Widows' Watch

by Nancy Herndon

  “I think they’re coming,” she said. The aura discussion ended abruptly as the tap dancers erupted onto one of the streets edging the square. There were silken banners attached to poles carried by the dancers: NORTHEAST TAPPERS ASSOCIATION; TIPTAP CLUB. They weren’t dancing in unison, so the sound was chaotic, like many snare drums, each going its own way. Elena watched as various dancers leapt out in front and did fancy steps while their cohorts cheered. A sort of contest, she thought.

  “Look, there’s the Socorro Heights group,” cried Harmony, standing up because other people had crowded in front of them. Lance helped Harmony onto the bench. In seconds they were all teetering on the wooden slats. Elena spotted five or six dancers who appeared to be over sixty-five.

  “I didn’t know they had a tap-dancing class at the center,” said Elena.

  “Oh, yes,” said Harmony. “When you go on the twelve-to-eight shift next week, you can come with me mornings.”

  “Good idea,” Elena agreed. She’d ask questions about the five murders, the bridge group, and T. Bob Tyler—but discreetly, under cover of spending time with her mother. Undercover at a senior citizens center—she bet that didn’t happen too often.

  “As soon as Concepcion told me about Leo’s event, I told Mrs. Galindo. She’s had her own tap-dancing school for the last ten years,” said Harmony. “She calls it Elder Terpsichoreans, but she donates her time to the center. She’s sixty-nine.”

  Elena watched Mrs. Galindo, attired in a red, white, and blue satin jogging suit with U.S.A. embroidered on the front. Twirling small American flags, she broke ahead of the procession, danced alone for about thirty seconds, then clicked her heels in the air on the left while crisscrossing the flags with her upper body leaning to the right.

  The crowd roared appreciatively, and a young man standing in front of Elena shouted, “Viva, Abuelita!” As she picked out another strip of Colin’s fajitas, Elena wondered whether Mrs. Galindo was really the young man’s grandmother.

  “Have you spotted your partner?” Colin asked.

  Elena studied the oncoming phalanx of tap dancers. A young woman in a tutu was now at the point doing her solo. As the dancers turned to pass her vantage point on the bench, Elena said, “There he is.”

  Leo was tapping along the edge of the group, keeping the dancers in order, doing some step in which his feet were twinkling while he flung his arms out periodically. He wore, of all things, a tuxedo, and carried a cane in one hand and his flashlight in the other. He did a sort of tap-dancing bow to various lady performers, top hat held over his heart, the cane now tucked under his arm.

  Elena grinned. Gallant Leo! If Concepcion was somewhere in the crowd, watching, she just might give him a kick in the shins for his mobile flirting techniques. “That’s him in the tuxedo,” Elena murmured to Colin.

  “And who’s that woman in the garish outfit that just grabbed him?” asked Colin.

  Elena had seen it too. The woman had shiny black hair, blunt-cut at her shoulders, long bangs, heavy eye makeup, a short black leather skirt, and red knee-high boots with black mesh stockings. The stockings were dotted here and there with red rosebuds, and she wore a black satin blouse with a red rose at the low V-neck. Very exotic. She looked as if she should be holding a rose between her teeth as she gave Leo an unsubtle, come-hither look from under long, patently false eyelashes.

  To the astonishment of both Elena and the watching crowd, Leo grabbed her arm and twisted it up behind her back. She shrieked. They were now close enough that Elena could hear Leo roaring angrily, “You’re under arrest for offering to commit an unnatural sex act with a police officer.”

  “You’re a cop?” yelled the woman. “Is this a sting?”

  Leo whipped his handcuffs out from under his cummerbund and cuffed her, bringing the whole tap-dancing procession to a halt. Camera units from three TV stations were whirring. A reporter from the Los Santos Times jogged over to Leo and shouted, “What’s up?”

  “Goddamn transvestite prostitutes,” Leo muttered.

  “Can I quote you on that, sir? What’s your name?” asked the reporter.

  “Bug off!” said Leo and gave the transvestite’s arm a yank. “Hey, Officer,” he yelled to a cop standing by his patrol car blocking off traffic from one of the streets that fed into the plaza.

