Dancing Aztecs

by Donald E. Westlake

  Wally lunged the Pinto forward. Oscar Russell Green. Gotta hustle.

  THEREFORE …

  DOO de doo, de doo, de doo, de-doot-de doody doo.

  Oscar Russell Green was a rotten dancer, but he didn’t care. He had no natural sense of rhythm, he had two left feet, he moved his shoulders wrong, and he had no idea what to do with his hands, but he just didn’t give a damn about any of that. If he wanted to dance, goddam it, he’d dance, that’s all. Dance all over the friggin’ living room, no matter how much the friggin’ furniture got in the way. Hell with the friggin’ furniture.

  Oscar was dancing the Hustle. He wasn’t, actually, but he thought he was, and that’s almost the same thing. He was lumbering around the living room, cartwheeling inadvertently from time to time over the larger pieces of furniture, but always picking himself up again and dancing on. Ever on. To the music in his head, or maybe to the music of the spheres. Remembered music.

  After the Irish comedy team of Frank and Floyd had departed, Oscar had napped woozily until the doorbell ringing had brought him around to a violent headache. Fortunately, the ringing had heralded the delivery boy from the liquor store, so a lot of quickly gulped hooch had smothered the headache and left Oscar more or less awake and more or less in his wrong mind, his non-Leader mind.

  Nevertheless, enough of his right mind had remained for him to fret about the broken Other Oscar and to decide at last to fix the damn thing, right now, right this second, right this instant, where the hell’s the Elmer’s glue? Kitchen kitchen kitchen kitchen, ah hah! Elmer’s glue. Next, he brought the Other Oscar and the Other Oscar’s other leg in from the bedroom to the living room, spread a lot of Elmer’s glue over the furniture and the lamps and his hands and the floor and various parts of the Other Oscar, and then jammed the leg back on and damn if it didn’t stay. Damn if it didn’t He put the Other Oscar on the living room window-sill to dry—he had a hell of a time letting go of the thing, what with all the Elmer’s glue all over the damn place—and when he stepped back to view the result (flipping backward over the beanbag chair) it seemed to him the Other Oscar looked as though he was just climbing over the sill, just coming in from the great outdoors. There wasn’t any fire escape outside that window, nothing but dark silent air five stories over the street, so this had to be a real god to be able to come in through that window. A flying god. “Whadaya hear from the flying nun?” Oscar asked it, and went chuckling away to find his bottle. Then he came chuckling back with the bottle and sat on the Barcalounger—floop, it went, and there he was lying on the Barcalounger, all unexpectedlike—and he sat there chuckling for a while and drinking from his bottle, and then he discovered he couldn’t put the bottle down.

  Goddam it Damn thing, damn goddam sum-bitch dirty filthy goddam—Ah, the hell with it why put the thing down, anyway? So he just went on holding it and drinking from it, chuckling whenever he looked over at the Other Oscar, and then it occurred to him the Other Oscar looked creepy.

  Spooky. Damn if it didn’t Coming in the window that way, all gold and glittery against the darkness of the night sky, green eyes glistening out as if this is a real meat-eater god, hopping on one leg like he’s a bad-tempered meat-eater flying god, coming in to lay waste, man, gonna waste somebody before he’s through.

  “Sum-bitch,” Oscar muttered at the damn thing, and took another swig from the bottle stuck to his hand. If he’d been some sort of superstitious jigaboo, by Jesus, that sum-bitch over there on the windowsill would give him something to superstit about You get one of your Deep South field niggers, Oscar reflected, that little sum-bitch over there would shake his goddam teeth right out his goddam head. Damn if it wouldn’t.

  Good thing he himself happened to be an educated city fella. Good thing.

  Oscar took another drink, and found the bottle empty. Still stuck to his hand, but empty. And that’s a hell of a thing, goddam it. Hell of a thing. Who wants an empty bottle stuck to his hand?

  Struggling one-handed out of the Barcalounger—it didn’t want to let him go, until the very end, when it flipped upright and bunked him onto the mohair sofa—Oscar weaved his way into the kitchen, and ran boiling water from the tap over his hand until the bottle let go, at which point it finally dawned on him that he’d just turned his fingers into hot dogs. “Ow,” he said. “Goddam it, ow.”

