Corpse de Ballet (18 page)

Elektra nodded, then glanced apologetically at Kirsten. The latter assumed a mask of sublime indifference, at the same time blinking back a swell of tears.

“Lily, you'll remain as First Havisham. I'd like you to learn Estella, too. Nicky, can you handle second Pip?”

Nicky, a dark, curly-haired demigod Juliet sometimes saw out on the fire escape, said yes. And then Luis Fortunato sat at the piano and the rehearsal began.

Reminding herself that she did need to get back to Lady Porter's soirée, Juliet was just beginning to slink away when the door opened and Detective Murray Landis entered, another man at his side. The second man was also a detective—there needed no deerstalker hat to tell Juliet that. Later, she would learn he was Tom Fales of the Manhattan North homicide squad, Landis's partner on this case.

Fales was big-boned and thickset, with protuberant blue eyes on either side of a thin red nose, and he wore the same kind of casual khaki slacks-and-dark sports jacket clothing that made Landis look so suspiciously average. But he also had a subtle quality—Landis had it too—that made him look exactly like a television police detective. What was it? No doctor or lawyer (to say nothing of writers) that Juliet knew looked so much like his video counterpart; nor did one expect these professionals to behave like their simulacra. But for some reason, the moment a real policeman swaggered into view, supra-authentic images of fictional officers rose in the mind's eye. Perhaps the cop shows were simply better done than the medical and forensic ones? Perhaps police took their own cues from television?

Curious to watch her old acquaintance in action, Juliet arrested herself in mid-slink and sat down on the floor a few feet from the exit, as if this had been her intention in leaving her chair in the first place. The two detectives had drawn Patrick's notice at once (and the notice of everyone in the room, for that matter, except the oblivious Ruth) and he hurried over to them. Juliet heard his startled, “Oh!” no doubt in response to their identities, but could make out only mutters and murmurs after that. From his gestures, he was showing them where Anton had danced, where he had fallen and how, where most of the people in the room had been and so on.

Presently, Ruth looked up for her assistant, found him busy chatting with strangers and sharply called his name. This occasioned a break in the proceedings, as Patrick brought the men over and introduced them to her.

More buzzing and murmurs, more nodding and gestures (while the ensemble traded glances and raised eyebrows at one another), and then Murray and his colleague stationed themselves in the front corner of the room farthest from Juliet, where they stood watching as Ruth returned to choreographing Pip's youthful fistfight with Herbert Pocket, Miss Havisham's gentlemanly young relative. Murray had not so much as looked at Juliet, so far as she knew, and he kept his eyes on Ruth and the dancers now.

Pocket was to be danced by Alexei Ostrovsky, who Juliet now knew had been a rising soloist when he left the Kirov for the Jansch. He had no intention of staying in the corps here, nor did Ruth think he long would.

“What you're telling Pip is literally, ‘Come and fight,'” Ruth was explaining to him when Juliet focused on them again. “‘Come and fight.' You want to fight, you look forward to fighting. For you, fighting is a game. You're a rich boy who just earned his second belt at a karate training center on the Upper East Side. You know what a karate belt is?”

Alexei nodded. He was wearing purple tights and a black sort of vest that left a good deal of his chest bare. His chest was hairless and narrow, but beautifully defined. His habitual smirk had not quite left his otherwise handsome face, and Juliet supposed this reflexive, superior twitch was part of the reason Ruth wanted him for the role.

“You want to try all your moves, and now you've found a real live lunk to try them on, understand? And you,” Ruth turned to Hart Hayden, who stood listening with his head slightly dropped, as if he could concentrate better by looking at the floor, “Dickens compares you here to a ‘savage young wolf' or a ‘wild beast.'” Hart looked sharply up. “He says you feel like a beast after you deck Pocket, not once but many times,” Ruth went on, “because he keeps coming at you and he has no strength at all, for all his fancy skipping and jumping around. Plus, there's Estella between you. And Estella—come here, Elektra—Estella is watching you.”

Elektra Andreades rose effortlessly from the floor and joined the little group at the front of the room. She moved mechanically, her thoughts clearly elsewhere. But she seemed able to force herself to listen, for she did what she was told. Juliet saw her give Hart a speaking look, a wordless appeal for help, support, kindness. It struck Juliet, as it had before, how very much closer Hart and Elektra seemed than Ryder and Elektra. They had almost the kind of communication you see in twins, as if moving together for so many years had given them a secret, silent language.

