by Ed McBain
Ernesto looked at the photograph.
Blonde, good, that was more like it. Sexy chiquita grinning into the camera, silky low-cut dress, tits spilling over the top, one hand on her hip, the other holding a drink, long legs in high-heeled sandals.
He handed the picture to Domingo and then said, "Have you any more like this?"
"I think she sent some from Seattle when she was up there, let me see." She began rummaging through the box again. "Is that wrong of me?" she asked. "To love her the most?" She turned to look into Ernesto's face. "Detective Garcia?" she said. "Is that wrong of me?"
Domingo suddenly tensed.
"One cannot dictate to the heart," Ernesto said, and tapped his chest.
"I'm sorry," Annie said, puzzled. "You did say Garcia, didn't you?"
Domingo was perched on the edge of the couch now, the picture of Jenny Santoro at a Hollywood party in his left hand, like Fay Wray in King Kong's huge paw.
"Gomez," Ernesto said, and placed his hand gently on Domingo's right arm.
"Gomez, yes," Annie said, and smiled. "I have a terrible time with names."
"If you can find those other pictures," Ernesto said, and returned the smile. "Por favor."
In his pocket, Domingo loosened his grip on the switchblade knife.
7
Luis Amaros was known as El Armadillo to those in the drug trade. This was not because he looked like an armadillo. Not many people looked like armadillos. In fact, not many people knew what armadillos looked like. Most people confused armadillos with anteaters. An anteater had a long narrow snout, and a long sticky tongue, and a long shaggy tail, and it looked like a hairy flying saucer with legs. An armadillo, on the other hand, had a covering of armorlike, jointed, bony plates, and it looked like a small tank with legs. Luis Amaros did not look like a tank. He looked more like a fire hydrant. Short and squat and a bit chubby. An amiable fire hydrant was what he looked like. A good-natured fire hydrant. He looked like Baby Doc Duvalier of the island Haiti, was what he looked like, but he was not a member of the Duvalier family. Luis was a fire hydrant member of the Amaros family of Bogota, and he was into dealing drugs. Well, that was a given. If you were Colombian, and you lived in Florida, you were not moving coffee beans.
The reason Luis Amaros was called El Armadillo was because, like the armor-plated burrowing mammal that was his namesake, Luis was very well-armored. There was hardly any way anyone could get to him. Anybody took a fall for dealing dope, it wasn't going to be Luis. It was going to be a dozen other people lower in the echelon, but it was not going to be Luis. That was why so many other Colombians lived in shitty prison cells and Luis lived in a luxurious house on Key Biscayne.
Luis smiled a lot. He had a chubby little face, and an infectious Bugs Bunny sort of grin. It was a wonder people didn't call him El Conejo, which meant "the rabbit" in Spanish. Because actually, he resembled a chubby little rabbit more than he did either a fire hydrant or an armadillo. Women thought Luis was cute. Even some men thought he was cute "You some sweetheart, baby," customers would often say to him, which Luis took to mean he had a nice friendly smile and chubby cheeks everybody wanted to pinch. Actually, his customers meant he drove a hard bargain. "You some sweetheart, baby." And he would slit your throat for a dime. Or get someone else to do it for a nickel.
Luis prided himself on the size of his penis.
He would often ask girls if he was bigger than Johnny Holmes. Johnny Holmes was a pom star who couldn't act at all, but he had this enormous organ. In the movies Luis had seen with Johnny Holmes in them, Holmes always looked a little soft, as if the damn thing was too long to stay hard all the way to the head. Luis would play a Johnny Holmes movie on the VHS, and ask whichever girl he was with who was bigger, him or Johnny Holmes. They all said he was ten times bigger than Holmes, and also a lot cuter.
