Solitary Dancer (12 page)

The blows ceased and she heard only the man's heavy, laboured breathing. MaryLou imagined him reaching for a knife and she repeated do it quick do it quick do it quick in her mind, her eyes squeezed shut.

But she heard only his breathing and then not even that when he held his breath, and she realized he was listening to something.

She heard it too. First a step on the landing beyond the door, and now the sound of the door opening.

McGuire stood absorbing the sight of MaryLou bound and gagged face down on his cot, and the man in the sweat-soaked red Hawaiian shirt with one arm raised and his eyes on McGuire's. They were frozen for a moment, each stunned by the other's presence, until the john dropped the hose and whirled around in search of the tweed jacket he had tossed over McGuire's small table.

McGuire remained in the doorway, his thoughts moving slowly toward action, like someone swimming through syrup, and here was the john charging for the door now, holding his glasses against his face with one hand, the other gripping his jacket, aiming his body for the opening between McGuire and the door frame.

The scene was filtered through the pain and the residual effects of the Demerol but they failed to dull McGuire's instincts entirely. He reacted without thinking, extending his arm out to clutch the man even while his eyes remained fixed on the sight of MaryLou bound and naked on his bed, her body crisscrossed with cranberry-coloured stripes.

The man twisted out of his grip, stumbled backwards past McGuire and out the door, then bounced off the railing and turned to flee down the stairs. Now everything was clear to McGuire, who turned and hurled himself against the man's back, throwing him onto his face and McGuire, gripping the other man's shoulders, rode him down the stairs like a boy on a sled. At the landing they settled in a heap and McGuire, still laying atop him like a lover, seized a handful of hair and hammered the man's head against the metal grates again and again until his face was layered with blood and bird droppings. Then he rose to his feet, lifted the man by the back of his shirt collar and walked slowly down the rest of the stairs to the ground pulling the bloodied mess behind him, the man's feet striking each step of the fire escape, thunk, thunk, thunk.

McGuire rolled the man on his back, then limped back down the alley to the front door of the club where Sienna was standing with her robe partially open. “Tell Dewey there's a piece of shit waiting for him out by the fire escape,” McGuire said when he caught his breath. “And have him call an ambulance. For MaryLou.”

Then he sat down right where he was on the sidewalk, his back against the crumbling brick wall, waiting for everything to unravel as he always knew it would some day.

“What'd you do to him?”

One of the cops handed McGuire a black coffee in a plastic cup and McGuire nodded his thanks. The others stood a few feet distant, chewing gum, making notes.

“Stopped him from killing the girl,” McGuire said. He was in the same spot in which he had collapsed fifteen minutes ago, his back against the wall of the club. Small knots of people grouped themselves across the street, staring down the alley now crowded with police cars and two ambulances.

Billie, her robe peeking out from beneath the hem of a cheap fur coat, knelt beside McGuire and used a damp cloth to dab at a cut over his eyebrow.

“Sure as hell did that,” the cop with the notebook said. “Berkeley Street lit up like a Christmas tree when we sent the guy's description and M.O. in. Guy did two girls in Cambridge last month and one down in Quincy, all of 'em hookers. Same routine. Beats 'em with a hose and when he gets tired or bored, I guess, slips a knife between the ribs.”

“You see his face?” another cop asked McGuire.

“Too dark.” McGuire took another sip of coffee. Billie's hands were soft and soothing on the back of his neck and for a moment, a brief passing moment that frightened McGuire, he felt his eyes begin to sting with tears.

“I mean just now, when they wheeled him into the ambulance?”

McGuire shook his head.

“Son of a bitch was at McDonald's, they'd put his face on a grill, fry it up into a Big Mac.”

“Good.” Billie's voice was full of venom. “Joe shoulda killed him's what he shoulda done.”

“You wanna tell us how they got into your room, the two of 'em?” the cop with the notebook asked.

“Door's always unlocked,” McGuire said. “Anybody can come and go as they please.” He drained the coffee, handed the cup to Billie. “How's MaryLou?”

“Probably be back in there showing her ass to the world, couple a weeks,” the other cop said. “You don't mind coming in, signing a statement when it's typed up?”

“Sure.” McGuire struggled to his feet, steadying himself against Billie who rose with him. “Let me know when.”

“Where do we reach you? Be a bunch of ID people in your room for a while.”

“At my place,” Billie said before McGuire could respond. “He'll be staying with me for a couple a days over on Chandler Street.” She recited an address and a telephone number while McGuire watched her, a small smile on his face.

