Cinderella

14

She did not reach Martin Klement until six o’clock that night. She had called him earlier at his restaurant — Springtime, what a name for a restaurant, it sounded like a place selling plants — and she’d been told that he wouldn’t be in till the dinner hour. She asked what time that would be. For different people the dinner hour was at different times. The snippy little bitch who answered the phone said they began serving at six-thirty.

Jenny figured she’d try at six, nothing ventured nothing gained.

When Klement came on the line, she said, “Hello, this is Sandy Jennings, I was talking to a friend of mine this afternoon, a girl named Merilee James, she had some interesting things to say about two Hispanic gentlemen.”

“Oh?”

Caution in that single word. British caution, but caution nonetheless.

“I think I might be able to accommodate them,” Jenny said.

“I’ll have to call you back,” Klement said.

“No, I’ll call you back. What do you want to do? Check with Merilee?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“I’ll call you back in half an hour,” Jenny said, and hung up.

There was no way she was going to give this telephone number to anybody. Not this one, nor the one at the hotel, either. She didn’t want Klement or his two spic friends — or anybody, for that matter — barging in looking for coke.

She wondered when Vincent would be home.

When she’d spoken to him on the phone this morning, he’d told her his last appointment was at two-thirty, and he’d be back at the condo by three, three-thirty. She’d come here right after talking to Merilee, hoping he’d be home already, knocked and knocked and finally let herself in with her key. Tried him at Unicorn, they told her he’d already left. So where the fuck was he? Six o’clock already. She desperately needed to tell him what she’d heard from Merilee, first damn good news since they’d come to Calusa.

Sitting on four fucking keys of cocaine, you think there’d be buyers coming out of the woodwork like cockroaches.

Well, you can’t take an ad in the paper, can you?

No way.

You kept your ears open, you listened, you didn’t trust anybody with the secret. In the state of Florida, you could find yourself on the bottom of the ocean if somebody thought you had four keys of coke. So you had to play your cards very close to your chest. Meanwhile sitting there with what you knew was worth seventy, seventy-five a key. All that shit and no way to translate it to cash.

Until now.

So where the fuck was Vincent?

Thought it might be him when the lawyer knocked on the door.

How the hell did a lawyer get into this?

If he really was a lawyer.

Man, this was weird.

Well, he’d given her a card, she guessed he was a real lawyer.

Summerville and Hope.

On impulse, she dialed the number—

“Good evening, Summerville and Hope.”

— and immediately hung up.

So who hired the lawyer?

Larkin again? It sure as hell wasn’t Fat Louie in Miami. You steal a man’s cocaine, he doesn’t go to any kind of law. No, it had to be Larkin again. Guy coming around with a picture of her. Knocking on the door here at the condo, you know this girl? Vincent later described the picture. Polaroid color shot of her in the ice-blue gown she’d worn first for Amaros in Miami and later here at the Jacaranda Ball. Went there with a girl she’d met at the Sheraton. She hadn’t told Vincent about that night with Larkin. Hadn’t told him she’d stolen the Rolex. Didn’t want to risk his shrill faggoty rage. Didn’t want to piss old Vincent off, fags could get meaner than pit vipers.

The look on his face.

“Amaros,” he said.

She knew it wasn’t Amaros, she knew it was Larkin.

Larkin trying to find her for what she’d given him.

Directly traceable to Amaros.

Nice little present from Amaros, the shit.

She didn’t say anything.

She figured four keys of coke was worth getting herpes.

Maybe.

“When did he take your picture?” Vincent said.

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, damn it, remember! Can’t you see he’s traced us here?”

Voice high and strident. Very nervous now. Started pacing back and forth. This was like Friday a couple of weeks ago, the fourth, the fifth, somewhere in there. Biting his lip while he paced. Nervous as a cat. Eyes flashing.

“I don’t remember,” she said again.

Damned if she was going to tell him about Larkin and the Rolex, have to listen to his fuckin’ faggoty screams.

Which was why she was a little nervous about talking to Klement now, before she’d had a chance to discuss this. She didn’t want Vincent taking another fit. A fag throwing a fit was something to behold. But shit, if there were some real buyers out there...

Was the lawyer from Larkin?

Knew names she’d used since she was for Christ’s sake sixteen years old!

She looked at her watch. She hoped he’d get home before she had to call Klement again.

When he wasn’t there by six-thirty, she started getting a little worried. Had he had an automobile accident or something? Last client at two-thirty, so it was now six-thirty, so where was he?

She dialed the number at the Springtime restaurant.

“Mr. Klement, please,” she said.

“Whom shall I say is calling?”

Same bitch from this afternoon. Whom. My ass, whom, that’s whom.

“Sandy Jennings.”

Jenny Santoro sort of ass-backwards, she thought.

