Solitary Dancer (25 page)

Grizzly held a hand out toward the Gypsy, keeping his eyes on Django, and the Gypsy, still muttering to herself, reached inside the parka and withdrew a blue-steel snub-nosed revolver.

At the sight of the gun, Django panicked and tried to stand and run until Grizzly's boot shot out and the blow to Django's chest sent him rolling on his side, deep within the storage shed, facing the open door, watching it all.

The Gypsy was staring down at the gun, turning it over in her hand like maybe her name was written on it somewhere.

Grizzly raised his right arm again, stretching it out toward the Gypsy, his fingers moving in an impatient give-it-to-me motion while Django watched, unable to take his eyes off her and the gun in her hand.

The Gypsy was still muttering something to herself and her other hand, the free one, rose to stroke the welt on her neck. She took a step toward Grizzly, raising the gun.

Django didn't hear what she said, never heard anything above the sound of traffic out on Washington, but Grizzly heard it. A puzzled expression crossed his face, and when the big man turned to look at her for the first time, she raised the gun to the level of his head and fired.

The bullet struck Grizzly in the face, shattering his lower jaw. He dropped to his knees, keeping his arm outstretched to her, still wanting the gun and she repeated the words and fired into his shoulder. Still Grizzly remained kneeling until a third and a fourth bullet entered his chest, the Gypsy talking to herself between each squeeze of the trigger. She stepped toward Grizzly's prone body and shot him again, repeated the words and shot him a sixth time before squeezing the trigger on an empty chamber.

Garce had ducked against the building at the first shot, crouching there, watching it all. Now the Gypsy raised the gun in his direction and pulled the trigger again, then swung her arm toward Django and tried to shoot him. Django heard the hammer click harmlessly, watching as the Gypsy slouched to the ground where she sat and stared openmouthed at Grizzly's body.

Django wriggled through the open doorway. Garce, circling Grizzly's body, his eyes on the river of blood running down the slight incline toward the alley, almost tripped over him.

“He'p me, Garce,' Django said. “Get the wires. Or cops'll find me, we all be in shit.” Garce knelt beside Django and untwisted the wire before bolting away, Django behind him, glancing briefly back at the Gypsy who was still watching Grizzly, the empty gun pointed at him like she was daring him to get up. Like she could do anything about it if he suddenly came alive to hurt her again.

Django and Garce ran together down the lane and along Washington in the direction of the Common until Garce noticed people watching them, a Cuban and a black, street people, running in panic, one of them with fresh blood on his face. Had to be bad news, keep an eye on those hoodlums, and Garce and Django ducked around the corner on Oak Street, through a parking lot and down a service lane. At the end Garce sat against a dumpster smelling of rotting Oriental food and rested his head in his hands, his breath sounding like a steam engine at rest.

Django paced in circles in front of him. “D'ja know he doin' that?” Django said. “He ready to blast me?”

Garce shook his head. “Said you had a lesson comin',” Garce said. “Din't know wha' kind.”

“Listen,” Django said. “Hear?”

They both held their breath as a police siren approached from the north, and Garce leaned forward to look down the lane toward Washington, watching two police cars scream past.

“See you 'round,” Garce said, standing. He grinned almost shyly at Django. “You gotta be the luckiest black man in Boston.”

Django nodded. He was thinking of his hotel room, the few belongings he had, the little bit of his money stashed away behind the loose baseboard under the bed. Two thousand dollars nearly. Enough to get him started, set him up, think about where he'd go, what he'd do.

Garce was already walking down the lane, hands in the back pockets of his tight black jeans, swivel-hipping away.

“Hey, Garce,” Django called.

Garce stopped and turned to look at Django warily. “Wha'?”

“What she be sayin'?” Django asked. “The Gypsy, she mutterin' somethin', I couldn't hear. You hear what that crazy woman sayin'?”

Garce smiled and nodded. “She prayin'. But she couldn't get pas' the firs' par'.”

“Prayin'?”

Garce nodded again. “She say, ‘Our father, who art in heaven, hallow be thy name,' thas' what the craz' bitch sayin' over and over. Craz' bitch.”

