Dancing with the Dead (16 page)

He wondered if Waxman would come up with anything on whether Verlane had registered at a hotel in Seattle during the time frame of the Roundner murder. He doubted it. The airlines had no record of him flying out of New Orleans; if he’d used an alias for that, he sure wouldn’t register at a hotel under his own name then go out and do the Rounder woman. But then killers could be unpredictable in small ways. They were a quart of oil short to begin with, so who could tell how they might think, especially if they were the compulsive type, which Schutz said this character was. At least Morrisy and Schutz agreed about that.

Morrisy looked up and saw Captain Bill Quirk easing his bulk between the white-clothed tables, nodding to people he knew. Important people.

Quirk had said he’d meet Morrisy here to discuss the Verlane case. Morrisy wasn’t crazy about that idea. The news media had been laying it on thick, even national news, so the pressure was on and Morrisy knew he figured to get his ass reamed for not coming up with a suspect that could be brought in and booked. When that happened, the media would briefly go spastic, then they’d calm down and concentrate on something else for a while and things would ease up.

Morrisy smiled. The media thought they knew it all, now that it had been made public the two women were humped after they were dead. But they didn’t know it all, only thought they did.

Quirk had assumed Morrisy was smiling at him and smiled back.

The way a shark might smile at a smaller shark.

R
ISING STRAIGHT UP
from the bed, Mary gazed down at her sleeping form, then drifted inches from the ceiling, swooped low, and passed through the window pane as if it were a sheet of cold water.

And she was high up into the night. Everything below was in vivid detail in the artificial illumination of the city. The surgical-like seams of tarred roofs, the silver turnscrews on the domed aluminum tops of streetlights, and, as she rose higher, the geometric maze of blocks and then neighborhoods. Beneath her, unaware of her, nighthawks circled, their wings winking like black sequins.

But up here the air was thin, and she was having difficulty breathing. Her lungs pumped desperately, thirsting for oxygen that existed only at lower levels. She could hear herself begin to rasp, shrill and airless screams that trailed away in the void.

She awoke with Jake on top of her, pinning her to the mattress. Her wrists were in his merciless grip, nailed to her wadded pillow. He’d worked her twisted nightgown up above her breasts, and his nude body pressed down on her with monstrous weight. She could move nothing but her head and her legs. She thrashed her legs helplessly in the air, pounding his buttocks with her heels. He laughed, liking that.

“Jake, damn it!”

His only answer was his bellowslike breathing.

“Goddammit, Jake, get
off
me!”

For an instant he raised his sweating body and she could breathe. Then he was tight and hot against her again, and inside her even though she was still dry. She heard herself whine, then bit her lip against the pain.

“Mary likes that, huh?” he asked.

She made no sound.

He began the relentless rhythm.

He’d at least used some kind of lubricant, probably the K-Y jelly, so the pain lessened somewhat. He grunted, probing her particularly deep, seeking soft distances.

“Like that?” he asked again.

He released her wrists; what could she do with her hands now anyway?

After shifting his weight slightly, he began moving faster. Thrusting! Thrusting!

A woman in the room was moaning, her breath catching. Who it was Mary had no idea. What was happening had nothing to do with her. Nothing.

She lay as if crucified with her limp arms spread wide, gazing up into darkness and listening to the perfect rhythm of the headboard beating against the wall, and in her mind she danced.

“The more you feel the music,” Mel told her that evening at the studio, “the easier it’ll be to move to it.”

He took her hand gently and led her across the dance floor to where one of the big Bose speakers was standing on its pedestal. A mambo was pounding out of it, almost loud enough to rattle Mary’s fillings.

“Put your haaand on the speaker,” Mel said, imitating a televangelist, and pressed her palm to the warm side of the wooden box.

With each drumbeat or deep bass note she could feel the speaker throb. She let the syncopated rhythm pulsate up her arm and into her body, down to the floor.

Mel raised his forefinger and cocked his head to the side, listening for the one beat. “One!” he said, sharply dipping the finger. “One, two, three, four!” His body undulated from side to side as he counted out the beat in time with the throbbing speaker, waving his finger as if it were a conductor’s baton. “That’s how you need to feel the beat with your entire body so you can dance your best,” he said. “You understand what I mean, Mary?”