  The patrolman sauntered over. “What’s up, mister? You making a citizen’s arrest here?” He grinned.

  Leo produced his detective’s badge. “Take this prisoner over to Central and book her, or him, or whatever the hell it is. You better check the sex before you put it in a cell.”

  “I’m not an it,” snapped the prostitute. “I’ve probably got a bigger dick than you, you asshole,” and he burst into a stream of vituperative Spanish.

  Harmony jumped off her bench and said to Leo’s prisoner, “I consider myself a fairly broad-minded woman, and I do consider prostitution a victimless crime, but there are children in this crowd, and I think you should watch your language.”

  “Some victimless crime,” said Elena. “You can bet he/she’s got AIDS.”

  “I do not. I’ll sue you for slandering me and causing irreparable damage to my source of income,” said the prisoner.

  “O.K., dancers,” shouted Leo. “Once around the plaza.” The tap dancers, now looking confused, tapped away, the patrolman hustled Leo’s prisoner across the street, and the newspapers interviewed Harmony. Elena didn’t want to hear it. She shuddered to think of what

  inappropriate thing her mother might say, like introducing her daughter as the partner of the officer who had stopped the parade by making an arrest.

  “My husband is the sheriff in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico,” Harmony was saying, “where people, happily, seem to have less trouble with their sexual identities. I think the Los Santos police need to take a much more tolerant view of sexuality. This young man, for instance, was a murder suspect”—Lance looked horribly embarrassed as she pointed to him—”although he’s a noted bicycle racer and poet. One has to suspect that he was harassed because he’s gay.”

  “Mom, we didn’t harass him,” Elena muttered, tugging at her mother’s elbow. “For God’s sake, we escorted him up to Chimayo to the damn race.”

  “Would you care to make a statement, ma’am?” a reporter from the Herald Post asked Elena. “What’s your connection with this incident?”

  Elena cast a look of frustrated appeal at Colin Stuart, who promptly and gallantly said, “I think we’ve enjoyed most of the entertainment available here. Let’s go to the Border Folk Festival. Lance tells me there’ll be jazz groups there that we wouldn’t otherwise get a chance to hear.” He gathered his party together, cold-shouldering the reporter, and herded them off before Harmony could make any more inflammatory remarks about the Los Santos Police Department and Lance’s gay-ness.

  41

  Saturday, October 9, 9:00 P.M.

  “For Pete’s sake, Mom,” Elena muttered once they’d climbed into Colin’s Oldsmobile. “Do you have to keep criticizing the department?”

  “Public scrutiny is what keeps public servants on their toes,” Harmony replied. “That was certainly a memorable finale to Tap Night, don’t you think?”

  “Stunning,” said Elena, giggling. Leo’s picture would be in the paper, along with the transvestite he’d arrested. A memorable finale indeed. The whole city ought to turn up next year if Leo could get permission to hold Tap Night again. As Captain Beltran always said, an officer was never off duty. She wondered how he’d like the television coverage of Leo’s particular off-duty police action.

  They drove to the Chamizal National Memorial’s Folk Festival, where tents and stages perched all over the grassy, almost treeless hills that surrounded the building. Lance and Colin accepted programs from a ranger and located the area where a jazz performance was to take place.

  “This is a Boston group,” said Col
in knowledgeably. “Very avant garde.”

  Lance agreed. Elena groaned, but silently. She wasn’t into avant garde music, things you couldn’t sing along with.

  “Oh, we must stop and hear these folk singers,” cried Harmony. “And just look. At nine-thirty there’s a storyteller. Indian myths. I don’t want to miss that.”

  Lance and Colin looked unhappy. They had come for the jazz, and Harmony’s choices overlapped theirs. “If you wouldn’t mind,” said Colin, “perhaps we could all separate, hear our choices, and meet back at—how about the Lone Star stand at ten o’clock?”

  Some date, thought Elena and trailed off with her mother. Evidently Colin Stuart found Lance a more interesting companion than her. Or maybe he was just a music fanatic. Not that she cared; Colin was nice, but she didn’t feel any overwhelming attraction to him.

