Dancing Aztecs (48 page)

Which is seven people who weren't there. But nineteen people
were
there, and that's a lot of people. Particularly to all be crowded into David and Kenny's living room, which wasn't that big to begin with.

Here's who was there: Victor Krassmeier, and his associate August Corella. Jerry Manelli and the other three members of Inter-Air Forwarding, being Mel Bernstein, Frank McCann, and Floyd McCann. And thirteen members of the Open Sports Committee: F. Xavier White, Mandy Addleford, Ben Cohen, Mrs. Dorothy Moorwood, Oscar Russell Green, Chuck and Bobbi Harwood, Bud Beemiss, Wylie Cheshire, David Fayley, Kenny Spang, Leroy Pinkham, and Marshall “Buhbuh” Thumble.

It was nine o'clock at night, and they'd all been here for nearly an hour, and so far nothing had been accomplished except a lot of belated discoveries and realizations, some of them positive and some of them less so. Members of the Open Sports Committee kept pointing at members of the Inter-Air Forwarding group and saying, “You!” Ben Cohen and Wylie Cheshire, for instance, both pointed like that at Mel, and both seemed prepared to settle personal grudges with Mel right here and now. Leroy and Buhbuh, they had the same feeling about Frank and Floyd, but F. Xavier remembered Frank and Floyd with fond humor. And David Fayley and Kenny Spang were absolutely
ecstatic
when they recognized Jerry and realized what they meant. “You little goose,” Kenny said to David, “did you really think I'd—” “Oh, Kenny!” David cried. “I was so afraid!”

The main problem in getting the meeting under way was that everybody wanted to run it. Oscar wanted to run it, but so did football lineman Wylie Cheshire. So did Bud Beemiss, and so did Chuck Harwood. Krassmeier took it for granted
he'd
run the meeting, and Corella tried to take over by intimidation.

Corella finally won. What he did, he went to the kitchen and found a package of four light bulbs. He brought these back to the living room, stood on a chair, and threw one of the light bulbs against the wall. It made that satisfactory HO gauge explosion that light bulbs do, and there was a shocked and bewildered silence. Into it, Corella attempted to insert himself, saying loudly, “Okay now, let's get organized!”

Which resulted in eleven people all simultaneously having something to say. So Corella threw another light bulb against the wall, was rewarded with another
pop
, and silence returned. Except that this time it was Kenny Spang who inserted himself into it, crying, “Jee-ziz
Christ!
What are you
doing?”

Corella glowered. If you asked
him
, that bird was a fruit. “Getting a little peace and quiet,” he said, and held up a third light bulb. “And this one,” he said, “I throw at the next big mouth that opens up.
Now
let's get organized.”

There was some mutinous rumbling, and much shuffling of feet, but no big mouths opened up, and Corella went on: “The situation is,” he said, “there was sixteen statues.
Definitely
one of them is real, but we all missed it the first time through. Now, a lot of them are for sure not it, because they've been busted up, so it's gotta be one of the ones left over. Any of you people got a list of the Open Sports Committee?”

Bud Beemiss did. He handed it to Corella, who used it to run down the fate of every statue, and when he was done the mystery was deeper than ever:

 

Oscar Russell Green—broken in three places.

Chuck and Bobbi Harwood—both smashed.

Bud Beemiss—smashed.

Wylie Cheshire—smashed (Wylie winced, and touched his head).

F. Xavier White—head broken off.

Mandy Addleford—finger broken off.

Ben Cohen—chipped, and then paint rubbed off.

Mrs. Dorothy Moorwood—smashed.

David Fayley and Kenny Spang—both heads broken off.

Jenny Kendall and Eddie Ross—both smashed.

Leroy Pinkham—head broken off.

Marshall Thumble—head broken off.

Felicity Tower—finger broken off.

“Well, goddam it,” Corella said.

