Dancing Aztecs

by Donald E. Westlake

  When Frank, who had heard the ruckus, dashed into the room, he found Floyd struggling his way out of a mélange of splintered wood (casket), bent metal (stand), and torn cloth (lining), while a dead woman lay on the floor with her arms spread out. “Jesus Christ!” Frank said. “You didn’t have to kill anybody!”

  “I didn’t,” Floyd said savagely, kicking the last of the satin off his ankle. “But I’d like to kill the son of a bitch that didn’t sew that lining in.”

  Frank was having trouble catching up. “What?”

  “Never mind,” Floyd said. “Besides, she isn’t dead. It’s that same fat woman from last night. She just fainted again.”

  “Oh,” said Frank.

  “And there’s the statue,” Floyd said, pointing.

  “At last,” said Frank.

  But it wasn’t the right one. Frank hit its head against the filing cabinet and it broke right off. “Shit,” said Floyd.

  “Right you are,” said Frank. “Let’s get out of here.”

  But before leaving, out of some obscure need for revenge, Floyd placed the headless statue at the feet of Maleficent White. Then he and Frank departed, and when Maleficent regained consciousness a few minutes later she’d had all the signs from Heaven a body could want. Great pink ghosts flapping around, a headless golden statue dancing at her feet; the message might not be clear, but it was loud.

  “All right,” Maleficent said aloud, sitting there on the floor. “I’ll stay alive. And I’ll lose weight. And I’ll be good to Savior.”

  All good resolutions. And as to the diet, as she was becoming uncomfortably aware, she’d made a good start, having already lost fourteen ounces.

  EN ROUTE …

  “But you don’t understand,” said the pilot. (He didn’t look so much like a pilot now, in his Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts and Japanese shower clogs borrowed from the luggage of cooperative passengers. His own clothing had not survived Pedro’s arrival, and had been jettisoned over the unsuspecting Andes after the pilot’s visit to the disgusting lavatory.) “You just don’t understand,” he repeated.

  “People a been tellin me that all my life,” Pedro said. (He was into the best drunk of his career, high and sailing. His incessant throwing up was leaving him with plenty of alcohol in his system, but none of those side effects of headache and diarrhea and general discomfort well-known to the habitual gluppe drinker.) “People a been tellin me that all my life, but here I am. I’m dune fine. Jus fine.”

  The pilot might have pointed out that a person who, while drunk, hijacks an airplane in the sovereign state of Descalzo, belonging to the sovereign state of Descalzo, cannot really be said to be doing “fine,” but the pilot’s attention was on a different aspect of the problem. “This airplane,” the pilot said, “only has a range of seven hundred miles. We’ll run out of gas before we ever leave South America.”

  “Then we land,” Pedro said, “and get more gas.”

  “Refuel? You don’t understand!”

  “There you go again,” Pedro told him.

  “New York is five thousand miles from here! To get to New York we’ll have to land and refuel seven times!” (It was only six, actually; the pilot was making a common error.)

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” Pedro said. “Land and refuel seven times.” And he swigged gluppe, a fresh bottle found in the co-pilot’s briefcase.

  “But you don’t understand!” wailed the pilot.

  “That’s okay, too,” Pedro said.

  “Our top speed,” the pilot said, “is three hundred fifty miles an hour. It will take fifteen hours to get there!”

  “That’s okay,” Pedro said. “I ain’ in no rush.”

  “Then take the damn train,” said the co-pilot. He was bitter about his gluppe.

  Both Pedro and the pilot ignored the interruption, since the pilot was saying, yet again, “But you don’t understand, you just don’t understand the situation.”

  “Sounds okay to me,” Pedro said. “What time we get into New York?”

  “Around three in the morning,” said the co-pilot (Despite his bitterness over the loss of his gluppe, he was in fact looking forward to New York. He’d always wanted to go there.)

  The pilot was determined to explain the situation. “This is a very old airplane,” he said. “We have trouble making it go all the way from Quetchyl to Rosie. I’m not sure it can make five thousand miles.”

  “Oh, sure it can,” Pedro said. “You’ll take care of it. We’ll be jus fine. Jus fine.”

