Ed McBain - Cinderella

In which case—

If they took a look at her and she wasn’t the girl with the long blonde hair and the blue eyes—

Well, then, who needed her or her expensive coke? It would have to be Goodbye, hermana , it was nice knowing you but you can shove your coke up your ass.

In which case, there might be nastiness.

Because suppose the girl was just a telephone talker for some very heavy people who if you didn’t buy the coke you said you were going to buy would feed you to the sharks?

This was a possibility.

It was Domingo who mentioned this possibility, alert as he always was to the ways and means of staying alive in this profession.

The second problem was that they had agreed to pay the Englishman his seven-and-a-half-percent finder’s fee before the buy went down. He wanted his money in advance, didn’t want to be anywhere near where the transaction took place because that was his way of staying alive in this business.

Which was unheard of.

Giving the man his money in advance, before they even knew whether they were buying real coke or just sugar or chalk or whatever the fuck.

They would have to talk to the Englishman about that, work out some way to keep his nineteen-five in escrow till they had a chance to test the shit they were buying.

But that was the third problem.

Because if the girl on the phone really turned out to be Cenicienta then what they would do was grab her and grab the coke, too, without giving her a fucking nickel because this wasn’t her coke, it belonged to Amaros. And if that turned out to be the case, they certainly didn’t want to pay no fucking Englishman $19,500 for what was their own coke.

There were several other problems.

They had agreed to meet the girl and make the buy from her at twelve noon this Saturday.

They had also agreed to make the buy from Jimmy Legs and Charlie Nubbs at one-thirty that same day.

But if the girl turned out to be the girl they wanted then they had no real need to buy the Jimmy Legs/Charlie Nubbs bargain-price coke that was intended only as a consolation prize to calm down Amaros if they couldn’t find the girl.

In which case, there might also be nastiness.

Because both Jimmy Legs and Charlie Nubbs did not look like people who would take kindly to other people backing out of a deal.

Which was just what Ernesto and Domingo were planning to do if the girl turned out to be the one they were looking for. Grab her, throw both her and the stolen coke in the car, and drive straight to Miami, leaving the wops waiting with their dicks in their hands.

Although maybe, even if she was the girl, they should buy the ten keys from the wops, anyway.

Ten keys at sixty a key was truly a bargain.

And what was the big hurry? Once the girl was in their hands, they could take their good sweet time getting back to Miami.

It really was a bargain, sixty a key.

Ernesto told Domingo he wished they didn’t have so many problems.

Also this was already Thursday night, and Amaros hadn’t yet called to say when they could expect the money.

In this business nothing moved without money.

It was Domingo’s opinion that tomorrow was another day.

He suggested to Ernesto that they go out and try to get laid.

Luis Amaros kept his money in a bank where the manager liked doing business with drug dealers. The manager thought they were unusually courteous people with courtly Old-World manners and soft Spanish accents. Like Luis Amaros. Who everyone in town said was the scion of an old Cuban family who’d fled from Castro and invested in Louisiana soybeans, but who Roger Ware suspected was a Colombian thief who was very heavily invested in controlled substances.

This didn’t matter to Ware.

Drug dealers brought a lot of money to the bank. Millions of dollars. Always deposited in amounts of less than five thousand dollars so the bank did not have to report them to the IRS. Drug dealers never asked for loans. They let their money sit for long periods of time and, whereas they often withdrew huge sums, they normally gave notice far in advance that such withdrawals were about to occur.

Except on rare occasions.

Like today.

Friday, the twentieth day of June, and raining to beat the band in Miami and Luis Amaros sitting across the desk from him at nine in the morning, smiling and saying he wished $600,000 transferred from his account to a bank in Calusa.

Ware was taken by surprise.

He did not like rainy days to begin with. He had not moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for rainy days in Florida. He had also had a fight with his wife this morning. It was never good to approach a banker with an unusual request if he’d had a fight with his wife just before coming to work. Unless you were a drug dealer with zillions of dollars on deposit.

“I’m sure we can handle it, Mr. Amaros,” Ware said, “although this is rather short notice.”

Chidingly but smilingly. The last thing on earth he wanted was for Amaros to take his money across the street.

“Yes, I know,” Amaros said, looking extremely doleful. “And I apologize.” His pudgy little hands fluttered on the air. “A family emergency,” he said.

“Happens to all of us,” Ware said understandingly. “Did you have any particular bank in mind? Would our own branch office in Calusa suit you?”

“Where is it?” Amaros said.

He still looked extremely sad, perhaps there really had been a family emergency. Everything he said sounded apologetic. Like just now. As though it were somehow his fault that he didn’t know where their Calusa branch office was.

“Downtown,” Ware said. “A block north of Main Street. Very centrally located.”

“Is it near the Suncrest Motel?” Amaros asked.

“Well, I... I really don’t know. I can have my secretary check if you like. The Suncrest, did you say? I’m sure we can—”

“No, that’s all right,” Amaros said. “The Main Street branch will be fine.”

“If you’d prefer some other bank, there’d be no problem at all.”

“No, no, that’s fine. Centrally located, you said.”

“Oh, yes. Not on Main Street, but just a block north.”

“Fine. I’ll need the address...”

“Of course.”

“So I can tell my cousin where to pick up the cash,” Amaros said.

“Had you planned...?”

“Before the close of business this afternoon.”

“No problem,” Ware said. “So,” he said, “as I understand this, you want six hundred thousand dollars transferred immediately for withdrawal later today. A simple wire transfer.”

“Yes, I wish you to wire six hundred thousand dollars for withdrawal in cash before the close of business today at your branch in Calusa, yes,” Amaros said.

“Can you let me have your cousin’s name, please? We wouldn’t want that kind of money falling into the wrong hands, would we?”

“No, we wouldn’t. His name is Ernesto Moreno.”

Ware began writing, talking out loud at the same time.

“Ernesto Moreno,” he said. He pronounced it Mor- eeno even though Amaros had just pronounced it correctly. “That’s M-O-R-E-N-O,” he said, writing, “I’ll just say withdrawal on proper ID. I’m assuming he’ll have proper identification.”

“Of course.”

“Would you want me to add any special instructions? This is a large amount of money, you know.”

“Special instructions? Like what?” Amaros asked.

“Well, we could prearrange for the bank to ask your cousin a question that only he would know the answer to. His mother’s name, for example...”