Dancing Aztecs (17 page)

Another passing zone! But an ambling diaper service truck filled the on-coming lane while Mel and Brasspendle were in it, so Mel couldn't get around the economist's Saab. Unfortunately, the diaper service truck was no longer in the way when Mrs. Leenk and Ralph got there, and Ralph surged the Cadillac forward as though the thing would actually take off and fly.

Mel, hunched over the wheel, clenching and grimacing and moaning low, saw the Caddy growing huge in his rear-view mirror. Full night hadn't quite settled in, and he could make out the big gleaming menace of the machine behind its four headlights. (Ralph was the kind of son of a bitch who leaves his high beams on when following other cars.) Ahead there was no passing zone. There was nothing, there was nothing, there was—

The Connecticut Turnpike! Not thinking twice, Mel slipped past Brasspendle on the right, swung up the entrance ramp, and shot away eastward on the Turnpike. And right behind him came the Cadillac, doing seventy before it was well away from the ramp.

Mel was doing eighty, eighty-five, eighty-seven, eighty-seven and a half. The Cadillac was doing ninety, ninety-five, a hundred and five.

Mel slammed on the brakes. Mel drove at exactly fifty-five.

“We've got him!” Corella yelled. He was, in his excitement, pounding the top of the front seat directly behind Ralph's neck, which Ralph hated. “We've got him we've got him we've got him!”
Pound, pound, pound
.

The Cadillac was coming up fast, it was closing the gap. The Cadillac was roaring up on the outside lane. Any second now the Cadillac was going to overtake the station wagon and force it off the road, and then something terrible would happen to Mel Bernstein.

And then Ralph slammed on the brakes, and Corella and Earl both fell on the floor in back. The Cadillac moved at exactly fifty-five.

“What the hell are you doing?” Corella clawed his way up off the floor. “Grab him! Shove him off the road!”

“There's a cop,” Ralph said.

“What? Where?”

“Right in front of the wagon. That's why
he
slowed down.”

“Jesus,” said Corella. “All right. Stay with him.”

Earl too had come back up onto the seat, and in an aggrieved way he said, “Damn it, Ralph, take it easy.” He was rubbing his other eye, not the one the girl had punched. He'd slammed that part of himself into the seat back on the way down.

Both Ralph and Corella ignored Earl. Both were leaning forward, trying to see the police car beyond the station wagon. Now night was fully settling in, and they had only the station wagon's headlights to show them the other car up ahead, with its bubble light on top of its distinctive police markings. A state trooper. Highway Patrol. “Damn damn damn,” said Corella.

In the station wagon Mel was smiling from ear to ear. He wanted to rush up there and kiss that cop. He'd been really terrified when the Cadillac was catching up with him, but now he was safe, at least for the moment. He didn't know what he'd do next, but for right now the people in the Cadillac couldn't get at him.

The state trooper was driving a Fury II. State troopers
love
Fury IIs. State troopers will go on driving Fury IIs until some car company puts out a car called Kill. Then state troopers will drive Kills. State troopers get their self-image from Marvel Comics.

The Fury II and the station wagon and the Cadillac drove in a neat law-abiding row at fifty-five miles an hour, the legal speed limit all across this mighty land (thirty-two hundred miles wide), all three vehicles heading eastward on the Connecticut Turnpike. They drove thirty-three miles in thirty-seven minutes, and then the Fury II switched on its right directional. The state trooper was leaving the Turnpike.

Mel hadn't yet figured out a next move, so he decided he might as well stick with the state trooper. Maybe the people in the Cadillac would go away.

In the Cadillac, Corella thumped Ralph's shoulder, which Ralph
loathed
. “He's taking that exit!” Corella said.

“So's the cop,” Ralph said.

“God
dam
it,” Corella said.

The Fury II and the station wagon and the Cadillac peeled off like slow-motion dive bombers, curving away down the ramp one after the other, and lining up neatly at the
Stop
sign by the county road. The Fury II turned on its left directional signal. So did the station wagon. So did the Cadillac. The Fury II turned left onto the county road. So did the station wagon. So did the Cadillac. The Fury II drove through the under pass beneath the Turnpike. So did the station wagon. So did the Cadillac. The Fury II turned on its left directional signal. So did the station wagon. So did the Cadillac.

