Dancing Aztecs

Dancing Aztecs

Donald E. Westlake

A
MysteriousPress.com
Open Road Integrated Media ebook

THIS IS FOR
Abby, who gave me the harp,
Cindy, who gave me the satin lining,
Pete, who gave me Flattery,
Herb, who gave me the grain of sand,
and Aunt Peg, who wanted five books
HERE THEY ARE

The Hustle is a New York dance.
The New Yorker
,
“Talk of the Town
,”
May 5, 1975

THE CAST (most of them) IN ORDER OF
APPEARANCE (approximately):

J
ERRY
M
ANELLI
—
city boy, on the move

H
IRAM
—
a guard

M
EL
B
ERNSTEIN
—
an intellectual, but OK

A
NGELA
M
ANELLI
B
ERNSTEIN
—
wife, sister and virago

M
YRNA
—
very very

J
OSE
C
ARACHA
—
sculptor

E
DWARDO
B
RAZZO
—
functionary, with necktie

P
EDRO
N
INNI
—
patsy

H
ECTOR
O
VELLA
—
walk-on

M
RS.
M
ANELLI
—
mother and scientist

F
RANK
M
C
C
ANN
—
Irishman

F
LOYD
M
C
C
ANN
—
the Irishman's brother

T
ERESA
M
ANELLI
M
C
C
ANN
—
wife and sister

B
OBBI
H
ARWOOD
—
ex-wife, on the go

C
HUCK
“P
ROFESSOR
C
HARLES
S.” H
ARWOOD
—
pothead

O
SCAR
R
USSELL
G
REEN
—
successful activist and unsuccessful drunk

V
ICTOR
K
RASSMEIER
—
a la financier

A
UGUST
C
ORELLA
—
Jersey thug

W
ALLY
H
INTZLEBEL
—
swimming pool salesman and son

J
ENNY
K
ENDALL
—
a nice girl

E
DDIE
R
OSS
—
her nice boy

R
ALPH
—
chauffeur

E
ARL
—
henchman

R
ALPHI
D
URANT
—
indispensable receptionist

E
THELRED
M
ARX
—
visitor from another planet

M
RS.
H
INTZLEBEL
—
the world's best Mom

B
UD
B
EEMISS
—
PR man with a heart of gold

D
AVID
F
AYLEY
—
a nice boy

K
ENNY
S
PANG
—
his nice boy

T
ROOPER
L
UKE
S
NELL
—
fantasist

M
ADGE
K
RAUSSE
—
friend with a sofa

B
ARBARA
M
C
C
ANN
—
rotten bridge player

K
ATHLEEN
M
C
C
ANN
P
ODENSKI
—
a fourth

L
EROY
P
INKHAM
—
punk

M
ARSHALL
“B
UHBUH
” T
HUMBLE
—
another punk

F. X
AVIER
W
HITE
—
Harlem's Premier mortician

M
ALEFICENT
W
HITE
—
fat mama

J
EREMIAH
“B
AD
D
EATH
” J
ONESBURG
—
The Man

F
ELICITY
T
OWER
—
unexploded bomb

M
ANDY
A
DDLEFORD
—
the colored lady

W
YLIE
C
HESHIRE
—
mean mother

M
R.
M
ANELLI
—
man with a hobby

L
UPE
N
AZ
—
a yam-fed Descalzan beauty

B
EN
C
OHEN
—
Sound sailor

T
HEODORA
N
ICE
—
nice

H
UGH
V
AN
D
INAST
—
patrician and enthusiast

M
RS.
D
OROTHY
M
OORWOOD
—
philanthropist

G
INNY
D
EMERETTA
—
cameo appearance

A H
AWK
—
innocent bystander

and

S
IXTEEN
D
ANCING
A
ZTEC
P
RIESTS
—
all together now
…

THE
FIRST PART
OF THE
SEARCH

 

 

Everybody in New York City is looking for something. Men are looking for women and women are looking for men. Down at the Trucks, men are looking for men, while at Barbara's and at the Lib women are looking for women. Lawyers' wives in front of Lord & Taylor are looking for taxis, and lawyers' wives' husbands down on Pine Street are looking for loopholes. The hookers in front of the Americana Hotel are looking for johns, and the kids opening cab doors in front of the Port Authority bus terminal are looking for tips. So are the riders on the Aqueduct Special. So are the cabbies, the bellboys, the waiters, and the undercover narcs.

