Solitary Dancer (22 page)

Donovan was enjoying it, watching Django squirm there in the darkened doorway. Little black prick was a source, you could see it. Dealing on the street, feeding McGuire what he needed, he was a
source
.

“The Jolt's okay, he all right.”

“He could be involved in two murders, you know that?”

“Not for me to know.” Django's eyes were flying around in their sockets like a couple of ping-pong balls.

“If you're hiding anything on him, I'll nail your ass as an accessory and you'll spend ten years at Cedar Hill, you got that?”

“Ain't nothin' to know.” Django shook his head and forced himself to look into Donovan's eyes.

“You ever meet Fox?”

“Good-lookin' dude, got shot in the Jolt's door? No, sir.”

“You ever meet a woman named Heather Lorenzo?”

Django shook his head.

“Your buddy McGuire did her, over in her apartment. . . .”

Django's eyes shot to the left and he said something.

“What'd you say?” Donovan asked.

“Maybe—”

“Maybe what?”

“Maybe I met her once.” Oh, Jesus, Django thought. Oh shit, here it goes, and he remembered Elsie.

Donovan let go of Django and Django slumped against the door. “You wanta tell me about it now?” he said, smiling. “Or you wanta tell me when your balls are between my shoe and the sidewalk?”

Could save the Jolt's life, Django thought. Maybe save mine too. They get me down on Nashua Street, Grizz think I'm talking, he'd do it, spread the word whether I'm talking or not, and Grizz'll get a guy, bury a shiv in my ribs. 'Sides, this has nothin' to do with Grizz, the woman on Newbury. Nothin' to do with him.

“She give me a message,” Django said. “She finds me one day, her and her car. Leans out the window, gives me a message for the Jolt. That night she's dead. But it ain't the Jolt did it.”

“'Course it ain't.” Donovan leaned casually against the side of the doorway, watching Django. “So tell me the message. Tell me what she wanted you to say to McGuire.”

“She want him to come see her, hold some money, somethin' like that.”

“Why'd she pick you to tell him?” Donovan looked Django up and down. “You're hardly the Newbury Street type.”

“Saw me once. Over by the river. On the 'Splanade. Then she see me in front of the Bird, come to find the Jolt. Gave me twenty bucks, find McGuire, tell him something.”

“Tell him what?”

“Just come see her, else him and me, we'd both be in trouble.”

“Him and you?”

“That's what she say.” Django drew circles on the concrete with the toe of a shoe. “You tryin' to nail the Jolt for what happened, that woman?”

“Maybe.”

“And the black cop, got his ass shot at the Bird, goin' in Jolt's apartment?”

“What's that to you?”

“I seen him.”

“Who? McGuire? You saw McGuire?”

Django felt sick. Right there he felt his stomach do a flip and he told himself, here we go. Here we go, fool.

Through the window of the dance club Billie had watched Donovan sprint across the street and disappear into the shadows of the buildings along Dalton. A waiter appeared and spoke to her, and by the time Billie had turned to order drinks and then looked out the window again, a bus had arrived, blocking the view. When the bus pulled away the shadows were black and lifeless again. Billie finally gave up and leaned back in her seat, watching the waiter arrive with a beer and a C.C. and water.

She was halfway through the C.C. and water when Donovan returned, walking with his hands in his topcoat and his head down, looking at the floor and frowning. When he slid across from her and sipped his beer without looking at her, she knew he reminded her of something or somebody, and when she sat back against the booth and he raised his head to give her a small smile that looked as though he wanted it to explain everything, she knew what it was. Or who. He reminded her of McGuire, the surface toughness over the quizzical expression, like a small boy puzzling over a riddle he knew he could never solve.

“Sorry about that,” Donovan said. He shrugged out of his topcoat. “Police business.”

“Hell of a way to treat a lady,” Billie said. “Who'd you go after out there?”

“Your buddy Django.”

Her face tightened with anger. “What'd you do, rough him up?”

“He was following us. Had been since we left your front door.”

“So that gets you uptight? Maybe he wants to talk to me, maybe he needs something. Django wouldn't hurt me, for Christ's sake.” She turned her glass in circles with both hands, staring angrily at it. “You rough him up or what?”

“Just talked to him a little bit.”

“About what?”

Donovan avoided her eyes, wanting to be somewhere else. “Your friend McGuire.”

“So what about him? Is he in more trouble or what?”

“I don't know,” Donovan said.

“You don't like this place?” Micki asked when they were seated in the restaurant.

McGuire's reply was a grunt. He opened the menu. It was illustrated with colour cartoon characters and featured omelets and salads. The ceiling was hidden by a mass of hanging plants and the waiter introduced himself as Jonathan and announced that Jennifer would soon be along to take their order.

“I think it's nice,” Micki said, looking around. The dominant decorating features were plants, brass and unpainted wood. “Guess it's not masculine enough for you, huh?”

“Long as the food's good.”

Micki leaned toward him. “When I made the reservations I asked if they served Kronenbourg beer and they said they did, so I said okay.” She was smiling at him like a young child, eager to please.

“Thanks,” McGuire nodded.

