Corpse de Ballet (21 page)

A faint, contradictory recollection niggled at Juliet's consciousness, but she only said, “I see. And—?”

“And that's about it.”

Juliet was silent a moment. From a balcony a few stories down, a burst of laughter and a smell of lighter fluid drifted into the night. “And the prints—?”

He shrugged. “Do you have a bottle I can use?”

Juliet went indoors. There was a little fridge and a wet-bar the previous owner had installed in an upstairs closet. Ames used it to keep her lunch in. Juliet took out a bottle of Perrier and returned with it to the terrace.

Landis stood up and set it on the painted table to demonstrate how you could hold a bottle without leaving prints.

“You just take it like this.” He put the web between his thumb and index finger up against the glass threading, where the metal top screwed on. Squeezing gently, he lifted the bottle. “No prints,” he said, setting it down. “All we found on the bottle were his, yours, and a few useless smudges.”

Juliet looked glum.

“Prints are really hard anyway,” said Landis consolingly. “I've probably seen prints come in as real evidence maybe two or three times out of a hundred. Anyway, a person could just drop the stuff in—a capsule or powder or whatever form they chose—right into the open top. So I'm not saying it couldn't happen. I'm just saying everything points the other way. Unless—”

He hesitated. “Unless?” Juliet prompted.

“Unless you were trying to frame someone. See, if you put the E in there yourself, maybe later, you could make it look like—”

“Excuse me, do you mean unless ‘you,' as in ‘anyone,' was trying to frame someone?” she interrupted. “Or do you mean unless ‘you,' i.e. me, was trying to frame someone?”

“Just what I said.” He seemed puzzled. “Unless you were trying to—”

“I had hoped you meant unless
one
was trying to frame someone,” she snapped. “You can't really think I had anything to do with this crime, can you? Still?”

He shrugged. “No. But I don't really think there was a crime,” he said. “That's what I really don't think.”

She was silent for a minute, remembering facts and the four walls of a room. Of all the stupid possibilities to keep an open mind about …

Finally, “What did Greg Fleetwood say about the powder?” she asked. “Did Anton have any idea who had done it?”

“Fleetwood never told him about it,” Landis answered bluntly. Addressing Juliet's look of surprise, “Did he have a motive?” he went on. “Sure. He didn't want to upset his star. Or, if we're to follow your theory, maybe Fleetwood rigged it himself and didn't want to inform his own victim. We're pursuing it, trust me.” He shrugged. “He seemed pretty miserable about the whole thing. To my eye, at least.”

Juliet frowned. “This Frank Endicott,” she said. “Are there other dancers he supplies as well?”

“Oh, yes. He wasn't crazy about giving up names, but he mentioned a few. We told him we wouldn't go after them. That guy Ryder you don't care for, he's a customer. But he likes mostly speed. Frank didn't remember him buying Ecstasy. And Olympia Andreada—”

“Andreades.”

“Right, she buys a lot of pot. There are six or seven others, but they're not in
Great Ex,
so they're probably beside the point. Unless more than one person is in it. But anyone can score a drug like Ecstasy anywhere, it isn't much of a trick. Frank Endicott didn't even necessarily supply the dose that killed Mohr. The point is, unless we can find an eyewitness who actually saw the perpetrator drop something into that Coke bottle, we don't have a prayer of getting a conviction. Or even an arrest. And quite honestly … Well, I already said that.” His words faded away and he looked again at the river, the sparkling bridge, the twinkly Jersey shore.

“Quite honestly, you don't think there's anyone to arrest,” Juliet filled in.

He nodded.

“Teri saw nothing?” she asked, but not very hopefully. “You said she had her eye on Anton the whole time. If that's true, she must have seen him drop the Ecstasy into the Coke, at least.”

“Yeah, I asked her about that, too,” he said, shrugging again. “She didn't see that either. But obviously, it must have happened—he dropped it in or someone else did. Of course, there's always the chance that she slipped it in herself—”

“Oh, forget it,” said Juliet impatiently.

