Cinderella (14 page)

    "Well, there's a lotto-"

    "-and start practicing it?"

    He looked at her.

    There was a shrug on her face.

    Eyebrows lifted.

    Brown eyes wide.

    Questioning.

    Why not practice criminal law?

    The simplicity of it.

    "Just like that, huh?" he said.

    "Why not?" she said. "I have a feeling you find it more interesting than real estate."

    
"Anything's
more interesting than-"

    "Or divorce or negligence or malpractice or-"

    "Yes, but…"

    "So do it," she said, and this time actually shrugged.

    Why not, he thought, and leaned over and kissed her quickly on the cheek. "Thank you," he said.

    "That's a thank-you?" she said, and reached up to him, and put her arms around his neck and drew him down to her on the lounge. For a moment, they teetered awkwardly, Matthew on the edge of the lounge, struggling for purchase, Susan trying to make room for him, the normal clumsiness of foreplay exaggerated by the suddenness of her move and his unprepared reaction to it. Like groping adolescents-and perhaps this was good because it, too, reminded them of another time long ago-they shifted weight, bumped hips, tangled arms, and finally settled, or more accurately collapsed onto the lounge in an approximate position of proximity, Susan on her side, the robe pulled back to expose her left flank, Matthew seminestled into her, his left arm pinned under his body, his right arm draped loosely over the curving arc of her hip, their lips at last meeting abruptly and in surprise.

    Later, he would try to understand that kiss.

    They had kissed many times before. Kissed as true adolescents in steamy embrace, when kissing was all she would permit and therefore the sole expression of their passion. Kissed after kissing had become a prelude to heavy petting, something to be got through hastily, like the dull passages of a novel, something to be skimmed or skipped entirely, merely the necessary overture to nipples and breasts and the exciting electric touch of nylon panties and the crispness beneath and the moistness below. Kissed only perfunctorily in the waning years of their marriage, on the cheek in greeting or farewell, passionlessly on the lips in bed before what had become a mechanical act. Kissed last Sunday night hurriedly and somewhat frantically, eager to get to the real thing, both of them fearful of what they were about to do and simultaneously afraid they wouldn't
get
to do it before one or the other had a change of mind or heart.

    Now…

    It was in many respects a first kiss.

    First in the sense that it brought back to each of them, in a rush of memory, the
actual
first time they kissed in Chicago, on the doorstep of her house, a porchlight glowing, the sounds of summer insects everywhere around them, I had a good time, Matthew, So did I, their lips tentatively rushing, clinging, her arms coming up around his neck, his hands in the small of her back, pulling her close, into his immediate erection, Jesus, she said breathlessly, and pulled away and looked fiercely into his eyes, and kissed him again quickly and hurried into the house.

    But first in another sense as well.

    First in that for perhaps the only time in their separate adult lives, they brought to the simple act of kissing each other an expertise they had learned not only from each other but from others as well, so that the mere anatomical joining of two orbicularis oris muscles in a state of contraction became something much more intense and heated and all-consuming.

    They broke away.

    She said what she had said back in Chicago, more years ago than he could count.

    "Jesus."

    Breathlessly.

    And then:

    "Let's go inside."

    

    

    Ernesto figured what they should do first thing this morning was start spreading the word around. This was Monday already, they'd been here in Calusa four days already, this was ridiculous. They had contacted this Martin Klement person at his Springtime restaurant, just the way Amaros had told them to, but they hadn't heard anything from him since, so what they had to do now was let the word out they were looking to score. Ernesto figured unless the girl was a pro, she wouldn't know how to get rid of four keys of coke, she'd be looking for buyers.

    "She'll be shopping around looking for a buyer, am I right?" he said to Domingo. He said this in Spanish. Whenever the two were alone together, they spoke Spanish.

    Domingo said, "Maybe she plans to snort the whole four keys all by herself."

    Ernesto said, "That isn't why a person steals four keys of coke, to snort them. A person steals four keys to
sell
them is what a person does."

    Domingo said, "Maybe, but even so I think it's risky to say we're looking for big cocaine. We don't know what the narcotics situation is here in Calusa."

    It looked to him like a very clean town on the surface, but in Spanish there was a proverb that said,
Las apariencias enganan.
In English, this meant, "You can't judge a book by its cover." Domingo didn't know what was going on here in the city of Calusa, Florida. Perhaps it was a very strict town, policewise, in which case they could find the Law on their motel doorstep if word got around that they were looking to buy dope in quantity.

    On the other hand, it could very well be the kind of town where you could buy four keys of coke right on Main Street, in which case somebody already had the trade nailed down and they might not like the idea of two Miami Beach dudes strolling in talking a big dope deal.

    "These are all things to be considered," Domingo said, "if a person is interested in staying alive and staying out of jail."

    Actually, the most recent figures from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement didn't mention anything about narcotics in Calusa County or in the city of Calusa itself. It reported that the crime rate in the entire state of Florida had begun to climb again only recently, after two years of decline, and it defined "crime rate" as the number of "serious" crimes committed per 100,000 people. Serious crimes included murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. Selling four keys of cocaine on Main Street either wasn't a serious crime or else the FDLE had no figures on it. In any case, there were 13,236 serious crimes committed in Calusa County in the year just past, an increase of 11 percent over the 11,928 reported during the year before that. Sixteen murders, most of them -involving people who knew each other, had been committed in the county during the past year. Rapes went up from 97 to 127. There were similar increases in every category except auto thefts.

