Dancing Aztecs (40 page)

They'd gone ahead without him.

IN THE PARKING LOT …

Three-fifteen in the morning. Darkness and silence everywhere. In the parking lot of the Holiday Inn along Interstate 80 near Oil City, Pennsylvania,
snick
goes the hood release of Hugh Van Dinast's Jaguar XJ12. Jerry pauses, looks around, hears and sees nothing, and goes to work.

Twelve cylinders, that's a lot of cylinders. It's also a lot of spark plugs. One by one, Jerry removes each spark plug and uses a screwdriver blade to widen the gap. When each plug has been altered sufficiently so it won't spark, it is neatly put back in place. It is not enough that this car not run tomorrow; it is also necessary that any mechanic called in have a difficult time deciding
why
the car won't run.

Eleven, twelve. So much for that. Next, Jerry uses the same screwdriver to turn the air-flow screw on the carburetor right down tight. There; try driving with
that
mixture.

And another thing. The tools from Angela's station wagon include an icepick; sliding under the Jag with that, Jerry pokes it through the automatic transmission pan. Ochre fluid drips thickly down, and Jerry emerges again, to alter the pressure on the fan belt, so that it won't turn with the engine.

Is that enough? Probably; as it is, the mechanic is going to wonder how the damn thing ever got this far. Jerry closes up the Jag, returns the tools to the station wagon, and goes back up to his room and to bed. His call is in for nine o'clock. He isn't worried; his quarry will still be here.

AROUND THE CIRCLE …

Nearly everyone is asleep. Four in the morning, and nearly everyone sleeps, and why not? It's been a busy day.

In the Bernstein house, Mel and Angela are asleep in one another's arms. Both are smiling, Mel because Angela is in his arms and Angela because Mandy has agreed to stay. In the guest room, Mandy also sleeps and also smiles; this is a
much
better gig than Valerie Woode.

Frank and Floyd McCann are asleep in their separate beds with their separate wives. Frank is smiling in his sleep, because he is dreaming of gold. Floyd is frowning in his sleep, because he is dreaming of blacks.

Augie Corella, asleep beside his plump wife in his expensive house in Red Bank, New Jersey, has no expression on his blocky face at all. He looks like something in a wax museum.

Victor Krassmeier, having informed his wife that he would be staying in town tonight due to the pressure of work, is sleeping with the occupant of the apartment on 65th Street, who figures so prominently in his negative cash-flow. Neither of them is smiling.

Oscar Russell Green and Chuck Harwood are both asleep in Chuck's apartment, and despite the day's setbacks both are smiling, since they blew a whole
lot
of grass after dinner. In Connecticut, Bud Beemiss sleeps fitfully beside his expensive second wife; his dreams are full of lifelines slipping through his fingers.

Felicity Tower's dreams are also full of fingers, among many other things. She never never never remembers her dreams the next day, but they sure do keep her smiling at night.

Awake, but soon to be asleep, is Wally Hintzlebel, who is sitting at the kitchen table with his mom, saying for the thousandth time, “You know I didn't mean it, Mom.” Mom, unfortunately, has remembered
every word
that Wally said to her during this morning's argument, and has been more than willing to share her memories with Wally.

Also awake, but also soon to be asleep, are Jeremiah “Bad Death” Jonesburg and Theodora Nice. There was no way Bad Death could keep himself from talking to “Pam Grier” after the funeral, and Theodora hadn't at all minded maintaining the fiction up close, and they are having an evening neither will ever forget.
Ter-rif-fic!

Also awake, and not likely to sleep for some time, are Edwardo Brazzo and José Caracha. Sitting in adjoining cells, charged with more violations than there are yams in Descalzo, what
really
frosts them is that
Pedro got away
. Unless their belated appeal for political asylum is accepted by a not particularly amiable American government, they will both be back in Descalzo within the week, hanging by their tongues. It's enough to keep anybody awake.