“Yeah, I am forgetting it. More or less. Unless Malone's the best actress since Bernhardt, she's leveling with us. What happened is probably what happens lots of times; people think they're watching something closely, but really they often turn their eyes away. She did mention the same folks as you as going near him then.”

“As a matter of fact,” Juliet said, suddenly remembering the contradictory detail that had been troubling her, “at one point during that interval, Victorine showed Teri how to do a step. So she couldn't have been watching every second.”

She pressed her lips together as a wave of irrational dislike of Teri Malone swept over her. The truth was, she herself thought she had been watching fairly closely—and what had she seen?

“We will keep asking,” Landis was going on. “We'll keep asking everyone. We've already gotten through forty or so interviews, and now that we've narrowed it down to people who were in Studio Three for the run-through, we only have maybe thirty left to go. But so far, no one noticed anyone acting strange around that Coke bottle.

“We have learned some interesting things though,” he went on, as Juliet said nothing. “There's a former car thief in the company, and a convicted hooker. The Jansch has an illegal immigrant on staff, and there are a couple of people on the creative team that the Department of Motor Vehicles is very sorry they ever gave licenses to. And I can tell you, Anton Mohr got around—”

“I already knew that.”

“—but he wasn't universally loved. Some people found him cold and arrogant, hard to talk to—in fact, maybe most people did. Gretchen Manning told me he gave her a giant headache—wouldn't talk to this magazine, wouldn't shut up with that one. Several of the soloists admitted they resented his coming in as a principal, over their heads. I mean, the guy was only nineteen. Hart Hayden, he said straight out he didn't think much of Mohr as a person at all. But you can see they're pretty different types—and Hayden admits he wouldn't have minded being cast for the leading Pip himself. I respect a person who can be truthful like that with a police officer,” he added. “You'd be amazed the lies people tell.”

“And what did Ryder Kensington say?”

“I haven't called him in yet. I'll get to him eventually.”

All the frustration and disappointment that had been building in Juliet over the last quarter of an hour suddenly exploded.

“But he's the one I think is most—”

“I know, he's the one you like best for the killer. That's why I'm saving him for last,” said Landis calmly. “The ones you suspect, those are the ones you leave to stew a little. Right now, Kensington knows all his pals have been called and he's thinking how come he hasn't. He's ripening.” Landis smiled. “Anyway, you call these guys early, they lawyer up before you know what questions you want to ask them.”

“‘Lawyer up?'”

“Sorry, hire a lawyer. You call, they tell you to ask their attorney, and then where are you? Don't worry, I know who's on your list.”

“Hart Hayden was also with Anton right before the run-through,” said Juliet rather sullenly, looking down at the terrace's stone floor.

“I know that.”

“And Lily Bediant, and Elektra Andreades, and—”

“And Greg Fleetwood and Victoria Vaillancourt. Victorine,” he corrected himself. “Juliet, I'm on top of it. Trust me. I had the Jansch send me over a tape of Mohr dancing. He was terrific. If somebody offed him, believe me, I want to know about it.”

Juliet looked up. Landis was smiling at her in an unmistakably friendly way. Belatedly, it occurred to her that almost everything he was doing or had arranged to have done in the matter of Anton Mohr's death—the lab analysis and fingerprint check on the Coke bottle, dozens of interviews, the search for the dealer, scores of background checks—everything had been done for her, done because of her claim that Anton Mohr (a person she barely knew) would not have risked screwing up a run-through by deliberately taking a recreational drug. She doubted whether any other officer in the NYPD would have taken a tenth of the trouble—and he was not done yet, he said.

“I'm sorry,” she said contritely. “I really appreciate what you're doing.”

“You know our motto.” He smiled his bright, white smile. “‘Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect.'”

*   *   *

Yet two days later, barely a week after Anton Mohr's collapse, the police investigation into his death was over. Every possible witness had been interviewed. No one had seen a thing. Given the psychological history of the deceased (as Landis's partner, Fales, kept referring to Mohr during a final courtesy visit to Juliet), there was every reason to conclude that he had doctored the Coke himself and died accidentally. He lived high, he sank low. He took risks and he miscalculated. The medical examiner officially classified the death as an accident. The case was closed.

