Dance Fever Part II

by

Greg Smith

Bronx, NY, 1978. Donna jammed her elbow repeatedly in my ribs. I focused on the shadow play cast onto the basement wall. Our captors upstairs had quit their card game. One man stood and made crisscrossing waves with the straight edge of his hand. Donna’s elbow dug deeper into my side. I batted it away. It came again.

“Can it.” I hissed. She let go a moaning sigh.

Two new figures joined the men upstairs. One wielded a large kitchen knife. Another held an object aloft. It was an oval with frizz. And tendrils. It was the head of the man they’d executed.

“Eww,” cried a few of our crowd.

My date didn’t see it. She whined, “Do you love me, B.K.?”

I looked at her. In the half-light of the subterranean room her features were soft. But anxiety had her eyes wide.

“We’ll make it out of this. Sit tight,” I said gently.

“If we get out of this, I want you to marry me.”

“Sit tight.”

“You got me into this.”

“You wanted to come here.”

“You’re the policeman,” she said too loudly.

A slick-haired Romeo type nearby snapped his head toward us. “You’re a cop? What the fuck have you been doing?”

“Who’s a cop?” cried the woman sitting behind him.

“She says he’s a cop,” said Romeo, pointing a finger at me.

“Where?”, asked another.

“What?”

“He’s a cop,” said another.

“What the fuck?" called another.

A cacophony of loud voices cried louder and louder: “He’s a cop.” “What the fuck?” “Get real.”

The shadow play froze with the dead man’s head being dangled by its frizzy hair. Footsteps clicked on the dance floor overhead. The door to our basement opened. Two men walked halfway down.

A coarse voice shouted, “Shut the fuck up down here!”

A gun exploded with a muzzle flash. We all dove to the floor. Plaster blew out of the opposite wall. I thought of the two-shot Derringer tucked into the small of my back—the gangbangers missed when they frisked me. Footsteps pounded up the staircase again and the door slammed. The odor of cordite wafted in the air. I raised my head. Some others did, too. Rounds of “shhhs” went through the crowd. The men upstairs let loose a round of laughter and jeers.

The Romeo guy gave me a sidelong look. He butt-shuffled over to me and leaned in close. “We’ve all seen them. Are we going to make it out of this alive?”

Under the flashing disco lights I doubted anyone could have gotten a good look at the invaders. And bright lights in my face when they took me upstairs, charging me with keeping order down here. IDs would be difficult.

“Killing twenty-five people wouldn’t be easy.” I said. “We sit tight.”

“I say we set fire to that pile of junk over there. They smell smoke and evacuate. We leave." The slickster produced a Zippo lighter and flicked it to flame.

“Are they going to unlock that door to upstairs before they leave?”

“That door’s not so strong. They go, we can knock it down.”

“You’ll suffocate us all. Put that away,” I said.

He clamped the lighter lid over the fire. “I’m not waiting here for them to murder me.”

I took hold of his wrist and wrenched it. He winced but held the Zippo tightly. His free hand came in. I brought in mine. We locked in battle for the lighter.

“Hey, mister,” whispered a soft voice behind me. “Are you really a policeman?”

Romeo and I both looked to the voice. It belonged to a man dressed like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. He was Latin and thin. His dark irises pierced the dim light.

“You know about the back stairs?” the Latin man asked.

“Bolted from the other side,” I said.

“What about the dumbwaiter?”

Romeo and I eyed each other and forgot our battle. We let loose our grasps; he retained possession of the lighter.

“Show me.” Romeo and I said simultaneously

The man led us to the far wall where he pushed aside a pile of cardboard boxes. A three-by-four elevator was revealed. He lifted one half of the door. The bottom slide opened simultaneously. A dark lift was revealed. I put my hand in it. There rested a steel carriage.

“How does it work?”

The guy pointed to a panel of three buttons set on the frame. “Electric motor. It comes out in the kitchen by the back door. Near the back staircase.”

“Would they have seen the upstairs end?”

