THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction (5 page)

“Guess what music was playing?” Hammond shrugged his shoulders.

“Mexican, what else. Since they’ve apparently taken over our country I think it’s only fitting that we listen to their music. Don’t you?” Receiving no reply, I continued. “Or Cuban or something with a Latin beat is all I really know. And, believe me, it’s great to dance to. Better perhaps than any of our modern
experiments
. Old people like it for sure. It’s not so frenetic but it does keep you moving.”

Whereas Sandy hesitated to attend, fearing quite justifiably the carpenter and his alcoholic girlfriend’d be there since they went every weekend, and the
proximity
of the two men might prove
too tempting
, she said,

“You go on alone. Perhaps you’ll meet someone. I’m just too tired.” Hartwig grabbed her, shook her a little and said,

“Then I’m going home.” She was a poor dancer but he’d been teaching her disco in the living room and he wanted to show her off.

“If you insist, but I’m not going.”

She was stubborn and spoiled to the hilt. Both of them were when it came to having to have their own ways. She retreated to her bedroom, locked herself in but somehow Hartwig managed to get to her. I don’t know whether it was through a window or perhaps he forced the lock. But he cornered her on her bed, pulled her up and made her get dressed. Just to make sure she went along and didn’t run away on him kept him from dressing. He, however, knew others’d be there in their sandals and shorts so what was the difference? It was a beach community. Go like you’d just come off the beach. You were there, weren’t you? The dress he picked out for her was white and summery. It’d be the beachcomber and the fashion model, perhaps a fitting combination out there.

Not two blocks from the house they ran into several neighbors. Once Sandy began chatting he let her tightly held hand go. He figured she was no longer a flight risk and just before they entered the old tavern she did make him promise.

“Just be good and don’t cause any trouble. That’s all I ask.” To which Hartwig answered,

“You think I’m crazy?”

A reasonable request, of course, if you’re dealing with rational people but they weren’t like that. Was anyone really if you stopped to think about it? None of them were, including some of the other peacemaker types in the vicinity, who caused more trouble than they made peace. On top of that they’d been drinking. Or at least the provocative ones had.

“Boy,” said Hammond, “Now I’d really like to see Hartwig knock the crap out of that Barney fellow. He does sound despicable.”

“You would? And I haven’t even been talking about him. I could say it never happened. Something did, however, it always does and here’s what it was.”

The crowd was so thick any party that couldn’t fill a table entirely was bound to share it, hopefully with friends, but if not with amicable strangers. Sandy and Hartwig sat with the Adamses, a grey haired couple both of whom were artists, and Mort the script writer who commuted between Hollywood and the beach. He’d come with Vera, another single woman out there who had money and also a weight problem. Though she had a pretty face, Mort wouldn’t look at her. She had a ribald sense of humor and was funny as hell. That’s why he put up with her. He’d once made a play for Sandy and been rejected but they were still friends and he had no objection to Hartwig, who he found quite intelligent and more than once had suggested a screen test for him. The Adamses, the woman and the man, though fun, were figure and landscape painters respectively and not very good. Hartwig’d seen their works at the local gallery and though Sandy had bought several of their things, which hung in her home and she’d told Hartwig how great they were, his reply’d been.

“Yes, I’m sure. They’re lucky to have you as a client otherwise they’d have nothing to live on.” Made in jest, I’m sure, for the couple had other money otherwise they wouldn’t’ve been there, but,

“That’s not a very nice thing to say.” He’d managed to insult Sandy’s integrity in the process. To the Adamses, however, he was unctuously sweet. He claimed it was a painful exercise just not to talk about painting in their presence especially as he considered it such an interesting subject.

“And,” I said to Hammond, “Guess who took the table on the other side of the dance floor virtually opposite to where they sat?”

“The Pope … Now really, Pearson, you know how I hate these guessing games.”

“The giant and the beauty,” I said, “along with several of his henchmen from the swamp.”

Call them bodyguards if you like, though I’m sure the convict’s ego’d never admit that he needed any such entity. They wore hats that sat on their heads like beehives and they walked like sloths with sloped shoulders and long, dangling arms. They’d set their head pieces on the table and were waiting for the music. She had worn a pink orchid in her long flowing hair and a print Hawaiian dress. Like a diamond in a dark room it was hard to take your eyes off her.

