Dancing Aztecs (13 page)

Jerry slapped it open again with his own palm, marching through into a long high-ceilinged living room just in time to see a tall, skinny bare-ass guy duck through another doorway and slam
that
door. Which did slam, and which apparently also locked, judging from the
click
that followed.

Alice in Wonderland. Following the White Rabbit. Jerry strode across the room, intending to kick open this next door and see what the Naked Rabbit did after that, but midway two things brought him to a stop. The first was the memory of all that clothing raining down onto West End Avenue, and the second was the smell of marijuana.

Ah? Ah, there it was, the remnant of a joint smoldering in an African-looking ceramic ashtray next to a black leather chair. So Jerry
had
misunderstood. This wasn't some misplaced men's room masher, it was a rich radical-chic bleeding-heart liberal getting smashed on grass and throwing all his clothes out the window.

And the wife? Mr. and
Mrs
. Charles S. Harwood. Was she around here somewhere, too, also stoned out of her mind and out of her clothes? Jerry tried to remember if any of the garments descending from the sky had seemed feminine.

Meantime, Harwood was calling again, through this locked door, explaining at great length what Jerry had just figured out for himself, except that he didn't say he'd thrown his clothes out, he said there'd been an “accident,” all his clothing had “fallen” out.

Jerry ignored him, because in glancing around the living room he had suddenly spotted something familiar in the fireplace. Going over there, he went down on one knee and picked up a definite fragment of a Dancing Aztec Priest. The right hand, with a remnant of wrist.

There were more fragments here. Enough for one statue, or two? Jerry rooted in all corners of the fireplace, pulling shreds and pieces out onto the hearth, and when he was finished he was sure it was only one. The Harwoods had received two statues at lunch today, and apparently the husband while smashed had smashed this one. So where was the other?

Harwood's voice had changed by now, becoming more plaintive: “Are you there?”

Jerry didn't bother to answer. Instead, he made a quick search, and when he'd satisfied himself that the living room contained no Dancing Aztec Priest other than the one on the hearth, who would dance no more, he went back to the kitchen and repeated the search there. Still nothing.

He returned to the living room as Harwood was just tentatively creeping out, extending an exploratory naked toe. Seeing Jerry, he yelped and shot back inside, slamming the door and locking it with another
click
.

But that was the only place left to search, so Jerry went over, lifted one foot, and kicked the door next to the knob with the flat bottom of his shoe. Inside, Harwood yipped like a spaniel.

It took three kicks to pop the lock, and Harwood yipped each time. When the door at last did jerk open, Jerry saw Harwood scooting into a closet, pulling the door shut behind himself.

Good place for him. Jerry took the ordinary skeleton key from the inner keyhole of the door he'd just forced, crossed this cluttered bedroom, and locked Harwood in the closet Then he searched the bedroom and bathroom, and damn if there still wasn't any sign of the other statue.

Which left nowhere but the closet. Unlocking the door, Jerry opened it and found Harwood brandishing a wooden hanger clutched over his head in his right hand while more or less covering himself with the splayed fingers of his left He looked like some Dada parody of the Statue of Liberty, and he was truly stoned. He'd gulp-smoked that entire joint in the few minutes after Bobbi left, and the effects had fully caught up with him by now. “A man's home is his castle,” he announced.

Jerry ignored him. Gazing around at the completely empty closet—empty except for Harwood and a bunch of hangers—he said, “What the hell is going on around here?”

“I am defending my castle,” Harwood explained. “And I'm going to report
you
to the building.”

Jerry prodded him on the chest with the plunger end of the plunger. “Where's the statue?”

Harwood blinked at him. The wooden hanger lowered to half-mast. Harwood said, “What?”

“Statue, statue. You got it today at lunch. Two of them. Bust one in the fireplace, Where's the other one?”

“Isn't it here?” Harwood, apparently with real surprise, leaned forward against the plunger and gazed over Jerry's shoulder at the bedroom.

“No, it isn't here,” Jerry said. Not wanting to carry Harwood's weight on his plunger any more, he pushed till Harwood had his balance back and then put the plunger down at his side. “I can guarantee you it isn't here,” he said.

“Then she must have taken it with her.” That seemed to give him food for thought.