And Krassmeier snapped. “Goddam
you!”
he screamed at Corella. “It's another of your failures, Corella, the statue never left South America! You've cost me thousands, you've ruined my clothing and my digestion, you BAAASTAARRRD!!” And he flung himself at Corella, knocking him off the chair, knocking them both off their feet, punching and kicking and biting and gouging while Corella thrashed around and yelled,
“Help! Help! Help!”

The others finally did get them separated and quieted down, and in the depressed silence that followed Mel Bernstein suddenly said, “Hey! Where's Jerry? Jerry?”

Which caused everyone else to look around, which caused Chuck Harwood to say, “Where's Bobbi? Where's my wife?”

People called, “Bobbi? Bobbi?” Other people called, “Jerry? Jerry?” Other people walked through the Fayley-Spang apartment, opening doors and rucking up the rugs, but they didn't find anybody. Jerry and Bobbi were both gone.

THE WINNERS …

The old man was on his hands and knees on the front lawn, a mixing bowl beside him, a tablespoon in his left hand, and a flashlight in his right. Jerry said, “What's up, Pop?”

“Looking for worms.”

“You're collecting worms?”

“Thought I'd take up fishing,” the old man said. He looked up, and shined an appreciative flashlight on Bobbi. “Well, look at that.”

“Bobbi Harwood,” Jerry said, and explained to her, “This is my father.”

“Hello,” Bobbi said. “Don't get up.”

Gratefully, the old man sank back to his knees. “Your mother's inside.”

“Right Have fun with the worms, Pop.”

“Fish,” said the old man.

“Nice to meet you,” Bobbi said, and Jerry took her around the house and in through the back door to the kitchen, where his mother was tasting the latest spaghetti sauce. “Hiya, Mom,” Jerry said. “How is it?”

“Not so hot,” she said, and dropped the ladle back in the pot.

Not so hot? Since there were about fourteen ways to take that—so-so, heat, spicy—Jerry dropped the subject and said, “Mom, this is Bobbi Harwood, a new friend of mine.”

His mother frowned at the girl. “Bobbi?”

“Barbara,” she said. “It's a nickname.”

“How are you, Barbara?”

“Wonderful,” Bobbi said, “This has been the most different day of my life.”

Mrs. Manelli looked keenly at their faces. “Oh ho,” she said. “So this one's special.”

Jerry laughed and said, “The perfect spaghetti sauce, Mom.”

Bobbi said, “What?”

Mrs. Manelli said, “You're hungry?”

“Starving,” Jerry told her. “The last thing we had was lunch, way out in Pennsylvania.”

“Go wash,” she said. “Dinner in fifteen minutes.”

So they went up the outside staircase to Jerry's apartment, and he let her use the bathroom first. Waiting, he stood by his front room window, whistling as he looked down at the dot of flashlight on the lawn below.

What a day. First he had a statue worth a million dollars, and then it wasn't worth anything. First he was ditching this girl, and now he was bringing her home. Everything was changing, inside and out.

Back at the Fayley-Spang apartment, while Corella was leading the recap of what had happened to all the statues (and Jerry already
knew
they'd all been dealt with), he had walked over to Bobbi, sitting there alone on one of the delicate chairs against the wall, and he'd said, “You know, I just worked it out. There's nineteen of us here, plus three more in your committee, so that's a twenty-two way split even if we
do
find the damn thing.”

That had made her laugh. “What's one twenty-second of a million dollars?”

He'd already worked it out: “Forty-five thousand. And I'll tell you, Bobbi, I don't know if that statue ever came up from South America or not, but I do know I don't need to run around with twenty chowderheads to hustle forty-five grand.
That
much I can pick up on the street.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I'm going home,” he'd told her. “Wanna come along?”

And she had said, “No.”

“No?”

“No.” But then she had grinned and said, “But I'll let you drive me to California.”

He had hesitated. “Leave New York?”

“We can always come back. But right now you owe me a trip to California.”

