Cinderella Read online

  Matthew thanked him and hung up.

  When he came back into the bedroom, Susan was already dressed.

  "I just remembered why we got divorced," she said, and walked out.

  ***

  It was nightmare time.

  A nightmare of flashbacks.

  Invading Matthew's bed, invading his sleep.

  I just remembered why we got divorced.

  Susan's words. Opening a floodgate of memories that triggered the first of the nightmare flashbacks: Matthew coming home at a quarter to one, the lights on in the study, Susan sitting naked behind the desk in the house they used to share. "I just had a phone call," she says, "from a man named Gerald Hemmings," and Matthew's throat goes suddenly dry.

  He and Aggie have rehearsed this scene a thousand times. They are lovers, Aggie and he, and therefore liars of necessity. They are lovers, he and Aggie, and therefore killers by trade, strangling their separate marriages. They are lovers, Aggie and he, he and Aggie, and therefore conspirators in that they are sworn to secrecy and know exactly what to say in the event of a trap.

  This is a trap, he knows it is a trap.

  But he knows in his darkest heart that it is nothing of the sort.

  She has spoken to Gerald Hemmings, she has talked to Aggie's husband, it is one o'clock in the morning, and Susan knows everything, Susan knows all.

  In the horror chamber of his mind, as he tries to sleep, the scene replays itself.

  Denial, denial, denial, for surely this is a trap.

  It is not a trap.

  She is suddenly laughing. He comes around the desk swiftly, wanting to stop her manic laughter before it awakens Joanna down the hall. He puts his hand on her shoulder and she recoils from it as if a lizard has crawled up her arm, and suddenly there is more to be afraid of than hysterical laughter. Without warning, her hand reaches out to grab for the scissors, clutching it in her fist like a dagger, and lunges at him, lunges again, tearing the sleeve of his jacket. She is naked in the emptiest hour of the night, a woman scorned, a deadly weapon in her fist, and she comes at him again and again, he cannot catch her wrist. The tips of the scissors flick the air, retreat, flick again, catch the lapel of his jacket, cling there an instant till she rips them free with a twist and comes at him again. He brings up his left hand in defense and a gash magically opens from his knuckles to his wrist. All at once he feels faint. He falls against the desk for support, knocking the telephone to the floor. She is on him again…

  And suddenly there is a scream.

  For a moment, he thinks it is he himself screaming.

  His bleeding hand is stretched toward Susan, his mouth is indeed open-it is possible that he is the one screaming.

  But the scream is coming from behind him.

  He spins to the left, partially to avoid the thrusting scissors, partially to locate the source of the scream.

  His daughter, Joanna, is standing in the doorway.

  She is wearing a long granny nightgown, her eyes wide, her mouth open. Her scream hangs on the air interminably, overwhelming the small room, suffocating murderous intent.

  The scissors stop.

  Susan looks down at her own hand in disbelief. It is shaking violently, the scissors jerking erratically in her fist. She drops them to the floor.

  "Get out," she says. "Get out, you bastard."

  In nightmares there is no fade out/fade in, there is no matching shot, no attempt at continuity, flashback overlaps flashback and there is horror in chaos. The naked woman dropping the scissors, the little girl rushing to her and throwing herself in her mother's arms, both are rudely and abruptly replaced on the screen of Matthew's mind by a slender woman wearing a wheat-colored suit and a wide-brimmed straw hat, pantyhose to match the suit, tan high-heeled shoes, dark sunglasses covering her eyes.

  Time outdistances time.

  Two years ago is suddenly two weeks ago.

  This is the twenty-third day of May, anno domini, the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend, and in his nightmare Carla Nettington has come to the law firm of Summerville and Hope, ostensibly to discuss the drawing of a will.

  Ten minutes later, she is telling Matthew that she suspects her forty-five-year-old husband is having an affair. That is why she is really here. She did not want to go personally to a private detective; there is, she feels, something sleazy about private detectives. So she is here to ask if Matthew can help her secure the services of someone who can ascertain (these are her exact words, nightmares do not lie) ascertain whether her husband's frequent absences from home are truly occasioned (the exact words) by a heavy work load or are instead attributable to the favors of another woman.