The musicians in their ranchero costumes and sombreros were gathered on a dais opposite the floor level bar at the other end of the hall, screeching their various instruments in warm up mode. The spotlights, which shone on a revolving multi-faceted globe that resembled the eye of an insect, cast rays of light in an otherwise dark setting. One of the bartenders and part owner, sprinkled mica dust on the floor. The leader of the band stepped forward and in quite good English, announced the first tune upon which couples filtered from their seats and took the floor. With the bay windows all along the western wall, the ocean in the offing, it was the perfect setting and mood for a dance. But what battlefield hasn’t been idyllic before soldiers and their weapons took to it. You just name one. All crowded into one corner table, were the wives and children of the players. They were the only Latinos there.

The evening began on a romantic note. Couples danced, waitresses zigzagged their way between the two tables with drinks and food. The owner, an Irishman they called
Big Red
, stood behind the bar helping out now and then; sometimes with arms folded … I’m sure licking his chops as to how profitable the night might be. Band nights were big for him. That’s where he made his money. Without them he’d have to close up.

Hartwig said he saw no cause for trouble as he’d perhaps hoped. He and Sandy danced. People rubbed against one another and accidentally bumped. He gave Vera a turn or two, and the couple glided past the giant and the beauty easily like two fish slithering by one another in a stream. The sloths may’ve been a little clumsy with their partners but they at least danced. They were out there trying. What more can one ask of one with limited ability or any ability for that matter?

The band took a break and began another session. After tiring out Sandy, Vera and the artist’s wife, all of whom Hartwig danced with, he got a strange notion into his head.

“Wonder if she’d dance?” He turned to Mort and pointed across the floor to where the
beauty
sat.

“Don’t know,” said Mort. “Why don’t you go ask her?” That, of course, was all Hartwig needed. With the drinks he’d had despite the exercise, he was just loose enough to ask. He’d seen her dance and she danced really well. So, guess what …?”

“What?”

“Hartwig went over and asked her to dance and she said yes and the fool allowed her go onto the dance floor with his worst enemy or rival or whatever those two had become to one another.”

“And the bully had no compunctions, he let her go?”

“Yes,” I said, “at first anyhow.”

He must’ve been waiting on tenterhooks for her to turn Hartwig down on her own but when she hadn’t, he didn’t want to show timidity by objecting. The idea is she’ll come back to you having found out what a dud the rival turned out to be and your hold over her’ll be even greater than it was for having taken the risk. Maybe she’ll fall for the other and that’ll be your own tough luck. Barney smiled kindly, confidently as the beauty rose and shaking her butt followed Hartwig out onto the dance floor.

I call this man a giant. He wasn’t, of course. Though he was six feet six and towered over Hartwig, I doubt if he weighed as much. He was all legs with yet a long trunk, narrow bowed shoulders like one of those long legged birds with hunched wings and long neck we sometimes see in wetlands. He didn’t have a bill, naturally, but his nose was adequate, his jaw prominent and long in the Neanderthal tradition and his eyes were connected at the bridge by overlapping hairy eyebrows. When he smiled it was like a skull smiling at you, very preoccupying. But he wasn’t bad looking, or at least the women thought so and he also possessed a certain flirtatious charm.

He had a receding hairline and he maintained a constant nervous energy about him, which was actually for the most part upbeat and must’ve been amply sustained by the hard life he’d lived.
Chosen
by himself, of course. I winked at Hammond, despite what Plato suggests to the contrary that no one would willingly choose a wrong path in his life. The man had been in and out of prison, was currently on probation. In the slammer he’d learned to box a little but wasn’t nearly as proficient as he thought he was. Because he was so tall and skinny, in his weight class he’d always looked down on his challengers. It took a usually shorter opponent with special courage to charge through his stinging defense, but once a good man had the carpenter cracked like a reed in the wind. He was just too thin not to. But in the baggy clothes he wore, he presented a towering, almost invulnerable figure. At least that’s how the beach crowd had accepted him. And there was no doubt about it, he was a strong, wiry man with powerful hands from wielding a hammer all day at least when he worked. Though not steady, that was often enough, often enough.

