by Ed McBain
Jimmy was sure the spies knew the going price for cocaine that was ninety-percent pure, which this actually was. Either they knew or they were amateurs. He knew for sure that they were jerking him around when they offered forty. Seventy-five was a good price, it really was. Well, not a good price-nobody was giving anything away at seventy-five-but a fair price. He and Charlie were getting a very good deal on the twenty keys because the South Americans they were dealing; with were new people trying to establish a foothold in Florida. Fifty thousand a key was, in fact, a damn good deal. But in this business it was cash on the barrelhead, mister, and they were having a tough time coming up with the million. So they wouldn't have minded laying off some of it on the spies. Not at forty a key, though. That was ridiculous.
Ernesto and Domingo both knew that forty was ridiculous. That was why Ernesto had immediately modified this to "forty, forty-five," which was also ridiculous. A fair price was seventy-five. But Ernesto figured the wops were telling the truth (always a bad failing) when they said they wouldn't mind laying some of the deal off on somebody else, which meant they weren't about to lay it off at cost but were trying to make a little bit above cost for putting the deal together and so on. The question was how much they had agreed to pay for the dope. If they were paying sixty a key, for example, which is what it sounded like if they were asking seventy-five, then there was no way Ernesto was going to get a bargain here. He'd either have to find the girl or risk Amaros's anger. Amaros might even hang him from the ceiling if he didn't find the girl. He was thinking Ai, muchacho, it would be nice to get this shit for fifty a key, make Amaros very happy.
He didn't have a chance of getting it for fifty; fifty was what they were paying for it. But he didn't know that. Anyway, nobody was leaving just yet.
The waiter brought menus.
The men ordered.
Domingo kept eyeing the two women at the nearby table, both of whom were all dressed up for their Tuesday lunch.
"So what do you say?" Charlie Nubbs asked.
"I told you," Ernesto said. "The highest I can go is forty-five. And even that, I'd have to check back with Miami."
"Then we can't talk business," Jimmy said. "'Cause the lowest we can go is seventy."
Ernesto noticed that a few minutes ago Jimmy had considered seventy out of the question. They were making progress.
"This snapper is delicious," Charlie Nubbs said.
"Yeah, they get it fresh every morning in this place," Jimmy said.
"You get good fish over in Miami, too, don't you?" Charlie said.
"Oh, sure," Ernesto said.
"How about sixty-five?" Jimmy said. "And you take eight keys. That's we're talking five-twenty, that's a good deal."
Ernesto suddenly knew they were paying fifty thousand a key.
"Sixty-five is too high," he said. "I could never clear that with Miami."
"Must be a real high roller there in Miami," Jimmy said, "he can't go to sixty-five."
Ernesto said nothing. He looked at Domingo. Domingo shook his head. Jimmy suddenly wondered if the big guy with the slick little mustache wasn't the real boss here.
"What could you go for?" Charlie Nubbs asked. "I mean, what do you think your man in Miami would okay?"
"I told you," Ernesto said. "Forty-five." He hesitated and then said, "Maybe fifty absolute tops."
"Tell you what we'll do," Jimmy said. "You take ten keys for sixty a key, you've got a deal. That's cost, amigo, believer me. That's exactly what we're paying for it."
Ernesto knew he was lying.
The question was whether they'd be willing to come down to fifty-five. He was afraid that if he offered fifty-five they might become offended and walk. Italians had pride. At the same time, he wondered how desperate they were for cash.
"What we're talking is six hundred thou," Charlie Nubbs said.
Jimmy was doing arithmetic in his head. Sell off ten for six hundred, that meant they were paying only forty a key for the remaining ten keys. That was very good. If the spies went for it. If not, he didn't know what he would do. They were probably looking to pay fifty-five a key, which was why they'd started at forty. Sell them ten keys for fifty-five, that meant the remaining ten keys were costing forty-five a key… no, that sucked. Sixty a key, he thought, take it or leave it.
"Take it or leave it," he said aloud.
Ernesto knew he meant it.
So did Domingo.
"I have to call Miami," Ernesto said.
"There's a phone booth in the lobby," Charlie said.
"I want to call from the motel," Ernesto said.