  "Because if the bastard's cheating on me," she says, "I want a divorce."

  The bastard is Daniel Nettington, her husband.

  Get out, you bastard.

  In the distance, beyond the fringes of Matthew's unconscious, beyond the nightmare, offscreen so to speak, there is the sound of an automobile. He knows consciously-he is half asleep, half awake, he can hear for example the sound of raccoons outside, rummaging in his garbage cans, can hear a forlorn train whistle, for sometimes in the middle of the night Calusa gets trains bound for God knows where-he knows consciously, his conscious mind tells him that this offscreen automobile is Otto Samalson's. His conscious mind is a raisonneur, wide awake, explaining to half-asleep Matthew that this flashback nightmare will soon replay scenes he has never witnessed. The offscreen car is Otto Samalson's and soon Matthew will be subjected to the horror of his death, an event he can only blindly conjure, but such is the magic of nightmare.

  He is talking to Otto on the telephone. He is asking Otto if he can take on a surveillance case. Otto is saying he's working another case right now, but if Matthew doesn't mind a little time-sharing he can start maybe Tuesday, will that be all right?

  "What I'm doing," he says, "I'm taking Monday off like a normal human being."

  The sound of the car is closer, it nudges the unconscious, demands to be driven onscreen. Matthew knows the car is a blue Buick Century, he has seen the car before. That he can only hear it now, cannot see it now, is frustrating. And yet he does not want to see it. He knows that once it enters the dream, he will know true horror, he will witness a close friend dying. He wants Otto to stay alive, to be alive, he wants the car to drive all the way to Tampa on I-75, bypassing Calusa, bypassing the nightmare.

  Friday.

  Is it Friday already?

  Friday, the sixth day of June, 4:00 p.m. or thereabouts, Otto Samalson sitting in Matthew's office, smoking a cigarette. It is difficult to imagine this man as a private detective. He is no Sam Spade, no Philip Marlowe. He looks instead like a tailor or a shoe salesman. Short and slight of build, mostly bald with a halolike fringe settling above his ears, twinkling blue eyes, his mouth in a perpetual smile, he is the Eli Wallach of the sleuthing profession, enormously likable, immensely sympathetic, a man you would trust to drive your youngest sister to Napoli. Matthew suspects that Otto, with his wonderful bedside manner, could coax a devoted mother into revealing the whereabouts of her ax-murderer son.

  The sound of the car.

  Closer.

  Louder.

  Matthew tosses in half-sleep, half-wakefulness. Outside, the raccoons argue heatedly among themselves, their voices shrill.

  "The guy's been fucking this widow lives in Harbor Acres," Otto is saying. "I've got him going in and out every night since

  I started tailing him. That was Tuesday a week ago, I got him going in and out nine days already. Nice pictures, Matthew, he gets there when it's still light, I catch him with the long lens. I also got a tape I want you to hear. This lady, she thinks this is still Calusa twenty, thirty years ago, she goes out, leaves doors unlocked all over the place. I been in and out twice already. I put my recorder right under the bed, voice-activated. I got some very hot stuff, Matthew, wait'll you hear it. I couldn't bring the tape today 'cause I only got the original, it's in the safe. I'll make a
copy, let you hear it next time I see you. Very beautiful stuff, Matthew, the two of them talking very dirty, she's a widow, nice-looking woman in her late-"

  The Buick suddenly roars into view.

  The office is gone.

  There is only U.S. 41 and the blue Buick.

  Otto is behind the wheel. He is smiling.

  Turn back, Matthew thinks.

  "Pictures of them in action are gonna be impossible, I think," Otto is saying, "because so far they only been makin' it with the drapes closed. You maybe have all you need on the tape, anyway, names, everything, a guided tour of what they're doing there in the lady's bed. I shoulda brought it today, but I didn't want to risk it 'cause I'll tell you the truth, if anything happens to that tape I'm not sure I can get in the house so easy again. I think he's on to me, Matthew, and I think the two of them are gonna start being very careful in the not too distant-"

  Otto is still smiling.