  AT ODDS …

  “I don’t even agree with this,” Mel Bernstein said. “I don’t understand how it happened, I don’t like it, and I absolutely do not agree with it I think it’s wrong. I think, when you come right down to it, when you come to the bottom line, I think what I ought to do is stop the car and take you off behind a wall someplace and kill you.”

  “You wouldn’t do a thing like that,” Wally Hintzlebel said.

  Which was unfortunately true. Regretting the fact that he wasn’t a killer—and that it was so obvious he wasn’t—Mel hunched over the steering wheel, glowering, and took the on-ramp for the Throgs Neck Bridge. “You can pay the goddam toll,” he said. And to think he’d thought this was Mel Bernstein Day!

  After Mel had chased this son of a bitch into Long Island Sound, they had grappled a bit in the water before finally making their way back to the dock and clambering up on it, both of them exhausted. Mel, who had gained possession of Ben Cohen’s statue by that time, had rubbed the base of it against the wooden boards of the dock, once he got some strength back, and after a while a certain amount of gold paint had rubbed off, revealing hints of dirty white plaster beneath. “Fine,” Mel had said, and dropped the damn thing in Wally’s lap. “It’s yours.” Then Mel, sopping wet, had splashed back to his car, in the nearby parking lot.

  But after he’d paid the parking fee at the little shack by the entrance, and just as he was about to drive away toward his next and last prospect, Mrs. Dorothy Moorwood of Alpine, New Jersey (which must be at least fifty miles from here), damn if this bastard Wally hadn’t come trotting along, equally wet, waving his arms and yelling that he wanted to talk, hold up a minute, hold up, let’s talk.

  What Mel should have done, of course, was run the bastard down and be done with it. What he did do, however, was stop the car and let Wally in and listen.

  And what Wally had wanted to talk about was joining them. He wanted to team up with Mel, wanted to go into partnership with him.

  Mel, of course, had been outraged. “Why, you son of a bitch!” he’d shouted. “First you go to bed with my wife, and then you try to steal my statue, and now you want to be my partner? Get out of the car!”

  “That’s all the past. Let’s forget about all that.”

  “Not to mention the punch in the nose! I’m not likely to forget that!” And Mel, caught up in the whirlwind of his own rage, had punched Wally very hard on the nose.

  Which Wally had taken with no argument at all, as though it had simply been another element in the discussion. “I know the way you feel,” he’d merely said, pressing two fingers and a thumb to his reddening nose. “And I don’t blame you. But this is better for you, too. I won’t stop looking for the right statue, and if I’m on my own and I find it, you won’t get any of it.”

  “You won’t find it!”

  “I might. I know just as much as you do.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s Mrs. Dorothy Moorwood’s address?”

  Promptly Wally had responded: “Five Ronkonkomo Drive, Alpine, New Jersey.”

  Which meant that Wally did know just as much as Mel; or in any event, he knew too much simply to be sent away. Much as he disliked the idea, Mel had realized it would be necessary to join with Wally, after all, at least until he could get together with Jerry and Frank and Floyd, who would undoubtedly deal with the problem briskly and definitely. In the interim, though, “All right,” Mel had told him.

  “Half and half,” Wally
had said.

  “Half of what I get,” Mel had agreed, congratulating himself on his slyness.

  Not sly enough. Wally had given him a penetrating look: “You have to split with your friends?”

  No point lying. “Yes.”

  But Wally had merely shrugged. “Okay. We’re in it for halfs.” Meaning he must have some nefarious plan of his own in mind.

  Then there’d been a delay, because Wally had to get his bag from his car. “I keep extra clothes in the car, in case I’m away, um, away for some reason of, um …” And, blushing while Mel glowered at him, he’d trotted away and then trotted back again with his canvas overnight bag. Finally, then, Mel had turned the car in the direction of Alpine, New Jersey, with Wally at first in the back seat changing into dry clothes, but more recently up front, looking bright and alert and prepared to become fast friends.

  It was the look that Mel couldn’t stand. The look, and the fact that his own clothing remained sopping wet. (Without Wally, he might have gone home first to change his clothes, but he was not about to bring Wally home.) And, finally, the whole infuriating goddam thing. Everywhere he went, there was that son of a bitch Wally. He didn’t want Wally; why did he have to have Wally all the goddam time?

