Dancer in the Flames

by Stephen Solomita

  Boots sighed, then glanced across the street at a baby in a stroller. The girl was staring directly at him, her gaze as intrusive as a slap in the face. Boots looked back at her, wondering what she was trying to decide. She was too young for language, too young to be guided by experience, yet her stare was all-consuming. Maybe she was trying to understand how a grown man could be such a complete asshole.

  The self-accusations were still flying when the woman Boots awaited stepped from the white-brick apartment building. She looked in both directions, then walked directly toward him. Boots might have gotten out at that point, but he remained where he was, his mind kicking into high gear. Though he was too preoccupied to know it, his gaze was even more intense than that of the child across the street. And, like the child, words played no part in his calculations. Only a sense – derived from her bent posture and a heavy sweater that hung below her hips, from the way she stared down at the sidewalk, from her slow and hesitant gait – of how to proceed.

  Be firm, but gentle, he told himself as he withdrew his shield and opened the door. Be her daddy.

  Be her daddy? Not unless her daddy had a scar on his forehead and one eye halfway closed. When Boots stepped into her path, the woman raised a hand to her mouth and began to quiver.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss.’ He placed his shield directly in front of her face, the better to block her view of his own. ‘My name is Detective Littlewood and I need to speak with you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Tell me your name.’

  ‘Madeline Gobard.’ Up close, she wasn’t unattractive, just unhealthy. Her brown hair was lifeless, perhaps even dirty, her eyes dull, the whites yellowed. ‘Did I do somethin’ wrong?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Madeline. But we need to talk.’ Boots held up the disc, trying to keep it simple. ‘We need to talk about this DVD. And about Chris Parker.’

  Madeline pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her trembling hands. ‘Do I gotta move?’ she asked. ‘I don’t have no place to go.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Eighteen.’ She ran her fingers through her hair, which fell right back over the sides of her face. ‘I didn’t have nowhere to live when I hooked up with Chris. Chris gave me a home.’

  Boots nodded agreeably. Like so many of the men and women he dealt with, nature had left Madeline woefully unprepared for survival in the modern world.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘first thing, we’re going to inspect your apartment.’

  ‘It ain’t really mine.’

  ‘Then you have nothing to worry about.’ She didn’t resist when Boots took her arm. ‘Why don’t you give me the keys?’

  Chris Parker’s living room might have been plucked from a department store showroom. A couch and matching side chairs, end tables supporting green ceramic lamps, a tall bookcase filled with popular novels. A large vase sporting a flock of cranes and a school of leaping fish rested on a cabinet by the window. Across the way, a Bose stereo surrounded a flat-screen TV with a built-in DVD player. Boots stared at the television for a moment. He wanted to put his foot through the screen, but knew, if he did, Madeline was likely to jump out the window.

  ‘Is this where Parker watched his home movies?’ Boots asked.

  Madeline had yet to raise her eyes from the floor. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘And what did you do while he indulged his fantasies?’ The words were out before Boots realized that the last thing he wanted to know was the answer to this question. ‘Scratch that. Let’s see the rest of the apartment.’

  The bedroom Madeline led Boots into was dominated by a familiar king-sized bed. Boots looked to the corners of the room, found the pin-holes at the junction of walls and ceiling.

  ‘Chris was very strict,’ Madeline declared without being prompted. ‘I did whatever he said.’

  ‘Did you want to?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘My mother dumped me out when I was seventeen, so I had to live on the street. That was very hard. People hurt you on the street. Sometimes they hurt you bad.’

  ‘Why did your mother ask you to leave?’

  When she responded after a moment’s consideration, Madeline’s inflection was ruler-flat. ‘Her boyfriend was makin’ a move on me, ya know. Comin’ into the bathroom when I was in the shower. Comin’ into my bedroom when I was gettin’ dressed. She said I was leadin’ him on.’

  Boots sighed. He wanted to hate her, but it was impossible. ‘Where did Chris sleep?’

  ‘He usually didn’t stay over.’

  ‘Where did he sleep when he did stay?’

