Cinderella

16

The wonder of it. Saturday morning. Rain beating against the windowpanes. Lightning flashing and thunder booming. And Susan in bed beside him.

“Aren’t you glad Joanna decided to spend the night with a friend?” Susan asked.

“Yes,” Matthew said. “What time do you have to...?”

“Eleven.”

“Then we have—”

“Hours yet.”

The sound of the rain outside.

A car swishing by on wet asphalt.

“How many women have been in this bed since the divorce?” she asked.

“Not very many,” he said honestly.

“How come you didn’t buy a motorcycle?”

“A motorcycle would scare me to death. Besides, I couldn’t afford one,” he said.

“Ah, poor put-upon,” she said. “All that alimony. Is that why you’re courting me? So you can stop paying—”

“Courting you?”

“Well, what? Dating me? God, I hate that word, don’t you? Dating? It sounds like ‘Happy Days.’ Don’t you hate grownups who say I’ve been dating So-and-so. Dating!” She rolled her eyes. “Courting is much nicer. Anyway, courting is what you’ve been doing. I looked the word up.”

“What do you mean? When?”

“When you started courting me,” she said solemnly.

He almost burst out laughing. It was...

He was...

It was just that he felt so goddamn happy lying here beside her, listening to her talking nonsense about courting as opposed to...

“I am not courting you,” he said, and did burst out laughing.

“Yes, you are,” she said, and began laughing with him. “You are, Matthew, admit it. This is infinitely more serious—

“Oh, yes, infinitely,” he said, laughing.

“—than when we were kids. That was dating. This is courting. Now stop being so silly.”

“What was the definition?”

“What def... oh. Well, it means ‘to woo.’”

“To woo? Oh my God,” he said, and burst out laughing again.

“That’s not my definition, it’s American Heritage’s.”

“To woo?”

“To woo, yes. Which means ‘to attempt to gain the affections or love of.’”

“And that’s what I’ve been doing, huh?”

“Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Of course,” she said. “Do you want to know the derivation?”

“I can hardly wait.”

“It’s from the Old French cort, from the Latin cohors, the stem of which is cohort.”

“Okay, now I get it. Cohorts.”

“Courtesan is from the same root.”

“What do you think of my root?” he said.

“You’re the dirtiest man I’ve ever met in my life, that’s what I think.”

“You know something?” he said.

“No, don’t say it,” she said.

“What was I about to say?”

“I don’t know. Yes, I do. And I don’t want you to say it. Not yet.”

“Okay,” he said.

They both fell silent.

Rain plopped on the leaves of the palms outside.

“Why won’t you let me say it?” he asked.

“Because maybe it’s not me, not us, maybe it’s... I don’t know, Matthew, I really don’t. Maybe it’s the new haircut, maybe it makes me look like someone very different, and maybe you’ve fallen—”

She cut off the sentence.

“Maybe you’ve been attracted to someone who looks different but who’s only the same person underneath and you’ll be disappointed when you discover it’s still only me after all.”

“I love you, Susan,” he said.

“Oh, shit,” she said, “you had to go say it, didn’t you?” and began weeping.

He took her in his arms.

“I love you, too,” she said.

Sobbing now.

“I’ve always loved you.”

Tears rolling down her face.

“Hold me.”

She had left ten minutes ago, and he could not stop thinking about her.

But as he showered, he wondered if what she’d said wasn’t perhaps true.

Maybe it was only the haircut after all, a surface alteration, the same old Susan underneath, a woman who — by the time the divorce happened — was a stranger to the girl he’d married in Chicago. And a stranger to Matthew. And, by that time, a stranger he didn’t very much like.

So here was Susan in the here and now — not physically here, she was already on her way to pick up Joanna, but here in his mind — two years later, give or take, and not an hour ago he’d told her he loved her. He did not think he was the sort of man who used those words as cheap currency in an easy market. He had meant what he’d said, and he was bewildered now by his reaction to a woman he’d known and loved, later known and disliked, still later known and abandoned, and now knew (or did he?) and loved (or did he?) all over again.

