A New York Dance Page 20

  Popping sense into her head, too late. F. Xavier was out in the world right now, going through either the greatest triumph of his career or its final disaster, and where was Maleficient? Here in the mortuary, alone. Fat had her body, and Theodora Nice had her husband, and what was left?

  Suicide, that's all. Leave F. Xavier to rest in peace with Theodora. Put this big fat body away forever.

  Suicide, yes. But how? Poison. That was the answer. Eating and drinking had been her abiding vice, now let them bring her abiding peace. The embalming rooms in the basement contained a sufficient variety of deadly liquids for any taste, so that was where Maleficient headed, step by heavy step down the wide stairs — wide to permit the passage of caskets — to the chemical-smelling white-walled room where the last remains were prepared for that final transformation.

  What Maleficient didn't know was that Frank and Floyd McCann, having gained access to the alley behind the building and having climbed the fire escape past a series of locked windows, had just forced the lock on the door to the roof and were starting down the stairs towards the top floor.

  Maleficient, having selected the liquid with which she would dispatch herself, poured it into a beaker. A clear watery liquid, vaguely blue in colour, it was one of the few things Maleficient had ever seen that did not look appetizing.

  Frank and Floyd, believing the funeral home to be empty because everyone had gone off with the funeral, made a quick search of the top floor without finding the golden statue.

  Maleficient, about to drink, stopped with the sudden realization that she had best write a note, or else the police would surely believe F. Xavier had murdered her so he could get together with his paramour, Theodora Nice. Carrying the beaker of evil fluid, she looked around the bare antiseptic rooms, but could find neither pen nor paper. She would have to go upstairs, a long and difficult process, involving a pause for breath at every second step.

  Frank and Floyd, not having found the golden statue, moved down to the third floor.

  Maleficient reached the tenth step, and paused to catch her breath.

  "Gotta hustle," said Frank. "Christ knows when they'll come back."

  "Right, right," said Floyd, and the two of them started their search of the third floor.

  During her pause at the twelfth step, three from the top, Maleficient sniffed at the nasty blue fluid in the beaker. It smelled awful.

  Hustling, Frank and Floyd continued to ransack the rooms of the third floor.

  During her pause at the fourteenth step, one from the top, Maleficient began to wonder if maybe there just might could possibly be some small tiny scant reason for hope after all. What if — just what if, now — what if she really went on a diet? What if she gave up that quack and charlatan, Dr. Erasmus Cornflower, and simply stopped eating for a while? And what if she was kindly and friendly with F. Xavier from here on? What if she turned over a new leaf and became a changed woman? A better woman. Would there still be hope?

  No golden statue on the third floor. Frank and Floyd hustled down to the second floor.

  Reaching the top of the stairs, Maleficient paused for a final time, looked at the beaker of poison, and realized she was just fooling herself. The damage had been done. F. Xavier would be happier without her, happier with Theodora Nice. He deserved Theodora Nice.

  "A sign," she murmured and lifted as many chins as she could in order to gaze heavenward. If there was hope, if she could stay alive and go on a real diet and treat F. Xavier nice from now on, then let Heaven give her a sign. Something, anything, to let her know she could go on hoping.

  Was that a muffled thump from the direction of Heaven?

  Apparently not.

  With a sigh, Maleficient gazed into the beaker again, saw that the fluid had not miraculously changed colour nor disappeared, and realized there was nothing for it. She had to go through with it now. Write the note, drink the poison, die.

  Pen and paper would be in F. Xavier's office, beyond the room in which casket models were displayed. Sad, sighing, Maleficient made her slow way in that direction.

  Frank and Floyd finished on the second floor, and hustled down the stairs to the first floor, the business part of the mortuary. "You go that way," Frank said, "and I'll go this way, and we'll meet back here at the stairs."

  "Right," said Floyd.

  Floyd's path took him to the casket display room. Entering, he saw through an open doorway on the far side what appeared to be an office; the corner of a desk, a leatherette chair with wooden arms, a tall filing cabinet. And what was that on top of the filing cabinet? Wasn't it a Dancing Aztec Priest?

