Dance Of Death

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.

NINE

William Smithback Jr. got out of the cab, tossed a crumpled twenty through the front passenger window, and looked up Broadway toward Lincoln Center. A few blocks uptown he could make out a vast throng of people. They'd spilled out into Columbus and across 65th Street, creating one mother of a traffic jam. He could hear people leaning on their horns, the shriek of sirens, the occasional earth-shuddering blaaaat of a truck's air horn.

Smithback threaded his way through the sea of motionless vehicles, then turned north and began jogging up Broadway, his breath misting in the cold January air. It seemed he ran just about everywhere these days. Gone was the dignified, measured step of the ace New York Times reporter. Now he rushed to get his copy in on time, dashed to each new assignment, and sometimes filed two stories a day. His wife of two months, Nora Kelly, was not happy. She'd had expectations of unhurried di

It had been one of the worst shocks of Smithback's life to return from his honeymoon and find Bryce Harriman lounging in his office doorway, gri

Our paper. Oh, God.

Everything had been going his way. He was a rising star at the Times, had nailed half a dozen great scoops in as many months. Fen-ton Davies, his editor, had started turning automatically to Smithback when it came time to hand out the big assignments. He'd finally convinced his girlfriend Nora to stop chasing old bones and digging up pots long enough to get hitched. And their honeymoon at Angkor Wat had been a dream-especially the week they'd spent at the lost temple of Banteay Chhmar, hacking through the jungle, braving snakes, malaria, and stinging ants while exploring the vast ruins. He remembered thinking, on the plane ride home, that life couldn't possibly get any better.

And he'd been right.

Despite Harriman's smarmy collegiality, it was clear from day one that he was gu

Smithback quickened his jog. Sixty-fifth and Broadway-the spot where some guy had reportedly fallen right into the midst of dozens of people eating lunch-was just ahead now. He could see the cluster of television cameras, reporters checking their cassette recorders, soundmen setting up boom microphones. This was his chance to outshine Harriman, seize the momentum.

No briefing under way yet, thank God.

He shook his head, muttering under his breath as he elbowed his way through the crowd.

Up ahead, he could see the glassed-in cafe of La Vielle Ville. Inside, police were still working the scene: the periodic flash of the police photographer lit up the glass restaurant. Crime scene tape was draped everywhere like yellow bunting. His eye rose to the glass roof of the cafe and the huge, jagged hole where the victim had fallen through, and still farther, up the broad facade of Lincoln Towers, until it reached the broken window from which the victim had precipitated. He could see cops there, too, and the bright bursts of a flash unit.

He pushed forward, looking around for witnesses. "I'm a reporter," he said loudly. "Bill Smithback, New York Times. Anybody see what happened?"

Several faces turned to regard him silently. Smithback took them in: a West Side matron carrying a microscopic Pomeranian; a bicycle messenger; a man balancing a large box filled with Chinese takeout on one shoulder; half a dozen others.

"I'm looking for a witness. Anybody see anything?"

Silence. Most of them probably don't even speak English, he thought.

"Anybody know anything?"

At this, a man wearing earmuffs and a heavy coat nodded vigorously. "A man," he said in a thick Indian accent. "He fall."

This was useless. Smithback pushed himself deeper into the crowd. Up ahead, he spotted a policeman, shooing people onto the sidewalk, trying to clear the cross street.

"Hey, Officer!" Smithback called out, using his elbows to dig through the gawking herd. "I'm from the Times. What happened here?"

The officer stopped barking orders long enough to glance his way. Then he went back to his work.

"Any ID on the victim?"

But the cop ignored him completely.

Smithback watched his retreating back. Typical. A lesser reporter might be content to wait for the official briefing, but not him. He'd get the inside scoop, and he wouldn't even break a sweat trying.

As he looked around again, his eye stopped at the main entrance to the apartment tower. The building was huge, probably sported a thousand apartments at least. There'd be people inside who knew the victim, could provide some color, maybe even speculate on what happened. He craned his neck, counting floors, until he again reached the open window. Twenty-fourth floor.

He began pushing his way through the crowd again, avoiding the megaphone-wielding cops, tacking as directly as he could toward the building's entrance. It was guarded by three large policemen who looked like they meant business. How on earth was he going to get in? Claim to be a tenant? That wasn't likely to work.

As he paused to survey the milling throng of press outside, his equanimity quickly returned. They were all waiting, like restless sheep, for some police brass to come out and begin the briefing. Smithback looked on pityingly. He didn't want the same story everybody else got: spoon-fed by the authorities, telling only what they wanted to tell with the requisite spin attached. He wanted the real story: the story that lay on the twenty-fourth floor of Lincoln Towers.