Ed McBain: Cinderella

“Oooo, that sounds marvelous,” Vincent said.

“Cut the fag shit, willya please? I’m trying to be serious here. That’s why a lot of girls work with pimps, for protection against these fucking weirdos, you know? What I’m saying is suppose I go in there tomorrow and these two guys haven’t even got carfare, never mind sixty-five a key? Suppose what they’re planning is a plain and simple Smash-and-Grab? Smash me , grab the coke, and it’s off to the races. That’s what’s worrying me.”

“Yes,” Vincent said.

“So here’s what I think we should do,” Jenny said.

“The thing is,” Jimmy Legs said to his brother, “I think she still has the watch, didn’t try to hock it or nothing, leastways according to Harry Stagg, who knows every fence in this city and also there’s only two pawn shops.”

“Yeah,” Larkin said.

He was making the spaghetti marinara sauce he planned to use tonight. He had come home at noon today. Rainy days, he didn’t know why it was, nobody came around shopping for boats. Also, what the hell, the owner of the place was entitled to half a day off every now and then, wasn’t he? He was chopping onions, which made his eyes tear. Jimmy was sitting on a stool at the kitchen counter, sipping on a gin and tonic. The sliding glass doors that led to the deck were crawling with rain-snakes. Beyond the deck, the sky was gray and ominous.

“Mama made the best marinara sauce in the whole world, may she rest in peace,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah,” Larkin said. “So you think she’s still got the watch, huh?”

“Oh, yeah, no question.”

“Then maybe you oughta run over this condo.”

“What condo?”

“On Hacienda Road there.”

“What about it?”

“This shyster lawyer?”

“Yeah?”

“Matthew Hope?”

“Yeah?”

“He comes here, he tells me the dead guy was—”

“Who, the P.I.?”

“Yeah, Samalson. He tells me he tracked her to this condo. Place named Camelot Towers on Hacienda Road there, I forget the address.”

“So whattya mean? She’s there ? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Well, I don’t know if she’s there or not. That’s an address she gave when she went to see this doctor. Samalson planned to go back Monday morning, but then, you know, he got boxed.”

“Yeah.”

Jimmy sipped at his drink.

Larkin chopped onions and cried.

“It was the garlic made it so good,” Jimmy said. “She used to put in a lot of garlic.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna put in garlic,” Larkin said.

“Keeps the Angel of Death away, garlic,” Jimmy said and burst out laughing. Larkin laughed, too, crying at the same time.

“So what it was,” Jimmy said, “he caught it before he had a chance to check it out, huh?”

“Well, Sunday night.”

“Before he checked it out.”

“Yeah.”

“So you want me to run over there, show the picture?”

“You still got the picture?”

“Yeah, Stagg gave it back to me. His real name’s Stagione, you know that?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“That’s why no honest Italian should change his name,” Jimmy said.

“What do you mean?” Larkin asked, bridling.

“Because everybody thinks only wanted desperadoes change their names. Or escaped cons. Them and Jewish movie stars. Paul Newman is Jewish, you know. You think that’s his real name? Newman?”

“I don’t know,” Larkin said. “It could be Jewish, Newman.” He was still annoyed that his brother had brought up the fucking name change again.

“So’s Kirk Douglas,” Jimmy said. “His real name is Israel something. Bob Dylan, too. And you remember John Garfield? The pictures he used to make? He was Jewish, too. I gotta tell you, for a Jew he was some fuckin’ gangster. Bogart, too.”

“Bogart was Jewish, too?”

“No, no, who said he was Jewish?”

“I thought you—”

“No, Bogart was a good gangster . It’s Garfield who was Jewish. Jules Garfinkel was his name. Or Garfein. How’d you like a fuckin’ name like that ?”

“Largura’s no prize, either,” Larkin said.

“Papa just turned over in his grave,” Jimmy said.

“Then whyn’t you just lay off the fuckin’ name, okay?” Larkin said.

“Don’t get so fuckin’ excited, okay?”

“Okay,” Larkin said.

“Okay,” Jimmy said.

The men were silent for several moments, listening to the sound of the falling rain and the rattling palm fronds.

“So you want me to run over there or what?” Jimmy asked.

“Well, I don’t think it’d hurt, do you? Run over the condo, ask around?”

“No, no, it might be good.”

“So when you think you can do that?” Larkin asked.

“Maybe tomorrow afternoon sometime, this rain ever stops. No, wait, it’ll have to be Sunday, I got something to do tomorrow. Which reminds me.”

Larkin was dropping tomatoes into boiling water now.

“What are you doing there?” Jimmy said.

“Taking the peels off.”

“How is that taking the peels off?”

“You’ll see.”

Jimmy watched.

“I don’t see no peels coming off,” he said.

“You have to keep them in boiling water for a minute or so,” Larkin said.

“Then what?”

Larkin was looking at his watch.

“Fuckin’ cheap Timex,” he said, shaking his head. “I catch that cunt...”

“So where are the peels coming off?”

Larkin drained the hot water from the pot and put the pot under the cold water tap. Jimmy watched as he slipped the tomatoes out of their skins.

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said.

“Mama used to do it over a gas jet,” Larkin said. “She used to put a fork in the tomato and then turn it over the flame to loosen the skin. I only got an electric stove here, though, so I use boiling water.”

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Jimmy said again.

He kept watching his brother’s magic act, amazed and astonished, shaking his head.

“You got any more of this gin?” he asked.

“Yeah, in the cabinet there,” Larkin said, gesturing with his head.

Jimmy went to the cabinet, rummaged around, found an unopened bottle of Tanqueray.

“Okay to break the seal on this?” he asked.

“That’s what it’s for,” Larkin said.

Jimmy poured more gin into his glass. He poured tonic into the glass. He cut a key lime in half, squeezed it into the glass.

“Where’d you get the key limes?” he asked.

“Lady down the street grows them,” Larkin said.

“ Salute ,” Jimmy said, and drank. “Ahhhhhh,” he said, and drank some more. “These key limes are what make a good gin and tonic. Your regular limes suck.” He drank again. “Tonight’s the twentieth, you know,” he said.

“Yeah? So what’s the twentieth?”

“The boat.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot.”

“One of the cigarettes, remember?”

“I’ll run you by the place later, you can pick one you want,” Larkin said, “take the key from it.”

“Thanks,” Jimmy said, and looked out over the water. “I hope this rain lets up,” he said. “We got these two spics from Miami, we’re layin’ off six hundred thousand—”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Larkin said.

The rain showed no sign of letting up.

Camelot Towers sat tall and gray and ugly on the bay side of Whisper Key, looking more like a federal penitentiary than anything anyone would want to live in — even at nothing down, no closing fees, and a nine-point-nine percent, thirty-year, fixed-rate mortgage.

Matthew made sure he parked the Karmann Ghia in a space marked VISITOR, looked over the checklist of the apartments he’d already visited, and walked into the building. He studied the directory to the left of the mailboxes, wrote down names for the apartment numbers already on his list, and then wrote down names and apartment numbers for the other tenants in the building. He was walking toward the elevator when the doors opened and the redhead he’d talked to yesterday stepped out.