  The room Floyd was in was long and fairly narrow, lined on both long sides with casket models, some open and some closed. A dark brown strip of carpet ran down the middle of the open office floor, and Floyd was moving quickly along this when he heard the sound behind him.

  Someone was coming.

  Bad Death Jonesburg, that's all Floyd could think of. It had to be Bad Death, and Floyd had no confidence in his ability to fast-talk Bad Death without Frank. "Damn damn damn!" Floyd whispered, and looking around he knew he'd have to hide. Furthermore, you and I and Floyd all knew where he had to hide. So into an open casket he went, lickety-split, a waist-high one on a metal stand, and yanked the lid down over himself as the door at the far end of the room opened and Maleficient waddled in, muttering to Heaven under her breath.

  Maleficient, at the best of times, was not a fast walker, and this was not the best of times. Probably nobody ever jogs toward the room where they will write their suicide note, and poor Maleficient wouldn't have been able to jog if her underwear was on fire. It would take Maleficient quite a long while to traverse the entire distance of that room, along the brown carpet aisle between the rows of caskets. Much longer.

  For Floyd, on the other hand, who hadn't discovered until he'd closed the lid that the satin lining in this coffin wasn't attached, and who was now being smothered by the lid lining, which had fallen down onto his face and body, was feeling a certain urgency. In pitch-blackness, in a casket, believing someone named Bad Death Jonesburg to be in the near vicinity, and at the same time to be smothered by heavy clinging satin, is one of the least pleasurable experiences available in this world of ours, and Floyd didn't like it one bit.

  Surely it was safe to get out of here now, surely it was because surely surely surely it was NECESSARY.

  Maleficient was about halfway across the room when all at once the lid leaped off the casket just to her right and some great gleaming pink creature sailed up out of it, beating its great gleaming pink wings and moaning like the souls of all the damned in one.

  "Yow!" said Maleficient, throwing her hands up in the air. (The beaker, with its noxious contents, arced across the room and utterly spoiled an expensive set of draperies on the side wall.)

  "Yow!" echoed Floyd, who could neither see nor breathe nor get this goddam stinking rotten filthy satin off his head, and who in his thrashing dislodged the casket on its rickety stand, and over went everything, Floyd, satin, casket, stand…

  …and Maleficient, who simply gave herself up for dead and swooned on the spot. Over on her back she went, out like a light, rocking gently.

  When Frank, who had heard the ruckus, dashed into the room, he found Floyd struggling his way out of a melange of splintered wood (casket), bent metal (stand), and torn cloth (lining), while a dead woman lay on the floor with her arms spread out. "Jesus Christ!" Frank said. "You didn't have to kill anybody!"

  "I didn't," Floyd said savagely, kicking the last of the satin off his ankle. "But I'd like to kill the son of a bitch that didn't sew that lining in."

  Frank was having trouble catching up. "What?"

  "Never mind," Floyd said. "Besides she isn't dead. It's that same fat woman from last night. She just fainted again."

  "Oh," said Frank.

  "And there's the statue," Floyd said, pointing.

  "At last," said Frank.

  But it wasn't the right
one. Frank hit its head against the filing cabinet and it broke right off. "Shit," said Floyd.

  "Right you are," said Frank. "Let's get out of here."

  But before leaving, out of some obscure need for revenge, Floyd placed the headless statue at the feet of Maleficient White. Then he and Frank departed, and when Maleficient regained consciousness a few minutes later she'd had all the signs from Heaven a body could want. Great pink ghosts flapping around, a headless golden statue dancing at her feet; the message might not be clear, but it sure was loud.

  "All right," Maleficient said aloud, sitting there on the floor. "I'll stay alive. And I'll lose weight. And I'll be good to Saviour."

  All good resolutions. And as to the diet, as she was becoming uncomfortably aware, she'd made a good start, having already lost fourteen ounces.