  Which was why he’d made his remark about killing Wally behind a handy wall. Instead of which, all that happened was that Wally paid the toll on the Throgs Neck Bridge.

  Damn it.

  IN TRANSIT …

  Hustle. Gotta hustle. Everybody walking the midtown streets was moving fast, in a hurry, staring out straight ahead, walking against the DON’T WALK signs, pushing along, getting there, moving on, moving fast. And among them Bobbi Harwood, pushing her harp, with Jerry striding half a block back. Some people looked startled when they saw the good-looking girl pushing the six-foot-tall triangle along the sidewalk, and some people smiled, but most people ignored it.

  From the orchestra office, Bobbi first led him down Fifth Avenue to a branch of Capitalists’ & Immigrants’ Trust at 44tb Street, where she cashed a check while he read a pamphlet on auto loans. Front there, she went down to 42nd Street, turned right, and pushed the harp along the broad sidewalk past the library and Bryant Park and the little stone comfort station there. The day was sunny and bright—Manhattan in June can be a beautiful place—and the park was full of people, feeding themselves, feeding the pigeons, reading, chatting, or just lifting their faces to the sun.

  None of that for Bobbi Harwood; she led Jerry briskly across Sixth Avenue and on as far as Times Square, where they turned left down Broadway. At 39th Street they turned right, and Bobbi entered an office building in the middle of that mini-block between Broadway and Seventh.

  She went into the elevator first, with Jerry at her heels. They were the only two aboard, plus the looming black presence of the harp, and he saw that the button marked 7 was lit, so he pushed 15. Up they rode together, not looking directly at one another, and at 7 he held the door open while she off-loaded the harp. (The little wheels wanted to get stuck in the crack, but she’d obviously traveled with this thing before and had it under control.) He held the doors an instant longer than necessary, and watched her turn left as they slid shut.

  Quickly now he pushed the button for eight. Up one floor, and out to take a quick look at the floor diagram posted next to the elevators. YOUR ARE HERE. And Stairway B was just to the left.

  Bang, bang, bang, down the metal stairs and through the door to the seventh floor hall. One of the offices to the left.

  Six of them. A dentist An accountant. An auto transport company. Something called Nebula Musical Attractions. Something called Those Wonderful Folks, Inc. And a photographer studio.

  Jerry started opening doors, leaning his head inside. The dentist’s waiting room contained two glum-looking people, neither of them Bobbi Harwood, and no harp. The accountant’s outer office contained a brassy-looking receptionist with Chinese red hair, who gave Jerry a jaundiced look and said, “Yeah?”

  “Bobbi Harwood come in yet?”

  “Who?”

  The auto transport company was a large office with two rows of desks, at one of which Bobbi Harwood was talking with a stocky young woman who was simultaneously nodding, chewing gum, writing something on a form, and dialing a telephone. Bobbi seemed to be showing some kind of identification.

  Christ on a crutch. Was she taking a car some place? Back down in the elevator Jerry went, and out to the street, where he found ā phone booth down at the corner of Broadway. He dialed Angela’s number and waited, tapping his foot. Two rings. Three rings.

  “Hello?” Angela’s voice.

  “Listen,” Jerry said. “I don’t have much time.”

  “Jerry! Oh, I wanted to tell you, what an absolute jewel you found us with Mandy!”

  “Yeah, we’ll have to work something out there. We can’t keep her forever.”

  “Oh, but we can!”

  “Say again?”

  “You know she’s been working for that actress, Valerie Woode. Well, apparently the famous Miss Woode is also famous for her terrible tantrums, and when Mandy called to say she might be late this evening dear Miss Woode just screamed at her. I could hear it in the next room, coming over the phone.”

  “Angela, I don’t have much time.”

  “Well, the point is,” Angela said, “the point is, Mandy is staying!”

  “She what?”

  “She’s working for us, now, for Mel and me! She never did like those late hours with Valerie”—Angela was a name dropper—“and she didn’t like living up in that nasty neighborhood in the Bronx, so she’s moving right in here, in the spare room, and she’ll work for us!”

