Last Dance

by Jeffrey Fleishman

  “Who’s the other one you turned me on to?”

  “Bedouine.”

  “Elsa likes Bedouine. We went to her show at the Bardot last year.”

  Azadeh rolls down the window, lets her black hair fly like demons, reminding me of a fable I heard when I was a boy, about a desert princess who loved cherries. For her birthday, her father gathered doves from across the land and dispatched them to orchards in a rival kingdom to carry back one cherry each, until the sky filled with white and red, and the princess laughed and danced on her balcony as the enemy king sent out his armies.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just drive, Carver.”

  We drop onto Sunset and park between a barbershop and a tattoo parlor.

  “It’s like a hipster petting zoo,” says Azadeh. “You should get an earring and grow a beard. Get one of those Bogart hats they wore in those old noir movies. You have hipster potential, Carver; I see it.” It is a Sunday, and she is happy. “You hungry? Let’s get a Cuban sandwich. This place up here has the best.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Relax, Carver.”

  We order two sandwiches and coffees at the counter and take a

  table in the corner. The place is nearly empty. A blond twenty-something in yellow-tinted Lennon glasses is typing on a Mac. A guy with a wallet on a chain, and a beard too gray and messy for a hipster is reading Hunter Thompson, shaking his head at the funny parts. A Latina slides us our food, an overhead fan spins, and I feel I’ve been here before, years ago, but I don’t remember. A man in a deep-green suit and striped shirt walks in, slow, five foot ten, fading tan, darting eyes. His black shoes and combed-back hair gleam. Azadeh waves and he heads toward us, winking at the cook, hugging the waitress. He pulls out a chair and sits down. Nobody says anything. I listen to the fan and wait. Azadeh gets up and walks out the door.

  “We go back,” says the guy, nodding toward her. “She’s good people.”

  “She asked you here?”

  He rubs a hand over his mouth, moves his chair closer.

  “This young man, this kid, the cellist,” he says. “I seen him here a few afternoons ago, maybe last week, sitting right over there with his instrument all cased up. Minding his own business, you know.” The guy pulls out a vape, studies me, sits there like a bronze cast, confident, a bit of East Coast Soprano air about him. “Anyway, these two big fucks come in. One of them was really fucking big, like a tower, you know? They move the kid’s cello. Sit on both sides of him, squeeze him in like. I’m sitting over there watching.” His eyes cut to a table near the counter. “Everything’s real nice and slow, no hysterics, but mean, you know. Like this kid’s in the shit. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but the kid is spooked. Confused. They lean in even closer. One of the guys—the smaller one, but shit, even he was big—was packing. A bulge under his jacket. Then things kinda relax. The guys get up, pat the kid on the back, and then, boom, out the door, gone.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m uncomfortable with identities. Azadeh knows me. She can tell you.” He reaches for half of Azadeh’s sandwich. “She won’t mind. Never seen her eat two halfs.”

  “Why were you here that day?”

  “It’s my neighborhood.”

  “You know what happened to the kid?”

  “Azadeh told me. But I’m thinking, kid didn’t put that needle in his arm without a little help.”

  “These guys . . .”

  “Sounded Russian—at least, definitely Eastern European variety.” He reaches for a napkin. “Good sandwich. Too much cheese, maybe.”

  “Have you seen them before?” I say.

  “Nah. They’re not from here, you know. The clothes. Russian clothes. Different fabric, cut. The big guy had a pack of smokes, not the kind they sell here. You know how you can just tell about guys? A kind of unexplainable sense you get. Definitely not Angelenos. But these days, who the hell really is, you know? All kinds of fucking people arriving from all kinds of places.”

  “What else?”

  “What else? I just gave you a boatload.”

  “Can you describe them more?”

  “Already did. Azadeh.”

  “You know about the ballerina?”

  He exhales, shakes his head.

  “You guys lost her. All over the Internet. I’m thinking—”

  “The same thing we are. You didn’t hear anything else, see anything?”

  “Just that these guys weren’t locals,” he says. “So whatever came, came from somewhere else?”