Maybe he was only in love with a goddamn haircut.

Change a woman’s hair, you change the woman.

Cut it short, put her in a yellow dress, she’ll come swinging out of church like a hooker.

And yet, the same woman underneath. Had to be. You looked into those dark eyes, wet with tears not an hour ago, and you saw Susan, no one else. People who saw her every day of the week — the people who worked with her, for example — probably hadn’t even noticed that she’d cut her hair and had it restyled. But someone like himself — well, look what had happened at the Langerman party. Hadn’t recognized her at all until those dark eyes flashed, and there was Susan.

The eyes were always the same.

Cut your hair, paint your toenails purple, it didn’t change you except for people who knew you only casually. To anyone else, the eyes were the clue to who you were and who you’d always be. The eyes. Brown, blue, hazel, green, it didn’t...

The eyes.

Blue.

He wished he had the photograph, but the photograph had been stolen when Otto’s office was burglarized.

He wished he could have it in his hand when she opened the door. Look at her face, look at those blue eyes, negate the short red hair, compare only eyes with eyes, nose with nose, cheeks with cheeks, face with face.

Without the photograph, he would have to rely only on memory.

It was eleven-thirty by his watch, still raining here on Whisper Key, the rain sweeping in over the bay and lashing the open corridor that ran along the outside wall of Camelot Towers. He knocked on the door to apartment 2C, knocked again.

“Who is it?” a voice called.

A man. The person she’d been visiting when he was here on Thursday.

“Matthew Hope,” he said. “You don’t know me.”

Silence inside.

He knocked again. “Hello?” he called.

“Just a minute, please.”

He waited.

The man who opened the door was wearing designer jeans and a long-sleeved red shirt, the sleeves rolled up onto his forearms. He was in his late twenties, Matthew guessed, with a pale oval face, hazel eyes, high cheekbones, and a pouting delicate mouth. Black hair swept high off his forehead in a sort of punk hairdo, was he gay?

“Yes?” he said.

One hand on his hip, extremely bored expression on his face.

Was he?

“I was here Thursday,” Matthew said. “I spoke to a young woman—”

“There’s no young woman here,” the man said.

“She told me she was visiting—”

“No, you must have the wrong apartment.”

“I’m sure it’s the right apartment,” Matthew said, and consulted the list he’d copied from the downstairs directory. “Hollister,” he said, “2C. Are you Mr. Hollister?”

“I am.”

“There was a girl here on Thursday—”

“I’m sorry, you’re wrong,” he said.

“A young girl with blue eyes and red hair. Short red—”

“No.”

“Mr. Hollister...”

“You’re annoying me,” he said, and closed the door.

The nameplate was at eye level.

HOLLISTER.

Matthew kept looking at it.

He debated knocking again. Instead, he went downstairs, walked slowly to the Karmann Ghia, looked up toward the second-floor corridor again, got into the car, and sat behind the wheel thoughtfully for several moments. At last he nodded, started the car, and moved it to a space that afforded a good view of both the staircase and the lobby entrance.

He did not know whether or not the redhead was in there with Hollister right this minute.

If so, he intended to wait here till she came out.

He did not know if Hollister was expecting the redhead to visit him again today.

If so, he intended to wait here till she arrived.

The only thing he did know was that Hollister had lied to him.

Each kilo of cocaine was packed in a brown paper bag.

Last night, when Jimmy Legs saw the paper bags, he said, “You cheap fucks, you can’t afford Baggies?”

You could fit a kilo of coke in a gallon-size plastic Baggie and then tie it shut with a little blue plastic tie. Jimmy and Charlie were doing that now. Transferring the twenty kilos of coke to plastic Baggies from the brown paper bags the fucking farmers had packed it in.

