big black detective at eight o’clock last night — a goddamn Sunday , could you believe it? Cops had no respect.

Daniel Nettington was Carla Nettington’s philandering husband.

Daniel Nettington was the star of the porn show Otto had recorded in the bedroom of a woman named Rita Kirkman.

Carla had told Matthew her husband was forty-five years old. He looked a good deal older. His graying hair was combed sideways across his forehead in a vain attempt to hide his encroaching baldness. His teeth and the index finger and middle finger of his right hand were nicotine stained. His small brown eyes were embedded deep in puffy flesh. He was an altogether unattractive man, and Matthew could not for the life of him imagine why: (a) Rita Kirkman kept pressing him to leave his wife and/or at least take her out to dinner, and (b) Carla Nettington would care if he was sleeping with the entire state of Florida.

“This black detective,” Nettington said, “informed me that the man who was killed had been following me. That my wife had gone to you, and that you had hired this man to follow me.

He seemed inordinately fond of the verb “to follow” in all its declensions. The verb “to follow” incensed him. He was outraged by the fact that Otto Samalson had been following him. That Otto had been killed was a matter of only secondary importance.

“This was all in the file this black detective got from Otto Samalson’s assistant, a Chinese lady from what I understand. A regular little United Nations, huh?”

Matthew said nothing.

“According to what I was told by this black detective, whose name is Cooper Rawles...”

“Yes, I know Detective Rawles.”

“Yes, I gathered that. According to what he told me, I was being followed for something like ten days before this man met with his accident. Is that true, sir?”

“It wasn’t an accident ,” Matthew said. “Otto Samalson was murdered.”

“Yes,” Nettington said. “And because he was following me, it now appears I’m a goddamn suspect here.”

“Is that what Detective Rawles told you? That you’re a suspect?”

“I don’t need a black detective to tell me I’m a suspect when he comes to my home — on a Sunday night, no less — and begins asking questions about where I was the previous Sunday, June eighth, at a little before eleven, which happens to be when the man who was following me got shot and killed on US 41. Now what I want to know, Mr. Hope...”

“Yes, what exactly is it you want to know?” Matthew said.

“And I don’t want to hear any bullshit about the confidentiality of the lawyer-client relationship,” Nettington said, “because it so happens I’m an attorney myself.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Matthew said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that I’m sorry to hear it. What law firm do you work for?”

“ I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind,” Nettington said, and then immediately answered the question anyway. “I don’t work for a law firm,” he said, “I’m house counsel for Bartell Technographics.”

“I see,” Matthew said. “And does your work ever take you out of town?”

“Rarely,” Nettington said.

“A pity,” Matthew said.

Nettington looked at him.

“That’s exactly what I want to talk to you about,” he said. “My wife tells me she’s got some kind of tape — she hasn’t heard the tape yet, but there’s some kind of tape supposed to be between me and some woman, God knows what she’s talking about — is there such a tape?”

“I’m not in a position to discuss that, Mr. Nettington.”

“There’s either a tape or there isn’t one,” Nettington said.

“That is a safe assumption,” Matthew said.

“So is there one?”