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 inside the door, as though paralyzed. He thought for a moment she would turn and run right out again.
“Won’t you sit down?” he said, as gently as he could, and motioned to the chairs in front of his desk.
The girl looked terrified.
“Miss?” he said.
The girl nodded.
“Please sit down, won’t you?”
She moved crablike toward one of the chairs, sat in it, and then immediately and defensively folded her arms across her chest.
“I’m sorry,” Matthew said, “I didn’t get your name.”
“Kelly,” the girl squeaked, and cleared her throat. “Kelly O’Rourke.”
“How can I help you, Miss O’Rourke?” Matthew asked.
She stared at him, her eyes wide. He wondered if he had grown horns.
“Miss?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please relax.”
“I’m relaxed,” she said.
“I understand you want to talk to me about Otto Samalson.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about him?”
“I read in the paper that he worked for you.”
“Well, he was doing some work for us, yes.”
“The paper said investigator with the firm of Summerville and Hope.”
“Yes, well, that wasn’t quite accurate,” Matthew said.
“That’s why I came here,” Kelly said, sounding disappointed, like a child who’d been promised the circus only to have it rain. “’Cause the paper said he worked for you.”
“Well, maybe I can help you, anyway,” Matthew said. “What was it you wanted to tell me?”
She hesitated.
Then she said, “I saw him.”
“When?” Matthew asked at once.
“Sunday night.”
“Where?”
“At the Seven-Eleven where I work. He came in and asked for a pack of cigarettes.”
“Where’s that?”
“On Forty-one. Just over the Whisper Key bridge.”
“Which bridge? North or south?”
“North.”
“What time was this?”
“About a quarter to eleven.”
“Are you sure it was him?”
“Yes, I recognized his picture in the paper. He seemed like a nice man.”
“He was,” Matthew said. “Did he say anything else?”
“Just that he didn’t need matches. When I handed him the cigarettes. Said he had a lighter, thanks.”
“Was he alone?”
“Yes.”
“Came in alone?”
“Yes.”
“Went out alone?”
“Yes. But...”
Matthew was writing. He looked up sharply.
“Yes?”
“I watched through the front window, you know? The big window? Because he was such a cute little man. And there was nothing to do, the place was empty.”
“And?”
“He got in his car, and started it, and backed out.”
“Yes, go ahead, Kelly.”
“This other car backed out right after him. Like it was waiting for him to pull out, you know? Backed out and followed him.”
“You’re sure it followed him?”
“Made the turn at the light, same as he did.”
“Heading in which direction?”
“South on Forty-one.”
“What kind of car was it, Kelly?”
“A black Toronado,” she said, “with red racing stripes and tinted windows.”
“Did you happen to notice the license plate?”
“No, I’m sorry. I would’ve looked if I’d known he was gonna get killed. But I didn’t know that.”
“Did you notice who was in the car?”
“No. I told you, the windows were tinted.”
“You couldn’t tell if it was one person... or two?”
“I couldn’t see in.”
“Anything else you can remember? Anything Mr. Samalson said or did?”
“Yes, sir,” Kelly said, and suddenly smiled. “He made a joke about my hair. He said it looked like my head was on fire.”
The moment she was gone, Matthew called Cooper Rawles at the Calusa PD He had first met Rawles when he was working on what the police files had labeled the Jack and the Beanstalk case but what Matthew would always remember as the Bullet in the Shoulder case. Unfortunately, the shoulder in question had been his, and the bullet had been traveling at enormous velocity, trailing fire and pain behind it.
Rawles had been there on that memorable night in August, upstairs with Bloom, questioning a suspect named Jack Crowell who’d made a break for it when the cops started demolishing his alibi. Crowell burst out of the front door of the building, barefoot and barechested, a gun in his right hand, shoving his way through the handful of people cluttered on the front steps, almost falling over the lap of a woman who sat Haitian-style, her knees wide, her dress tented over her crotch. Matthew, waiting outside on Bloom’s explicit instructions, heard Bloom’s voice shouting from inside the building — “Stop or I’ll shoot!” — and shoved himself off the fender of the car, moving to intercept Crowell, figuring Bloom was right behind him with his own gun, and never once stopping to think what might happen next.
What happened next was that he’d got shot for the first time in his life, and he never wanted to get shot ever again because not only was it embarrassing, it also hurt like hell. Rawles hadn’t said much that night. He was a man of few words. He’d just shaken his head, and then walked over to the car to radio for a meat wagon. Matthew visualized him now as the phone rang at the Public Safety Building. A huge man, black as the Arctic night, wide shoulders and a barrel chest. Massive hands. Stood at least six feet four inches tall and weighed possibly two-forty. No one to mess with.
When he came onto the line, Matthew said, “Detective Rawles? This is Matthew Hope. I have some information for you.”
Rawles listened silently as Matthew repeated everything Kelly O’Rourke had told him not five minutes earlier.
There was a long silence on the line.
“You’ve been busy,” Rawles said, and for a moment Matthew thought he’d only imagined the reprimanding note in his voice. But then Rawles said, “Maybe you ought to make application for the Police Department, Mr. Hope.”
Matthew said nothing.
“Understand you were out to see Mrs. Nettington before we got to her,” Rawles said.
His meaning was unmistakable now.
“Mrs. Nettington was my client,” Matthew said.
“Is that why you asked all kinds of questions about where her husband was Sunday night when Samalson was boxed?”
“What is this?” Matthew said.
“I think you know what this is, Mr. Hope,” Rawles said. “I don’t think you’d be acting this way if Morrie wasn’t on vacation ’cause Morrie’d have called you as a friend and told you to bug off. What I want to know is why you think you can get away with conducting your own personal little investi—”