Dance Of Death

EIGHT

Lorace Sawtelle passed the oversize vellum menu back to the waiter with relief. He wished that once-just once-a client would come to him. He hated the sprawling concrete jungles they all worked in: Chicago, Detroit, and now New York. Once you got to know it, Keokuk wasn't so bad. He knew all the best watering holes and titty bars. Some of his clients might even develop a deep admiration for certain Iowan charms.

Across the table, his client was ordering something that sounded like cough-up of veal. Horace Sawtelle wondered if the man really knew what the hell he was asking for. He himself had scanned the menu, first one side and then the other, with deep misgivings. Handwritten French script, and unpronounceable at that. He'd settled on something called steak tartare. Hell, how bad could it be? Even the French couldn't ruin steak. And he liked tartar sauce on fish sticks.

"You don't mind if I glance through them once more before signing?" the client asked, holding up the sheaf of contracts.

Sawtelle nodded. "You go right ahead." Never mind that they'd spent the last two hours going over them with a damn magnifying glass. You'd think the guy was buying a million dollars' worth of Palm Beach real estate instead of fifty grand in machine parts.

The client buried his nose in the paperwork and Sawtelle looked around, idly crunching on a breadstick. They were sitting in what looked to him like a glassed-in sidewalk cafe, protruding out into the sidewalk from the main restaurant. Every table was full: these pasty-faced New Yorkers needed all the sunlight they could get. Three women sat at the next table, black-haired and gaunt, picking at huge fruit salads. On the far side, a fat businessman was digging into a plate of something yellow and slippery.

A truck passed in a shriek of grinding gears, seemingly inches away from the glass wall, and Sawtelle's hand closed reflexively, breaking the breadstick. He wiped his hand on the tablecloth in disgust. Why the hell had the client insisted on eating out here, in the January chill? He glanced up through the glass ceiling at the pink awning, La Vielle Ville stitched on it in white. Above towered one of the huge cliff dwellings that passed for apartments in New York City. Sawtelle eyed the rows of identical windows rising toward the sooty sky. Like a damn high-rise prison. Probably held a thousand people. How could they stand it?

There was a flurry of activity near the entrance to the kitchen and Sawtelle glanced over disinterestedly. Maybe it was his lunch. Prepared tableside, the menu had said. And just how the hell were they going to do that: wheel a Weber grill over and fire up the charcoal? But sure enough, here they came, a whole damn procession of men in white smocks, pushing what looked like a small gurney in front of them.

The chef parked the rolling table at Sawtelle's elbow with a proud flourish. He barked a few orders in rapid-fire French and several underlings began to scurry around, one chopping onions, another frenziedly beating a raw egg. Sawtelle scanned the rolling table. There were little white toast points, a pile of round green things he guessed were capers, spices and dishes of unknown liquids, and a cupful of minced garlic. In the center, a fist-sized wad of raw hamburger. No steak or tartar sauce to be had for love or money.

With great ceremony, the chef dropped the hamburger into a stainless bowl, poured in the raw egg, the garlic, and onions, then began mashing everything together. In a few moments, he removed the sticky mass and dropped it back onto the rolling table, working it slowly between his fingers. Sawtelle glanced away, making a mental note to ask that the hamburger be cooked extra-well-done. You never know what kinds of diseases these New Yorkers carry around. And where was the damn grill, anyway?

At that moment, a waiter appeared at the client's side and slipped a plate onto the table. Sawtelle looked over in surprise just as another waiter darted in and slid something in between his own knife and fork. Looking down, Sawtelle saw with incredulity that the glistening patty of raw beef-now tamped down into a neat little mound-sat in front of him, surrounded by wedges of toast, chopped eggs, and capers.

Sawtelle looked up again quickly, uncomprehending. Across the table, the client was nodding approvingly.

The chef beamed at them briefly from the far side of the table, then stepped back as his flunkies began wheeling the apparatus away.

"Excuse me," Sawtelle said in a low voice. "You haven't cooked it."

The chef stopped. "Pourquoi?"

Sawtelle jerked a finger in the direction of his plate. "I said, you haven't cooked it. You know, heat. Fire. Flambé."

The chef shook his head vigorously. "No, monsieur. Is no cook."

"You don't cook steak tartare," the client said, pausing as he was about to sign the contracts. "It's served raw. You didn't know?" A superior smile came briefly to his lips, then vanished.

Sawtelle sat back, rolling his eyes heavenward, struggling to keep his temper. Only in New York. Twenty-five bucks for a mound of raw hamburger.

Suddenly, he stiffened. "Sweet Caesar, what the hell is that?"

Far above him, a man dangled in the sky: limbs flung wide and flailing silently in the chill air. For a moment, it seemed to Sawtelle that the man was just hovering there, as if by magic. But then he made out the thin taut line of rope that arrowed upward from the man's neck. It disappeared into a window above, black and broken. Sawtelle stared openmouthed, thunderstruck by the sight.

Others in the restaurant had followed his gaze. There were sharp intakes of breath, a sudden gasp.

The figure jerked and shuddered, its back arching in agony until the victim seemed almost bent double. Sawtelle watched, transfixed with horror.

Then, suddenly, the rope parted. The man, flapping his arms and churning his legs, dropped directly toward him.

Just as suddenly, Sawtelle found he could move again. With an inarticulate cry, he threw himself backward in his chair. A split second later, there came an explosion of glass, and a shape hurtled past in a shower of glass and landed with a deafening crash on the women and their fruit salads, which disintegrated into a strange pastel eruption of reds and yellows and greens. From his position on his back on the floor, Sawtelle felt something warm and wet slap him hard across the side of the face, followed almost immediately by a shower of broken glass, dishes, cups, forks, spoons, and flowers, all raining down from the impact.

A strange silence. And then the cries began, the screams of pain, horror, and fear, but they seemed strangely soft and far away. Then he realized that his right ear was full of an unknown substance.

As he lay on his back, the full impact of what had just happened finally registered. Disbelief and horror washed over him once again. For a minute, maybe two, he found himself unable to move. The cries and shrieks grew steadily louder.

At last, with a heroic effort, he forced his unwilling limbs to respond. He rose to his knees, then staggered to his feet. Other people were now climbing to their feet, the room filling with the muffled shrieks and moans of the damned. Glass lay everywhere. The table at his right had turned into a crumpled mound of food, gore, flowers, tablecloth, napkins, and splintered wood. His own table was covered with glass. The twenty-five-dollar mound of raw hamburger was the only thing that had been spared, and it sat in solitary splendor, fresh and gleaming, all by itself.

His eyes moved to his client, who was still sitting, motionless, his suit splattered with something indescribable.

Abruptly, involuntarily, Sawtelle's limbs went into action. He swiveled about, found the door, took a step, lost his balance, recovered, took another.

The client voice followed him. "Are-are you going?"

The question was so inane, so inappropriate, that Sawtelle broke into a choking, hoarse laugh. "Going?" he repeated, clearing his ear with a tug. "Yeah. I'm going." He lurched toward the door, coughing with laughter, his feet crunching across glass and ruin, anything to get away from this terrible place. He hit the sidewalk and turned south, his walk breaking into a run, scattering pedestrians in his wake.

From now on, people would just have to come to Keokuk.