Last night it had taken the Excalibur exactly five minutes to get out beyond the three-mile limit where the ship was waiting. Panamanian registry. Rusting old hulk. Neither the ship nor the cigarette showing any lights, and besides they were out well past the limit. Anyway, if the Coast Guard showed, the cigarette — traveling at close to a hundred miles an hour — would leave them in the dust in a minute. Everybody on the ship was nervous as a cat. Amateurs, all of them. Two bearded guys looking like Castro and his brother. We wann to see d’money firs’. Hardly speak English. Greed in their eyes, fingers itchy. We wann to see d’money.

Jimmy told them they’d get the money after the coke was tested.

Both he and Charlie Nubbs were packing guns. Anybody got frisky here, there was going to be a lot of spics with holes in them. Besides there were three other guys down on the Excalibur where the money was.

They went down to this cabin.

The ship stunk. Of everything. Jimmy could hardly decide what stunk worst, the two bearded dope entrepreneurs or the ship. There were five more guys down in the cabin. Bad odds there in the cabin, seven to two. Jimmy didn’t like being way the fuck out here on the Gulf with seven guys who looked liked the bandidos in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He was counting on them being new in the business, though, and trying to make a good impression on the big boys. They fucked up this time around, the next time they showed their asses it was adios, amigos. Also, they knew the million bucks was still on the Excalibur down there on the water with three guys packing Sten guns. If the coke tested good, they’d work out a step-by-step exchange that wouldn’t put either the money or the coke or anybody involved in jeopardy.

Twenty brown paper bags to check.

They used three tests.

Sometimes only one test for any given kilo, sometimes two, sometimes all three in combination. They wanted these raggedy-assed farmers from the wilds of South America to know they were dealing with professionals here.

The first of the tests was the old standby cobalt thiocyanate Brighter-the-Blue. The chemical dissolved in cocaine leaving some kind of blue shit, and if it was a very deep blue, you had yourself very high-grade coke.

The second test was with plain water.

You scooped a spoonful out of the brown paper bag, and dropped a little of it in a few ounces of water. If it dissolved right away, it was pure cocaine hydrochloride. If any of the powder didn’t dissolve, the shit had been cut with sugar.

The third test was with Clorox.

You dropped a spoonful of the powder in a glass jar with Clorox in it.

If you got a white halo as the powder fell, the stuff was coke.

If you saw any red trailing the powder, then man, the stuff was cut with some kind of synthetic shit.

It took them quite a while to test the twenty bags.

Satisfied that they were buying good coke, they shook hands with the bearded farmers, transferred the coke to the Excalibur and the money to the rusting tub, and went their separate ways.

Today, Saturday, the twenty-first day of June, they were making some discoveries.

They were discovering, first of all, that you couldn’t be too careful when you were dealing with guys who looked like farmers that had never seen or used a toilet in their lives, which was why the ship stunk so bad. What you had to do — no matter how nervous and inexperienced any guy selling dope looked — was not take anything at all for granted in the dope business. Because, as they were just discovering, it was possible for certain fucking thieves to fill a bag with three-quarters coke and one-quarter sugar, the sugar wrapped in Saran Wrap on the bottom of the bag.

It wasn’t that the fucking farmers couldn’t afford Baggies, it was that you could see through Baggies.

Jimmy recalled now that they had dumped several brown bags of the shit on the tabletop there in the cabin. Show the farmers how careful they were being, take their test samples from anywhere in the pile there on the table.

But Charlie Nubbs recalled it was the farmers who’d handed them the bags for testing, one by one. The first few bags, the ones they knew would be carefully tested, had contained coke right down to the bottom. Go ahead, dump it on the table, we’re honest farmers.

Jimmy and Charlie both recalled that after they’d dumped three, four bags on the table, they’d stopped doing that. You had twenty keys of coke, it made a hell of a mess you went dumping it all over the table. Besides, how could you not trust these two bearded dopes, bringing their coke up in brown paper bags and nodding and grinning while the tests were being made — thank you for testing our coke, thank you for dealing with such unworthy peasants, nodding, grinning, also smelling very bad.

What they were discovering now was that only five of the brown paper bags were actually filled with coke down to the bottom. Fifteen of the bags ranged anywhere from sixty percent to seventy-five percent coke and the rest Saran-Wrapped sugar.

