Shadow Dancers

by Herbert Lieberman

  But then, just as suddenly and abruptly as if a switch were thrown, the sensation of transcendence ceased and she found herself standing in the darkened, stuffy little cubicle upstairs beneath the cupola in Warren’s room. The air was close and smelled of sour bedding. Outside, the wind howling up and down Bridge Street rattled the glass of the cupola in its frames. Beyond the glass, the light from the Statue of Liberty glowed with an unearthly golden sheen in the harbor.

  Half crouching there in the dark, swathed in coats and robes and layers of outer wear, she slowly regained an awareness of her surroundings. Still resonating from the intensity of her “experience,” she tingled with excitement. She’d been exhausted, bone weary and feverish, when she’d taken to her bed that evening. Now she could feel a current of new vitality surging through her. With her finger she touched tentatively the flesh of her cheek and found it warm and glowing.

  For days, ever since he’d left, she’d had no contact with Warren. That didn’t alarm her. With the police poking about as they had, she was glad there hadn’t been any. In the past she’d known him to disappear for months on end, making virtually no contact with home. Then, just as suddenly he would reappear, with not so much as a word about where he’d been or what he’d been up to.

  Knowing that the police had traced him to Bridge Street (even though the police themselves didn’t yet quite realize it) and for a time were even watching the house (several times she’d seen the unmarked cars parked with their lights out at the head of the street), she scarcely expected Warren to be so rash as to try and make any sort of contact. He’d be an awful fool if he did, and whatever one might say about Warren Mars, in matters of the police he was nobody’s fool.

  Now something had told her that Warren would soon be returning. She no longer had anything to fear about his threats of breaking away. Feelings of imminent good fortune suffused her. Things would go well now. She’d had an inkling while under the influence of her nightly infusion and those inklings were always reliable. Once again, there would be the old closeness between her and Warren. Just like the old days, when he was a slip of a thing seated at her side, his tiny child’s hand in hers and learning the trade.

  An angry blast of wind leaned hard up against the cupola glass. The noise of its creaking jolted her rudely from her reverie. Suddenly, she was keenly aware of things to do if Warren was to be returning soon.

  Although she was reasonably certain the police still continued their surveillance of Bridge Street, she was not uneasy. Even if Warren did return while they were still about, she knew he was canny enough not to march brazenly up the gravel walk and knock on the front door. The night he’d left Bridge Street in near panic, he’d left through the tunnel. She was certain that if he came back now, it would be by precisely the same route.

  As a matter of additional precaution, she moved more of his things out of the little room in the attic, boxed them, and hauled them down into the far reaches of the cellar. As a final gesture, she pulled a chair beneath the light fixture hanging overhead, reached up, unscrewing the small brass crown ringing the bulb, and lifted down from there the little velvet jeweler’s sack of rings and bracelets and brooches of precious and semi-precious stones comprising Warren’s own personal cache. These she would stash away out of sight until such time that any danger of the police re-searching the house would have faded entirely.

  Even at that late hour (two A.M., at least), she carried the small sack down into the cellar. She made her hobbling, lurching way into the distant reaches of the icy, subterranean vault. With the fat knob of tallow flickering before her, she found the cast-iron lid marking the entrance to the sewer line, wrestled it off by means of a crowbar, and descended.

  Not more than fifty or so feet from the bottom of the stone stair stood the half-dozen assorted barrels and crates that contained the cream of her “collections.” Before tucking Warren’s sack deep into one of those containers, she spilled its contents into her ruddy, callused palm and rummaged through them once again. Several she hefted separately, holding them up to the sputtering candle for closer inspection.

  As always, when she handled valuables, something rapt overcame her. She never perceived such objects in terms of pure, simple beauty, but rather as a source of powerful “magic” to be hoarded up against the bad days she was always certain were coming. The sense of physically possessing them produced in her a joy that was oddly sexual. Merely handling them, the sensations in her were nearly identical. In her mind she’d already forgotten that they were Warren’s prizes. Had someone confronted her with that unpleasant fact, she would have said she was merely holding them for safekeeping against his return.