On Thursday morning, when the call came from Ernesto Moreno in Calusa, Luis was showing a twenty-year-old black girl a trick with an apple and a handful of cocaine. Luis himself was very light-skinned, but he had a terrific yen for black girls. He also had a terrific yen for apples. Cocaine, he could take or leave, mostly leave. Cocaine was business. The trouble with Al Pacino in that movie Scarface-aside from the fact that he was ugly and wanted to fuck his own sister-was that he mixed business with pleasure. Every time you saw Pacino, he was snorting a bucketful of coke. Luis rarely touched the stuff. But there were a lot of girls who enjoyed coke a lot and Luis always kept some in the house to meet the need. Coke-snorting girls were often very grateful girls, except when every now and then you came across a eheap cunt who needed to be taught a lesson.
Luis spoke with a Spanish accent that a lot of girls thought was cute. Not Hispanic girls. They didn't think the accent was cute, they thought everybody talked that way. Anglos, though, slender young things in thin little dresses, flitting around the hotel bars, they thought his accent was cute. They also thought he might have some coke. They heard a Spanish accent, they automatically figured coke. Young girls nowadays, you said, "Hello, how do you do?" they answered, "Hi, my name is Cindy, you got any blow?" That was one of the names for cocaine. Blow.
Before he'd come to Miami, even though he was in the business, Amaros hadn't known there were so many names for cocaine. Americans were so inventive. C, coke, snow, he knew. Happy dust, too, he'd heard it called that and also gold dust. But star dust, no, that was new to him, and so was white lady and nose candy and flake. The names he found most peculiar were Bernice, Corinne, and girl. For cocaine. People calling cocaine Bernice, Corinne, or girl. As if they were equating sniffing a noseful of dope with fucking. Calling the dope girl. Maybe they were fucking when they sniffed the stuff, the looks on their faces, some of them.
He impressed girls with the cobalt thiocyanate trick. Mix it in with the dope, watch it turn blue. The brighter the blue, the better the girl. Always kept three, four kilos in the house, never knew when there'd be a party. The brighter the blue, the better the girl. Luis had his own expression. The better the girl, the better the girl. Meaning you gave a girl good dope, you got good action in return. Except every now and then a cunt got too smart for her own good.
"What you do," Luis said, "you scoop out the middle of the apple like so."
The black girl watched him, eyes wide. Her hair was done like Bo Derek's in the movie JO. She had informed him last night that this particular hairstyle was really African in origin. According to the blacks, everything these days was African in origin. Even the Torah was African in origin. She had sniffed coke like she was a vacuum cleaner, sucked cock the same way. When he asked her was he bigger than Johnny Holmes, she said, "Man, you are bigger than God!"
He worked the apple with a corer.
"What's that do, what you're doin?" the girl asked.
Her name was Omelia. Black people, they made up names, the names were never right on the money. Like Omelia sounded like Amelia, but it wasn't. He'd balled black girls named Lorenne, Clorissa, Norla-none of them real names at all, just names that sounded like they could be names. He loved black girls with their funky sounding names.
"What we're doing here," he said, "is we're making a hole in the apple here. Right in the center of the apple."
"What for?" she said.
She was sitting Indian style on a chair at the kitchen table.
Knees up, ankles crossed. Naked. High sweat-sheen on her skin.
"Put the dust in it," he said.
"In where?" Omelia said. "The apple?"
"Right here in the hole," he said.
"Gonna mess up real good blow," she said.
"No, give it a good flavor."
"Who tole you that?"
"Trust me," he said, and poured cocaine into the cored apple. He took a plastic straw from a glass on the counter. He stuck the straw into the apple and then handed the apple across the table to her.
He watched her sniffing coke.
Eyes closed.
Legs slightly parted.
"When you fini
sh," he said, "I'll eat the apple."
"We should put some of this in my hole," she said, and looked up and giggled.
"You want to do that?" he said.
"Anythin' you want, man. This is some shit you got here. Where you get such shit, man?"
"I have connections," he said.
"Purify my hole, shit like this."
The telephone rang.
"Excuse me," he said. "I won't be long."