Ten minutes later, their drinks had arrived, they ordered their meals and Micki sat watching McGuire carefully over the rim of her wineglass while McGuire let his eyes roam around the room, lighting upon hers briefly, then wandering away again.

“You nervous?” Micki asked.

“A little.”

“You weren't nervous with me in Florida last year.”

“A lot of stuff has happened since then. Heather's dead, Timmy's dead . . .”

“Are you still upset about what happened on that boat? In the Bahamas?”

“Maybe.” McGuire sipped his Kronenbourg. “How much do you know about that?”

“As much as Tim Fox told me. How you almost died. Then how you got addicted. Are you sure you're over it? I mean, if you had some now—”

“Would I take them? No. But that's because I don't have any. Drop a couple of Demerol on the table and then ask me.” He wiped his eyes. He was tired of this bullshit. Somebody always seemed to be testing him. Fat Eddie, Ollie, Ronnie, Micki . . . And the toughest of them all, McGuire himself.

“Ronnie Schantz said you were as stubborn as ever but this time you put it to good use.” Micki smiled at him, almost coyly. “Lot of people get hooked the way you did. I knew a woman in Florida, she was injured in a car accident and she'd have sex with her doctor just so he'd write out codeine prescriptions for her. It starts with pain and after your body's healed it still needs the drugs.”

“My body had nothing to do with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wasn't taking the drugs for the pain in my body. I got headaches, sure, but they were withdrawal symptoms. The drugs were covering other stuff.”

“Like what?”

McGuire stared down into his drink for several moments before replying. “While I was in the hospital, the woman on the yacht was found floating in the harbour at Green Turtle. Her name was Patty. Her husband said they had been drinking and around midnight she decided to go for a swim before bed. He fell asleep in the cabin, woke up about three, couldn't find her anywhere. Two guys in the crew said they were asleep in bed too. The husband, name's Charlie, roused them and called the police on Treasure Cay. They found her when the sun came up. Said it was an accident or maybe suicide.”

“You don't believe it was either one?”

McGuire breathed in and out slowly. “Friend of mine in New Plymouth sent me newspaper clippings about it. He underlined the names of the crew members. Same two guys Charlie brought down from Chicago to kill me. Besides,” McGuire raised his eyes to meet hers, “Patty couldn't swim a stroke.”

“Maybe she committed suicide.”

“Or maybe she was walking on the water and tripped over an anchor chain.”

“You think you were responsible for her death.”

“Don't know. But one day I might be responsible for something that'll happen to her husband.”

“You're not serious.”

McGuire nodded. “Patient too.”

“You've been planning to get revenge all this time?”

“Only while I was lying in Ollie and Ronnie's house shaking off the meperidine. As long as I was taking that crap, I didn't have to deal with it. Now that I'm off it . . .” He shrugged. “She was a nice person. Good woman in a bad marriage.”

“Happens all the time.”

McGuire grunted, staring into his beer, remembering Patty's thick hair, the way she'd combed it back from her face.

“What about Tim Fox?” Micki asked. “And Heather? They're both dead. What're you planning to do about them?”

McGuire shrugged. “Out of my hands. Don't give a damn.”

Micki sat back and folded her arms, and when she spoke her voice had that little-girl softness which made her words all the more bristling. “Who the fuck are you trying to kid?”

Billie can't believe it. They dance a little bit, okay, he's not Fred Astaire but she can live with that, she just likes feeling a man's body rubbing against her, gets her wet, gets her ready. Then she says, “Let's go back to my place but this time I want to take a cab,” and he's somewhere else, he mumbles, “Okay,” like she's asked him if he wants a second cup of coffee.

Then, in the back of the cab, she grabs him right by the crotch, gets a real handful, and all he does is wince.

“What's your problem?” she says, really getting pissed now.

He says he's got a lot to think about. Big deal, she knew what he was thinking about when he came by to pick her up, couple of hours earlier. He's thinking, let's do it, let's roll across that hay, and that's
all
he was thinking. She was too, she just wanted to tease him a little, dancing and drinks and knowing it's going to happen later, that's
romance
, for God's sake.

But it doesn't happen later. They have a fight in the car, or anyway she gets mad, says some dumb things and gets out at her place, slams the cab door shut and yells, “See you around, asshole!” as the cab pulls away, and goes upstairs alone.

Like she's done a hundred times, a thousand times.

Micki was laughing with him, throwing her head back and bringing a hand to her throat the way McGuire remembered she did when he could make her laugh in their marriage. She asked for another glass of wine instead of coffee and McGuire considered a third bottle of Kronenbourg but decided against it. The meal had been omelets and salads and the conversation had been everywhere. Several times Micki had leaned toward him and reached to touch his hand with hers while speaking to him and when she did, his skin had jumped.

Her laughter subsided and she took a long drink from her wineglass, set it aside, placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands. “God, I miss you sometimes,” she said.

Before McGuire could answer, the waitress brought the cheque and Micki peeled a number of bills from her wallet and looked back at him. “Let's go,” she said.

