Shadow Dancers (42 page)

The figures moving back and forth across the screen were mostly black people. They wore robes and pajamas with overcoats thrown over their shoulders. They brandished sticks and other objects. Police were getting in and out of patrol cars. Neighborhood merchants discussed the awful scourge of the Dancer and the heavy toll exacted on small businesses that remained open all night.

A tall, attractive black woman appeared on the screen, her throat swaddled in bandages. In a rasping, rapid-fire delivery, peppered with expletives, she related her experience to reporters. She was shortly followed by a tall, rumpled detective with a thatch of white hair and staring eyes that gave him the fierce look of a totem god. He stood in a hospital corridor growling curt replies at clamorous reporters and seemed anxious to go.

As he quickly summarized all that was known by the police up until that time, Janine McConkey attempted to follow developments, but the thought of Warren Mars obsessed her, crowding everything else from her mind. Where was he at that moment and, more critically, had he any idea where she was? The thought that he might almost suffocated her with panic.

She knew Warren well enough to know that eventually he would come after her. Once his mind was set on something, nothing could deflect him. He would not stop until the business was accomplished. Indeed, hadn’t that been precisely the case with poor Mickey?

It was unlikely that Warren knew where she was at that moment. She told no one where she was going. She’d left no forwarding address. No one had seen her leave the apartment. No one, to the best of her knowledge, had followed her to the Port Authority building and watched her purchase a ticket or board the bus to Philadelphia—at least, no one she was aware of. However, with Warren, you could never be certain. His powers of tracking were uncanny, and, while he’d never met her old friend, Bobbie Murdoch, whom she’d known since they met in a foundling home when they were both five years old, she had often spoken to him of Bobbie. She couldn’t be certain, however, if she’d ever mentioned to him the fact that she lived in Philadelphia.

“… Janine McConkey, aged twenty-three …” The sound of her name droning quietly over the television speakers sounded curiously alien to her, like the name of someone else. Some perfect stranger. It was only when the snapshot of her, a fairly recent one taken at an outing the year before at Coney Island, flashed on the screen and the name and face came suddenly together that she recognized herself.

“… believed to be a vital link to the Dancer …” The voice droned on through the darkened room, even as the image of her face smiled pleasantly out at her over the airwaves.

“… police are searching desperately for this young woman who it is said may hold the key to the identity and whereabouts of the Shadow Dancer. Police characterize her sudden disappearance from both her home and job as ominous. Sources fear she may have been abducted by the Dancer and her life may be in danger.... Any person having information leading to the whereabouts of Miss McConkey is urged to call the following toll-free number: one eight hundred, six two four, five three hundred. All calls will be kept strictly confidential.”

Her image faded from the screen, leaving in its place a scene of a soccer game in a teeming stadium in São Paulo, where thousands of fans had proceeded to riot. Long after her image had faded, she continued to sit there on the futon, her head swimming, her knees drawn up tight to her chest while she hugged them for dear life. She had the feeling that if she dared let go, she’d be swept off by some swift, engulfing tide.

She started up to wake Bobbie and tell her. Then, she thought better of it. If she told Bobbie that the police were searching high and low for her and, possibly, Warren too, friend or no friend, Bobbie might very well ask her to leave. She had no place to go. For her part, Janine never wanted to go out into the world again. She wanted instead to huddle there in the dark, curled up in a little ball on that lumpy futon that smelled of mold and tired bodies. Safe and warm in the dark forever.

She racked her brain, trying to figure how the police had established this “vital link” between her and Warren. She knew where they’d found the photograph. That was easy. It had been on a shelf in the kitchen. So, they’d been to the apartment and had, no doubt, searched it. But what had they found there to make the connection? There was nothing. Nothing incriminating that she could think of. A surge of elation went through her, only to be dashed the next minute when she recalled the crumpled letter, smoothed out and pressed flat beneath a stack of pots and pans in a kitchen cabinet.

Could they possibly have found it? Obviously, they had. If someone were searching, seriously searching, common sense told her that in such a tiny apartment it wouldn’t have been too difficult.

