Dancing Aztecs (14 page)

Hello? Oscar clutched the wine bottle to his chest and staggered with swift purpose to the bedroom, where he found two white men just about to climb out the window onto the fire escape. And one of them had the Other Oscar!

“Hey!” the first Oscar cried.

The two white men stared at him in utter panic. “Oh, no!” one of them cried. “F-f-f-feet,” stuttered the other one, “d-d-d-do your stuff.” And yet he didn't move, he just stood where he was, blocking the window.

“That's mine!” Oscar shouted, pointing the wine bottle in surprise and outrage at the Other Oscar. Wine sloshed. “You gimme that!”

The man with the statue abruptly turned, trying to shove his frozen partner out of the way so he could get out the window.

“Oh, no, you don't!” Oscar yelled, and threw the wine bottle. More wine sloshed. The sound of breaking glass was followed by the sight of Oscar's window disintegrating. Both halves; the thieves had raised the bottom half and Oscar's bottle had therefore crashed through both thicknesses of glass.

“Goddam! Goddam! Goddam!” Oscar ran at the burglars, and started wrestling with the one who had the statue, a big red-faced white man, with staring eyes and bad breath.

“Here!” yelled the white man, and tossed the statue over Oscar's head to his partner. “Run, Floyd!”

Floyd ran. Instead of running out the window, though, he ran over the bed, and Oscar caught him before he reached the bedroom door.

After that, the whole thing degenerated into some sort of idiotic schoolyard game, with the two white men tossing the statue back and forth to one another while Oscar played monkey in the middle. And they kept shouting at one another all the time: “Floyd! Floyd!” “Frank! Frank!”

It came to an end at last when Oscar tackled Frank as he was just about to catch Floyd's lateral. The Other Oscar zoomed past them both, whacked into the wall, fell to the floor, and broke its right leg.

Floyd and Frank and Oscar all scrambled for the fumble, and it was Floyd who came up with the main part, while Frank emerged with the Other Oscar's right leg from knee to toe, the statue's uplifted leg, which had snapped off clean.

Oscar, prepared to go on fighting on this front if it took all winter, suddenly found himself with a bunch of guys who didn't want to play any more. Floyd and Frank looked at one another, looked at the broken parts in their hands, and all at once lost interest. “Sorry, fella,” Frank said, handing over the snapped-off shin. “Nothing personal,” Floyd said, placing in Oscar's other hand the rest of the statue. And, while Oscar stood there gaping, they proceeded rapidly but in an orderly fashion out the broken window and down the fire escape and away.

“Well, I'll be damned,” Oscar said. When he closed the window, the rest of the glass fell out, but he locked it anyway. Then he went off to phone the local liquor store that delivered.

FURTHERMORE …

Bud Beemiss was
not
the type August Corella liked to do business with. A soft self-satisfied drone like financier Victor Krassmeier was best, and failing that Corella had no objection to dealing with another tough guy like himself; they could talk the same language, they'd both know where they stood. In a way, Beemiss combined both types, but the result was new, and a lot more difficult.

The house was rambling Colonial-style set amid rolling parkland, and the maid who'd let them in had showed them to a booklined study. “Not bad,” Earl said, apparently referring to everything, the maid, the house, the room, even the books.

Not good either
, Corella thought, but he didn't say it aloud. He waited for Beemiss, already knowing this wouldn't be easy.

Then Beemiss himself bounced into the room, and was even worse than Corella had expected. His pullover shirt, beltless slacks, and rope-soled shoes were the most intimidating kind of casual. He had the neat, tanned, round, fleshless head of a man who takes very good care of himself, and the cheerful blue eyes and wide smile of a man who never gives anything away. He had a glad-hander's version of Krassmeier's board-room toughness, but some stink of the street still clung to him. “Hiya, fellas,” he said, flicking the door closed and striding across the room. “What can I do for you?”

The subject of this interview was going to be power; that was plain enough. And Corella was determined to get his own claim for dominance in first. “It isn't what you can do for me, Beemiss,” he said, in his toughest style. “It's what I can do for you.”