  This is a close shot of him behind the steering wheel. He has no idea what's coming. Only Matthew knows what's coming. Matthew hears a repeat of the news broadcast he heard only hours ago, while he and Susan were making love, Get out, you bastard, hears the broadcast as if it is coming from very far away, like a short wave broadcast, Otto's smiling face filling the screen, In Calusa tonight- Turn back, he thinks.

  "Reason I think he's made me," Otto says, "is there's something on the tape, I think he's referring to me. I couldn't be sure 'cause it wasn't an absolute reference. But he could've been talking about me, about me following him. And last night when he's coming out of her house, this must've been along around eleven, he stops dead in the street, he does like a take, you know, and looks straight at the car. So I think my days are numbered. What I'd like you to do is hear the tape and then decide whether you want to stay with this. You ask my opinion, he's gonna go underground a while, maybe surface again in a few weeks, but meanwhile cool it till he's positively sure nobody's watching him. What I thought, maybe Monday I can-"

  -killing the driver. The car swerved off the highway and into-

  "Turn back!" Matthew screamed aloud.

  ***

  He sat up in bed, wide awake.

  He was drenched with cold sweat.

  Morning was here.

  He could still hear Otto's voice.

  So I think my days are numbered.

  2

  There were flies buzzing around the cheese Danish on Frank Summerville's desk. He was drinking coffee from a soggy cardboard container, and he was glaring sternly at Matthew over the rim of it.

  "I don't want you getting involved in this," he said.

  "Otto was a friend," Matthew said.

  "Otto was a private eye who occasionally did work for us."

  "No, Frank, he was a friend. I liked him."

  "I liked him, too," Frank said. "But now he is dead, Matthew. He was shot in the head, Matthew. Twice, Matthew. His murder has nothing whatever to do with us, and I want you to stay away from the Public Safety Building and Detective Morris Bloom, do you hear me, Matthew?"

  "Morrie's on vacation," Matthew said.

  "Good," Frank said.

  He was a half-inch shorter and ten pounds lighter than Matthew. They both had dark hair and brown eyes, but Frank's face was somewhat rounder, what he himself called a "pig face."

  In Frank's physiognomical filing cabinet, there were only two kinds of faces: pig and fox. Frank also believed that there were only two kinds of names: Eleanor Rigby names and Frere Jacques names. Benny Goodman was a Frere Jacques name. "Benny Goodman, Benny Goodman, dormez vous, dormez-vous?" Robert De Niro was an Eleanor Rigby name. "Robert De Niro, puts on his face from a jar that he keeps by the door…" Frank further believed that there were only two kinds of people in the world: the Tap Dancers and the Touchers. He considered himself a tap dancer because he was very agile at gliding away from any sticky situation. He considered Matthew a toucher because he was always getting involved in situations he had no business getting involved in.

  "I'm going over to his office later today," Matthew said.

  "Whose office?" Frank said. "You just told me he's on vacation."

  "Otto's."

  "What for?"

  "I want to hear what was on that tape."

  "Otto's murder has nothing to do with us, Matthew."

  "You don't know that for sure."

  "He was working a lousy surveillance."

  "Maybe somebody didn't like the idea, Frank."

  "Matthew… please. Do me a favor…"

  "I want to hear that tape."

  ***

  The people of Calusa, Florida, liked to believe there was no crime here at all; the uniformed cops and detectives who worked out of the Public Safety Building were concerned only with such things as citizens stubbing their toes.

  Public safety.

  Not crime.

  But in Rand McNally's most recent Places Rated Almanac, there was a section that rated metropolitan areas from safest- the number-one position-to most dangerous-the 329th position.

  Wheeling, West Virginia, was rated the safest city in America.

  Number One.

  New York, New York-Frank's beloved Big Apple-was rated the most dangerous city in America.

  Number 329.

  Chicago, Illinois-Matthew's hometown-was rated 205.