"You better not be," she said. "We got things to try, man."
He walked into the library, closed the door behind him, and picked up the ringing phone. Through the window, he could see out over Biscayne Bay, southward to Soldier Key. The sky was clear and blue, but it would turn cloudy by afternoon, and then it would rain again.
"Hello?" he said.
"Luis?" the voice on the other end said.
"Yes?" he said.
"Ernesto."
They talked for almost five minutes.
Their conversation was entirely in Spanish.
Ernesto reported that he and Domingo were now in Calusa and were staying at a motel called the Suncrest.
He said they now had seven different names for Jody Carmody, but they were pretty sure her real name was Jenny Santoro.
Luis asked if the name was Spanish, she hadn't looked Spanish.
Ernesto told him it was Italian.
Luis said nothing to this. He did not like Italians. He equated Italians with the Mafia, and the Mafia with people who would kill him in a minute to get at his business.
Ernesto told him this was going to be a very difficult job. All these different names now, and nobody else to ask about her.
Luis told him to stay with it.
He told him to contact a man named Martin Klement at a restaurant named Springtime. In Calusa. Tell him they were looking to buy good cocaine. Tell him to ask around. Martin Klement.
Luis told Ernesto he wanted to hang the girl from the ceiling by her cunt. Put a hook in her cunt and hang her from the ceiling.
Well, we'll do our best, Ernesto said.
Both men hung up. Luis went back into the kitchen, smiling like Bugs Bunny. Omelia was no longer sitting at the kitchen table. For a panicky moment, he thought Not again. He thought this in Spanish. His heart was beating wildly.
"Baby?"
Her voice.
Distant. From the other end of the house.
"Come find me, baby," she said.
He went to find her, wondering if she'd done with the cocaine what she said they should do with it.
***
At ten minutes to ten that Thursday morning, Cynthia Huellen buzzed Matthew from the front desk to say there was a girl here who wanted to talk to him about Otto Samalson. He asked her to send the girl in right away.
She was no more than seventeen, Matthew guessed, a carrot-topped, freckle-faced redhead wearing blue shorts and a white T-shirt. She came into the office and then stopped stock still inside the door, as though paralyzed. He thought for a moment she would turn and run right out again.
"Won't you sit down?" he said, as gently as he could, and motioned to the chairs in front of his desk.
The girl looked terrified.
"Miss?" he said.
The girl nodded.
"Please sit down, won't you?"
She moved crablike toward one of the chairs, sat in it, and then immediately and defensively folded her arms across her chest.
"I'm sorry," Matthew said, "I didn't get your name."
"Kelly," the girl squeaked, and cleared her throat. "Kelly O'Rourke."
"How can I help you, Miss O'Rourke?" Matthew asked. She stared at him, her eyes wide. He wondered if he had grown horns.
"Miss?"
"Yes, sir."
"Please relax."
"I'm relaxed," she said.
"I understand you want to talk to me about Otto Samalson."
"Yes, sir."
"What about him?"
"I read in the paper that he worked for you."
"Well, he was doing some work for us, yes."
"The paper said investigator with the firm of Summerville and Hope."
"Yes, well, that wasn't quite accurate," Matthew said.
"That's why I came here," Kelly said, sounding disappointed, like a child who'd been promised the circus only to have it rain. "'Cause the paper said he worked for you."
"Well, maybe I can help you, anyway," Matthew said. "What was it you wanted to tell me?"
She hesitated.
Then she said, "I saw him."
"When?" Matthew asked at once.
"Sunday night."
"Where?"
"At the Seven-Eleven where I work. He came in and asked for a pack of cigarettes."
"Where's that?"
"On Forty-one. Just over the Whisper Key bridge."
"Which bridge? North or south?"
"North."
"What time was this?"
"About a quarter to eleven."
"Are you sure it was him?"
"Yes, I recognized his picture in the paper. He seemed like a nice man."