“Hello?”

Klement’s voice.

“Did you check with Merilee?” she said. “Am I real?”

“When can we meet?” Klement asked.

“We can’t,” Jenny said. “You tell me what your end is, and then you give me a number to call. That’s how it works.”

Cover your ass. She’d learned all about covering her ass in Los Angeles. It was even more important to cover it here. Four keys of high-grade? Shit, man.

“Sorry,” he said, “I don’t do business that way.”

“You’re not the one holding,” she said.

“True.”

“Do we talk or not?”

“My end is ten percent,” he said.

“Five or forget it.”

“I hate haggling like a fishmonger.”

“So do I.”

“Seven and a half then.”

“Fine. How do I reach your people?”

“Have we got a deal?”

“Yes. Payment on delivery.”

“No. I don’t want to be there.”

“Then get your end in advance.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“From your people. As soon as we set a price.”

“Most professionals don’t do this sort of business on the telephone.”

“Lucky I’m an amateur,” Jenny said. “Let me have the number.”

Klement gave her the number.

Only once before had Vincent been tempted by a male client, and that was when he was working for Vidal Sassoon in New York. The man’s name was Melvyn — with a y, no less — and he was as queer as a turnip, but oh so gorgeous. Great blond locks and cornflower blue eyes and muscles he doubtlessly flexed every weekend at Cherry Grove — oh, what Vincent wouldn’t have given for a tumble with young Melvyn.

At the time, Vincent was spending his weekends with two good friends of his who owned a house in Pound Ridge, near Emily Shaw’s Inn. He made the mistake one Wednesday afternoon, while Melvyn-with-a-Y was in having his golden fleece shorn, to suggest that he might enjoy coming up one weekend, meet some of the boys, party a bit, did Melvyn think he might enjoy that? Melvyn lowered his baby blues and put one hand on Vincent’s arm, and said, “Oh dear, that’s so kind of you, but I’m involved just now.”

The person he was involved with, as it turned out, marched in that very afternoon to make certain his sweet little boy was having his hair properly trimmed. The grandest old drag queen who ever lived, wearing a black cape and high-heeled boots and blood-red lipstick that made him look like Dracula.

Vincent swore off that very minute.

Never again would he come on with a client.

Cut the hair, make the chitchat, and let it go.

But at 6:47 that night, while Jenny was on the phone asking for cabin number three at the Suncrest Motel, Vincent was in a room at Pirate’s Cove, making love with a man named George Anders, who’d been his two-thirty client.

Anders was a married orthodontist.

Giggling, Vincent told him he had a very bad overbite.

At exactly that moment, Susan Hope walked onto the deck of the restaurant at Stone Crab Shores and spotted Matthew sitting at a table overlooking the water.

A wide smile broke on her face.

Swiftly, she walked to him.

With twenty-five cents and the accent of the man on the other end of the line, you could start a banana plantation in Cuba.

“Sondy Hennings?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Martin Klement asked me to call you.”

“Ah, sí,” he said.

“Is this Ernesto?”

“Sí.”

No last name. Martin hadn’t given her one, and she didn’t ask for one. She didn’t care how many names of hers he had, first, last, it didn’t matter, the Sandy was a phony and so was the Jennings.

“I understand you’re looking to buy some fine china,” she said.

This was what Martin had told her to say on the phone. Fine china. What bullshit, she thought. Ernesto was thinking the same thing. Domingo was sprawled out on the bed, looking through the July issue of Penthouse.

“That is correct,” Ernesto said.

“I have four fine plates that may interest you.”

“How fine?” Ernesto asked.

“This is 1890 china we’re talking about,” she said.

“Ninety?” he said.

“That’s right.”

Fooling nobody, she thought. We’re talking ninety-pure and we both know it and so does anyone listening, fine china my ass.

“How much do these plates cost?” he asked.

“Seventy-five dollars,” she said. “I want three hundred dollars for the four plates.”

“That’s expensive,” Ernesto said.

“How much are you willing to pay?”

“Fifty,” he said.

“Well, so long then.”

“Wait a minute,” he said.

And then silence except for static on the line.

It was going to rain again.

She could visualize wheels turning inside his head, gears meshing but she didn’t know why.

Was he trying to figure a more reasonable comeback price? Fifty was ridiculous. You sometimes got tricks, you told them it was a hundred an hour, they started bargaining with you. Make it sixty, all I’ve got is forty, whatever. You said “Well, so long then,” they always came back with “Wait a minute.”

Only the pause wasn’t as long as this one. She waited. She waited some more.

“Where’d you get these plates?” he asked at last.

Funny question, she thought. All that huffing and puffing and this is the question he comes up with?

“Funny question,” she said out loud. “Where’d you get your money?”

“My money is Miami money,” he said.

“So are the plates.”

