Dancer in the Flames

by Stephen Solomita

  With Boots staring straight into his eyes, Drago had to struggle for words. He could smell the sour stink of his own sweat as it wafted up from his crotch and his armpits. He knew that Boots smelled it, too.

  ‘So,’ he asked, his voice weaker than he would have liked, ‘you gonna tell me or not?’

  ‘Blunt force trauma to the back of her head. See, that’s not the way sexual predators kill. I know because I checked with this profiler who works downtown. Stabbing and strangulation, those are the most common methods. True, you also find thrill killers who batter the faces of their victims, but Angie’s face was untouched.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Drago interrupted, ‘didn’t you tell me she had a rope around her neck?’

  ‘Yeah, I did. But it was put there after she was dead. Likewise for the ligatures on her wrists. That’s what I meant when I said the scene was staged.’

  TWO

  Drago lit another cigarette and immediately felt better when Boots looked away. He told himself to take the advice he’d given Boots a few minutes before. Calm down. Relax.

  ‘You spent the last twenty minutes tellin’ me what didn’t happen,’ he finally said. ‘Why don’t you tell me what did happen. So we’ll both know.’

  Boots glanced at the television as the Red Sox lead-off hitter, Dustin Pedroia, approached the plate. ‘I think the perp grabbed Angie by the hair,’ he said, ‘then slammed her head into a concrete wall or a concrete floor. Probably once, but no more than twice. I think the killing was impulsive and I think he wished he could take it back afterward.’

  Pedroia was batting from the right side against the right-handed Rivera. Strictly old school, he was a dirty-uniform second baseman with a tendency to hit clutch home runs even though he was by far the smallest player on the field.

  ‘I hate this guy,’ Boots said. ‘He doesn’t give an inch.’

  ‘Boots …’

  ‘Hang on, Frankie.’

  Rivera’s first two pitches, both cutters, started in the center of the strike zone, then broke to the outside, clipping the front corner of the plate. Pedroia took both and both were called strikes. Rivera came inside with his third pitch, uncorking a head-high fastball that put the little second baseman on his back.

  Littlewood turned away in disgust. ‘So, what were you sayin’, Frankie?’

  ‘Nothin’. I don’t know what to say. I’m kinda stunned.’

  ‘OK, then let me ask you this. You remember I told you the killer hung on to Angie’s body for two days, right? And I asked why he’d do something like that? I mean, if it wasn’t a sex killing?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘So now I’m askin’ you again. Why did he keep the body for two days?’

  ‘How am I supposed to know?’

  ‘Don’t get your balls in an uproar. I’m just askin’ what you think might’ve happened. I’m askin’ you to put it together. Your sister’s killed in a moment of rage by someone who knows her. After the deed is done, he stashes her body for a couple of days, then dumps her in the woods in Prospect Park. Why do you think he waited?’ Boots turned his attention back to the game. ‘Don’t worry,’ he advised, ‘I’m listenin’ to every word.’

  ‘All right,’ Drago said as Pedroia took a practice swing, ‘you know what I’m thinkin’? I’m thinkin’ Angie had a lover, somebody in the neighborhood. You remember the way she carried on about loose morals, like she thought the sky was fallin’ when Janet Jackson showed her tit at the Super Bowl? Well, if Angie was doin’ the nasty out of wedlock, she woulda definitely kept it to herself.’

  Boots made a little gimme gesture with his hand. ‘Go on. Why would Angie’s lover hold on to her body for two days?’

  Drago began to speak as Rivera threw his next pitch, a high fastball that Pedroia took. The count was now two balls and two strikes.

  ‘Ya gotta figure like this, Boots. If Angie had a boyfriend, he wasn’t no mover and shaker. He had to be an ordinary guy. Remember, you said he killed Angie in a moment of rage, which I could understand, Angie havin’ such a big mouth. But that means he didn’t have a plan goin’ in. So, what can he do? He’s not a killer. He can’t get on the phone, call in a disposal expert like in that movie. But he’s gotta do somethin’, right? And he’s gotta do it pretty quick. Then he hears there’s gonna be a blizzard in a couple of days and he figures the snow will cover her up.’

  ‘And what happens when the snow melts, like it finally did?’

