Cinderella (9 page)

    You could add, say, another hundred and a quarter, give or take, for every kilo you came away with. Come out of there with
four
kilos, for example, you had half a million bucks right there in your hand. You were talking two point two pounds per kilo. You were talking carrying eight, ten pounds the most in your tote bag when you left the house. Walk away with it, disappear in the night.

    She told him it sounded dangerous.

    Also, how did he know this customer of his wasn't full of shit?

    He said For Christ's sake, I've known her for ages, she's a hooker same as you, she had no reason to
lie
to me, she was just telling me an interesting
story.

    Listening to him tell her all this, she was thinking amateurs shouldn't fuck around with dope deals.

    She told him she knew a hooker in L.A., a working girl like herself, who got involved bringing dope in on an airplane. They were paying her fifty thousand bucks to bring the dope in from Antigua where it had come from London by way of Marseilles. All she had to do was carry in this false bottom bag with the dope in it. So they brought out the police dogs that day, and she was now doing twenty in San Quentin, and the guys who hired her were still having a nice time on their yacht on the French Riviera. Amateurs shouldn't fuck around with dope deals, she told him.

    Also, you shouldn't try to cross guys dealing dope.

    That's how amateurs got their brains blown out. Crossing guys who were dealing dope for a living. Nobody likes his rice bowl broken, she told him. You mess with a guy's rice bowl, he's gonna come break your head.

    So I don't think I want to do it, she said.

    But at the same time she was thinking Oh God, this could be my way out.

    This was back in March.

    They were at this house he was renting in Hallandale. They were sitting by his swimming pool. This was the beginning of March, it was still too cold to swim here no matter what anybody said. She'd flown to Miami from L.A., got there on the twentieth of January. A girlfriend on the Coast told her she heard they were paying two, two-fifty for an hour's work in Miami, she ought to go down there, check it out. Any given city, you wanted to know what call girls were getting you looked in the Yellow Pages under "Massage" or "Escort." In L.A., Jenny was registered with an outcall massage service that advertised in the Yellow Pages and accepted credit cards. You dialed the number, you got somebody who told you what the agency fee was and asked if you wanted a girl to call you. What Jenny did when she called, she reminded you that the agency fee was fifty bucks, and then she mentioned that she usually got a hundred an hour. So what it was, it was a hundred and fifty bucks an hour, did you want some company or not? Some nights, she turned seven, eight tricks and went home with a thousand bucks when you figured the guys who tipped extra for an, ahem, exceptional blow job. Some nights she watched Johnny Carson. Miami was supposed to be two hundred, two-fifty an hour, which was a lot of bullshit as it turned out. She figured she'd get a few days' sun-actually it was also rainy and cold-and then head back to the Coast.

    The day before she was supposed to leave, she met a girl on the beach, told the girl she was an insurance investigator working for a company in L.A., here settling a big claim, be leaving tomorrow. She always made up stories about what she did for a living. A lot of her friends were straight, and you couldn't just say Hey, guess what, I'm a hooker. So she either worked for a bank, or an insurance company, or she did research for a computer company, or she was office manager for a textile firm, all bland jobs nobody would ask her much more about. She liked playing different roles. Well, that was why she'd gone out to L.A. in the first place, to become a big
movie
star, sure, some star. A hooker was what she was, plain and simple. But even so, she thought of hooking as playing different roles, sort of.

    Anyway, she'd hit it off right away with the girl on the beach-Molly Ryder was her name-and Molly was saying like Gee, what a shame it is you're leaving so soon, just when we're getting to know each other, it's a shame you can't stay a little longer, get the feel of the place, 'cause it's real nice here, it really is. And then she told Jenny that there was gonna be a party tonight at this guy's house in Hallandale that had a swimming pool and everything, and there'd be some interesting quite far-out people there, if Jenny would like to come along.