It’s difficult to say why one man fears another but among a crowd of normal citizens, an ex-con always presents a conundrum. He’s overstepped a line none of them’d cross and what was to prevent him from doing that again. As to why he chastised the boy I’ve already said. As to challenging some of the lifeguards or town firemen, who really were big fellows, like professional linemen, he was smart enough to avoid them entirely. If one of them looked at his woman, as was often the case, he’d grab her and they’d move on to another place. That’s one of the reasons they were constantly fighting and drifting from bar to bar. At Oceanview, of course, there were only two but there was one in Salinas, a small town nearby.

When Hartwig made his move, it wasn’t just to engage his new partner for one dance; it was for the entire evening. In his inebriated state I’m sure that’s what he intended. And not without some justification since he’d tired his other partners out.

You can say other things about him but the man could dance, especially with a few drinks under his belt. Fox trot, rumba, bop, twist, hip-hop, the jerk, he’d kept up with them. And this was Latin music, his favorite of all.

Chapter Five

Of course, it’s one thing to hand your girlfriend over to a virtual enemy out of decorum for a dance or two; another to end up like you’re watching an elimination contest where only two couples end up on the floor to receive the grand prize, but that’s nearly what happened here. Evidently Hartwig and the woman, Sarah, partnered nearly perfectly together. The two couples moved in synch like one, the cha, cha, the merengue, cumbia, samba, you name it. And all this while the giant looked on as a circle widened around his girlfriend and Hartwig with the beauty, who sometimes smiled, sometimes pouted like a professional who knew what she was doing. Her hair shined as it caught the light. The other dancers stopped to gawk, realizing they’d been outclassed. And then it’s not so bad to watch someone better than you. It can even be enlightening. As a crowning insult, however, the band accepted the solo routine and directed its music to those two alone. They could be considered lovers.

“What’dya think of that?” One of the sloths said to Barney. “Not only did you let her go out and dance with that imposter but you’ve ruined it for everyone else. They’ve … they’ve taken over the floor. Go get her, why don’t’cha Barney?”

“Not yet,” said the tall man as he rubbed his chin undoubtedly making some quick mental calculations.

Sandy, who was peeking at the bilious affair through her fingers, was angry. Even her old friend the cook in his floppy hat had emerged from the kitchen to admiringly watch, which further embarrassed her.

“Look at that son of a bitch,” she said to Mort. “What’d I come with him for? How dare he? I’m going home.” And she stood up grabbing her coat from the back of her chair as Mort, the card, pulled her back down. She fell into it.

“You … you could always go over and ask the string bean to dance. Look at him sitting there like a gawking bird. He … he’s so flustered he doesn’t know what to do. He’s a wallflower, ha, ha, ha.”

“Very funny. Why don’t you go ask him to dance?” Sandy pouted. “He’s more your type.” And she stared at him furiously.

But no matter from what standpoint you criticized the newly found partners they were inspirational to watch. Like people talking in tongues, they created a belated enchantment. Many of the older people in the crowd had forgotten two people could move that well.

“So,” said Hammond, “the band ended the piece, took a break and everyone went happily back to their seats.”

“No quite,” I said.

The band would have to begin a tango, easily the most suggestive dance of them all. That’s where you whirl your partner by the waist; suddenly dip her to the floor, which her hair, if long, actually touches. Then you lift her up and rub crotches like you’re engaged in coitus. There’s something nowadays like it called the
bump
, another unintelligent name for a crude expression. The tango, however, is merely an art form but try to tell a jealous boyfriend that. Good luck if you can get him to understand you. It’s like ‘doing it’, mind you, ‘doing it’.

On the third dip or so Barney was up out of his seat like a shot’d been fired. He’d become so furious merely watching the spectacle the forced adrenalin that surged through his system had brought him back to relative sobriety. He knocked over a chair and leapt onto the dance floor like a cat alighting from a tree; crept up behind the couple as they’d just risen from what … from another dip, of course, what else.

Hartwig felt a poke in the back. It almost knocked him off balance. It felt like he’d been jabbed with an iron bar, but as he released his grip on his partner, turned around and faced the giant he saw it was only the carpenter’s bony forefinger, not a lethal weapon. The angry carpenter spoke the first words.

“Time to cut in, this’ my dance,” he moved aside to grab his girlfriend, she fell back and the gallant Hartwig said,

“Oh, it’s you. Here’s your answer,” and gave him a mighty shove. Barney, with rigid joints, sailed across the slick floor like an iceboat on a frozen pond.