So what had happened was they’d paid a million bucks for twenty keys of coke, but they’d only got something like sixteen keys for their money because the other four keys were Domino, man. So instead of paying $50,000 a key, they had actually paid $62,500 according to Charlie’s pocket calculator. Moreover, they had agreed to sell ten keys to the two Miami spics for $60,000 a key, which meant they would be losing $25,000 on those ten keys.

Jimmy said if he ever caught those farmers he would cut off their balls.

Charlie wanted to know what they were going to do about the two Miami spics.

“Pack the shit back in the paper bags,” Jimmy said, “the way the farmers done to us. Only we go them one better ’cause we ain’t farmers. With us, it’ll be fifty-fifty separated by Saran Wrap. We’ll be selling them five keys for the six-hundred K instead of ten keys, which means we’ll be getting a hundred and twenty thou per key, and that ain’t zucchini.”

Charlie agreed this was not zucchini.

Hollister came down the steps at a run, still wearing the jeans and the red shirt, but with a yellow windbreaker over the shirt, partially zipped up the front, billowing slightly as he came out from the protection of the building and into the wind and the rain.

In one hell of a hurry, Matthew thought, watching him as he ran toward a blue Ford parked in a space some six cars down and diagonally across from where Matthew was parked. He unlocked the door, got in, and started it at once. Matthew debated — but only for the instant it took him to turn the ignition key — whether he should follow him. Suppose the girl was upstairs in the apartment? The Ford moved past on the wet pavement, and Matthew immediately pulled out after it.

Florida license plate.

16D-13346.

Matthew’s dashboard clock read 11:40.

Rain lashed the windows, clattered noisily on the roof of the Karmann Ghia. The windshield was fogging. He wiped at it with the heel of his hand, followed the Ford when it took a sharp left onto the southern bridge to the mainland. Over the bridge, not a boat on the water. Another left onto US 41. Heading north into the rain. Just a shade over the speed limit. Headlights on against the rain. Taillights glowing red in the gloom. Passing the northern bridge to Whisper now, still heading north on 41. Steady at fifty miles an hour, five over the limit on this part of the Trail. Causeway to Flamingo Key and Lucy’s Circle on the left now, the road to Three Points and the Cow Crossing on the right. Still heading north. Up ahead on the left, the Helen Gottlieb Memorial Auditorium and just past that the new Sheraton sitting on the bay.

The Ford made a left turn.

Matthew’s dashboard clock read 11:52.

He watched as the Ford pulled into a parking space.

Hollister got out and walked swiftly toward the entrance to the hotel.

Matthew parked the car some six spaces down from the Ford.

At the Suncrest Motel, further north on the Trail, Domingo looked at his watch and said in Spanish, “It’s five minutes to twelve, where’s the girl?”

“Don’t worry,” Ernesto said. “Sixty-five a key is very good money. I’m sure she’ll be here.”

He had gone to the bank to pick up the money yesterday. When they asked him what they called the blonde girl in Spanish, he was confused at first. Was he supposed to say “ladrona,” which meant “thief,” which was what she was? Was he supposed to say “puta,” which meant “whore,” which was also what she was? And then he remembered his last conversation with Amaros, where he’d called the girl Cenicienta.

He said to the bank manager, “Cenicienta.”

The bank manager smiled.

“Yes,” he said, pleased. “What does that mean in English?”

“I don’t know how to say it in English,” Ernesto said, and shrugged. “Es un cuento de hadas.”

“Ah, yes, I see,” the bank manager said, still smiling.

He didn’t understand a word of Spanish.

Now, here in the motel, Domingo lying on the bed and looking up at the ceiling, the rain sweeping the windows, Ernesto wondered if the girl would turn out to be Cenicienta after all.

As if reading his mind, Domingo said, “We’ll have to look at the pictures, verdad?”

“Yes,” Ernesto said.

