Stuart Kaminsky - Dancing in the Dark

“Let’s call him Arthur Forbes,” Phil suggested. “And sit down. I don’t like looking up at you.”

“Hurts to sit,” I said. “Forbes’s bodyguard, the Beast of Bombay, hit me in the ass.”

“Should I ask why?”

“A warning to Fred Astaire.”

“It’s all clear now except for one thing,” he said. “Who killed Luna Martin?”

“I don’t know who or why or how.”

“Astaire didn’t maybe hire someone who got carried away?” Phil asked and then, with amazing restraint for my brother, added, “Will you for chrissake sit down? I don’t care who hit you.”

I eased myself onto the chair across from him, biting my lower lip and wishing I had brought the pillow in from the Crosley.

“Phil, would I kill someone? Kill a woman who was giving my client a hard time?”

“I didn’t mean you,” he said, looking toward the bandstand.

“They didn’t even know why they were here. Do I need to call Marty?”

Martin Leib was my lawyer. “My” is a little too strong, since I didn’t give him much business and what little I gave him required payment in advance. Martin Leib was a mercenary. Martin Leib looked at me and talked to me as if I were an annoying insect. Martin Leib was a hell of a good lawyer.

“No,” said Phil, starting to get up, as a man with a small leather bag from the medical examiner’s office and a trio of uniformed policemen came in. One cop was carrying a rolled-up stretcher over his shoulder. Another had a camera. Phil looked over at Seidman, who nodded. Phil got up and so did I.

“What now?” I asked.

“Now, you go home or wherever you go,” said Phil wearily. “And I talk to hotel staff, Fred Astaire, and Mr. Arthur Forbes.”

“Mr. Arthur Forbes, not Fingers Intaglia?”

“In this town,” said Phil. “Arthur Forbes is spoken to politely.”

“By you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never met the man.”

This was not my brother. My brother Phil had a lifelong vendetta against all felons, all crime. In spite of his lousy temper and honesty, he had made it to the rank of captain and actually headed the Wilshire District for a couple of years. He was forced to step down as head of the Wilshire when he couldn’t be polite to important people in the community and he couldn’t keep his fists off of suspects.

“Phil,” I said as he shooed me out of the ballroom. “This is Fingers Intaglia.”

“I like catching criminals,” he said. “I want to keep catching them. It helps me stay calm with my family. I have been informed by the chief of police that if I have one more complaint I’ll be suspended without pay. So I’m going to do my best to be nice to Arthur Forbes.”

We were in the hallway now, right in front of the phone I’d called him from.

“Okay,” I said.

“Hell, it’s not okay,” Phil said, plunging his hands into his pockets to keep them still. “But I’m going to do it, Toby.”

“This is crazy,” called Shelly, as Seidman hurried him down the corridor.

Pook and Jerry went quietly. Both of them gave me a look which made it clear I shouldn’t come to them for help again. But I knew better. Actors, even successful ones, which Pook and Jerry were not, would pretend they were the toilet cleaners at Grauman’s Chinese Theater if it was the best role they could get.

“Can I ask?” I said, holding up my hands. “Don’t get mad. How are Ruth and the kids?”

In the past, this simple family question had driven Phil to violence. He never clearly explained why, other than that I had given little or no thought to them when they needed me. I had made an effort to be a better brother-in-law and uncle since Ruth got sick. She had been in and out of the cancer ward for more than a year now. She seemed to be getting better, but it was slow and she never carried the weight for a good fight.

“They’re fine,” he said.

“Good. Phil, how quiet are you going to keep this?”

“Arthur Forbes is an important citizen,” he said, looking back toward the ballroom. “I think the chief will be happy to keep this investigation confidential. At least for a while.”

It wasn’t Forbes I was worried about and Phil knew it. It was Fred Astaire. The guy from the medical examiner’s office came out, following two guys lugging a stretcher. A gray blanket covered the body of Luna Martin. A corner of her silk dress fluttered as they carried her past Phil and me. The fabric brushed against my hand. And she was gone.

The medical examiner was a twig named O’Neil whose hair was never combed and whose glasses were never clean. He paused next to us, nodded at me, and said, “In front of him?”

Phil shrugged, hands out of his pockets now, searching for something to do with them.

“Suit yourself,” O’Neil said. “Lady’s throat was cut, nice thin, even stroke. She was also strangled, but there are no bruises. Not sure which killed her. I’ll know more about the weapon and the cause of death sometime tonight or tomorrow morning. I’ve got bodies piling up. Riot, gangs, something in Little Mexico. I’ll get to the little lady as fast as I can.”

“Thanks,” said Phil.

O’Neil was shaking his head and looking down the corridor in the direction Luna’s body had been carried. “Seidman says it looks like she walked all the way into the middle of the ballroom after she had been attacked,” he said.

“Right,” I said.

“She couldn’t have come far,” said O’Neil. “A miracle that she could walk at all. That was a dead woman walking. I’d say she was murdered right out here, in front of the door to the ballroom probably. That was some determined woman.”

“Amen,” I said.

O’Neil strode down the corridor. When the M.E. was gone, Phil walked back to the door of the ballroom and looked down at the carpet. There were a couple of dark spots that might have been blood. There was no knife, nothing that looked like a murder weapon. On the chance that the killer had hidden the weapon, Phil looked behind the mirrors and paintings down the hall and went into the men’s room.

“You want me to help?” I asked, standing behind him.

“You’re a witness,” he said. “Don’t touch. Don’t help.”

Phil didn’t need my assistance. When he was done, he went to the sinks against the wall, turned on the cold water full blast, and when the basin was half full he plunged his face into it and held it there for about five seconds. When he came up for air, he shook his head like a wet dog and dried his face with one of the towels piled in the corner. I’d watched this before. He had never explained the rite. I had tried it myself but it didn’t seem to work the same magic for me. Phil looked refreshed.

“Time to see Mr. Forbes and his friends,” he said.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“You go home. I see Mr. Forbes. We’re getting along just fine so far. Let’s not test it right now.”

“Phil, I. .”

“Go now, Tobias.”

I went, but not out of the hotel. I hid behind some plants in the lobby. Phil went to the desk, where Seidman joined him. They talked to a clerk and headed for the elevator. When the elevator doors had firmly closed, I ran for the phone in the corridor near the ballroom and called the number Fred Astaire had given me. A man answered and I identified myself and asked for Astaire, telling him I thought it was important. Astaire came on about ten seconds later.

“Peters?”

“Luna Martin’s dead.”

He listened quietly while I told him what had happened, let him know that the police would be talking to him, and informed him that it probably wouldn’t make the papers.

“I should have given her the damned lessons,” Astaire said.

“I’d say the odds are very good that Luna Martin’s death had nothing to do with you, me, or her dancing lessons.”