Solitary Dancer (15 page)

“What's that you're eating?” Fox asked, slouching in one of the chairs facing Vance's desk.

Fat Eddie held the container up for the detective to see. “Yogurt,” he said. “Great stuff. Good for you, full of vitamins. I'm eating healthy now, cutting back on cholesterol and animal fats.” He sampled a spoonful. “This stuff is
really
good. I have more in the fridge. Want some?”

Tim Fox grinned. “Naw, I think I'll stick to ribs and collard greens, thanks.”

Vance smiled, unsure of the black detective's humor, then shrugged and set the yogurt and spoon back in the drawer of his desk. “I'm having a problem adjusting the staff list,” he said, stroking his mustache to remove droplets of yogurt. “There's Stanton, you know him? Young guy, just got his detective status last year?”

Fox nodded, his face blank.

“Trouble is, Stanton's got a trial next week so he'll be unavailable for a while. Then there's Orwin, used to work with Sergeant Parsons, but she'll be taking a leave of absence for a few months—”

“Janet?” Tim Fox asked. “What's up?”

Fat Eddie leaned across his desk and lowered his voice like a racetrack tout. “She's pregnant.”

Fox smiled and tilted his head. “Hey Eddie,” he said. “It's all right. Being pregnant is legal now, haven't you heard?”

Vance sat back in his chair. “It's Ralph Innes's—” he began.

“Hell, I
hope
it is,” Fox laughed. “They've been together for a couple of years now.”

Fat Eddie nodded quickly. “Anyway, how do you feel about working with Orwin?”

“Better'n Donovan.”

“I have to deal with that, too. He's pretty upset, Phil is. He felt he was making progress on this Lorenzo woman.”

“Bullshit.” Fox spat the word at Fat Eddie, then sat back in the chair. “He talked to the victim's ex-husband two days ago and didn't get a damn thing except the same old alibi. I saw the husband today and picked up a lead on the guy who was spooking her, the best connection we've got so far. Donovan missed it completely.”

“I asked Donovan to transfer all of his files to you.”

“I haven't seen anything yet.”

“If you don't have them by the end of the day, let me know. Meanwhile, fill Orwin in on what you've got on this Lorenzo thing and anything else that's on your plate, bring him up to speed, start teaming with him tomorrow.” Fat Eddie removed the yogurt container from his desk drawer again. “Sure you won't try some of this?”

The Gypsy's voice was a drumbeat, a pinched, tight, rhythmic sound penetrating the wall behind Django's head. “Uhn, uhn, uhn, uhn,” over and over, a tattoo of pain or pleasure, Django could never tell.

Nearly an hour ago Grizzly had tossed Django half a bottle of that good Canadian whiskey, comes in a glass container shaped like a crown, ritzy stuff. Then Grizz went back into his room, the one next to Django's in the Warrenton Hotel, where the Gypsy had been waiting with something shot up her arm and something else wrapped around her body, maybe black leather. Django had seen her in the black leather outfit once, sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for Grizzly, looking glum and crazy, pink flesh spilling out between a laced-up vest and trousers with no crotch, waiting for Grizz, a strange sight, strange, yes.

Word had it, Django'd heard Dewey or somebody say it, that the Gypsy was North American Indian, Mohawk or Iroquois, one of those northern tribes. Liked to sniff gasoline out of a glass jar, walked around the little Maine town carrying it with her like it was lunch. Got on a bus one day, higher'n two hawks flying kites, stuffed herself behind the rear seat and fell asleep. She woke up in the Greyhound maintenance yard and Grizzly spotted her on the street trying to figure out where the hell she was, how the hell she got there.

She was kind of pretty back then, nice dark eyes, skin the colour of faded chestnuts, long black shiny hair. In a month Grizzly owned her, had her doing everything he wanted her to do, doing things she couldn't dream up herself, doing them with people she'd never met in her worst high-octane nightmares. Six months later she looked twice her age and if you stared into her eyes long enough, if the pupils were wide enough and their gaze steady, you could look over the rim of the hell that was her life and know somewhere beneath it, broken into cinders, were memories of a young girl from the north country who had once sat on logs over crystal ponds in the summer sun and watched tadpoles swim beneath her bare feet, who had cuddled in her mother's lap on cold winter nights, hearing wolves howl and moose crash through the brush.

