Dancing in the Dark Read online

  “You ever run into Preston Stewart?” I asked.

  “Preston …” he nibbled his lower lip, looked down at the table, and then snapped his fingers. “Right. Tall, tennis-player tan. B pictures.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Ran into him a few times,” said Astaire. “Not much conversation, but he seemed likable enough and, as I remember, he was remarkably informed about dance.”

  “I’m ready,” I said, getting up.

  Astaire rose, turned a knob to warm up the phonograph, and stepped out onto the scuffed, massive floor.

  “I’m going to walk you through some basic steps,” he said. “I’ll keep it simple. Stop me if you don’t understand. When you give Luna Martin the lesson, just do what I’m doing.”

  I nodded.

  “Good,” he said, rubbing his hands. “Very good. Now I’ll just put on a record.”

  The record he put on was ancient and scratched, but I recognized “Hindustan” and would have bet that it was Isham Jones.

  “Now,” said Astaire, “do this. Two sliding steps forward and one short one to your left.”

  He demonstrated. I mimicked.

  “Not bad,” he said. “Now do the same thing to the music. Pick up the beat and you’ll be doing the fox-trot.”

  “We have a problem,” I said.

  “You have a wooden leg,” Astaire said over the steady sound of the music.

  “No,” I said.

  “You are going blind. You suffer from horrible vertigo when you dance. You are massively embarrassed and have what you hope is a temporary insane feeling that you can’t move.”

  “None of the above,” I said. “I can’t hear a beat.”

  “Even the deaf can hear the beat, feel its vibration,” said Astaire. “Try it.”

  I tried.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’ll say ‘beat, beat, beat, beat,’ and you put your left foot out on the beat.”

  “Right,” I said.

  When that didn’t work, he tried counting one-two-three-four.

  Ten minutes and three records later I still hadn’t found the beat. I hadn’t heard it. I decided it was some mysterious thing that other people heard and I was cursed to never experience.

  Astaire was rubbing his chin and watching my feet. “You are a challenge,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  “We’ll search for the beat until you find it,” he said. “This time, forget the music. Just listen for the beat. The music will take care of itself.”

  We searched for ten minutes more when Astaire finally said, “Stop.”

  I stopped. We had been trying to find the beat in a waltz. I had been given to understand that there were three.

  “I suggest that if Miss Martin asks you to show her a step, turn off the music, claim a case of dancer’s arthritis, and walk through the step. There will be a mercifully small number of steps to go through.”

  He showed me steps. Tango, swing, fox-trot, waltz. I drew little pictures in my notebook with comments like, “Hesitation step, follow the flow of dance, keep your arms up, don’t dance on your heels, and don’t look at your partner when you’re waltzing or doing the fox-trot.”

  After almost two hours of this, Astaire said, “Enough” and took off a Sammy Kaye recording of “Brown Eyes.”

  He stood at the table in silence, looking at me, tapping his slender fingers together.

  “It won’t work,” he said. “I thought I could teach anyone, but …”

  “I can fake it,” I said. “It’s part of my job.”

  “I’m beginning to think this is not a terribly good idea,” Astaire said, plunging his hands into his pockets and heading toward me.

  “I’m a professional,” I reminded him.

  “So is Arthur Forbes,” he said.

  “We have a deal,” I reminded him. “But if you want your money back …” I reached for my wallet. He held out his left hand to stop me.

  “Go ahead,” he said with a sigh. “But be careful.”

  “If ‘careful’ works,” I said.

  “All right,” Astaire said, arms folded, tapping his fingers on his elbows. “Once more.”

  We concentrated on the waltz. I led him around the floor and before I flattened too many of his toes, he said, “Okay, forget the beat. Confidence. Complete confidence and a smile. Back straight. Stomach in. Elbows up. Use the whole floor. It’s yours.”

  Something came over me when I didn’t have to worry about the beat. The “Missouri Waltz” scratched away on the phonograph and something inside me said, “What the hell.” I danced. I flowed. I led. I made my boxes, did progressives, turned Astaire. And then the music stopped.