She told him yes, she thought so, though she wasn’t exactly sure.

“You need even more lessons,” Mel told her, patting her hand and removing it from the speaker. He grinned. “But not to worry; I’ll have you more than ready by the time Ohio rolls around. You’re making amazing progress, Mary, really you are.”

“By the way,” she said, “there was another dancer murdered, this time in Seattle. Martha Roundner. She’s the one I asked you about. You sure you didn’t know her?”

“Can’t say as I did. Hey, they ever catch the creep that killed Danielle Verlane?”

“Not yet.”

“So let’s mambo!” Mel said, leading her back toward the center of the floor. In the corner of her vision she saw Ray Huggins enter the studio and walk toward his office. He glanced over at her, paused staring for a moment with his fists on his hips, then flashed her a wide smile and clapped his hands. “Way to move, Mary!”

She thought of waving to him, but Mel led her into an arm check and she was whirling so he could pick her up on the one beat.

Finally the music stopped and he stepped away, grinning and wiping the back of his wrist across his forehead. “You got it tonight, hon. Let’s do something slower now so you don’t wear out the instructor.” He trod smoothly toward the stereo to put in another tape. Over his shoulder: “What’ll it be, waltz, fox-trot, or tango?”

“Tango.”

“Big surprise,” Mel said. He studied the cassettes, then drew one from the shelf and slipped it into the stereo. After punching the Play button, he turned back to face her.

“I’d like to work some more on my promenade turns,” Mary said, in the silence at the beginning of the tape.

“Anything you want, Mary.”

He came back and drew her into dance position, and when the music started they began to tango. She was pleased to learn that the head motion and smoothness she’d achieved practicing by herself in her apartment were still in her dance. Her responses to Mel’s lead were automatic.

“Beeeeautiful!” Mel said, taking her through a pivot.

She thought so, too.

When the lesson was over, Mary sat on the vinyl bench to change back into her street shoes.

A warm draft whirled around her ankles as Helen shoved through the door carrying her dance shoes.

“Hi, Mary Mary,” she said. “Like these?”

She held out the new shoes for Mary to look at more closely. They were Latin, open-toed models with straps and inch-and-a-half high heels. Made of silky silver material etched with thin dark lines of no discernible pattern, like delicately veined marble.

“They’re called ‘Cracked Ice’ in the catalogue,” Helen said, sitting down and slipping off her black leather pumps. “Aren’t they just great!”

“Terrific,” Mary said, and meant it. If her dress were the right color, she wouldn’t mind wearing shoes like them in the Ohio competition.

“I read he had sex with her after she was dead,” Helen said.

“Wha—?”

“The guy that killed the dancer down in New Orleans. He was a whatchamacallit.”

“Necrophiliac.”

“That’s it.” Helen worked her feet into her new shoes and doubled over to buckle the straps; her voice was momentarily muffled. “Double-yuk! Imagine some sicko wanting to get it on with a corpse.” She sat up straight and breathed out huffily. “Had to be the husband.”

Mary was surprised. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, the husband’s always the prime suspect anyway, because usually he turns out to be the murderer. And I heard of it before, husbands wanting to screw dead wives. It’s some kinda total male domination thing.”

“That’s insane.”

“Hey, don’t get so upset. It’s the weirdo husbands that’re insane.”

“You must still be bitter about your divorce.”

“Better believe it, Mary Mary.”

“I mean, you talk like necrophilia’s a common domestic problem, like not putting down the toilet seat.”

“No, no, it’s rare, I admit. Just like somebody killing his wife. And when there’s sex after death, odds are it’s the husband. I mean, if he was wacky enough to kill her in the first place, why’s it so hard to believe he carried things farther?”

“He didn’t kill her in the first place.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“The woman in Seattle. She was probably killed by the same man.”

“Not necessarily. I read where that one was laid after she was dead, too, though.” Helen clucked her tongue. “And you said it wasn’t common.”

“If Rene Verlane killed his wife, how come he traveled to Seattle to try to find her killer?”

“How do you know he did that?”

“I ta—I saw it on the news.”

