“I’ve been asked myself once or twice,” Martin said, lowering his voice.
“Asked what?”
“Y’know. Whether I knew where to get any stuff.”
“Oh.”
“Recently, in fact,” Martin said. “Two Hispanics came in the other night, told me they were looking to buy quality cocaine, ready to pay top dollar for it. I’ll tell you, I wish I could’ve accommodated them. I figure the way they got to me... I wouldn’t repeat this, Mer—”
“Cross my heart,” she said.
“—is years ago, when I had the restaurant on Grenada, I was... well... engaged in what one might call ‘redistribution,’ eh? Helping merchandise find its way from one place to another. There was money to be made in redistribution, I can tell you. You’d get your banana boats up from South America, they’d be carrying other than bananas sometimes, eh? You accepted whatever cargo you thought you could safely handle, you merely redistributed it to Barbados, and it found its way from there to Guadeloupe or Martinique and then on up the chain to Haiti and finally into Florida, this was, oh, six, seven years ago, Mer. Grenada’s a stone’s throw from Venezuela, y’know, and once you were past British Customs, you had the whole Caribbean open to you. A great deal of money was waiting to be untrousered back then. Now, too, for that matter. All you need is the merchandise to redistribute, eh? Which is why these two men came to the restaurant, sat at the bar, ordered a few drinks, mentioned they’d heard my name here and there. Hispanics, y’know, the Colombian word gets around, look up Martin Klement, he used to own The Troubador on Grenada, he’s got a restaurant in Florida now, maybe he can help you.”
“I can see how that might happen,” Merilee said.
“I truly wish I could help them,” Martin said, and sighed. “They were talking real commitment. Excellent money, too. If you should hear of anyone, let me know.”
Merilee was standing in front of the dressing room mirror as she repeated this story to Sandy. She was pulling up the zipper on a pair of very tight jeans. She sort of did a little leap off the floor as she pulled up the zipper.
“What I’m saying,” she said, “is six years from now, I’ll be like those two Spanish guys, you know? I’ll have myself a real bundle, I’ll breeze back here into Calusa, tell Martin I’m looking to make a big dope buy, are these too tight?”
“A little,” Sandy said.
“Mustn’t look cheap, must we?” Merilee said, and both girls giggled. Merilee took off the jeans and tried on another pair, talking as she smoothed them over her hips and turned this way and that in front of the mirror.
“Martin knows everything,” she said. “That’s ’cause he owns a restaurant, all kinds of people come in. He was the first one in Calusa to recognize me for a hooker. You were the second one, but you’re in the life yourself, so that’s understandable. Do you know what la moglia del barbiere means? That’s Italian. It means the town gossip. Actually, it means ‘the barber’s wife,’ but everybody knows what it really means. Because the barber hears everything there is to hear, and he tells it to his wife, and she gossips about it. Well, people tell restaurant owners and bartenders the same things they tell barbers. That’s how come Martin hears so much. Which, speaking of barbers, when did you do that to your hair?”
“Two weeks ago come Saturday,” Sandy said.
“You got tired of it long?”
“Sort of.”
“You like it better red, huh? Than blonde?”
“Sort of,” Sandy said.
She was silent for the space of a heartbeat, and then she said, “How much are they looking to buy?” and Merilee’s eyes met hers in the mirror.
Yellow flags and banners were flying outside 1237 Hacienda Road when Matthew pulled into the condominium’s parking lot that Thursday afternoon. A huge sign outside the sales office read:
Frank had told him that Florida State First had been forced to foreclose on the condominium’s contractor and was virtually giving away the unsold units in an attempt to get rid of them. Sixty units in the entire complex, twenty-four of them still unsold. Last week, Otto had questioned the occupants of seventeen apartments. Seventeen plus twenty-four came to forty-one. From sixty came to nineteen. Still nineteen apartments to tackle. Assuming Frank was right about the number of unsold units.
Frank had also told him the latest condominium joke:
This man comes down to Florida looking for a condominium. He pulls his car into the nearest parking space and is looking for the sales office when he spots a woman and asks her, “Can you tell me where the sales office is? I’d like to see one of the condominiums.”
The woman says, “Why do you need the sales office? I live here, come look at my condominium.”
“Well, thank you, that’s very kind of you,” the man says and follows the woman upstairs to her apartment.
“Would you care for a drink?” the woman asks.
“Well, thank you, I wouldn’t mind,” the man says.
She brings him a drink, and they sit in the living room, drinking.
“Would you care for some sex?” the woman asks.
“Well, thank you, I wouldn’t mind,” the man says.
“Some kinky sex?” she asks.
“Well, yes, thank you,” he says.
“Unzip your fly,” she says.
He unzips his fly.
“Put your member on the palm of my left hand,” she says.
He puts his member on the palm of her left hand.
She raises her right hand and begins smacking his member, smack, smack, smack, each smack punctuated with the words, “Don’t... ever... park... in... my... space... again!”
Matthew hoped he hadn’t parked in anyone’s space.
He looked for the Resident Manager’s office, found it tucked in a corner of the building that housed the workout room and the rec room, and knocked on the door.
“Come in!” a woman’s voice called.
He opened the door onto a small reception room with a desk and chair in it, no one in the chair, no one behind the desk. This was one o’clock in the afternoon, he assumed the receptionist was out to lunch.
“I’m in here!”
He followed the voice into a larger office with a larger desk in it. An attractive, dark-haired woman sat behind the desk. She was, he guessed, in her late thirties, early forties, a pleasant smile on her face, her brown eyes studying him from behind tortoiseshell glasses. Behind her was a rental calendar with large blocks of in-season time marked with different colored strips of tape.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m Matthew Hope,” he said.
“Anne Langner,” she said. “Please sit down, won’t you?”
“Thank you,” he said, and took a seat opposite her desk. “Miss Langner,” he said, “I wonder if you remember... on the sixth of June... that would have been two weeks ago this coming Friday... a man named Otto Samalson...”
“Oh, yes,” she said at once.
“You do remember him?”
“Well, of course. With all the stories about him on television and in the papers? Yes, certainly. He was here asking about a beautiful young woman, I forget her name just now.”
“Well, I’m sure he asked about several names,” Matthew said.
“Yes, now that you mention it, he did. I’m sorry but I didn’t recognize the girl in the picture he showed me. She isn’t one of our owners, and she isn’t renting an apartment here, either.”
“Would you have recognized her?”