Grizzly, as he had done for Django and Garce and others, had given the Gypsy salvation and sanctuary, but at what cost? Now he extracted pleasure from her in the same manner as he extracted money from Django and the others, leaving enough for them to cling to his network, his protection, his demands of unquestioning obedience.

“We be dry,” Grizzly had told Django, and Django wondered again what Grizzly knew and how he knew it and where he learned it, but there was no asking Grizzly, never.

Django never asked because that was one of the rules, the ones that came with the deal, with everything that Django owed Grizzly from nearly two years ago. Day before Christmas it was, just a month after Django arrived in Boston, looking for a way to put some extra money together to send back to Buffalo, to Elsie and the two boys.

Careful, fool, Django told himself, remembering. Careful, careful. There be some doors you don't ever want to open, some alleys you don't ever want to walk down, not again, not ever.

Django's eyelids quivered and he lifted his left hand, the one they had broken under the wheel of the truck and held in the fire, and lay the crippled hand across his eyes and felt the scar tissue, like corrugated paper, against the skin of his face.

“Uhn, uhn, uhn.” The Gypsy was singing on the bed with Grizzly, and Django's eyes began to sting and he remembered, ignoring his own warning.

“Dealin' on the street,” Django told Elsie over the pay telephone, long distance back to Buffalo, and Elsie said, “Hush, you don't know who listenin'.” Elsie was worried, but she was happy when Django sent her the first thousand later that week and then the next thousand a week later, sending it back for Elsie to spend on clothes for the boys and to put food in their bellies and save the rest in a bank account, using the money to keep the boys healthy, keep the dream alive.

He was working strange turf there on Dorchester, other people's turf in a strange city, but you had to take risks, that's what business is about. His brother-in-law Percy sent the coke in from Buffalo, bus shipments marked Books and Clothing and Personal Affex, Percy never much of a speller, but that was good, that was okay. Django was living in a room on Mass Avenue, cooking the coke into crack and dealing it along the river, selling to college kids and white suburban guys in their Buicks and Jap minivans so they could take some back to the wife or girlfriend in Newton or Waltham, try some of this here nigger sin. But most of it he sold to black dudes who needed the stuff, they'd rip off whoever, whatever was around to get a boost, a bit of that good crack, smoke it out of an empty Pepsi can, that's what they lived for, that's what life was all about, that's
all
life was about.

Two different times the competition warned him, couple of heavy black brothers in Raiders jackets, pulling up to the curb in a beat-up Ford, calling him over, telling him they knew all about his rat's-ass tenement back in Buffalo, telling him he don't get the cream if he ain't on the team, and Django'd nod and smile and dance away for a day or two.

But he had to go back to the same place, no choice about it. Regular customers, they came by and if Django wasn't there they got spooked or went somewhere else and
stayed
there because you needed loyalty in the business and Django was loyal, yes indeed.

The third time the brothers came around they arrived in a dump truck, three of them this time, where'd a bunch of young black dudes get a truck like that? Django never knew. One put a gun to Django's head, big mother of a gun, the end of the barrel in his ear, another one of the brothers gripped his hair and yanked his head back, the third twisted Django's arm up between his shoulder blades until Django screamed and when they started dragging him he ran with them, anything to cut the pain, ran with them to the truck and through the open door. They flung him to the floor where he lay while two of them kicked him all the way to the bridge where Dorchester crossed the channel, taking the last exit and turning into a dead-end lane.

“Told ya, motherfucker,” one kept saying. “Told ya.”

They tossed him from the truck and jumped on him before he could crawl away and he was flat on his back, one of the brothers standing on his forearm, a second pulling a gray container, looked like a coffee thermos, out from behind the seat of the truck. The third dude stayed behind the wheel and started backing the truck up, swinging it closer to Django lying there, until the dual wheels crushed Django's hand against the pavement with a sound like popping corn, pop pop pop, like that, and the truck rumbled on and stopped ten feet away.

“Shoulda done the other,” said the dude with the gray container that wasn't a thermos bottle but a propane torch, because now there was a quiet blue flame hissing from a brass tube on the end of the container. “Shoulda done his right one.”