  “Not bad,” he said.

  I was trying to catch my breath. I leaned over.

  “I don’t know what I did,” I said.

  “That, I could tell,” said Astaire. “But you pretended. You got carried away. Confidence will take you across any ballroom.”

  “Hearing the beat would also help.”

  “By pure luck you’ll get it about a quarter of the time,” Astaire said.

  “I guess I’ll have to count on pure luck,” I said, straightening up.

  “See this floor?” he said, looking down. “When we dance on a floor like this, we have to keep stopping so a crew can come in and clean up the foot marks. They all show on film. So you dance your routine and stop and wait while the ground crew comes in on their hands and knees with buckets and towels.”

  There was a moral here but I wasn’t getting it.

  “You are polishing my floor. I am sitting around waiting. You have the dirty job. I dance.”

  “I also get paid,” I reminded him.

  “So do I,” he said. “Which makes it much easier to watch young men endlessly polish the floor. Good luck, Toby. You have my number. Call me at home.”

  We shook hands and he escorted me to the stage door.

  “I think I’ll stay here for a while,” he said. “A few steps I want to try. Besides, I want to be sure I can still find the beat.”

  The next day was Thursday, the day I met Luna Martin, Fingers Intaglia, and the Beast of Bombay, whose hand print was probably indelibly welted to my ass. Driving Lou Canton back to Glendale in agony and listening to him complain didn’t help my disposition.

  I spent most of the rest of the day finding backup. I’d been told gently by Jeremy’s wife, Alice, that I was not to call on him for help again. Or, as she put it in a calming voice as we stood on the stairway of the Farraday Building while she gently rocked Baby Natasha, “If you so much as suggest that you might need his help for one of your dangerous, silly cases, I’ll personally tear off three of your toes.”

  It was an effective warning. Alice, at nearly three hundred pounds, could do the job. But what made it effective was the specific number, three, the choice of an inspired imagination or someone who had thought long and hard about what might be effectively said and done.

  Gunther Wherthman was my second choice. Tiny, easy to spot, maybe, but smart and loyal. Except Gunther was up north. That left Shelly, a less than formidable body, but a body.

  I stopped at a diner called Mack’s on Melrose, ordered a tuna on white toast with a pickle and fries from an ancient waitress in a uniform left over from the Dr. Kildare series. Near the cash register was a display of emergency first-aid supplies—aspirin, Band-aids, Ex-Lax, and an ugly-looking pain salve in a purple jar. I picked up the jar. Then I called the office.

  Violet answered, “Dr. Sheldon Minck’s office.”

  “This is the office of Minck and Peters,” I corrected. “Can I help you?”

  “Is this a joke?” she asked.

  “Mrs. Gonsenelli, this is Mr. Peters. I thought we agreed that you would answer the phone with ‘Minck and Peters, can I help you?’”

  “Dr. Minck changed that,” she said. “He says he pays the phone bill and you should …”

  “Put him on,” I said.

  “He’s with a pa
tient.”

  “Let the patient bleed to death,” I said pleasantly. “It’ll be more humane than what Shelly must be putting him through.”

  “I’ll tell him,” she said, and the phone clicked against the top of her little table.

  I imagined her drawing up tight and wedging through the thin space between the desk and wall. Voices and then, “I’ve got a patient, Toby,” he said. “A new thing I’m trying. Killing the nerves. I’ve got to get back to him.”

  Beyond and behind Shelly came the moan of the Lusitania as it finally sank into the Atlantic.

  “Minck and Peters,” I said.

  “It’s not good for business.”

  “Yours or mine?”

  “Mine,” he said. “You should have your own line.”

  “Hard to get with a war on.”

  “Then you pay half the phone bill,” he said, obviously playing to the alert Violet Gonsenelli.

  “It’s built into my rent.”

  “Built into … who said that? When? How? Why? You make things up. I’m a victim here.”

  More moans from the patient beneath the sea.

  “One dollar a month more,” I said.

  “One dollar? You must be …”

  “… making my final offer,” I said.