  It was one of those pains that built gradually, getting worse and worse long after the cause of it had stopped. Oscar reeled back to the living room with a fresh bottle in his good hand, his bad hand stuck into the opposite armpit, while he hopped on one leg as a curative for the pain of the burn. He was standing there hopping, saying Ow from time to time and otherwise cursing and muttering in a general fashion, when he noticed the Other Oscar again, and saw that he and the Other Oscar were both hopping together.

  “Hah!” said Oscar, and stopped hopping, and stood there grinning at the Other Oscar, who went on hopping but who didn’t seem spooky any more. Not at all spooky.

  In fact, in fact, the Other Oscar wasn’t hopping, he was dancing. That’s what he was doing, he was dancing, and so Oscar started dancing with him, and pretty soon Oscar was dancing all over the room, doing his own version of the Hustle, and that’s what he was doing when he heard the tinkle in the bedroom.

  Tinkle? Glass? Frank and Floyd back? Clutching his half-full—half-empty?—bottle tightly in his good hand, Oscar tippy-toed through the apartment into the bedroom, and there stood another white man. Another one.

  This one was even weirder. He was a tall skinny bony sort of guy, with limp blond hair. He had on a sports jacket, and his hand was in the pocket, and he was pointing something in that pocket in Oscar’s direction. Also, he was wearing a mask over the lower half of his face, like bank robbers in Western movies, only this mask was made of a paper napkin from McDonald’s, and the upside-down golden arches right in the middle of the mask made this new loony look bucktoothed, like a beaver.

  “Hands up,” said the beaver.

  Oscar’s hands were already occupied, one with holding a bottle and the other with tingling and stinging. “Well, goddam it,” Oscar said.

  “Back up,” said the beaver.

  “You guys getting to be a pain,” Oscar said, but he backed up. He backed up step by step all the way to the living room, with the beaver following him, pointing that whatchit at him from his jacket pocket and glaring at him with pale, watery blue eyes that made Oscar think, for some reason, of swimming pools. Angry swimming pools.

  The two of them entered the living room. Oscar backward, and then Oscar somersaulted backward over the beanbag chair, spraying cheap whiskey in various directions, and when he struggled up to a sitting position this new white man was running across the living room with his hand out at the Other Oscar.

  “Hey!” Oscar yelled, but the beaver grabbed the Other Oscar around the torso, turned, and ran the other way.

  Except the Other Oscar didn’t move. It stayed there on the windowsill—maybe, Oscar reflected, just maybe he’d used a little too much Elmer’s glue—and the beaver did a wonderful stunt of running up an invisible wall until he was horizontal with the ground, about five feet up.

  At which point the Other Oscar broke. The ankle of the leg standing on the base gave way, and the Other Oscar went off with the beaver, leaving his left foot and his base stuck to the windowsill. The beaver, meantime, clutching the Other Oscar, sailed feet-first into the Barcalounger, which ate him. It just folded up like a Venus fly trap, enclosing most of the beaver except his head and the arm holding the Other Oscar.

  “Now,” Oscar said, in admiration, “now I never saw anything like that before.”

  The beaver thrashed around in the Barcalounger, kicking and squirming, and all at once the Barcalounger up-chucked him again, and the beaver spun around on the floor, leaped to his feet, and was about to dash from the room when he apparently noticed for the first time that the Other Oscar had broken. He halted in midstride, like one of those action photographs that win
the Sports Category awards, and he stared at the exposed plaster of the Other Oscar’s ankle, and then he said, “Well, shoot” And he tossed the Other Oscar away onto the sofa.

  Well, he tried to. Then he tried again. Then he stared at the Other Oscar, stuck to his hand, and at that point Oscar struggled over to him and said, “Lemme help, lemme help.”

  “Jesus,” said the beaver. The paper napkin fluttered every time he spoke.

  Oscar peeled the beaver’s hand off the Other Oscar, and the beaver shoved that hand into his pocket, pointed something at Oscar and said, sounding tough, “I want the list.”

  “You were pointing in the other pocket before,” Oscar told him.

  “What?” The beaver stared down at himself, as though he’d just been told his fly was open, and then he leaped straight up in the air, turned around in midleap, and landed running in the other direction.