Beemiss' smile turned lopsided, but not with apprehension. He looked merely annoyed that he'd been taken away from whatever he'd been doing—six laps in the pool, maybe, or dyeing his brown hair. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I suspect this is a matter to be taken care of at the office.”

If you start tough, stay tough. “Well take care of it here,” Corella said. “It's about this Open Sports Committee.”

From the sudden glint in Beemiss' eyes, Corella knew the man had picked up a sudden wrong impression. He probably thought this was political, right-wing tough guys leaning on a liberal. What he started to say confirmed that idea: “Gentlemen, there's no point talking about differences be—”

“You got a statue today,” Corella said. He had no time for misunderstandings.

Which stopped Beemiss cold. He frowned at Corella, with nothing to say.

So Corella went on: “Sixteen statues. Shipped to you from down in South America.”

Beemiss shook his head. “I confess, gentlemen,” he said, “I'm at a loss.”

“We know about those statues.” Corella let a wintry smile appear on his lips and then fade away. “It's our job to know about them.”

“Your job?”

“You weren't supposed to get that shipment.”

Beemiss was leaning forward slightly, as though he would understand the words better if he could hear them better. “I wasn't?”

“You were supposed to get a different shipment,” Corella told him. “Friends of mine were supposed to get that shipment.”

A sudden knowingness altered Beemiss' expression, and he leaned back again, nodding, calculating. “I see.”

Good. He'd picked that up fast, much faster than someone like Krassmeier would. Corella said, “My friends want their shipment.”

“Yes, I suppose they do.” Beemiss was being slow, careful, thinking things over. He still wasn't afraid.

Corella said. “My friends realize it's an inconvenience, so they'll put out cash money, and you people can get something better instead.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. They'll pay uhh …”—and Corella hesitated, Beemiss and the house combining to force him to revise his initial offer upward—“… four thousand for the statues.”

“Four thousand.” The pale blue eyes glinted. “Apiece?”

Beemiss mustn't be allowed to get away with jokes. “Four thousand for the whole shipment,” Corella said. “And peace of mind.”

Beemiss cocked an ear. “What was that?”

“These people, my friends. They're not your ordinary businessmen.”

“I was getting that impression.”

“If something happened and they didn't get their shipment,” Corella said, “their
whole
shipment, you and me, we'd both be in big trouble.”

“
We
would?”

“They'd get sore at both of us.” Corella gestured at the room. “Now, I see you got a nice house here, a nice family, a nice business in New York, you don't want to—”

“You're not from New York, are you?”

Corella frowned. “What?”

“Jersey, I'd say.” Beemiss nodded to himself. “Connected with the docks, maybe, is that where your friends are?”

“You don't want to know my friends,” Corella said.

“The question is, do I want your friends to know my friends?”

“I don't get that”

“You want me to give you a list, isn't that it, of all the people who got statues?”

“No way.” Corella was offended. “You want me to shlep all over the city? You got a nice office in New York, secretaries; tomorrow morning you put a secretary to work on the phone, call everybody, bring in their statues. Then you turn them over to me.”

“I assume you're talking about cash in advance.”

“First thing tomorrow morning,” Corella said, “you'll have the cash on your desk. What time you get to the office?”

“Usually around ten.”

“Ten o'clock, four grand in cash on your desk.”

“Four?” Beemiss looked surprised, but Corella was sure the look was fake. “I'm sorry, did I ever agree to four?”

“You want a little more?” Corella shrugged. “My friends won't quibble.”

“I should think, for sixteen statues,” Beemiss said, “sixteen thousand dollars is a more sensible number.”

“On the other hand,” Corella said, “my friends won't stand around and get held up either.”

Beemiss shrugged. “You know your friends better than I do. At what point does quibbling become holding up?”

“We'll split the difference. Call it eight thousand.”

“The way I learned math,” Beemis said, “splitting the difference between four and sixteen is ten.”

“Half of sixteen is eight Take eight.”

“And on the other hand,” Beemiss said, “maybe I don't want the deal at all. Maybe we'd all rather just keep the statues. They do, after all, have a certain sentimental significance.”

“Listen to me,” Corella said, and now his effort was to combine toughness with fellow feeling. “You and your friends don't want those statues. Please take my word for it For the sake of your happiness and your health and your well-being you don't want those statues. You want some other statues.”

