Shadow Dancers

by Herbert Lieberman

  In time, the need to compute every series of numbers he saw induced in him a mental numbness behind the eyes and a drowsiness, as if he’d been hypnotized. At last he had to roll down the windows and open the dash vents and gulp air to keep himself awake.

  Weary as he was, still he couldn’t stop himself from counting. After a while he made a concerted effort to avoid seeing numbers, raising his gaze above the level of the car plates ahead. For a time this worked, but if he relaxed his concentration for even a moment, his head would droop to a more normal, less unnatural, position and there would be the numbers again, flashing at him like some remorseless taskmaster: 286 WCD … 322 FLV … 606 WDH … 421 DOV.

  At Hawthorne, where he turned onto the Taconic, his hands cramped from grasping the wheel so hard. The air rushing through the open vents and windows was nearly frigid, but he was in a sick sweat. Near Peekskill, he was overcome with an uncontrollable desire to sleep. The effect of adding numbers, endless numbers rapidly, shouting them out loud as if in defiance of someone or something only he could see, had increased the speed of the small white dot jumping back and forth behind his eyes. It made his head swim and his temples throb.

  He thought of pulling off onto one of the grass shoulders beneath a tree and then sleeping. But if he did, he knew he risked attracting the attention of the troopers, who plied regularly up and down the parkways at night, looking for just that sort of thing.

  North of Claverack he pulled off the parkway onto a service road where he found a diner. There, he drank three cups of coffee and ate a stalish sticky doughnut that tasted of lard and left a queasy-making taste on his tongue.

  He still wasn’t at all sure where he was going. He had a direction. Suki had said north, but as of yet he had no specific destination. Possibly Canada, as the old lady had suggested, crossing over at Niagara. He wasn’t convinced that was wise. True, the customs people were lax at the border crossings. Very seldom did the Canadian customs ask for identification when you entered, nor did U.S. customs when you came back in. But, occasionally, they could surprise you, if they didn’t like your looks. It was precisely the kind of surprise he wished to avoid. He didn’t have the sort of papers that could stand up to close scrutiny.

  At Chatham he headed briefly west on the Massachusetts Turnpike, then north on the New York State Thruway. The large infusion of caffeine kept him going until Albany, where at last he turned off the Thruway at a Ramada Inn, rented a room, and fell into bed with his clothing on.

  Six hours later he awoke with a shaft of sunlight poking its way through a frost-rimmed window. He rose and moved toward it. Standing there in his rumpled clothing, peering out beyond a cloverleaf to the parkway already teeming with traffic, he etched the word chaos with his fingernail on the frozen pane.

  The small patch of neatly barbered grass outside his window was laced with frost. A flock of sparrows foraged across it, pecking at the hard, unyielding earth. For the first time in nearly seventy-two hours he stripped off his clothing and bathed. Next he shaved, lingering long before the fogged mirror, savoring the good feeling of hot water, soap, and cologne. He dressed in a fresh shirt and trousers and shined his shoes from a complimentary kit provided by the management.

  Cleanliness and creature comforts meant a great deal to Warren Mars. He had an abhorrence of personal filth that amounted to a phobia. The fact that he called home a place as notable for squalor as 14 Bridge Street was imply one more irony in a life charged with ironies.

  Downstairs in the coffee shop he devoured an enormous breakfast: fruit, cereal, pancakes and sausage, all washed down with sizable drafts of sweet coffee. Then he went out, chatted amiably with the cashier for a while, and settled his bill.

  When he stepped back out into the parking lot, carrying his suitcase, a toothpick drooping from the corner of his mouth, the sun, moving out from behind a low scudding cloud, suddenly blazed resplendently upon him. He took it as an augury of good tidings and started to whistle.

  The Mercedes coupe, so recently green, wore its fresh coat of pearl gray with such natural ease that it would have been hard to imagine that it ever was another color. Its big lacy chrome grille flashed like a million bits of broken glass in the morning sunlight. In addition, the car sported four new tires and had recently been tuned up at the garage.

