A New York Dance by Donald E Westlake

Author:Donald E Westlake [Westlake, Donald E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-11-10T07:21:04.641000+00:00

And after that…

WHEN JERRY GOT back to the Bernsteins' house there were a lot of people there. Mel and Angela were in the kitchen, arguing about something. Teresa and Kathleen and Barbara were in the dining room, arguing about bridge. And Frank and Floyd were in the living room with an old fat coloured woman, arguing with her about whether or not they should have kidnapped her.

"What's going on here?" Jerry said.

Neither Mel nor Angela would answer him, none of the card-playing women would give him an answer he cared about, and Frank and Floyd kept both talking at once.

Jerry pointed at the coloured woman and said, "What the hell'd you bring her back for? She ain't no Dancing Aztec Priest."

"I don't dance for nobody" the coloured woman said.

Frank finally got sufficient silence around him so he could answer the question, and then he said, "Jerry, I had to do it. She recognized me."

"Recognized you? What do you mean, recognized you?"

"I mean recognized me as in recognized me. As in, 'Hello, Frank.' That's how."

"You know her?" The social combinations necessary to such a thing boggled Jerry's mind.

"She works at the theatre," Frank said. "She's a maid, she's seen me around backstage. Her name's Mandy, that's all I ever knew. How'm I supposed to know she's somebody called Amanda Addleford?"

"Well, you're all in trouble," Mandy announced, "unless you let me go right this minute."

Jerry told her. "We're in trouble no matter what we do, lady."

Frank said, "We couldn't kill her, could we? No. And we couldn't leave her there to call the cops. So we brought her with us."

"You can't keep her," Jerry said. "She's out of season."

"Ever since the Emancipation Proclamation," Mandy said.

Frank said, "Jerry, I was hoping you'd come up with something."

"You were, huh?"

Floyd said, "We did pretty good otherwise, Jerry. We got the—"

Jerry said, "Not in front of the prisoner here, okay? I mean, she knows too much already; let's start cooling it."

Frank said, "So what do we do with her?"

"You let me go," Mandy said. "Right this second."

Jerry said, "We'll stash her while we think it over. Just a minute." And he went out to the kitchen where Mel and Angela were still arguing and said, "Listen, do you have a closet upstairs where we can stash this old woman Frank and Floyd brought back?"

"Closet!" yelled Mel, and for some reason that made the argument even worse than it was before. Mel screamed at Angela, and Angela screamed right back at Mel, and Jerry couldn't make any sense out of it at all. So Jerry went back to the living room and told Frank and Floyd, "Screw it. Come on, bring her along upstairs, we'll find someplace to stash her."

"You're making a big mistake," Mandy said.

"It wouldn't be my first today," Jerry told her.

In the kitchen, Mel was yelling the phrase "in the closet" in various ways: "In the closet!" "In the closet?" "In the closet!" Jerry and Frank and Floyd and Mandy were upstairs in search of a closet.

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