Everybody understood the need for privacy. They would not be discussing soy beans or hog bellies on the phone.
"Okay," Jimmy said, "get back to us tomorrow sometime. I don't hear from you by three o'clock, I figure you're out."
"Good," Ernesto said.
"Good," Jimmy said.
12
The headline on Wednesday morning's newspaper read:
MURDER CAR FOUND
The article under it described a black Toronado that the police had found deep in the palmettos off Bay Point Road, near the old Adderby place. The car, the police said, was registered to a woman named Florence Goodel, who had reported it stolen on June 7, the day before Otto Samalson was murdered. The police said that Miss Goodel was definitely not a suspect. The article did not mention whether the police had found any latent fingerprints or spent cartridge cases in the automobile. Neither did it say how the police had known the black Toronado in the palmettos was the car driven by Otto's murderer.
Matthew nodded sourly, threw the newspaper into his trash basket, picked up the telephone receiver, and dialed Jamie Purchase's office.
Jamie Purchase.
Forty-six years old on the night of the Goldilocks murders, ten years older than Matthew. In the pale moonlight, he'd seemed much younger, or perhaps only more vulnerable. He was wearing a faded blue T-shirt, white trousers, and blue sneakers. Matthew had introduced himself to the patrolman at the scene as Dr. Purchase's attorney, which indeed he was.
Two years ago Jamie Purchase was a client for whom Matthew had reviewed and revised a pension plan. He was also a man who came home one night after a poker game to find his wife and his two little daughters brutally murdered. He called the only attorney he knew: Matthew Hope. On the phone that night, Matthew first asked him if he'd committed the murders, and then asked if he wouldn't prefer a criminal lawyer to a man who'd never represented anyone involved in a crime. Jamie had said, "If I didn't kill them, why do I need a criminal lawyer?"-which plunged Matthew headlong into the case.
Just like that.
This past Friday, Susan had said, "Why don't you simply learn all there is to learn about criminal law and start practicing it?" The more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. But now, as he sat in Jamie's waiting room, he wondered if in actuality he hadn't started practicing criminal law away back then, when the phone call from Jamie had shattered the stillness of the night.
"Mr. Hope?" Jamie's receptionist-nurse. "Doctor will see you now."
"Thank you."
Jamie looked good. Two years ago his world had disintegrated. He seemed all right now, looked all right. He had not remarried. Rumor around town had him dating a twenty-seven-year-old interior decorator. It did not sound too serious.
"I called Nathan," he said. He was referring to Dr. Nathan Schlemmer, who had identified Cinderella as Mary Jane Hopkins but had refused to tell Otto why she'd come to see him. "Do you know him?"
"No," Matthew said.
"Fifiyish," Jamie said. "Gray hair, closely trimmed gray beard, blue eyes so pale they look gray." He shrugged. "Dr Nathan Schlemmer. I know him well enough to be able to state, unequivocally, that if you'd gone to him directly, asking about this Mary Jane Hopkins, he'd have told you-and I quote more or less accurately-'Mr. Hope, this is not information I care to divulge.' That is Dr. Nathan Schlemmer very uptight, very tight-ass. However…"
"Uh-huh," Matthew said.
"Professional courtesy. Plus a slight lie. I told him the gin was a patient. I asked him why she'd gone to see him. I asked him if she was pregnant."
"Was she?" Matthew said.
"She was not," Jamie said.
"Then why did she go see him?"
"She suspected she had herpes," Jamie said.
"Uh-huh," Matthew said. "And did she?"
"Yes."
***
The boat was a huge monster with a flying bridge.
Larkin was behind the wheel, guiding her in toward the dock, careful not to bang her up. A deckhand wearing a Larkin Boats T-shirt ran forward to toss a line to someone on the dock wearing an identical T-shirt, The Way to the Water. Another hand dropped fenders over the side. More lines came over, you'd think this was the QE2 Larkin was docking. Big boat, though, had to cost a pretty penny.
Two people were standing on the bridge with Larkin. Tubby little man wearing a sports shirt as colorful as a Portuguese man-of-war, and a blonde lady wearing yellow shorts, a white shirt, and a pair of sunglasses. Larkin frowned the moment he saw Matthew standing on the dock. He clambered down off the bridge, jumped ashore, walked immediately to him, and said, "What are you doing here?"