    So Jenny went to the party and met a lot of interesting quite far-out people who were doing coke and stuff and decided to hang around Miami a while, see if she couldn't drum up a little trade at the fancier hotels on the beach, maybe even find some old geezer she could play house with, because Miami seemed to have less phonies here than there were in L.A. where they came a thousand to the square inch. What came a thousand to the square inch down here were the cockroaches. She remembered them from when she used to be a kid living down here. They called them palmetto bugs down here. They were as big as your forefinger, some of them. You stepped on them, you jumped up and down on them, they crawled away all crippled and broken but they wouldn't die unless you hit them with a sledgehammer. Also, they knew how to fly. Staying with Molly the first few weeks she was in Miami, she almost wet her pants when one of them flew right up into her face.

    That had been back in January.

    By the beginning of March, she was sitting by a swimming pool and listening to talk about a quarter of a million dollars for a single night's work.

    What she usually got for an all-night stand in L. A. was five hundred, sometimes only four if things were slow.

    This was a quarter of a
million.

    Split it with him, it still came to a hundred and a quarter.

    That's if there were only two kilos in the safe. If there was more…

    How do I get
in
that safe? she asked him.

    Because this was her way out.

    

    

    Matthew disliked him on sight. Big beefy man with a wide forehead and prominent nose, coming across the deck to greet him, hamhock hand extended, blue jeans, and a T-shirt that had "Larkin Boats, The Way to the Water" printed on its front. The man was probably a saint, and yet-instant animosity. That happened sometimes. Even with women. Even with gorgeous women. Something clicked in the unconscious, who the hell knew? Maybe Larkin reminded him of a high school geometry teacher who'd giver him an F. Or maybe there were just certain combinations of sights and smells that signaled to the brain and triggered defense mechanisms, watch out for this guy. Whatever it was, he didn't like Larkin.

    But there were some questions he needed to ask him.

    And, after all, when he'd called, the man had been gracious enough to invite him to his home for an early afternoon drink, hadn't he? Instead of asking him to stop by at his place of business. Gorgeous house on Fatback Key, all wood and glass and stone, sitting right on the Gulf. Matthew and Larkin sitting on lounges facing the water. Thunderheads building up out there the way they did every day at this time.

    "It wasn't
Otto
started calling her Cinderella," Larkin said. "It was me."

    "When was that?" Matthew asked.

    "When I hired him."

    "Which was when? I'm sorry to be asking all these questions, Mr. Larkin…"

    "No, no, listen, I'm happy to help. What happened was I went to this ball in April sometime… well, down here there are more balls than you can count, I'm sure you know that."

    "Yes," Matthew said.

    "Over on the East Coast, in Miami, it's your Cubans throwing a ball every time one of their daughters turns fifteen. That's a custom with Spanish-speaking people," Larkin said, educating Matthew. "The daughter turns fifteen, they dress her like a bride and throw a ball. All the friends rent lavender tuxedos and come to the party to wish the kid well on her fifteenth birthday because pretty soon she'll be on her back on the beach with her legs spread and not too long after that she'll be a fat old lady with a mustache."

    Larkin laughed.

    Matthew said nothing. He was not liking Larkin any better.

    
"La quinceanera
they call her," Larkin said, "a lot of bullshit. Anyway, here in Calusa, we got balls to mark the seasons of the year, which is even
more
bullshit. Around Christmastime, you have your Snowflake Ball for the American Cancer Society, and in the spring, when the purple jacaranda trees are blooming, you got your Jacaranda Ball for Multiple Sclerosis or Muscular Dystrophy, I always mix them up. That's where I met her. At the Jacaranda Ball."

    "This was…?"

    "In April."

    "When in April?"

    "Beginning of the month sometime. The jacarandas were just starting to bloom. In she walks, a pretty young thing in a blue gown the color of her eyes, slit high up on her right leg and scooped low over a very good chest. Danced with her all night long. Had her picture taken by a photographer who was charging fifty bucks a pop for charity. That's the picture I gave Otto. The one I had taken at the ball. Did you see that picture?"

    "Yes, it's in the file," Matthew said.

    "Gorgeous girl, am I right?"

    "Very pretty."

