Cinderella

13

The two girls shopping for jeans at Coopersmith’s were both in their twenties, one of them with dark black hair cut almost shoulder length, the other with russet-colored hair cut in a wedge.

The brunette was wearing a wide skirt, a peasant blouse, and flat sandals. She had brown eyes and she looked very Italian. Her name was Merilee James.

The redhead was wearing tan slacks, a brown blouse, and low-heeled tan shoes. She had blue eyes, and she looked very Irish. Her name was Sandy Jennings.

Coopersmith’s was one of Calusa’s better department stores. The girls probably could have found the designer jeans they were looking for at Global, which was a discount clothing store on the South Trail, but neither of them would have dreamt of shopping there.

They were both call girls.

In Calusa, there were very few bona fide call girls as such. This was not a convention town or a gambling town, it was just a rather pleasant family resort town — at least when the weather was good. Not too many men came down here looking for the kind of good time a hooker might show them. The singles who came to Calusa were looking for other singles who’d care to spend a freebie night or two in the hay. The married men were with their wives and children. So a bona fide call girl — the ones who charged a hundred bucks an hour — were as rare as snowflakes. What you had down here were some girls doing ten-dollar blow jobs for teenage kids in pickup trucks behind either of the two topless joints, or else — and this was rare, too — a free-lance, scaly-legged whore in her forties who sat on a bar stool toying with a ginger ale and hoping somebody would find her attractive enough to pay for her favors.

Both Sandy and Merilee were genuine call girls.

This meant that Sandy and Merilee were not their real names.

They had met each other a month ago, at a lounge on 41. Merilee said she was down here on vacation. She worked in New Orleans as a computer programmer for Shell Oil. That was what she told Sandy. But that was okay because Sandy told her she was a graduate student in psychology at UCLA. She was in Florida looking over the universities here because she was thinking of perhaps applying for a teaching job down here after she got her master’s.

At the time, Sandy suspected Merilee was a hooker, and Merilee suspected the same thing of Sandy, but neither of them mentioned it until one rainy afternoon when they went to an early movie together — the five o’clock movie in Calusa cost only $2.25 — and the movie had a hooker in it, and later on over dinner Merilee and Sandy began discussing the girl in the picture and it turned out they were both hookers, too, well, well!

Merilee, in fact, was working pretty steady down here, at night, which was why she had to go to five o’clock movies. She had a couple of old guys she serviced on Fatback Key. She thought one of them was in love with her. Or maybe he was kidding. But he kept saying he wanted to take her out to dinner, maybe go away for a weekend together, buy her jewelry, like that. Only he never did. She asked him once whether he was jealous of her making love to other men. She didn’t say fucking other men, she never talked dirty when she was with him, he despised dirty talk. He said he was very jealous because he loved her so much. But he never suggested like making this a permanent live-in thing, you know, even though he was a widower. Sandy told Merilee she herself wasn’t turning any tricks down here, just taking it easy for a while.

Today, while they were trying on clothes in the dressing room, neither of them discussed their mutual profession, except peripherally. In fact, neither of them even discussed men except peripherally, which was odd since a lot of women, when they were alone together, discussed nothing but men.

What they were discussing was career moves.

What Sandy was going to do, as soon as she settled a few financial matters here in Calusa, was get out of Florida entirely. Get out of the country, in fact. She had very big plans for the future and they didn’t include sucking some married businessman’s cock. She was only hanging around here till a few things were settled, that was all. It wasn’t a bad place to wait, she told Merilee.

Merilee thought she might stay with what she was doing till she was thirty. She already had fifty grand in Dreyfus Liquid Assets, and it was paying good interest at the moment, and she guessed in the next six years — she had just turned twenty-four — in the next six years, if she kept adding to the account and if the interest rates stayed good, she could maybe hope to have something like five, six hundred thousand in cash. That was a lot of money. You had cash like that, you could do a lot of things with it.

For example, there was a guy she knew here in Calusa, his name was Martin Klement, who’d been born in London but who was now an American citizen with a restaurant on Lucy’s Key. Martin had spent a great deal of time down in the Caribbean — first running a hotel on Antigua, and then a restaurant in St. Thomas, and then another restaurant on Grenada — before coming up to Florida and settling in Calusa. His restaurant here was called Springtime, all done up in green and white and fresh with flowers every day of the week, an immediate hit the moment it opened six years ago, perhaps because there was no such thing as a real springtime in the state of Florida although longtime residents insisted they could tell when the seasons changed.

Martin was maybe fifty-three years old, a giant of a man some six feet three inches tall with white hair and a white walrus mustache, tattoos on both arms, reputed to have done some shady deals down there where the trade winds played, a keen eye for a quick penny had old Martin Klement. Merilee also suspected that Martin was AC/DC, or at least that was the rumor circulating, not that Merilee cared in the slightest.