“Twelve,” Beemiss said.

Corella shook his head. “No.”

Again Beemiss shrugged, this time having nothing to say. Clearly this was not the first negotiating session he'd ever attended.

Corella waited, trying to decide on the right balance of threat and payment, and finally nodded and said, “Take ten, then. And be happy I'm such an easygoing guy.”

“Fine,” Beemiss said. “I'll accept ten And replacements.”

“Replacements?” Corella spread his hands. “So go get some.”

“The
same
. Give us the shipment your friends got by mistake.”

A complication; Corella wasn't immediately certain how to deal with it “I don't think we could do that,” he said.

“Then get me another shipment.”

“We want our shipment
now
.”

“Fine,” Beemiss said. “Tomorrow morning you place an order for sixteen more statues, to be delivered to my office in New York, and you send the order slip over with the cash.”

Corella was becoming more and more troubled. That clown from Ecuador had arranged the first shipment. Corella had no idea how to go about getting more copies. “You do it,” he said. “How much were the damn things?”

“Eighteen apiece, wholesale. That's two hundred eighty-eight dollars for sixteen.”

Corella looked, and felt, bitter. “That's a nice profit you're making.”

“It wasn't my mistake,” Beemiss pointed out.

“All right” Corella said. “In the morning you'll get cash money, ten thousand two hundred eighty-eight dollars. I'll call you in the afternoon.”

“I didn't catch your name.”

“Mister Kane. And while I'm here, why don't I pick up
your
statue?”

Beemiss raised a slightly surprised eyebrow. “Before the cash is delivered?”

“All right, all right” Turning to Earl, Corella said, “Give him six and a half.”

Which meant that Earl, who until now had kept his good profile firmly toward Beemiss, would now have to show himself full-face. Grumbling, looking sullen, he dug out his wallet, peeled off four hundred dollar bills and five fifties, and slapped them into Beemiss' hand. Beemiss, a faint smile on his face as he looked at Earl's black eye, said a quietly ironic, “Thank you.”

“The statue,” Corella said.

“It's upstairs.”

Beemiss left the room, and both Corella and Earl followed. “I'll be right down,” Beemiss said.

“That's okay.”

So up the stairs they went, all three of them, and along the hall, and into Beemiss' study, where Mel Bernstein (also known as Zachary George) was walking across the carpet toward the open window, the Dancing Aztec Priest clutched in his left hand.

IN THE MEANTIME …

Jerry put his credit card away and walked into the Fayley-Spang residence. David Fayley and Kenneth Spang, both members of the Open Sports Committee, turned out to share this apartment on West 87th Street, in another bulky old apartment building like the one housing the Harwoods. A short hallway flanked by small abstracts and arty black-and-white photographs led to a living room bristling with artifacts. A wooden African fertility goddess with sixteen breasts dominated one corner, near a sleek grouping of black stereo components on dark walnut shelves. A wall-hanging in predominantly red and blue depicted the arrival of a well-hung barbarian at some effete court. Chrome cube end tables flanked the maroon sofa. Spider plants festooned the windows. Some sort of copper implement, suggesting for some reason the Pennsylvania Dutch, stood among more obscure items on a long black wooden table behind the sofa.

It wasn't like the living rooms Jerry knew. The Harwood living room had also been somewhat grander, or artier, than the rooms where Jerry spent his time in Queens, but it had at least maintained the normal pattern, a sofa and two arm-chairs all grouped to face the television set A floor lamp at one end of the sofa, a table lamp at the other. The style had been different—flexible chrome floor lamps were not to be found in Teresa's or Angela's living room—but the substance was the same.

Here, though, everything was different. The sofa, squarely in the middle of the room, faced nothing at all, unless that wall of shelves—crowded with books, figurines, small framed pictures, mementoes, curios, forget-me-nots, whatnots, and thingamabobs, artfully arranged—could be thought to take the place of TV. There was, in fact, no television set in the room at all, nor any armchairs. A few wooden chairs tucked into free spots along the walls could presumably be moved forward to make conversational groupings, but the apparent idea of this room was that it would contain two people who would sit together on the sofa and—what? Talk? Read? Stare at the shelves?