  Oscar didn’t follow. He listened to the crashing, and then the tinkling, and then the brong-brong-bronging of the guy’s retreat down the fire escape. “This is the worst drunk I’ve ever had,” Oscar said out loud. Then he put the Other Oscar on the beanbag chair for safekeeping, and turned his attention to the base on the windowsill.

  Stuck. Well and truly stuck. Sighing, shaking his head, Oscar went off toward the kitchen to get some hot water.

  ALONG WITH WHICH …

  Our Story Till Now: Earnest, professional MEL BERNSTEIN, while engaged in business activities instigated by his bustling, clever brother-in-law JERRY MANELLI, enters the posh residence of dapper, amiable BUD BEEMISS in search of the ugly, valuable DANCING AZTEC PRIEST. At the same time, unknown to MEL, BUD is in discussion with tough, dishonest AUGUST CORELLA and big, mean EARL in the library, while stocky, disinterested RALPH remains in the new, shiny CADILLAC out front, BUD, AUGUST and EARL, upon entering the room containing the PRIEST, discover MEL in the process of a felony. Everyone is startled. Now go on with the story—

  Mel jumped out the window, clutching the golden statue in both hands. Behind him, Corella and Beemiss were both yelling, while Earl was trying to decide whether or not he wanted to jump out the window.

  Mel landed on his feet. Then he landed on his knees, then on his side, then on his shoulder, then on his head, and then on his back. Then he rolled. At no time, however, did he let go of the statue, nor at any time did any part of the statue break.

  Upstairs, Corella and Beemiss were both still yelling. Earl, having decided that jumping out second-story windows was not in his repertoire, was running from the room, headed toward the stairs.

  Out on the lawn in the twilight, Mel was staggering to his feet and running in various directions. Having blundered into the side of the house, he oriented himself at last and took off across the rolling lawn, clutching the statue to his chest. The two Beemiss family Great Danes, with whom Mel had become friendly on the way in, romped along at his side, saying, “Woof!”

  Corella and Beemiss both finally stopped yelling, and Corella ran out of the room after Earl, while Beemiss stood frowning at the man and dogs gamboling away across the lawn. Bud Beemiss had a quick mind, and it had begun nibbling at the inconsistencies.

  Earl didn’t have a particularly quick mind, but he had a very quick body, and in no time at all he had bounded down the stairs, leaped across the front hall, flung himself out the doorway, and was rounding the side of the house in Mel’s wake. Corella, in less terrific physical shape, was puffing gamely along in the background.

  Mel had left the station wagon on a dirt road abutting the Beemiss property, just out of sight of the house, beyond the lawn and some pine trees. Mel and the dogs were just reaching these pine trees when Earl started off across the lawn from the house, and both dogs at once left Mel and turned back to consider this other guy. This one was a stranger to them, not an old friend like Mel, and they concluded that his running was a suspicious act. Therefore, they intercepted him and knocked him down.

  “Hamlet!” yelled Beemiss. “Ophelia! You stop that! Stop it! Leave that man alone!”

  The dogs reluctantly released Earl, just in time to see Corella come around the corner of the house. Ah hah! This must be the guy they should defend the house against. The two dogs, smiling happily, loped toward Corella, who made an abrupt U-turn and ran like hell the opposite way.

  “Hamlet! Come back! Ophelia! Damn it, come back here!”

  The dogs were having too much fun to listen to some old spoilsport. Pretending they couldn’t hear their master’s voice, they continued after Corella, who scurried around to the front of the house and lunged into the Cadillac, startling Ralph out of a year’s growth. The two Great Danes thudding against the side of the car startled him out of a second year’s growth. “Jesus!” he yelled, flinging his well-read New York Post up in the air. “Jesus Christ!”

  “Start the car!” Corella yelled at him.

  Ralph didn’t need to be told twice.

  Simultaneously, Mel was starting his own car, while Earl pounded through the pines in his wake, at the same time trying to brush pawprints off his tie. The station wagon was reluctant, but Mel kicked it in the accelerator a lot of times fast and the engine coughed and groaned and started. Mel swung the car around in an even tighter U-turn than Corella had made, and Earl leaped out of the pines. Mel accelerated, Earl grabbed the rear bumper, the car leaped forward, the bumper snapped off, and Earl went sailing back into the pine trees with the bumper in his hand.