  “How would I find out about that?”

  “I guess you’d have to know the right people.”

  “You know the right people?”

  “I know a person.” He takes the last bite of the sandwich, reaches for Azadeh’s coffee. “Oh, she likes it black. I like a little cream. Fuck it.” He sips. “Azadeh tells me I can trust you. But this can’t come back on me. I mean, shit, I can’t have two big, funny-talking shits put me in a squeeze at that table over there, or anywhere. Say I mention a name. No one knows where that name came from. Just a name you happened to hear from the anonymous. Right?”

  “Couldn’t have put it better.”

  “Jimmy Krause. Lives in Burbank.”

  “What about . . .”

  “All I’m saying.” He checks his phone. “I got a date. I met a girl a few weeks ago. She likes walking around the lake, snapping pics of water lilies and turtles and shit. What the fuck, right? You gotta do what they want, least in the early stages.” He stands, brushes crumbs from his suit, tugs his collar straight.

  “I like that,” I say. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Tailor on Beverly out near Larchmont. A bit pricey, but nice work. Armenian, I think. Maybe a Jew.”

  “What are you?”

  “I’m outta here.”

  He leaves. I finish my sandwich. The blond is still typing away. Girls at a table next to her are sharing Instagrams and laughing and talking about a boy one of them loves but is too shy to tell. They tease her and shovel french fries, and they start talking about Kanye and Kim and why has he been so weird, “talking nice shit about Trump and disappearing to Wyoming or Montana—you know, one of those white-people places.” And why Kylie Jenner is making “like a billion gazillion selling lipstick. That girl smarter than the whole bunch—Kim, even.” They are from another world, an orbit briefly touching mine. I like listening to them sailing from sentence to sentence through a late afternoon, like a parade that for a moment has stopped. I walk outside. Azadeh is leaning against my Porsche, eating ice cream.

  “You didn’t bring my coffee?”

  “Your guy drank it.”

  “What’d you think?”

  “LA by way of Jersey.”

  “He can put it on thick,” she says. “He’s a good CI, though. He’s part Iranian. Mother’s side. He’s a scam artist, sets up money-laundering fronts. He’s a fixture here.” She licks. “You know how some of them like it. They pretend not to, like it’s a chore or we’re pulling fingernails, but they like it. He’s like that. He likes the whole chemistry. Makes him feel important, like he’s working all angles. I love hustlers like that. I’ve worked him for five or six years. Usually on the mark.” I lean next to her. The sky is hard blue behind us. Azadeh’s eyes are hidden behind sunglasses; she has chocolate on her chin. “I spread Levon’s picture to a few of my people,” she says. “Nobody recognized him except him.”

  “Strange he was in there the day Levon was.”

  “I know what you’re thinking. Thought the same thing. But he’s clean, not connected—not to this, anyway. Sometimes you catch a break, Carver. You go with it.”

  “So who’s Jimmy Krause?”

  “That’s for you to find out. Keep me in the loop, right? In case this becomes a Bureau thing.”
>
  “It already is, isn’t it?”

  “Depends on who you arrest.”

  I reach and wipe the smudge from her chin.

  “It’s mocha fudge, Carver. Want a lick?”

  “I’ll pass. Where now?”

  “Home.”

  I open the door. She slides in. I go around and start the car and ease into the thin traffic on Sunset.

  “Why you laughing, Carver?”

  “It’s just funny.”

  “What?”

  “How it all rides on guys like that. Devious men who know other devious men.”

  “Makes sense to me.”

  We get on the 110. Wind fills the car; the mountains rise clear. Azadeh sends a text.

  “Thanks,” I say. “I owe you.”

  “You do.”

  Chapter 16

  Andreas Stein leads me to the rooftop of a restored Art Deco near Sixth that’s been converted into apartments. A violinist is playing. Ballerinas and slight, handsome men are drinking around a pool next to a framed portrait of Katrina Ivanovna. It is twilight, and in the distance north and west, the sky is black and red with rage. It’s been like this since the first brush fire flared in Ventura and zigzagged to Bel Air. It is a terrible beauty, fed by dry winds, and from this distance it has the glimmer of the sacred, reminding me of candles burning against stained glass, colors changing with light and heat. Flames rip through funnels of smoke that rise like doomed towers and topple across the horizon. Beneath, in neighborhoods and arroyos, fires feed and howl; sparks spin and scatter, searing the air with orange diamonds as night falls.

