John Lutz - Dancing with the Dead

“Like how much down?”

“Oh, just a small percentage.”

“Why not ten percent?” Mel said.

Huggins glared at him as if he’d just screwed up nuclear arms negotiations, then he shrugged and grinned. “Your instructor’s taking good care of you,” he said. “Since Mel made the offer, okay, I’ll live with it. Ten percent down, and you’re locked into the present price for the Ohio Star Ball. My promise to you.”

Mel was smiling, pleased he’d helped work this out in her favor.

“Tell you what,” Huggins said. “You decide you can’t compete, you get half the down payment back. That’s about the best I can do. But for God’s sake don’t tell anybody I’m sticking my neck out this way for you.”

“I won’t,” Mary said.

“You better keep a lid on it, too, okay, Mel.”

“You betcha, Boss.” Mel casually did another spin.

“See me in the office when your lesson’s over, okay, Mary? You can write a check, and I’ll type you out a receipt.”

“Fine,” Mary said. She and Mel watched Huggins walk back across the dance floor, cross the short stretch of carpet, and enter his office. He left the door open.

“Tango!” Mel said, smiling and stamping his foot. He didn’t shout “Ole!” but it was in the air. The quick-quick-slow rumba beat Willie and Marlene had been dancing to was ended. Mel made a good-natured show of beating Marlene to the tape deck, and tango music began. He returned and moved close to Mary into dance position, his young body lean and hard against her. For some reason she thought about him dancing with Danielle Verlane in New Orleans. She hadn’t known Mel had taught at a New Orleans studio before coming to Romance. “Nobody really knows anyone,” Angie had said, but she’d been talking about Jake.

During the rest of the lesson she forgot about her problems with Jake, about her day at work that went by in a disorienting blur, about Victor hanging around her desk and trying to make small talk. Victor was such a schmuck. And there was more to it than that, really. Sometimes, for reasons she couldn’t quite understand, he gave her the absolute creeps.

Mel led her through some cortes, then some fans. Mary felt the beat coursing like fever in her blood. She knew she was dancing beautifully.

“Wonderful move, hon,” Mel told her, drawing her close again after a series of fans. She smiled, determined to concentrate on her posture, to trace a line even more elegant. Being on the gaunt side could be an advantage in dancing; with the right dress she could seem exquisitely graceful if only she made no glaring mistakes.

After going into Ray Huggins’s office and writing a money-market check for five hundred dollars, Mary felt even better. In fact, as she left the studio and walked toward her car, she felt absolutely exhilarated. Only a tango step away from Columbus in November.

She approached the car with some trepidation, almost expecting another grisly symbolic message.

But she’d deliberately parked directly beneath one of the bright lights, and the little yellow Honda was exactly as she’d left it. She climbed in and drove away fast, not looking at her rearview mirror.

Her phone was jangling when she let herself into her apartment.

She expected to hear Jake’s voice when she said hello, but instead a woman asked if she was the daughter of Angela Arlington. Something about the voice; the impersonal tone of officialdom. News of tax audits and deaths came in voices like that.

Mary stood still for a moment, a chill on the back of her neck.

“Miss Arlington, is it?”

“Yes.”

Silence except for muffled voices, as if a hand had been cupped over the receiver for temporary privacy.

“Has something happened?” Mary finally asked through the lump of apprehension in her throat. She was having difficulty breathing; something heavy seemed to be resting on her chest.

“Your mother Angela was checked into the detoxification center earlier this evening here at Saint Sebastian Hospital. We found your name and phone number among the possessions she left at the desk.”

“My God! Is she all right?”

“We think so,” the woman said, “but her alcohol level was dangerously high when she was brought here. It’s still at an unacceptable level, and there’s some possibility of alcohol poisoning.”

“Who brought her there?”

A pause. “He didn’t leave a name.”

“I see.”

“I think it’d be a good idea if you came down here, Miss Arlington. So you can see your mother and then speak to the doctor yourself.”

“I’ll come right now,” Mary said.

She hung up the phone, dropped her dance shoes on the sofa, and hurried to the door.

During the drive to Saint Sebastian, her fear for Angie’s life clashed with anger at her mother for doing this to herself again. And yes, doing it to her, Mary. She felt a stab of guilt for seeing herself as a victim. Angie, Angie, don’t you know the pain you cause?

But she was sure Angie did know, only she lost sight of the fact from time to time. It wasn’t something you could put in a bottle and look at, like gin.

Morrisy bit down hard on the stem of his unlit pipe. He’d been thinking about his former wife, Bonita. About the time he’d discovered her in bed with-

Hell with that! Better not to remember it.

He removed the pipe from his mouth and focused his mind on the Verlane mess. He’d decided to turn the screws tighter on the husband. The asshole kept shooting off his mouth to the media, and it was having its cumulative effect. Subtle and not so subtle pressure, from the media and from higher-ups in the department, was being applied to Morrisy to bring the case to a conclusion. They were beginning to squeeze, and Morrisy didn’t like it.

The loose tail kept on Verlane had been stepped up to almost constant surveillance, and in a way calculated to let Verlane know he was being observed. So far there’d been no results, but Morrisy knew these things could take time. Then, when there were results, they could be sudden and decisive.

He was leaning back in his desk chair, staring at the dark patterns the gentle salvos of beginning rain were making on the building across the street, when he heard a perfunctory knock and Waxman walked into his office.

Morrisy’s swivel chair squealed as he turned away from the window and the view of outside gloom. He liked the expression on Waxman’s smooth, handsome face; it suggested he’d found out something he was eager to share.

“Verlane’s called the airport,” Waxman said, standing close to Morrisy’s desk.

They had a tracer on Verlane’s home phone, but not a wiretap. Pansy-ass judges needed more than Morrisy could give them right now for a wiretap warrant. A cop’s intuition didn’t count for as much as it used to, as it should still. “Which airline?” Morrisy asked, nonetheless liking this development.

“I’m supposed to find out any minute now. We can ask some questions when we know, get Verlane’s destination.” Waxman adjusted his tie’s strangulation-tight knot. His sleekly combed hair looked a little wet from the rain. “Think it’s cut-and-run time?”

“We’ll know more when we discover the destination,” Morrisy said, “assuming Verlane made a reservation. Could be just a business trip, but if he’s got a seat on a flight to South America or someplace like that, we can figure he’s broken enough to confess, providing we pick him up and work him right.”

Actually Morrisy didn’t think Verlane had reached the point where he’d flee, even if he was guilty. He’d so far demonstrated more anger than fear, shown he had some balls. But you could never tell, so Morrisy allowed himself to hope.