“Who? Your wife?” Jerry stepped back a pace and considered the situation. He remembered the angry young woman downstairs, with the suitcases. “Oh, is
that
what happened? She walked out on you, and she threw all your stuff out the window.”

“I can't understand it,” Harwood said.

“And she took the statue with her. Where'd she go?”

“I really don't know,” Harwood said.

Jerry turned the plunger around and poked Harwood a little with the wooden end. “Take a guess,” he said.

“Ouch,” said Harwood. “Don't do that.”

“Guess.”

“But I don't want to guess.”

“No,” Jerry said. “You
do
want to guess. What you
don't
want is for me to poke you any more.” And he poked again, as demonstration.

“I wish you wouldn't do that,” Harwood said. “It makes me lose my equilibrium.”

“Look Jack—”

“Chuck,” Harwood said.

“I'm losing my patience,” Jerry told him.

Harwood looked sympathetic. “Oh, are you a doctor?”

“What?”

Harwood frowned, saying, “What on earth do you want with that statue?” Then, before Jerry could decide what or whether to answer, he became pensive and said, “Do you suppose she'll come back?”

Jerry knifed through to the meat of the conservation: “From where?”

“From out,” Harwood said vaguely, and gestured with the hanger like a man trying to point at a flag on a windy day.

“Out
where?
”

“Perhaps I should learn to drive.” Forgetting to cover himself, Harwood raised his left hand to pull at his left earlobe, a thing professors do as an aid to thought.

Jerry said, “Does your wife have a boyfriend?”

“Oh, dear,” said Harwood. He sighed and leaned against the rear wall of the closet, lost in wistful meditation.

Jerry said, “What's his name and where does he live?”

Harwood slowly focused. “Who?”

“The boyfriend.”

“Bobbi's boyfriend?”

So women give themselves men's names; so what? So Jerry was standing talking with a naked man in a closet who'd just said, “Bobbi's boyfriend.” So what? “Right,” Jerry said.

“Oscar,” Harwood told him.

“Oscar?”

“Not the Other Oscar. The
other
Other Oscar.”

“Terrific,” Jerry said. “Oscar who?”

“Oscar Russell Green.” Harwood frowned. “I distrust men with three names.”

Oscar Russell Green, a name already on the list “Fine,” Jerry said. “See you later.”

Harwood frowned at him. “Were you going to get me a pair of pants?”

“Not that I remember,” Jerry said. He closed and locked the door again, and went away.

EARLIER …

Sitting in his Pinto on Eleventh Avenue near the newspaper library, with the back seat full of swimming pool brochures and the windshield decorated by a brand-new parking ticket, Wally Hintzlebel studied his list of Open Sports Committee members, which only included five names with addresses:

Oscar Russell Green
291 West 127th St
.

Professor Charles S. Harwood
237 West End Avenue

Wylie Cheshire
58 Ridge Road
Deer Park, Long Island

Bud Beemiss
29 West 45th St
.

Dorothy Moorwood
5 Ronkonkomo Drive
Alpine, New Jersey

Through Wally's brain and body surged emotions of rage, urgency, greed, frustration, panic, inadequacy, envy, hatred, lust, and despair. He shook in the grip of these feelings, he trembled so much that the car itself vibrated slightly, and a loose screw on the rear license plate chattered a little tune to the gutter.

What to do? What to do? Those four men in Queens, they were surely well on their way by now.
Sixteen
statues, by God, sixteen statues, and he only had five addresses, and the filthy library was closed for the night.

What to do? Break into the library? But he didn't know how, he'd never broken into anything in his life except other men's wives, and then only when the door had already been opened for him.

It might be one of the five. It might be. The million-dollar prize, the true golden statue, it
could
be any one of the sixteen, and so it might be one of these five, the addresses he already had.

A phone booth stood at the corner, glass-sided and unoccupied. Wally, still quivering slightly, got out of the Pinto and trotted to the phone booth, where he called his mother and said, “Mom, I won't be home for dinner.”

“Hello? Who is this speaking, if I may ask?”

“Mom?”

“Would you be so kind as to identify yourself, if I may be so bold?”

“It's Wally, Mom.”

“Wally?”