  “How many acres?” says Stein, standing near the roof’s edge, a wineglass in his hand.

  “More than two hundred thousand,” I say.

  “All the way to Santa Barbara. I read that. It’s like the Inferno. I suppose that sounds arch or obvious, Detective, but from this far away, it looks like a glimpse of hell, doesn’t it? Imagine humankind picking at its sins and wailing through eternity. Dante knew.” He breathes, teeters, and waves a hand over the horizon. “I’m sorry. I’m a bit drunk. But look how frightening and majestic it is.”

  “People call it a lot of things.”

  He takes a big swallow of wine. Unshaven and weary, his voice cracked, he’s not the man I met days ago in the theater, sitting on the stage in the spotlight, reading his laptop and plotting his comeback, his Giselle with Katrina. “It seems unreal,” he says. “I half expect the flames to stop and the smoke to be vacuumed away. Paradise destroyed and resurrected. The way they do in the movies.” He wipes away a tear. “All those flaming palm trees. They look like armies in bright rows.”

  “You okay?”

  “We had to cancel Giselle.”

  “I read.”

  “We couldn’t get a replacement in time. Impossible. We had to do something. The dancers wanted to have this goodbye for Katrina. She made an impression. She always did. They’re up here to pay homage. See that man over there, the very good-looking one? He’s a choreographer from Paris, and the one over there, a bit chubby in the black suit—he’s the money. He was financing Giselle, but alas, well, you know . . . I feel as if I’m slurring, Detective. Am I slurring?”

  “A little.”

  “I can’t believe she’s gone,” he says. “She was in and out of my life for so long.” He looks at me, squinting, losing and finding words. “I don’t know if we could have pulled it off. You didn’t know me before, but I had my day, Detective. I wasn’t such a wreck. I thought Katrina and I might take one more gamble. A reverie.” He puts down the empty wineglass. “Are you closer to anything, Detective?”

  “We’re following leads.”

  “Ah, yes, leads. Many, many leads, I suppose. Is there a chance you’ll get her body back? I dream of her out there, wandering.”

  “We’re doing everything we can. I have a question.”

  “Please.”

  “Katrina kept diaries in small, red books.”

  “She wrote in them often,” he says, his eyes scanning for a waiter. “At breaks in rehearsal, she would sit in the back of the theater and write. I asked her once what she was scribbling. She looked at me, and I knew to mind my own business. I haven’t seen any. There were none in her locker when we cleaned it out.”

  “What was in there?”

  “Ballerina things. Leggings, toe shoes, you know. A picture of her doing an arabesque, another of a grand jeté. It’s rare to have so much strength and explosion hidden in such elegance. Making the body insubstantial until it succumbs to beauty.” His eyes widen. “You’re looking at me as if I’m crazy.” He teeters a bit more. “I am full of myself, I suppose. At any rate, I have seen no diaries.” He takes another glass of wine from a passing silver tray. “There is someone I’d like you to meet.” He draws me to him; his voice softens. “See that woman over there? Blond hair, black dress? Her name is Molly Ames. Wonderfully American, if you know what I mean. A once-promising dancer ruined by injuries. She managed Katrina off and on. She helped bring Giselle together. Follow. I shall introduce you.”

  He’s drunk but walks through the crowd with ease. I hadn’t realized before how compact he is, how delicate, like a dancer. Katrina’s choreographer and occasional lover, he is a man, once brash and indulged, whose name I am certain she scrawled into her little red, lost books. Molly Ames turns. She kisses Stein on the cheek. He flits away.