  “One dollar,” Shelly agreed.

  “Don’t hang up. I may need your help, Shel.”

  “Help?”

  “I may need some people to protect a client.”

  “Astaire?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fred Astaire? You want me to become a private investigator for a while and protect Fred Astaire?”

  “Did Violet catch all of that? Is she impressed?”

  “I think so,” said Shelly as his patient let out an “agggggghhhhhhh.” “I don’t care if it’s dangerous. When do you need me?”

  “Nine tomorrow morning,” I said. “Ballroom of the Monticello Hotel on Sunset.”

  “I’ll cancel my morning patients. Should I bring my gun?”

  “You don’t have a gun, Shel.”

  “I understand,” Sheldon said seriously. “I’ll be there. Violet wants to talk to you.”

  He handed her the phone and walked away, calling to the moaning patient, “Jesus Christ, can’t you take a little pain without acting like a baby?”

  “Mr. Peters?”

  “Yes, Violet.”

  “Jimmy Bivins is five-to-six to beat Tami Mauriello Friday. I’ll take Bivins and give you four-to-six on six dollars with an extra two dollars that say the fight goes the distance.”

  “Our Ortiz-Salica bet still on?”

  “I’ve got Ortiz, two dollars.”

  “You’re on on the Bivins fight,” I said and hung up.

  I lined up Pook Hurawitz and Jerry Rogasinian, both bit actors and part-time stunt men who could be counted on for a good show if you paid them. They both looked like what they frequently played, gangsters who helped fill out the gang and never uttered a word. I was type-casting them.

  Pook asked who we were working for. He upped his price to twenty bucks a day from the fifteen I offered him. I could have gotten Rogasinian for fifteen but I was sure they’d talk about what I was paying them so I just offered the twenty. Jerry was grateful.

  “Jerry, you ever work on a film with Preston Stewart?” I asked after we had agreed to terms.

  “Twice,” he said. “On Hell in Himalaya I was one of the Sherpa carriers. And on Night of Destiny I played a cab driver. Had one word. Preston comes to me on the curb and says, ‘You free?’ and I answered, ‘Sure.’”

  “What’s Preston Stewart like?”

  “Good guy,” Jerry said. “No star crap. Drank coffee with the rest of us. Joked around. Polite to the women. Good guy. Why?”

  “I think he’s going to marry my ex-wife.”

  “I take it back,” Jerry said. “Stewart was an asshole.”

  “Too late, Jerry. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I hung up the phone and went back to the counter to eat my sandwich and drink a Pepsi.

  “Toast is cold,” the waitress said, hands on hips, challenging me to blame her or deny it. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  “Cold toast is fine,” I said. “Can’t sit. I was spanked by a giant from India.”

  “Want me to do it again?”

  “Nope. I’m in enough pain already.”

  “No,” she said. “I meant, do you want me to give you fresh toast?”

  “I’m all right. I could use a little ketchup.”

  She nodded. “You’re Tobias Pevsner, aren’t you?” she said, handing me the bottle of Heinz.

  “Right,” I said, pouring ketchup and looking a little more closely at her.

  A distant aunt? A former client? She sagged under an oversized white starched uniform; tight curls of white hair crept out from under her Nurse Duncan cap. Her skin was pale and her lips colorless.

  “Anita Maloney,” she said.

  “Anita?”

  “Tobias,” she said. “You took me to the senior prom. You tried to get under my pink crinoline dress and into my cotton panties.”

  There was one other customer at the counter, a round man wearing a delivery cap. He had three folds of skin on the back of his neck. He ate slowly, mechanically, from a bowl that looked as if it contained the same swill that the Count of Monte Christo was forced to gulp down in the Chateau Des Ifs. He tried not to look at me and Anita. I forced myself to look at Anita. She was a year, maybe two years younger than me and she looked like someone’s angry grandmother.

  “Anita,” I said, putting down my sandwich. “How the heck have you been? You look terrific.”

  “You look pretty much the same,” she said, eyeing me. “A few more kicks in the face. A few more pounds. Eat your food before it gets too cold.”