  Jerry stood there in the phone booth, nodding slowly.

  “Jerry? Are you still there?”

  “Yeah,” Jerry said. “Frank and Floyd kidnap her, and you’re keeping her.”

  “I’m hiring her, Jerry.”

  Jerry brought himself with an effort back to the issue at hand. “Listen, Angela. Before I forget what’s going on at this end, copy down an address.”

  “All right I have paper and pencil right here.”

  “Terrific Broadway and 39th Street in Manhattan. There’s a phone booth on the northwest corner. That’s where I am right now.”

  “All right.”

  “I don’t have my car any more, and I’m going to need wheels. I’m following the girl with the statue, and it’s getting tricky.”

  “You want a car brought to you there?”

  “I want the car brought here,” Jerry told her, “but I probably won’t be here when it shows up. So the next time I land, I’ll call this phone booth and say where the car should be brought. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Maybe Teresa can bring it.”

  “She has kids,” Angela said. “I’ll bring you my wagon.”

  “You gotta stay on the phone there.”

  “Mandy can take care of any calls that come in.”

  “Mandy!”

  “You can’t believe how reliable she is, Jerry.”

  “I can’t believe any of it,” Jerry said. And then, looking up, he saw Bobbi Harwood emerging from the building, coming this way, pushing her harp. “Here she comes! Get here as quick as you can!” And he hung up.

  He waited in the booth till she’d pushed the harp on by, then set off in her wake. She walked half a block down Broadway, then abruptly turned, stepped off the curb, and flagged an immediate cab. Jerry, on the hop, ran frantically out into the street, and there wasn’t a bit of yellow anywhere to be seen. Damn! Hell! Crap! Corruption!

  Fortunately, it isn’t that easy to get a harp in to a cab, so Jerry had more time than he might have. With the help of her cabbie, Bobbi Harwood finally loaded the thing in back, and then she sat up front with the driver, and off they went.

  By which time, another cab had turned the corner a block away and stopped next to the wildly semaphoring Jerry. Leaping into it, he yelled, “Follow that cab!”


  It was a fleet taxi (“V.S. Goth Corp,” it said on the door), so a thick Plexiglas partition was between Jerry and the driver, with a small grillwork at one corner to permit speech and a small movable trough in the middle to permit payment. This system protects drivers from being mugged, but it also means none of them can ever hear anything the first time. Therefore, “What?” yelled the driver.

  The girl’s cab was moving away. The light would change and Jerry would be stuck here, with this idot. “Follow that cab!”

  The driver, a short squat man with a mouth made for cigars, turned to give Jerry an appreciative grin through the Plexiglas. “Yeah, yeah, that’s a good one,” he said. “Where you wanna go?”

  “Straight,” Jerry told him. “Straight down Broadway.”

  “Fine,” said the cabbie. He threw the meter, and headed straight down Broadway.

  Unfortunately, Jerry’s cabbie was more of a hustler than Bobbi’s cabbie, and down around Herald Square Jerry suddenly found himself in the lead. “Hey!” he yelled, through the little grill. “Take it easy, will ya?”

  “We’re doing fine, we’re doing fine,” the cabbie assured him.

  “Slow down!” Jerry yelled. Casting a quick look back, he saw they had now gained half a block on their quarry.

  “I tell you what, Mac,” the cabbie was saying, in the necessary loud voice, “I drive my cab, and you do what you do.”

  “Slow down! I got a heart condition!”

  The cabbie took his hands off the wheel in order to lift them in a gesture of despair; everything happens to me. Fortunately, he also took his foot off the gas, and they slowed down. Also fortunately, Bobbi’s cab didn’t make any turns for the next few blocks, and by 29th Street was out front again, where it belonged.

  Unfortunately, Jerry’s cabbie did nothing in moderation, and they were now moving so slowly that pedestrians were surging ahead. They were coming dangerously near the end of the traffic-light cycle—the one-way avenues have staggered traffic lights, set for a steady speed Of approximately twenty-five miles an hour—and if they got stuck at a light while Bobbi’s cab continued with the greens, he’d lose her forever. “Not THAT slow!” Jerry yelled.