Dancing Aztecs Read online

  So that took care the celebrities. So now the celebrities, they in five convertibles in the funeral procession, two celebrities per convertible. Only not the front two convertibles, cause in the front two convertibles is Mole Mouth’s immediate family, a bunch of wooly-head niggers from Down South someplace, staring around at everything and eating Kentucky Fried Chicken outa plastic buckets on the floor the convertibles and generally making fools a theyselves. But starting with the third convertible, here come the celebrities.

  Leroy, he say, “Buhbuh.”

  Buhbuh, he say, “Whu?”

  Leroy, he say, “Lu dah.”

  Buhbuh, he say, “Lu wuh?”

  Leroy, he say, “Dah! Ain dah Sammy Davis Junyuh?”

  Buhbuh, he look, he say, “Nah.”

  Buhbuh, he right. That ain’t no Sammy Davis, Jr. That F. Xavier’s cousin Jim Haye from South Ozone Park, what look a little like Sammy Davis, Jr., special when he got that black eyepatch on what the real Sammy Davis, Jr., don’t wear no more. (When F. Xavier, back at the funeral parlor, when he point to Jim Haye and say Bad Death, “There Sammy Davis, Jr.,” and Bad Death, he say, “How come he wearin that eyepatch? He don’t wear that no more,” F. Xavier, he say, “He lost the glass eye.” And Bad Death, he say, “Playin what?”)

  So now Leroy, he say, “Well, ain’ dah Muhammad Ali?”

  Buhbuh, he look, he frown, and he say, “Nah.”

  Buhbuh, he right again. That ain’t no Muhammad Ali, that F. Xavier’s nephew Lucius White from New Rochelle, sitting in there next to Jim Haye with his jacket shoulders all full a paper towels and his arms up in a boxer’s handshake with himself.

  So that the first car celebrities. Jim Haye with a eyepatch on and Lucius White wearing paper towels, both a them nodding and waving to the multitude, what stare back. And that F. Xavier, he had to be pretty smart and pretty dumb, try to pull a stunt like this.

  So now the next Cadillac convertible come along, and Leroy, he say, “Gah dammit, Buhbuh, ain’ dah Diana Ross?”

  “Nah,” say Buhbuh.

  “How bow Flip Wilson?”

  “No way,” say Buhbuh.

  That Buhbuh, he batting a thousand. That ain’t Flip Wilson, that a casket salesman from Detroit name a Happy Charlie Lincoln, who do look like Flip Wilson. He look like Flip Wilson so much that people say it all the time; they say, “Man, you look like Flip Wilson.” And right away they sorry they say that, ’cause right away Happy Charlie Lincoln, he do fifteen minutes a Geraldine. It awful.

  And nor ain’t that Diana Ross. Who that is, that Maleflcent’s little nephew Alexander Sternfeather. When F. Xavier, he call him and ask him help out in a matter a life and death, that Alexander, he say, “I ain’ gone dress up like any girl.” And F. Xavier, he say, “This ain’t dressin’ up like any girl, Alexander. This dressin’ up like Diana Ross. This dressin’ up like a star.” So he talk Alexander into it, and they give Alexander some really heavy threads, and they give Alexander a wig almost tall as he is, a scale model a Versailles made outa yak hair. And now Alexander, he getting such a big kick outa being a star, he singing “Stop in the Name of Love” while waving at them multitudes. Good thing they can’t hear him.

  So now Leroy, he getting mad, he getting pissed off, he stand up from the curb where him and Buhbuh, where they been sitting, and he point, and he say, “Now. You tell me dat ain’t no Bob Teague.”

  Now, ain’t nobody perfect. Buhbuh, he don’t watch no Channel 4 news, he don’t know Bob Teague from McTeague, he say, “Beat me, man. Mebbe so.”

  “Hokay,” Leroy say. “An you tell me, what dat in dere with Bob Teague?”

  Buhbuh, he look, he say, “Dunno.”

  “It Pam Grier, you dum-dum!”

  Buhbuh, he say, “Poo.”

  Buhbuh, he back on the beam. Pam Grier, poo. That ain’t no Pam Grier, sitting there in brown leather pants and brown leather jacket and snakeskin shirt. That F. Xavier’s cosmetician in the funeral parlor, name a Theodora Nice, who put out all the time for the drivers on the cosmetology table. She don’t even look all that much like Pam Grier, though she been fixed up more in that direction at the moment, but they something about the expression in her eyes that make a lotta men, they see her, among the things they think, they think, “Pam Grier.”