“You have a message,” Ronnie Schantz told McGuire over the telephone.

McGuire lifted a coffee cup to his lips. From upstairs he could hear the sound of the shower. “What is it?” he asked.

“Somebody invited you to dinner tonight. He just called a few moments ago, said this was the number Berkeley Street gave him.”

“Who?”

“Man named Harley DeMontford. Ever heard of him?”

“Yeah,” McGuire said. “I've heard of him.”

It swept over him again, propelled by the prospect of pain, the knowledge that Micki was already planning another departure from him, the awareness that he would be able to hold back the distress and depression for only a few hours until it crushed him again.

And he wanted a taste, a ripple of the wave that the meperidine could ride to him. He wanted to escape with it on the warm wave of vertigo he had ridden for so many weeks. . . .

Ronnie was speaking to him. He rubbed his forehead, told himself to dredge up some goddamn courage and listen to her voice.

“Sounded very nice on the telephone. Very cultured. If you go, you may have to come up and change into one of your suits. Dinner's at six o'clock. In the dining room at the Four Seasons.”

McGuire released a slow whistle. “Let me talk to Ollie.”

He heard a click on the line before Ollie's voice rasped through his speaker phone. “Joseph!” his former partner barked. “Where are you?”

“Newbury Street,” McGuire said. “Heather Lorenzo's apartment.”

“Scene of the crime. One of 'em anyway. What the hell you doin' there?”

“I'm with Micki.”

Ollie waited a beat or two before speaking, more slowly, more gently now. “Ronnie tell you about your dinner date?”

“She told me.”

“Who's Harley DeMontford?”

“Owns a stock brokerage. Dan Scrignoli fingered him in a Green Team operation and turned him, got him to name some names.”

“And DeMontford gets off the hook.”

“Scrignoli says he's one guy in a big bunch, he's a small price to pay.”

“So what's he want with you?”

“Heather Lorenzo was blackmailing DeMontford. There's no evidence, no paper trail. Scrignoli told me about it.”

“This guy DeMontford, he married?”

“So I hear.”

“Lemme guess. Once a month his accountant adds up his net worth, pays him a visit and says, ‘Harley, you really love your wife, don't you?' and old Harley looks at the balance sheet and says, ‘Sure as hell do.'”

McGuire smiled. “That's what it sounds like.”

“And if it spills that DeMontford was doing elbow push-ups on Heather Lorenzo, DeMontford threatens to take his chances in court instead of testifying against his country club buddies, that the way it works?”

“Without DeMontford, Scrignoli's case might not even make it to the grand jury.”

“Who talked to him from Fat Eddie's group?”

“According to Scrignoli, nobody.”

“They nuts over there? Timmy Fox is dead, it's got something to do with the Lorenzo thing, he's banging her for bucks and nobody's talked to him?”

“Calm down, Ollie,” McGuire began.

To McGuire's surprise, Ollie did. McGuire heard three long noisy breaths drawn in and exhaled, then Ollie's voice again. “You know something, don't you?”

“Yeah, I do,” McGuire said.

“What?”

“I know DeMontford's involved.”

“Where was he that night the Lorenzo woman was killed?”

“On Cape Cod with Dan Scrignoli, pulling all the parts of Danny's case together.”

“So what're you saying, DeMontford got some goon to do her?”

“No,” McGuire said, leaning back in his chair and stretching his legs in front of him. “That's not what I'm saying at all.”

Billie was out of cigarettes, which was a royal pain in the ass. She was also on her second pot of coffee, sitting there watching the goddamn television, bunch of crazy people on talk shows, where the hell do they get these freaks?

Maybe the telephone wasn't working. It had happened before, Dewey trying to reach her one afternoon and some jerk working on the roof clipped the telephone lines, didn't tell anybody about it.

Don't be stupid. The telephone's working.

So why hasn't he called?

Go out and get some cigarettes and he'll call for sure. Why didn't she get an answering machine last month when she saw them on sale, fifty bucks? Could use one now.

