bout de papier, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2003) — Fall/Winter 2003 // Automne/Hiver 2003, pp. 38–44
Most cases begin in my office. Many end in a back-alley gunfight. This one began and ended on a dance floor. Where are the mean streets when you really need them?
t was Sunday. Even the sax man, who plays moody jazz background for my life, had taken the day off. Effie’s car was in for repairs and I drove him to the Arts Centre for a rehearsal. When Wackford Syzygy bought it, I was watching Effie and his partner Bugbyte O’Nanotek work on a particularly torrid tango. Bugbyte is tall, black, bright and gorgeous. She is also totally uninterested in the male half of the human race. Effie acts and dresses female but was born a man. Their relationship makes me cross-eyed but them happy. And they dance like silk and fire.
Bugbyte was bending Effie way back when we heard a crash from the next room. We ran to the connecting door, Effie spitting out petals from the rose crushed between his teeth. On the floor was the prone figure of a man in full Japanese court drama costume. Or what you could see of the man under a huge metal ballet slipper that had fallen from the ceiling and crushed him. It was clearly murder. The restraining pin was gone from the winch holding the shoe up.
Twenty minutes later, the police arrived, led by my friend Sergeant Tennant. I helped him narrow the list of suspects. The only way out of the storeroom where Syzygy died was through the area where I had watched Effie and Bugbyte. No one had left after we heard the crash. So the murderer was one of the five people found hiding in various corners of the huge storeroom — the managers of the five dance companies in the Thunderfoot Cross-Genre Dance Festival playing at the Centre.
Tennant knew the victim. “Wackford Syzygy,” he said with distaste. “A dance critic for a long time, and a vicious one. Never a good word unless you had power or money, he enjoyed putting the weak to the wall. He was responsible for forcing at least three troupes into bankruptcy. He was always getting ballerinas to sleep with him by promising a good review, and then welching. He was finally fired from the last tabloid that would print his dreck, after a review of some North Adriatic troupe so vicious that the choreographer committed suicide. Since then, he’s been using the same talents elsewhere — as a blackmailer on the fringes of the arts scene. But we’ve never been able to pin anything on him.”
“So lots of people had a good reason to kill him,” said Tennant, “but which one did? Not one of our suspects is talking, and no-one else is around on a Sunday.” “Perhaps I can help,” said Bugbyte. “I noticed that his PDA wasn’t completely crushed. If you want, I can open up his files.” Tennant accepted her offer. The PDA was damaged but still worked. Its files were encrypted but that didn’t stop her for long. Combined with Effie’s close reading of some half-destroyed documents on the body, we were able to work out the following: each of the five troupes had its practice room on a different floor (2 through 6) of the Centre; the theme of the festival was performance that mixes dance styles; the Latin American Retired Despots Organisation on floor 2, for example, performs Tango Sumo, a kind of elimination slam dance (LARDO’s members average 200 kilos); the manager of the troupe “Rumba Lumumba” from Bioko was being blackmailed over his role in promoting shares in a rubber mine on the Vancouver Stock Exchange; the troupe from Bangka, managed by Küchi Yamamoto, performs Kecak Rock, setting the traditional Balinese Monkey Dance to the tune of “Last Train to Clarksville”; the troupe managed by Dr Voodoo is made up of Boris Gudenov, Betty Grable, Benny Goodman and Barry Goldwater; fuelled by the doctor’s special tonic, these “BeeGees” are only slightly slowed down by the fact that they are all dead (which does however give resonance to their performance of “Staying Alive”); Syzygy was blackmailing one of the managers for being Rialto Sleazewagon in disguise and another (on the odd-numbered floor immediately below) because he invented the bunny hop – something no choreographer could ever live down; on one of the even-numbered floors is the troupe managed by Joseph Mkimya; it performs a “minimalist drum-dance” in which the musicians and dancers come on stage, put on whiteface, sit silent and motionless for 19 minutes, then file off again; Don Gordo Beluga manages the troupe from Coiba; he was being blackmailed over his heavy contributions to charity, news of which could destroy his standing as a tyrant; the troupes on the lowest and highest of the five floors use music by Astor Piazzolla and John Cage respectively;
10 the troupe “Krk of Dawn” being their home) is managed by Bodo Estval;
I the troupe “Ne Win Solution” floors below the troupe that performs Ballet Interruptus, where the music shifts without warning (even to dancers) between Strauss’ “Blue Danube” and PDQ Bach’s “Pervertimento for Bagpipe, Bicycle and Balloons”;
12 the troupe from Disko performs
Punk Gavotte, dressed in 18th century grunge costume and dancing to Mozart played by the D Street Band (which started as the A Street Band, worked its way up and almost made the big time).