She came out of the hotel wearing the same short, shiny, fire-engine red rainslicker she’d had on yesterday, this time over a blue skirt, same shiny red boots, nothing on her short red hair, no sunglasses, either, not on a rainy day, blue eyes flashing as she came down the steps and began walking toward where Matthew was parked.

As she approached the car, he quickly turned his head away.

She went right on by, striding into the rain, stopping at a white Toyota parked some four spaces to the left.

Now what? he thought.

Wait for Hollister to come out?

Follow her?

Yes. She was the one Otto had been tracking.

He started the Ghia.

As soon as she backed out of her space, he backed out of his. When she pulled out of the hotel parking lot, he was right behind her.

The Florida license plate on the Toyota read 201-ZHW.

A yellow-and-black Hertz #1 sticker was on the rear bumper.

She made a left turn at the light and headed north on 41.

Matthew was right behind her.

A moment later, Vincent Hollister came out of the hotel.

He was carrying a valise.

The Suncrest Motel.

Adorable.

A ramshackle office. A swimming pool the size of a thimble. A gravel driveway leading to eight cabins spaced some ten feet apart from each other. Opposite the cabins, an asphalt rectangle with parking for about a dozen cars.

There was a roadside joint some fifty yards up the road from the motel. It was Vincent’s impression — and he’d expressed this to Jenny last night, when they’d booked the room — that the place catered to men and women who wandered over from the bar next door, booked a hot bed, and used it for an hour or two.

Delightful.

He told her he’d be afraid to touch anything here for fear he’d catch whatever dread disease was circulating these days. Remembering the herpes she’d caught from Amaros, he apologized a moment later.

On the way back to his place last night, she explained the plan.

She’d show up at twelve noon. Cabin number three, as specified.

She’d ask to see the money.

She’d count the money.

There was supposed to be $240,500, which was $260,000 for the four keys less Klement’s seven and a half percent.

If the money was all there and it didn’t look like Monopoly money, she’d stay there in cabin number three with one of the buyers — and the money — while the second buyer went over to where Vincent would be waiting in cabin number five with the valise full of dope.

Maybe they wouldn’t want to test the dope at all, but Vincent doubted that. If you’re paying sixty-five a key, you’re going to test what you’re buying.

If the dope was okay, which of course it was, they would call on the phone — cabin five to cabin three — and Jenny would walk out with the money at the same time the buyer walked back with the dope.

Trains that passed in the night.

No opportunity for funny business.

But just in case, Vincent had a .38 Colt Detective Special tucked into the waistband of his jeans, under the windbreaker.

The Suncrest Motel.

That’s what the sign outside the place read. TV, the sign further advised. SWIMMING POOL. UNITS OFF ROAD. AIR-CONDITIONED. LOW RATES.

Another sign advised VACANCY.

The Toyota made a left turn across 41 and disappeared up the motel’s gravel driveway. Matthew waited till the flow of southbound traffic eased, made the turn across the road and entered the driveway just in time to see the girl knocking on the door to cabin number three. A man opened the door. They exchanged a few words and then the girl stepped inside.

Matthew pulled the Ghia up alongside a small amoeba-shaped hole in the ground that he guessed was the motel’s swimming pool, and was looking toward the cabin again when the door to the office opened and a tall, burly man wearing a gray raincoat and rainhat stepped out and walked directly to the car. Matthew rolled down his window.

“Help you?” the man said.

“Uh... yes,” Matthew said. “I’d like a room, please.”

In cabin number three, Ernesto was confused.

The girl didn’t look at all like the pictures they had got from her stepmother. In the pictures, the girl was very blonde and very sexy. Here in person, if this was the girl, she had short red hair that was very wet and sticking to her head from when she’d walked over from her car, no makeup on her face, not sexy at all in a red coat and red boots, looking more like Caperucita Roja than Cenicienta.

She was all business.

“I’d like to see the money, please,” she said.

“We would like to see the dope, please,” Ernesto said.

“The money first.”

Ernesto looked at Domingo.

“You afraid I’ll bop you on the head and steal it?” she said, and smiled.

The smile made her look more like the girl in the pictures. The smile and the blue eyes.

