“Okay,” Jim said, laughing, “the world.” He squeezed her arm gently. “Take it easy, Mary. If you compete and lose, life won’t punish you.”
She sat down thinking that was an odd thing for him to say. Maybe he’d glimpsed some intensity in her she didn’t suspect was that obvious, a desire to compete and win. A desire that, burning bright enough, could be visible in people, like madness. She got up, and went to the bar for a diet Pepsi.
When she returned, Helen and Willis had joined June and Curt at the table.
“Saw you dancing with Jim,” Helen said, her smile made sly by violet eyeliner.
“Well, that’s why I came here,” Mary told her, “to dance.” She pried up the tab on her soda can, fizzing some of the cold liquid onto her knuckles, and poured Pepsi over the ice in her plastic cup. Helen could be irritating; she sounded like a teenager at times, every school’s overweight, gossipy sophomore.
The bandleader said something into the microphone that, where the Romance Studio people were seated, sounded like an echoing, indecipherable announcement at a bus terminal. Then the band began playing a rumba. Big Curt thought he could handle that one, so he stood up and asked Mary to dance.
She followed him out to the edge of the floor.
Curt had improved in the last few months, but he still couldn’t stay on the beat. Mary listened to him muttering under the music, “Slow, quick-quick; slow, quick-quick,” as he guided her through a series of simple box steps. She began back-leading to make it easier for him, and he grinned in appreciation. Affable Curt. “Not one of my better dances,” he said apologetically. He told her that about every dance, every time they danced.
About halfway through the rumba, Mary glanced beyond Curt’s hulking shoulder and saw something that surprised her. She back-led skillfully so she was facing the right direction, and made sure her eyes hadn’t tricked her.
They hadn’t. There was old Fred Wellinger, dancing with a woman about forty who was wearing a tight red dress that belonged on a woman about twenty. He had his gray hair plastered sideways over his bald spot and was grinning down at her, and she smiled and said something, then rested her head against his chest. Fred’s right hand slid down to the swell of her buttock, his fingers gently stroking the taut red material of the dress as she swayed her rear in Latin rhythm.
Fred, you bastard! Mary thought. What would Angie say if she knew?
Fred happened to glance her way. A shock of recognition played over his features. Seen a ghost, Fred? He quickly danced his partner out of sight on the opposite side of the crowded floor.
Well, at least he hadn’t dragged the woman over and introduced her as a platonic relationship.
Curt stepped on the very tip of Mary’s toe, pinching the nail and causing a jolt of pain that made her temporarily break rhythm. Immediately he faltered, shaking his huge shaggy head and apologizing as fervently as if he’d just insulted her and all her ancestors.
Mary told him not to worry, he hadn’t hurt her, it was her fault, really. One of the first things dancers learned was that it was always the woman’s fault if she got stepped on, some flaw in her technique.
Reassured, he danced on, and she concentrated on following.
After the evening’s last dance, a waltz Mary did with Jim, she changed her shoes, said her good-byes, and left the dance hall to cross the street to the lot where her car was parked.
The night was dark, and Mary was almost at the car when she noticed something odd. It took several seconds for her mind to accept it. Something, a bird, seemed to have alighted on the car’s antenna. At first she was amused, until she realized the bird was motionless and in an awkward position with its wings drooping, and she could see the antenna protruding a few inches above it.
Her stomach tensed and moved with revulsion as she stepped closer and saw that someone had broken off the antenna to a sharp point and then impaled a sparrow on it.
She moved along the car and slumped against the rear fender, nauseated and trembling.
Something touched her shoulder and she jumped, almost shrieked.
“Mary?”
It was Jim.
“What’s wrong, Mary? You sick?”
She nodded toward the dead bird, frozen in its macabre imitation of flight. Heard Jim say, “What the hell?”
He walked closer to the bird, shook his head, then returned to her. “Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of it for you, Mary.”
She said nothing as he went to his car and returned with a wad of Kleenex in his hand. She turned away, and when she looked back, the bird was on the ground.
“Kids, I guess,” he said, dropping the Kleenex near the bird. “Probably saw a dead bird in the street and thought they’d give somebody a scare. Guess they managed.”
She knew that was what the police would say. No crime had been committed here. There was no victim other than a sparrow. There was no proof someone was trying to terrorize Mary and had sent her a sick and frightening message. Even she couldn’t be sure. Maybe the marks on her door and the dead bird were in no way connected. Maybe.
“Want me to follow you home, Mary?”
She told him no, she’d be okay. He moved close and strapped his arm around her.
“I’ll be all right,” she said. “Thanks, Jim.” She squirmed. Right now she didn’t want a man hugging her.
He sighed and removed his arm, smiled his slow smile. “Okay. Go home, have a drink, and try to forget this. Can you do that?”
She nodded, thinking a drink was the last thing she wanted.
Avoiding the dead bird, she climbed into her car and started the engine.
Jim stood watching as she drove away.
9
Morrisy was to meet Waxman at a Cajun restaurant a block off Bourbon Street to talk before Waxman went off duty. Morrisy loved Cajun food, had loved it even before it became a fad. He was eating blackened redfish when Waxman slid into the seat opposite him in the booth.
Waxman was wearing a neat gray sportcoat, paisley tie, blue slacks. He looked fresh, not as if he’d been slogging around all day in the heat. “How can you get to sleep after eating that stuff so late at night?” he asked.
Morrisy finished chewing a bite of fish and swallowed, took a slug of Dixie beer. “Helps me doze off,” he said. “How’d you make out with Verlane today?”
“He gave me the same answers, wanted to know why I was asking the same questions. He’s getting plenty testy. Keeps trying to make a big deal of the fact his wife did ballroom dancing.”
“I used to dance myself,” Morrisy said. “Used to do the twist.”
“No shit? Hard to imagine.”
“Means nothing about nothing,” Morrisy said. “Just ’cause a witness said the victim was dancing at that lounge don’t mean any more’n me getting down and screwing up my knees when I was young and dumb. People dance, people play golf, tennis, then they go out and get themselves killed anyway and so what?”
“Think maybe hubby wants us to go off in some direction other’n him?” Waxman asked.
“What do you think?”
“My thought is he’s extremely tense. I told him lots of people besides his wife were dancing at the lounge that night, and they’re still alive. Thought he was gonna poke me. He’s that tightly wrapped.”
“Good. You want one of these peppers?”
“God, no.”
Morrisy smiled. He got to why he’d wanted to meet Waxman. “I talked with Schutz today.”
Waxman nodded. Schutz was a police psychiatrist. The young blond waitress who’d waited on Morrisy sashayed over and Wax-man ordered a cup of decaf.
“What he told me dovetailed with some of our conclusions,” Morrisy went on. “Autopsy report shows the perpetrator was skillful with the murder weapon, a very sharp knife, used in a way that suggests the perp knew exactly how much pressure to apply and at what angle. Way we reconstruct the crime, he almost certainly took precautions not to get any of the victim’s blood on him, as if he knew about arterial blood spurting. Schutz looked over the evidence and said the killer did the Verlane woman with a deliberateness that indicated detachment and planning. Work of a bona fide sociopath.”