But still, how had they known enough to go to the apartment in the first place? Then she thought of Mickey and what had happened, and then it was clear. She knew at last how the connection between her and Mickey and Warren had been made. And that’s why the police now wanted her so badly. Well, they could forget about it. She had no intention of turning herself over to the police, not with Warren Mars out on the loose. Not even with Warren Mars in captivity. She knew quite well how that all worked. If information she provided resulted in Warren’s capture and conviction and they put him away for life, okay. But it seldom worked like that. More likely, the scenario ran to appeals, with the possibility that Warren would be out on bail or, if he was convicted, out on parole after serving only a few years, then declared “rehabilitated” by the penal system. Since he’d know that his conviction had stemmed largely from her testimony, it wouldn’t take Warren long after he’d been released to be around again, looking for her the first opportunity he had. Warren never forgave and never forgot.

No, there was no way in the world she was going to surrender herself to the police. Better stick your head in the oven or jump off a bridge, she thought. Instead, she was going to stay put right there, if Bobbie would let her. If not, she’d make a run for it. There was a whole country out there in which to lose oneself. She was frightened to go it alone, but anything was better than the alternative offered by the police.

Now, for the time being, for the few hours remaining until dawn, she would sit right where she was. Pull the blankets up over her head, hide in the stuffy, comforting warmth of the dark, and pray not to hear a tap or a sudden nervous scratching at the front door.

On Sunday morning Mooney slept late. It was his custom to do so, then to rise about ten, shower and shave, and while still in his robe, enjoy a long, unhurried breakfast, lingering over coffee and the racing forms. It was ritual, hence inviolate. Nothing was ever permitted to intrude.

On this particular Sunday morning, however, Mooney remained in bed. He had not slept all night. He had no particular appetite for breakfast and no great zest for news of any sort. His mood was one of anger and despair — anger that he’d been replaced by his archrival, Eddie Sylvestri, fifteen years his junior, who had already amassed a notable record for himself on the force and who was destined, so they said, for greatness; and despair that after nearly two years of hard, thankless rooting about, he’d at last picked up a strong scent of the Dancer. It was now sharper than ever before and, keenly, he felt the distance between himself and his quarry closing. But he no longer headed the case.

A bright wintery sun came streaming through the windows over 83rd Street. He could hear Fritzi out in the kitchen, puttering about. There was the smell of coffee and the doughy, slightly burned smell of pancakes frying on the griddle.

Still, he had little inclination to rise, even to the temptation of those enticements. His pride bristled far too much for him to derive any solace from the gratifications of the stomach. The prospect of now taking orders from a brash
Wunderkind
like Sylvestri, whose nose was never too far from the commissioner’s ample fundament, literally sickened him. What had kept him sleepless and tossing all night was the growing certainty he felt, that Sylvestri, capitalizing on Mooney’s hard work, would march right in now, nab the Dancer, and take all the credit for himself.

“Breakfast’s on,” Fritzi trilled from the kitchen. That was followed by a stream of coarse invectives out of the throat of Sanchez.

Mooney’s response was merely to lie there, fuming in his rumpled bedding, feeding on his own intestinal lining.

Shortly, Fritzi herself appeared in the doorway, looking cross. With an apron wrapped around her still-girlish waist, her thick reddish hair barely brushed, she made a pretty picture.

“You’re waiting for me to carry you piggyback to the table?”

“I’m not coming to the table.”

“I’ve got a stack of flapjacks out there, and you’re coming to the table.”

“I’m not hungry.”

A look of perturbation crossed her face. In the next moment, she smiled with mock commiseration. “Ah, I see we re feeling sorry for ourselves this morning.”

“Look, Fritz, I’m really not in the mood.” He rolled over on his side and faced the wall.

“I’d think you’d be relieved. I’d think you’d be ecstatic. It’s not your headache anymore. It’s that twit Sylvestri’s. He’s welcome to it, I say.”

At the mere mention of the name, Mooney’s hands flew to his ears as if to block out the hated sound.

“Now, you listen to me, Mooney. You get out of that bed and march right out there to breakfast.” She hauled down the blankets and proceeded to yank him up forcibly.

He tried several times to pull the blankets back up around him, but each time she yanked them back down. He groaned and bayed and flailed the air with his hammy fists until at last he capitulated. Robed like the priest of some esoteric cult, he permitted himself to be steered across the long living room to the pretty little breakfast nook adjoining the kitchen.

