Solitary Dancer Read Online Free Page B

strides. “Didn’t want to, you know, upset things too much. But this way . . . hell, you agree it’s a good idea, right?”
    Vance nodded. Right. One hand twisted the cap on the bottle. The point of a dagger traced its way along his lower digestive track. When Donovan closed the door, Vance tilted his head back and drank deeply.
    The fire escape was crusted with layers of bird droppings accumulated over the years. As he climbed, Tim Fox wrapped his beige Burberry tightly around his body to keep the fabric from becoming soiled. He leaned slightly forward so that if he lost his step he wouldn’t fall backward.
    At the first landing, he looked up to the door of McGuire’s apartment on the top level. From inside the building came the distant
whump-whump-whump
of the strip club’s sound system.
    On the second landing he paused again to look around and was startled to see an ancient Oriental woman watching him through a grimy window in the adjacent building, her toothless jaw moving in some kind of chewing action, her expression vacant and uncaring.
    He began climbing to the third-floor landing, the bird droppings thicker and fresher, layering the soles of his nearly new Florsheims, his heart beating from the effort and from his fear of heights. He hated heights. Sometimes he hated his work. He sure as hell hated his new partner, Acting Lieutenant Philip James Donovan.
    But he liked McGuire. He had always liked the snarly bastard somehow. He sure as hell wouldn’t be doing this for anybody else.
    Fox reached the door, raised a hand to shield the light from his eyes and wiped away a layer of dust that clung, thick as a penny, to the window in the door.
    Through the dusty glass he could see an unmade cot, a sink, a long pine table, a shelf crowded with books, a straight-backed wooden chair, a naked light bulb dangling from the ceiling, a battered plastic radio, a low counter with a hot plate and a kettle, and a cheap floor lamp standing at one end of the bed. Fox knocked on the door, looked over his shoulder to see the ancient Oriental woman still watching him and knocked again.
    He tried the doorknob. It turned easily in his hand and with one step he was inside the room, inhaling its stale air.
    Billie was ready to go on after Mary Lou, standing behind the stage in her pink gown with the pink halter and panties underneath, her silver G-string cutting the skin on her hips, wishing she could get a drink about now, a hit of Scotch maybe, when the door opened and in came Django.
    The Dancer, Dewey and Grizzly called him, but then Dewey and Grizzly could call people anything they wanted to and usually did. Nobody picked an argument with Dewey or Grizzly except maybe a goddamn platoon of marines and then they’d better be sober and well-armed.
    â€œHere comes the Dancer,” Dewey grinned when he saw Django sidling between the tables, moving in rhythm to the music from the overhead speakers, snapping the fingers of his good hand and holding the other one, the one that was scarred and claw shaped, out to one side. His close-cropped head bobbed, his eyes shone and he flashed his wide grin at everybody in the room, even Dewey. Django was wearing his black leather trench coat and gray tweed stingy-brimmed porkpie hat, the coat open so he could move his legs and feet easier, showing his dance steps, strutting his stuff.
    His mother named him Elias for reasons she never explained, and he grew up in Buffalo as Elias Tetherton, just another runty black kid destined for a life in the projects or a death in a gutter, take your pick. Then Elias met Elsie, cute little Elsie who liked his sense of humor and his crazy way of dancing, telling him he made old Michael Jackson look like a tree stump, you come right down to it. Only thing is, Michael Jackson had the drive, the urge, and Elias Tetherton just had the joy, and joy alone gets you nothing but a grin and a nod and maybe a couple of bucks from white people