Cinderella (3 page)

    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 U.S. 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-"

    Otto is still smiling.

    This is a close shot of him behind the steering wheel. He has no idea what's coming. Only Matthew knows what's coming. Matthew hears a repeat of the news broadcast he heard only hours ago, while he and Susan were making love,
Get out, you bastard,
hears the broadcast as if it is coming from very far away, like a short wave broadcast, Otto's smiling face filling the screen,
In Calusa tonight-
Turn back, he thinks.

    "Reason I think he's made me," Otto says, "is there's something on the tape, I think he's referring to me. I couldn't be sure 'cause it wasn't an
absolute
reference. But he
could've
been talking about me, about me following him. And last night when he's coming out of her house, this must've been along around eleven, he stops dead in the street, he does like a take, you know, and looks straight at the car. So I think my days are numbered. What I'd like you to do is hear the tape and then decide whether you want to stay with this. You ask my opinion, he's gonna go underground a while, maybe surface again in a few weeks, but meanwhile cool it till he's positively sure nobody's watching him. What I thought, maybe Monday I can-"

    
-killing the driver. The car swerved off the highway and into-

    "Turn
back!"
Matthew screamed aloud.

    

    

    He sat up in bed, wide awake.

    He was drenched with cold sweat.

    Morning was here.

    He could still hear Otto's voice.

    
So I think my days are numbered.

    

    

    There were flies buzzing around the cheese Danish on Frank Summerville's desk. He was drinking coffee from a soggy cardboard container, and he was glaring sternly at Matthew over the rim of it.

    "I don't want you getting involved in this," he said.

    "Otto was a friend," Matthew said.

    "Otto was a private eye who occasionally did work for us."

    "No, Frank, he was a
friend.
I liked him."

    "I liked him, too," Frank said. "But now he is dead, Matthew. He was shot in the head, Matthew. Twice, Matthew. His murder has nothing whatever to do with us, and I want you to stay away from the Public Safety Building
and
Detective Morris Bloom, do you hear me, Matthew?"

    "Morrie's on vacation," Matthew said.

    "Good," Frank said.

    He was a half-inch shorter and ten pounds lighter than Matthew. They both had dark hair and brown eyes, but Frank's face was somewhat rounder, what he himself called a "pig face."

    In Frank's physiognomical filing cabinet, there were only two kinds of faces: pig and fox. Frank also believed that there were only two kinds of names: Eleanor Rigby names and Frere Jacques names. Benny Goodman was a Frere Jacques name. "Benny Goodman, Benny Goodman,
dormez vous, dormez-vous
?" Robert De Niro was an Eleanor Rigby name. "Robert De Niro, puts on his face from a jar that he keeps by the door…" Frank further believed that there were only two kinds of people in the world: the Tap Dancers and the Touchers. He considered himself a tap dancer because he was very agile at gliding away from any sticky situation. He considered Matthew a toucher because he was always getting involved in situations he had no business getting involved in.

    "I'm going over to his office later today," Matthew said.

    "Whose office?" Frank said. "You just told me he's on vacation."

    "Otto's."

    "What for?"

    "I want to hear what was on that tape."

    "Otto's murder has nothing to
do
with us, Matthew."

    "You don't know that for sure."

    "He was working a lousy
surveillance
."

    "Maybe somebody didn't like the idea, Frank."

    "Matthew… please. Do me a favor…"

    "I want to hear that tape."

    

    

    The people of Calusa, Florida, liked to believe there was no crime here at all; the uniformed cops and detectives who worked out of the Public Safety Building were concerned only with such things as citizens stubbing their toes.

    Public safety.

    Not crime.

    But in Rand McNally's most recent
Places Rated Almanac,
there was a section that rated metropolitan areas from safest- the number-one position-to most dangerous-the 329th position.

    Wheeling, West Virginia, was rated the safest city in America.

    Number One.

    New York, New York-Frank's beloved Big Apple-was rated the most dangerous city in America.

    Number 329.

    Chicago, Illinois-Matthew's hometown-was rated 205.

    And crime-free Calusa was rated 162, virtually midway down the Rand McNally list, only forty-three slots higher than big bad Chicago, and apparently not as safe as the citizens here
dreamt
it to be.

    To hear them talk about the murder of Otto Samalson, you'd have thought this was the first time anyone had ever been killed down here. Oh my, how shocking. Shot twice in the head. Unthinkable. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Blue-haired ladies shaking their heads and refusing to believe that public safety meant anything more than avoiding banana peels on the sidewalks. Such an embarrassment. It annoyed Matthew that Otto Samalson had become an embarrassment to Calusa, Florida- where homicides never happened except on a motion picture or television screen.

    He did not get to Otto's office until a little after noon that Monday. By then he had spoken on the telephone to at least a dozen people who clucked their tongues (and undoubtedly wagged their heads, which Matthew could not see) over the unfortunate death on a public thoroughfare of a man whose profession was questionable at best. It took him ten minutes to walk from his own office to Otto's office in downtown Calusa. Downtown Calusa. The words somehow conjured a giant metropolis. Like downtown
Calusa,
man, you dig? Same as downtown New York or downtown Chicago. Downtown Detroit. Downtown L.A.