The Latin guy shrugged. “Maybe. If they tried the doors they wouldn’t have opened because the lift is down here.”

“We can go up this and out the back door,” said Romeo. He pointed a finger to press the activation button. I batted his hand away.

“It’s an electric motor. They’ll hear it.”

Romeo looked to the Latin guy. He said, “It’s not too loud.”

“They’ll hear it and whoever is in there is dead. We sit tight.”

I examined the operating panel. “Why are there three buttons?”

“One goes to the subbasement. No way out there. Just rats and the sewer line.”

“Okay. We sit tight.”

“Who put you in charge?” barked Romeo.

A chorus of ‘shhs’ came from our fellow prisoners.

“They’re in charge and they’re killers. Go sit down.”

“Fuck you, cop. You don’t run me. You’re just chicken shit.”

The “shhs” came louder and harder.

I grabbed Romeo up under his armpit and bum-rushed him back to the pack of hostages. I said in a low, clear voice, “They hold all the cards. We’re at their mercy. Sit tight and shut up.”

“Fuck you.”

I threw him to the floor, went to my spot by Donna, and sat down. She lifted my arm around her shoulders and snuggled in. It’d been three hours since armed gangsters had invaded Plato’s Cave disco, forced all of us into the basement, and executed the fat guy with the frizzy hair. They’d brought me up to lecture me to keep the prisoners orderly. They’d taken my gun and badge. Since then, from the shadow play on the basement wall, created by the bright klieg lights on the dance floor, they seemed to be killing time, waiting for someone or something. They’d played cards, toyed with the head of their victim, now they lounged. It was two a.m.

Donna had laid her head in my lap and dozed. I stroked her blond hair. She whistled as she did when her respiration slowed for sleep. She hadn’t asked for a lot. She just wanted to be taken out on a weeknight. I felt warmly toward her right now. I nodded into half-sleep.

The acrid odor of smoke snapped me alert. By the wall nearest the vent to the disco room upstairs Romeo was fanning a crackling fire of a small pile of debris. I jumped up. Donna came to. Other dozers woke. Cries of distress filled the basement. Panic ran through the crowd. They ran to the stairway and up it. The forerunners pounded on the locked door. Overhead heavy footsteps stampeded and  voices shouted. I ran to the fire, knocked Romeo aside, and stomped my size-twelve Stride Rites onto the blaze. The sound of an electric motor starting came from the back of the room. It whirred for ten seconds, then stopped.

More shouts and pounding footsteps came from above. Muted explosions of gunfire came from above and to the rear. I finished stomping out the fire. Romeo grinned at me. The electric motor ran again, then stopped with a clang on this level. Romeo, Donna and I ran over and opened its door. The Latin guy fell halfway out. His eyes were open. There was a hole between them. Blood poured from it.

Donna screamed. She ran to the packed stairway. The mob desperately pushed upward.

“Get away from the door!” I yelled, running to the roiling crowd. “Get away from the door! Get away! Get away!”

The two people at the top front heard me and got it. They tried to retreat but the crowd on the steps pressed forth. One squirmed free and dove over the bannister. The other ducked down. A fusillade of bullets ripped through the door. The next two in line on the stairs took them in their heads. Gore sprayed out over the crowd. They screamed and tumbled over themselves and each other. Arms and legs flew in every direction. On the floor men and women in svelte, tieless suits and taffeta dresses crawled for the far wall.

I searched for Donna. She was trapped by one of the dead. I rolled him off her. Her disco dress was soaked with blood. Her eyes were pinned open. She was in shock. I search her over for a wound. There was none. She gagged. Her eyes fluttered. I hugged her.

“You’re O.K. Donna. You’re O.K. Get up. Get up. This is not over. We’ve got to get out of here.”

I dragged her to her feet and half walked/half carried her to the darkest shadow in the room.

I whispered to my love, “They’ll be back. You got to come around.”

The door to upstairs was kicked open with a shudder. Three men descended. Guns were ready in their hands. One was a machine pistol.