“You got them in Miami?”

“Listen, are you interested at seventy-five a plate or not?”

“We may be interested. But we have to make sure they’re quality plates.” This came out: “Burr we ha’ to may sure they quality place.” Another pause. “Where did you get them in Miami? From the Ordinez people?”

“You’re asking too many questions,” she said. “I’m gonna hang up.”

“No, no, please, por favor, no, don’t do that, señorita.” Another pause. “How does sixty sound?”

“Low,” she said.

“Can we talk about this in person?”

“No.”

“It would be good to see you face-to-face.”

“When we deliver. First I need a price. So does Mr. K. He’s in for seven-and-a-half finder’s.”

“We?”

“What?”

“Who’s we?”

“My partner and me.”

“Who is your partner?”

“Who’s your partner?” she said, and hung up.

She pressed one of the receiver-rest buttons, got a dial tone, and called the Springtime again. When Klement came on the line, she said, “What is this? A setup?”

“What?” he said. “No. What?”

“Your people are asking too many questions. I want a price and no more questions.”

“How much are you really looking for?” Klement asked.

“With no bullshitting back and forth?”

“Your best price.”

“Sixty-five. With no haggling.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“Times four. Less your seven and a half.”

“I understand.”

“I want to close this five minutes from now.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

She called him back five minutes later.

“They’ve agreed to your price,” he said. “They’re waiting for your call.”

The rain started so suddenly it caught everyone on the deck by surprise. One moment there was sunshine and then all at once raindrops were spattering everywhere. The outdoor diners grabbed for drinks and handbags, sharing for a moment the camaraderie of people caught in either a catastrophe or an unexpected delight. There were cries of surprise and some laughter and the sound of chairs scraping back and a great deal of scurrying until the deck — within moments, it seemed — was clear of everything but the empty tables with their white cloths flapping in the wind, and the empty chairs standing stoically in the falling rain.

The rain came in off the water in long gray sheets.

Susan said, “I’m soaked.”

She looked marvelous. Summery yellow dress scooped low over her breasts, cinched tightly at the waist, flaring out over her hips. Not quite soaked, but her face and hair wet with rain, a wide grin on her mouth.

Waiters were bustling about, showing diners to tables inside. There was the buzz of excited conversation, everyone marveling at how swiftly and unexpectedly the rain had come.

“It reminds me of something,” Matthew said.

“Yes, me too,” she said, and squeezed his hand.

“But I can’t remember what.”

“Mr. Hope?” the headwaiter said. “This way, please.”

He led them to a table close to the sliding glass doors. Outside, busboys were hurriedly gathering up glasses and silverware. The wind was fierce. The tablecloths kept flapping, as if clamoring for flight.

“Something in Chicago?” Susan said.

“Yes.”

“Something that made us laugh a lot?”

“Yes.”

“But what?”

“I don’t know. Is your drink okay?”

“I spilled half of it on the way in.”

He signaled to the waiter. The place was quieting down now. He kept trying to remember. Or was it something that had happened so many times that it had taken on the aspect of singularity?

The waiter took their order for another round.

Susan was silent for a moment.

Then she said, “We have to stop meeting this way,” and they both burst out laughing. “Truly, Matthew, this is absurd.”

“I know,” he said.

“I feel like I’m cheating on your wife! That’s carrying Electra a bit far, don’t you think? You should have heard all the questions she had about why I was all dressed up and—”

“You look beautiful,” he said.

“Thank you, and where I was going, and who with, and—”

“What’d you tell her?”

“I said it was none of her business.”

“Wrong thing to say.”

“Oh, boy, was it! Off she went in a huff. How’d you know?”

“I said the same thing to her and got the same reaction.”

“Well, what should I have said? I mean, I think we’ve made the right decision about keeping this from her for a while...”

“Yes.”

“But at the same time I don’t want to lie...”

“No.”

“I guess I could have said I was meeting Peter downtown...”

“But he normally picks you up at the house, doesn’t he?”

“Well, yes.”

“And suppose he’d called while you were out?”

“Listen to the expert,” Susan said.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and the table went silent.

The silence lengthened.

She looked into her drink, eyes lowered.

“You hurt me very much, you know,” she said.

This was the first time she’d ever said anything about it. After that night of discovery there’d been no talk except through lawyers. And after the divorce all the conversation was about arrangements for Joanna, more often than not ending in one screaming contest or another. Now, meeting in secret so that Joanna would not know they were seeing each other — God, this was peculiar! — they seemed about to discuss it at last.

“Because I loved you very much,” she said.

Loved. Past tense.

“I loved you, too,” he said.

“But not very much, did you?” she said, and looked up and smiled wanly. “Otherwise there wouldn’t have been another woman.”

“I don’t know how that happened,” he said honestly.