  As for that Bob Teague, he ain’t no Bob Teague neither. Maleficent, she come out a the bedroom after she cool off, she full a contrition and Dunkin Donuts, and when F. Xavier, he tell her what he scheming, she say she gone help out, on account her no-good sister’s no-good husband, Roosevelt Jackson, he look like that fella on the TV, that Bob Teague. So Leroy, he wrong again.

  He gone be wrong twice more in another minute, when he say, “Lu dah. Redd Foxx an Diahann Carroll!”

  “Wrong an wrong,” say Buhbuh.

  Leroy, he say, “Buhbuh, you a pain in the ass.”

  That may be, but Buhbuh, he a right pain in the ass. Redd Foxx, huh. Who that is, that Maleficent’s diet doctor, Doctor Erasmus Cornflower, a nasty goddam charlatan and quack, what F. Xavier had to point a pistol at this morning before he’d sit still and let Maleficent dye his hair red. He ain’t at all happy in that convertible, which is okay, on ’count when he frown like that he look almost exactly like Redd Foxx on television when he mad at he family.

  And you know who dat Diahann Carroll is? She made up a lot, and her hair different from usual, but Leroy, he should a known who that is. Buhbuh, he know. “Leroy,” he say, “you got your eyes up you asshole. Tha Miss Tower.”

  Leroy, he say, “Huh?” And he stare. “You fulla shit,” he say. But then he stare again, and if that convertible, if it hadn’t gone on by already by then, he would of maybe run right over to it and look close, because damn if maybe it wasn’t Miss Tower, after all.

  It is. Felicity Tower was almost the only Open Sports Committee member what F. Xavier could get in touch with this morning, and she come down when he say he need help, but they ain’t no high school teacher in the world a big star celebrity except maybe Sam Levenson, and he the wrong ethnic. So Maleficent and Theodora Nice and F. Xavier, they all work on Felicity, and when they done she still one a the most beautiful women ever, but she don’t look like no block a ice no more, what she look like is Diahann Carroll. O-kay.

  So Leroy, he shake he head at that convertible, ’cause he don’t know who that is no more, but then he look at the next convertible, and he frown, and he say, “Buhbuh.”

  And Buhbuh, he say, “Wuh?”

  And Leroy, he say, “Who dah in dere wih Jim Brown?”

  And Buhbuh, he say, “Whut Jim Brown?”

  “Well, hell!” Leroy say.

  Well, that ain’t no Jim Brown in there, but who that is in there with him is Alexander Sternfeather’s mother Lois. It used to be everybody told Lois she look exactly like Nat King Cole, but these days everybody tell her she look exactly like Shirley Chisholm, so that who she supposed to be, but Leroy and Buhbuh, they ain’t up on current events. Not that kind current events.

  About that Jim Brown. The funny thing about him, his name really is Jim Brown, and he used to play football one time, and then he was a sparring partner for a while, and then he busted safes until he went up to Attica for a while, and now he drive one a F. Xavier’s hearses (except today), and if ever a fella from a protection racket or something like that come around pester F. Xavier, F. Xavier, he send the fella talk to Jim Brown, and that take care a that. So all that was done with this Jim Brown, make him look like the other Jim Brown, is give him a mustache cut out from the back part of Alexander Sternfeather’s Diana Ross wig.

  So now Buhbuh, he say, “Okay, Leroy, who dah?”

  He mean the fellas in the next convertible, which is the eighth convertible, and which has in it Bad Death Jonesburg his own self, and three a his close associates. And Leroy, he look, he say, “It beat the shit outa me.”

  “You doan think tha no Wallace Beery or nothin’, huh?”

  And Leroy, he grumpy, he don’t ans
wer.

  So now three more convertibles go on by, full a evil and dissolute men, and then Leroy, he get happy and excited again, he say, “Buhbuh!”

  And Buhbuh, he say, “Wuh?”

  That Leroy, he say, “Lu dah! Dat our band!” Then he turn, he give Buhbuh a cold-fish look, he say, “Or you gone say tha not our band?”

  “Oh, it our band, all right,” Buhbuh say.

