Dead on Your Feet

by Grant Michaels

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Branco. “I know we don’t see eye-to-eye on very much.”

  I swirled the paper cup as if to cool down the steaming muck inside. I had no desire to taste it.

  “But this time I’m not going to fence you in,” he said.

  “When did you ever, Lieutenant?”

  He cocked his head slightly. “In the past I’ve ordered you to keep out of these things, not that you ever listened to me.”

  I bobbed my head and shoulders slightly as though I was enjoying some cool Latin music, audible only to me.

  “But this time I’m going to give you the go-ahead. You can meddle away to your heart’s content.”

  “Did I ever need your permission?”

  “Not really. I just wanted to tell you where I stand.”

  “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

  Branco nodded.

  And I didn’t trust him for a second.

  “Why?” I said.

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  The Latin rhythm in my head was changing to something more percussive, more like the sacrificial drums from The Rite of Spring.

  Branco continued, “In the past you’ve always taken an opposing stance to mine. And in spite of whatever happened between us, it never hurt the final outcome of the case.”

  “Lieutenant, are you asking for my help?”

  “Absolutely not. But I’m not putting any limits on you either.”

  Reflexively I raised the paper cup to my mouth and let the murky liquid touch my lips. It was bitter and burnt but strangely not loathesome. I caught Branco watching my reaction.

  “It’s not as good as yours,” he said.

  “You’re right,” I replied with a smirk. “And since we’re being so buddy-buddy today, can I ask you something?”

  Branco wavered for an instant as if fearing what secret I might dare to know, but he quickly regained his cool machismo.

  “What?” he said, braving my impending query with manly composure.

  “Can I see your file on Toni di Natale?”

  Palpable relief showed on the cop’s face.

  “Officially, no. But I can tell you what’s in it.”

  “Shoot, then,” I said.

  Branco twisted his big sensuous mouth into a smile.

  “You like to provoke me, Kraychik?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Lieutenant. I do it to my cat too.”

  The virile Italian frowned, obviously displeased at being conjoined with other household pets.

  “So?” I said. “What’s your take on Toni di Natale?”

  “Care to tell me why you’re so interested?”

  “I’m trying to settle a domestic score.”

  Branco pulled one corner of his mouth up into a wry smile. Then he leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and stretched his torso luxuriously, like a big contented tiger about to engage in a playful bout of get-the-gazelle.

  “We suspect that Ms. di Natale committed the crime to protect herself from defamation.”

  “By whom?”

  Branco smiled. “We figure that Max Harkey was in love with her, but she was involved with someone else, possibly even your friend.”

  “You think she killed Max Harkey because he was in love with her, but she’s really after Rafik?”

  Branco held up one of his big hands. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Sorry.” I shrank back dutifully. But I did recall Toni di Natale’s open flirtation with Rafik the night of the dinner. Yet Max Harkey had appeared unmoved by it. Had that been good acting on his part, or had he truly not cared?

  Branco went on. “A man like Max Harkey couldn’t accept that kind of humiliation. He’d take revenge. So he planned to cancel her contract with the ballet company—an extremely lucrative contract— and also to defame her throughout the arts world so that she’d probably never work again.”

  I felt as though Branco should have finished with a question to me: What’s wrong with this theory?

  “Lieutenant, first off, Max Harkey was incapable of being humiliated. He was the kind of person who used people up and then discarded them. It was very simple with him.”

  “Sometimes those big important people can be pretty fragile underneath.”

  “Sometimes, yes. But from what I know of Max Harkey, there was nothing about him that was fragile, least of all his ego. And beyond that, from what little I know of Toni di Natale she’s too smart to kill somebody over money.”

  “What else could she do?” asked Branco.

  “She’d work it out another way, maybe seduce Max Harkey into some kind of amiable settlement. But she wouldn’t kill the guy.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I almost told him, “Because Rafik says so,” but figured that wouldn’t convince Branco. Instead I said, “I guess because she’s an artist. An artist just wouldn’t do a thing like that.” When Rafik had expressed that very idea to me, I had denied it as nonsense. Now here I was spouting it to Branco, who sat there silent as stone.

  “If it’s possible,” I said, “I’d like to see her.”

  “That’s no problem,” he said.

  “You’ll arrange it, then?”

  “No need to. We released her half an hour ago.”

  “You what!”

  Branco’s mouth spread open to a full grin. “She’s out,” he said. “Free as the breeze.”

  “But you were holding her for murder. Who paid the bail?”

  “No bail,” he replied. ‘‘We were holding her for questioning. We don’t have sufficient grounds for a charge, not yet.”

  “You led me on!”

  “I told you the facts as I know them. You inferred what you wanted.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “You’d know that better than me.”

  Damn his wrong usage! I relinquished my cup of coffee to Branco’s desktop. It was still full, though now tepid, with an oily rainbow-hued slick forming on its surface. I stood up.

  “I guess that puts things between us back the way they’ve always been.”

  “That may change soon,” he said enigmatically.

  When I left his office one question persisted: Why had Branco been so friendly yet so deceitful?