Maybe she'd have a drink, a little taste of Wild Turkey from the bottle in the cupboard behind the oatmeal.

She stood up, took three steps toward the kitchen and detoured past the telephone, picked up the receiver.

Damn thing's working.

“I'm going for a walk.” Micki handed McGuire a brass key. “Take this in case . . . in case I'm not here when you get back, okay?”

Micki stood in the open bedroom doorway watching McGuire, who lay back with his hands clasped behind his head. He had been thinking of small white pills.

“I don't belong here anymore.” Her face shattered like a fearful child's. “No, don't, please,” she added as McGuire began to rise from the bed to reach for her. “I'm going back to Florida tomorrow. I'll let you know where I am, what I'm doing. Okay?”

“What happened?”

The question seemed to stun her. “What?”

“What are you afraid of?” McGuire said gently. “What's the worst that can happen? We try to make it work again and it doesn't? Is that what scares you?”

“Yes.” She raised her eyes to the ceiling and bit her lower lip.

“But isn't it worth trying anyway?”

“No.” She shook her head vigorously, like a terrier. “Not unless I know for sure.”

“There's nothing to know for sure.”

“
I never knew you!
” She held her small hands at her waist, her fists clenched like an angry schoolgirl's, and when she spoke she kept her eyes closed, maybe concentrating on her words, maybe blocking out the sight of McGuire, he didn't know. “I don't know who you are. Who are you? Do you know? Are you some tough son of a bitch like other people, the ones you work with, think you are? But you're
not
. There were times when I wanted you to get angry with
me
,
just to let it out, but you didn't or you couldn't, you just withdrew, over and over, until something would happen, I never knew what, and you'd put your head on my chest and cry like a baby and . . .”

“Micki—”

“. . . and I never knew why, you'd never tell me. Who the hell are you anyway? I mean really, inside? Do you know yourself?”

“Maybe I never gave a damn. About knowing who I was.”

“Yes, you did, yes, you did. You were just
scared
to find out. You were
scared
, and it frightened me, it scared the hell out of
me.
That's what made you dangerous, can't you see that? Other men, they can hit me or threaten me, I can deal with that because . . . because it's
there
, it's in front of me, but you . . . It was all hidden, it's
still
all hidden and . . . Can't you
see
?”

McGuire couldn't see. Looking that deeply and darkly within himself would be like asking him to see the back of his head without a mirror. “Why are you saying all of this now?” he said. “Why now?”

“Because . . . because I started feeling something for you all over again and I had to remind myself that . . . that I need somebody who knows who he is, not some big kid who acts tough and really isn't and will never know. Don't you understand how that can scare somebody close to you? Don't you?”

McGuire lay there for a very long time after she turned and descended the steps, after the door at the bottom of the stairs had closed and after his body had shook with spasms of sadness and despair.

“You will at least have an enjoyable meal.”

Rudy Zelinka smiled at McGuire across his untidy desk. Outside, on the square in front of the old courthouse, a weak sun cast pale shadows across empty concrete walks and over flower beds crowded with frost-killed flowers.

“And a wonderful view of the Public Garden,” Zelinka added. “I understand DeMontford has a table reserved for his exclusive use in one of the bay windows on Boylston Street.”

“I didn't expect him to do something like this,” McGuire said. “Inviting me to dinner. I called just to poke him a little, see if he'd panic.”

Zelinka thrust out a bottom lip. “It fits the man's personality, from what I know of him. Stay aloof, in control. You come at him in a vulgar manner, he responds with formality.”

“What do you figure he'll talk about?”

“He'll want to impress you with his power. Discover perhaps how much you know, in an atmosphere where he cannot incriminate himself.” The cold smile returned. “Perhaps he will offer you a job. He'll certainly want to protect himself.” Zelinka made a tent with his hands. “I should tell you that enquiries have been made at Berkeley Street, delicate discreet enquiries by a prominent criminal lawyer acting on Mr. DeMontford's behalf.”

“Wondering what you've got on his client,” McGuire said.

