The Devil May Dance

by Tapper, Jake

  “Do you see her, old boy?” Lawford said as he scanned the scene.

  “I don’t,” Charlie said. He stared at the faces. Couples sat at tables or around the bonfires, drinking. Some danced. An older man, white-haired with a belly, struggled to his feet. He laughed and extended his hand to the girl by his side; she was dressed like a squaw in a B Western with feathers in her headband and a short, fringed, clingy faux buckskin dress and beaded moccasins.

  It was Violet.

  Charlie gasped.

  She followed the older man into the fort through a doorway marked APOTHECARY. Charlie saw a different couple exiting the same room through a side door as a soldier waved the new couple in.

  Charlie gestured at the couple going in. “That’s her.”

  “Where?” asked Lawford.

  Before he could answer, a young soldier approached them. “We have two girls available,” he said. “One of them is a mulatto if you’re interested, Mr. Davis. Would you like to come with me?”

  He motioned toward the wooden stairway.

  Sweaty and panting from the steep ascent, Margaret and Sheryl Ann finally reached the Hollywood sign. Each letter was huge, fifty feet high and thirty feet across, made up of three-by-nine panels of sheet metal painted white on one side and held up by utility poles and wooden beams. Margaret walked along the front of the sign while Sheryl Ann walked on the opposite side.

  “Nothing here,” Sheryl Ann said. “Do you know where Entwistle died?”

  “She climbed to the top of the H,” said Margaret. “And then she jumped.”

  Sheryl Ann slowly walked along, surveying the rocks and bramble in the predawn light. She lifted her head and gazed at the top of the H.

  “That’s the lore, anyway,” Margaret said. “Couldn’t have been any more of a metaphor if she’d been nailed to the H.”

  “How did she get up there?”

  Margaret noticed just above her head a white ladder fastened to the back of the letter. At the top, there appeared to be something wedged between the sheet metal and a utility pole.

  “Come here,” Margaret said, beckoning to her friend.

  Sheryl Ann joined Margaret behind the H.

  “I need a boost,” Margaret said. “Clasp your hands.”

  She hauled herself up to the ladder and climbed. Each rung made a loud creak. She tried to focus on the inches in front of her and not the broad-view insanity of what she was doing.

  Charlie hatched the plan in a panic. “I want to stop him,” he told Lawford and Davis as they approached the wooden steps. He told them what to do and they nodded their assent. The two walked to the front of the fort and whispered to a couple of the guards. Then they strode to the center of the parade ground.

  “Hey there, kids!” Lawford said as the loudspeakers blared the zzzzzip of a needle being clumsily removed from the record. Charlie—slowly walking toward the apothecary—was surprised at how his friend’s voice boomed throughout the fort without the aid of a microphone.

  “Since this is all entre nous,” Davis said, “we thought you cool cats and chicks might appreciate a song or two.”

  “So unless you’re otherwise indisposed, my friends, let’s celebrate!”

  The old man with Violet poked his head out of the room and smiled to see the special mini–Rat Pack concert. Violet followed him out, seizing the respite to lean against the wall.

  Davis had grabbed a recorder from a girl dressed as a squaw while Lawford beat on tom-toms.

  “¡Revolución cubana!” the two men shouted from the center of the parade ground, commencing with a popular one-hit wonder from the mid-1950s, before the Castros and Che landed at Playas de las Coloradas from Mexico.

  ¡Revolución cubana!

  I just fell in love in Havana

  She ran for the Puerto

  And wished on me muerta

  And left me with just my banana!

  “¡Olé!” the singers shouted, prompting clueless cries of “¡Olé!” from the crowd. Some of the teenage girls started to dance. Charlie wondered if they were drunk or trying to avoid their “dates” or just having a little harmless fun, the kind kids their age should be having in purer settings.

  He looked at Violet; her “date” stood a few feet in front of her. Charlie stared at her; he didn’t want the old man aware of his presence. Finally, sensing the eyes on her, Violet glanced to her left and saw Charlie, who motioned with his head that he wanted her to follow. Violet’s face registered no reaction. Charlie realized that she probably figured he was just another pervert. Then, as if something had snapped in her brain, she looked at him again and her eyes opened in recognition. Uncle Charlie? she mouthed, and he nodded.