The marble refectory table was set with stoneware mugs and bright Quimper crockery. A tall tumbler of freshly squeezed orange juice stood beaded and chilled at his place and coffee gurgled fragrantly from the percolator. Even the surly, sardonic Sanchez seemed more solicitous of his feelings that morning.

“Morning, Mooney. Morning, Mooney.”

Mooney sneered at the bird and took his place grumblingly at the table. In a burst of lively chatter intended to distract him from his woes, Fritzi poured coffee and set a stack of flapjacks before him.

She kept the chatter up. Mostly it was about horses, primarily their own. The talk was almost entirely one-sided, intended to divert Mooney from his morbid thoughts. He scarcely replied, only sat there picking morosely at his pancakes and occasionally nodding at some remark.

She didn’t expect much more. She knew the depth of his disappointment and hurt, but she refused to acknowledge any of that to him. “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Mooney. You’ve done a great job.”

He gazed up at her sourly. “I’ve never been bounced from a case before.”

“That’s their tough luck.” She poured him fresh coffee. “And their bad judgment.”

“My luck, Sylvestri’ll wrap the whole thing up in the next forty-eight hours. After I’ve done all the dirty work.”

“Let him. You don’t need that. It’s his headache now. Just think, Frankie, my young buck: in another nine months or so you’re going to be free as the wind. I’ve been giving it some thought. Don’t think I haven’t. You and I are going to take six months off and do the world. Go to the race tracks everywhere. Deauville. Longchamp. Aberdeen. Baden Baden. Ascot. Chantilly. Down Royal. Del Mar. Disconnect the phone. Sleep late every morning. Do nothing. Answer to no one.”

Glowing with enthusiasm, she brought her chair up beside him and threw an arm round his burly shoulders. “How does that strike you?”

“Wonderful,” he grumbled.

“Wonderful,” Sanchez assented.

“My heart’s all a-twitter,” Mooney sneered.

Sanchez nodded. “Twitter. Twitter.”

Fritzi flung her hands up in despair. “Now, look, if you’re going to sit around here sighing and moaning…”

“I like to sigh and moan.”

“Well, if it makes you feel good.”

“It does,” he snapped with finality and rose.

“Do you hate your job?” she asked suddenly.

“I despise it. Everyone there’s a lackey and a twit.” Swelling dangerously in his rage, he glared at her. “Why the hell should that turd Sylvestri get all the glory?”

“Ah, so it’s glory we’re after? You never told me that. You always scoffed at glory.”

“What’s wrong with glory? I did all the damned work. Now he just walks in and —”

“You’re still on the case, aren’t you?”

“Sure. But under him. That’s as good as being off it. He’s not there to give me opportunities.”

Fritzi rose and started to clear the dishes. “Why should he give you opportunities? Would you give him any if the tables were turned? The answer to your problem, my friend, is quite simple.”

“Oh, yeah? What is it?”

“Make your own damned opportunities.”

He looked at her quizzically.

“Or just go out and take them,” she continued hotly. “Just don’t sit around waiting for Sylvestri to hand you something. He won’t. You’re still on the case, aren’t you? What does it matter if he’s the big honcho, or you? Honestly” — she started to load the dishwasher — “men are such babies. Go out, for Chrissake, and get that goddamn Dancer and stop worrying about fancy titles.”

“Fancy titles.” Sanchez’s voice echoed hollowly through the bright Sabbath sunlight.

Later that morning Fritzi went out to Mass. While proclaiming to the world her unyielding agnosticism, one of her secret pleasures in life was regular attendance at late Sunday morning Mass at St. Patrick’s. She’d long since given up trying to get Mooney to attend with her. His reaction to the business of institutional religion was mostly to scoff.

Left to himself that Sunday morning, his ego badly bruised, his funk deepened. Slumped in the battered old Morris chair, morose and fretful, he wondered why this struggle with Mulvaney and Sylvestri over the conduct of a police investigation that he’d failed to conclude successfully should so mingle itself with bitter memories of other, past failures, and why he should now reprove himself for the way things had turned out.