  Drago stared at the side of Littlewood’s head for a moment, then laid his hands on the arms of the chair and began to rock back and forth. ‘That’s why he made it look like a sex crime. He probably thought her body would be in bad shape and you wouldn’t be able to tell what really happened.’

  ‘Pretty good, Frankie. Credit where credit is due.’ Boots nodded approval. ‘And it mighta happened exactly that way, except for one little thing. Angie didn’t have a lover.’

  Drago’s mouth opened, then snapped shut. ‘You’re positive?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘How …’

  ‘How can I be positive?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Because Angie was a virgin when she died. Because she never had a lover in her life.’

  Mariano Rivera’s fourth pitch took a sharp break to the outside about twenty feet away from the plate. Well back on his heels after two inside pitches, the best Pedroia could do was flick the bat out there and pray for contact, a prayer that would certainly have gone unanswered if the pitch had been perfect. But the ball traveled across several inches of the plate and Pedroia managed to catch it on the end of the bat, lifting a soft flare that sailed over the head of a leaping Derek Jeter. A moment later, Pedroia was standing on first base and the Boston fans were again on their feet.

  ‘Did you see that?’ Boots slammed his fist into his palm. ‘The little prick couldn’t hit that pitch again if his fuckin’ life depended on it.’

  ‘Boots …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can we talk about this for a minute?’

  ‘Talk about what?’

  ‘Angie.’

  ‘Frankie, there’s nothing to say. We’re gettin’ a search warrant for the house. The Crime Scene Unit will be here in an hour.’

  ‘For my house?’

  ‘Yeah, the whole house, includin’ your mother’s apartment. The ME recovered concrete dust and paint chips from Angie’s wound. If we match that paint to paint on a surface in this house, you’re gonna have a lot of explainin’ to do. Unless, of course, you wanna pin it on your mom.’

  Unable to contain himself, Drago rocked forward until his bulk was centered over his knees, then pushed himself to his feet. Boots paid the bookie no mind, his attention returning to the game. For the next several minutes, while Drago loomed, unmoving, above him, Boots watched Rivera obliterate Adrian Gonzalez on four pitches, the last a borderline, chest-high fastball that the umpire, Dan Eddings, called a strike.

  ‘One out,’ Littlewood said, rubbing his hands together.

  ‘Fuck you, Boots. I don’t give a damn about the game and neither do you.’

  Littlewood’s eyes widened and he smiled. ‘You pissed off, Frankie?’

  ‘Yeah, now that you mention it. If you wanted to make an accusation, you should’ve done it up front. It’s not like we’re strangers.’

  ‘OK, you’re right. I’ve been fuckin’ with your head. But look at it from my point of view. You’ve been lyin’ to me from day one, you and your mother both, and I’ve been runnin’ around in circles when I could’ve been solvin’ crimes. No more, though. This is where all the circles intersect. We’re not only gonna find that paint, we’re gonna find traces of blood and tissue. I don’t care if you cleaned up with bleach.’

  With his teammate safe in the dugout, Kevin Youkilis stepped to the plate. All hustle and determination, Youkilis was the kind of player Boots most feared, a guy who personified the scruffy, working-class image Red Sox players cultivated.

  ‘Here’s a
nother one,’ Boots said, ‘who don’t give an inch.’

  Rivera’s first pitch was a cutter that missed the strike zone by a foot. Though Youkilis leaned across the plate, he didn’t offer. Rivera’s second pitch was a thigh-high fastball over the outer third of the plate – a gift. Youkilis jumped on it, but made a grave error when he tried to pull the ball into left field. The pitch was too far outside and his weight was too far back on his heels. Inevitably, he topped a weak grounder to Derek Jeter, who did everything right. He charged the ball, caught it gently in the web of his glove and shoveled it over to the second baseman. Already spinning toward first, Robinson Cano leaped high in the air to avoid the sliding Pedroia as he uncorked a perfect throw. Ball and runner arrived at first virtually at the same time, but the umpire didn’t hesitate. His arms traced a wide arc away from his body. Kevin Youkilis was now on first base.

  Boots watched the replays in disbelief, replays from every angle that clearly showed the ball in the first baseman’s glove while Youkilis’s foot was above the bag. Meanwhile, it was tough shit. Baseball had no instant replay rule and the umpire’s call stood, despite Joe Girardi’s passionate argument.