“So?” she said.

Ernesto was just realizing she wasn’t carrying any kind of bag. So where was the dope?

“You don’t have the dope?” he said.

“It’s coming,” she said.

“Coming?”

“A friend is bringing it.”

“A friend?”

“In a car. He’s only a few minutes behind me.”

Ernesto went to the window, spread two Venetian blind slats with his fingers and looked out. He saw a tall, dark-haired man coming out of the motel office and getting into a tan, foreign-looking car. The car door closed behind him. The car started.

“Is that him?” Ernesto asked.

She went to the window, looked out. “No,” she said, “he’s driving a blue Ford. That’s a Karmann Ghia.” The car moved past in the rain. She turned away from the window. “So?” she said. “Do I see the money, or do we forget the whole thing?”

She was playing it very hard considering how badly she wanted this deal. She’d been waiting for this deal to come along ever since they arrived in Calusa at the beginning of April. Maybe she’d been waiting for this deal ever since she went to California to become a great big movie star. She would have turned free tricks for the entire Russian army to get this deal. Please God, she thought, don’t let anything happen to screw up this deal.

Ernesto was thinking if she isn’t the girl, who needs the dope she’s selling at sixty-five a key? We’ve got other people waiting who’ll sell for only sixty a key.

Domingo was thinking the same thing.

“So what do you say?” she said. “Do we deal or do we just stand here staring at each other?”

“Get the money,” Ernesto said to Domingo.

He wanted to study her face a little longer, make sure.

He could always tell her later to take a walk.

Matthew’s cabin smelled of Lysol. There was a dresser with cigarette scars on it and a flaking mirror over it. There was an air conditioner in the window. There was a plaid cover on the bed. There was a telephone on a nightstand beside the bed. In the bathroom, there was a plastic glass on the sink, and a loop of paper on the toilet seat, telling him it had been sanitized. He went to the window and opened the Venetian blinds. He could not see cabin number three from here. All he could see was the asphalt rectangle where he’d parked his car. A red LeBaron convertible was parked there, too, alongside the girl’s white Toyota.

He was about to close the blinds again when a blue Ford pulled in alongside his car.

Hollister.

Carrying a valise.

It was ten minutes past twelve by Vincent’s watch.

She had told him to give her a half-hour in there. That would be time enough to count the money. There was nothing they could take from her, so she didn’t feel herself in any danger. If the money wasn’t all there or if God forbid there wasn’t any money at all, she’d simply say good-bye.

Twenty minutes to go, he thought.

He was in the cabin they had booked last night. Cabin number five. Booked it for two days, paid the man in advance. All she had to do after she counted the money was send somebody over to test the dope.

The dope was in the valise on the bed.

All Vincent had to do was wait.

Which was the hard part.

The money was in hundred-dollar bills, neatly stacked in a dispatch case. Jenny took the bills out of the case and began counting them. Vincent had been hoping for hundred-dollar bills, but this made the counting harder for her. All the while she counted, both men watched her intently. Not her hands riffling the bills as she counted them, but her face.

Kept looking at her face.

The bills were wrapped in narrow paper wrappers, supposed to be a thousand dollars in each stack, but Jenny wasn’t taking any chances on being shortchanged. She was counting every bill in each wrapper. Two hundred and forty little stacks of bills, neatly wrapped with $1000 stamped on each wrapper. Plus five loose hundred-dollar bills, which she counted first.

They kept watching her.

One of them said something in Spanish to the other one.

She kept counting.

She had counted a hundred and five thousand dollars when the short one said, “Miss Santoro?”

Her hands stopped.

Her heart stopped.

She looked up from the neatly wrapped bills on the tabletop.

The big one with the slick little mustache was standing there with an open switchblade knife in his hand.

The other one had a photograph in his hand.

“This is you, no?” he said.

Twelve thirty-five by Vincent’s watch and nobody knocking on the door.

What the hell was going on in there?

How long could it possibly take someone to count two hundred and forty thousand dollars? And some change. Had they brought the money in singles? Had they broken into someone’s piggy bank?