Well, last night Merilee dropped in at the restaurant to see what was shaking — Martin sometimes had guys sitting there at the bar who would perhaps be interesting — and he came over and bought her a drink on the house and the two started chatting. Martin liked her a lot, and she liked him, too. He still spoke with a British accent, and sometimes used funny British expressions. When he’d first met Merilee, in fact, he’d tried to teach her Cockney rhyming slang, but it was far too difficult and all Merilee had come away with was “bread and honey” — if she was remembering correctly — which meant “money,” which was the only thing in the world that interested her.

They started talking about the unusually hot weather they’d been having and its effect on the restaurant business. It was Martin’s theory, and maybe he was right, that extremely hot weather sent people out to eat, maybe because a woman didn’t want to toil over a stove when it was ninety degrees outside.

One topic led to another and eventually Martin asked, “Have you been out to Sabal Beach since the crackdown started?”

“No, I haven’t,” Merilee said.

“They’re still letting the women go topless, but catch anyone bare-arsed, male or female, and it’s into the wagon with them.”

“Awful, the police down here,” Merilee said.

“Think they’d find a way to spend their time more profitably, wouldn’t you?”

“Really,” Merilee said.

“They’ll have their hands full soon enough,” Martin said, “never mind chasing after nude bathers. Did you read the stories on the big drug arrest in Miami a few months back?”

“No, I didn’t,” Merilee said.

“Took the DEA almost a year to set it up, but they netted some very big fish indeed. What I’m saying is I wouldn’t be surprised if bearing down on the other coast won’t send the drug people scurrying here to Calusa. The police’ll have plenty to do, believe me, without rounding up nudists.”

“Well, there’s not much of that here in Calusa,” Merilee said. “Narcotics.”

“True enough, I’ve yet to see anyone openly smoking marijuana in my place,” Martin said. “But I’ll tell you, Mer, on occasion I’ve happened upon a few people doing a bit of coke in the men’s room, eh? So it’s not as uncommon as you might believe.”

“Well,” Merilee said.

“I’ve been asked myself once or twice,” Martin said, lowering his voice.

“Asked what?”

“Y’know. Whether I knew where to get any stuff.”

“Oh.”

“Recently, in fact,” Martin said. “Two Hispanics came in the other night, told me they were looking to buy quality cocaine, ready to pay top dollar for it. I’ll tell you, I wish I could’ve accommodated them. I figure the way they got to me... I wouldn’t repeat this, Mer—”

“Cross my heart,” she said.

“—is years ago, when I had the restaurant on Grenada, I was... well... engaged in what one might call ‘redistribution,’ eh? Helping merchandise find its way from one place to another. There was money to be made in redistribution, I can tell you. You’d get your banana boats up from South America, they’d be carrying other than bananas sometimes, eh? You accepted whatever cargo you thought you could safely handle, you merely redistributed it to Barbados, and it found its way from there to Guadeloupe or Martinique and then on up the chain to Haiti and finally into Florida, this was, oh, six, seven years ago, Mer. Grenada’s a stone’s throw from Venezuela, y’know, and once you were past British Customs, you had the whole Caribbean open to you. A great deal of money was waiting to be untrousered back then. Now, too, for that matter. All you need is the merchandise to redistribute, eh? Which is why these two men came to the restaurant, sat at the bar, ordered a few drinks, mentioned they’d heard my name here and there. Hispanics, y’know, the Colombian word gets around, look up Martin Klement, he used to own The Troubador on Grenada, he’s got a restaurant in Florida now, maybe he can help you.”

“I can see how that might happen,” Merilee said.

“I truly wish I could help them,” Martin said, and sighed. “They were talking real commitment. Excellent money, too. If you should hear of anyone, let me know.”

Merilee was standing in front of the dressing room mirror as she repeated this story to Sandy. She was pulling up the zipper on a pair of very tight jeans. She sort of did a little leap off the floor as she pulled up the zipper.

“What I’m saying,” she said, “is six years from now, I’ll be like those two Spanish guys, you know? I’ll have myself a real bundle, I’ll breeze back here into Calusa, tell Martin I’m looking to make a big dope buy, are these too tight?”

“A little,” Sandy said.

“Mustn’t look cheap, must we?” Merilee said, and both girls giggled. Merilee took off the jeans and tried on another pair, talking as she smoothed them over her hips and turned this way and that in front of the mirror.

“Martin knows everything,” she said. “That’s ’cause he owns a restaurant, all kinds of people come in. He was the first one in Calusa to recognize me for a hooker. You were the second one, but you’re in the life yourself, so that’s understandable. Do you know what la moglia del barbiere means? That’s Italian. It means the town gossip. Actually, it means ‘the barber’s wife,’ but everybody knows what it really means. Because the barber hears everything there is to hear, and he tells it to his wife, and she gossips about it. Well, people tell restaurant owners and bartenders the same things they tell barbers. That’s how come Martin hears so much. Which, speaking of barbers, when did you do that to your hair?”

