Dancing Aztecs (41 page)

“Of course not! Let me have that phone!” Snatching it from his willing hand, she shouted into the mouthpiece, “If I
was
going to wreck your stupid car, I'd do it in
California
, you imbecile! I don't want
me
to sit in this parking lot till kingdom come!”

“I'll speak to Mr. Tucker, if you don't mind,” Van Dinast said.

“Asshole!” Bobbi slapped the phone back into the mechanic's hand, telling him, “If you want me, I'll be in the bar.”

“I don't think it's open yet.”

“We'll see about that,” Bobbi said, and marched away.

THE RIVALS …

Ginny Demeretta didn't know
what
to think. She'd been an interviewer with Beacon Auto Transport for seven years, and she'd
never
had a day like this one. Working in an operation where on the one hand you have people too rich to drive their own car, and on the other hand hippies and flake-outs with bedrolls, you can expect the job isn't exactly going to be tame, but
never
a day like this. Never. And to think it all had to do with that nice Mrs. Barbara Harwood. Of all the drivers Ginny Demeretta had interviewed in the last seven years, Mrs. Barbara Harwood was the
last
one she'd expect to make trouble.

In the first place, Mrs. Harwood wasn't really poor. She was broke, but as Mike Todd used to point out, that isn't the same thing. In the second place, she was a respectable ongoing member of the middle class.
Harpist
with the New York City Symphony Orchestra! And in the third place, the owner of the car, Mr. Hugh Van Dinast, had phoned yesterday afternoon especially to say how pleased he was with the person chosen to drive his car. Now, a thing like that
never
happens, an owner calling to say he's happy about something. Never.

But that was yesterday. As for today …

It started exactly at ten
A.M.
, as Ginny was walking in the door. Mickey, the receptionist and switchboard girl, was nodding and talking on the phone, her head down and shoulders hunched in that inevitable way when the shit is hitting the fan, and when she looked up and saw Ginny a relieved smile covered her face and she said into the phone, “Excuse me, Mr. Van Dinast. Here she is now.”

“Oh, shit,” Ginny said. But it was too late to duck back out the door.

Mickey was waggling the phone at her, saying, “One of yours, left yesterday. The owner says she racked up the car.”

“Racked it up?”

“On purpose.”

“Beautiful,” Ginny said. “Wait a minute; did you say Van Dinast?”

“Right. The driver's a—”

“Mrs. Harwood.” Shaking her head, Ginny said, “There's something wrong here. I'll take it at my desk.”

“Better you than me,” Mickey said.

Ginny settled herself at her desk, popped a Turn, picked up the phone, pushed the right button, and said, “What appears to be the problem, Mr. Van Dinast?”

“The problem?” His voice was an enraged squeak, with intermitting bass notes. “The problem is, your driver deliberately destroyed my car!”

“Deliberately destroyed, Mr. Van Dinast? If there was an accident of—”

“This was no accident! She called with some lame story that the car won't
start
this morning! She has a
mechanic!
She
says
he's a mechanic! She vandalized my car!”

“Mr. Van Dinast, you can't mean that. Why would she do such a thing?”

“Well, she—I presume she's insane, that's why!”

“Mr. Van Dinast, did the mechanic say the car had been vandalized?”

“He's
her
mechanic!”

“Here in New York?”

“In Oil City, Pennsylvania!
Oil City
, Pennsylvania!”

“Then he's hardly her mechanic, Mr. Van Dinast Who told you she'd vandalized your car?”

“Nobody
had
to tell me! I
know
she did it!”

“Why?”

There was silence on the line; in it, Ginny could hear heavy breathing. “Mr. Van Dinast,” she said, “you're making a very serious accusation here. I assume you've called the Oil City, Pennsylvania, police.”

“Not yet.” And all at once Van Dinast sounded oddly defensive.

Hmmm. Had the son of a bitch thrown a pass at Mrs. Harwood yesterday? Is that why he thought she'd vandalized his car? Getting even. Good Christ, maybe she
did
vandalize it!

“Well, Mr. Van Dinast, I'll certainly look into this, but before you make accusations, I—”

“I'm not making accusations,” he said, with astonishing inaccuracy. “I just don't want her to drive the car any more, that's all.”