  ¡Cubana revolución!

  Batista retribution!

  He calls CIA.

  And they say come-what-may

  No, no, no to wealth redistribution!

  Señorita—

  Your skin—leche con café

  On your Sierra Maestra I want to play

  While I attack in the valley beneath Escambray

  Charlie put a finger to his lips, then pointed upstairs. Violet understood.

  ¡Revolución cubana!

  Now I’m back in ol’ Indiana

  I loved to do pillage

  In each sexy village

  Every lady like heaven-sent manna!

  Charlie casually strode to the stairs, followed by Violet, who seemed nervous and eager to flee. The porch wound around the back of the fort and they ducked into a room, at the far end of which was, luckily, another door to another set of stairs. Beyond the fort lay the banks of the faux Missouri River, on which they were relieved to see a canoe.

  Borrowing some of the light cast on the immense H, Margaret held the first document close to her face. It was a bill from a costume designer for seventy-five squaw costumes. The next was a bill from the same costume designer for fifty flapper outfits. That was followed by dozens of other bills for dozens of costumes—leprechauns, witches, plantation, Kentucky Derby, and the like—dating back to 1953.

  Margaret looked back at the most recent bill. It was dated two weeks ago.

  Sheryl Ann studied a different stack of papers in the light projected onto the giant O. “Here’s a photo of Chris Powell at some film premiere,” she said. She held it up. Powell and his date were smiling.

  “That’s Lola,” Margaret said. “The dead girl.”

  Sheryl Ann sifted through the stack. “What’s this?” she asked, holding up bookkeeper vouchers, records of debts paid. “Payments from Paramount and Warner Brothers Studios to someone named Marie Antoinette.”

  Margaret dug through the file folder she’d found wedged behind the H. “There’s a film reel here too,” she noted, digging into the bottom of the container.

  “Does it make any sense that Charlotte died for…this?” Sheryl Ann asked. “What is this? Some bills, bookkeeper vouchers, some photos, and a film reel?”

  From above them, at the top of the mountain behind the sign, they heard a car slowly driving over gravel.

  “We should get going,” Margaret whispered. The steep canyon wall blocked her view of the car. They heard footsteps and Margaret stuffed everything back in the folder, and the two women began cautiously walking down the mountain.

  Some rocks dislodged above them and rolled by. Margaret looked over her shoulder to see the silhouette of a large man determinedly moving down the hill.

  “Sheryl Ann!” she cried.

  “I see!”

  It was difficult to go much faster, given the steep precipice and the dim light; Margaret stumbled on a bush. She recovered, reclaimed the folder, and continued her controlled rush down the mountain. When she found the semblance of a trail they’d used on their way up, she paused and looked back and saw Sheryl Ann fighting off the man. With his free hand, he pulled out a gun, aimed it at Margaret, and fired.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Anaheim, California

  April 1962

  “H
op in front,” Charlie said as he and Violet scurried to the canoe. He had originally planned for them to swim and couldn’t believe their luck.

  He looked back at Fort Wilderness. Lawford and Davis continued to sing, the crowd was still cheering, no one seemed to have any idea they had left.

  “Okay,” Violet said as she stepped into the boat. “Thank you.”

  He looked at her, hoping she was still the same good-natured kid he’d met some Christmases ago given that she’d been through God only knew what since running away from home. Margaret was going to be so happy, so relieved, so grateful, he thought. He slid the vessel off the banks and into the water, stepped in, knelt, found an oar, and began paddling.

  “How do we get out?” she asked. They were cloaked in the night as Charlie guided them through the imitation Missouri, but he gently whispered, “Shh,” as he clutched the oar. She nodded. She got it.

  With Tom Sawyer Island on their left, he paddled past a dock, a small forest, and keelboats on their right. A sign announced FOWLER’S HARBOR and beyond that stood a structure that advertised NEW ORLEANS SQUARE. If they kept paddling to the left on the circular river, they would soon be back at the Mark Twain Steamboat area, which teemed with activity, so Charlie figured New Orleans was a better route. He put some muscle into his stroke to land on the banks in front of him.