“Two weeks ago come Saturday,” Sandy said.

“You got tired of it long?”

“Sort of.”

“You like it better red, huh? Than blonde?”

“Sort of,” Sandy said.

She was silent for the space of a heartbeat, and then she said, “How much are they looking to buy?” and Merilee’s eyes met hers in the mirror.

Yellow flags and banners were flying outside 1237 Hacienda Road when Matthew pulled into the condominium’s parking lot that Thursday afternoon. A huge sign outside the sales office read:

Frank had told him that Florida State First had been forced to foreclose on the condominium’s contractor and was virtually giving away the unsold units in an attempt to get rid of them. Sixty units in the entire complex, twenty-four of them still unsold. Last week, Otto had questioned the occupants of seventeen apartments. Seventeen plus twenty-four came to forty-one. From sixty came to nineteen. Still nineteen apartments to tackle. Assuming Frank was right about the number of unsold units.

Frank had also told him the latest condominium joke:

This man comes down to Florida looking for a condominium. He pulls his car into the nearest parking space and is looking for the sales office when he spots a woman and asks her, “Can you tell me where the sales office is? I’d like to see one of the condominiums.”

The woman says, “Why do you need the sales office? I live here, come look at my condominium.”

“Well, thank you, that’s very kind of you,” the man says and follows the woman upstairs to her apartment.

“Would you care for a drink?” the woman asks.

“Well, thank you, I wouldn’t mind,” the man says.

She brings him a drink, and they sit in the living room, drinking.

“Would you care for some sex?” the woman asks.

“Well, thank you, I wouldn’t mind,” the man says.

“Some kinky sex?” she asks.

“Well, yes, thank you,” he says.

“Unzip your fly,” she says.

He unzips his fly.

“Put your member on the palm of my left hand,” she says.

He puts his member on the palm of her left hand.

She raises her right hand and begins smacking his member, smack, smack, smack, each smack punctuated with the words, “Don’t... ever... park... in... my... space... again!”

Matthew hoped he hadn’t parked in anyone’s space.

He looked for the Resident Manager’s office, found it tucked in a corner of the building that housed the workout room and the rec room, and knocked on the door.

“Come in!” a woman’s voice called.

He opened the door onto a small reception room with a desk and chair in it, no one in the chair, no one behind the desk. This was one o’clock in the afternoon, he assumed the receptionist was out to lunch.

“I’m in here!”

He followed the voice into a larger office with a larger desk in it. An attractive, dark-haired woman sat behind the desk. She was, he guessed, in her late thirties, early forties, a pleasant smile on her face, her brown eyes studying him from behind tortoiseshell glasses. Behind her was a rental calendar with large blocks of in-season time marked with different colored strips of tape.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m Matthew Hope,” he said.

“Anne Langner,” she said. “Please sit down, won’t you?”

“Thank you,” he said, and took a seat opposite her desk. “Miss Langner,” he said, “I wonder if you remember... on the sixth of June... that would have been two weeks ago this coming Friday... a man named Otto Samalson...”

“Oh, yes,” she said at once.

“You do remember him?”

“Well, of course. With all the stories about him on television and in the papers? Yes, certainly. He was here asking about a beautiful young woman, I forget her name just now.”

“Well, I’m sure he asked about several names,” Matthew said.

“Yes, now that you mention it, he did. I’m sorry but I didn’t recognize the girl in the picture he showed me. She isn’t one of our owners, and she isn’t renting an apartment here, either.”

“Would you have recognized her?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Even if she was living here with someone else?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, not an owner, not a renter, but living with someone who is an owner or a renter.”

“Oh. Well... I don’t know. There are sixty units here, twenty-four of them as yet unsold, the others either owner-occupied or in our rental program. It would be difficult to—”

“How many are owner-occupied?” Matthew asked.

“Nineteen.”

“Year-round residents?”

“Not all of them. Seven are owners who only use the apartment two or three months out of the year but prefer not to rent it when they’re away.”

“That leaves twelve year-round residents.”

“Yes.”

“Of the seven absentee owners, are any of them here now?”

“I really couldn’t say. This isn’t a full-service condo, you see, we don’t check on the comings and goings of anyone whose apartment isn’t in our rental program.”

“How many apartments are rented right now?”

“All of the seasonal renters are already gone, they usually disappear just after Easter, the beginning of May at the very latest. We have three summer rentals, but they’re unusual. The rest are renting by the year, people who come down here with a job, expect to buy a house, rent a condo while they’re settling in and looking.”