As for Pedro, he is sleeping like a baby. Having wandered around Kennedy Airport for some time, he eventually stumbled on Jerry's cul-de-sac, and in it Jerry's truck, and he is now in the truck, sound asleep on Jerry's coveralls.
None
of which Jerry can be expected to like.

Jerry Manelli and Bobbi Harwood, in beds separated by seven walls and eleven other sleeping bodies, are dreaming of one another. The dreams are tentative, the characters keep getting mixed up with other characters both have known in the past, and nothing really conclusive occurs in any of the dreams, but nevertheless both dreamers are smiling.

Awake on the Holiday Inn dresser in Bobbi's room, prancing and dancing, glittering gold in the dim light gleaming through the gap in the window drapes, stands the Dancing Aztec Priest. To look at him, nobody would think he was at all valuable, and in fact he is not. He's the wrong one, he's made of plaster.

What? That's right, he's a copy, he isn't gold at all, every body's chasing the wrong statue.
One
of the sixteen statues handed out to the Open Sports Committee is the real one, worth over a million dollars, but not
this
one. This one is maybe worth twenty bucks.

Someone has made a mistake.

THE
THIRD PART
OF THE
SEARCH

 

 

Everybody in New York City wants to be somebody. Young people want to be older and old people want to be younger. Poor people want to be rich and rich people want to be richer. First nighters want to be hip and last nighters want to be hipper.

Blacks want to be equal. Women want to be equal. Puerto Ricans want to be equal without having to learn a new language. Sanitation men want to be equal with the other uniformed services. Jews who claim their middle name is their last name want to be superior, while drunks who hang around Third Avenue and East Houston Street want to be inferior.

New York
magazine wants to be
The New Yorker
.

Outsiders want to be insiders. Singles at Adams' Apple and Maxwell's Plum want to be doubles, without getting hurt. Drag queens
don't
want to be women; they want to be drag queens.

Cab drivers want to be Bobby Unser, and subway riders want to be sitting down. Architects want to be artists, and artists want to be useful.

Priests want to be relevant. Novelists want to be relevant. Eric Sevareid and David Susskind want to be relevant. Andy Warhol wants to be irrelevant, and is.

High schoolers from Staten Island want to be sharp. High schoolers from Brooklyn want to be cool. High schoolers from Queens want to be funky. High schoolers from Harlem want to be the baddest. And high schoolers from the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan want to be Leonard Bernstein.

Leonard Bernstein wants to be
everybody
.

The Landmarks Commission wants to be effective. The real estate developers want to be 100 percent leveraged. The powerless want to be powerful, and the powerful want to be unobserved.

Wall Street clerks want to be financiers, financiers want to be great lovers, great lovers want to be serious actors, serious actors want to be called to the Coast.

Cops want to be cowboys. Cowboys want to be sophisticates. Sophisticates want to be liberal. Liberals want to be tough-minded. The tough-minded want to be in charge. Those in charge want to be chauffeured, and chauffeurs want to be in the driver's seat. Everybody wants to be in the driver's seat, but nobody is.

Everybody in New York City wants to be somebody. Every now and then, somebody makes it.

THE HERO …

Jerry Manelli wanted to be a tough guy. Growing up in a neighborhood like his, a smart guy learns to be a wise guy, and a wise guy knows how to be a tough guy. Jerry Manelli never wanted anything except to be a tough guy, and a tough guy was what he had always been.

But does a tough guy grin for no reason at all? Does a tough guy hum “In the Mood” and dance with his reflection in the bathroom mirror?

The hell with it;
this
tough guy does.

Jerry's wake-up call was for nine, but he'd been up since eight-thirty, his mind fuzzy and full of confusions. After brushing his teeth with his fingers and putting on yesterday's clothes, he looked out the window and saw below him the tableau in the parking lot; arm-waving girl, shoulder-shrugging mechanic, raped Jaguar, massive tow-truck. And does a tough guy feel guilty when one of his hustles work out?

