Ed McBain - Cinderella

She didn’t say anything.

She figured four keys of coke was worth getting herpes.

Maybe.

“When did he take your picture?” Vincent said.

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, damn it, remember! Can’t you see he’s traced us here?”

Voice high and strident. Very nervous now. Started pacing back and forth. This was like Friday a couple of weeks ago, the fourth, the fifth, somewhere in there. Biting his lip while he paced. Nervous as a cat. Eyes flashing.

“I don’t remember,” she said again.

Damned if she was going to tell him about Larkin and the Rolex, have to listen to his fuckin’ faggoty screams.

Which was why she was a little nervous about talking to Klement now, before she’d had a chance to discuss this. She didn’t want Vincent taking another fit. A fag throwing a fit was something to behold. But shit, if there were some real buyers out there...

Was the lawyer from Larkin?

Knew names she’d used since she was for Christ’s sake sixteen years old!

She looked at her watch. She hoped he’d get home before she had to call Klement again.

When he wasn’t there by six-thirty, she started getting a little worried. Had he had an automobile accident or something? Last client at two-thirty, so it was now six-thirty, so where was he?

She dialed the number at the Springtime restaurant.

“Mr. Klement, please,” she said.

“Whom shall I say is calling?”

Same bitch from this afternoon. Whom . My ass , whom, that’s whom.

“Sandy Jennings.”

Jenny Santoro sort of ass-backwards, she thought.

“Hello?”

Klement’s voice.

“Did you check with Merilee?” she said. “Am I real?”

“When can we meet?” Klement asked.

“We can’t,” Jenny said. “You tell me what your end is, and then you give me a number to call. That’s how it works.”

Cover your ass. She’d learned all about covering her ass in Los Angeles. It was even more important to cover it here. Four keys of high-grade? Shit, man.

“Sorry,” he said, “I don’t do business that way.”

“You’re not the one holding,” she said.

“True.”

“Do we talk or not?”

“My end is ten percent,” he said.

“Five or forget it.”

“I hate haggling like a fishmonger.”

“So do I.”

“Seven and a half then.”

“Fine. How do I reach your people?”

“Have we got a deal?”

“Yes. Payment on delivery.”

“No. I don’t want to be there.”

“Then get your end in advance.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“From your people. As soon as we set a price.”

“Most professionals don’t do this sort of business on the telephone.”

“Lucky I’m an amateur,” Jenny said. “Let me have the number.”

Klement gave her the number.

Only once before had Vincent been tempted by a male client, and that was when he was working for Vidal Sassoon in New York. The man’s name was Melvyn — with a y, no less — and he was as queer as a turnip, but oh so gorgeous. Great blond locks and cornflower blue eyes and muscles he doubtlessly flexed every weekend at Cherry Grove — oh, what Vincent wouldn’t have given for a tumble with young Melvyn.

At the time, Vincent was spending his weekends with two good friends of his who owned a house in Pound Ridge, near Emily Shaw’s Inn. He made the mistake one Wednesday afternoon, while Melvyn-with-a-Y was in having his golden fleece shorn, to suggest that he might enjoy coming up one weekend, meet some of the boys, party a bit, did Melvyn think he might enjoy that? Melvyn lowered his baby blues and put one hand on Vincent’s arm, and said, “Oh dear, that’s so kind of you, but I’m involved just now.”

The person he was involved with, as it turned out, marched in that very afternoon to make certain his sweet little boy was having his hair properly trimmed. The grandest old drag queen who ever lived, wearing a black cape and high-heeled boots and blood-red lipstick that made him look like Dracula.

Vincent swore off that very minute.

Never again would he come on with a client.

Cut the hair, make the chitchat, and let it go.

But at 6:47 that night, while Jenny was on the phone asking for cabin number three at the Suncrest Motel, Vincent was in a room at Pirate’s Cove, making love with a man named George Anders, who’d been his two-thirty client.

Anders was a married orthodontist.

Giggling, Vincent told him he had a very bad overbite.

At exactly that moment, Susan Hope walked onto the deck of the restaurant at Stone Crab Shores and spotted Matthew sitting at a table overlooking the water.

A wide smile broke on her face.

Swiftly, she walked to him.

With twenty-five cents and the accent of the man on the other end of the line, you could start a banana plantation in Cuba.

“Sondy Hennings?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Martin Klement asked me to call you.”

“Ah, sí ,” he said.

“Is this Ernesto?”

“ Sí .”

No last name. Martin hadn’t given her one, and she didn’t ask for one. She didn’t care how many names of hers he had, first, last, it didn’t matter, the Sandy was a phony and so was the Jennings.

“I understand you’re looking to buy some fine china,” she said.

This was what Martin had told her to say on the phone. Fine china. What bullshit, she thought. Ernesto was thinking the same thing. Domingo was sprawled out on the bed, looking through the July issue of Penthouse .

“That is correct,” Ernesto said.

“I have four fine plates that may interest you.”

“How fine?” Ernesto asked.

“This is 1890 china we’re talking about,” she said.

“Ninety?” he said.

“That’s right.”

Fooling nobody, she thought. We’re talking ninety-pure and we both know it and so does anyone listening, fine china my ass.

“How much do these plates cost?” he asked.

“Seventy-five dollars,” she said. “I want three hundred dollars for the four plates.”

“That’s expensive,” Ernesto said.

“How much are you willing to pay?”

“Fifty,” he said.

“Well, so long then.”

“Wait a minute,” he said.

And then silence except for static on the line.

It was going to rain again.

She could visualize wheels turning inside his head, gears meshing but she didn’t know why.

Was he trying to figure a more reasonable comeback price? Fifty was ridiculous. You sometimes got tricks, you told them it was a hundred an hour, they started bargaining with you. Make it sixty, all I’ve got is forty, whatever. You said “Well, so long then,” they always came back with “Wait a minute.”

Only the pause wasn’t as long as this one. She waited. She waited some more.

“Where’d you get these plates?” he asked at last.

Funny question, she thought. All that huffing and puffing and this is the question he comes up with?

“Funny question,” she said out loud. “Where’d you get your money?”

“My money is Miami money,” he said.

“So are the plates.”

“You got them in Miami?”

“Listen, are you interested at seventy-five a plate or not?”

“We may be interested. But we have to make sure they’re quality plates.” This came out: “Burr we ha’ to may sure they quality place.” Another pause. “Where did you get them in Miami? From the Ordinez people?”

“You’re asking too many questions,” she said. “I’m gonna hang up.”

“No, no, please, por favor , no, don’t do that, señorita .” Another pause. “How does sixty sound?”