Dancing Aztecs

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Nope. All by himself. Ran around like a cockroach.”

  “Huh. Think of that.” Maybe the mob, maybe somebody else entirely. But the point right now was Bobbi Harwood. “Be seeing you,” Jerry said, and left the bedroom.

  The black man reeled after him through the apartment to the front door, where he said, “You sure you didn’t come here for that goddam statue?”

  “Wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole,” Jerry assured him. “So long.” And he left, trotting down the stairs and out to the street.

  There was a lot to think about. Frank and Floyd, for two; what were they doing together? And who was the guy with the McDonald’s napkin on his face? And if he wasn’t from the mob, where was the mob?

  But the main point was still Bobbi Harwood. Standing on the sidewalk (he had become so blasé by now that he didn’t even notice the prevailing quiet), he looked around almost as though he might see her from here. She was somewhere in this city, right now, with what might be the golden statue. But where?

  AT THAT VERY MOMENT …

  “I tell you, Madge,” Bobbi Harwood said, pouring more of the Almaden Mountain Burgundy from the half-gallon jug into the jelly glass, “I had a revelation tonight. A revelation.”

  “That’s good,” Madge said, and yawned discreetly behind her hand.

  Bobbi didn’t notice, She hadn’t noticed much of anything the last few hours, not since she’d stalked out of Chuck’s life—that was the way she thought of it now, with a new sense of determination and purpose—and marched away down West End Avenue with the two heavy suitcases hanging from her arms. She’d stamped along, noticing nothing in the world around her, ignoring cabs and catcalls and pedestrians, concentrating exclusively on the activities inside her own head, the new aura of freedom and possibility and movement, the new conviction that she was out of it now, well out of it and poised on the brink of a new level of being, and it was only the weight of the suitcases that had dragged her at last back down to earth. Once she had finally noticed that her arms were suffering a great deal of pain, she’d also realized she couldn’t simply keep walking down West End Avenue the rest of her life. She would have to have a destination.

  Which was when she’d thought of Madge, as she had mentioned to Madge herself several times by now. (“I thought of you right away. Right away.”) Madge being a cellist in the same orchestra in which Bobbi plied her harp, and Madge further being Bobbi’s best friend in all the world, and Madge even further being someone who was living alone at the moment, it wasn’t all that startling that Bobbi had thought of her, but Bobbi herself couldn’t seem to get over it.

  In any event, she had lugged her luggage another block and a half to a phone booth, where she had called Madge and said, “It’s Bobbi and I just left Chuck forever and can I come sleep on your sofa tonight?” Madge had said why-of-course, and Bobbi had taken a cab down here to this pleasant converted brownstone on Waverly Place in the Village, and the two women had been sitting in the front room of Madge’s third-floor floor-through apartment ever since, with the traffic going by down below. Madge had produced the then-full-now-nearly-empty half-gallon of red wine, and they had settled down to have a nice dialogue together. Or monologue, really, since the last few hours had seen Bobbi doing most of the talking, her two topics being (A) a specific catalog of Chuck’s faults, errors, omissions, and flaws, and (B) a vaguer but equally impassioned catalog of the fresh vistas open to Bobbi now that she had broken out of the trap. Madge’s sympathetic smile had become rather more glassy in the last hour or so, but she too had been married at one time, and she knew how terrific it could feel to have a thing like that over and done with, so she was a good sport and let Bobbi run on as long as she wanted.

  Which apparently was forever. “A revelation,” Bobbi repeated. She swigged half the jelly glass of wine, and said, “I suddenly realized I could be my own person, you know?”

  “I know,” Madge said, and she really did know. Bobbi had said the exact same thing at least eleven times by now. Quickly, before Bobbi could say anything else that she’d already said, Madge told her, “But I’m sorry, honey, I’m afraid I’ve had it for today.”

  Bobbi stared at her, not understanding. “You what?”

  “I’m sleepy.” Madge got to her feet. “Stay up as long as you want, Bobbi, but I have to go to bed.”

  “In the morning,” Bobbi said. “I’ll go see Coalshack.” Everett Coalshack was the director of the New York City Symphony Orchestra, where Bobbi and Madge both worked.