Helen grinned slyly. “It’d be a peachy way to try to avert suspicion, wouldn’t it? Pretend the same man killed your wife and the woman in Seattle. Even go to Seattle and act like you’re trying to prove it.”

“You’re only speculating,” Mary said, “and pretty wildly at that.”

“Oh, I know. Fact is, except for the killing part, a guy like that might make the perfect husband if he was rich; I mean, you’d never have to fake another orgasm.”

“God, you’re something, Helen.”

“Maybe, but I don’t murder dancers.”

“And you don’t know who does, so you oughta be careful what conclusions you jump to.”

She looked at Mary curiously. “What the hell, I’m not on a jury, so no harm done.”

“But someday somebody just like you might be on Rene Verlane’s jury, and send him to the electric chair or whatever they use in Louisiana.”

“It’s possible, I guess,” Helen said, standing up and rocking back and forth in her new shoes. She waved to her instructor, Nick, who’d just emerged from Huggins’s office. “It’s possible, too, he’s guilty as original sin.”

“Hey!” Nick said. “Tango time!”

Mary watched Helen, head bowed and studying her feet in their new silver shoes, follow him out onto the dance floor.

Cracked Ice, Mary thought. Cracked Helen.

S
HE WANTED TO CALL
him but knew she shouldn’t. At this point there was nothing more for her to say to Rene Verlane. Mary thought that for once she’d handled the situation perfectly; the phone conversation had gone better than she’d thought possible. To try extending their tenuous relationship now, on her initiative, would be like adding too much of an ingredient to a successful recipe. Rene had her number, and if he wanted to talk to her, he’d call.

Mary considered, then denied, that she might simply be afraid to call. He might not
want
to talk to her next time. The balance of credibility might tilt and he’d regard her as a thrill-seeking crackpot using the phone for long-distance kicks. She wasn’t that at all, and she didn’t want him to see her that way. It was his turn to call; she’d asked him to dance, and now he should lead.

She did call Angie, who said she was feeling better and not drinking and needed to be alone that night. It wasn’t that you didn’t love your kids when they grew up, she told Mary, but you needed time by yourself.

“With Fred, you mean?” Mary asked.

“No, not with Fred. Not tonight. You okay, Mary? You’re the one that doesn’t sound quite with the program tonight. Jake there with you?”

“He’s at work.”

“Good.”

Mary wound up assuring Angie that
she
was just fine, then hung up. She didn’t mind being alone herself.

There was no mention of either murder on the ten o’clock news. Mary swallowed the last of her chilled white wine and carried the glass into the kitchen. Was Angie right now drinking something stronger than wine? Wine wasn’t like gin or scotch or bourbon; wine was a connoisseur’s drink and could be controlled. Still, Mary didn’t like the thought of Angie trying to exercise that control, so she made it a point never to drink wine in her presence.

She rinsed out the glass, dried it, and admired the rainbowed world of light in it before replacing it stem up in the cabinet. She’d hoped the wine would make her sleepy, but it hadn’t. Some source of energy seemed to have infected her blood like a virus.

She walked into the bedroom and got undressed. There was always the possibility Jake might come home early, so she decided against practicing nude. She put on her nightgown and Latin shoes, then went into the spare bedroom to dance.

Though she felt a stiffness in her knees and hips at first, within a few minutes her body was inundated with the rhythm of the taped music, and the steps, the moves, began to flow. She did rumba for a while, concentrating on making her Cuban motion smooth and precise, holding the slow count and shifting weight completely. Then she worked on the smooth dances, fox-trot, waltz, and tango.

In the middle of a series of pivots, she caught slight movement from the corner of her eye and dug in the ball of her foot to stop.

Jake was leaning hipshot against the doorjamb with his arms crossed, grinning at her, like a street-corner lounger eyeing passing skirts.

She caught her breath. Swallowed. “Didn’t hear you come in.”

“I’d have worked overtime,” he said, “only the fucking boss got my job classification mixed up. Everything about that place is exactly what’s wrong with American industry.”

“So why not talk to
his
boss?”

“Ha!
His
boss is even more fucked up than he is. I mean, that guy is
royally
fucked up.”