“What the hell?” Corella was clutching the seat back very near Ralph's ear. “What's going
on?”

“Well, shit,” Ralph said. “He's going back up on the Turnpike.”

He did. They all did, the three vehicles in a row, back up onto the Turnpike, this time westbound. (
Well
, thought Mel,
at least now we're headed toward New York
.) Once again they lined themselves out in a neatly spaced row and proceeded at fifty-five miles an hour.

“What the hell
is
this?” Corella demanded. “Just what the hell is that son of a bitch
doing?”

“He's sticking with the cop,” Ralph said. “We can't touch him till he gets away from the cop.”

“Goddam son of a bitch bastard.”

Earl, sitting back in his seat, was pouting, though the other two didn't know it. His good eye was hurting more and more. He did believe he was getting another shiner.
Two
black eyes. It wasn't fair.

The Fury II and the station wagon and the Cadillac traveled forty-one miles in forty-seven minutes.

“He's leaving again,” Corella said.

“So's the cop,” Ralph said.

The Fury II and the station wagon and the Cadillac left the Turnpike, took the county road through the underpass, and got back on the Turnpike eastbound.

“I can't
stand
this!” Corella yelled. “What kind of chase
is
this! We're on a goddam merry-go-round!”

The state trooper, whose name was Luke Snell, had seen a Clint Eastwood movie on television the night before, and he was spending this tour of duty fantasizing activities for himself based on the plot line and incidents of the movie. Trooper Snell liked to make up stories while driving his Fury II, and often thought he could write stories just as good as that crap they have on TV. In fact, he had put a couple of his story ideas down on paper and sent them off with a reading fee to a big-shot literary agent in New York named Zachary George, and George had written a personal letter saying his material showed promise and giving him some hints on how to whip it into shape better. All of this fantasizing and story-creation took most of his attention, so he remained unaware of some of the things in the real world around him, such as the same set of headlights remaining at all times in his rear-view mirror.

For the next hour and a half, the Fury II and the station wagon and the Cadillac moseyed back and forth on the Connecticut Turnpike at fifty-five miles an hour. Mel and Ralph were both worried about their gas. Earl was worried about his eye. Trooper Snell was elaborating his fantasies. Corella was having apoplexy.

At a little before ten, the three cars left the Turnpike again, but this time when the Fury II reached the
Stop
sign at the county road its
right
directional went on. So did the station wagon's.

“Hey,” said Ralph. “Something happening.”

“I can't stand this,” Corella said. His chin was on the seat back next to Ralph's head, and his breathing was in Ralph's ear, which Ralph didn't care for even a little bit. “I'm going crazy,” Corella said.

The Fury II turned right on the county road and drove away from the Turnpike at forty miles an hour. Mel followed in the station wagon, wondering what was going to happen next. Ralph followed, in the Cadillac, wishing Corella would get his damn head out of his ear.

The Fury II traveled four miles on the county road and then signaled for a right again. The Fury II turned in at the trooper barracks.

“Hey hey!” yelled Ralph. “The cop's going off duty!”

“That son of a bitch'll follow him into his garage,” Corella said.

But Mel knew he couldn't do that. Getting very worried now, he accelerated hard the instant the Fury II turned off the road, but those Cadillac lights stayed huge and threatening in his rear-view mirror.

Have to keep ahead of them. Straddling the center line so the Cadillac couldn't pass, Mel rocketed down the road as fast as the station wagon, his steering, and the laws of gravity would permit.

Corella, who had sagged into something very like despair over the last two hours, was up and yelling again, pounding the seat top behind Ralph's head, shouting, “We got him! We got him now!
Pass
the son of a bitch, Ralph! Pass him, shove him over, kill him, run him off the goddam road!”

Mel, straddling the center line, came roaring around a tight curve and saw two headlights coming right at him. He thought he was dead. He screamed, and threw his hands up in front of his face, and the headlights passed him, one on either side of the car, and the station wagon raced out of control off the road onto the left and into the woods and ricocheted off several trees.