  At odds…

  "I DON'T EVEN agree with this," Mel Bernstein said. "I don't understand how it happened, I don't like it, and I absolutely do not agree with it. I think it's wrong. I think, when you come right down to it, when you come to the bottom line, I think what I ought to do is stop the car and take you off behind a wall someplace and kill you."

  "You wouldn't do a thing like that," Wally Hintzlebel said.

  Which was unfortunately true. Regretting the fact that he wasn't a killer — and that it was so obvious he wasn't — Mel hunched over the steering wheel, glowering, and took the on-ramp for the Throgs Neck Bridge. "You can pay the goddam toll," he said. And to think he'd thought this was Mel Bernstein day!

  After Mel had chased this son of a bitch into Long Island Sound, they had grappled a bit in the water before finally making their way back to the dock and clambering up on it, both of them exhausted. Mel, who had gained possession of Ben Cohen's statue by that time, had rubbed the base of it against the wooden boards of the dock, once he got some strength back, and after a while a certain amount of gold paint had rubbed off, revealing hints of dirty white plaster beneath. "Fine," Mel had said, and dropped the damn thing in Wally's lap. "It's yours." Then Mel, sopping wet, had splashed back to his car, in the nearby parking lot.

  But after he'd paid the parking fee at the little shack by the entrance, and just as he was about to drive away toward his next and last prospect, Mrs. Dorothy Moorwood of Alpine, New Jersey (which must be at least fifty miles from here), damn if this bastard Wally hadn't come trotting along, equally wet, waving his arms and yelling that he wanted to talk, hold up a minute, hold up, let's talk.

  What Mel should have done, of course, was run the bastard down and be done with it. What he did do, however, was stop the car and let Wally in and listen.

  And what Wally had wanted to talk about was joining them. He wanted to team up with Mel, wanted to go into partnership with him.

  Mel, of course, had been outraged. "Why, you son of a bitch!" he'd shouted. "First you go to bed with my wife, and then you try to steal my statue, and now you want to be my partner? Get out of the car!"

  "That's all the past. Let's forget about all that."

  "Not to mention the punch in the nose! I'm not likely to forget that!" And Mel, caught up in the whirlwind of his own rage, had punched Wally very hard on the nose.

  Which Wally had taken with no argument at all, as though it had simply been another element in the discussion. "I know the way you feel," he'd merely said, pressing two fingers and a thumb to his reddening nose. "And I don't blame you. But this is better for you, too. I won't stop looking for the right statue, and if I'm on my own, and I find it, you won't get any of it."

  "You won't find it!"

  'I might. I know just as much as you do."

  "Oh, yeah? What's Mrs. Dorothy Moor-wood's address?"

  Promptly Wally had responded: "Five Ronkonkomo Drive, Alpine, New Jersey."

  Which meant that Wally did know just as much as Mel; or in any event, he knew too much simply to be sent away. Much as he disliked the idea, Mel had realized it would be necessary to join with Wally, after all, at least until he could get together with Jerry and Frank and Floyd, who would undoubtedly deal with the problem briskly and definitively. In the interim, though, "All right," Mel had told him.

  "Half and half," Wally had said.

  "Half of what I get," Mel had agreed, congratulating himself on his slyness.

  Not sly enough. Wally had given him a penetrating look: "You have to split with your friends?"

  No point in lying. "Yes."

  But Wally had merely shrugged. "Okay. We're in it for halfs." Meaning he must have some nefarious plan of his own in mind.

  Then there'd been a delay, because Wally had to get his bag from his car. "I keep extra clothes in the car, in case I'm away, um, away for some reason of, um…" And, blushing while Mel glowered at him, he'd trotted away and then trotted back again with his canvas overnight bag. Finally, then, Mel had turned the car in the direction of Alpine, New Jersey, with Wally at first in the back seat changing into dry clothes, but more recently up front, looking bright and alert and prepared to become fast friends.

  It was the look that Mel couldn't stand. The look, and the fact that his own clothing remained sopping wet. (Without Wally, he might have gone home first to change his clothes, but he was not about to bring Wally home.) And, finally, the whole infuriating goddam thing. Everywhere he went, there was that son of a bitch Wally. He didn't want Wally; why did he have to have Wally all the goddam time?