Ruth soon began to mold some tentative steps, like a sculptor warming clay in her hands. “More watching!” she said meditatively. “Maybe we'll create a sort of parallel here to Pip watching the Havisham–Estella pas de deux, I don't know. Anyway, after the fight is over, Estella will say to Pip, ‘You may kiss me if you like.' And of course, you will kiss her, Hart. On the cheek, as she turns it to you.” Ruth brought Hart and Elektra together, turning Elektra's chin so that her cheek was presented to Hart's pale lips. Behind them, neglected by Ruth, Kirsten and Nicky Sabatino attempted the same gesture, while a soloist named Arturo Ruiz awaited further instructions as second Pocket.

“Okay?” Ruth went on. “But it's a contemptuous gift, a tip, like a couple of crumpled bucks you give the bellboy. And you must think of yourself as an animal, Hart. A wild animal, coarse and earthy and low. Not noble or uplifting, not enlightened, not princely—” She paused and glanced guiltily at Juliet, who glared back meaningfully. “I'm sure you understand,” Ruth corrected herself hurriedly, rather awkwardly patting Hart's arm.

Juliet wondered why it would be rather awkward to pat Hart Hayden's arm. It certainly would, she thought, unless the patter was a fellow dancer accustomed to stylized caresses. There was something shiny about him that discouraged patting and petting, a cleanly, almost antiseptic quality that was both attractive and disconcerting. It was extremely difficult to imagine Hayden giggling, say, or hiccoughing—taking any involuntary action, allowing his body to relax. He was the sort of person for whom a bout of flatulence could have tragic repercussions. Control. Everything was controlled with Hayden. Yet he was so intelligent and had been so welcoming and easy with her. He was not, Juliet concluded, as easy to read as she had first supposed.

Whatever his inward feelings, he managed to give his body over to Ruth. She worked first with Alexei, devising a kind of capering sequence of steps that half-menaced, half-teased Pip. But even before she had turned to work with him, Hart had begun to feel out his response, beginning with an almost apelike swinging of one arm, a confused hunch of the shoulders. Juliet was gratified to see that she had been (however fortuitously) correct about his ability to become an earthier Pip. Ruth eagerly soaked up his tentative movements and began to work them into a pattern to complement Pocket's.

“Lovely!” Ruth exclaimed, at a seemingly off-balance spin Hart improvised.

Juliet recognized the genuine enthusiasm in her voice and felt free to let her gaze wander away from the work, to Landis. She was startled to find him looking at her. The moment their eyes met, his cut away to the door, and he raised an index finger. “Go out the door and wait,” she understood this to mean, and obeyed, ignoring Ruth's quick, reproachful glance as she crept away. The corridor was empty, except for the echoey swells of piano music from other studios on the floor.

Landis and Fales joined her a few minutes later. The former provided introductions.

“Anywhere quiet we can talk for a few minutes?”

Juliet, anticipating the question, had already checked the next studio down the hall and found it unoccupied. She led them in. Landis drew her to a spot away from the door, where they could not be seen through the little window.

“Cops and robbers,” she remarked, with an uneasy laugh.

“Cops and murderers, according to you,” said Landis, who seemed determined to keep her at arm's length. Which was fine with her, she had begun to think. “You mind letting me borrow your cell phone? I'll call the lab now, see what they found.”

“The city doesn't give you guys cell phones?” Juliet asked, handing him the phone.

Landis laughed. “We still write our reports on typewriters,” he said. “Meantime, why don't you help Detective Fales here make a diagram of Studio Three?”

Juliet obliged, identifying the main landmarks (mirrors, barres, rosin box) while Fales sketched swiftly in a spiral notebook. Landis went into a corner alone and muttered into the phone for a bit. Juliet could not help smiling a little at how uncomfortable and out of place he and Fales looked here. She supposed she must look equally incongruous and silly to the dancers.

Soon Landis folded the phone and returned to the others, his dark face thoughtful.

“You were right,” he announced, handing Juliet the phone. He turned to Fales. “The Coke was heavily laced with Ecstasy.”