  “You really ought to talk to your date more, Elena,” said Harmony.

  “It was your idea to listen to stuff he didn’t want to hear.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean for you to come along with me.”

  “I think he did.” They took folding chairs in a tent where a bluegrass singer was plunking on a banjo while another strummed a guitar and a third played a fiddle, elbows flying. They all sang in nasal tones, but Elena agreed with her mother; she did like folk music—all those maidens pining for dead lovers. An hour and a half later, having crossed paths on the grass several times, the foursome met at the beer stand and walked to Colin’s car, a long hike away in the Bowie High School parking lot.

  Colin dropped Lance off first, then drove to Elena’s house where he asked if she’d like to go out for a drink. Elena was surprised. At first, when he suggested that she bring her mother along, she thought he had the hots for Harmony. Then she thought, during the evening, that he was basically indifferent to both Portillo women. Now it occurred to her that he intended to ask her out again. Did she want to go? All she had to do was say no to the drink, and that would take care of it. Still, they hadn’t had that much time to talk, and Sarah was hoping that they’d be friends. “Sure,” she said.

  “Goodnight, children. Have a good time,” said Harmony when Colin had unlocked the door for her.

  Children? Harmony was closer in age to Colin Stuart than Elena was. They drove off toward the Camino Real bar downtown.

  “I wanted to talk to you privately,” said Colin once they were sitting in comfy leather chairs under the Tiffany dome and drinking Bailey’s Irish Cream.

  “Uh-huh.” Elena took a handful of tidbits from the dish on the table.

  “My guess is that you’re not particularly interested in me,” said Colin.

  Now what was she supposed to say to that?

  “The truth is, I was married for a long time to a woman who, unfortunately, decided to divorce me several years ago.”

  Oh lord, thought Elena, another unhappy divorced man about to tell her his problems.

  “Looking back, I have to admit,” said Colin, “that the marriage was never very successful. There just wasn’t any—I don’t know—spark between us. We had a lot in common professionally—my wife was an engineer too—but personally—”

  He shrugged.

  “That’s too bad,” said Elena, but none of my business, she added silently.

  “And strangely enough, it was pretty much the same with Sarah and me. You know we dated for several months.”

  Elena nodded. Sarah had noticed the same thing. No chemistry. Now what’s he going to say: “I’ve finally developed a great lust, and you’re its object? Let’s hop into bed together.”

  “And I think I’ve finally figured out why my relationships with women have been so unsatisfying.”

  “Oh?” She crunched another tidbit.

  “Yes, I think all these years I’ve been repressing a homosexual proclivity.”

  Elena blinked. Now, that had to be a new topic of conversation on a date. A first for her, at any rate.

  “I find myself—well—amazingly attracted to Lance. And the feeling seems to be mutual.”

  “I see.” Elena had to suppress a giggle. Laughter would not be politically correct under these circumstances. “Well, I—ah—wish you both the best.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” said Colin. “I’m sure many women would be highly offended to hear my explanation of why I wasn’t going to ask them out again. And it’s certainly not that I didn’t enjoy your company this evening.”

  What company? thought Elena. He’d spent his time with Lance. “Well, that’s great. You have a lot in common—bicycle racing, jazz.”

  “Yes, we do.” Colin beamed at her.

  “Good luck.” Elena didn’t know what else to say.

  “Thank you. Would you like another drink?” Colin now looked quite cheerful.

  Elena wondered whether he was a virgin—homosexually speaking. Not that it was any of her business. “No thanks,” she said. If he took her home right now, he’d have time to go over and visit Lance. They left the bar, and she bade him goodnight twenty minutes later.

  She wondered whether he expected her to pass the big news on to Sarah. What a time to change your sexual orientation, Elena thought wryly. Right in the middle of the AIDS epidemic. Although she remembered Lance telling Bayard Sims’s wife that he didn’t have AIDS. Of course, probably you couldn’t tell that from one year to the next unless you were into chastity.

  Her mother had already gone to bed, so Elena went into the kitchen and fixed herself a cup of herb tea, sitting down to think about the visit she was going to make Monday to the Socorro Heights Senior Citizens Center. She had to do it without spooking the serial killer or killers.