They played the flame across Django's shattered hand, back and forth, and they watched Django writhe and scream with no expression on their faces, none at all, until the propane was exhausted and the flame died. One of the dudes said, “Shit,” and shook tile container before throwing it away where it clattered against a brick wall and landed at the feet of Grizzly who'd been standing there watching it all from a doorway, the Gypsy behind him.

The guy in the truck recognized Grizzly who held his hand out to the side and the Gypsy drew an ass-kicking Colt from a pocket of her parka and placed it in Grizzly's hand. In one motion, his eyes never leaving the kid in the truck, Grizzly raised the Colt to shoulder level and it jerked in his hand and a copper-jacketed forty-five splashed tile dude's brains all over the inside of the cab before anybody could react.

“You boys're too far from home,” Grizzly said, and he fired again, this time into one of the other dude's knees, and his howls of pain echoed off the warehouse walls over and over. “Warned you to keep your asses clear a me. Warned you what I'd do, you pull this shit around me.”

The third dude was already gone, snap, like that, running like hell out onto Dorchester because he knew Grizzly, knew the man's rep, knew he was right, the man was
right
, you didn't go into Grizzly's area unless he knew you were coming, gave you the okay word. But that's what they planned to do, that's what they'd been
told
to do, take this dumb little mother from Buffalo and dump him on Grizzly's turf, and if he lives, you let him walk around town, let everybody know what happens when you don't get on the team.

That's how you played the game, the game had
rules
,
everybody knew that. Django broke the rules and he paid, and then the dudes in the truck, they broke Grizzly's rules and they paid. But a week later, a week after Grizzly and the Gypsy took Django to their place and wrapped his hand up and waited for it to heal, Elsie paid and Elsie didn't
break
any rules, Elsie had been four hundred miles
away
,
but Elsie paid anyway. They made her pay and made her little boys watch and the guys who did it, friends of the dudes in the dump truck, they took pictures of it all and sent them to Grizzly who showed them to Django, the Gypsy taking them out of an inside pocket because these pictures were
bad
and Grizzly never carried anything bad on him, never. Another one of Grizzly's rules.

“Word come with the pictures,” Grizzly said. “You okay here, it's over, account's been settled, hear me? This shit started 'fore you came along, between me an' them, you just got yourself sucked in. But you don't go back to Buffalo, understand? And you don't go back on the river, not your turf. You go back, either place, it starts again and this time they maybe get your little boys.” Grizzly put a big paw on Django's shoulder. “Give you a chance,” Grizzly said. “Me and the Gypsy could use a buddy, a partner. No crack, understand. You handle pills and such, lotta action happening there. Little bit a bread in it for you, little taste now and then, and protection. Specially protection.”

Django had nodded, staring dry-eyed at the dirty bandages on his hand, the pus oozing through, the fingers twisted like a chicken's claw, and he avoided looking at the pictures of what was left of Elsie.

Alive, he told himself. You be alive, the boys be alive. That counts. That
counts
, damn it. You a little different, a little crazy maybe. He knew that, he knew he had to go a little crazy now to save himself, keep himself from living those few minutes with the brothers and the dump truck over and over in his mind, keep himself from thinking of Elsie being raped and cut open while the boys watched and screamed. He would celebrate the fact that he survived by dancing through life, one way or another he told himself. He would let whatever music that entered his mind carry him above all he had suffered, and he would dance to it.

Django closed his eyes and rolled onto his right side, his scarred and crippled left hand against his chest, and willed himself to sleep.

Gerry Orwin was an experienced cop who never played the political game or tried to raise his profile in the department, which was why he had not moved past sergeant after ten years as a full detective. That was how Tim Fox assessed it, and he was quietly satisfied to have Orwin as a partner.

They began their review at Orwin's desk in the new open-concept office arrangement that Fat Eddie had installed a year earlier and that every detective hated because there was never any privacy. When Fox suggested they retreat to the basement lounge for coffee he and Orwin gathered the file summaries and spent two hours in the small, harshly lit room, Fox pointing out key details on the Lorenzo murder, autopsy report and interviews along with three other investigations that were still open on his docket. Orwin nodded his balding head and filled several pages of yellow notepaper with neat and tidy handwriting.