Dancing in the Dark

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 patient.”

“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?”