  She was protecting him in the event the police might return and search the room again. She had his interest at heart, she told herself, without pushing self-analysis of her motives too far.

  She didn’t covet anything of his, she assured herself. But what if he were to return to the house at a time when she wasn’t there and discover that his little cache was missing? What then? The consequences might be dire.

  On reflection, however, she concluded that such an outcome was improbable. When the time came for him to return, she would be there to explain. Having pushed all such unpleasantness from her mind, she turned her attention to the fistful of pretty baubles gleaming in her palm — the little bits of colored stone, the chunks of silver and gold shimmering in the murky gloom of the candlelit tunnel.

  “Hey, Briggs.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “That’s right. I’m talking to you. You’re Briggs, aren’t you?”

  Ferris Koops hovered in the shadows beneath the scaffolding of a construction site on Bridge Street. The voice he heard came from the inside of a four-door Dodge sedan parked nearly opposite him at the curb. He couldn’t see the face of the person addressing him, only the featureless silhouette of a disembodied head poised above the driver’s seat.

  “You’re Donald Briggs, aren’t you?”

  Koops stared blankly at the dark square of the car window, where the disembodied head appeared to be nodding at him. In the next moment, both front doors opened simultaneously. Two men emerged from either side of the car. The doors slammed hollowly through the empty street. Koops could see a pair of dark, boxy forms approaching him, their footsteps ringing on the cold cobblestone of the street.

  They approached him quickly from either side, one swooping down on him from the left, the other on the right. The one approaching from the left, a stoutish man with a bull neck and a bristly, well-trimmed mustache adorning his upper lip, flicked open a wallet. A silver badge flashed like a gash of lightning. “My name is Officer Borelli, N.Y.P.D. This is Officer Carpenter.” He tilted his head at a sullen black man in a houndstooth suit of imitation British cut.

  “Your name is Briggs, isn’t it?”

  “My name?” There was a smile of pleasant bemusement on Koops’s face. “My name’s not Briggs. My name’s Koops.”

  “Koops?”

  “Right. Ferris Koops.”

  The officer calling himself Borelli frowned. “What the hell kind of name is that?”

  “Dutch. My ancestors were Dutch. On my father’s side, that is,” Ferris hastened to explain just in case it was not immediately apparent to the officer.

  Borelli stared him up and down skeptically. “What are you doing out here this hour, Koops?”

  “Out here?”

  “That’s right. You been out here the last three nights. What’s the big attraction? This ain’t exactly Broadway and Forty-third.”

  “You been starin’ at that house a lot, Koops,” the black officer chimed in. “Something about that house interest you?”

  “I’ve been out here the last three nights?” Ferris replied in the form of a question. The ingenuous smile, the good-natured perplexity gave the impression of someone vaguely distracted but altogether likable.

  “That’s right. I can vouch for it, ‘cause we been out here the past three nights watching you
,” Officer Borelli said. “You got some identification on you, Ferris?”

  “Identification?” The word appeared to elude him. He wavered there beneath the streetlamp, his eyes smiling off into space.

  The officers exchanged quick glances. “Driver’s license. Social Security. A credit card,” the black officer said. “Anything with your name on it?”

  “Oh, sure. With my name. I get it,” Ferris yelped like an overexcited puppy. Fumbling in his back pocket, he withdrew a wallet. He flipped it open, revealing a swollen compartment of leather, crammed full with cards, scraps of paper, and assorted debris.

  From out of that turmoil, he produced several cards. One was a Social Security card and the other a pass with his photograph on it, issued by the Department of Welfare, entitling him to eat in various shelters around the city.

  “This your address, Ferris?” Officer Borelli read from an address card inside a plastic window. “Four twenty East Eighty-first Street.”