The cops told everybody to break it up, damn it, the show was over. Standing in the doorway, Dewey announced the Flamingo was closed for the night and everybody should do what the police officers—dragging every syllable out with contempt—do what the pol-ice off-i-cers said to do.

Billie edged past Dewey to run inside for her purse and call a cab. The cop who had brought the coffee moved sideways toward McGuire. Keeping his eyes on the crowd as it parted to make way for the ambulance, he said, “You gave that pervert one hell of a ride.” Instinctively he patted McGuire on the back and strolled down the alley toward the back of the club.

Across the street on the fringe of the crowd, Grizzly watched the gesture impassively, the tip of a freshly lit Camel glowing precariously close to his wild untrimmed mustache. Standing next to him, the Gypsy's face mirrored hate as her eyes flew back and forth between the police officers. “Cops are shit,” she muttered. “All of 'em, can't trust a one of 'em.”

But a few feet away Django stood smiling among the grim faces of the onlookers, happy for McGuire and his new hero status, repeating over and over, “Yes yes yes yes Jolt, you the one, you the
man
!”

Phil Donovan was pissed. All those years he tried to get along with people, no matter what colour they were or how big an ass they could be, he'd always made an effort and where'd it get him?

He made an
eff
ort.
Found a way to work with Fat Eddie, never made wisecracks about him like the other clowns did. Worked with Howie what's-his-name, that chink over in Forensics, got along great with him. Didn't bitch when they teamed him up with Fox, told him he had to take orders from a black man. And where'd it all get him? Flat on his ass is where. One day he's an acting louie, the next day he's back to sergeant. Who the fuck they think they're dealing with?

Donovan twisted a paper clip in his hand into a knot, swiveled in his chair, tossed it at the wastebasket and missed.

Which put him over the edge. Rising from the chair he took one step toward the wastebasket, drew his right foot back and launched the gray plastic receptacle in a short arc that ended against the radiator on the far wall.

“Gotta keep your head down, boy.”

Donovan turned to see Danny Scrignoli watching him from the open doorway, grin on his face, stick of gum in one hand. The undercover cop was wearing a suede windbreaker with grease marks on the collar, red wool turtleneck, black chinos and a pair of beat-up Adidas.

“You can tell if you made it through the uprights from the crowd noise, see,” Scrignoli said. “Didn't your coach tell you that? You wait to hear the crowd, then you lift your head.”

“The fuck you want?” Donovan sat down in the chair again, leaned back, lifted his feet to the corner of the desk.

Scrignoli spread his hands and looked around the room. “Want?” he said in exaggerated surprise. “I don't want anything, man. What's to want?” He popped the gum into his mouth and talked around it. “Question is, what the hell do
you
want, man? Word's out Vance dropped you back to sergeant and now you're ready to slip his balls in a wringer. What, you wanta make captain overnight? You want Fat Eddie's job? You know what Ollie Schantz said about Fat Eddie's job, being a captain here?”

Donovan picked up another paper clip from the desk, started twisting it in and out of shape. “You think I give a shit?”

“No but I'm gonna tell you anyway. 'Cause that's the kind of guy I am.” Scrignoli leaned against the open door, chewing with his mouth open, looking like the street-smart punk he pretended to be in undercover work, busting heads and asses on Mass Avenue. He leaned forward to catch Donovan's eye and frowned. “You remember Schantz? You ever meet Ollie?”

“Couple times. What about him?”

Scrignoli laughed. “Funniest son of a bitch you'd ever wanta meet. He had more lines. . . .” Scrignoli folded his arms and smiled down at his sneakers. “Talkin' about Fat Eddie one day, this was 'way before Vance made captain, he's still Sergeant Eddie Vance. Ollie's over there, end of the hall, watchin' Eddie whose belly's spillin' out over his pants and he's tryin' to be Paul Newman. Eddie's glasses are slidin' down his nose and he's pullin' at that mustache of his, always looks like a toothbrush, sweet-talkin' some new honey in the steno pool, just started the day before. She's lookin' around saying to herself, ‘Where'd this loser come from and when's somebody gonna take him away and lock him up?' And Ollie and me and a couple other guys, probably McGuire and ol' Dave Sadowsky, we're watchin' from the doorway, and Ollie says to us, ‘You know somethin'?' he says. ‘Eddie Vance couldn't get laid in a woman's prison with a fistfulla pardons,' and that did it.”

Scrignoli grinned and shook his head at the memory.