  It stood there, glistening in the early-morning sunlight as though it had been champing at the bit waiting for him. Sitting behind the wheel, he turned the key. The ignition roared instantly to life. The red indicator dials on the dashboard sprang hard right and quivered at the top digits. He switched on the defroster and the fan, then watched the wipers carve large graceful half-circles onto the befogged glass.

  Waiting for the engine to warm, he gunned it several times, enjoying its roar, feeling its enormous power so instantly receptive to the slightest pressure of his foot.

  Rolling out of the parking lot, it occurred to him that all of the dark demons of the night before had fled before the warm, purging sunlight of the new day. Gone were the evil humors, the dark premonitions, the bad auguries that had foretold doom in a whirlpool of numbers.

  Bridge Street and all of its attendant cares — Suki; the police; his pursuing fury, Ferris Koops — all seemed very far away. He thought momentarily of Janine with a shrug of regret. Well, he would even that score too. There were many scores to be evened. But not just yet. In time, he told himself. For now, he must withdraw from the field and wait.

  Now, it was just him and Mother, as it had been for so many years. He placed his right hand down on the console of the Mercedes and stroked it almost sensuously, as if it were warm, living flesh. That, too, was an additional unpleasantness that would have to be faced. Suki had said he must get rid of the car. With the police having now traced it to Bridge Street, he knew she was right. Still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to entertain the notion. It was like abandoning a child you’d cosseted and cared for and nurtured into maturity over the course of years, through good and bad times, and then been told the child had a fatal illness and must surely die.

  A twinge of sadness like a lowering cloud put a chill to his morning elation. He pushed it aside as if waving off a puff of bad air. There were problems ahead, to be sure, hut for today at least, he wouldn’t worry. Up ahead, through the circular three-pointed hood insignia of the car, the north country loomed. Like a compass, it pointed the way to lakes and mountains, to immense pine forests that rolled on endlessly for miles, vast distances in which one could lose oneself for just as long as one chose.

  At the Rensselaer intersection of the New York State Thruway, he had a scare. Automobiles were lined up to approach the tollhouse, where dozens of troopers had circled the area with their cars. He felt a fist close over his heart. They appeared to be checking everyone going through the toll. He was certain that it was a roadblock and that they were looking for him. Those cops had undoubtedly gone back to Bridge Street and questioned Suki. She’d broken, told them everything, given them a lull description of him and the car and where he was heading. There was already a line of cars behind him and there was no turning around at that point. If he had, it would have drawn immediate attention and they would have assuredly come after him.

  As the car inched forward to the tollbooth, he fell into a cold sweat. His hands, gripping the wheel, were ringing wet. For a moment he thought of getting out of the car and making a dash for it. But where? There was nothing but wide open space around him, and on foot they would run him down in a minute.

  There were only four or five cars ahead of him now. From where he sat, it appeared they were checking registrations and, in some cases, going around the back to check license plates. With only two cars ahead of him, his heart banged fitfully away in his chest. Dark spots jumped before his eyes. Breathing deeply, he counted numbers to himself in an effort to regain his composure. As a tall trooper under a big felt Stetson sauntered his way, Warren smiled jauntily.

  “What’s up?”

  The trooper stoo
ped slightly, looking at his front plates, then came around the side and glanced at his windshield. “Just checking your inspection sticker. Have a good day.” The trooper flicked a finger to the wide brim of his hat and waved him on.

  “You, too,” Warren returned heartily, picked up a mileage card at the booth, and rolled through. His heart was still thumping and his hands were ringing wet where they’d gripped the wheel.

  Ahead of him was a tangle of route signs. He had still made no choice as to a destination. He could take the Thruway west, farther into New York State, toward Schenectady, Syracuse, Buffalo, Niagara, Canada, or Route 7 east, out of Troy toward Bennington and over the Green Mountains into New Hampshire, heading north on into the rugged peaks and notches of the White Mountains.