    Well…

    Downtown Calusa was exactly nine blocks long and three blocks wide. The tallest buildings in downtown Calusa, all of them banks, were twelve stories high. Main Street ran eastward from the Cow Crossing-which was now a three-way intersection with a traffic light, but actually
had
been a cow crossing back when the town was first incorporated-to the County Court House, which, at five stories high, was the tallest building anywhere on Main. The other buildings on Main were one- and two-story cinderblock structures. The banks were on the two streets paralleling Main to the north and south. So when you said "downtown Calusa," you weren't talking about a place that also had an
uptown.
There
was
no uptown as such. There was simply
downtown
Calusa and then the
rest
of Calusa.

    Similarly, when you saw a frosted glass door and the lettering on it read-

    SAMALSON INVESTIGATIONS

    SUITE 3112

    -you expected to open that door and find behind it a
suite,
which by strict definition was a series of connected rooms and which in the popular imagination (like downtown
Calusa,
man!) conjured grandness, a suite at the Plaza Athenee, right?

    Well, when you opened the frosted glass door to Otto's office, you found yourself in a reception room measuring six by eight feet and crammed to bursting with a wooden desk, and a typewriter on it, and In and Out baskets to the left of the typewriter, and papers all over the desk, and a wooden chair behind it, and an upholstered easy chair opposite it, and green metal filing cabinets, and bookshelves, and a Xerox machine, and a coatrack, and walls hung with pictures of presidents of the United States, only two of whom Matthew recognized. On the wall opposite the entrance door, there was another door, presumably leading to the rest of the "suite."

    A Chinese woman was sitting behind the reception room desk. She did not look at all like the Dragon Lady. She had black hair and eyes the color of loam, and she was wearing a Chinese-style dress with a mandarin collar, but that was where the resemblance ended. Matthew guessed she was in her fifties, as plump as a dumpling, as tiny and as squat as a fire hydrant.

    "Yes?" she said. "May I help you?"

    Perfect English. Not a trace of sing-song.

    "I'm Matthew Hope," he said. "Summerville and Hope. Mr. Samalson was doing some work for us."

    "Oh, yes," she said. "I'm May Hennessy. Otto's assistant."

    He had spoken to her on the phone more times than he could count, but he had never once guessed she was Chinese. Always figured Otto's assistant was a big redheaded Irish lady who carried a blackjack in her handbag. May Hennessy. That's what a May Hennessy should have looked like. He glanced at her left hand resting on the typewriter. No wedding band. So where'd the Hennessy come from? Had her mother been Chinese, her father Irish? Or was she divorced?

    "Hell of a thing, isn't it?" she said.

    "Yes."

    "Nicest man who ever lived."

    "Yes," Matthew said, nodding.

    There was an awkward silence.

    "Miss Hennessy," he said, "when I saw Otto on Friday, he mentioned a tape he'd made. On the Nettington case. He said it was in the safe." He paused and then said, "Could I possibly have that tape?"

    May Hennessy looked at him.

    "I don't know," she said.

    "Would there be any problem with that? I know my client-"

    "Well, I can't see any
problem
as such," May said. "Your client was paying Otto to
make
that tape, so I guess you're entitled to it. It's just…"

    "Yes?"

    "Well, the detectives asked me…"

    "Oh? Have they been here?"

    "Been here all morning," May said. "Left just a few minutes ago."

    "Who? Which ones?"

    "Hacker and Rawles."

    "Have they sealed the office?"

    "Well, this isn't a crime scene, I don't suppose they'll be sealing it, do you? It's just… they want me to gather all the current files, the cases Otto was working on when he got killed." She shook her head. "I still can't say those words. I get a lump in my throat if I even
think
those words."

    "Yes," Matthew said.

    "So I guess that includes the tape, don't you?"

    "I would guess so. When will they be coming back for the files, did they say?"

    "I told them it'd take me a while. The phone's been ringing off the hook all morning. He had a lot of friends, Otto."

    "But will they be coming back later today?"

    "I told them around five, five-thirty."

    "I wonder if you'd do me a favor, Miss Hennessy."

    "You want to hear that tape, don't you?" she said. "Before I give it to the police."

    "Please."

    "I can't see any harm in that," she said.

    "May I take it with me? I'll bring it back in an hour or so."

    "You can listen right here," she said. "If you're worried about me, I've already heard anything that could be on that tape a hundred times before. I've been working with Otto for ten years now, Mr. Hope. There's no more dirty surprises for me."

    Matthew hesitated.

    "You can go in his office and close the door if you think I'll be embarrassed," May said. "The recorder's on his desk. I'll get the tape for you."

    "Thank you," he said. "And Miss Hennessy… these cases Otto was working? The current ones?"

    "Yes?"

    "How many were there?"

    "Just yours and one other."

    "Both here in Calusa?"

    "Yes."

    "Are the files very thick?"