  What a strange case! What a strange evening! She washed out her cup and went to bed. She’d spend Sunday digging irrigation ditches. You always knew where you were with a shovel in your hand.

  42

  Sunday, October 10, 8:30 A.M.

  “Finally you have a day off,” said Harmony. “We can get some practice in.”

  Elena had been enjoying the Sunday Times, her huevos rancheros, and the anticipation of a pleasant morning digging trenches and installing the new irrigation system. “What practice?” she asked with a sinking feeling.

  “For our act. I’ve settled on ‘House of the Rising Sun.’”

  “I told you, Mom. The guitar’s gone.”

  “Frank returned it,” said Harmony smugly.

  “How? Did he meet you on neutral ground or ignore the restraining order?”

  “He honked, and I went out to his truck.”

  Elena cut another bite after spreading the yolk of her egg into the melted cheese and salsa. Ambrosia! What was Frank up to? Had he given up bugging her? Or had her mother—”What did you do to Frank, Mom?”

  “Nothing, dear. I asked him to return the guitar and gave him some advice on his aura.”

  “Frank doesn’t know he has an aura.”

  “He does now.” Harmony smiled radiantly. “Don’t you think ‘House of the Rising Sun’ is a good choice?”

  “The guys from Vice will love it,” said Elena dryly.

  “Of course they will. You sing beautifully.”

  Elena groaned and went back to her newspaper. On B-2 in the local section, she found an article that might explain Frank’s having returned the guitar. He’d completely flipped.

  MUSHROOMS FELL NARC

  Detective Frank Jarvis of the LSPD Narcotics Squad was hospitalized Saturday afternoon at Thomason General after erratic behavior at Police Headquarters. Dr. Rama Bahadna, the attending physician, speculated that Jarvis might have ingested an hallucinogen such as peyote. Test results are not yet in. When contacted, Jarvis’ superior, Lieutenant Paul Costas, had no comment on the incident.

  “Look at this,” said Elena, passing the paper to her mother. Poor Frank. He wouldn’t be the first narc to fall victim t
o the product. But peyote? She’d have taken him for the cocaine type. Thank God, she’d divorced him. She glanced across at her mother and noticed that Harmony had gone pale.

  “I think we should visit him,” said Harmony.

  “No way,” said Elena. “I’d rather pay a conjugal visit to Charles Manson.”

  Harmony’s eyebrows went up. “Frank can’t have been that bad! And I’m sure hospitals frown on conjugal visits.”

  “I’m sure,” Elena agreed.

  “I really think—”

  “Where’s the guitar?” Anything to distract her mother from the crazy idea of visiting Frank. He was bad enough when he wasn’t taking drugs. She couldn’t imagine what he’d be like hallucinating, and she didn’t want to find out.

  43

  Monday, October 11, 8:30 A.M.

  “You hear about Frank?” Leo asked.

  Elena had answered on the cordless phone because she and Harmony were eating on the patio. “Yeah, I read the article yesterday.” She tucked the phone between her head and shoulder so that she could pour herself more freshly squeezed orange juice. Harmony didn’t hold with juice in cartons. She claimed the little vitamin C’s escaped once they’d been separated from the rind more than an hour. But then that was her mother: full of crackbrained ideas. Not that Elena didn’t appreciate drinking extra-fresh orange juice.

  “The newspaper didn’t tell the half of it,” Leo was saying. “Frank came in for his shift, and they had this scumbag drug dealer in interrogation. Everyone agrees that Frank was acting peculiar before he spotted the dealer: calling people by the wrong names, complaining about dangerous alien rays coming off the main departmental computer. Then he sees the dealer. ‘What are you bastards doing to my wife?’ he yells at the narcs, and he grabs the dealer and kisses him. Course the guy, being the macho type, gets all upset. He doesn’t want to be kissed by a male narc.

  “The lieutenant, who’s in on the interrogation, tries to drag Frank away from his true love, the drug dealer, while Frank’s yelling, ‘Were you trying to come back to me, sweetheart?’ Then Frank turns and punches Costas and yells, ‘Why are you bustin’ my wife, asshole?’