“But what if it turns out she
didn't
vandalize your car?”

“I don't want her to drive it!”

“I have your number, Mr. Van Dinast. Let me check with our driver in Oil City, and I'll get back to you. Do you have the number there?”

He gave it, a Holiday Inn; she
was
traveling first cabin. Ginny called and got Mrs. Harwood's side of the story. The car had been working fine yesterday, it didn't work at all this morning, the mechanic said it could be a lot of tilings, and when she'd called the owner as per instructions, he'd blown up at her. “Hm,” said Ginny. “Listen, Mrs. Harwood. Did he try anything with you yesterday?”

“He got very grabby, if that's what you mean. I fought him off.”

“Successfully?”

“Of course!”

“He thinks you're trying to get even with him.”

“Getting
away
from him was all I needed.”

Ginny sighed. “What a mess. He says he doesn't want you driving the car any more. I don't know
what
we'll do.”

“You mean I'm stuck here in Oil City, Pennsylvania?”

“I'll get back to you,” Ginny said, and called Van Dinast again, and he was
much
calmer. “I may have been hasty,” he said.

“I thought you probably were,” Ginny told him.

“Nevertheless,” he said, “I can't be sure one way or the other, and I would prefer that … she, not drive my car any longer. I'll pay the fee, of course, but I'll arrange to have the car picked up and transported.”

Well, she argued with him, she tried to jolly him, she implied her knowledge of his bad behavior of yesterday, but nothing would budge him. Mrs. Harwood was not to drive his car ever again; he would pay the company's fee, and he would make his own further arrangements regarding the car.

So she called Mrs. Harwood back, and. broke the news, saying, “I'm sorry, Mrs. Harwood. If you can get a bus back to the city or something, I could probably get you into another car the early part of next week.”

“
Back
to the city.” She sounded very depressed.

“Sorry,” Ginny said. “Give me a call when you get back.”

“Sure.”

Ginny hung up, and at that point discovered an individual seated in the client's chair at the side of her desk. He flashed an untrustworthy smile with a rancid cigar stuck in the middle of it, and he was wearing a powder-blue shirt with a white collar, a broad powder-blue tie with tiny white wind-mills all over it, an off-white sports jacket with powder-blue stitching, powder-blue slacks with a white belt, and white patent-leather shoes. Ginny's guess was that he was a pick-pocket disguised as the Virgin Mary. “And what can I do for
you?
” she said.

“Information,” he said, leering, and placed a palm on the surface of the desk. Through the slightly spaced fingers she could see a touch of green, a bit of currency, a twenty-dollar bill.

Never in her life had Ginny Demeretta ever been offered a bribe. What would anybody bribe her for? She didn't know anything, she didn't have any clout anywhere, and none of her decisions made any difference. Ginny's immediate reaction, therefore, was suspicion; she frowned at the twenty, glowered at its offerer, and said, “What's that for?”

“Like I said. Information.” And he made a little go-on-and-take-it gesture with his chin.

“Information. Information?
What
information?”

“About Mrs. Barbara Harwood.”

Suspicion deepened. Ginny glanced at the phone, so recently full of the subject of Mrs. Barbara Harwood. What was going on with that woman? If this was a private detective—and on television bribes were
invariably
offered by private detectives—what had that nice lady got herself mixed up in?

“Don't worry,” the private detective told her, with a smile that would have made anybody worry. “You can't get in any trouble for this.”

“And Mrs. Harwood?”

He looked surprised. “Mrs. Harwood? I'm on her side!”

“Against Van Dinast?”

Was that doubt, briefly on his face? If so, it cleared up at once, replaced by a confident smile as he said, “Absolutely! Against Van Dinast!”

She wasn't sure of him yet; personally, she thought he was a creep. “What do you want to know?”

“Her present location, and her final destination.”

“No.” She shook her head.

He seemed surprised. The hand covering the twenty nearly lifted. He said, “Why not?”

“Maybe you
aren't
on her side.”

“But I am! And I have to get in touch with her, right away.”

“Then you don't need to know her final destination.”