“Christ, we laughed so hard everything stopped in the steno pool and Fat Eddie stood there lookin' over at us until Kavander, he was captain then, he comes out of his office and yells across at us, ‘You comedians want a laugh, I got a couple autopsies you can look at.' Then he points at Fat Eddie and says, ‘Vance, stop trying to fuck the stenos. It slows down their work and annoys 'em all to hell.'”

“Terrific,” Donovan said dryly, but he permitted a small smile to play at the corners of his mouth.

“Hey, speakin' a McGuire, you hear he just about offed a pervert over at the Flamingo last night?” Scrignoli's expression changed to one of admiration. His eyebrows shot up his forehead, his jaw ceased its ferocious chewing and his bottom lip shot out. “Christ, I'd just dropped him off there maybe ten, fifteen minutes before. I'm a couple blocks away and McGuire's preventing a homicide.”

Donovan tossed the paper clip across his desk. “Big deal. Now everybody's sayin' he's a hero. Never heard such bullshit.”

Scrignoli stepped into the small office and closed the door behind him. “What, you got something against Joe?”

“Nothin' except maybe he's weaselin' sideways out of a possible murder one, murder two maybe.”

“You mean the woman over on Newbury Street?”

“Yeah. Used to be my case, Tim Fox and me. Now Fox thinks McGuire's a goddamn altar boy and me, I guess I'm just another nigger-baitin' freaked-out cop. So here I am, waitin' around for somethin' to happen and Fox, he's off runnin' the case on his own like he's General MacArthur.”

“You don't think McGuire did that woman.”

“I think he knows more than he's lettin' on.”

“Like what?”

Phil Donovan rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers. “Like maybe what she had on him.”

“You wanta tell me about that?”

“She was ballin' men and blackmailing them. I think she had something on McGuire and was usin' it on him.”

Scrignoli gave a short, sharp laugh. “You gotta be kiddin' me. What's she gonna get from McGuire? Guy doesn't have a pot to piss in.”

“I dunno. Drugs, maybe. Inside information. Hell, her own landlord said she was scared shitless of somebody she knew. McGuire's got a way, okay, he
had
a way of scaring people, intimidating them.” He shook his head. “Somethin' fits there, damn it. He knows somethin' he's not tellin' and it's behind the whole thing. You know, we never did a search of his room. What's he got up there we should know about? Guy's a murder one suspect and nobody even gets a warrant to search his place?”

“Probably done it now, after last night.” Scrignoli thrust his hands in his pockets.

“Bullshit. All they're lookin' for last night is felonious assault stuff, the broad bein' worked over on McGuire's bed. They got the victim, a witness, the perp.” Donovan shook his head. “There's somethin' there, damn it.”

Scrignoli rested his hand on Donovan's shoulder. “You better get over this one,” he said. “McGuire's not the guy, you're not on the case, Tim Fox is as good as they come around here and Fat Eddie'll make you golden again in a couple of months. Just gotta keep the faith, boy.”

Donovan looked up, mildly amused. “Faith? Who the hell are you, Billy Graham?” he said.

McGuire stared at each of them in turn for several minutes before deciding he liked the brown-haired one best of all. She had the kind of wide-eyed innocence that always appealed to him in young women. And she was dressed more conservatively than the others. Nice red gingham apron, little matching bow in her hair. The blond next to her looked like a tart in one of those fifties sheath dresses that clung to her ass, even under the cheeks. The redhead was a phony, anybody could spot it. Probably had a nose job too, real noses don't turn up at the tip so neat. But there was a real body on the black-haired honey at the end, look at that chest. Jesus. He reached an unsteady hand toward her. Footsteps and the aroma of coffee drifted down the hall. Billie would catch him in the act but McGuire didn't care. His fingertips brushed the oversized breasts.

“You're awake.”

Billie was wearing a silky sky-blue robe trimmed with white lace. Her blonde hair was gathered on the crown of her head, a few strands permitted to fall across her face. She carried a tortoiseshell tray bearing two cups of coffee, two glasses of orange juice, a stack of raisin toast and the morning newspaper.

“You like my dolls?” She set the tray on the bed next to McGuire. “That's Carmella, the one you were reaching for. She's Spanish. I mean, I didn't
get
her in Spain, I've never even
been
to Spain, but I saw a picture of a Spanish woman once and I thought, ‘She looks like my black-haired doll,' and Carmella, I don't know where that came from, I just like it.”

McGuire pulled his hand away from the dolls lined up on the table next to Billie's bed.

“You probably think it's nuts, a woman my age collecting dolls, but . . .” Billie shrugged. “It's harmless, just a hobby. Actually, a lot of girls at the club collect dolls. Terri does, she gave me Cheryl, that's the blonde doll, one night. You take your coffee black, right?”