“And the prints?” she asked hopefully.

He shook his head. “We'll check what we found, but they're not likely to prove much. Anyone could have taken an innocent swig from the bottle or handed it to him. You could have marked it when you opened the bag at home—”

Annoyed, “I told you, I never opened the bag at home,” Juliet interrupted.

“It could have prints from the vendor who sold it,” Landis went on, “or a delivery boy—”

“It came out of a machine,” said Juliet.

“How do you know?”

She was quiet a moment. “I guess I don't know,” she corrected herself. “I just assumed it came from the machine in the dancers' lounge, because it's the same kind of bottle.”

“We'll check on that. We'll see if anyone saw him buying it. And when. If it was purchased inside and someone doped it, we'll have to check out who was near him—or it—from the time he acquired it. Can just anyone walk into this place?”

She shook her head. Next door, she heard Luis Fortunato playing the “Peeping Pip” trio and knew, with a sinking sensation, that Ruth was moving backwards. “You have to go past the receptionist. There's no other way in.”

“And out?”

“You can go out quite a few ways. There's a fire escape and a couple of other doors that lead to the building stairwell.”

“I'll need a list of everyone who was here yesterday.”

“That shouldn't be any problem. Every day, there's a schedule written out, telling who goes where and when.”

“Support staff? Visitors?”

“You'd better ask Gayle. She's the apricot blonde in front. Murray, did you talk to Anton's family? What did they say?”

Landis glanced at Fales before answering. Fales raised and lowered his furry eyebrows as if to say the irregularity did not trouble him if Landis thought it okay.

“Well, of course they're distraught,” he began. “And I had to use an interpreter, they don't speak much English. But I gathered young Anton had a very rocky adolescence,” he went on. His Brooklyn accent mysteriously faded as his voice unexpectedly gained warmth and his expression sympathy. “Up and down, up and down, shrinks, guidance counselors, lots of problems. A few collisions with the law, mostly about drug use.” He paused and looked at her meaningly. She compressed her lips. “I have to tell you, they sounded shocked, but they didn't sound too surprised. I think they knew this could happen some day.”

“They knew their son could be murdered?”

“They knew he could commit suicide. Recklessly, inadvertently, in a fit of despair, whatever. What they said, though they didn't say it outright, wasn't so much, ‘This can't be.' It was more like, ‘So, this is how it finally happened.'”

“But he had everything to live for!” Juliet protested. “He had just become a principal in a highly regarded company. He could have danced anywhere in the world. And he was physically splendid, the most splendid example of a human being I've ever seen.”

“Yeah, I saw him too,” said Murray and Juliet, about to argue, realized a moment later that he meant at the autopsy. “That makes it sad. It doesn't make it murder.”

“But why would he put a drug in his Coke rather than simply drop a pill?” she demanded. “Why would anyone?”

“Ambivalence?” suggested Detective Landis. “Playing a little game with himself? Some people do sprinkle Ecstasy on food or take it in a beverage. And look at it the other way,” he added. “Ecstasy has a discernable taste, a slightly bitter taste. If Mohr wasn't expecting it, why didn't he notice the Coke tasted funny?”

Juliet frowned but could think of no answer. Somehow, she had assumed MDMA was tasteless. But if—

“Oh!” she burst out suddenly. “Because he had a cold! They all did. I do. He'd have thought it tasted strange because he had a cold.”

Landis glanced at Fales, who nodded.

“Could be,” Landis acknowledged.

“Sure it could. It had to be,” insisted Juliet. “Listen, I swear to you, Anton Mohr absolutely would not have—”

But Landis interrupted. “Keep your pants on.” The Brooklyn in his English had returned. “I'm going to investigate. I'll question every dancer in the company, if I have to. And the staff.” He turned to Fales. “Let's go out to his place this afternoon. He lived in Park Slope. You want to dump his phone?”

The other man nodded and Landis turned again to Juliet. “Dump his phone, that means check the records to see who he's been talking to. We'll look into it, we will. But you have to realize” (“buh you hafta realoize”—Landis was pouring the Brooklyn on now, maybe for Fales's benefit) “the guy was a known user of recreational drugs, he had a long history of clinical depression—it doesn't look particularly like homicide.”