  I telephoned Nicole at the shop and explained that I was on my way back there. When I told her I’d just seen Branco she said brightly, “Oh. how is he today?”

  “Odd.” I replied before pondering the very oddness of her question.

  “That’s good,” she said.

  Then, as is Nicole’s wont, she hung up without saying good-bye. I hope someday to uncover the root of that strange habit. But for now the question persisted: Why hadn’t she scolded me for my truancy?

  I was returning to Snips along the same route I’d come, and once again I passed by the outdoor café near the ballet company studios. I was surprised to see Scott Molloy still sitting at the table where we’d spoken. But now Alissa Kortland was with him. They appeared trapped and miserable in each other’s company. Scott happened to catch sight of me approaching them. Within seconds he stood up and fled from the table. Not a subtle exit. When I got there I asked Alissa Kortland if I could join her.

  “Suit yourself,” she said, hiding behind huge opaque sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat of starched linen. Her blond hair was mostly tucked up underneath the hat, but from what I could see, the rare and uniform platinum hue was all natural.

  “Scott was telling me what you’ve been up to,” she said. “So why don’t I save you the bother of asking questions and just tell you my side of everything.”

  “Thanks,” I said. But I knew that easy cooperation like hers was not to be trusted. A waiter appeared at our table. Alissa ordered “another” and the waiter dutifully verified her café Borgia. After my earlier dose of caffeine a glass of lemonade would have been a wise choice, but it might have cast me as a delicate creature, oversensitive to legal d
rugs. So I ordered a real man’s drink—another double espresso.

  Then Alissa Kortland lit a cigarette and, like the best of storytellers, began her tale in medias res.

  “I was Max Harkey’s mistress, but it didn’t last long.”

  “What ended it?”

  “What usually does? Another person.”

  “Toni di Natale?”

  “So it would seem,” she said.

  “Were you hurt?”

  “I wasn’t in it for love.”

  “Then were you angry?”

  She allowed a tiny smile, but her eyes were concealed by the dark lenses of her sunglasses.

  “I was hoping,” she said, “for something from his estate, some appreciation for services rendered if nothing else.”

  “What about the way he treated you as a dancer?”

  “What about it? I was a vehicle for his creative whims. That’s all we ever are. The audience sees a ballerina as a fairy-tale figure, a princess from an enchanted world. But really we’re nothing more than neurotic, emaciated athletes—contortionists actually—who jump and spin and perform circus tricks on our toes.”

  “Is it like that with Rafik, too?”

  Another smile, more playful this time, but no reply. Our coffee arrived. Her café Borgia was extravagant with the scent of orange liqueur and bitter chocolate capped with a layer of crème fraîche. My espresso was straight, uncut, and aromatic. As I said earlier, a manly drink.

  I said, “You make dancing sound horribly grim.”

  She took a sip of her coffee. Then, demure as a damsel, blotted a hairline of cream from her lip with a gauzy handkerchief. I’d bet she’d rehearsed that gesture a lot.

  “The illusion of glamour is worth all the pain,” she said.

  “What about your relationship to Scott Molloy?”

  “He deserves the gold medal for Most Earnest Closet Case in the Ballet World.”

  She waited for my reaction, which I held in check. Two could play the game of cool.

  She went on. “After years of Scott trying to get Max’s attention, I arrived in town and Max took me as his mistress at once. All hell broke loose with Scott. He accused Max of treating him unfairly—and he did it in front of the other dancers, right there in class.”

  “How did they react?”

  Alissa shrugged. “Ballet isn’t democratic. Everyone else knew enough to keep quiet. But Scott went on and on, even threatening Max if he wouldn’t start treating his dancers equally. It was shocking, I think most of all for Max. He never suspected that Scott had any feelings for anyone, least of all for him, and suddenly Scott was threatening to hurt Max unless he loved him back.”

  “Was it that blatant? Did Scott really demand that Max Harkey love him?”

  “Of course not.” She sipped at her coffee, then said, “You’re almost as sappy as he is.”

  “You don’t much like Scott, do you?”

  “He’s silly. He has no goals for his life. He wanted Max to be his father. I find that mildly disgusting. I think it’s better to be independent of everybody, including father figures. They’re useful for getting started, but it’s better to learn to get ahead without them.”

  “If you dislike Scott so much, why do you stay friendly with him?”

  She turned her head as though she wanted me to admire her profile instead of asking stupid questions. She was beautiful.

  “Scott helps me keep my own weaknesses in check, like a barometer for character flaws.” She turned her face back to me. “Are you surprised that I can admit I’m not perfect? Well, I don’t delude myself about anything, including my shortcomings. Scott is a mirror that tells me when I’m thinking or behaving in a weak way.”

  Alissa Kortland portrayed emotional honesty so well it was almost convincing. No wonder the critics loved her. But I took her cool logic one step further and realized that she had a vested interest in keeping Scott Molloy in her power, in sustaining his heterosexual delusions. Through him she could artificially enhance her own strength. Scott had admitted to me that as a dance partner, Alissa drained the energy from him, like a succubus.

  “Doesn’t anything affect you?” I asked, unable to control the tinge of moralism in my voice.