“Then I better pay off,” he'd said.

So here they were, and tomorrow they'd call Beacon and get another car, and who knew what would happen after that? Something different, that's all. Let the hustles run without him for a while. A guy was crazy to spend all his life hustling a dollar, anyway. Where'd it get you? What you wanted was a person, and something to laugh about.

It was a weird thing, but the search for the Dancing Aztec Priest was what had changed him around like this, starting with the revelation he'd had when he'd first seen the fags' living room.
There were other ways to live
. You could do something else, if you wanted. And if you had a reason. Like Bobbi Harwood, for instance, that was a reason.

When Bobbi came out, shiny-faced, he grinned at her and kissed her and then went into the bathroom while Bobbi went back downstairs to the kitchen, where she found Jerry's mother dropping a fistful of spaghettini into boiling water. Shutting the door behind herself, Bobbi said, “Is there anything I can do?”

“One thing.”

“Yes?”

“Never, as long as you live, call me Mother Manelli. In the meantime, sit down at the table there, tell me about yourself. You Catholic?”

“No, I'm not,” Bobbi said. “Does it matter?”

“Barbara,” Mrs. Manelli said, “from what I can see the last few years, the
Church
isn't Catholic any more. You a New Yorker?”

Bobbi hesitated, and felt a sudden rush of elation and discovery. “Yes,” she said, and grinned broadly, and said, “Originally from Maryland.” And went on to give her life history to this round red woman who smelled like a tomato, while at the same time she was still trying inwardly to explain her recent history to herself.

What a day. When it had started she'd been on her way to California, alone, in a snazzy Jaguar, running away from her husband. Now she was in New York, without the snazzy Jaguar but
with
some sort of strange new man, who had at first stolen from her and then returned to her a statue that had at first been worthless, then worth a million dollars, then worthless again. And then she'd seen her husband Chuck in a roomful of strangers, and
he
had become a stranger. A shabby seedy down-at-the-heels stranger whose shoes didn't match, and whose haircut was too long and uneven, and whose facial expression was too wishy-washy and self-centered.

Things were shifting very fast. All her life Bobbi had thought about what would happen
ultimately
, would things work out
in the long run
, would everything be all right
from now on
. She and Chuck had spent ten years battling unsuccessfully for a permanent truce. And suddenly none of that mattered. She wasn't sure whether the run would be long or short, and she didn't care. She knew what was happening today, and she knew what would happen tomorrow, and she could make some guesses for maybe a week into the future. Who needed more than that?

When Jerry came downstairs, he and Bobbi grinned at one another, and Mrs. Manelli nodded and said, “That's one of the things they can't fake on television.”

Jerry frowned at her. “What's that?”

“That look between two people.” Draining the spaghettini, she said, “Jerry, go ask your father would he like a little something.”

“I will,” Bobbi said, and bounded up and out of the room.

Jerry, watching his mother watch Bobbi depart, said, “She's okay, Mom.”

“She bounces a lot.” Mrs. Manelli brought the bowl of spaghettini to the table. “One of my daughters married an Irish and the other one married a Jew. What's this you brought home?”

“I don't know for sure. I think she's a Wasp.”

“Good,” said Mrs. Manelli. “This place has been needing some class. And
you
,” she said, turning and pointing at her entering husband, “you get out of here with those worms.”

SIX
MONTHS
AFTER THE
SEARCH

 

 

The Inter-Air Forwarding truck came to a stop at Southern Air Freight and Floyd hopped out, wearing his white cover-alls and aviator's sunglasses and carrying his clipboard. “Hello, Hiram,” he said to the guard. His breath frosted in the crisp December air.

“How you doing, Floyd?”

“Not too bad. Got a couple pickups here,” Floyd said, and cast an eye over the nearby stacks of cargo.

“How's your partner Jerry?”

“Still out at the West Coast office,” Floyd said. A sack of registered mail from Brazil struck his fancy. “There it is.”