  There was traffic coming up fast behind him and still more troopers pulled up on the other side of the toll. Trying to decide, his feverish gaze swarmed over the woozy letters of the road signs before him. As he had done so often before under similar circumstances, he finally sat back at peace and decided to let Mother make the decision for him. By means of some vague pressure, some subtle pulse passing between his hand and the wheel, a message was conveyed to the automobile. The machine responded instantly by veering east. In the next moment, he was roaring into the blinding glare of sun. It was still rising above the distant peaks, like some huge hot-air balloon cut loose from its moorings. He was hooting and laughing at the top of his lungs.

  PART V

  TWENTY-FIVE

  IT HAD BEEN QUIET FOR THE BETTER PART OF ten weeks — the sort of quiet that makes an old cop edgy, knowing that for each day of quiet savored, a tithe would be exacted in the currency of havoc.

  Mooney went about his appointed rounds, tracking down old leads on the Shadow Dancer and following up new ones. Keenly aware of time running out on him, he prayed for the Dancer to resurface and the carnage to start anew. All to no avail. The raging fever of Dancermania appeared to have finally abated.

  Still, it hadn’t abated in Mooney’s mind and wouldn’t. Some two weeks later, on the day before Sylvestri’s accession was to occur, Mooney, attired in his best Sunday suit, appeared in Mulvaney’s office to plea for a stay of execution.

  “I know what you’re here for, Frank.” The chief of detectives shot a scathing look at Mooney’s Sunday finery. “The answer is no.”

  “I’m close to this thing now, Clare. Just a little more time.”

  “No.” The o sound of the word came long and resonated through the bare, dusty room.

  “Sixty days, Clare. Two months. Two months more.”

  Mulvaney’s lips curled in a scornful smile. “I will say one thing for you, Frank. You got a lot of brass.”

  “I can wrap this whole thing up in that time.”

  “No way, my friend. No way.” Mulvaney busied himself with paperwork.

  Standing there, fuming above him, Mooney chewed the inside of his lip. “Six weeks,” he heard himself plead pitifully.

  Not speaking, Mulvaney rose, returning several folders to his file. When he returned to his desk and resumed his seat, Mooney was still waiting there for an answer. None came. Mulvaney busied himself with more paperwork.

  “What would you like me to do, Clare, get down on my knees and beg?”

  “I’d like to see you clear out of here so I can get some work done.” Mulvaney never looked up from his papers.

  A look very much like desperation crossed Mooney’s features. “What if I offered to quit?”

  That did succeed in bringing the chief of detectives’ head up. “Quit?”

  “To go now instead of waiting out my ten or eleven months. Wouldn’t that be a great pleasure for you, Clare? Not to have old crabby nutcase Frank around here anymore?”

  A look of mild interest flared momentarily in the chief of detectives’ eyes. He stirred slowly, shifting his weight in the chair. “What’s the deal?”

  His barely concealed enthusiasm hurt Mooney, but he couldn’t afford to grieve about that now. “You give me an extension of six weeks. If I haven’t delivered the Dancer by then, I’m walking.”

  Mulvaney nibbled the rubber nub at the tip of his pencil. “You’d be losing a wad of pension money.”

  “That’s my loss.”

  Mulvaney pondered that a moment. “One month.”

  “Come on, Clare. Have a heart.”

  “One month. Thirty days,” Mulvaney snapped with cold finality. “You got nothing by then, you walk. That’s final.”

  Early in December, Mooney had a birthday. It was the occasion of a small celebration at the Balloon. Fritzi, in her quiet, methodical way, had gone about the business of digging up names — Mooney’s cronies from the bad old 19th Precinct days, most of them now retired.

  It was a loud and vinous evening. Mooney’s sidekicks, while considerably unloosened, still felt a certain constraint in the posh setting of the Balloon, with its tony uptown clientele and its striking owner.

  Did Frank Mooney, the chronic misogynist, actually snare this imposingly handsome lady? They’d all heard about Fritzi and were fully prepared to dislike her. Frank, they’d heard, had lost weight and put on airs. He used doesn’t for don’t, not for ain’t, and placed his knife down on the plate each time he raised a forkful of food to his mouth. Worse even, he no longer drank beer.