Remembering his embarrassment with Billie, McGuire hesitated when she turned at the top of the stairs and kissed him, open-mouthed. He held her, feeling uncertain and foolish, her lips moving against his, until she pulled away and stared at him. “You okay?” she said.

“I don't know.”

“Obviously I'm not turning you on.”

McGuire smiled.

“This isn't the same guy who took me to Key Vaca, is it?”

McGuire shook his head and she turned abruptly from him. “Does anybody turn you on anymore?” she said, dropping heavily into an upholstered chair and avoiding his eyes.

He was standing on the bare patch of floor where Heather had died and he stared down at it and at his shoes, scuffed and worn. “I don't know,” he said again.

Micki sat there, one leg hoisted over the arm of the chair, her fingers at her mouth. Then she stood and walked away from him, her hands at the hem of her sweater, hoisting it above her head and entering Heather's bedroom. With the bedroom door open and McGuire watching from the top of the stairs, she unbuttoned her skirt, lowered the zipper, and let it drop to the floor. She kept her back to McGuire while she reached around to unfasten her bra, and when she bent forward to let it fall from her shoulders, McGuire drew a sharp intake of breath at the sight of her breasts, the nipples round and pink, rosebuds the size of kisses.

She turned to face him, her eyes avoiding his, raised one foot to the bed, and removed her shoe. She repeated the motion with the other foot, then tucked her thumbs under the waistband of her pantyhose and removed them as well. Standing on the other side of the bed, her legs slightly apart, she threw her head back and released her hair, letting it cascade onto her shoulders. Then she lay on the bed and only then did she catch McGuire's eyes with hers, her expression defiant, and watched until he closed his eyes briefly, smiled in the somehow sad way she remembered from a life or two ago and walked toward her.

“I want to do everything we used to do,” Micki was saying, her face against his and her lips at his ear. Her hands, small hands, were at the back of his head, gripping him to her as though McGuire were a weightless thing and she were the earth, holding him against her body with her hands and periodically her tongue, grasping him within her, her legs fluttering against him like flames.

“I want to do it, do it . . .” and the last words repeated themselves over and over, fading like the sound of running footsteps in a dark and distant cave until she lay crying under him and he kissed her tears and removed one hand from beneath her to stroke her thigh, never wanting to rise from her, fearing that to rise from her now would be to leave behind too much of himself and he would hobble through the remainder of his years with less of himself than ever. So he lay within her, watching her eyes until they opened and regarded him with fear, not of him but of something else, until she closed them again and sought his mouth with her tongue. And the motion began again in a rhythm that was unfrantic and measured and steady until he moaned and she urged him to speak her name aloud and he did and she asked him to tell her he loved her and he shook his head from side to side, his eyes closed, until she asked him again and he did.

In the dark, facing away from him, McGuire with one arm extended beneath her head, the other holding her to him, his hand cupping a breast, hearing her breathe, hearing her choke down small sobs as she had been doing since she turned away from him.

“What?” he asked.

“I'm sorry.”

Not for tonight. Tonight had been wondrous, a recapturing of part of the past, and McGuire remembered someone describing lovemaking as “two bodies laughing together.” No, Micki was apologizing for past sins and past rejections.

“Me too,” McGuire said, and Micki began a long, slow tumble of quiet sobs, shaking in his arms like an animal craving freedom.

“You don't . . .” she began, and started again. “You don't know what I did . . . some of the things I did . . . after I left.”

“You made a mistake,” McGuire said. “I told you before. We all make mistakes. Dumb mistakes. All of us.”

She shook her head violently. “No, no, no, more than that, more than that . . .”

“So tell me.”

“I can't.”

“Why? Was it so bad?” He lay there watching a pattern of lights on the ceiling. Wishing he weren't where he was. Wishing she had never started this conversation. Wishing he didn't want to know, didn't need to know.

“Yes.”

McGuire exhaled. You don't need to ask, he told himself.

“Yes,” she said again.

She cried again and drifted off to sleep, leaving McGuire inhaling the aroma of her perfume and her hair and the warm musk of her body. He withdrew his arm and rolled onto his back and refused to think of what Micki might have done since leaving McGuire and whom she might have done it with.

Instead, he thought of Heather.

It had begun earlier, before they left for dinner, when McGuire had traced Heather's route through the apartment. From the bedroom to the top of the stairs. From the top of the stairs to the office. From the office back to the bathroom. Tim Fox had told McGuire she had been beaten at each location, probably with a baseball bat.

He rose from the bed and trod silently, nakedly, out of the room to the top of the stairs, from the top of the stairs to the office, from the office back to the bathroom. Why didn't she escape, he wondered. Why didn't she try harder to escape?

“Joe?”

Micki's voice sounded back to him from the bedroom and before he could answer she was through the door and into the vestibule, her skin shining in the soft light drifting in through the windows from the street.

“I thought you had gone,” she said, walking toward him and resting her head on his shoulder. “I don't think I want to stay here anymore. Not alone.”

“Okay,” McGuire said, wrapping her in his arms. “You won't. I promise.” And he led her back to the bedroom where she lay down and he buried his face in her neck and nuzzled her until she cried aloud and launched her hands on an excursion of his body.