  “After him! After him!” Corella was yelling.

  Ralph was going crazy. “After who?” he cried, heedless of grammar.

  “Him him him!” Corella screamed, pointing at the station wagon swaying out onto the blacktop road.

  Earl came running out of the pines, waving the bumper, and the dogs gave up trying to batter their way into the Cadillac and went galumphing off to play with their other new friend. “No no no!” yelled Earl, and ran back into the pines.

  “Hamlet! Ophelia! Come back here!”

  Earl ran through the pines and out the dirt road, while Ralph swung the Caddy around the Beemiss circular driveway. The station wagon was bouncing and bucketing away along the blacktop road. Earl and the Caddy intersected where the dirt road met the blacktop, and Ralph slammed on the brakes so Earl could get in. Earl threw the bumper at the dogs, dove headfirst into the Caddy, and Ralph slammed them forward again. Away went the Caddy down the blacktop road after the station wagon, and away went the dogs after the Caddy.

  In the first mile, there was no advantage gained or lost between the two cars. The Caddy was bigger and faster, but the road was too curvy and bumpy for Ralph to let it all the way out. In fact, he was having more trouble keeping on the road than Mel was.

  But at least they outdistanced the dogs, who finally gave up the chase and turned back, grinning at one another. They’d had a wonderful time. Returning to their territory, Hamlet carried Mel’s bumper into the house in his teeth, as a prize of war. He sulked when Beemiss wouldn’t let him keep it.

  After that first mile, Mel turned onto a somewhat larger and smoother road, in which the Cadillac could use more of its greater speed. However, there was only one passing zone in the first four miles of that road, and Mel used it to pass a car containing a clergyman, a Methodist minister named Actable who liked to go for long leisurely drives while working out the following Sunday’s sermon. A curvy road and on-coming traffic kept Ralph bottled up behind the Reverend Actable and his Roadrunner while Mel surged away, until Mel in his turn came upon a Volkswagen Microbus driven by a florist’s wife named Muriel Leenk, who had nine children, all of them in the bus with her. She was discussing Star Trek with three of the boys.

  Another passing zone. Mel zoomed around Mrs. Leenk, and a minute later Ralph zoomed around the Reverend Actable. Then Ralph tailgated Mrs. Leenk for a while, and Mel tailgated a famous economist named Brasspendle, who was driving along having an interior argument with Keynes, in which Keynes just kept making a fool of himself.

  Another passing zone! But an
ambling diaper service truck filled the on-coming lane while Mel and Brasspendle were in it, so Mel couldn’t get around the economist’s Saab. Unfortunately, the diaper service truck was no longer in the way when Mrs. Leenk and Ralph got there, and Ralph surged the Cadillac forward as though the thing would actually take off and fly.

  Mel, hunched over the wheel, clenching and grimacing and moaning low, saw the Caddy growing huge in his rear-view mirror. Full night hadn’t quite settled in, and he could make out the big gleaming menace of the machine behind its four headlights. (Ralph was the kind of son of a bitch who leaves his high beams on when following other cars.) Ahead there was no passing zone. There was nothing, there was nothing, there was—

  The Connecticut Turnpike! Not thinking twice, Mel slipped past Brasspendle on the right, swung up the entrance ramp, and shot away eastward on the Turnpike. And right behind him came the Cadillac, doing seventy before it was well away from the ramp.

  Mel was doing eighty, eighty-five, eighty-seven, eighty-seven and a half. The Cadillac was doing ninety, ninety-five, a hundred and five.

  Mel slammed on the brakes. Mel drove at exactly fifty-five.

  “We’ve got him!” Corella yelled. He was, in his excitement, pounding the top of the front seat directly behind Ralph’s neck, which Ralph hated. “We’ve got him we’ve got him we’ve got him!” Pound, pound, pound.

  The Cadillac was coming up fast, it was closing the gap. The Cadillac was roaring up on the outside lane. Any second now the Cadillac was going to overtake the station wagon and force it off the road, and then something terrible would happen to Mel Bernstein.

  And then Ralph slammed on the brakes, and Corella and Earl both fell on the floor in back. The Cadillac moved at exactly fifty-five.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Corella clawed his way up off the floor. “Grab him! Shove him off the road!”