  ‘On the bed.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Sometimes with him, when he wanted me. The rest of the time on the couch.’

  Boots nodded, then walked into the second bedroom. Aside from a large table dominated by a computer and various bits of peripheral hardware, the room was empty. Boots traced a pair of cables that ran up the wall, then across the top of the room to a closet. He opened the closet to find it, like the room, almost empty.

  ‘You have to push,’ Madeline said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘On the back.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Madeline walked into the closet and gave the wall a shove. A concealed door popped open to reveal an extremely narrow space. Parker’s carpentry skills were much in evidence here.

  Boots stepped into the small space behind the closet. He had to duck to get through the door, then turn sideways to fit into the makeshift room. To his right, a pair of small monitors, each with its own controller, rested on a shelf. There was no ventilation in the room, and no place to sit down.

  ‘Whose name is on the lease?’ Boots asked.

  ‘Chris’s.’

  ‘And who’s been paying the rent since he died?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘How?’

  Boots stepped out of the closet and turned to face Madeline, the mistake she made beginning to register. Already hooked at the corners, her mouth fell still further. Boots put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Chris is gone, Madeline,’ Boots said as he guided her into the living room. ‘I’m your only hope now. It’s me you have to please.’

  The tone of voice, the look in his eyes, the gentle touch. If only his cellphone hadn’t begun to ring, the effect would have been as empathetic as Susan Sarandon praying for that twisted killer in Dead Man Walking. But the toneless trill, almost insect-like, ruined the performance. Disgusted, Boots took out his cellphone.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Hey, Boots, was I such a disappointment?’

  ‘Jill?’

  ‘I mean, I’ve been rejected before, but moving out, that’s a bit extreme. You could’ve just sent me a note.’

  Boots’s laugh was a little too sharp and Madeline backed away. Though Boots didn’t try to hold her, he gestured toward the couch and she sat without protesting.

  ‘Don’t take it personally, Jill, It’s just that I’m allergic to lethal projectiles.’

  ‘So, how do I find you?’

  ‘You’re doin’ it right now. But there’s a question I’ve been wantin’ to ask you.’

  ‘Why don’t you come over tonight – say about eleven – ask it then?’

  Boots didn’t reply for a moment. Not that he was in any doubt. In fact, the thrills would begin with him getting from his car to her door without being shot.

  ‘Didn’t you say you lived with your mother?’

  ‘My mother’s a drunk, Boots. She’ll be passed out long before you get here.’

  Madeline was up and moving as Boots shoved the phone into his pocket. She crossed the room to the cabinet beneath the window and opened the door to expose a small safe.

  ‘What you want’s in here.’

  ‘Is it locked?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know the combination?’

  ‘It’s written on a piece of paper.’

  Boots ground his teeth in frustra
tion. ‘Get the paper and open the safe.’ After a second, he added, ‘Please.’

  A few minutes later, Boots was looking at the contents of the safe: a stack of DVDs on a shelf, a pile of money on the bottom, a small ledger beneath the money.

  Boots pointed to the cash. ‘This how you’ve been payin’ the rent?’

  ‘Yes.’ Madeline was standing to one side, her arms folded across her breasts.

  ‘What about the DVDs? Are there any more in the apartment?’

  ‘Not that I know about.’

  ‘There are no more safes, no more false closets?’

  ‘No.’

  Boots took up the ledger, found it handwritten in some sort of code. There were dates, figures and a series of names: Goose, Pedro, Carlos, Ricardo. Without Parker to unravel the code, the ledger didn’t amount to much, not as evidence. But it would provide a rough estimate of LeGuin’s payoffs. That would be important later on.

  ‘All right, Madeline, what I’m gonna do is leave this money so you can keep paying the rent.’ Boots stopped when Madeline burst into tears. Talk about disabilities. What Madeline needed was support. What she’d likely find, when the money ran out, was a series of men who’d exploit, then discard her.