  Which was why he'd made his remark about killing Wally behind a handy wall. Instead of which, all that happened was that Wally paid the toll on the Throgs Neck Bridge.

  Damn it.

  In transit…

  HUSTLE, GOTTA HUSTLE. Everybody walking the midtown streets was moving fast, in a hurry, staring out straight ahead, walking against the DON'T WALK signs, pushing along, getting there, moving on, moving fast. And among them Bobbi Harwood, pushing her harp, with Jerry striding half a block back. Some people looked startled when they saw the good-looking girl pushing the six-foot-tall triangle along the sidewalk, and some people smiled, but most people ignored it.

  From the orchestra office, Bobbi first led him down Fifth Avenue to a branch of Capitalists' & Immigrants' Trust at 44th Street, where she cashed a cheque while he read a pamphlet on auto loans. From there, she went down to 42nd Street, turned right, and pushed the harp along the broad sidewalk past the library and Bryant Park and the little stone comfort station there. The day was sunny and bright — Manhattan in June can be a beautiful place — and the park was full of people, feeding themselves, feeding the pigeons, reading, chatting, or just lifting their faces to the sun.

  None of that for Bobbi Harwood; she led Jerry briskly across Sixth Avenue and on as far as Times Square, where they turned left down Broadway. At 39th Street they turned right, and Bobbi entered an office building in the middle of that mini-block between Broadway and Seventh.

  She went into the elevator first, with Jerry at her heels. They were the only two aboard, plus the looming black presence of the harp, and he saw that the button marked 7 was lit, so he pushed 15, up they rode together, not looking directly at one another, and at 7 he held the door open while she off-loaded the harp. (The little wheels wanted to get stuck in the crack, but she'd obviously travelled with this thing before and had it under control.) He held the doors an instant longer than necessary, and watched her turn left as they slid shut.

  Quickly now he pushed the button for eight. Up one floor, and out to take a quick look at the floor diagram posted next to the elevator. YOU ARE HERE. And Stairway B was just to the left.

  Bang, bang, bang, down the metal stairs and through the door to the seventh floor hall. One of the offices to the left.

  Six of them. A dentist. An accountant. An auto transport company. Something called Nebula Musical Attractions. Something called Those Wonderful Folks, Inc. And a photographer's studio.

  Jerry started opening doors, leaning his head inside. The dentist's waiting room contained two glum-looking people, neither of them Bobbi Harwood, and no harp. The
accountant's outer office contained a brassy-looking receptionist with Chinese red hair, who gave Jerry a jaundiced look and said, "Yeah?"

  "Bobbi Harwood come in yet?"

  "Who?"

  The auto transport company was a large office with two rows of desks, at one of which Bobbi Harwood was talking with a stocky young woman who was simultaneously nodding, chewing gum, writing something on a form, and dialling a telephone. Bobbi seemed to be showing some kind of identification.

  Christ on a crutch. Was she taking a car some place? Back down in the elevator Jerry went, and out to the street, where he found a phone booth down at the corner of Broadway. He dialled Angela's number and waited, tapping his foot. Two rings. Three rings.

  "Hello?" Angela's voice.

  "Listen," Jerry said. "I don't have much time."

  "Jerry! Oh, I wanted to tell you, what an absolute jewel you found us with Mandy!"

  "Yeah, we'll have to work something out there. We can't keep her forever."

  "Oh, but we can!"

  "Say again?"

  "You know she's been working for that actress, Valerie Woode. Well, apparently the famous Miss Woode is also famous for her terrible tantrums, and when Mandy called to say she might be late this evening dear Miss Woode just screamed at her. I could hear it in the next room, coming over the phone."

  "Angela, I don't have much time."

  "Well, the point is," Angela said, "the point is, Mandy is staying!"

  "She what?"

  "She's working for us, now, for Mel and me! She never did like those late hours with Valerie" — Angela was a name dropper — "and she didn't like living in that neighbourhood in the Bronx, so she's moving right in here, in the spare room, and she'll work for us!"