A Bullet for Cinderella

by John D. MacDonald

  “He’s dead, Toni.”

  Her face lost its life. “You certainly didn’t waste any time working up to that. How?”

  “He was taken prisoner by the Chinese in Korea. So was I. We were in the same hut. He got sick and died there and we buried him there.”

  “What a stinking way for Timmy to go. He was a nice guy. We got along fine, right up into the second year of high school, and then he started considering his social position and brushed me off. I don’t blame him. He was too young to know any better. He left me to take a big hack at the dancing-school set. My reputation wasn’t exactly solid gold.” She grinned. “Nor is it yet.”

  “He mentioned you while we were in camp.”

  “Did he?”

  “He called you Cindy.”

  For a long moment she looked puzzled, and then her face cleared. “Oh, that. You know, I’d just about forgotten that. It was sort of a gag. In that eighth grade we had a teacher who was all hopped up about class activities. I was the rebel. She stuck me in a play as Cinderella. Timmy was the prince. He called me Cindy for quite a while after that. A year maybe. A pretty good year, too. I was a wild kid. I didn’t know what I wanted. I knew that what I had, I didn’t want. But I didn’t know how to make a change. I was too young. Gee, I’m sorry about Timmy. That’s depressing. It makes me feel old, Tal. I don’t like to feel old.”

  “I came back and tried to find a Cindy. I didn’t know your right name. I found a couple. Cindy Waskowitz—”

  “A great fat pig. But nothing jolly about her. Brother, she was as nasty as they come.”

  “She’s dead, too. Glandular trouble of some kind.”

  “Couldn’t you go around wearing a wreath or singing hymns like Crossing the Bar?”

  “I’m sorry. Then there was Cindy Kirschner.”

  “Kirschner. Wait a minute. A younger kid. Teeth like this?”

  “That’s right. But she had them fixed. Now she has a husband and a couple of kids.”

  “Good for her.”

  “She was the one who remembered the class play or skit or whatever it was. And the name of the eighth-grade teacher. Miss Major. She couldn’t remember who played Cinderella. So I found Miss Major. She went blind quite a while ago and—”

  “For God’s sake, Tal! I mean really!”

  “I’m sorry. Anyway, she identified you. I went out and saw your sister. I came here hunting for Antoinette Rasi. The way your sister spoke about you, when I couldn’t find you, I tried the police. They told me the name you use. Then it was easy.”

  She looked at me coldly and dubiously. “Police, eh? They give you all the bawdy details?”

  “They told me a few things. Not much.”

  “But enough. Enough so that when you walked in here you had to act like a little kid inspecting a leper colony. What the hell did you expect to find? A room all mirrors? A turnstile?”

  “Don’t get sore.”

  “You look stuffy to me, Tal Howard. Stuffy people bore me. So what the hell was this? A sentimental journey all the way from prison camp to dig up poor little me?”

  “Not exactly. And I’m not stuffy. And I don’t give a damn what you are or what you do.”

  The glare faded. She shrugged and said, “Skip it. I don’t know why I should all of a sudden get sensitive. I’m living the way I want to live. I guess it’s just from talking about Timmy. That was a tender spot. From thinking about the way I was. At thirteen I wanted to lick the world with my bare hands. Now I’m twenty-eight. Do I look it?”

  “No, you really don’t.”

  She rested her cheek on her fist. She looked thoughtful. “You know, Tal Howard, another reason why I think I jumped on you. I think I’m beginning to get bored. I think I’m due for some kind of a change.”

  “Like what?”

  “More than a new town. I don’t know. Just restless. Skip that. You said this wasn’t exactly a sentimental journey. What is it?”

  “There’s something else involved.”

  “Mystery, hey? What’s with you?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “What do you do? You married?”

  “I’m not doing anything right now. I’m not married. I came here from the west coast. I haven’t got any permanent address.”

  “You’re not the type.”

  “How do you mean that?”

  “That information doesn’t fit you, somehow. So it’s just a temporary thing with you. You’re between lives, aren’t you? And maybe as restless as I am?”

  “I could be.”

  She winked at me. “And I think you’ve been taking yourself too seriously lately. Have you noticed that?”

  “I guess I have.”

  “Now what’s the mystery?”

  “I’m looking for something. Timmy hid something. Before he left. I know what it is. I don’t know where it is. Before he died, not very many hours before he died, Timmy said, ‘Cindy would know.’ That’s why I’m here.”

  “Here from the west coast, looking for Cindy. He hid something nice, then. Like some nice money?”

  “If you can help me, I’ll give you some money.”

  “How much?”

  “It depends on how much he hid.”

  “Maybe you admitted too fast that it was money, Tal. I am noted for my fondness for money. It pleases me. I like the feel of it and the smell of it and the look of it. I’m nuts about it. I like all I can get, maybe because I spent so much time without any of it. A psychiatrist friend told me it was my basic drive. I can’t ever have too much.”

  “If that was really your basic drive, you wouldn’t say it like that, I don’t think. It’s just the way you like to think you are.”

  She was angry again. “Why does every type you meet try to tell you what you really are?”

  “It’s a popular hobby.”