“Wally, Mom, it's Wally.”

“Wally, you'll be late for dinner. Where are you?”

“I won't be home for dinner, Mom.”

“Where?”

“What?”

“Where
are
you, Wally?”

“I'm in Manhattan, Mom. Listen, Mom, I won't be home for dinner.”

“Wal-lee? Does Wal-lee have tum a dirl friend?”

“Aw, come on, Mom, you know you're my best girl.”

“Does Wal-lee have a heavy date with a sweetsie-sweetsie?”

“Nothin' like that, Mom. Honest.”

“Can't you bring her home to your Mommy-Mommy, Wal-lee?”

“Mom, listen, it isn't a date or
anything
like that I
swear
it isn't. It's business.”

“Is Wal-lee extra special positive?”

“Business, Mom. No girls.”

“
What
business at this hour, Wally?”

And Wally knew he was beaten. There was no way out of
it
. “I'll, uh—” He stared through the glass at Eleventh Avenue. I'll come home,” he said. “I'll uh, I'll explain it to, uh, these business people. I”ll be right home.”

He hung up on her bubbling appreciation, and raced back to the Pinto. In the car, he kicked the engine into life and yanked the car out among the cabs, turning toward the Midtown Tunnel.

He'd eat fast, that's all. Eat fast, claim he was—claim he was going to a movie, rush back to the city. It could still be done. Blinking through the windshield (the parking ticket, still stuck under the wiper, blinked back, flapping in the breeze), he urged the Pinto toward the tunnel.

ALSO …

Oscar Russell Green was drunk as a skunk. He was drunker than
two
skunkers. Nayamba had taken refuge at her mother's place over in Newark, and Green was letting 'er rip. Letting 'er tear. Letting 'er do anything 'er damn well wanted to do.
Sum
-bitch!

It isn't easy to be a leader of men. Whether you're fronting a crack Marine brigade or a fat-bellied lynch mob, you still have to bring to bear the same leadership qualities of self-reliance, decisiveness, control over others, and unflagging determination. Oscar Russell Green had those leadership qualities in abundance, but unfortunately he also had all the opposite qualities as well, such as self-doubt, indecision, defeatism.

When actively engaged in being a leader, Green had to smother all those qualities in himself that were inappropriate to the Leadership Profile. Which meant that every once in a while, every once in a
great
while and only at moments when the demands of Leadership were temporarily lifted, Green had to let that other side of himself out of its cell and into the exercise yard for a quick walk around. With a bottle in its hand.

It had started today right after lunch at the Goddess of Heaven. The brandy after the presentation of the Other Oscars had tasted
sooo
good, had made him feel
sooo
easy, and had disappeared from the little glass
sooo-oooo
fast, that he had known right away the relinquishing of the reins of Leadership had begun, and he had stopped off in the phone booth near the restaurant's cash register to put his wife Nayamba wise. “Time to visit your mama, girl. The black tornado has just been sighted.”

“Have a good time, Oscar,” she said, and hung up without another word.

Having finished his Distant Early Warning, Oscar said farewell to his troops on the sidewalk out front, making an abortive pass at Bobbi Harwood
en passant
, which was the first time he'd ever made a play for her. (Aside from the fact that he was always faithful to Nayamba, except while drinking, Oscar had kept away from Bobbi before this because one of the basic qualities of the Leader is that he show no favoritism.) But Bobbi was having none of that, so away went Oscar, homeward bound.

Home was an apartment on West 127th Street, way over near the Hudson River, in one of a group of brick tenement buildings that had been taken over by a neighborhood committee, refurbished inside, and turned into moderate-rental apartments. Having an in with several members of the committee, Oscar had managed to leapfrog over the waiting list, and had a nice three-and-a-half at the top rear, with a narrow view northward and a pretty good view of the Henry Hudson Parkway to the west.

Stopping at the apartment only long enough to leave the Other Oscar atop the bedroom dresser, Oscar had returned to the overworld and had patronized a number of bars and liquor stores before staggering homeward once more, the demands of leadership long forgotten. Trying to drink cheap port wine from the bottle and climb stairs at the same time, he made his way to his door, fumbled with his keys, unlocked his way in, and heard noises from the bedroom.