Ed McBain: Cinderella

This is a trap, he knows it is a trap.

But he knows in his darkest heart that it is nothing of the sort.

She has spoken to Gerald Hemmings, she has talked to Aggie’s husband, it is one o’clock in the morning, and Susan knows everything, Susan knows all.

In the horror chamber of his mind, as he tries to sleep, the scene replays itself.

Denial, denial, denial, for surely this is a trap.

It is not a trap.

She is suddenly laughing. He comes around the desk swiftly, wanting to stop her manic laughter before it awakens Joanna down the hall. He puts his hand on her shoulder and she recoils from it as if a lizard has crawled up her arm, and suddenly there is more to be afraid of than hysterical laughter. Without warning, her hand reaches out to grab for the scissors, clutching it in her fist like a dagger, and lunges at him, lunges again, tearing the sleeve of his jacket. She is naked in the emptiest hour of the night, a woman scorned, a deadly weapon in her fist, and she comes at him again and again, he cannot catch her wrist. The tips of the scissors flick the air, retreat, flick again, catch the lapel of his jacket, cling there an instant till she rips them free with a twist and comes at him again. He brings up his left hand in defense and a gash magically opens from his knuckles to his wrist. All at once he feels faint. He falls against the desk for support, knocking the telephone to the floor. She is on him again...

And suddenly there is a scream.

For a moment, he thinks it is he himself screaming.

His bleeding hand is stretched toward Susan, his mouth is indeed open — it is possible that he is the one screaming.

But the scream is coming from behind him.

He spins to the left, partially to avoid the thrusting scissors, partially to locate the source of the scream.

His daughter, Joanna, is standing in the doorway.

She is wearing a long granny nightgown, her eyes wide, her mouth open. Her scream hangs on the air interminably, overwhelming the small room, suffocating murderous intent.

The scissors stop.

Susan looks down at her own hand in disbelief. It is shaking violently, the scissors jerking erratically in her fist. She drops them to the floor.

“Get out,” she says. “Get out, you bastard.”

In nightmares there is no fade out/fade in, there is no matching shot, no attempt at continuity, flashback overlaps flashback and there is horror in chaos. The naked woman dropping the scissors, the little girl rushing to her and throwing herself in her mother’s arms, both are rudely and abruptly replaced on the screen of Matthew’s mind by a slender woman wearing a wheat-colored suit and a wide-brimmed straw hat, pantyhose to match the suit, tan high-heeled shoes, dark sunglasses covering her eyes.

Time outdistances time.

Two years ago is suddenly two weeks ago.

This is the twenty-third day of May, anno domini , the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend, and in his nightmare Carla Nettington has come to the law firm of Summerville and Hope, ostensibly to discuss the drawing of a will.

Ten minutes later, she is telling Matthew that she suspects her forty-five-year-old husband is having an affair. That is why she is really here. She did not want to go personally to a private detective; there is, she feels, something sleazy about private detectives. So she is here to ask if Matthew can help her secure the services of someone who can ascertain (these are her exact words, nightmares do not lie) ascertain whether her husband’s frequent absences from home are truly occasioned (the exact words) by a heavy work load or are instead attributable to the favors of another woman.

“Because if the bastard’s cheating on me,” she says, “I want a divorce.”

The bastard is Daniel Nettington, her husband.

Get out, you bastard.

In the distance, beyond the fringes of Matthew’s unconscious, beyond the nightmare, offscreen so to speak, there is the sound of an automobile. He knows consciously — he is half asleep, half awake, he can hear for example the sound of raccoons outside, rummaging in his garbage cans, can hear a forlorn train whistle, for sometimes in the middle of the night Calusa gets trains bound for God knows where — he knows consciously, his conscious mind tells him that this offscreen automobile is Otto Samalson’s. His conscious mind is a raisonneur , wide awake, explaining to half-asleep Matthew that this flashback nightmare will soon replay scenes he has never witnessed. The offscreen car is Otto Samalson’s and soon Matthew will be subjected to the horror of his death, an event he can only blindly conjure, but such is the magic of nightmare.

He is talking to Otto on the telephone. He is asking Otto if he can take on a surveillance case. Otto is saying he’s working another case right now, but if Matthew doesn’t mind a little time-sharing he can start maybe Tuesday, will that be all right?

“What I’m doing,” he says, “I’m taking Monday off like a normal human being.”

The sound of the car is closer, it nudges the unconscious, demands to be driven onscreen. Matthew knows the car is a blue Buick Century, he has seen the car before. That he can only hear it now, cannot see it now, is frustrating. And yet he does not want to see it. He knows that once it enters the dream, he will know true horror, he will witness a close friend dying. He wants Otto to stay alive, to be alive, he wants the car to drive all the way to Tampa on I-75, bypassing Calusa, bypassing the nightmare.

Friday.

Is it Friday already?

Friday, the sixth day of June, 4:00 P.M. or thereabouts, Otto Samalson sitting in Matthew’s office, smoking a cigarette. It is difficult to imagine this man as a private detective. He is no Sam Spade, no Philip Marlowe. He looks instead like a tailor or a shoe salesman. Short and slight of build, mostly bald with a halolike fringe settling above his ears, twinkling blue eyes, his mouth in a perpetual smile, he is the Eli Wallach of the sleuthing profession, enormously likable, immensely sympathetic, a man you would trust to drive your youngest sister to Napoli. Matthew suspects that Otto, with his wonderful bedside manner, could coax a devoted mother into revealing the whereabouts of her ax-murderer son.

The sound of the car.

Closer.

Louder.

Matthew tosses in half-sleep, half-wakefulness. Outside, the raccoons argue heatedly among themselves, their voices shrill.

“The guy’s been fucking this widow lives in Harbor Acres,” Otto is saying. “I’ve got him going in and out every night since I started tailing him. That was Tuesday a week ago, I got him going in and out nine days already. Nice pictures, Matthew, he gets there when it’s still light, I catch him with the long lens. I also got a tape I want you to hear. This lady, she thinks this is still Calusa twenty, thirty years ago, she goes out, leaves doors unlocked all over the place. I been in and out twice already. I put my recorder right under the bed, voice-activated. I got some very hot stuff, Matthew, wait’ll you hear it. I couldn’t bring the tape today ’cause I only got the original, it’s in the safe. I’ll make a copy, let you hear it next time I see you. Very beautiful stuff, Matthew, the two of them talking very dirty, she’s a widow, nice-looking woman in her late—”

The Buick suddenly roars into view.

The office is gone.

There is only US 41 and the blue Buick.

Otto is behind the wheel. He is smiling.

Turn back, Matthew thinks.

“Pictures of them in action are gonna be impossible, I think,” Otto is saying, “because so far they only been makin’ it with the drapes closed. You maybe have all you need on the tape, anyway, names, everything, a guided tour of what they’re doing there in the lady’s bed. I shoulda brought it today, but I didn’t want to risk it ’cause I’ll tell you the truth, if anything happens to that tape I’m not sure I can get in the house so easy again. I think he’s on to me, Matthew, and I think the two of them are gonna start being very careful in the not too distant—”