  “That’s where I live. That’s my address,” Ferris proclaimed with boyish eager pleasure. Borelli and Carpenter exchanged more meaningful glances.

  “You’re a bit off your beat, aren’t you, my man?” the black officer remarked.

  “I guess so.”

  “What brings you down here, three nights in a row?”

  “Down here.” Ferris pointed with his finger at the ground as if to clarify the question. “Oh, you mean down here?” A radiance illuminated his youthful features. “I used to live down here. Bight there in that house.” His longish finger waved excitedly at the ramshackle brick Federal nearly eclipsed by the shadows of the encroaching warehouses and factories.

  Borelli stared doubtfully across at the crumbling, near derelict structure. “You lived over there?”

  “Right. With my mom and dad. Lived there the first seven years of my life.” Ferris beamed with pride.

  “Then what happened?” Borelli inquired.

  “My dad died and my mom remarried.”

  “That’s when you moved up to Eighty-first?”

  “There were some other places before that,” Ferris said. “Not so nice.” The smile on his face never wavered as he recited a litany of woe.

  “Where were some of these other places?” Borelli asked while he flipped incuriously through the grimy wad of papers Ferris had provided him.

  The young man closed his eyes in an effort to recall. When he opened them again he looked apologetic.

  “You don’t recall?” Borelli regarded him skeptically. “People don’t usually forget where they lived.”

  “It’s not that far back, Ferris,” Officer Carpenter pressed him. “Try and remember.”

  Ferris stared blankly down at his shoes as if stalling for time. The two plainclothesmen waited patiently.

  “Tell you what we re gonna do, Ferris.” Officer Borelli’s voice rang with hearty goodwill. “This area’s not exactly the best area to stroll around in after dark, recapturing boyhood memories. What d’ya say we run you up to Eighty-first Street?”

  “I’d sure appreciate that,” Ferris replied full of earnest gratitude. He was excited at the prospect of riding in the unmarked police car with the two plainclothesmen.

  “But first, we gotta make a little stop at the precinct house. Want to ask you a few more questions. Check a few things out.”

  “Sure. Great.”

  “Just routine stuff.” Borelli patted him on the arm and opened the back door. “Hop in.”

  “He says he lived there as a kid.”

  “You check it out?”

  “At the Bureau of Deeds … Klink bought it forty-five years ago from a party name of Blaylock. No record of any Koops ever having lived there.”

  “Nothing in the archives?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Could be his family rented the place from the former owners.”

  “I asked about that.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Nothin’. Just smiled at me, funny like.”

  “Smiles a lot, this Koops.”

  “And nods his head,” Pickering added dryly. “He likes to nod his head.”

  “A flake.”

  “Right off the wall, Frank. Believe me.”

  Both men nodded sagely. It was early morning at Manhattan South. The squad room, full of smoke and noise, clattered with the motion of the first shift muster. Names fired back and forth in the morning roll call. Chairs scraped across the floors. Shoes scuffled. Lockers clanked open and shut in the noisy corridors where men shed uniforms for street clothes and indulged in sophomoric joshing peppered with epithets, prior to going home.

  Under the watchful, slightly anxious gaze of Rollo Pickering, Mooney affixed his signature to a sheaf of dusty reports with the busy, distracted air of a man who’d already forgotten what had just been said. “And no prior police record?” Mooney suddenly asked; all the while his pen continued to scratch fitfully across the reports.

  “None.”

  “How long he say he lived up on Eighty-first Street?”

  “Two years in January. Landlord confirms it. Says he’s an ideal tenant.”

  “That just means he pays the rent on time. Sits still for all the increases.”

  “That’s about it,” Pickering assented. He had no heart left for disputation. “Frank, this kid ain’t the Dancer.”

  “Who said he was?” Mooney’s hand rose mechanically to accept a mug of coffee from a rookie patrolman. “The point is, what the hell was he doing out there on Bridge Street, three nights in a row?”

  Mooney drank coffee and returned to his reports, while Pickering mulled the question over in his head.

