THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction by LEE OLDS Page B

table on the other side of the dance floor virtually opposite to where they sat?”
    “The Pope … Now really, Pearson, you know how I hate these guessing games.”
    “The giant and the beauty,” I said, “along with several of his henchmen from the swamp.”
    Call them bodyguards if you like, though I’m sure the convict’s ego’d never admit that he needed any such entity. They wore hats that sat on their heads like beehives and they walked like sloths with sloped shoulders and long, dangling arms. They’d set their head pieces on the table and were waiting for the music. She had worn a pink orchid in her long flowing hair and a print Hawaiian dress. Like a diamond in a dark room it was hard to take your eyes off her.
    The musicians in their ranchero costumes and sombreros were gathered on a dais opposite the floor level bar at the other end of the hall, screeching their various instruments in warm up mode. The spotlights, which shone on a revolving multi-faceted globe that resembled the eye of an insect, cast rays of light in an otherwise dark setting. One of the bartenders and part owner, sprinkled mica dust on the floor. The leader of the band stepped forward and in quite good English, announced the first tune upon which couples filtered from their seats and took the floor. With the bay windows all along the western wall, the ocean in the offing, it was the perfect setting and mood for a dance. But what battlefield hasn’t been idyllic before soldiers and their weapons took to it. You just name one. All crowded into one corner table, were the wives and children of the players. They were the only Latinos there.
    The evening began on a romantic note. Couples danced, waitresses zigzagged their way between the two tables with drinks and food. The owner, an Irishman they called Big Red , stood behind the bar helping out now and then; sometimes with arms folded … I’m sure licking his chops as to how profitable the night might be. Band nights were big for him. That’s where he made his money. Without them he’d have to close up.
    Hartwig said he saw no cause for trouble as he’d perhaps hoped. He and Sandy danced. People rubbed against one another and accidentally bumped. He gave Vera a turn or two, and the couple glided past the giant and the beauty easily like two fish slithering by one another in a stream. The sloths may’ve been a little clumsy with their partners but they at least danced. They were out there trying. What more can one ask of one with limited ability or any ability for that matter?
    The band took a break and began another session. After tiring out Sandy, Vera and the artist’s wife, all of whom Hartwig danced with, he got a strange notion into his head.
    “Wonder if she’d dance?” He turned to Mort and pointed across the floor to where the beauty sat.
    “Don’t know,” said Mort. “Why don’t you go ask her?” That, of course, was all Hartwig needed. With the drinks he’d had despite the exercise, he was just loose enough to ask. He’d seen her dance and she danced really well. So, guess what …?”
    “What?”
    “Hartwig went over and asked her to dance and she said yes and the fool allowed her go onto the dance floor with his worst enemy or rival or whatever those two had become to one another.”
    “And the bully had no compunctions, he let her go?”
    “Yes,” I said, “at first anyhow.”
    He must’ve been waiting on tenterhooks for her to turn Hartwig down on her own but when she hadn’t, he didn’t want to show timidity by objecting. The idea is she’ll come back to you having found out what a dud the rival turned out to be and your hold over her’ll be even greater than it was for having taken the risk. Maybe she’ll fall for the other and that’ll be your own tough luck. Barney smiled kindly, confidently as the beauty rose and shaking her butt followed Hartwig out onto the dance floor.
    I call this man a giant. He wasn’t, of course. Though he was six