  I ate and shook my head in an isn’t-it-a-small-world shake.

  “So …” I said with a mouthful of tuna, “how the heck have you been?”

  “Life story fast?” she asked, leaning forward.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Married Ozzie Shaw. Remember him?”

  “Football team, straight A’s?”

  “That’s him,” she said with a grin.

  “How is he?”

  “Dead,” she said. “That’s why I’m grinning and happy to be on my feet behind a counter hauling grease.”

  “I gather it was a less than happy union.”

  “Liar, womanizer, hitter, shiftless. And those were his good points.”

  I smiled, keeping my mouth shut as I chewed, and looked over at the man with the extra-thick neck. He was still shoveling.

  “We had one kid, Lonny,” she said. “Here.”

  She reached under her apron and came up with a pocket-sized cardboard folder. She took out a photograph and slid it forward next to the plate.

  There was the Anita Maloney I knew. I didn’t recognize Ozzie, who had his arm around her shoulder. The kid standing between them was maybe five or six.

  “Cute,” I said, sliding the photograph back. “Ozzie changed.”

  “That’s not Ozzie,” she said, putting the photograph back. “That’s Charlie, Lonny’s husband. He’s in the army. Prisoner of war. Japs. The boy is my grandson, Mal.”

  “Great-looking kid,” I said.

  “That’s not the end of my story,” she said with a smile that suggested much more. “But we’ll save that. What’s your short-and-sweet tale? I heard you married Anne Mitzenmacher. How’s your brother?”

  “Anne and I were married and divorced, no kids,” I said, dipping fries in ketchup and wondering how I’d escape. “And Phil’s a captain with the L.A.P.D. Three kids.”

  “You still a cop? I heard you were a cop.”

  “Not for a long time,” I said. “I’m a private investigator.”

  “Like Mike Shayne?”

  “A little,” I said, looking at my wristwatch.

  “You got a card? I’ve got something you might help with.”
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  I found a withered edged card in my wallet and handed it to Anita. She looked at it and put it into the pocket of her white uniform. There was no check and I didn’t want to wait for one. I pulled out two bucks, plenty for the drink, sandwich, and salve, and the most generous tip Anita Maloney was likely to get in her entire career, at least from a sober customer.

  “Generous,” she said, picking up the bills and my plate.

  “You know where I can get some potatoes?” I asked.

  “Potatoes?”

  “Five pounds.”

  Anita shrugged and disappeared into the kitchen. I exchanged looks with the eating machine. Anita was back almost instantly with a paper bag.

  “This is about five pounds,” she said, handing the bag to me. “Thirty cents.”

  “Thanks, Anita,” I said, reaching into my pocket for change.

  “You left more than enough,” she said, holding up the two dollar bills. “Maybe we can get together some time and talk about Glendale,” she said. “Here, I’ll write down my phone number.”

  She pulled out a pencil and scribbled her name and number on a napkin and handed it to me.

  “It’d be fun,” I said, folding the napkin and stuffing it into my pocket.

  “I clean up real good,” she said.

  “That makes one of us,” I said over my shoulder, heading for the door. “Take care, Anita.”

  The eating man’s stomach gurgled. He pulled out a red-and-white package of Twenty Grand cigarettes and looked around for matches.

  Getting back into my Crosley was as close to hell as a human is likely to get. My rear end wept with electric bursts. I drove home trying not to think about the pain or about Anita Maloney. There had been a thirtieth reunion of my high-school class not long ago. I hadn’t gone. I told myself I never had anything in common with my classmates and I hadn’t liked Glendale High. I knew now that I didn’t want to look at their faces, to see dopey Gregg Lean with no hair and a big belly, and Anita Maloney, without saying a word, telling me to go look in the mirror.

  I was back at Mrs. Plaut’s boardinghouse and halfway up the stairs when I heard behind me, “Mr. Peelers.”

  I turned with a smile, paper bag in hand.

  “Mrs. Plaut.”

  “My manuscript.”