  “So all right. He hid something. Now I’ve got a big fat disappointment for you. I wouldn’t have any idea where he hid something. I don’t know what he means.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Don’t look at me like that. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I do know and I won’t tell you because I want it all. Honestly, Tal, I don’t know. I can’t think what he could have meant.”

  I believed her.

  “This sun is actually getting too hot. Let’s go inside,” she said. I helped carry the things in. She rinsed the dishes. Having seen her the previous evening I would not have thought she had the sort of figure to wear slacks successfully. They were beautifully tailored and she looked well in them. We went into the living-room. It was slightly overfurnished. The lamps were in bad taste. But it was clean and comfortable.

  She sat on the couch and pulled one leg up and locked her hands around her knee. “Want to hear about Timmy and me? The sad story? Not sad, I guess.”

  “If you want to tell it.”

  “I’ve never told anybody. Maybe it’s time. I turned fifteen before I got out of the eighth grade. I was older than the other kids. Timmy was fourteen. He was the biggest boy in class. We never had anything to do with each other until that skit. We practiced a couple of times. We got to be friends. It wasn’t a girl-friend-boy-friend thing. More like a couple of boys. I wasn’t the most feminine creature in the world, believe me. I could run like the wind and I could fight with my fists.

  “I didn’t want Timmy to come out to the house. I was ashamed of where I lived. I never wanted any of the kids to see how and where I lived. My God, we lived like animals. It wasn’t so bad until my mother died but from then on it was pretty bad. You saw the place?”

  “I saw it.”

  “The old man kept pretty well soaked in his vino. My brother was completely no good. My sister slept with anybody who took the trouble to ask her. We lived in filth. We were on the county relief rolls. The do-gooders brought us food and clothing at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I was proud as hell inside. I couldn’t see any way out. The best I could do was try to keep myself clean as a button and not
let any of the kids come out there.”

  She came over and took one of my cigarettes, bent over for me to light it. “Timmy came out there. It nearly killed me. Then I saw that it was all right. He didn’t pay any attention to the way things were. I mean it didn’t seem to mean much to him. That’s the way they were, so that’s the way they were. He was my friend. After that I was able to talk to him. He understood. He had his dreams, too. We talked over our dreams.

  “When school was out that summer he came out a lot. He used to cut lawns and make money and we’d go to the movies. We used to swim in the river. He’d come out on his bike. He got hold of a broken-down boy’s bike for me. He fixed it up and I painted it. Then we could get around better. The relief people gave the old man a hard ride for buying me a bike. I had to explain how I got it and prove I didn’t steal it. I can still remember the sneaky eyes on that cop.

  “When it happened to us it was sudden. It was in late August. I’d gotten a job in the dime store by lying about my age and filling out the forms wrong. I was squirreling the money away. I spent Sundays with Timmy. His brother and his father didn’t like him to see me, but he managed it.

  “He had a basket on the front of his bike and we went off on a Sunday picnic. We went a long way into the country. Fifteen miles, I guess. We walked the bikes up a trail. We found a place under trees where it was like a park. It was far away from anybody. We could have been alone in the world. Maybe we were. We ate and then we stretched out and talked about how high school would be when it started in September. It was hot. We were in the shade. He went to sleep. I watched him while he was sleeping, the way his eyelashes were, and the way he looked like a little kid when he slept. I felt a big warmth inside me. It was a new way to feel toward him. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I slipped my arm under his neck and half lay across him and kissed him. He woke up with me kissing him.

  “He was funny and kind of half scared and sort of half eager at the same time. I’d had a pretty liberal education as you can well imagine. I guess it was pretty sad. Two kids being as awkward and fumbling as you can possibly imagine, there on that hill in the shade. But awkward as we were, it happened.

  “We hardly talked at all on the way back. I knew enough to be damn scared. But fortunately nothing happened. From then on we were different with each other. It got to be something we did whenever we had a chance. It got better and better for us. But we weren’t friends the way we were before. Sometimes we seemed almost to be enemies. We tried to hurt each other. It was a strong hunger. We found good places to go. It lasted for a year and a half. We never talked about marriage or things like that. We lived for now. There was one place we would go. We’d take one of the boats and—”

  She stopped abruptly. We looked into each other’s eyes.

  “Now you know where he meant?” I asked her softly.

  “I think I do.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t think we can handle it that way, do you?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I think we better go there together, don’t you?”

  “There’s nothing to keep you from going there by yourself, Antoinette.”

  “I know that. What would it mean if I told you I won’t?”

  “In spite of the money hunger?”

  “I would be honest with a thing like this. I would. Believe me. I’d have known nothing about it. How much is there?”

  I waited several moments, measuring her and the situation. I couldn’t get to it without her. “Nearly sixty thousand, he said.”

  She sat down abruptly, saying a soundless Oh. “How—how would Timmy get hold of money like that?”

  “He did all the book work for the four companies he and his brother owned. He took over two years milking that much in cash out of the four companies.”

  “Why would he do that to George? It doesn’t sound like Timmy.”

  “He planned to run off with Eloise.”

  “That thing George married? That pig. I knew her. Where is she?”