  Boots went in search of a tool box, certain the handy Chris Parker wouldn’t be without a basic collection of household tools. He found what he was seeking under the sink and hauled it, along with the DVDs, into the second bedroom. Though far from computer literate, Boots knew that anything on the DVDs was also on the computer’s hard drive. He was tempted to destroy the hard drive on the spot, but contented himself with the discs, cutting them into slivers with a pair of tin shears.

  ‘Madeline, can you operate the whole system?’

  ‘How do ya mean?’

  ‘I want to know if you can make a DVD?’

  ‘Yeah, ya just click and the computer does it for ya.’

  ‘What about sound? Why was there no sound on the DVD I had?’

  ‘The bed squeaked.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The bed squeaked real loud and you couldn’t hear anything else. So Chris recorded with the volume off.’

  ‘Can you turn it on?’

  Madeline’s eyes clouded with suspicion. As far as she knew, Chris Parker’s system had a single purpose. ‘What do I gotta do?’

  ‘Only one thing, and then I’ll be on my way, at least for the present. I want you to help me shift some furniture.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Boots dashed the two blocks between the nearest parking space and Jill Kelly’s modest row house through a cold, pelting rain. Though he was aware of the potential for threats against his life, he failed to keep an eye out for would-be assassins. There was no point. Carried by a sharp wind, the rain was blowing into his eyes and it was all he could do not to stumble over cracks in the sidewalk. Fortunately, the door opened as he tore up the steps and then he was inside with Jill Kelly, her ice-blue t-shirt and lace-trimmed panties commanding the whole of his attention.

  ‘Boots, you’re all wet,’ she said, smiling that amused vampire smile, the one that said Welcome to my castle. ‘I think you’d better get out of your clothes right away. Otherwise, you’ll catch your death.’

  Boots did as he was told, letting his wet garments drop, one at a time, to the carpet. Finally, he stood naked in front of her.

  Jill’s smile dissolved as she laid her hand on his chest. When she could feel his heart beating against her palm, she leaned forward to lightly pinch his nipple with her teeth. His heart kicked up a notch and she backed away.

  ‘I hope you were right about your mother,’ Boots said.

  Now Jill was grinning. The son-of-a-bitch had blindsided her again. ‘Do you think we should put your clothes in the dryer now? Or later?’

  Boots answered her question with one of his own. ‘Would you catch an attitude,’ he asked, ‘if I ripped that t-shirt off your body?’

  ‘Yeah, I would.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’

  Boots knew it was more than a bad case of the hots. And there was nothing he could do about it. Free will be damned; he was helpless. Boots felt as if he’d been tapped on the shoulder, been delegated. But to do exactly what? To protect Crazy Jill Kelly from herself? Talk about your suicidal impulses. Boots glanced at the clock. Three in the morning and the room smelling of tobacco and sex, Jill asleep alongside him, snoring lightly. From somewhere in the basement, Boots could hear the dryer turning.

  Boots turned when Jill rolled on to her back. Relaxed in sleep, she was even more beautiful, and he thought, just for a moment, that he recognized the woman she might have been. Her face was Irish-pale, her auburn hair nearly black in the darkened room. Her relaxed shoulders and opened hands left her frail and vulnerable. Across the top of her breasts, a spray of pale freckles attracted his mouth like magnets. Boots resisted their pull, not because he feared waking Jill, but because Jill had emptied his pockets and he couldn’t get hard again if he used a splint.

  Boots laid back on the pillow and closed his eyes. A few minutes later, he fell into a sleep from which he emerged after four dreamless hours. Jill was shaking him, and none too gently.

  ‘C’mon, Boots,’ she said, her tone matter-of-fact, ‘you gotta get out before my mother comes down.’

  Boots sat up and rubbed his eyes. ‘Ya know, Jill,’ he said, ‘it would have been kinder if you’d dressed yourself before makin’ that request.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Boots, you didn’t get enough last night?’

  ‘I did get enough last night, but it’s morning now.’

  ‘And time to go home. Your clothes are on the chair.’ Jill slipped into a bathrobe. With no realistic expectation of success, she was hoping to bum-rush Boots out the door without having that serious conversation.