  “That’s right,” Madge said.

  “He can send me to the right people out on the Coast,” Bobbi said. “I know he’ll help me.”

  “I’m sure he will,” Madge agreed, not for the first time, and retreated out of the room and out of earshot, while Bobbi went on talking.

  “I’ll get to California,” Bobbi said to the jelly glass and the wine jug and the empty room, “and the first thing I’ll get is a car. A car, goddam it. And a nice little house somewhere near the ocean. And never have to see or hear or speak to that bastard Chuck again.”

  She went on in that vein for a while, eventually noticing that she was indeed alone, and then she prepared herself for bed, a process that involved emptying both suitcases all over the living room floor. When this exercise unearthed the little gold-painted statue that had started it all, she gave the ugly creature a radiant smile and whispered to it, “You’re my good-luck charm. You know that? You made it all possible.”

  She placed the statue on the windowsill, among the avocado plants, with the spider plants dangling overhead; a very jungly atmosphere, perfect for the little devil. And when at last she turned out the lamps and stretched herself on the sofa under Madge’s other blanket, she saw how the peach-colored glow of the sodium streetlight outside glinted in metallic slivers on all the contorted surfaces of the creature. Coral and gold, with wicked emerald eyes. “Good night, little devil,” she whispered to it, and she could almost believe that one of the eyes winked at her.

  SOON …

  The four women playing bridge in the Bernstein dining room were Angela Manelli Bernstein (north), Teresa Manelli McCann (east), Floyd’s wife Barbara Kavetchian McCann (south) and Kathleen McCann Podenski (west). (Kathleen, Frank and Floyd’s sister, was married to a Polish gentleman named Howie Podenski who was currently serving three concurrent terms for mail fraud but was expected home soon.) Angela was in four spades, doubled, on the basis of Barbara’s promise of strong support, but when Teresa led the jack of clubs and Barbara lay down her dummy hand Angela saw at once that she’d been screwed again. “Barbara,” she said, glaring at her sister’s sister-in-law, “what in Jesus Christ’s holy name made you support spades?”

  “Well,” Barbara said, blinking in that infuriating way of hers, “you sounded so enthusiastic about it”

  “Barbara,” Angela said, and in the other room the phone rang. Angela closed her mouth, counted to seven, opened it again, and said, “Barbara, answer the phone. You’re dummy.”

  “All right.” Barbara went away to answer the phone, and Angela settled down to compare her hand with the dummy’s, to see how much could be salvaged.

  When Angela had called Frank’s and Floyd’s wives to tell them their husbands wouldn’t be home for dinner, the idea of bringing in Kathleen Podenski for a fourth and settling down to a nice game of bridge had seemed a natural one. And since the Bernstein home was the only one not blessed with children, it had also been natural to hold the game here. (Besides, Angela was on duty for phone messages, of which this one was the first) The nine children belonging to the other women, ranging in age from Frank and Teresa’s eleven-year-old Francine to Floyd and Barbara’s four-year-old Ronald, had all been assembled over at Barbara’s house with Francine as their baby-sitter and the color television set to keep them out of trouble, so everything was fine.

  The only thing wrong, in fact, was what was wrong with the same idea every time they tried it. Floyd’s wife Barbara and her
partner (they rotated) invariably lost every game. Invariably. And Angela, who was a very intense and rather good bridge player, hated to lose. Hated it, hated it.

  And she was going to lose again, no doubt of it. Down three, at the very least. Jack of clubs led, king X X in dummy (one of Barbara’s few honors, as it happened), X X X in Angela’s hand. If she played over the jack, surely Kathleen would have the damn ace. If she didn’t, Teresa would have the damn ace. Whatever happened, Angela could see herself losing three club tricks in a row. Hell and damnation.

  Angela chose to finesse, playing a low club. If Kathleen had the ace but not the queen, she might play high. Except that she didn’t, and on the second round Teresa led the queen, and this time Angela played the king over it, and Kathleen had the ace.

  Kathleen was leading the ten of clubs, which was now high in that suit, when Barbara came back from the phone to say, “I think it’s Mel.”