"He was," Matthew said. "Did he say anything else?"
"Just that he didn't need matches. When I handed him the cigarettes. Said he had a lighter, thanks."
"Was he alone?"
"Yes."
"Came in alone?"
"Yes."
"Went out alone?"
"Yes. But…"
Matthew was writing. He looked up sharply.
"Yes?"
"I watched through the front window, you know? The big window? Because he was such a cute little man. And there was nothing to do, the place was empty."
"And?"
"He got in his car, and started it, and backed out."
"Yes, go ahead, Kelly."
"This other car backed out right after him. Like it was waiting for him to pull out, you know? Backed out and followed him."
"You're sure it followed him?"
"Made the turn at the light, same as he did."
"Heading in which direction?"
"South on Forty-one."
"What kind of car was it, Kelly?"
"A black Toronado," she said, "with red racing stripes and tinted windows."
"Did you happen to notice the license plate?"
"No, I'm sorry. I would've looked if I'd known he was gonna get killed. But I didn't know that."
"Did you notice who was in the car?"
"No. I told you, the windows were tinted."
"You couldn't tell if it was one person… or two?"
"I couldn't see in."
"Anything else you can remember? Anything Mr. Samalson said or did?"
"Yes, sir," Kelly said, and suddenly smiled. "He made a joke about my hair. He said it looked like my head was on fire."
***
The moment she was gone, Matthew called Cooper Rawles at the Calusa P.D. He had first met Rawles when he was working on what the police files had labeled the Jack and the Beanstalk case but what Matthew would always remember as the Bullet in the Shoulder case. Unfortunately, the shoulder in question had been his, and the bullet had been traveling at enormous velocity, trailing fire and pain behind it.
Rawles had been there on that memorable night in August, upstairs with Bloom, questioning a suspect named Jack Crowell who'd made a break for it when the cops started demolishing his alibi. Crowell burst out of the front door of the building, barefoot and barechested, a gun in his right hand, shoving his way through the handful of people cluttered on the front steps, almost falling over the lap of a woman who sat Haitian-style, her knees wide, her dress tented over her crotch. Matthew, waiting outside on Bloom's explicit instructions, heard Bloom's voice shouting from inside the building- "Stop or I'll shoot!"-and shoved himself off the fender of the car, moving to intercept Crowell, figuring Bloom was right behind him with his own gun, and never once stopping to think what might happen next.
What happened next was that he'd got shot for the fi
rst time in his life, and he never wanted to get shot ever again because not only was it embarrassing, it also hurt like hell. Rawles hadn't said much that night. He was a man of few words. He'd just shaken his head, and then walked over to the car to radio for a meat wagon. Matthew visualized him now as the phone rang at the Public Safety Building. A huge man, black as the Arctic night, wide shoulders and a barrel chest. Massive hands. Stood at least six feet four inches tall and weighed possibly two-forty. No one to mess with.
When he came onto the line, Matthew said, "Detective Rawles? This is Matthew Hope. I have some information for you."
Rawles listened silently as Matthew repeated everything Kelly O'Rourke had told him not five minutes earlier.
There was a long silence on the line.
"You've been busy," Rawles said, and for a moment Matthew thought he'd only imagined the reprimanding note in his voice. But then Rawles said, "Maybe you ought to make application for the Police Department, Mr. Hope."
Matthew said nothing.
"Understand you were out to see Mrs. Nettington before we got to her," Rawles said.
His meaning was unmistakable now.
"Mrs. Nettington was my client," Matthew said.
"Is that why you asked all kinds of questions about where her husband was Sunday night when Samalson was boxed?"
"What is this?" Matthew said.
"I think you know what this is, Mr. Hope," Rawles said. "I don't think you'd be acting this way if Morrie wasn't on vacation 'cause Morrie'd have called you as a friend and told you to bug off. What I want to know is why you think you can get away with conducting your own personal little investi-"