  ‘I got a bad feelin’ here,’ Boots announced as the Red Sox catcher, Kelly Shoppach, settled into the batter’s box. ‘Like, what’s next? Rivera pitched great, but these scumbags don’t give up.’

  Boots glanced up at Frankie Drago who stood above him, hands balled into fists, jaw rigid, nostrils flared. ‘You got somethin’ you wanna say, Frankie?’

  ‘I don’t want my mother hassled.’ Drago managed to put a little menace in his tone, but the detective only turned back to the television.

  ‘Frankie, your mother told me that Angie never came home that afternoon. I don’t care if she lied because she loves you. I don’t care that you were always her favorite. Unless you tell me the truth, she’s fair game.’

  ‘So, you’re puttin’ the squeeze on me?’

  ‘I’m a cop. Squeezin’ criminals is what I get paid for.’

  ‘I know what you do for a livin’, but I can’t have my mother hassled.’

  ‘Then you gotta step up. You gotta tell me the truth.’

  Drago’s immense torso quivered, the tension rippling through his body, from his shoulders to his knees. He wasn’t afraid of Boots Littlewood, not exactly, but there was something about Littlewood’s attitude as he watched Mariano throw a fastball that Shoppach fouled into the seats. Like Frankie Drago was no threat. Like Boots knew he’d already won.

  ‘All right, Boots, you want the truth,’ Drago said, ‘here it is. Like you figured, it happened on March thirteenth. Ma was sleepin’, so Angie came downstairs to watch Law and Order, which we both love, and which we been watchin’ together for years. Anyway, Angie went into the kitchen. I think she said she was gonna nuke some popcorn, but I can’t remember exactly. What I do remember is that I called to her just before the show started and she didn’t answer, so I put the DVR on pause and went to look. Boots, she was lyin’ at the bottom of the cellar steps, curled into a heap, and there was blood all around her head. I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t get my mind around it, that she could just be gone, that she …’

  ‘If you were standin’ at the top of the stairs,’ Littlewood interrupted, ‘how’d ya know she was dead?’

  Boots waved off Drago’s reply as Rivera threw a cutter into the dirt. Instinctively, Youkilis took a few steps toward second, then quickly reversed field when Martin came up with the ball and fired to first. Again, ball and runner arrived at the same time, again the ump called the runner safe, again the replays proved the ump wrong, again Joe Girardi came flying out of the dugout. The only difference this time was that Girardi got himself tossed out of the game.

  As the Yankee’s manager walked off the field, Boots finally rose to his feet. He watched the umpires resume their positions, watched Rivera lean in for a sign. ‘C’mon, Mariano,’ he whispered. ‘Just do this one thing for me. Never again will I say you choked in the playoffs. And if someone else says it, I promise I’ll defend you. Just do this one thing.’

  ‘Boots?’

  Littlewood’s eyes snapped open. ‘What, Frankie? What the fuck do you want?’

  ‘I just told you.’

  ‘Told me what?’

  ‘I just told you I went down the stairs. I mean, her eyes were open and I knew she wasn’t seein’ anythin’, but I checked Angie’s pulse anyway.’

  Rivera threw a knee-high fastball over the outside corner that Shoppach fouled off behind third base. A-Rod made a run for it, but the ball dropped several rows back in the stands.

  ‘So why didn’t you call nine-one-one?’

  ‘I thought about it, Boots. I swear. But I couldn’t seem to do anythin’. I kept tryin’ to figure out how I was gonna tell Ma. And I was afraid you’d accuse me the way you’re accusin’ me right now. I mean, I spent the whole night goin’ back and forth. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? It was like I went crazy. And then it was too late. It was the next morning and I knew if I called the cops, I’d never be able to explain why I waited.’

  Boots considered this for a moment, then said, ‘Tell me something, Frankie. When you laid your sister out nude in the snow, did you think about how she’d look to the person who found her? How she’d look to the cops who came to investigate? This was Angie, who was never naked with a man in her entire life.’