  “Drifting. Wandering. Who knows? His lawyer says he’s a bit simple.”

  “What’s the lawyer’s name again?”

  “Drummond.”

  “Drummond?” Mooney glanced up. “Haven’t I heard that name somewhere before?”

  “Probably. He’s one of the top piranhas for Wells, Gray.”

  Mooney whistled. “Wells, Gray, eh? That’s pretty big league for a flake. Where does this kid get the bread to retain a gilt-edge shyster outfit like Wells, Gray?” Pickering suppressed an urge to scream. “I already told you, Frank. They’re trustees of Koops’s annuity. Apparently, old man Koops was pretty well-heeled. Lost a fortune in real estate at the end of his life and died of a broken heart. He left the kid pretty well off. No fortune, mind you, but enough to take care of himself for the rest of his life.”

  “What does Drummond say?”

  “Drummond was in here last night, spouting the Constitution and the New York State Penal Code.”

  “What’s he think about our holding him? You didn’t say he was a suspect in this Dancer thing?” Mooney glared up at him sharply.

  “All I told him was he was picked up for loitering and acting in an irrational manner in the streets.”

  Mooney made a face of despair.

  “Drummond wants him out. Says we’ve got no reason to be holding him.”

  “He’s right. We don’t.” Mooney scratched off his signature on the final report and shoved the whole stack of them aside with a grunt of disgust. “What about prints?”

  “We took a set when we booked him. Drummond nearly hit the ceiling when he heard that.”

  “Let him scream. It’s routine.” Mooney was up and moving. “How soon can you throw together a lineup?” Pickering’s eyes traveled to the ceiling. “Gimme an hour or so.”

  “You got it. In the meantime, send a car up to Washington Heights. Pick up Berrida and bring him down here.”

  “What about the Pell dame?”

  “No go. I’ve been on that for a week. The doctors still won’t permit it. Have the photographers get me a couple of mug shots before we release him. I’ll take them out to Rockaway myself.”

  Galvanized by the older man’s sudden momentum, Pickering started out the door at a dash.

  “Hey, Rollo,” Mooney called after him. “What about the teeth?”
<
br />   “Whose teeth?”

  “Koops’s, dummo.” Mooney glowered. “The incisors? The front teeth. Remember?”

  “Oh.” Comprehension flooded the detective’s face. “Straight as an arrow, Frank. Pretty as pearls.” Pickering shrugged gloomily. “Sorry.”

  “Look close. You gotta be sure now.”

  “I’m lookin’. I’m lookin’.”

  Though the temperature in the street was in the thirties, and not much higher indoors, Hector Berrida was in a sweat. Unaccustomed as he was to the presence of uniformed police all around him, he felt a certain pressure to oblige.

  “What d’ya see?” Pickering asked.

  Hector Berrida glared hard through the big one-way picture window, his neck thrust a good way forward from the rest of his body. The object of his attention was a lineup of ten men standing before a blank wall, with nothing but a series of black horizontal lines spaced at intervals up the wall’s length to indicate the height of each subject. From where he stood they gave the impression of ten cardboard silhouettes in a shooting gallery.

  “Well?” Pickering persisted.

  “I’m lookin’. I’m lookin’.”

  “Take your time, Hector. We can’t afford mistakes.” Mooney spoke with reassuring calm.

  “One guy says hurry. The other guy says take your time. I’m tryin’, man. I’m doin’ my best.”

  “Is there any one of them at least looks familiar?”

  A vein throbbed visibly at Berrida’s throat. “I don’t know.” His voice quavered with fretfulness and doubt. In his mind he thought he knew what they wanted, and he feared what they might do if he failed to comply. Experience had informed him that that was the way it was with cops.

  “That night you bought that amplifier,” Mooney prodded delicately. “You said you got a good look at the guy.”

  “Sure, sure,” Berrida agreed eagerly. “I was lookin’ at him face to face. Close as you’re to me, right now. Close as that.”