"Few questions," Matthew said.
"Get lost," Larkin said. "I'm about to sell a half-million-dollar boat here."
"I'll wait."
"No, just get the hell off my property."
One of the dockhands was helping the couple ashore now. First the lady in the yellow shorts. She was perhaps fifty years old, too stout, too heavily made up, and a bit unsteady in ankle-strapped sandals with very high heels. She come onto the dock with a smile of relief and a murmured "Thank you," and then turned to watch her companion jump ashore. The man was grinning from ear to ear. He was eager to buy this boat. Matthew wasn't sure the lady was half as eager. The man stepped back a pace, hands on his hips, and studied the boat from dockside.
"This won't take a minute," Matthew said.
"My customer's waiting," Larkin said.
"No, he's admiring the boat."
Larkin looked toward where the man was walking up and down the dock, reaching over to touch the boat's teak railing, running his hand over her gleaming white flanks.
"What is it?" Larkin said.
"Mr. Larkin, when I saw you yesterday, I told you that Otto-"
"I don't want to hear another word about Otto. I've already got somebody eke looking for-"
"Yes, I know. But I've learned something that-"
"I don't care what you learned."
"Mr. Larkin, Otto thought your Cinderella might have been pregnant…"
"You already told me that. And I told you-"
"But he was wrong. She went to see a doctor because she had herpes."
Larkin glanced quickly down the dock to where the man in the rainbow sports shirt was pointing to something on the boat's transom. He said a few words to the woman, and the woman nodded, an uncomprehending look on her face.
"So?" Larkin said.
"I asked you yesterday if you could've made her pregnant."
"So?"
"I'm asking you today if you could've given her herpes."
"I don't have to answer that," Larkin said.
"Yes, you do," Matthew said. "Because Otto was killed. And there's got to be a reason for it."
"Let's say I did give her herpes, okay? I'm the kind of guy who gives herpes to twenty-two-year-old girls. Twenty-three, whatever. When I don't even realize she's a hooker. I'm that kind of rat, okay? What's that got to do with Otto's murder?"
"Well, Mr. Larkin, suppose someone in her family-a father, a brother-learned she had herpes and decided to find out who'd given it to her. This is Florida, you know. There're lots of rednecks down here who don't like their kin messed with."
"This girl isn't a redneck."
"But you don't know what her family's like, do you?"
"What's your point?" Larkin said. "She stole my watch, that's all I-"
"Yes, but Otto was killed. And to me that's a bit more important than your watch. What I'm suggesting is that perhaps this father or this brother spotted Otto following her and jumped to the wrong conclusion."
"What conclusion?"
"That Otto was the man who'd-"
"Oh, I get it. This father of hers…"
"Yes, if it was her father…"
"Or brother…"
"Yes."
"Or whoever… didn't realize Otto was a private eye, figured he was somebody who knew Cinderella…"
"Yes."
"Somebody, in feet, who knew her well enough to give her herpes, right? And then what? Killed him for it? Come on, man."
"This is Florida," Matthew said again.
"No way at all is it even a possibility," Larkin said. "Because to begin with, hookers don't have fathers or brothers."
"I'm sorry," Matthew said, "but I don't find any of this even remotely funny. And you still haven't answered my question."
"Too fuckin' bad," Larkin said, and glanced quickly down the dock toward his customer. "In case you don't know it, this isn't a court of-"
"Could you have given her herpes?"
"Oh, now I really get it," Larkin said. "If I'm the guy responsible, if I'm the one infected her, then the wrong man got killed, right? Poor Otto took the rap for me, right? So you're here to tell me what an unprincipled son of a bitch I am. Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Hope, and then I want you to, get the hell out of here before I have Kirk throw you out."
He nodded down the dock to where one of the hands was hosing down the boat. Big muscular guy with pecs bulging in the white T-shirt, biceps bulging below the short sleeves, tattoo on the right forearm, a dagger dripping blood.
