Cinderella by Ed McBain Page A

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 finish," 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