“That must’ve been some shove,” said Hammond.

“It was I’m sure,” I said, “just like the poke, and one Hartwig’d been waiting for. Too bad it couldn’t’ve ended there. The dancers liked it so much they began to clap in all likelihood thinking it was a skit of some sort. It wasn’t, of course, as subsequent events proved.”

Monahan, the large freckle-faced bartender, who in his plaid vest was also part owner had a bird’s eye view of the fracas and jumped over the counter in seconds with a shillelagh in his hand. He stepped between the two men just as Barney recovered himself and Hartwig’d faced him.

“Now, listen you two.” Monahan having tucked the club into his belt, held a hand to either of their chests, and wedged them apart, “If you’re going to insist on this ‘sort’ (he spat out) of behavior you’ll have to take it outside. We can’t have that in here. This’ a peaceful place of business.” His eyes rolled back in his head.

The two looked at him, not very confidently and without another thought as though they’d understood one another sympathetically they crossed the dance floor and walked out the front door to the dimly lit parking lot. No ice rink now but hard packed sand, the perfect media for that sort of thing. Fall down and you get hurt a little but you don’t get killed. Can you imagine if the two’d gone at it in
there?
Everything’d been broken up as they’d slid from side to side in an attempt to keep their balances while they pummeled one another?

Once Monahan saw the two leave, of course, he immediately called the sheriff knowing promptness of arrival would depend upon whether one was patrolling nearby or not and though the band struck up a florid tempo to keep the dancers on track many of them followed the two out so by the time they came together a circle of customers had surrounded them.

Sandy, the artist and his wife, Mort and the heavy lady were together as were Sarah and the two sloths with their women. Believe me too, both of them itching to get a piece of Hartwig themselves. For as followers generally agree with their leader, these two also believed Hartwig was a no good hustling son of a bitch.

Hartwig standing defiantly in his beach shorts knew this. To him they were nothing but bums, an opinion most of the residents out there would’ve shared with him. He only wished he had some of his rugby companions along to help him take them all on.

A pungent smell of the ocean hung in the air, the distant shoring of waves, a sliver of a moon a jewel in its setting snug between myriads of stars, a dim electric light on a pole surrounded by a cluster of zooming bugs like electrons in orbit, the din of a pleasant trumpet from inside, completed the setting. One man tall and thin, the other a head shorter but stocky. No David and Goliath, just modern day fodder. Both attractive for what the species added to anything which I take to be us … I paused.

“Come on,” said Hammond evidently anxious to discover the outcome every contest implies.

God knows we have enough of them. Every weekend on every program, one sort or the other depending upon what’s in season. He insists upon keeping our thoughts concentrated on mindless activities. ‘Who won that game? Do you remember the score? Guess what?’ It goes on ad infinitum and also ad nauseam as though that’s all anyone can find to talk about. The mark of a truly decadent society. Oh, well…

“You know I never liked you,” the tall man called down to the shorter. I’m gonna bust your ass.”

“You’re nothing but a loser, a God damned fucking loser and a kid beater,” the shorter looked up; and with that brilliant exchange, talk like you might hear on a football field, the two came to blows.

A street fight’s never the same as a boxing match. The two’re different birds. One orderly, confined and counted off in rounds, the other, any weapon goes, any part of the body’s fair game and it ends when it ends or most likely is broken up. If you want to jump on your opponent from the top of a car, you can. If no one else is around you can kill him. It’s your discretion.

With his first punch Barney broke Hartwig’s nose. He felt it scrunch.

“Oww,” said Hammond holding his own. “That must’ve been painful.”

“It certainly wasn’t pleasant,” I said, “but it doesn’t mean giving up, if anything it makes you want to get the guy even more. Pay him back in kind.”

Of course when someone pokes his arms at you like they’re two lances, no matter how long they are, the shorter man simply goes between them or grabs them to tie them up. Who was it that disabled ten spears at once in such a fashion, a Spartan defending a bridge wasn’t it, though he also lost his own life in the process. An uncommon act, which we nonetheless adopt as a standard and call sacrifice. There was none of that here. Just two blokes trying to beat one another up. Maybe that’s all any battle is.