McGuire nodded and raised himself to a sitting position.

“How'd you sleep?”

“Okay.” McGuire took the coffee from her. “I slept fine.”

“Damn right, all the pills I gave you. How's your headache?”

“Gone.” McGuire sipped the coffee. Something floating within his head collided gently against the inner walls of his skull. “Thanks.”

Billie sat on the edge of the bed, watching him. “You want a shave later, I got a razor in the bathroom. Old boyfriend of mine left it here. Long time ago.”

McGuire nodded.

“I don't do what MaryLou does, you know.” Billie picked at her fingernails, her head down. “Never turned any tricks. You start that, where the hell're you gonna end up, right? I mean, all there is for you is gettin' beat up, maybe killed. I know some girls who just disappeared one night, never seen 'em again. I knew one, Molly or Dolly or something, little bitty thing, they found bits of her floating in the harbour, a leg here, an arm there. Never did find her head. Jesus, I don't want to wind up like that. What I'm saying is, I don't hook, Joe.”

“I know.” McGuire sampled the orange juice.

“I could, easy. Could use the money too. MaryLou, Terri, Josie, sometimes they make an extra thousand a week easy, right in their pockets. That's tempting, you know.”

McGuire grunted, drained the glass of juice.

“I just wanted you to know I never did that, Joe.”

“I hear you, Billie.”

“I don't even have any boyfriends anymore.” She dropped her hands in her lap and stared out the window, the winter sun shining weakly through layers of grime. “Used to but he got . . . he got sent away.”

“For what?”

“Assault with intent. Somebody promised him a couple a thousand dollars to rough up a guy, owed the other guy money. My boyfriend and a buddy, they got caught doing the guy with a crowbar. Guy recovered, he's walking the streets today. But Gene, that's my boyfriend, used to be my boyfriend, he gets five to ten upstate. His buddy, who turns evidence against him, he gets two years suspended.”

“Five to ten?” McGuire sampled more coffee. “Not a first offence term.”

“Gene's had a rough life.”

“Bet the guy he worked over with the crowbar will too.”

Billie shrugged. “Thing is, that was nearly six months ago and I've been on my own ever since. You know, at the beginning I told him, I told my
self,
I
said I'd wait for Gene, go see him once, twice a month, but Gene's having a tough time in there. Been in a coupla scraps already, he's in solitary now for two months, can't have visitors. Way he's goin', I'll be an old broad by the time he gets out and I don't think it's fair for a woman like me to spend the best years of her life alone, do you?”

McGuire sighed and set the coffee cup aside. “Your call, Billie. Your life, your call.”

“One thing Gene did, just on the side, you know, was use. A little snow, he tried horse once, made him sicker'n hell so he laid off it. He liked downers, codeine and 'ludes.” She slid the tray, her food untouched, from the bed and stretched out beside McGuire. He could smell her cologne, lilacs and cinnamon. “Left some here at my place, never kept any where he lived.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I know you need them. I know Django's your source. He really likes you, Django I mean. Says you're his man. He knows you're in pain. Hell, everybody can see you're in pain. Stuff I got, stuff Gene left here, you can use. Long as it's here, you can use it.”

She moved closer to him, and one hand reached out to stroke his shoulder. “Jesus, you know what it's like to stand up there at the club, night after night, gettin' those guys turned on, gettin' your
self
turned on, then comin' back here alone?” Tears began to flood her eyes. “It's hell, man. Sometimes it's fuckin' hell and . . . and I almost wish I could do what MaryLou does, not now, not after what happened last night, but sometimes I wish I could do that just once, you know?”

“You've been good to me,” McGuire said.

“Oh, Christ, you haven't seen anything yet.” She pushed herself onto her hands and knees over him, lifted one hand, brushed the tears from her eyes, then sat up and back on her haunches. “You haven't seen a damn thing yet,” and she shrugged out of the robe, letting it fall to her waist. Raising both hands she stroked her breasts, watching McGuire's eyes, and McGuire realized that everything Billie was about to do was an extension of her act at the club, the teasing, the posing, the surrender, the need to be used, and it swept a wave of overwhelming sadness through his soul.

He lay back and closed his eyes and Billie was bending over him again, brushing her breasts against his cheek, swinging them back and forth, their texture like crumpled silk within cool satin. He reached for her and Billie stretched herself prone over him, the rhythm of their breathing syncopated, their hands moving over each other's bodies in search of forgiveness, acceptance, defiance against what time was doing to them.