  “He’s bombed,” she says in a Southern accent, the kind I heard years ago in a hotel in Savannah, where I had attended a forensics conference on the art of autopsy and the science of sociopaths. “That man can drink, honey. He’ll fall over soon in a corner or the bed of some new thing he’s found.” She tips a whiskey. “This is devastating for all of us, Detective. No one is sure what to do.” She looks at me, direct, open, discerning, lipstick on her glass. She’s tall, hair pulled back, wide gold necklace, nails long and polished. She has the mark of money, of someone who rides horses on fields of white fences. “I was in London when I heard that horrible, startling ringing in the middle of the night. All I could think of was when I first saw her dance. I was a dancer then too. But not like that, Detective. No. I was good, but I would never do that.” Her eyes go away and come back. “She was magnificent.”

  “Andreas said you managed her.”

  “Lord, that girl could be difficult, as I’m sure you’ve heard. Famous for it. A prima donna extraordinaire. She’d call me now and then to fix something. A contract. To get her an audition.”

  “Were you close?”

  She lets the question float.

  “That’s a hard one,” she says, sipping and reaching over to brush something, perhaps ash, from my jacket. Her fingers stay for a moment, run down my lapel, and pull slowly away. “I don’t mean to be elusive, but there are many and yet, no answers to that. You could love and admire Katrina, but I don’t think you could get close. Does that make sense?” She leans toward me and lowers her voice. “We were intimate once; at least, I thought so. It was in New York years ago. It was the final night of Romeo and Juliet. She came from backstage and wanted to go for a walk. We went to Central Park, not deep in—it was late and dark, after all—but along the edge, you know, where the lights and shadows are. It was cold. We walked for hours. I was exhausted. I could only imagine what she was. We got back to the hotel and went to our rooms. An hour or so later—I was sleeping—a knock. It was her. Standing in the hallway in a white robe. She was restless. I let her in. She apologized and told me to go back to bed. She shut off the light and sat in a chair. A few minutes later, she stood and took off her robe and slipped naked under the covers next to me. I didn’t know what to do.” She shakes her head, turns away and back. “Look, I still blush at the memory.” She sips again. “She pressed close to me. Her skin was cool, but then it warmed. She kissed me on the cheek, put her head on my shoulder, and went to sleep. I couldn
’t sleep at all, of course. Lord, I couldn’t sleep. I must have, a little, though. Morning came, and she was gone. Nothing happened; I am not of that persuasion, but I understood how one could be. Katrina, of course, had a multitude of persuasions. But that night she just needed to feel another. Like a child with a bad dream. Does that make sense? I think it does. I would learn over the years that many others had similar stories about Katrina.”

  “Sounds like someone quite alone.”

  “Aren’t we all, in some way? Katrina had no inhibition, you know—a girl not afraid of wanting to be held.” She raises a finger, lifts away a tear. “The pills and the alcohol started as her talent diminished. Her mind could not accept what she called ‘her body’s rebellion.’” She looks at me. “Do you know what that’s like? The moment you understand your mortality?”

  “I do.”

  “I imagine, in your line of work, you must.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “Six months ago, in Spain. I was there on work, signing a promising dancer from Galicia, and Katrina flew in. She wanted advice on an advertising contract from Jimmy Choo to sell shoes. Dancing in high heels beneath the moon and across the Acropolis, or something like that. It was a good idea for a campaign. I offered advice. Before she left, she told me about Andreas wanting to do Giselle. I helped her with the contracts. It was arranged over phone calls and emails. And then I got the call in London a few days ago.”

  “Was she upset? Scared?”

  “She was long estranged from Russia and her family. Her mother, especially. It bothered her. I don’t know what happened there. You know how families can be. Her mother came to a performance once, in Geneva. Katrina left out the back door. Never said hello. I asked her why, and she shook her head but said nothing. I let it drop. There was more anger than regret in her eyes. I do remember that. Those angry blue eyes.” The violinist plays a requiem. A dancer drapes toe shoes over the corner of Katrina’s portrait; another hangs a scarf. A moment of silence falls, and then waiters move and glasses clink, and the hum of conversation returns. “Is this at all helpful, Detective? Or am I just babbling on. That’s what one does, babbles after a death. Look at all of us babbling.”