    Calusa County Sheriff Alan Huxtable said that rapid population growth might have accounted for the increase in the number of crimes. He also pointed out that completion of the interstate highway might have been another contributing factor.

    "We've traced some of these crimes back to I-75," he said. "People come into Calusa to commit a crime, and then go back into the other counties. The interstate just brings a lot of undesirable people through."

    Ernesto and Domingo hadn't read the newspaper article in which Sheriff Huxtable was quoted, otherwise they might have taken offense. They did not consider themselves undesirable people. They were here, in fact,
looking
for an undesirable person who had stolen four keys of cocaine from their j employer, taken the stuff
out
of Dade County, in fact, and
into
Calusa County, where for all they knew it had already been sold to someone who'd already run it up to New York in the back of a pickup truck carrying lettuce and tomatoes.

    Ernesto and Domingo were merely two righteous citizens trying to correct an outrageous wrong.

    

    

    It didn't sound like a warning until a moment before he walked out of Matthew's office.

    At the start of their conversation-this was at ten-fifteen on Monday and Matthew was feeling too good to be bothered by anyone or anything-Daniel Nettington was quietly telling him that he'd been visited by a big black detective at eight o'clock last night-a goddamn
Sunday,
could you believe it? Cops had no respect.

    Daniel Nettington was Carla Nettington's philandering husband.

    Daniel Nettington was the star of the porn show Otto had recorded in the bedroom of a woman named Rita Kirkman.

    Carla had told Matthew her husband was forty-five years old. He looked a good deal older. His graying hair was combed sideways across his forehead in a vain attempt to hide his encroaching baldness. His teeth and the index finger and middle finger of his right hand were nicotine stained. Hi? small brown eyes were embedded deep in puffy flesh. He was an altogether unattractive man, and Matthew could not for the life of him imagine why: (a) Rita Kirkman kept pressing him to leave his wife and/or at least take her out to dinner, and (b) Why Carla Nettington would care if he was sleeping with the entire state of Florida.

    "This black detective," Nettington said, "informed me that the man who was killed had been
following
me. That my wife had gone to you, and that you had hired this man to
follow
me.

    He seemed inordinately fond of the verb "to follow" in all its declensions. The verb "to follow" incensed him. He was outraged by the fact that Otto Samalson had been
following
him. That Otto had been
killed
was a matter of only secondary importance.

    "This was all in the file this black detective got from Otto Samalson's assistant, a
Chinese
lady from what I understand. A regular little United Nations, huh?"

    Matthew said nothing.

    "According to what I was told by this black detective, whose name is Cooper Rawles…"

    "Yes, I know Detective Rawles."

    "Yes, I gathered that. According to what he told me, I was being
followed
for something like ten days before this man met with his accident. Is that true, sir?"

    "It wasn't an
accident"
Matthew said. "Otto Samalson was murdered."

    "Yes," Nettington said. "And because he was
following
me, it now appears I'm a goddamn suspect here."

    "Is that what Detective Rawles told you? That you're a suspect?"

    "I don't need a black detective to tell me I'm a suspect when he comes to my home-on a Sunday night, no less-and begins asking questions about where I was the
previous
Sunday, June eighth, at a little before eleven, which happens to be when the man who was
following
me got shot and killed on U.S. 41. Now what I want to know, Mr. Hope…"

    "Yes, what exactly is it you want to know?" Matthew said.

    "And I don't want to hear any bullshit about the confidentiality of the lawyer-client relationship," Nettington said, "because it so happens I'm an attorney myself."

    "I'm sorry to hear that," Matthew said.

    "What's that supposed to mean?"

    "Only that I'm sorry to hear it. What law firm do you work for?"

    "
I'll
ask the questions, if you don't mind," Nettington said, and then immediately answered the question anyway. "I don't work for a law firm," he said, "I'm house counsel for Bartell Technographics."

    "I see," Matthew said. "And does your work ever take you out of town?"

    "Rarely," Nettington said.

    "A pity," Matthew said.

    Nettington looked at him.

    "That's exactly what I want to talk to you about," he said.

    "My wife tells me she's got some kind of tape-she hasn't
heard
the tape yet, but there's some kind of tape supposed to be between me and some woman, God knows
what
she's talking about-
is
there such a tape?"

    "I'm not in a position to discuss that, Mr. Nettington."

    "There's either a tape or there isn't one," Nettington said.

    "That is a safe assumption," Matthew said.

    "So is there one?"

    "I can't answer that, and you know I can't."

    "If Carta's already
told
me-"

    "That's
your
allegation, Mr. Nettington."

    "It's what Carla said."

    Matthew said nothing.

    "That there's a tape."

    Matthew still said nothing.

    "Where is this tape?" Nettington asked.

    Silence.

    "I don't think the police have it, 'cause the black detective didn't mention it It was only Carla who mentioned it. Said you'd told her there was an incriminating tape."

    Silence.

    "I'd like that tape," Nettington said.

    Silence.

    "If it exists."

    Silence.

    "Does it exist?"

    Silence.

    "What I'm prepared to do," Nettington said, "is pay a goodly sum of money for that tape. If it exists."

    
"If
the tape exists," Matthew said, "it's already been paid for, Mr. Nettington."

    "Which means it
does
exist," Nettington said. "What you just admitted is that my wife already paid for it when she hired you to put a private detective on me, which means the son of a bitch
did
manage to plant a bug in there somehow, didn't he?"

    "In where, Mr. Nettington?"

    "In Rita's house, you know damn well where, Mr. Hope. If you told Carla the tape's incriminating, then you know what's on it, and you know where it was made."