  You can count on Buhbuh. It the Liberation High School band, marching. Only they up on a flatbed truck like the first band and the horses, so the kind a marching they doing is back-and-forth marching. They going in and out with each other, they doing all their tricky moves for the band competitions, only they doing everything small, on account they don’t want nobody fall off the truck. So they spelling out HELLO and TEAM and USA and all like that, steady marching back and forth and in and out and up and down on the flatbed truck, on account most a them, they don’t know how to play standing still.

  They a colorful band. They got a red uniform, with silver buttons and white piping and a gold stripe down the pants leg. All their brass instruments real bright and shiny in the sun, and when they marching around up there they look like a Mad Magazine idea of a Norman Rockwell cover for The Saturday Evening Post. They playing John Philip Sousa’s “Thunderbird,” and many the people on the sidewalks watching, they give them a toast in the same.

  Meanwhile, up ahead, Felicity, she smiling and nodding and waving at the multitude, she being Diahann Carroll to beat all, when just on a sudden she see, standing right there on the sidewalk, them two cruel white men what broke into her apartment last night but got scared off before they could complete their evil designs. And the smile and the nod and the wave all falter, and it Felicity Tower looking out at them two men, not any Diahann Carroll at all.

  And the two men on the sidewalk look back at her, and one of the men, Frank, he say, “Hey, look. That ain’t Diahann Carroll, that’s that broad from last night!”

  And a minute later the convertible with Bad Death in it go by, and Bad Death, he poke his associates with his elbows, he say, “There’s them feds. They got they eye on me.”

  The associates is very impressed.

  Meantime, the funeral procession, it still going on. After the Liberation High band come three black Checker Marathons filled with professional mourners what F. Xavier, he got from a fellow mortician name of Israel Yid way down on Second Avenue. And these professional mourners, they got the Marathon windows rolled down and they got their heads sticking out and they moaning, “Oy!” and “Vey iz mere!” and similar sentiments, to regret the passing a Mole Mouth Dundershaft. And Leroy and Buhbuh, they don’t know what to say about that. They just look at it, with they mouth open.

  Then after the three Checker Marathons come one last flatbed truck, it containing three massed choruses a gospel singers, all female and all wearing floor-length robes and all singing at the top they voices. They singing hymns, and these hymns is made up mostly a two words. One a the words is, “Wah-ya-yow-ow-ow-wu,” and the other word is, “Jesus.”

  And Leroy, he say, “Lu dah!”

  And Buhbuh, he say. “Wuh you see now, Sidney Poh-tee-yay?”

  And Leroy, he say, “I see my mama!”

  Now this time, this time Leroy right That is his mama up there, and his sister Rose and his sister Ruby, and they all got they mouths open wide, and they all got they hymn books out in front a them, and they all singing for glory.

  “Hey, Mama!” Leroy yell, but ain’t nobody can hear nothing when they in the middle three massed choruses a gospel singers, so Leroy’s mama, she don’t look up from her hymn book at all. And the truck go on by.

  With the jazz band and the marching band and the professional mourners and the massed choruses, this a funeral you can hear. This a funeral attract attention.

  Now after the massed choruses come a dozen more cars, only these is not your regular-type funeral cars. One a them is a pink Cadillac with a white bearskin interior and mandalas painted on the hubcaps. And one a them is a silver Lincoln Continental with lemon suede interior and black metal eye-lashes over the headlights. They is all different—the only thing they all got the same is the little automobile TV antenna curling up over the roof on every one—but they is all got the same general name for them. They is pimpmobiles, and for those that think the Holiday Inn sign is pretty these here pimpmobiles is the last word in beauty. And they is being driven by they owners, who is business associates of either Bad Death or Mole Mouth, and who wanted to come to be a part a this special occasion, but who didn’t want to be in no car they themselves wasn’t driving, on account everybody got enemies so why take chances? And, anyway, they make a colorful part a the funeral procession, particularly since some a them got very attractive-looking girls in the passenger seats, girls that wouldn’t somehow have fitted in with the massed choruses a gospel singers.

  And finally at the end is a sleek black Cadillac Eldorado, with F. Xavier smiling and sweating and happy in the back seat. (Maleficent, she too fat to go out the house, she stay home all the time.) F. Xavier, he done it now and he know it. He The Funeral Man from here on out. This a funeral they gone be talking about for years. Walter B. Cooke, he don’t understand nothing.

  Leroy and Buhbuh, they trail along after the funeral a little ways, and then Leroy, he say, “Lu dah.”