  “She went off with another man two years ago.”

  “Maybe she took the money with her.”

  “Timmy said she didn’t know where he buried it.”

  “And she’d hardly be able to find it. I can guarantee that. So—this is George’s money then, isn’t it?”

  I waited a moment. “Yes, it is.”

  “But it was already stolen.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And nobody knows about it. George doesn’t suspect. Nobody knows about it but you and me, Tal.”

  “There’s another one who knows about it. A man named Earl Fitzmartin. He was in the camp, too. He didn’t know about the name Cindy. Now he does. He’s smart. He may be able to trace the name to you.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s smart and he’s vicious.”

  “So are a lot of my friends.”

  “I don’t think they’re like Fitz. I don’t think you could go with Fitz and find it and come back from wherever you went to find it, that is if it was a quiet place and he could put you where he dug up the money.”

  “Like that?”

  “I think so. I think there’s something wrong in his head. I don’t think he’s very much like other people.”

  “Can you and I—can we trust each other, Tal?”

  “I think we can.” We shook hands with formal ceremony.

  She looked at me quizzically. “How about you, Tal? Why are you after the money?”

  “Like they say about climbing mountains. Because it’s there.”

  “What will it mean to you?”

  “I don’t know. I have to find it first.”

  “And then all of a sudden it’s going to be some kind of an answer to everything?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What fouled you up, Tal? What broke your wagon?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I can place most people. I can’t quite place you. You look like one type. You know. Played ball in school. Sells bonds or something. Working up to a ranch-type house, a Brooks wardrobe, and some day winter vacations in Bermuda after the kids are in college. You look like that all except the eyes. And the eyes don’t look like that at all.”

  “What do they look like?”

  “The eyes on the horse that knows they’re going to shoot him because he was clumsy and busted his leg.”

  “When do we go after the money?”

  She stepped to the kitchen door and looked at the clock. “You’d feel better if we stayed together until we get it, wouldn’t you?”

  “I guess I would. But it isn’t essential.”

  “Your faith is touching. Didn’t the police give you the word?”

  “They said something about a cute variation of the badger game.”

  “It was very cute. They couldn’t convict. And it was very dishonest, Tal. But it wasn’t a case of fleecing the innocent. It was pulled on some citizens who were trying to make a dishonest buck. Like this. I tell them my boy friend is on one of the wheels at the Aztec. I tell the sucker the wheel is gimmicked. My boy friend is sore at the house. The sucker has to have two or three thousand he wants trebled. I say I can’t go in with him. I give him a password to tell the boy friend. So they let him win six or seven thousand. He comes here with the money. The boy friend is to show up later. But when the boy friend shows up he is with a very evil-looking citizen who holds a gun on him. Gun has silencer. Evil type shoots boy friend. With a blank. Boy friend groans and dies. Evil type turns gun on sucker. Takes the house money back, plus his two or three, and one time twelve, thousand. Sucker begs for his life. Reluctantly granted. Told to leave town fast. He does. He doesn’t want to be mixed up in any murder. House money goes back to house. I get a cut of the take. I love acting. You should see me tremble and faint.”

  “Suppose he doesn’t come back here with the money?”

  “They always have. They like to win the money and the girl too. They think it’s like th
e movies. Now will you trust me out of your sight?”

  “I’ll have to, won’t I?”

  “I guess that’s it. You’ll have to.” She smiled lazily.

  “I have some errands. You can wait here. I’m going places where you can’t go. You can wait here or you can meet me here. It’s going to take three or four hours. By then it’s going to be too late to get to the money today. We can go after it tomorrow morning.”

  “How are we going to divide it up?”

  “Shouldn’t we count it first?”

  “But after we count it?”

  She came toward me and put her hands on my shoulders. “Maybe we won’t divide it up, Tal. Maybe we won’t squirrel it away. It’s free money. Maybe we’ll just put it in the pot and spend it as we need it until it’s all gone. Maybe we’ll see how far we can distribute it. We could spread it from Acapulco to Paris. Then maybe we won’t be restless any more. It would buy some drinks to Timmy. In some nice places.”

  I felt uneasy. I said, “I’m not that attractive to you.”

  “I know you’re not. I like meaner-looking men.” She took her hands away. “Maybe to you I’m like they used to say in the old-fashioned books. Damaged goods.”

  “Not visibly.”

  She shook her head. “You kill me. It was just an idea. You seem nice and quiet. Not demanding. Let’s say restful. You said you don’t know what you’ll do with the money.”

  “I said maybe I’ll know when I get it.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “Then we’ll talk some more.”

  “You’ll wait here?”

  “I’ll meet you here.”

  “At five-thirty.”

  She said she had to change. I left. I wondered if I was being a fool. I had lunch. I didn’t have much appetite. I went to a movie. I couldn’t follow the movie. I was worrying too much. I began to be convinced I had been a fool. She wasn’t the sort of woman to trust. I wondered by what magic she had hypnotized me into trusting her. I could imagine her digging up the money. Once she had it there was nothing I could do. I wondered if my trust had been based on some inner unwillingness to actually take the money. Maybe subconsciously I wanted the moral problem off my hands.