  ‘Boots, please …’

  ‘And by the way, Frankie. I lied to you before. When I said that Angie didn’t have any bruises on her body. She had two bruises on her chest, parallel to each other. These bruises were almost identical, a pair of crescents about five inches across. The pathologist who did the autopsy says they were made with the heels of her killer’s hands and I agree with him. Now, ya wanna hear something funny? About how amateurs always fuck up, about how they hang themselves in the end? If she died right away, like you claim, those bruises would’ve been very faint. But they weren’t. They were deep purple and that means Angie was alive for at least two hours after you broke her head open.’

  Drago’s teeth ground together as he made a feeble attempt to process the information, including the possibility that Boots was still lying, that every single word was a lie. The bookie felt as though he was opening doors in some gigantic house, looking for a way out, a complete waste of time because there was only one door left. Drago opened it as the ball left Mariano Rivera’s hand.

  ‘I want a lawyer, Boots,’ he said. ‘It’s my right.’

  Rivera’s cutter was ankle-high over the outer half of the plate when the batter’s upper-cut swing interrupted its downward arc. The fly ball that resulted would have been a routine out in almost any other stadium. But this was Fenway Park and the foul pole in right field was only 302 feet away. Boots felt his heart jump as Nick Swisher raced toward the warning track.

  ‘Gimme a break here,’ Boots said, pumping his fist. ‘Gimme a fuckin’ break.’

  But there was no break to be had. The ball traced a gentle, rainbow arc that finally dropped it into the seats one row beyond Swisher’s outstretched glove. The game was over.

  Initially, Boots froze, his body rigid, his mouth open, staring straight ahead. Then a gurgling sound issued from the back of his throat, as though he were choking on his own phlegm. He watched Shoppach circle the bases, watched him leap into the arms of his jubilant teammates while the Yankee players walked off the field. A close-up of Mariano Rivera revealed an anguish that bordered on despair. He could not have pitched better and he knew it.

  Suddenly, Boots whirled in a half-circle and kicked Drago’s legs out from under him. Frankie threw out his hands as he crashed to the floor, but he wasn’t strong enough to break his fall. His face slammed into the carpet hard enough to bounce. An instant later, Boots Littlewood dropped on to his back.

  ‘Gimme your hand,’ Boots shouted. ‘Gimme your hand.’

  Boots jerked Drago’s right arm behind his back and fastened one end of a pair of cuffs to his wri
st. Then he reached for Drago’s other hand, still shouting, ‘Gimme your hand. Gimme your hand.’ But Drago’s back was very broad and he was carrying an extra hundred pounds as well. Though he didn’t resist, his hands wouldn’t come together, no matter how hard Boots yanked. Still Boots persisted, until finally he grew tired, until finally he heard Frankie Drago’s plea.

  ‘Boots, it was an accident. I swear. An accident.’

  ‘Shut up, Frankie.’ Boots had zero interest in hearing another version of the same event, a version guaranteed to be as self-serving as all the others. He jumped to his feet, yanked out a roll of bills, counted off two hundred dollars in tens and twenties, finally dropped to his knees and shoved the money into Drago’s pocket.

  ‘There, ya fuck,’ he said. ‘Now we’re even.’

  THREE

  An hour later, Boots Littlewood entered Angie Drago’s kitchen to find Officer Enrique Torres seated across from Frankie Drago at a table in the center of the room. The table was covered with a plastic tablecloth depicting scenes from Ancient Rome, the eruption of Vesuvius being the most prominent. Drago’s coffee mug sat dead center over the rim of the volcano and Boots had to wonder if he’d placed it there deliberately, perhaps to contain the explosion that threatened to engulf him.

  ‘Hank,’ Boots said, ‘you mind givin’ us a little privacy?’

  ‘No problem.’

  Boots waited for the door to close behind the uniformed cop, then crossed to the sink. He found a mug in the drain basket, filled it with coffee from a gleaming percolator, added milk and sugar, finally took Torres’s seat at the table. Drago watched Boots carefully, knowing that his own future was on the line. Make a mistake here and a series of very bad things would happen to him. Drago had spent four years upstate in the 1990s following a conviction for armed robbery and assault. In fact, prison was where he’d finally wised up, where he’d stopped dreaming those crime-czar dreams. Neighborhood bookie, he’d admitted to himself, far better suited his talents and his nerve.