  And crime-free Calusa was rated 162, virtually midway down the Rand McNally list, only forty-three slots higher than big bad Chicago, and apparently not as safe as the citizens here dreamt it to be.

  To hear them talk about the murder of Otto Samalson, you'd have thought this was the first time anyone had ever been killed down here. Oh my, how shocking. Shot twice in the head. Unthinkable. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Blue-haired ladies shaking their heads and refusing to believe that public safety meant anything more than avoiding banana peels on the sidewalks. Such an embarrassment. It annoyed Matthew that Otto Samalson had become an embarrassment to Calusa, Florida- where homicides never happened except on a motion picture or television screen.

  He did not get to Otto's office until a little after noon that Monday. By then he had spoken on the telephone to at least a dozen people who clucked their tongues (and undoubtedly wagged their heads, which Matthew could not see) over the unfortunate death on a public thoroughfare of a man whose profession was questionable at best. It took him ten minutes to walk from his own office to Otto's office in downtown Calusa. Downtown Calusa. The words somehow conjured a giant metropolis. Like downtown Calusa, man, you dig? Same as downtown New York or downtown Chicago. Downtown Detroit. Downtown L.A.

  Well…

  Downtown Calusa was exactly nine blocks long and three blocks wide. The tallest buildings in downtown Calusa, all of them banks, were twelve stories high. Main Street ran eastward from the Cow Crossing-which was now a three-way intersection with a traffic light, but actually had been a cow crossing back when the town was first incorporated-to the County Court House, which, at five stories high, was the tallest building anywhere on Main. The other buildings on Main were one- and two-story cinderblock structures. The banks were on the two streets paralleling Main to the north and south. So when you said "downtown Calusa," you weren't talking about a place that also had an uptown. There was no uptown as such. There was simply downtown Calusa and then the rest of Calusa.

  Similarly, when you saw a frosted glass door and the lettering on it read-

  SAMALSON INVESTIGATIONS

  SUITE 3112

  -you expected to open that door and find behind it a suite, which by strict definition was a series of connected rooms and which in the popular imagination (like downtown Calusa, man!) conjured grandness, a suite at the Plaza Athenee, right?

  Well, when you opened the frosted glass door to Otto's office, you found yourself in a reception room measuring six by eight feet and crammed to bursting with a wooden desk, and a typewriter on it, and In and Out baskets to the left of the typewriter, and papers all over the desk, and a wooden chair behind it, and an upholstered easy cha
ir opposite it, and green metal filing cabinets, and bookshelves, and a Xerox machine, and a coatrack, and walls hung with pictures of presidents of the United States, only two of whom Matthew recognized. On the wall opposite the entrance door, there was another door, presumably leading to the rest of the "suite."

  A Chinese woman was sitting behind the reception room desk. She did not look at all like the Dragon Lady. She had black hair and eyes the color of loam, and she was wearing a Chinese-style dress with a mandarin collar, but that was where the resemblance ended. Matthew guessed she was in her fifties, as plump as a dumpling, as tiny and as squat as a fire hydrant.

  "Yes?" she said. "May I help you?"

  Perfect English. Not a trace of sing-song.

  "I'm Matthew Hope," he said. "Summerville and Hope. Mr. Samalson was doing some work for us."

  "Oh, yes," she said. "I'm May Hennessy. Otto's assistant."

  He had spoken to her on the phone more times than he could count, but he had never once guessed she was Chinese. Always figured Otto's assistant was a big redheaded Irish lady who carried a blackjack in her handbag. May Hennessy. That's what a May Hennessy should have looked like. He glanced at her left hand resting on the typewriter. No wedding band. So where'd the Hennessy come from? Had her mother been Chinese, her father Irish? Or was she divorced?

  "Hell of a thing, isn't it?" she said.

  "Yes."

  "Nicest man who ever lived."

  "Yes," Matthew said, nodding.

  There was an awkward silence.

  "Miss Hennessy," he said, "when I saw Otto on Friday, he mentioned a tape he'd made. On the Nettington case. He said it was in the safe." He paused and then said, "Could I possibly have that tape?"

  May Hennessy looked at him.