Ed McBain: Cinderella

Otto knew he was being followed.

Thirty years in investigation, he’d never had anybody following him. Such a thing never happened to him. He guessed he was getting too old for this business, fifty-eight and closing fast, smoked too much and ate too much junk food, but those were occupational hazards. Didn’t carry a gun, never had, private detectives carrying guns were for the movies. Even if he’d had a gun with him tonight, he wouldn’t have known how to use it. Guns scared the hell out of him.

Anyway, nice Jewish guys didn’t carry guns unless they were Louis Lepke or Legs Diamond — he could remember the newspapers full of them when he was a kid. His mother would shake her head and mutter "Jewish gangsters, wot a ting!" and then would spit twice on her extended forefinger and middle finger, ptui, ptui! Nice Jewish guys weren’t supposed to drink, either. There’d been tests made and Indians came out highest and Irishmen next highest on the scale of heavy drinkers and Jews came out lowest, which showed there was some truth to the clichés. He personally drank a lot, though, which meant it was a bunch of bullshit.

The tail must have picked him up leaving the Sea Shanty half an hour ago.

Everything here in Florida had a cute name. The Sea Shanty. Like it was supposed to be the Sea Chanty , you know, so they got cute and made it Sea Shanty because the place looked like a shack. Had three drinks sitting there at the bar and watching two chesty girls in tube tops playing PacMan. Never too old for watching chesty girls in tube-top shirts. He’d worked divorce cases where there were ninety-year-old men fucking around outside the marriage.

So that’s where the tail must have picked him up.

When he was leaving the Sea Shanty.

Stop for a couple of drinks, next thing you knew you had a tail on your ass. Maybe the two tube-top broads had decided his bald head was very cute and were following him back to the condo to introduce him to all kinds of kinky sex, fat chance. The last time he’d had any sex, kinky or otherwise, was with a black hooker in Lauderdale who was scared of catching herpes and who washed his cock with what must have been laundry soap. Lucky she didn’t wring it out later. She was good, though. Hummed while she blew him. Very nice.

He kept wondering what she was humming.

It had sounded like Gershwin.

Matthew didn’t recognize her at first.

She was wearing red, which had always been her favorite color, and that should have been a tip-off, but she’d done something to her hair, and she’d lost he guessed ten or twelve pounds, and she looked taller than when he’d last seen her, and tanner, and he honestly didn’t know she was Susan. He was, in fact, staring at her as she came into the room. Actually staring at her. Standing on a deck with his back to the Gulf of Mexico, and staring across the room at his own wife from whom he’d been divorced two years earlier, and wondering who she might be, and thinking he would like to cross the room right away and corner her before somebody else did. And then her dark eyes flashed, and all at once he was back on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, strolling hand in hand with the most beautiful girl he’d ever met in his life and the girl was Susan and she was here and now, but she wasn’t his wife any longer.

Smiling, he shook his head.

She was coming toward him.

Fire-red gown held up by her breasts and nothing else. Dark brooding eyes in an oval face, brown hair cut in a wedge, a full pouting mouth that gave an impression of a sullen, spoiled, defiant beauty. Black pearl earrings dangling at her ears. He had given her those earrings on their tenth wedding anniversary. Three years later, they were divorced. Easy come, easy go.

“Hello, Matthew,” she said.

He wondered who she was going to be tonight. The Witch or the Waif? Susan had a marvelous way with the art of transmogrification. Ever since the divorce, you never knew who she was going to be next.

He could not take his eyes off her.

“You cut your hair,” he said.

“You noticed,” she said.

He still couldn’t tell whether to expect a mortar attack or a shower of rose petals.

“Are you still angry?” she asked.

“About what?” he said. Warily. With Susan, you had to be very wary.

“Joanna’s school.”

Joanna was their fourteen-year-old daughter, whom Matthew saw only every other weekend and on alternate holidays because Susan had custody and his daughter lived with her. The last holiday he’d spent with Joanna had been Easter. Since then, he had seen her a total of four times. Today was the eighth of June, and he was supposed to have seen her this weekend, but since next weekend was Father’s Day, he and Susan had agreed to switch weekends. They had similarly switched weekends when Mother’s Day rolled around. The logistics of divorce. Like generals planning pincer attacks. Except the battlefield was a young girl growing into womanhood.

In April, Susan had come up with her brilliant idea to send Joanna away to school next fall. Far away. Massachusetts. Their separation agreement gave her that right. Now she was asking him if he was still angry.

He did not know whether or not he was still angry.

Oddly, he was wondering if she was wearing panties under the red silk gown.

Once, years ago, when they were much younger and actually happy together, she had startled him in church one morning by telling him she wasn’t wearing any panties. This was when Matthew still went to church. He had thought at the time that the roof would fall in on them. Either that, or a little red creature with horns and a forked tail would pop out from under Susan’s Presbyterian skirts, grinning lewdly.

She was looking at him, waiting for an answer.

Was he still angry? He guessed not.

“Actually it might be good for her,” he said.

Susan raised her eyebrows, surprised.

“Getting away from both of us,” he said.

“That’s what I was hoping,” she said, and they both fell silent.

Two years since the divorce and until this moment they could barely manage civil conversation. It was Joanna who bore the brunt of it. Away from them, she wouldn’t be forced to take sides anymore. She was fourteen. It was time for her to heal. Maybe time for all of them to heal.

Beyond the deck, the beach spread to the shoreline and a calm ocean. A full moon above laid a silvery path across the water. From somewhere below the deck, the scent of jasmine came wafting up onto the night. Some kids up the beach were playing guitars. Lake Shore Drive again. Except that on the night they’d met, it was mandolins and mimosa.

“I knew you’d be here tonight,” Susan said. “Muriel phoned and asked if it was okay to invite you. Did she tell you I’d be here?"

“No.”

“Would you have come? If you’d known?”

“Probably not,” he said. “But now I’m glad I did."

The tail was still with him.

He had deliberately turned south on US 41, away from his condo, the last thing he wanted was to get cold-cocked in an apartment that had only one way in or out. He figured he’d find another bar, go in there, hope the tail would follow him in, see if he couldn’t make the guy, play it from there. Maybe do like they did in the movies. Walk up to whoever it was, tell the guy “Hey, you gonna stay with me all night, why not sit down and have a drink?” Eddie Murphy did that once, didn’t he? In that movie where he played a Detroit cop?

Could see the lights of the car in the rearview mirror.

Following.

Steady.