“Yes, but more pointed than that. The lawyer is aware of DeMontford's agreement to cooperate with Scrignoli's investigation and suggested that he could advise his client to cease such activities unless Dan Scrignoli is the only officer dealing with him. Anybody else approaches him and he'll simply refuse to cooperate.”

“Scrignoli's the only one he trusts?”

Zelinka smiled and watched McGuire.

“Still doesn't make sense,” McGuire said. “I'm on the fringe of things. All I know is what you and Scrignoli tell me.”

“I believe you know more than anyone else, perhaps even me.”

“I've got some suspicions, ideas. . . .”

“You have far more than that,” Zelinka said. “I think you have worked many problems out in your head to this point, hmm?” The Hungarian pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows.

“A few.” McGuire was hesitant, unsure about how much he should share with Zelinka. “Tell me again why DeMontford, who probably never heard of me before I called him, invites me to dinner.”

“Never heard of you?” Zelinka spread his arms wide. “Don't be so modest. He knows of you. Mr. DeMontford is very active in church diocese activities and he remembers your involvement in the serial killer of priests several years ago. To him, you are perhaps a minor celebrity.”

Zelinka lowered his hands and leaned forward, fixing McGuire with his dark eyes.

“But I suspect it's because you are unthreatening to him. And you may be a source of information, a conduit even. The man is fearful, McGuire. He maintains a cool exterior but beneath it he is panic-stricken. Within a few months he could find himself bereft of his marriage, his business and his freedom.” He smiled. “I love that word, bereft. It addresses the feelings the man will have while pondering his foolishness.”

“How do you know so much about DeMontford?” McGuire said. “You're Internal Affairs, DeMontford's a Team Green source.”

“I said I despise computers, McGuire. I did not say I refuse to use them. You may have noticed the terminal in the outer office.”

“Somebody's opening files for you, sending you reports from Berkeley Street.”

“I'm learning all I need to know without leaving any fingerprints.”

“From who? Brookmyer?”

“It doesn't matter who.” Zelinka looked away, smiled to himself, looked back at McGuire. “Brookmyer handles the transmissions and the commissioner has authorized his cooperation. Brookmyer himself is not accessing the files. You may be surprised at who is.”

“So tell me.”

“Captain Vance.”

It was McGuire's turn to smile. “Fat Eddie? He's running things for you?”

“Don't underestimate him.” Zelinka shrugged. “Due to the complexities of this case, access to information must be restricted to higher levels of authority. Whenever higher levels of authority are involved, Eddie Vance suddenly discovers new abilities neither he nor the rest of us were aware of.” Zelinka withdrew a pen from the inside pocket of his worn tweed jacket. “Now if you'll tell me what you know of Tim Fox's death and any related information, I will tell you what you may want to know before having dinner with the elegant Mr. DeMontford.”

At the door, Zelinka touched McGuire on the shoulder. “Have you won?” he said.

“Won what?”

“Whatever you win when you divest yourself of something that is destroying you.”

“Nothing to win,” McGuire said. “Nothing to lose.”

Descending the stairs, McGuire realized that Zelinka had been referring to his meperidine addiction and not to Micki.

Well, she'd be damned if she'd call
him
.
Phoned him twice this morning, left messages both times, how much more can a girl do?

Billie rose from her chair, fell back, rose again and reached out to steady herself against the battered walnut end table.

Out of cigarettes, out of bourbon, out of men, she thought. Then she grinned. Hell, I'm out of a job too. So what do I need first?

“Cigarettes and bourbon,” she said aloud. Then look for a job. Get a job, get out and around, find another man, men're the easiest part. It's the
good
men, the decent ones, guys you can
trust
, they're the hard ones to find and hold on to.

She dressed in an old pair of slacks, heavy sweater, flat shoes. Ran a brush through her hair, smeared a little lipstick on her mouth, sprayed some L'Air du Temps on her neck, never know who you might meet on the street. Checked herself in the mirror, frowned, pulled her sweater up to her neck and removed her bra. Walked into the bedroom to find another one, a French model with wire under the cups, give her a better bust line.