"The only person selling herpes-and I hope to God nothing else-was Cinderella herself. Jenny Santoro or whatever the fuck her name is!" He glanced down the dock again, and then lowered his voice. "She's the one selling it, Mr. Hope, she's the one I bought it from. Which is why, the minute I realized what I had, I hired Otto to find her, never mind the gold watch. I can buy another gold watch, I can buy a dozen gold watches, but I can't buy a doctor in the world can get rid of what she gave me. Okay, Mr. Hope? You got it now? You think you got it now?"
Matthew sighed heavily.
"Yes," he said. "Thank you."
"Good-bye," Larkin said.
***
The conversation was entirely in Spanish, and Ernesto was doing most of the talking.
Their private code name for cocaine was "hat."
In Spanish, hat was sombrero.
On the phone, Ernesto kept talking about sombreros. Ten sombreros at sixty dollars each, very high quality. If anybody from the DEA had been listening, he'd have known right off that Ernesto was talking about a drug buy. Ten keys of coke at sixty thousand a key. Drug dealers never mentioned the word cocaine on the telephone. They hardly ever mentioned it anywhere. Cocaine was always something else. To Charlie Nubbs and his pals, cocaine was "heavy machinery." With the Ordinez gang in Miami, if you talked to someone about a typewriter, you were talking cocaine.
"I tried to get the hats for less," Ernesto said, "but that's the lowest they would go. Very good hats, size nine."
A DEA man would have figured in a minute that the coke was ninety-percent pure.
"When do you have to take delivery on these hats?" Amaros asked.
"Saturday. One-thirty."
"Are the manufacturers reliable?"
"We'll examine the merchandise very carefully before payment is made."
"Do they require a deposit?"
"They haven't mentioned one."
"When will you need a check?"
"As soon as possible."
"I'll have one drawn," Amaros said.
The "check" was total bullshit. Nobody ever wrote a check for cocaine. You would have to be crazy to accept a check for cocaine. Cocaine was as good as cash and what you got for it was cash. Amaros was merely tell
ing Ernesto that he'd get the cash to him before one-thirty on Saturday. Ten keys at sixty a key came to $600,000. This was Wednesday, Amaros had two full business days to get the cash. He was not anticipating any trouble.
"What about Cenicienta?" he asked.
This was the first time Ernesto had ever heard her called Cinderella, but he knew immediately that Amaros was talking about Jenny Santoro or whatever her name was. Normally, Amaros referred to her as "the girl." But Ernesto guessed he didn't want to use the word girl on the phone because "girl" meant cocaine.
"We haven't located her yet," Ernesto said.
"I'm pleased about the hats," Amaros said, "but I very much want to see her."
"Yes, I know," Ernesto said.
"So find her," Amaros said, and hung up.
So now they're inside the house on Key Biscayne, it's like multileveled with decks on each level, all of them looking out over the water, and Amaros is telling her to make herself comfortable, which is not difficult to do in a place like this. A place like this Jenny figures had to have cost him a mill-five, something like that, waterfront property? Sure, at least that. This is what she wants for herself. This is her dream. A place of her own. Just outside Paris. A place with a garden. Her own house. A little house on a quiet little lane. She will be the American lady. She will tell her neighbors she used to be a stage actress. She will tell them she starred in The Crucible. She will drive into Paris on weekends, and sit at a table on one of the boulevards, sipping creme de menthe over ice and trying to guess which of the girls strutting by are in the life, the way she used to be. Because this is the last one. If there really is coke here in this house, and if she can take it away with her, then she will never have to make love to a stranger again.
He pours her a cognac, same Courvoisier she had in the Kasbah Lounge and then-big surprise!-the conversation drifts around to movies, has she seen any good movies lately? In his cute Spanish accent he tells her that occasionally he will watch a pornographic film because he feels pornographic films are an art form and that in fact many of them are superior to the films being shown in most theaters today. He's all at once a film critic, Luis Amaros of the Village Voice. She tells him she has never seen a pornographic movie in her life-big lie, especially since she had a bit part in an orgy scene in a skin flick they were shooting in L.A., went down on one guy while another guy was humping her from behind-and would probably be embarrassed seeing one. Oh, no, he says, not if it is a tasteful movie, you would not be embarrassed.