He didn't like that, but he recovered. With a shrug, he said. “Fine. Present location, that's all I need.”

Could that be harmful? This fellow would be able to phone Mrs. Harwood, but he'd never physically reach Oil City before she'd left it. “Okay,” Ginny said, and gave him the information, and the twenty-dollar bill disappeared into her desk drawer. She'd been bribed!

And all at once the private detective was on his feet, smile gone, expression anxious, noxious cigar smoke fuzzing his head as he leaned close and harshly whispered, “Tell them nothing! I'll go out the back way!”

“There
isn't
any back way,” she said, but he'd already trotted away toward the filing cabinets, and now she saw the two new men who had just walked in, and who were pointing in surprise and anger toward the fleeing private eye.

On television, these two would be plainclothes police. One was white, and the other was black. Both were tall and moderately well-built and in early middle age. Both were dressed rather seedily, and the white was dressed
very
seedily. In fact, his shoes didn't match. Even Columbo has shoes that match.

“Hey!” the black man yelled. He had a speaker's voice, with good projection. He and the other one started down the long office space past the row of interviewers' desks.

Ginny turned, and saw the first one coming back from the dead-end wall, a big insincere smile spreading like a stockingrun across his face. “Well, hello, fellows!” he said. “You're up bright and early.”

“Yeah,” said the black man. “And we caught us a worm.”
Exactly
what he would have said on television. Ginny watched, fascinated.

But now the scene took a turn into some other plot, because the alleged private eye stopped in front of the alleged cops, and smiled at them, and said, “You don't think I'd try to cut you boys out, do you?”

The white had taken a pipe from his pocket, and now he smiled in a calm and amiable way, pointed the pipe at the non-private eye, and said, “My good friend, of
course
that's what you'd try to do. You're too stupid to do anything else.”

“Such kidders,” said the nonprivate eye, with a big confident grin. “I got the info and I was on my way to the office. Can I give you fellows a lift?”

“You sure can,” said the black man, and the three of them walked out of the office together.

Ginny gazed after them, frowning. Should Mrs. Harwood be told? Should
Van Dinast
be told? It was, after all, his car. Who was the villain in this piece, anyway?

Maybe what Beacon Auto Transport ought to do, maybe Beacon Auto Transport ought to mind its own business. “Next!” said Ginny.

THE SURVIVOR …

There are three kinds of hangovers. There are hangovers that are green and wet and slimy, full of queasiness and trembling and the conviction that one has somehow been disemboweled in one's sleep and a recently dead muskrat has been placed where one's stomach used to be. Then there are hangovers that are gray and stony and cold, in which the granite of one's skull has been cracked like the veil of the temple, and the rock of one's brain has been reduced to rubble within,
painful
rubble. And finally there are hangovers that are red and jagged and jolting, lightning bolts shooting in one ear and out the other, more lightning in the elbows and knees, buzzers and electric chairs and whoopee cushions in the stomach, flash bulbs in the eyes and battery acid in the mouth. Those are the three kinds of hangovers, and Pedro had all three of them.

When he staggered out of the Inter-Air truck into the semidarkness of Jerry's cul-de-sac, Pedro had no memory of the preceding day and could only assume that he was still in Quetchyl and that the city had for some reason been hydrogen-bombed during the night. Surely he was the only survivor, if he could in truth be called a survivor.

“Hii,” Pedro said, staggering this way and that over the neat white lines Jerry had drawn on the concrete. “Hii hii hii.”

Gradually his staggering led him away from the truck, away from the darkness, up the curving ramp and around the wooden fences toward light and day and—

—Kennedy Airport.

“Hu!” said Pedro. With both hands pressed to his forehead, partially to keep it from exploding and partially to shield his eyes, Pedro squinted in the sunlight and stared out at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York, New York. A yellow taxicab went by. A bus went by. Taxi-bus-car-car-car-van-taxi-taxi-bus-car-bus-car-car-taxi-van-bus-taxi-taxi went by. Beyond all this sweeping movement swept a broken expanse of intermixed greenery and roadways, fringed by terminal buildings. Sunshine griddled down, turning Pedro's eyes and brain to goat fat.