  Buhbuh, he say, “Wuh?”

  Leroy, he say, “Dere dem cops.”

  This time, Leroy, he right and wrong. It them cops, sure enough, but them cops is no more cops than that Jim Brown they seen was Jim Brown. Them cops is Frank and Floyd, and now the funeral it out they way they crossing the street, off to get Marshall Thumble’s golden statue.

  Buhbuh, he say, “Where they goin, them bastids?”

  Leroy, he say, “Less follow em.”

  So they follow them cops, and damn if them cops, if they don’t go to Bubbuh’s house and go on inside. Buhbuh, he say, “Wuh the fuck?”

  So Buhbuh and Leroy, they stay outside and wait, while the sounds a the funeral, they fade away in the distance. ’Cause the funeral, it gone over a Hundred Twenty-Fifth Street to the Triborough Bridge. Then it gone over the Triborough Bridge and down the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to the Long Island Expressway, and out the Long Island Expressway to the cemetery, at fifty-five mile an hour, with the jazz band playing and the Liberation High band marching around and spelling ATIO (which is all from Liberation High they can spell without a whole mess a trumpets and tubas falling off the truck), and the professional mourners yelling out the windows, and the massed choruses hollering about Jesus, and all the girls in the pimpmobiles watching “Let’s Make a Deal.”

  And Frank and Floyd, they can’t get inside the Thumble apartment, so they go back out the building and they see that kid Leroy Pinkham again, and they see the other kid with him, and Frank, he go over to Buhbuh and he say, “Are you Marshall Thumble?”

  And Buhbuh, he say, “What of it?”

  And Frank, he say, “Why didn’t you say so before?” And him and Floyd, they walk away, and Buhbuh and Leroy, they don’t say nothing.

  ON THE PHONE …

  By the time they’d finished breakfast and returned to the apartment, Oscar had convinced Chuck that something was going on, and Chuck was beginning to convince Oscar what that something was. “The only explanation I can think of,” Chuck said, “is that the original somehow got mixed in with all our copies.”

  “I just don’t see how,” Oscar said. His forehead was deeply ridged with bewilderment.

  It was being quite a morning for Oscar. First, he’d awakened with the granddaddy of all hangovers, some big mean hairy dog scratching and biting inside his head, and then he’d seen where somebody had busted his Other Oscar into a lot of pieces and then badly glued them back together again. Memory had followed, confused and sporadic, and when he’d remembered that one of last night’s visitors had been asking for Bobbi Harwood he went to the phone to call Chuck, and there wasn’t any answer.
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br />   Which was all wrong. Over the last three years, Oscar and Chuck had worked more closely together than any other two members of the Open Sports Committee—they even had keys to one another’s apartments—so that Oscar knew Chuck’s teaching schedule, and at nine-thirty on a Wednesday morning Chuck had no class and should certainly be home. Most likely asleep, in fact. As for Bobbi, she was never out of the house before noon.

  So down to the Harwood apartment he’d gone, walking through the apparently empty rooms. Shattered statue in the fireplace; poor bastard in even worse shape than Oscar’s. Usual mess in the kitchen. Every stitch of clothing out of the gaping dresser drawers in the bedroom. And Chuck himself, naked in the closet. “Good Christ!” said Oscar.

  “Oscar,” said Chuck, painfully straightening, “you might not believe this …”

  Oscar listened to part of the story, then went downstairs to rescue what he could of Chuck’s clothing, and then the two of them had a sorting-out conversation during breakfast in a nearby restaurant. Back in the apartment, Chuck brought up the idea of the original Dancing Aztec Priest having gotten mixed in with their copies. “I’m not saying it was total accident,” he explained. “More likely there was chicanery afoot, and it misfired.”

  “Run that one through again.”

  So Chuck told him about the flourishing museum trade in stolen artifacts, and the estimated million-dollar price tag on the original Dancing Aztec Priest, and the fact that the Priest was famous enough in art circles to be worth acquiring but not so famous (like the Pietà, for instance) that a museum would be unable to show it, and then he went on to suggest that the original might have been stolen in South America and sent north with a shipment of copies. “But the smugglers,” he finished, “took the wrong one at this end. They got a copy instead of the original.”

  “You know,” Oscar said, “I think that makes sense.”

  “And the next thing to do;” Chuck said, “is make some phone calls and see if any of the other statues were attacked last night.”