  “Well, Jesus Christ. Ain’t he piss elegant? Ain’t she some piece of business, though?” — there was none of that sort of talk that evening. It was fun and old times and letting hair down. They sang a few beery saloon songs. There were several hilariously wicked imitations of old precinct chiefs, and a few brief awkward moments of dry-eyed memorials to old buddies long since gone.

  Fritzi was the unqualified hit of the evening. Far from being aloof and standoffish, as they half expected, she spent a good part of the night at the table with them, singing a chorus or two of “My Wild Irish Rose,” talking horses and swapping salty stories, trading them one for one. Fritzi’s were salty but never vulgar. By the time brandy and cigars came around, she had them eating out of the palm of her hand.

  Mooney, attempting to look his most irascible, merely flowed — more the proprietor of the famous old steak-house than the owner herself. He kept waving expansively at people, ordering rounds of drinks, and sending back food he thought improperly prepared. He’d learned it all from her but, of course, assumed that he’d been a connoisseur from birth.

  It was a show and they all knew it. What of it? Mooney had waited a lifetime to make his move. Now that it was made, he could gaze on his work and wonder at his good fortune. No one knew about his desperate deal with Mulvaney.

  Christmas was rapidly approaching. The tree was already up in Rockefeller Center. Salvation Army Santas clanged bells at every corner. People were jammed five-deep in front of the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord & Taylor, Bonwit’s and Macy’s to see the animated fairy tales, the magic shows, the street corner buskers and the Neopolitan creches depicting the ancient story of the Magi and the coming of the Prince of Peace.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE ROADS AT THAT HOUR WERE EMPTY. DESPITE the ice and bitter temperatures, they were reasonably passable. Twelve miles farther south, he’d begun his climb over Pinkham Notch. The fearsome gorge on his right was ringed with the dark, jagged silhouettes of peaks. Awesome vistas of pine forests slumbered beneath thirty inches of snow at an altitude of two thousand feet.

  The road descending into the notch was narrow, recently sanded, and plowed, with the banked snow at the edge of the road serving as a sort of road guard. Above the notch the phantom moon rode pale and remote through the scudding clouds.

  Somewhere just below the top, where the state road starts to make its dizzy descent into the craggy gorge, Warren pulled the car over toward the edge, turned off the headlights, and sat there for a time, looking out at the frozen lunar landscape. With the engine idling and the heater blowing warm air up around his trousers, he made his goodbyes. There was an attitude of communion and bereavement a
bout it, as if he were saying farewell to a dying friend.

  In ten minutes’ time he turned the headlights back on, opened the door of the car, and stepped out into the howling winds. Moving quickly now, he went around to the back of the car and removed his small suitcase from the trunk. In the trunk there was also a five-gallon can of gasoline, half full.

  His jaw set grimly to the task, he proceeded to sluice the contents of the gas can over the interior of the Mercedes. When he’d done that, he returned the can to the trunk of the car and locked it. Next, he released the emergency brake and put the car in gear.

  While it hovered there at the edge of the road, somewhat impeded by the bank of plowed snow, Warren pulled out a Zippo lighter from his pocket, cupped a hand over it, and flicked it. Standing back beside the open door, he held it in contact for a moment with the fuel-drenched upholstery of the back seat.

  There was a sudden audible whoosh, as of air sucked inward, violently imploded. A large flash followed closely on its tail. In the next moment, the interior of the car was ablaze. He went around the back again, and putting his shoulder to the trunk, he pushed, even as the front tires, slipping and sliding, began to creep laboriously upward over the banked snow.

  A wall of heat rushed outward from the open door with almost palpable force. Arms raised before him, Warren fell back from the car, fearing that the gas tank might explode at any moment. He watched with fascination and a terrible sadness the awful death struggle of the torched car as it slipped and climbed the snowy embankment like an injured insect. Torn between a desire to extinguish the flames and save the car and an urgent, almost panicky need to flee, he chose the latter. But even then he gazed sadly at the stricken car, full of a sense of his own treachery, his lack of gratitude, watching the flames behind the cracking glass glow almost festively. The front tires by then had breached the top of the bank and straddled it, hanging free in space while its rear wheels spun and whined, pushing puffs of powder out behind them.