Dancing Aztecs by Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online Page A

squash to the disadvantaged. Wealthy matrons, determined political activists, passionate college students, liberally committed advertising men, they were united by a goal, and now that goal had been achieved, they were applauding themselves and their own accomplishment, and why not? They deserved it.
    (There was for a while one small point of controversy within the group concerning the name of their accomplishment. A few of the overly educated middle-class types objected to calling it the Stokely Carmichael Memorial Squash Court and Snack Bar, on the grounds that Stokely Carmichael wasn’t dead, but as Oscar Russell Green finally pointed out at the time, “He doesn’t have to be dead for us to remember him, does he? Stokely did a lot for the Cause in his moment on the stage of history, and he deserves to be remembered.” Which ended that , despite some smart-aleck muttering something about Humpty Dumpty.)
    But these were more than victors. They were also survivors, the sixteen remaining stalwarts from a pressure group that had once totaled in the hundreds. The activism of the sixties had set them on their path, and in the early days it was easy to maintain a fat membership list for nearly any Civil Rights cause, but it took stamina to remain steadfast halfway through the Sluggish Seventies. They were an anachronism, and they knew it, and more often than not anachronism is its own reward. They could be forgiven if they chose to applaud their own durability.
    The standing ovation, like all good things, came at last to an end, and the flushed and happy members of the group reseated themselves, laughing and talking together, until Green raised his voice again, saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your indulgence for just one minute more?”
    He could. He was the one who’d brought them all together in the beginning, who’d led them through the years of fundraising, public relations, lobbying, and general struggle that had brought them to this moment of triumph, and he could have their indulgence just as long as he wanted it.
    â€œThank you. I have one more thing to say. Our real reward, our true reward, is being constructed right now up there in Morningside Park, but I thought we all ought to have a little something to take home with us, some little memorial of what we went through together. Like the movie people giving out an Oscar.” Grinning, he added, “Well, I’m Oscar, but I can’t give you me. I can give you my love, and my gratitude, but I can’t give you me.”
    Bobbi ignored Chuck’s smirk.
    Green was saying, “So I talked it over with Bud Beemiss and Chuck Harwood, and we decided we all ought to have something like an Oscar, because we all performed magnificently!”
    Laughter, applause.
    â€œSo here it is!” And up from the floor beside his chair Green lifted a tall package wrapped in brown paper. The paper was ripped off and a Dancing Aztec Priest emerged, glittering, to be placed on the table in front of Green’s dish of melting ice cream.
    The statue was greeted with a combination of laughter and bewilderment. Smiling at it. Green said, “Now, Chuck found this little fella, and Bud arranged to have him shipped here, and Chuck told me his history, and the fact is, this little man doesn’t have one thing to do with squash.”
    Nobody knew if that was supposed to be a joke or not, so there was a brief hiccup of laughter, soon over, which Green mostly ignored. “This is a copy,” he said, “of a very ancient Aztec statue, and it’s an Aztec priest doing some sort of dance. At least, that’s what he used to be. What he is now is the Other Oscar , our award to ourselves. This is the Rain Dance Oscar, jumping around like we did that day at the Board of Estimate, you all remember that?”
    They did. And now they all got it, the similarity between this contorted figure and a photograph that had appeared in the