Looking the list over, I recognised one of the names. Etfie confirmed it. “Right, the Yamamoto guy who’s been trying to buy the stamp.” Effie inherited a rare stamp from his father. Part of a 1936 Tuvan series in which animals compete against machines, Effie’s was a two rouble issue with a singularly robust camel doing improbable things to a Soviet tank. Wildly popular with the Tuvans, it was quickly withdrawn under pressure from Moscow. Yamamoto, a former naval officer and Marxist known as the “Red Admiral”, was desperate to get it, but Effie couldn’t make up his mind. Neither of us had known Yamamoto’s day job. Effie thought him a social butterfly.
I had all that I needed to put people and motives together. Once there, I realised that only one of the five managers was not being blackmailed by IANAGEMENT INC. LIÈRE PAGIC INC.
SERVICES BILINGUES Syzygy. Then the other shoe dropped. “Four of the managers were paying, and had been for some time. There is no sign that Syzygy was putting up his rates, or that someone was suddenly having trouble meeting the tab, was there?” Bugbyte shook her head. “So what if the murderer is the one not being blackmailed? And if he is, how would we prove it?”
Later that evening, I stood in the room where it had all started and watched the dress rehearsal for the festival’s joint finale, excerpts from Disney’s Fantasia. “Get a load of this,” said Bugbyte at my side, “Don Gordo’s grand jeté.” I raised an eyebrow. “Don Gordo couldn’t do a grand jeté if he was fired from the Quaker Oats cannon.” “Funny you should mention that,” she replied, as a loud boom sounded at the far end of the room. From a cloud of white smoke burst an enormous flying form in a hippo costume, tutu and crash helmet. At the far end of the room was a worried-looking man in an alligator costume with a pencil-thin moustache. He managed to catch the hippo and hoist it over his head, but never really regained his balance. The pair staggered off with increasing speed and decreasing control on a bee-line to the percussion section of the orchestra. I couldn’t look, but my ears kept me informed. A single cymbal rolled the length of the room and nudged my ankle.
End of practice. As people cleared out, Bugbyte and I walked into the storeroom. Sure enough, our suspect was inside, where my message had lured him, hunting for something. He knew why I was there, but he wasn’t about to give up. I laid out the whole story for him. He pointed out that a story wasn’t evidence. I told him that we knew his motive, even sympathised. He agreed that Syzygy had been a waste of oxygen, but refused to admit doing anything about it. I spoke of law and justice. He laughed harshly, saying justice had been done despite the law. He was wound tighter than Don Gordo’s G-string but wouldn’t break, and we needed his confession on Bugbyte’s micro-recorder.
A soft bell sounded behind him and he whirled around. In a cloud of white smoke loomed a shadowy figure dressed for Japanese court drama, holding out a small cylindrical object. The suspect stood transfixed as the figure said hollowly, “I think you came looking for this retaining pin. It has your fingerprints on it.” It was enough. “No, it can’t be! You’re dead, I crushed you! And I’m sure I threw that pin down a sewer miles away,” the killer cried out. Realising what he had said, he pulled himself together and made a dash for the door. Bugbyte, who has more black belts than a bottle of Johnny Walker 12-year-old, moved to cut him off. But I stopped her. “Let him go. He may have been right about justice. The tape will make sure that no one innocent is convicted. He’s Sergeant Tennant’s problem now””
The Japanese figure came over and pulled off its wooden mask to reveal Effie’s grim face. “Well, we pulled it off, boss. A tough case. Glad there was a spare retaining pin.” I nodded agreement. “How did you manage to convince Yamamoto to give you the costume, without letting him guess why?” Effie replied, “Easy enough. I sold him the Tuvan stamp — for a lot of money plus the robe and mask. He was too excited to ask questions. I figured that philately would get me Noh wear.”
Can you duplicate Shamus’ feat by (a) providing the name of the murderer; (b) figuring out his motive; and (c) filling in the attached table? bout de papier will decide the winner by drawing from a box containing all correct entries received by January 30, 2004. The winner will receive a book autographed by A Aalto. Not necessary for the contest, but can you also say what Bangka, Bioko, Coiba, Disko and Krk have in common (other than weird dance troupes)?
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2003) — Fall/Winter 2003 // Automne/Hiver 2003, pp. 38–44. Read the rest of this issue →