  Boots slid his feet over the edge of the bed, then grabbed his clothes and stumbled into the bathroom. He relieved himself, washed his face with brown soap that smelled like incense, finally took a moment to stare at himself in the mirror. Neither his damaged eye nor his scars, he reminded himself, had anything to do with Jill Kelly. If there was a war, it was between Mack Corcoran and Boots Littlewood. Jill was an ally.

  Nevertheless, when Boots emerged from the bathroom, he led with a question that was certain to provoke an evasive response.

  ‘Tell me what happened on the day your father was killed.’

  ‘Did you read the case file?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Then you know.’

  Boots had expected Jill to become angry, but her eyes were mild. She’d anticipated the question.

  ‘Fine, so let me see if I’ve got the facts straight. When you heard the shots, you became so terrified that you couldn’t bring yourself to turn around. Thus, you not only failed to observe the shooter, but you can’t be sure there was only one man involved. That about it?’

  ‘Like I said, Boots, my statement speaks for itself.’

  ‘What about your mother? What happened to your mother’s statement?’

  ‘She didn’t give a statement because …’

  ‘Because she passed out before you and your father came home. I get it, Jill. I get that you don’t trust me.’

  Jill Kelly walked Boots to the front door. It’d been a long time since she’d felt this way about a man. She pulled him into a kiss that rolled on until they were both out of breath.

  ‘Say, Boots,’ she said as she opened the door, ‘you wouldn’t want to tell me where you’re stayin’ these days. As long as we’re talkin’ trust.’

  The smile Boots flashed was as bright as it was brief. ‘I wouldn’t, Jill. But I will say this. The bedroom is perfect. The ruffled spread, the pleated curtains, the stuffed dog, the Sesame Street puppets, the pink sheets. Just perfect.’

  Boots went back to Frankie Drago’s long enough to shave, shower and change his clothes. Then he headed off to Astoria, to Libby Greenspan’s, for an early lunch. Outside, a pale sky was veiled by thin clo
uds and it was much cooler, more like April than June. Boots took the scenic route, over the Pulaski Bridge and across western Queens. There was plenty of traffic, but he didn’t mind the leisurely pace. He was thinking about Jill Kelly, imagining them a hundred and fifty years ago in a small Arizona town, the only law in the county. Wouldn’t they be surprised, the bad guys in their black hats, when they squared off against Crazy Jill at ten paces? Just in case, Boots put himself in a second-floor window with a shotgun.

  When Boots walked into Libby’s apartment, Joaquin was sitting at the dining-room table. Before joining him, Boots accepted a kiss from Libby and a hug from his father.

  ‘You do that thing for me, Jackie?’ he asked.

  ‘I might’ve.’

  Boots noted a familiar spark in Joaquin’s eye. The kid had pulled off something slick and couldn’t wait to talk about it. ‘So, let’s hear the story.’

  ‘First, Elijah LeGuin’s mother is deceased, his father unknown and he’s never been married. He has two siblings, younger sisters, both in the military. One is stationed in Iraq. She’s a major. The other one’s a captain. She’s in Texas. They didn’t seem likely candidates for what you wanted, but I searched for property listings in both their names, and in their brother’s name. Nada. Then I thought about what you said, about how LeGuin might use a girlfriend to front for him. All well and good, but how do I find her if she’s not legally tied to LeGuin?’

  Libby came out of the kitchen with a carafe of coffee and a couple of mugs. When she laid them on the table, then turned away, Boots said, ‘I take it you’ve already heard this story.’

  ‘Twice,’ Andy said from inside the kitchen.

  Joaquin blushed and Boots made an effort to look away. ‘Go ahead, Jackie. I didn’t mean to interrupt.’

  Joaquin filled his mug, then his father’s. ‘I ran a limited search through New York City birth records going back three years. The limitation I chose was paternity. I wanted to know whether LeGuin had fathered any children. If the search had come up negative, I would have extended it to five years and included New Jersey, maybe Pennsylvania. But I got lucky right away. Elijah LeGuin is the father of two children by a woman named Isabella Amarando. She owns a three-bedroom condo on Groton Street in Forest Hills.’