1135  Masquerade : A Tango Murder Mystery

Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 02:18:00 +0000
From: Victor Levant <victorlevant@HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Masquerade : A Tango Murder Mystery

MASQUERADE
() 2000-OIPC 2001)

By
Victor Levant

The police cruisers were closing in on a mansion overlooking Central Park.
An anonymous caller announced a grisly murder. It s not my fault, he
cried.
There she was, Zora, on the maple-wood floor, wrapped in a mink stole, her
throat slit, ripped open would be more accurate. Damien never saw a wound
like that before, but it was the pattern of blood that fascinated him. A
spray of drops on the dining room wall, with a pool of it below, then two
semicircles sprayed toward the middle of the room, followed by a whirling
circle of the stuff. My God, he said, the killer walked her to the cross
and crucified her. He didn t know who it was, but Damien recognized the
steps; the killer was a tango dancer.
The precinct brought him in because of the weapon. The Dancing Detective
they smirked behind his back. But it was all in good fun. There! Stuck
under one leg of the table. A jagged silver triangle. He put on gloves,
pulled out tweezers and lifted it up. It was a slice of a compact disc:
Tanturi-Campos La Abandoni y No Sabia. The killer had good taste. It had
taken him years to find that piece of music.
Damien saw her often at the Milonga, the tango salon. Odd for a broad of
that stature to wander down the hill at midnight to dance in the arms of
strangers. Zora s was a face to die for. Only the face wasn t hers. It was a
magnificent plastic job with her back molars removed to accentuate the
cheekbones. You could tell when you were sitting at her left. The corners of
her jaw were turned down a bit too severely. Did anyone else notice? She
claimed to be an antique dealer from Moscow, but a background check
indicated Zora was a high-class hooker from St. Petersburg who made her
fortune doing the Red Army brass. Lying there that night on the floor, her
body showed the wear and tear of her profession. The heavy breasts and
thunder thighs had sagged under the weight of all the traffic.
The Milonga was a second-floor walk-up in the old Chelsea meat-market
area, with its blood-red ceiling, tacky glass chandeliers and wall of
mirrors. The hall was filled with died-in-the-wool New York attorneys,
retired ballerinas, German fashion models, and South American condors on the
run. There were shrinks, automobile mechanics, opera singers, Puerto Rican
barrio boys, techno nerds and Jewish furriers from around the corner. At
the window stood a smattering of New England blue bloods slumming on the
wrong side of the tracks. They all came to tango with a longing for the
passionate music, for the men who cherished their masculinity and the women
flaunting their wares.
Across the floor a birthday celebration was in full swing. In the far
corner girls were chatting gaily, comparing shoes imported from Buenos
Aires. There were honeymooning couples, dance afficionados, pretty single
girls hoping to fall in love, and married types looking for an affair. Those
women desperate for admiration offered sex to the top tangeros. Playing with
fire, they usually ended up in a slagheap of tears.
There were the walking-wounded, refugees from life, yearning for a lost
paradise they never knew. Some were sullen, others lonely, sweet and sad.
Drawn by the dramatic and nostalgic sounds they hoped to lose themselves in
a close embrace. Lurking in the shadows lay the tango trash, the sharks
hungering for a tender heart and a bevy of half-crazed women waiting to rain
their madness on unsuspecting men.
They re moving like fish under water, Damien mused. Standing in the corner
he could see them all. He learned the trick at a cop convention. Some
Balinese guru taught them parabolic vision, 180 degrees; made them rock back
and forth on trees slit in half until their eyes fell back into their
sockets. Never would have believed it if he hadn t done it himself. It gave
him an advantage in crowd control, cut down on the number of men he needed
when the crazies came out to demonstrate. Now he used it to survey all the
girls in the hall without moving his head. Something told him the killer was
here, right in front of him. It wouldn t be easy. With a girl like Zora it
could be anyone.
He took to tango after his wife died, out of loneliness and the mystique.
At the beginning he was uncertain; the nostalgic melodies seemed too close
to polka. And it wasn t an easy go, either. Danced like Frankenstein,
stumbled through the steps, stepping on girls toes and crashing into other
couples. Teacher said he walked like a crab. He was