  Angela had just about had enough of Barbara. Glaring at her, she said, “You think it’s Mel?”

  “He sounds garbled,” Barbara explained.

  “In a minute.” Angela played that club round through, Kathleen took the trick, and now Angela had to take every last trick after this to make the contract. Fat chance.

  Kathleen led another club. Angela was now void both in her hand and in the dummy, but given Barbara’s lack of Strong cards Angela would prefer to be in her hand, so she played a low trump, and damn if Teresa didn’t go over it with a medium-size trump, and now Angela had to decide whether to lose the trick or to use up not only one more trump on this same trick but also to use up one of the few entries to dummy.

  “How we doing?” Barbara said.

  Angela looked up at her. “We? We?” Making a sudden decision, she got to her feet, slapped the cards face-down on the table, and said, “You play the hand. I’ll go talk on the phone.”

  Angela left Barbara blinking and went into the living room, where she picked up the phone and snarled, “Hello!”

  “Angela? Is that you?” Mel didn’t sound garbled, he sounded hysterical.

  “What’s up?”

  “I’m arrested!”

  “Arrested? For burglary?”

  “Everything but,” he said. “Reckless driving, endangerment, grand larceny, assault and battery, attempted murder, willful destruction of property and leaving the scene of an accident Attempted leaving the scene of an accident”

  “You?” Disdain dripped like honey from her lips. “Yon don’t have the guts for all that”

  “The point is,” he said, “I’m here in Haddam Neck, Connecticut and I’m—”

  “You’re in what? Horse’s Neck—”

  “Haddam Neck. Connecticut. And this is the one phone call I’m permitted, and I made the mistake of calling my wife. I’d do better to call Yassir Arafat”

  The presence of Barbara back there in the dining room left Angela with no compassion in her heart. “You may be there in Horse’s Ass, Connecticut” she said, “but I’m here in Dreadful Gulch, Queens, playing bridge with Barbara McCann, and what the hell am I supposed to do about you?”

  “Jesus, you’re a sweetheart I’ve been arrested”

  “Better late than never.”

  “Listen, Angela,” he said. “I can tell you’re in one of your moods, so just listen to what I tell you, and pass it on to Jerry when he calls in. I think they plan to hold me overnight but I want somebody to get a good Connecticut lawyer up here in the morning. That’s Haddam Neck, Connecticut.”

  “All right all right I got it.”

  “Also tell Jerry, I got to the Beemiss statue and it wasn’t the right one.”

  “Beemiss.” Angela was finally starting to jot things down on the notepad beside the phone.

  “I didn’t get to any of the others,” Mel went on, “but I did run into two people on somebody else’s list Almost ran into them, anyway. Edward Ross and Jennifer Kendall. I think Frank had them. Their statues weren’t any good.”

  Angela wrote the names on the pad. “Anything else?”

  “You’re a terrific person, Angela. Your husband is about to spend the night in a jail cell, and you say, ‘Anything else?’”

  Angela made the effort: “Keep well,” she said. “Try not to get bugs.”

  “What a warm human being,” Mel said, and hung up.

  Angela shrugged. She’d tried, hadn’t she? Going back to the dining room, she said to Barbara, “How we doing?”

  Barbara was blinking furiously. “Down four,” she said.

  “It could have been worse,” Angela said. She’d expected it to be worse.

  “So far,” Barbara said, and led a card.

  IN DUE COURSE …

  Swimming pool salesman Wally Hintzlebel was slowing down. The story of New York is speed, is movement, movement without stopping, on the go all the time, gotta hustle, but Wally was slowing down. The nervous energy still crackled and fizzed inside him, it still pushed and poked and prodded, but he wasn’t used to the pace, and his brain was slowing down.

  That was why it was so good to be in the Professor Charles S. Harwood apartment. Empty, silent, calm. What a place to be, after all he’d gone through. First the library, then the phone call with Mom and the scramble home for dinner and back to the city, then the Beemiss address being not an address, and then the drunken black man with the statue glued to the windowsill. Why would anybody glue a statue to a windowsill?