  “We’re getting off here?” Violet asked.

  “Think so,” he said. The canoe skidded onto the muddy shore and Charlie began pulling the boat all the way onto land so Violet could climb out. But suddenly he felt a sharp whack on the back of his head, and everything went black.

  The bullet ricocheted off a large rock maybe a foot from Margaret. She ducked, gasped, then turned and ran down the mountain. Her pursuer fired another shot. Margaret heard it whiz by her head; she felt the wind of it. She ducked again and started zigzagging down the hill.

  A minute passed. She skidded behind a bush then stole a look uphill. No one was there. It was quiet and still. The Hollywood sign stood indifferent to the drama.

  She stood and once again heard the crack of the gun. She turned and ran, straining her eyes to see the path in front of her. Her run down the mountain took on a pattern: hop-jump-skid, hop-jump-skid. Her thoughts drifted to Charlie, wherever he was, then Violet, then she remembered Charlotte. God. Charlotte. She’d put the dead woman out of her mind as she raced to find the hidden trove of evidence, but Margaret couldn’t believe she’d been murdered. What secrets would be worth killing someone to preserve?

  Hop-jump-skid…

  Lord Almighty, she wanted to see Charlie. She needed his help in rescuing her friend, of course, but it was much more than that, she realized.

  She loved Charlie at his best, and when he was at his worst she was mad at him for not being who she knew he could be. She’d been too hard on him, she decided, confronted as she was now with finality, with mortality. Perhaps she too readily compared him to the dashing, brilliant Columbia senior she’d met in the stacks that romantic winter night in 1941. Maybe she’d had a vision of the man he would become and was struggling with the chasm between that man and the reality of Charlie at forty-one, shell-shocked, booze on his breath, still unsure of how to negotiate his finely tuned sense of black and white on a planet of grays.

  Yes, he was, of course, making stupid mistakes, ones that maybe seemed small in the context of the Rat Pack bacchanalia but were nonetheless out of character. There remained so much in Charlie that was good—not just his virtue, but his tenderness with Lucy and Dwight, his kindness to her mother, his devotion to her. Margaret would help him. The fundamental issue she had, she knew, was not with her partner; it was with their enemies, those who sought the erosion of standards and fundamental decency. The American way of life was built on the honor system, but that depended on all the players having a sense of honor. Others might not, but Charlie did, and that was all that mattered, truly. Yet both of them had become so focused on the minutiae of day-to-day decisions and slights, they were blind to the overall wonder of their lives.

  Hop-jump-skid…

  She stopped to catch her breath and turned to look up the mountain. There was nothing but the letters, illuminated by both the floodlights and the pinkish-orange light preceding the rising sun to the east, past the reservoir. The shooter and Sheryl Ann were both gone. Before her, the glittering grid of Hollywood and the sprawl of Los Angeles, Inglewood, Compton, Lakewood, Torrance. And beyond that, the inky black where the Pacific rumbled. She would run to the bottom of the hill, get into her car, and go find Charlie. He would help her, she would help him, and they would defeat the nefarious forces that once again had found them and were trying to destroy them. She would do whatever she needed to get him back to full strength. They had no choice; she had no choice.

  As Charlie rolled over, he caught a glimpse of the imprint his face had made in the muddy bank of the fake river; it looked like the death mask of Napoleon Bonaparte. He tried to sit up, but a foot suddenly came at his chin. Charlie jerked away and the kick bruised his shoulder.

  When Charlie had told John Wayne about his hand-to-hand training at Fort Benning, he meant every word of it. He’d learned to fight dirty, to kill or be killed. His instructor, Master Sergeant Tom Ladzinski, would repeatedly say, “Fuck the Marquess of Queensberry” while demonstrating how to rip out a man’s throat. Ladzinski destroyed the idea that men should put up their dukes and instead showed them how to tap into the viciousness within themselves.