The phone: “Good morning, Mr. Spaulding. Nine o'clock.”

“Thanks,” Jerry said, and went away to breakfast.

THE HEROINE …

Bobbi was
furious
. After dragging herself out of bed at seven-thirty this morning—a cold empty bed, too, since she'd so nobly resisted that fellow Jerry last night—and after rushing through a mediocre breakfast, the
car
wouldn't
start
. Nothing at all from it, just nothing. The starter would grind, but the engine simply refused to operate.

At Beacon Auto Transport, back in New York, she'd been told what to do in case anything went wrong with the car. Take it to a garage or call a mechanic, and if the repair would cost less than twenty-five dollars she was authorized to spend the money, get a receipt, and expect reimbursement from the owner on delivery of the car. If it would cost over twenty-five dollars, she was to call the owner, turn him over to the mechanic, and let them work it out together.

“Let it be less than twenty-five dollars,” she muttered to herself, as the nice desk clerk phoned for a mechanic, and when the mechanic arrived with his tow-truck she told him the situation at once, finishing, “So if it's
under
twenty-five, it'll be a lot simpler for everybody.”

“Uh huh,” he said. He had a flowing brown mustache and black hornrim glasses and a dirty white T-shirt stretched over his beer belly, and he didn't seem to much care about anything at all. He sat at the wheel of the Jaguar—he couldn't have looked more out of place in a convent—grinding the starter and gazing mistrustfully at the instruments, and then he shook his head and got out of the car and opened the hood. After poking and prying under there for a while, he said “Start 'er up.”

Bobbi slid in at the driver's seat, hope suddenly blossoming inside her, and turned the key in the ignition.
Grind grind grind
, while the mechanic did something or other under the hood. She stopped finally, hating the noise, but he gestured at her to do it some more. She did, but then at last he withdrew his head from under the hood and shook it at her, as much as to say, this-thing'll-never-live-again.

Bobbi was reluctant to leave the wheel. Leaning out, she said, “Do you know what it is?”

“Could be a lot of things.” He was wiping his hands on an already filthy orange cloth.

“Well, can you find out which one?”

“Not here,” he said. “Have to take it in.”

“
Tow
it?”

He shrugged. “Ain't gonna move on its own, lady.”

Bobbi got out of the car, abandoning hope. “That's more than twenty-five dollars, isn't it? This is going to cost a
lot
, isn't it?”

“Depends what it turns out to be.”

“But more than twenty-five.”

“Probably so,” he admitted. “The tow's fifteen.”

“We'll have to call the owner,” Bobbi decided, and she couldn't have hated that knowledge more. The idea of contact with Hugh Van Dinast on
any
subject was distasteful, but to have to tell him that his car had broken down within a day of her taking charge of it was doubly grim.

Still, she never expected the response she got, once Van Dinast had accepted the collect call and she'd told him the situation: “
You
did it!” he screamed. “To get even with me!”

“What?”

“What a filthy, sneaking—”

He probably went on like that, but Bobbi listened to no more of it. Instead, she handed the receiver to the mechanic, saying, “Tell him about it.”

“Right.” But after listening for a second he said, “He's talking to somebody.”

“That's all right. Just tell him.”

“Okay.” Into the receiver he said, “Hello? Hello?” There was a little pause, and he said, “I'm from Coe's Garage, here in Oil City, Pennsylvania.” Another pause. “My name's Tucker, what's yours?” Apparently, whatever Van Dinast was saying back there in New York was not sitting too well, because the mechanic raised an eyebrow at Bobbi while saying into the phone, “I'll tell you, pal, I got all the business I need. That Jag of yours can sit in this parking lot till kingdom come for all I care.” Another pause. “Just a second.” Cupping his hand over the mouthpiece, he said to Bobbi, “He wants to know did you sabotage the car.”