Chapter Thirteen

The creation of a work of art, or even a work of artifice, typically involves such extremes of despair, elation, self-blame, doubt, frustration, embarrassment, dread, grandiosity, and exhaustion as few people would voluntarily endure for any other purpose except, perhaps, to raise a child. Young people often invoke the longstanding link between madness and art with approval, even impatient anticipation; but actually to be mad is not fun.

However, like the rearing of a child, most artistic work is started in a state of hopefulness that fades only when it is too late to turn back. Happy the artist who does not come, sooner or later, to fear and hate the work he has in hand. Even a mediocre play, painting, film, or symphony will likely exact a grueling toll on its maker. In fact, the law of averages alone suggests that more hearts have ached over the mediocre than the masterful.

In this respect, ambition (so highly regarded by guidance counselors and management consultants) is particularly dangerous. While the humbler artisan may pleasantly surprise himself now and then with a result that exceeds his own expectations, great ambition seems to spawn great struggle. An artist truly seized by the need to realize an ideal vision lives in a grip of a compulsion so strong—a dream so tempting and lovely—that family demands, love affairs, financial responsibilities, common kindness, even morality fall aside and are left behind.

Juliet stayed away from the Jansch for a whole week, Monday through Friday, before she felt she had made enough progress on
London Quadrille
to allow herself to go back for a visit. All in all, she was now feeling quite satisfied with her manuscript. An entirely unexpected chapter had cropped up in which Fitzroy Cavendish challenged a professional pugilist in hopes of inflaming Caroline Castlingham's desire. The poor boy ended up with nothing to show for his pluck except a broken nose, to which his mother insisted on applying hot, wet cloths to minimize the consequent bruising.

On her return to the Jansch, that Saturday afternoon, Juliet saw at once that Ruth also had made much progress in her work during the preceding week—though at what cost was equally visible, both in her face and in the bodies of the dancers she used as raw material. A number of the men sported back braces: wide, tight elastic bands worn around their waists to relieve strain on their vertebrae. The physical therapist and her massage therapist were kept busy repairing, soothing, and restoring mobility to “
Great Ex
Necks”; they had never seen such a rash of neck-muscle strains with any other project, the Marlboro-smoking massage therapist confided to Juliet on the fire escape.

Even more, though, a visible grimness had come into the faces of most of the dancers. This was partly accounted for by the music, which acquired an arhythmic, complex dissonance in this phase of the narrative arc (Ruth had arrived at Pip's rise in London, his growing snobbery, and was building to the discovery of his benefactor's identity) and, besides being unlovely, was hell to count out and dance to. It also had to do, no doubt, with their continuing grief and shock about Anton Mohr. Victorine, usually so austere and meticulous in her appearance, was now almost unkempt, her face haggard, her bun askew. An equally important factor in the changed look of Studio Three, Juliet thought, was Ruth's own grimness. As her deadline approached, she was terrified, almost petrified, about failing in her effort. And although she tried to keep her fear to herself, the dancers were surely too sensitive to body language not to see it.

She absolutely threw herself upon Juliet when she arrived—for Ruth, an unprecedented display of grateful affection. Juliet, who had been watching through the window in the door until the choreographer declared the statutory break, now gently detached herself from her sweaty, clinging friend and congratulated her on the new passages she had just been rehearsing.

“Do you think?” asked Ruth plaintively, her hard, dark face unwontedly appealing.

“Absolutely, it's brilliant,” said Juliet, and meant it. Ruth had fashioned an exciting, disturbing interlude in which Pip swirled in and out of the two worlds he inhabited, the refined world of London and Miss Havisham's house, and the homey, coarse world into which he had been born. Hart Hayden's steps and gestures eloquently conveyed a growing sense of being torn between the two milieux, his movements literally low when he visited Joe and Biddy, his whole body rising as he aspired to the elegant heights of his great expectations. She could see now why Ruth had described Hart as possessed. He did dance as if some overwhelming inner force had hold of him. His concentration was fierce, his bearing no longer princely but human, vulnerable. Elektra, with a much smaller role in this section, performed coolly but unremarkably. It was Hart you couldn't take your eyes off.