    "Sure, that's the picture I gave him. Plus twenty-five bills as a retainer. Find her, I told him. Find Cinderella for me. That's the first time I called her that."

    "Why was that?"

    "Well, because I met her at a
ball,
didn't I? Dressed like a princess, sapphire pin on her chest, high-heeled shoes looked like glass, all she's missing is a tiara. Plus by morning the princess turned into a fuckin' whore who stole my Rolex cost eight thousand dollars at Tiffany's in New York."

    "Which is why you hired Otto."

    "Yeah."

    "To get your watch back."

    "To find
her,
never mind the watch. The watch is probably in Alaska by now, you think she's gonna hang onto a hot watch engraved with my initials on the case?"

    "You merely wanted him to find her."

    
"Merely?
You think I was giving him an easy job or something?
Merely,
the man says. I didn't even know her name."

    "I thought she-"

    "Yeah, she told me Angela West, but I looked in the phone book before I called Otto, and there were six Wests in it, none of them Angela. So all I had was this picture of a young blonde girl-Cinderella, right? Of which maybe there are fifty thousand such young blonde girls in the city of Calusa, so Otto's supposed to run down to the beach and find her. That's not such a
merely,
Matt, is it okay if I call you Matt?"

    "Most people call me Matthew."

    "Matthew then," Larkin said and shrugged as if to say there was no accounting for taste. "The point is, this was a hard job I gave Otto, and he wasn't making a hell of a lot of progress, I can tell you that."

    "Why'd you go to him in the first place?"

    "Why? Because I heard he was a good-"

    "I mean, why didn't you go to the police?"

    "I didn't want to."

    "Why not? She stole your watch."

    "I felt this was a personal matter. Between her and me. I didn't want the police in this. Anyway, the police are full of shit, Matthew, I'm sure you know that."

    Matthew said nothing. Far out on the water, a trawler was silhouetted against the gray of the sky. Sandpipers skirted the waves as they nudged the shore. Overhead, a flight of pelicans hovered and then dipped into an air current. Matthew wondered if birds knew when it was going to rain.

    "So when did you go to him?" he asked.

    "Around the end of the month."

    "The end of April."

    "Yeah, sometime around the end of the month."

    "Why'd you wait so long?"

    "What do you mean?"

    "She stole your watch early in April, but you didn't go to Otto till the end of the month. How come?"

    "I was thinking it over," Larkin said.

    

    

    Domingo said since the mother wasn't home they should go to the beach. Ernesto said the beach could wait. Neither of the men were terribly impressed with Venice, which was where Mrs. Santoro lived, in a cinderblock development house not too far off U.S. 41. Domingo said he liked Miami Beach better. He said Venice looked "crommy." That was one of the few English words he liked, crommy. He didn't think Miami Beach was crommy. Miami Beach was like a small province in Cuba, and therefore gorgeous.

    The men were waiting outside the house in the red LeBaron convertible. They had decided on a high profile here because all these crommy little houses were very close together and they couldn't risk a break-in. Otherwise, they'd have preferred being inside the house when she got home. As it was, they had gone to the front door, and rung the bell and a neighbor next door had told them Annie wouldn't be back from Miami till later today. They had not anticipated
that
high a profile, being talked to by a nosy neighbor who should've been inside watching a soap opera. A moment before Mrs. Santoro drove up- at about twenty after three that Wednesday afternoon-Domingo was complaining that there were no Spanish-speaking radio stations in this crommy town. Ernesto nudged him in the ribs as her car, a brown Dodger Caravan, pulled into the driveway. They got out of the convertible at once, and were walking toward her as she unlocked the kitchen door at the side of the house.

    "Mrs. Santoro?" Ernesto said.

    She turned, surprised. Mother of the two other women, Ernesto thought, no question about it. Same eyes, same mouth, bleached blonde hair trying to hide the gray, yes, but no doubt the mother. Same firm breasts, well they were somewhat heavy, true, but she had to be fifty, fifty-five, something like that, a bit thick in the waist, also, but good legs like the two daughters, she was the mother, no question.