“So,” Matthew said, “right now how many apartments are occupied?”

“Twelve owner-occupied. Three summer rentals. Six annuals.”

“Twenty-one in all.”

He was thinking Otto had already covered seventeen of those twenty-one. But which seventeen?

“Plus any absentee owner who may be in residence just now,” Anne said. “They come and go.”

Better yet, Matthew thought.

“Would you mind if I knocked on some doors?” he asked.

“It’s a free country,” she said, and arched one eyebrow. “Will you need any help?”

Matthew knew an arched eyebrow when he saw one.

“Maybe,” he said, and smiled. “I’ll let you know.”

When Matthew was a boy in Chicago, the one thing he’d hated more than anything else in the world was going around with his kid sister Gloria when she was selling Girl Scout cookies. His mother had said she didn’t want little Gloria knocking on doors all by herself, you never knew who or what might be behind one of those doors.

So Matthew had gone along with a scowling and embarrassed Gloria — her goddamn big brother leading around a Girl Scout who could make fires by rubbing two sticks together and everything — and he’d knocked on doors and listened to his sister giving her spiel, “Morning, ma’am, would you like to buy some delicious Girl Scout cookies?” and he’d felt like a horse’s ass. Especially since no one at all tried to rape or kill Gloria.

By three o’clock that afternoon, Matthew had knocked on twelve apartment doors.

At two of those apartments, he’d got no answer at all.

At four of them, he was told that they’d already answered questions about the girl with the long blonde hair. One man asked if this was a contest or something, and if so, what was the prize?

At five of them — after describing the girl known variously as Angela West, Jody Carmody, Melissa Blair, Mary Jane Hopkins, and Jenny Santoro — he was told that maybe the girl sounded familiar, but didn’t he have a picture?

And at the last apartment, the door was slammed in his face before he could even open his mouth.

Sighing, he knocked on the door to apartment 2C.

He could hear rock music coming from inside the apartment.

“Who is it?” a voice called.

“My name is Matthew Hope,” he said, “I wonder if I might have a few minutes of your time.”

“Who?”

“Matthew Hope.”

“What do you want, Matthew Hope?”

This from just inside the door.

“I’m trying to locate someone, I wonder if—”

“Try the manager’s office.”

“I’ve just been there. Miss, if you look through your peephole you’ll see I’m not an ax-murderer or anything.”

A giggle on the other side of the door.

Then:

“Just a sec, okay?”

He waited. Night chain coming off. Tumblers falling. Door opening.

The girl standing there was wearing cutoff jeans and a green tank top shirt. She was barefoot. Matthew guessed she was five feet eight or nine inches tall, somewhere in there. Her russet-colored hair was cut in a short wedge with bangs falling almost to the tops of her overlarge sunglasses. There was a faint smile on her mouth. No lipstick. She stood in the doorway with one hand on the jamb, sort of leaning onto the hand. It was difficult to tell her age. She looked like a teenager. He felt like asking her if her mother was home.

“So okay, Matthew Hope,” she said.

Very young voice.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said.

“No bother.”

“I’m an attorney...”

“Uh-oh,” she said.

But not alarmed, just jokingly. Smile still on her mouth. Eyes inscrutable behind the dark glasses.

“I’m trying to locate someone for one of my clients.”

A lie.

She kept watching him, smile still on her mouth.

“I’m sorry I don’t have a photograph,” he said, “but she’s a girl of about twenty-two or three — long blonde hair, blue eyes, very attractive — and she may be living here at Camelot Towers. Would you happen to know her?”

“Not offhand.” A pause. “What’s her name?”

“Well, she uses several different names?”

“Oh? Is she wanted by the police or something?”

“No, no.”

“That’s right, you said you were trying to locate her for a client.” Another pause. “What are these names she uses?”

“Jenny Santoro...”

Shaking her head.

“Melissa Blair...”

Still shaking her head.

“Jody Carmody... Angela West... Mary Jane Hopkins...”

“Lots of names.”

“Any of them ring a bell?”

“Sorry.”

“And you haven’t seen anyone of that description?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Going in or out of the building...”

“No.”

“...or in the elevator?”

“No place.” Shaking her head again. “Sorry.”

“Do you live here?” he asked.

“I’m visiting a friend,” she said.

“Is she home?”

“He. No, I’m sorry, he’s out just now.”

“I was wondering, you see—”

“Yes?”

“—if he might have seen this person I’m looking for.”

“I really don’t know. I’ll ask him, how’s that?”

“Would you? Here’s my card,” he said, reaching for his wallet, searching for a card, never a damn card when you needed one, “he can call me here,” handing her the card, “if he thinks he knows her.”

She took the card, looked at it.

“I’ll tell him,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Not at all,” she said, and closed the door.

The name plate on it read: HOLLISTER.