“Come on Heartless (her nickname for her boyfriend),” Sandy emitted the old cheerleader yell, “beat the bully to a pulp.” Then she whispered to Mort. “Oh, how I wish Marcus was here to see this.”

“Not yet you don’t,” the realistic writer cautioned her. “Not until we see how it turns out. Of course just the commitment alone …”

“You can keep your ideas to yourself.” Sandy moved on the other side of him. She was out there cheering whereas a few minutes before she’d been cursing her escort and about to leave.

Sarah, the cause of it all didn’t know what to think. She was upset. She wanted her boyfriend to win, beat the hustler silly. On the other hand she hadn’t had so much craved attention since she’d moved out there. And all because of another’s asking her to dance. She still felt the firmness of
his
arms. Well, she had, and what’d she get for it…? This? As all women, she wondered why men couldn’t just be at peace, why they had to fight.

Meanwhile, the two grunts danced around one another jockeying for position. They threw punches, clashed, separated and clashed again. Thwacks on flesh, thuds on bone could be detected. Unusual sounds when you think about it. Not your everyday noises, but noises nonetheless. After receiving a particularly hard punch to his kidney, Barney groaned, staggered momentarily, dropped his guard and backed off to recover himself. That, of course, was when Hartwig dove instinctively as he would into a scrum, drove his shoulder into the tall man’s waist tackling and taking him down. The two rolled over furiously like two cocks fluttering on the ground, nipping and clawing one another. Presently (when the dust had cleared), one came out on top. It was the stronger, stockier man, of course, as one might’ve expected. Hartwig had that giant of a string bean down and sat on top of him. He must’ve felt it too. I looked over at Hammond whose eyes were shining.

All Hartwig did then was call for the man to …

“Give up now, Barney, or you’ll really get hurt. I gotcha…” A generous offer I’d say considering he’d already received a broken nose.

“Never. I’ll kill yuh.”

And yet keeping his balance so as to remain on top, Hartwig managed to pound the man’s face like it was a speed bag in midair. He knocked it this way and that and in the course of the punishment broke the man’s jaw. He didn’t know it but the giant felt it give just as Hartwig’d felt his own nose break but the giant didn’t know that either.

And, in fact, the man never did cry
uncle
though the fight soon ended. The owner and his assistant jumped in and pulled Hartwig off. It’d lasted four or five minutes at most. Nothing, really, but like a collegiate wrestling match it demonstrated a lot of action in a little time. And the worst wasn’t over.

“Worst not over? I thought you said the fight ended. What do you mean not over?”

Not so fast… Though the two men were pulled apart and separated the interveners grabbed Hartwig first for he was the aggressor who was doing the damage. Monahan, the bar owner, and his helper held him fast each taking an arm. The stunned giant who by then was bleeding profusely and wobbling from side to side was nonetheless alert. His pickup, a job box in its bed, an old Chevy, which his girlfriend then sat against was several steps away. When he went to get into it no one gave particular notice. He’d been soundly thrashed and was humanely beating a retreat before the sheriffs arrived to arrest him. One more offense, remember, and he was back in the slammer.

Imagine when someone let out a cry.

“Watch it, he has a gun.” And the man did. He held a pistol he’d fetched from the glove compartment of his pickup and standing before the crowd he waved it over his head.

“God damned sons of bitches, I ottah get yuh all.” His general anger towards the community surfaced, (it’s hard for an ex con not to despise society in general) “but it’s you who I want.” He steadied himself and pointed the pistol at Hartwig whose captors’d immediately released him and to their devotion to justice stepped in front vis-à-vis a shield.

“Now, Barney,” said Monahan who must’ve been shaking a bit himself by this time, “What’re you doin with that toy? Fight’s over. You don’t want to make things worse than they already are.”

“Toy eh? We’ll see about a toy. I don’t, don’t I? Who asked you?” His girlfriend, the beauty, stood silent. She was impressed.

The three men whispered between themselves, an ‘awww’ arose from the crowd, which had begun to scatter helter-skelter. Hartwig found himself pushed to the rear and was told to leave. The owner and assistant stood fast to hold the fort. Grabbing Sandy, and followed by Mort and the fat lady, who’d somehow fallen and had to be helped to her feet, along with the two artists, the six were let back into the building by the cook who slammed and locked the door behind them.