regularly swatted away or left on the floor with only the old or ugly. He
caught on, worked himself to the bone. Now he had the pick of the crop.
Edward glided by, his manicured fingers wrapped around a winsome waist. An
elegant dancer if ever there was one, he always dressed in the same charcoal
pinstriped suit. The guy moved like a cloud. Began dancing at the age of
four on the tips of his father s shoes. Word was Zora felt like heaven in
his arms ...until one of her Laurentian country club friends recognized the
man. The next time she paraded him at Summer s Gate someone whispered the
news in her ear: Just a dry cleaner dear. She stormed out leaving him
walk ten miles to the nearest bus station. Zora confused his 1940s pinstripe
with the Armani remake. That must have hurt bad, but slit her throat? Nah,
too messy for a dandy like Edward.
There, he saw her in the mirror. The raven-haired beauty with the plunging
neckline. Damien knew others were watching her too. He caught her eye and
she his gaze. She was his for the dance. He turned around and walked right
through the crowd of dancers, stood before her, and bowed slightly. She got
up, fluttering her eyelids.
Suddenly he felt a chill and the hair rose on the back of his neck. He
turned and found himself face-to-face with Rock. They called him The
Reptile and it wasn t because of his alligator shoes. How he loved to
humiliate the girls on the floor, berate them and reduce them to tears. He
didn t dance with his partners. He danced against them, fencing them in
like cattle in a coral. What was astounding was they d come back for more.
They couldn t get enough of the punishment. Zora loved it too, but not
enough to accept his proposal of marriage. He already bought the ring and,
in a fit of bravado, showed it to his pals. Now, there was a motive for
murder.
His hands were at his sides, he leaned forward, his weight on the balls of
his feet and she followed an instant later. Their chests met. He looked into
her eyes; his own softened.
Damien wondered whether she accepted his invitation because of the revolver.
He couldn t check it; regulations wouldn t have it. It was always there, a
bulge under his left arm. Did it turn her on? Was he just a bit player in
her fantasy? For him the dance floor was sacred ground; tango, meditation in
motion. On occasion it was pure magic, an unexpected invitation by an
unknown girl for whom dance was pure devotion. He never forgot her: Vanessa.
It was his first taste of communion in tango, seven years ago. She was
auburn haired, lithe, with a lilting laugh that lifted his grief.
A scent of lilies wafted through the air. He turned to see Michael, that
incurable romantic, dressed in a black tie. The pimple-faced kid was now a
handsome bugger who never took No for an answer. With his killer smile and
piercing black eyes could anyone refuse? There he was swaggering along the
dance floor with his latest trophy. Zora recognized his boyish vanity.
Don t leave the Milonga without dancing with me again she purred one
evening. And with a brush of her breasts and a tall tale of spousal neglect,
Michael was hooked. He lavished her with gifts he couldn t afford, and spent
a fortune on a studio for them to practice every day, only to find her in
bed one afternoon with Betty, the beautician from downstairs. How much crap
can a guy take?
Their chests touched. He felt his weight drop to the floor and an
electric haze arose within as he gently rocked from side to side. Her heart
was pounding. I m home, he said to himself. Suddenly they were doing
figure eights, weaving in an out, and crisscrossing each other like
revolving doors.
Tango taught Damien more about human behaviour than police work. He could
tell what a woman was like just by dancing with her. The pushovers who
couldn t resist, the heavy-hearted who hung on for dear mercy, the
seductresses who tested their charms, the vamps who sucked you dry, and the
precious few who cherished the intimacy of the dance.
And what about Betty? How Damien ached to get between her breasts. The
platinum blond was a buxom beauty, but a nasty piece of work. She got her
kicks standing at the bar drinking martinis with The Reptile while looking
down her nose at the beginners, deriding their mistakes and mocking their
posture. Hypocrites he thought. They spent thousands of dollars screwing
their way to the top of the dance card. Funnily, they weren t even that
good, only pretentious and self-absorbed. Like any nest of vipers. Utterly
incapable of abandoning themselves to another. But who knew what was really
between her and Zora? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned .



He retreated back, dancing the woman s steps. It was a trick he learned from
one of his teachers. Always a winner with the young girls. He walked her
like a warrior proud of his prey. Suddenly he blocked her foot. She stepped
around him, raising her leg along the inside of his calf and thigh.
Damien saw the best in Argentina, and they weren t the teachers, either. No,
they were the ordinary, regular types who d slog away five days a week in
some factory or office and dance every Friday and Saturday night for their
entire lives. Everybody here, he thought, is just a beginner.
Bahia Blanca was playing, the quintessential tango. Only one person had that
recording. It was Barbo, the towering, silver-haired Milonga owner. This was
a guy who changed lovers more often than most people change dirty underwear.
Who knew he was a Bolivian air force colonel fled north to escape
prosecution for the dirty war of the 1970s. He wore a stiff neck, hooded
eyes and tightly curled lips. Weren t there whispers that Zora planned to
start a classy club downtown? With her beauty and money, this little
barber s son would be ruined in an instant. Barbo wouldn t swallow that. But
cut Zora s throat? A bullet in the back of the neck would be his signature.
You couldn t tell if they were two people dancing or just one: his chest
and her legs moving around the floor. How stupid the idea it takes two to
tango, he thought. They were facing each other again. He took one step
backwards and then to the side. Two steps forward and she was dangling
midair in his arms. She was in the cross and they turned as identical
mirrors.
No, it wouldn t be easy finding the killer. With a girl like Zora it could
be anyone in fact. Damien knew her kind. Barren and voracious. Pure poison.
But what a face! What was the song now saying? Everyone s wearing a mask,
life is just a carnival ball. He caught the crowd from the corner of his
eye. He had a soft spot for most of them. They were unpretentious folk,
looking for human warmth and elegant movement to ward off the hard knocks of
the day. A tango waltz was playing, Sonar y Nada Mas. It was his favourite,
a memory of that first communion, seven years ago.
By now she was in Damien s arms all evening. She was welded to his chest and
he was dancing through her legs, floating through all the muck of the world
he witnessed, through the loss of his wife, through the pain of dead
partners, through the hurts of a lifetime, when he heard You re off beat.
He turned his head slightly to see where the sound came from. You re off
beat he heard again. He couldn t believe his ears. The sound was coming
from the girl he was dancing with. He felt a stabbing pain. His lips
trembled with rage. How could it be him! He studied with Pepito, Zotto,
Diego, and Hernan. Damien slowly separated himself, bowed ever so slightly,
turned and walked away to the edge of the dance floor.
Moving to the mirrored wall, he looked back to the raven-haired beauty, his
face a darkened cloud. He turned around, put his hand in his jacket pocket
and made a snapping sound. God help me, not again, he murmured. He took
out his hand. It was bleeding, in it a ragged-edged piece of compact disc,
Edgardo Donato: El Adios. It had taken him years to find that one too. It s
not my fault, he cried.


The End

This story was first published in the New York magazine ReporTango in March
2003.
Victor Levant is a Gestalt Psychotherapist, PhD. In International Relations
and a tango dancer in Montreal, Canada.
To contact the author: TheDancingDetective@hotmail.com