  A bigger question: What sort of person pours boiling water out his window onto the head of somebody in the street below? (All right, technically Wally’d been burglarizing Green’s apartment, but he hadn’t taken anything, had he? Did that deserve boiling water on the head?)

  But now, like a safe port after stormy seas, here he was at last in the Harwood apartment, wonderfully empty of crazy people, or indeed of any people at all.

  Unfortunately, it was also empty of golden statues, since that pile of fragments in the living room fireplace clearly had once been a plaster copy of the Dancing Aztec Priest So the million dollars wasn’t here. It was necessary to move on.

  Out of Manhattan, at last. Of the only two remaining addresses in Wally’s possession, one was over in New Jersey and the other was in Deer Park, on Long Island, not far from Wally’s own home. Frenzy and lust pushed him to do New Jersey, but exhaustion and dulled nerves encouraged him to settle for that fellow in Deer Park—Wylie Cheshire, his name was—then go on home and start up again tomorrow morning.

  Leave, anyway. He should leave here now, this apartment was useless to him. Still he stood where he was, trembling slightly, his eyes dull but with flickerings deep within as he gazed around at the empty living room. Something was holding him here, something—

  Why were the lights on? Every light in the apartment turned on, and the apartment completely empty.

  Why was the bedroom stripped? Living room and kitchen looked lived-in—the kitchen, in fact, was one of the messiest rooms he’d ever seen in his life—but in the bedroom the dresser drawers gaped open, empty. What was going on here?

  Wondering, frowning, back to the bedroom Wally went and brooded at those empty dresser drawers. And when he turned to the closet he discovered the door was locked. With the key in the keyhole. Puzzled, at sea, Wally reached out a tentative hand, unlocked the door, opened it, and a wild-eyed naked man leaped out at him, babbling, “Oh, thank God, thank God, I thought I’d starve in there, I was praying somebody would—”

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” Wally said. He pushed the naked man back into the closet, he locked the door, he went away. To Wylie Cheshire, Deer Park, Long Island. Enough craziness. Enough of Manhattan. Enough.

  ANON …

  Mel Bernstein’s car looked like a hobo’s hat after its ricochet romance with the trees of Connecticut, but the damn thing still ran. Mel ran west in it for ten miles before he found a phone booth, next to a closed gas station, where he called Angela once more.

  This time she came on herself, and Mel said, “It’s me
again.”

  “Listen, Mel,” she said. “I’m glad you called back. I was in a very bad mood before.”

  “I noticed. Anyway, the—”

  “We’re playing cards here, Teresa and Kathleen and Barbara and me, and you know how Barbara affects me.”

  “It’s water over the bridge,” he said. “What I’m—”

  “Under the bridge.”

  “What?”

  “It’s either under the bridge or over the dam,” she said. “Water over the bridge would be a disaster.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “That’s what my entire life is, water over the bridge.”

  “Poor Mel,” she said. “How’s your cell?”

  “I’m not in a cell. I got out, that’s what I’m caning about.”

  “You escaped?”

  “They let me go. Listen, I’ll tell you the story,” Mel promised, and he did, from the time he’d entered the Beemiss residence until the motorcycle had run into the state trooper’s car, at which point Angela said, “Come off it, Mel. If you did all that, they’ll never let you go.”

  “Well, I had some advantages,” Mel told her. “In the first place, the couple on the motorcycles was interracial.”

  “Oh? Which one was black?”

  “The boy.”

  “Ah hah,” said Angela.

  “In the second place,” Mel said, “the people in the Cadillac turned out to be mobsters of some sort. They kept being evasive with the cops. But the thing that really did it, the trooper that I hit with the motorcycle, he’s an amateur writer, he—”

  “No,” she said.

  “Swear to God.”

  “He’s a customer of yours?”

  “Client,” Mel corrected. “He’s sent in a couple stories, yeah. He recognized the Zachary George name right away. They wanted my occupation, and I said I was Zachary George’s assistant, and this trooper fell over.”

  “Mel, that’s incredible.”

  “What’s so incredible? I get hundreds of pieces of shit in the mail every week.”