Recent graduates are looking for a job. Men in ties are looking for a better position. Men in suede jackets are looking for an opportunity. Women in severe tailoring are looking for an equal opportunity. Men in alligator belts are looking for a gimmick. Men with frayed cuffs are looking for ten bucks till Wednesday. Union men are looking for increased benefits and a nice detached house in New Hyde Park.

Nice boys from Fordham are looking for girls. Rock groups from St. Louis staying at the Chelsea are looking for gash. Male and female junior executives along Third Avenue are looking for a meaningful relationship. Bronx blacks in Washington Square Park are looking for white meat. Short-sleeved beer drinkers in Columbus Avenue bars are looking for trouble.

The Parks Department is looking for trees to cut down and turn into firewood for local politicians. Residents of the neighborhood are looking for politicians who will stop the Parks Department from cutting down all those trees. Fat chance.

Bowery bums with filthy rags in their hands are looking for a windshield to wipe. Cars with Florida plates are looking for the West Side Highway. Cars with MD plates are looking for a parking space. United Parcel trucks are looking for a double-parking space. Junkies are looking for cars with NYP plates because reporters sometimes leave cameras in their glove compartments.

The girls in the massage parlors are looking for a twenty-five dollar swell. The Wednesday afternoon ladies from the suburbs are looking for a nice time at the matinée, followed by cottage cheese on a lettuce leaf. Tourists are looking for a place to sit down, con men are looking for tourists, cops are looking for con men.

Old men on benches along upper Broadway are looking for a little sun. Old ladies in Army boots are looking for God-knows-what in trash cans on Sixth Avenue. Couples strolling hand-in-hand in Central Park are looking for a nature experience. Teen-age gangs from Harlem are in Central Park looking for bicycles.

Picketing welfare mothers on West 55th Street are looking for Rockefeller, but he's never there.

At the UN they're looking for simultaneous translation. On Broadway they're looking for a hit. At Black Rock they're looking for the trend. At Lincoln Center they're looking for a respectable meaning.

Almost everybody in the subway is looking for a fight. Almost everybody on the 5:09 to Speonk is looking for the bar car. Almost everybody on the East Side is looking for status, while almost everybody on the West Side is looking for a diet that really works.

Everybody in New York is looking for something. Every once in a while, somebody finds it.

IN THE BEGINNING …

Jerry Manelli was looking for a box marked
A
.

It was a pleasant sunny Monday afternoon in June, and the big metal birds out at Kennedy Airport roared and soared, while Jerry drove his white Ford Econoline van through the cargo areas toward Southern Air Freight. On the shiny white sides of the van blue letters read
Inter-Air Forwarding
, with an address and phone number in Queens. White letters
I-A
were on his blue baseball cap, and his name in script—
Jerry
—was sewn on the left breast pocket of his white coveralls. He steered the van around mountains of mail sacks, stacks of cartons, cartfuls of luggage, and he whistled as he worked.

Approaching Southern Air Freight's terminal, where the plane from Caracas had just been off-loaded, Jerry saw that a brand new gray-uniformed security guard was on duty here. A stranger. Jerry took one look at him, put on his aviator's sunglasses, and reached for his clipboard. Braking to a stop on the tarmac, he hopped out wife the clipboard in his hand and the sunglasses sparkling in the light, and gave the new guard a big cheerful grin, saying, “Hi You're new around here.”

The guard, a tall black man with a bushy mustache and a suspicious manner, said, “They transferred me out from the city. They been too much pilferin' out here.”

“Jerry's the name,” Jerry said, still grinning, and he jabbed a thumb at the name sewn over his heart.

“Hiram,” said the guard. “You work around here, huh?”

“Internal cargo shipment.”

The guard nodded as though he understood something. “Ah,” he said.

Jerry consulted his clipboard. “Got a pickup here. One wooden box from Caracas, Venezuela.”

“We got a whole mountain of wooden boxes,” the guard said, “just come in from South America somewheres.”

“Lead me to them,” Jerry said.

Last night's phone call had come in just after the eleven o'clock news. The voice had been heavily accented, very Spanish sounding: “There weel be five wooden boxes. You want thee one marked with an
A
. You onnerstand?”