  Charlie was older and slower on the banks of Disneyland’s sham Missouri than he’d been at Fort Benning or in France. As he stood, he saw that his opponent was a good deal smaller, sinewy, with a floral-print shirt and horn-rimmed glasses, currently focused on trying to pull Violet, who had collapsed in the mud, to her feet. Charlie didn’t recognize him, but he realized that Violet’s flop onto the banks, purposeful or not, gave him an opportunity. Charlie charged.

  The man sidestepped Charlie’s lunge and tripped him. Charlie staggered and turned just in time to take a judo kick to his abdomen, which knocked the wind out of him, bringing him to his knees. The man attempted to kick Charlie in the chin, but Charlie grabbed the man’s leg, lifted him, and tossed him onto his back.

  He suddenly wondered if this man truly sought to kill him and whether lethal force was necessary. It was in that moment of hesitation—the precise second-guessing that he’d been warned about at Fort Benning—that Charlie heard the click of a switchblade, then saw its metal gleaming in the moonlight, the foil grip held in the right hand of his opponent.

  The knife came for Charlie, the assailant lunging for his abdomen; Charlie jumped to his right, splashing into the shallows. He snapped to it, chasing away any questions about whether both men would be able to walk off this beach. He ran and dived into the man and felt the tip of the blade enter the back of his left shoulder. He felt it again and again, going into the muscle in his back. Then the man tried to bring the knife to Charlie’s throat. Charlie grabbed the man’s head, ripped off his glasses, and plunged his thumbs into his eyes.

  He locked his elbows, sat forward, pushed his thumbs deeper, and dragged him headfirst into the water. The man writhed and splashed, swinging to bring the blade back to Charlie’s throat. Charlie looked away as the man’s spasms weakened. A sign at a nearby wooden building advertised AUNT JEMIMA’S PANCAKE HOUSE.

  The man stopped resisting.

  The knife fell into the water.

  Charlie felt light-headed. He vomited, violently, into the faux river until everything inside him, every drop of liquor that wasn’t in his bloodstream, dissolved in the water. He felt utterly sick. In his body, in his heart. The bile and alcohol, like poison in his throat, on his lips.

  He crawled out of the water and collapsed from exhaustion. Minutes passed; Charlie didn’t know how many. Then his mind reentered the full context of his situation. Music echoed from down the river.

  A whispered voice: “Charlie, that you?”

  It was Sammy Dav
is Jr., standing at the edge of New Orleans Square. Violet was with him. In the dark of night, neither of them seemed to see the corpse in the water. Or if they did, they didn’t acknowledge it.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Davis said. “Now!”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Santa Monica, California

  April 1962

  The morning sun had already begun to beat down on the beach town when, half a block from the Miramar Hotel on Ocean Avenue, a blue Rambler American swerved up to Lawford’s Ghia and honked. Charlie sat, spent, in Lawford’s back seat, Violet asleep with her head on his shoulder. Neither of them paid attention to the horn. Lawford followed the Rambler into a Howard Johnson’s parking lot a mile away.

  Few words had been spoken during the drive from Anaheim. In the front, Lawford and Davis spun the radio dial between music and news. Violet had nodded off immediately, almost as if she were trying to catch up on years’ worth of sleep. She was only sixteen but she looked ten years older, Charlie thought, and not just because of her dress and makeup. He wasn’t sure if the trauma she’d experienced was as bad as what he’d gone through during the war, and there wasn’t much sense in trying to compare the two; he just knew she’d be fighting to get back to who she’d been forever. She’d learn to numb herself, forget her pain for a few minutes here and there.

  Despite the events of the past few hours and the stab wounds that throbbed and continued to bleed beneath his makeshift bandages, Charlie felt more like himself than he had in years. He knew intellectually that in the weeks to come, he would start second-guessing his actions on the riverbank, but had he not killed the man in the floral shirt, Lucy and Dwight would be without a father and Margaret would be a widow, to say nothing of Violet being left in hell. Saving his niece, bringing her back to his wife, filled him with pride, an emotion he hadn’t felt in a long time.