That had been back in January.
By the beginning of March, she was sitting by a swimming pool and listening to talk about a quarter of a million dollars for a single night’s work.
What she usually got for an all-night stand in LA was five hundred, sometimes only four if things were slow.
This was a quarter of a million.
Split it with him, it still came to a hundred and a quarter.
That’s if there were only two kilos in the safe. If there was more...
How do I get in that safe? she asked him.
Because this was her way out.
6
Matthew disliked him on sight. Big beefy man with a wide forehead and prominent nose, coming across the deck to greet him, hamhock hand extended, blue jeans, and a T-shirt that had “Larkin Boats, The Way to the Water” printed on its front. The man was probably a saint, and yet — instant animosity. That happened sometimes. Even with women. Even with gorgeous women. Something clicked in the unconscious, who the hell knew? Maybe Larkin reminded him of a high school geometry teacher who’d given him an F. Or maybe there were just certain combinations of sights and smells that signaled to the brain and triggered defense mechanisms, watch out for this guy. Whatever it was, he didn’t like Larkin.
But there were some questions he needed to ask him.
And, after all, when he’d called, the man had been gracious enough to invite him to his home for an early afternoon drink, hadn’t he? Instead of asking him to stop by at his place of business. Gorgeous house on Fatback Key, all wood and glass and stone, sitting right on the Gulf. Matthew and Larkin sitting on lounges facing the water. Thunderheads building up out there the way they did every day at this time.
“It wasn’t Otto started calling her Cinderella,” Larkin said. “It was me.”
“When was that?” Matthew asked.
“When I hired him.”
“Which was when? I’m sorry to be asking all these questions, Mr. Larkin...”
“No, no, listen, I’m happy to help. What happened was I went to this ball in April sometime... well, down here there are more balls than you can count, I’m sure you know that.”
“Yes,” Matthew said.
“Over on the East Coast, in Miami, it’s your Cubans throwing a ball every time one of their daughters turns fifteen. That’s a custom with Spanish-speaking people,” Larkin said, educating Matthew. “The daughter turns fifteen, they dress her like a bride and throw a ball. All the friends rent lavender tuxedos and come to the party to wish the kid well on her fifteenth birthday because pretty soon she’ll be on her back on the beach with her legs spread and not too long after that she’ll be a fat old lady with a mustache.”
Larkin laughed.
Matthew said nothing. He was not liking Larkin any better.
“La quinceañera they call her,” Larkin said, “a lot of bullshit. Anyway, here in Calusa, we got balls to mark the seasons of the year, which is even more bullshit. Around Christmastime, you have your Snowflake Ball for the American Cancer Society, and in the spring, when the purple jacaranda trees are blooming, you got your Jacaranda Ball for Multiple Sclerosis or Muscular Dystrophy, I always mix them up. That’s where I met her. At the Jacaranda Ball.”
“This was...?”
“In April.”
“When in April?”
“Beginning of the month sometime. The jacarandas were just starting to bloom. In she walks, a pretty young thing in a blue gown the color of her eyes, slit high up on her right leg and scooped low over a very good chest. Danced with her all night long. Had her picture taken by a photographer who was charging fifty bucks a pop for charity. That’s the picture I gave Otto. The one I had taken at the ball. Did you see that picture?”
“Yes, it’s in the file,” Matthew said.
“Gorgeous girl, am I right?”
“Very pretty.”
“Sure, that’s the picture I gave him. Plus twenty-five bills as a retainer. Find her, I told him. Find Cinderella for me. That’s the first time I called her that.”
“Why was that?”
“Well, because I met her at a ball, didn’t I? Dressed like a princess, sapphire pin on her chest, high-heeled shoes looked like glass, all she’s missing is a tiara. Plus by morning the princess turned into a fuckin’ whore who stole my Rolex cost eight thousand dollars at Tiffany’s in New York.”
“Which is why you hired Otto.”
“Yeah.”
“To get your watch back.”
“To find her, never mind the watch. The watch is probably in Alaska by now, you think she’s gonna hang onto a hot watch engraved with my initials on the case?”
“You merely wanted him to find her.”
“Merely? You think I was giving him an easy job or something? Merely, the man says. I didn’t even know her name.”
“I thought she—”
“Yeah, she told me Angela West, but I looked in the phone book before I called Otto, and there were six Wests in it, none of them Angela. So all I had was this picture of a young blonde girl — Cinderella, right? Of which maybe there are fifty thousand such young blonde girls in the city of Calusa, so Otto’s supposed to run down to the beach and find her. That’s not such a merely, Matt, is it okay if I call you Matt?”
“Most people call me Matthew.”
“Matthew then,” Larkin said and shrugged as if to say there was no accounting for taste. “The point is, this was a hard job I gave Otto, and he wasn’t making a hell of a lot of progress, I can tell you that.”
“Why’d you go to him in the first place?”
“Why? Because I heard he was a good—”
“I mean, why didn’t you go to the police?”
“I didn’t want to.”
“Why not? She stole your watch.”
“I felt this was a personal matter. Between her and me. I didn’t want the police in this. Anyway, the police are full of shit, Matthew, I’m sure you know that.”
Matthew said nothing. Far out on the water, a trawler was silhouetted against the gray of the sky. Sandpipers skirted the waves as they nudged the shore. Overhead, a flight of pelicans hovered and then dipped into an air current. Matthew wondered if birds knew when it was going to rain.
“So when did you go to him?” he asked.
“Around the end of the month.”
“The end of April.”
“Yeah, sometime around the end of the month.”
“Why’d you wait so long?”
“What do you mean?”
“She stole your watch early in April, but you didn’t go to Otto till the end of the month. How come?”
“I was thinking it over,” Larkin said.
Domingo said since the mother wasn’t home they should go to the beach. Ernesto said the beach could wait. Neither of the men were terribly impressed with Venice, which was where Mrs. Santoro lived, in a cinderblock development house not too far off US 41. Domingo said he liked Miami Beach better. He said Venice looked “crommy.” That was one of the few English words he liked, crommy. He didn’t think Miami Beach was crommy. Miami Beach was like a small province in Cuba, and therefore gorgeous.
The men were waiting outside the house in the red LeBaron convertible. They had decided on a high profile here because all these crommy little houses were very close together and they couldn’t risk a break-in. Otherwise, they’d have preferred being inside the house when she got home. As it was, they had gone to the front door, and rung the bell and a neighbor next door had told them Annie wouldn’t be back from Miami till later today. They had not anticipated that high a profile, being talked to by a nosy neighbor who should’ve been inside watching a soap opera. A moment before Mrs. Santoro drove up — at about twenty after three that Wednesday afternoon — Domingo was complaining that there were no Spanish-speaking radio stations in this crommy town. Ernesto nudged him in the ribs as her car, a brown Dodge Caravan, pulled into the driveway. They got out of the convertible at once, and were walking toward her as she unlocked the kitchen door at the side of the house.