“Was she the first one?”

Her eyes lowered again. Hand idly turning the stirrer in her drink.

“Yes.”

His eyes studying her face.

“I knew the marriage was in trouble,” Susan said, “but—”

“Even so, I shouldn’t have—”

“So many arguments—”

“Yes, but—”

“All the fun gone. We used to have such fun together, Matthew. Then, all at once...”

She looked up suddenly.

“What came first, Matthew? Did the fun stop before you met her? Or did the fun stop because you met her?”

“I remember only the pain,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows, surprised.

He did not know how he could explain that he could no longer remember the pleasure. Only mindless passion and pointless pain leading inexorably to more passion and more pain.

“I was dumb,” he said flatly.

Her eyes were steady on his face. She did not nod even minutely, there was nothing in her expression to indicate she’d been seeking this confession, this admission in public in a crowded dining room smelling faintly of wet garments while the rain lashed the windows and the white tablecloths turned sodden and gray, she had not led him to this point, this was not vindication time. She merely kept watching him.

“So what do we do now?” he asked.

“I guess we’ll have to see,” Susan said.

What Ernesto and Domingo figured was that they would have to see.

They were thinking there couldn’t be too many young girls in this city — she’d sounded young on the phone — who were in possession of four keys of cocaine, could there? That would have to be a remarkable coincidence, more than one girl with four keys of coke in her pocket? In a Mickey Mouse town like Calusa?

The trouble was, the girl didn’t want to meet them until it was buy time.

So how could they know for sure this was the girl El Armadillo wanted to hang from the ceiling until they showed up this Saturday with the money she wanted?

As they saw it, there were a lot of problems.

The first problem was that suppose this wasn’t the girl they were looking for?

They had agreed to pay her sixty-five a key for four keys, which came to $260,000. That was not a terrific bargain. It came nowhere near the excellence of the deal they had made with Jimmy Legs and Charlie Nubbs, whom they had agreed to pay only sixty a key for ten keys. That came to $600,000. But for ten keys, remember. Whereas for almost half that amount, they would be getting only four keys from the girl if she didn’t happen to be the girl they were looking for.

In which case—

If they took a look at her and she wasn’t the girl with the long blonde hair and the blue eyes—

Well, then, who needed her or her expensive coke? It would have to be Goodbye, hermana, it was nice knowing you but you can shove your coke up your ass.

In which case, there might be nastiness.

Because suppose the girl was just a telephone talker for some very heavy people who if you didn’t buy the coke you said you were going to buy would feed you to the sharks?

This was a possibility.

It was Domingo who mentioned this possibility, alert as he always was to the ways and means of staying alive in this profession.

The second problem was that they had agreed to pay the Englishman his seven-and-a-half-percent finder’s fee before the buy went down. He wanted his money in advance, didn’t want to be anywhere near where the transaction took place because that was his way of staying alive in this business.

Which was unheard of.

Giving the man his money in advance, before they even knew whether they were buying real coke or just sugar or chalk or whatever the fuck.

They would have to talk to the Englishman about that, work out some way to keep his nineteen-five in escrow till they had a chance to test the shit they were buying.

But that was the third problem.

Because if the girl on the phone really turned out to be Cenicienta then what they would do was grab her and grab the coke, too, without giving her a fucking nickel because this wasn’t her coke, it belonged to Amaros. And if that turned out to be the case, they certainly didn’t want to pay no fucking Englishman $19,500 for what was their own coke.

There were several other problems.

They had agreed to meet the girl and make the buy from her at twelve noon this Saturday.

They had also agreed to make the buy from Jimmy Legs and Charlie Nubbs at one-thirty that same day.

But if the girl turned out to be the girl they wanted then they had no real need to buy the Jimmy Legs/Charlie Nubbs bargain-price coke that was intended only as a consolation prize to calm down Amaros if they couldn’t find the girl.

In which case, there might also be nastiness.

Because both Jimmy Legs and Charlie Nubbs did not look like people who would take kindly to other people backing out of a deal.

Which was just what Ernesto and Domingo were planning to do if the girl turned out to be the one they were looking for. Grab her, throw both her and the stolen coke in the car, and drive straight to Miami, leaving the wops waiting with their dicks in their hands.

Although maybe, even if she was the girl, they should buy the ten keys from the wops, anyway.

Ten keys at sixty a key was truly a bargain.

And what was the big hurry? Once the girl was in their hands, they could take their good sweet time getting back to Miami.

It really was a bargain, sixty a key.

Ernesto told Domingo he wished they didn’t have so many problems.

Also this was already Thursday night, and Amaros hadn’t yet called to say when they could expect the money.

In this business nothing moved without money.

It was Domingo’s opinion that tomorrow was another day.

He suggested to Ernesto that they go out and try to get laid.