She had to be still counting the money in there because she’d told him she would simply leave if there was any kind of hitch.

So there had to be money in there and it had to be real money or she’d have split right away.

So she had to be counting it.

But what was taking her so long?

“This one, too,” Ernesto said, and showed her another picture.

“No, that’s not me, either,” she said.

It was her, all right. It was her in LA at that producer’s party where she’d blown him later in the toilet for three hundred bucks. And the other picture was one taken on the beach at Malibu where a girlfriend of hers... where’d he get these pictures?

“My name is Sandy Jennings,” she said. “I don’t know who this girl—”

“And this,” he said.

Another recent one. At San Simeon when she’d gone up there with the same girlfriend who by the way was a hooker. She’d sent it to her mother last year sometime, dumb picture of her standing in front of—

“None of those are me,” she said.

“They’re you,” Ernesto said.

“Look, you want to deal dope,” she said, toughing it out, “or you want to look at pic—”

And Domingo cut her.

When Vincent heard the scream, the only thing he thought was that his money was in jeopardy. He did not give a rat’s ass about Jenny. All he cared about was the money they were supposed to get for the dope. He had already done quite a bit to protect the dope and the money he hoped to get for it, and he had not come all this way to have two Spanish gentlemen from Miami walk off with what he considered rightfully his own.

He pulled the .38 from the waistband of his jeans, stepped out into the rain, and started running toward cabin number three.

The owner of the motel was reading that morning’s newspaper when he heard the second scream. His gray raincoat and rainhat were hanging on a wall hook to the left of his desk. There was a picture of Madonna in the nude hanging on the wall alongside a calendar. The owner had never heard Madonna sing.

What he decided to do, he decided to ignore the screams.

Because every now and then somebody would smack a girl around in one of the cabins and there was a lot of screaming and fussing but it all worked out later in the sack. One of the things you learned in the motel business was that everything sooner or later worked itself out in the sack. Which was why he never called the police when anybody started screaming or yelling.

One of the switchboard lights popped on.

Cabin number eight.

The one he’d rented to the man with the Karmann Ghia.

The first thing Vincent saw when he burst into the cabin — maybe the first thing he wanted to see — was the money on the table. Lots and lots of crisp green bills in little wrappers, the legend “$1000” on each of the wrappers. Open dispatch case beside them.

The next thing he saw was Jenny.

She was lying on the bed. She was bleeding very badly. Her face, her arms, her legs where her skirt was pulled back.

A very big man was standing over her, his back to the door. He turned when Vincent came in. He had a very narrow mustache. There was a knife in his hand. The blade of the knife was covered with blood.

Vincent thought I’ve come this far and shot the man between the eyes. The man toppled backward onto the bed, almost onto Jenny. The other man in the room was reaching into his coat. Vincent figured he was reaching for a gun, so he shot him, too.

He went to the table and started packing the wrapped bundles of bills into the dispatch case. He closed the dispatch case.

From the bed, Jenny whispered, “Help me.”

Vincent said, “Ta, darling.”

“Please,” she said.

But he was already gone.

The last and only time Matthew was shot, Detective Morris Bloom gave him a piece of advice.

“Matthew,” he’d said, “never get in the way of a man with a gun. If you see a man with a gun coming toward you, move aside and let him go by. If you feel like being a hero, trip him as he goes by. But never get in his way.”

Matthew didn’t particularly feel like being a hero.

But he had heard the shots when he was talking to the police on the phone in his room, and the shots combined with the screams he’d earlier heard were enough to propel him out of cabin number eight, into the rain, and sprinting for cabin number three when he saw Hollister coming out of there with a dispatch case in one hand and a gun in the other.

Hollister was running for one of the cabins further up the line.

Matthew did just as Bloom had advised.

He stepped aside to let Hollister go by.

But even though he didn’t particularly feel like becoming a hero, he tripped him.

And when Hollister fell headlong onto the gravel, Matthew kicked him in the head.

Which was something else Bloom had taught him.