  As if on cue, she removed her sunglasses.

  “I got my fill of that warm-and-fuzzy-feel-good stuff from my family. Everything they do, everything they stand for—environment, health, love of mankind, all the New Age clichés—it’s all crap. There’s nothing before or after this. It’s all now. And I want big helpings of everything. That’s why I left the tyranny of California.”

  Ask for the world and end up in Boston, Massachusetts.

  However different the circumstances, Alissa Kortland’s “escape from tyranny” very much resembled Scott Molloy’s.

  I gulped the rest of my espresso and stood up.

  “I’ve got to get back to work,” I said. “Maybe we can continue this another time.”

  As Scott Molloy had done earlier, Alissa Kortland looked astonished that I could end our open-hearted discussion about art and life and love and her so lightly, for something so mundane as my job.

  9

  The Czarina Manquée

  BY THE TIME I FLEW BACK INTO Snips Salon—neurons all misfiring from the caffeine overdose—it was after three. Fortunately I had only one customer on the books, and that was later on, just before closing time. By then my eyeballs and my fingers would have returned to a more normal state of hyperactivity. Until then I could catch up on the other work I’d neglected because of my afternoon capers. I prepared myself to explain all this to Nicole, to defend my errant behavior, but she seemed strangely indifferent to my absence most of that day.

  When she came by my office, I related everything that had happened earlier. I concluded the long explication with a dose of dramatic irony.

  “And so, doll, the upshot of all my running around was to find out that Toni di Natale was already free.”

  “Is that so?” said Nicole, hardly interested.

  “Branco released her this afternoon.”

  Nicole corrected me. “You mean Lieutenant Branco.”

  “The same one,” I replied. “So now that Toni is free, I guess I can go back to fretting about home and hearth instead of Max Harkey’s murder.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” she said absently. Then she got up and gathered her coat and purse. “I’m leaving early today, Stanley. I want to run a few errands before I go home.”

  “Big date tonight, doll?”

  Nicole smiled enigmatically. “That’s right, dear.”

  “Do tell.”

  “You take care of business here, darling. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Nicole was almost out the front door when she turned back to me and said, “And would you open tomorrow? I may be late.”

  “Sure, doll.” Then I added with a smirk, “Enjoy yourself.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  Later on my client Garrett Wade arrived. Garrett had achieved brilliant if limited celebrity as a cabaret performer under the name Miss Doll. These days though, he doffed the sequins and pumps for pinstripes and wingtips, and his stage was more likely the courtroom, where he was quickly building a reputation as an effective if outrageous defense attorney. Garrett conversed like a talk-show hostess, a parody of a woman who can’t count to two without unbuttoning her blouse. I’d asked him once how the court judges reacted to his strategic use of dramatic, often campy devices to sway that gravest of audiences, the jury.

  Garrett had replied with a squeal, “They remind me to cross-examine and not cross-dress!”

  The question remained, Was he serious?

  I set him up at my station and began his monthly color adjustment. Ever alert to litigation, Garrett already knew about Max Harkey’s murder and had quickly made the connection to Rafik.

  “Is that hot lover of yours involved?”

  “Not criminally,” I replied.

  “If he needs representation I’m available.”


  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Garrett’s animated face paused uncertainly in the mirror, not sure whether I meant his litigious talents or the fate of my lover. An awkward silence followed, much like the unsettling hiatus when the wind shifts direction. Then Garrett quickly resumed the conversation all-ahead-full on an entirely different tack.

  “So how is married life?”

  “Hardly married,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “We’re not ready,” I lied.

  Garrett dismissed my remark with a downward flap of his wrist. “Oh girl, when I get like that I just dump the hunk and start dating again. There are too many men around to spend your life trying to understand just one of them.”

  I replied, “I wasn’t very successful at dating.” Besides, I thought, what would Garrett Wade, the reigning queen of the weekend romance, know about relationships? Once Miss Doll’s stud picked his nose or wore the wrong accessory he was history. And knowing what I did about about Garrett’s matriarchal lineage—the numerous marriages, divorces, alimonies, and flings—one thing was certain: He was his mother’s daughter. But whatever his quirks, Garrett always created effervescence around him, a lot of fun and frolic, and for that alone he was welcome company. In addition to that, all things being relative, he made me feel extremely masculine.

  Which was exactly what I needed, since at that moment Rafik rushed into the shop urgent and troubled.

  “Stani,” he exclaimed breathlessly. “Someone has made an attack on Madame!”

  Around the salon the few late-working stylists halted their scissors while they and their customers eavesdropped in morbid curiosity. When someone grabs center stage you listen.

  “It happened one hour ago,” Rafik continued excitedly.

  “Was she hurt?” I said.

  “Non. The police are there now.”

  “Where did it happen?” I said.

  “In the entrance to her building.”

  Garrett Wade chimed in. “Did you scare the attacker off?”

  “Eh?” replied Rafik.

  “Did you rescue the victim, you big strong man?”

  Rafik’s brow wrinkled. “Who is this?” he asked me impatiently, as though he didn’t really want an answer.