Ralph was too absorbed in following the station wagon. Also, he too was startled when a pair of motorcycles suddenly flashed by him, one on each side. The result was, he went on following the station wagon longer than he should, off the road and into the woods. Ralph, however, managed to stop the Cadillac with his brakes rather than with the trees.

By one of those coincidences that no novelist would every try to get away with, the two motorcycles were being driven by Jenny Kendall and Eddie Ross, the two NYU students who had been members of the Open Sports Committee. Both Jenny and Eddie lost some control of their machines when they found themselves in a near-collision with two cars in the middle of the road, but they managed to stop without injury, and Eddie yelled at the tail-lights in the woods, “Goddam crazies!”

“Maybe they're hurt!” Jenny cried.

So Eddie and Jenny left their motorcycles by the side of the road, with the Other Oscars strapped to the handlebars, and went back to see if anybody needed help.

As a matter of fact,
everybody
needed help. Earl had hit his nose against the seat this time, and it was bleeding, and he was in an absolute
rage
. Mel, who had leaped from the station wagon with the statue in his hand, and who had run directly into a brier patch, was flailing around like a fly in a bottle. Ralph and Corella, both having leaped from the Cadillac in pursuit of Mel, were getting persistently confused in the darkness and kept capturing each other instead. “Cut it
out!”
Corella yelled, the third time Ralph grabbed him around the waist.

“I can't
see
anything!” Ralph complained, and proved it a minute later when he grabbed Jenny around the waist Jenny screamed, and Eddie came over and punched Ralph in the nose. Corella came over, attracted by the ruckus, and Eddie punched
him
in the nose. Earl came over, black eyes and bloody nose and all, and punched Eddie in the nose, so Jenny kicked Earl very hard on the kneecap and Earl sat down on the ground and said, “That's it, I quit. I've had it.”

Mel, meanwhile, emerging from the brier patch, had run away from the cars and the people and all the activity, and then he came to a pair of motorcycles parked by the side of the road, and to his utter astonishment they both had strapped to their handlebars little Dancing Aztec Priests exactly like the one he was holding in his hand.

“Well, for Pete's sake,” Mel said. Then, looking over his shoulder, he saw that the chase had gotten itself organized again, and everybody except Earl was running in this direction.

Were these two Dancing Aztec Priests part of the sixteen Dancing Aztec Priests? How could they be, out here in the wilds of Connecticut, but on the other hand how could they
not
be? Either coincidence was too far-fetched for belief, but the likeliest of the options was that these were part of the sixteen.

Take all three of them? With everybody running in this direction, there wasn't time to untie them both from the handlebars. But then Mel remembered Jerry pointing out that the golden statue wouldn't break, whereas plaster statues
would
break, so he briskly whacked one of the motorcycle statues with the Beemiss statue, and they both broke. Then he whacked the other motorcycle statue with the remains of the Beemiss statue, and that broke too. Then he got on one of the motorcycles, started the engine, accelerated, fell backward off the machine as it leaped forward, and landed on the ground as the riderless motorcycle spurted out onto the road and ran head-on into a gray Fury I, the personal car of Trooper Luke Snell, who was on his way home from work.

AFTER A WHILE …

There was a time in New York City history when “going up to Harlem” was a fashionable thing to do—dancing to Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, drinking doubtful gin in the uptown speaks—but that time is long since past. Most white New Yorkers these days have
never
been to Harlem, and hardly any of them feel the lack.

Including Jerry. Never before had he visited that Dark Continent above 110th Street, and he headed up Broadway now with a certain tension in his shoulders. But there wasn't much choice; he'd done three of the four statues on his list, leaving only the one in the possession of Harwood's wife, whom the husband had called “Bobbi.” According to Harwood, who ought to know, Bobbi had gone off with her boyfriend, the same Oscar Russell Green who was the leader of the Open Sports Committee. He was on somebody else's list, probably Floyd's, but Floyd or whoever would only be looking for one statue in Green's apartment, so it was necessary for Jerry to go up there himself, no matter how much he hated the idea. According to everything he'd ever read on the subject of Harlem, he was about to enter a combat zone.