Canary (14 page)

Valentine furrowed his brow. “Are you sure you're not sick or on something?”

“What I am, Mr. Valentine, is a professional woman.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I've decided that if I'm going to be a viable partner in the running of this bar, I'm going to do it right. Positions of responsibility suit me quite well—I think.”

“You'll do fine,” he said, idly snatching unsuccessfully at a large fly that had just flown through the window, headed for the muffins.

“Thank you for that incredible vote of confidence. A true friend—whether he felt it or not—might have forced a
little
enthusiasm.”

“I'm not feeling too enthusiastic just now. Sorry.”

“Bad night?”

“Moderately awful.”

“Insomnia?”

He shook his head. “Not insomnia. A nightmare on two legs. I found an unexpected visitor in my apartment when I got up there.”

“You went out cruising? In the middle of the night? I thought you just closed up and went to bed.”

“I didn't go out anywhere. I found an unexpected visitor in my apartment when I got up there.”

Clarisse put down her knife and the portion of muffin she'd not yet eaten. Her expression was suddenly troubled. “Someone broke in?”

“More or less.”

“Please, Val—details, not riddles.”

Valentine told her about finding Bander in his bedroom, their ensuing argument, and his forcibly ejecting the man from the building. He held back his having found the neckties hanging on the knob of the closet door.

“That's very upsetting,” Clarisse said, tossing her napkin beside her plate. “I think you should walk directly across the street and report that man. I'll go with you if you like.”

“What I'd like is another cup of coffee.”

Clarisse stared, taken aback.

Valentine leaned back in his chair. “Clarisse, if I go to the police, what do you propose I tell them?”

“About that false repair call. About Bander deceiving you to gain entrance to your apartment. About his attacking you.”

“I told you, Bander covered his tracks as far as the repair call goes—and he actually did adjust the pilot light. The cops will ask one question—‘Did you ever sleep with this guy before?' Answer? ‘Yes.' End of questioning. They'll wink knowingly at each other and say, ‘Lover's quarrel.'”

“But—”

“All right,” Valentine said, “suppose they do question Bander. It's his word against mine.”

Clarisse sat back and glanced disconcertedly out the window. “Do you think Bander pulls this sort of thing very often?”

“I think he's done it before. He had it down pat. What difference does it make?”

“Remember the Boston Strangler?” Clarisse asked quietly.

“We never tricked,” said Valentine.

“When he was killing women in Boston, no one could ever describe him, and he didn't rely on makeup or a disguise.”

“So?”

“He used something much better than a disguise. He wore repairman's overalls. Witnesses only remembered seeing a repairman going into the building—and most of them didn't even remember that. Repairmen are invisible. Bander wears a uniform. He can get into apartments day or night without any trouble.”

“No. I'm ahead of you this time. Bander's unpleasant, and I don't like him, but I would not peg him for a psychopathic killer. Or I wouldn't, except for something I found this morning.”

“What?”

Valentine told her about finding his neckties draped over the knob of his bedroom closet door.

“Oh, that,” said Clarisse guiltily. “That was me.”

“You? What were you doing in my bedroom?”

“I needed to borrow your tan webbed belt. You know how color coordination rules my life. Anyway, I forgot to put the ties back.”

“That's a relief. I was about to compose an anonymous tip-off to the cops on Bander.”

“I still think you should.” She glanced at the clock. “I also think we ought to go for a walk in the neighborhood before this beautiful morning turns too hot.”

Valentine swallowed the last of his coffee and pushed back his chair. “Good idea, and while we're at it, you can tell me about the vicarious thrill you got from rummaging around in my drawers—if you'll pardon the expression.”

Clarisse groaned as she rolled her eyes. She snatched her sunglasses and keys from a table as they walked to the apartment door.

On the sidewalk outside they began to walk leisurely down Warren Avenue.

“Excuse me, but can I see you a minute, Valentine?” a male voice said behind Clarisse.

The couple turned around and saw a handsome uniformed policeman holding his hat in one hand and erasing sweat from his brow with the other. His hair was strikingly blond and wavy.

The policeman smiled at Clarisse in greeting, and she raised her glasses and looked him over. Lowering them back onto the bridge of her nose, she said, “You look just as good in uniform this morning as you did last night wearing cutoffs and a T-shirt in the bar.”

The policeman's expression sobered markedly as he looked to Valentine for an explanation.

“I pointed out the plainclothesmen for her last night,” Valentine explained to the man. “I really felt I had to.”

“I keep secrets better than the dead,” Clarisse put in. “I'm Clarisse Lovelace, by the way.”

“Chester Arthur,” the policeman said, and shook hands with her.

“Like the president,” Clarisse replied, delighted.

“Yes, except I'm Chester
B
. Arthur.” He put his hat back on. He took a moment before he spoke.

“You did want to talk to me?” Valentine prompted.

“It's about some of your customers—three of them in particular—who were at the talent show last night. A woman who calls herself B.J. and two men she's always running with.”

“Ruder and Cruder,” Valentine confirmed. “We know them.”

“What can you tell me?”

“When I say we know them,” Valentine confided, “I don't mean to imply they're friends. They're not. They're customers.”

“Then what do you hear about them?”

“Heavy leather, heavy drugs, heavy action,” Valentine said. “What you see is what you get.”

“But the two guys
are
gay, right?”

“Of course,” said Clarisse.

“But they run with a woman,” the policeman insisted, not argumentatively but as if trying to reason it out.

“Some gay men will do the sort of things B.J. likes,” Valentine continued, adding, “the sort of things straight men won't do.”

The policeman nodded slowly, evidently trying to make some sense of it. “I just came from a little visit with B.J. At the South Mortuary. She made a positive ID on both her two playmates.”

Valentine and Clarisse were completely taken aback by this revelation. Clarisse pulled off her glasses.

“They're dead?” Valentine asked. “
Both
of them?”

“Ruder and Cruder are dead?” Clarisse blurted out.

The policeman supplied them with the victims' real names. “They were strangled,” he went on. “Neckties.”

“What else is new in this town?” Clarisse snapped, shoving her glasses back over her eyes.

“They were at the talent show last night,” Valentine said.

“And they were killed last night also,” the policeman emphasized.

“Where were they killed?”

“Back Bay. Marlborough Street, between Fairfield and Gloucester. In a building undergoing renovation. A carpenter putting in overtime on the place found their bodies this morning. They were in separate rooms on the top floor—one in the back, one in the front.”

“Wait a minute,” Clarisse interrupted. “Those two never wore neckties, and where do you find neckties in a building that's being renovated?”

“The murderer brought them with him,” Valentine supplied calmly. “Am I right?” he asked the policeman.

“It looks like that's what might have happened.”

“Were there just two neckties used in the killing?” Clarisse inquired.

“Yes. Why?”

“Because other murder victims were practically hog-tied.”

“Were they handcuffed?” Valentine asked.

“How did you know?” said Chester B. Arthur, startled.

Valentine shrugged. “It makes sense. Ruder and Cruder wore handcuffs wherever they went.”

“What about B.J.,” Clarisse demanded. “Where is she in all this?”

“Somewhere else,” the policeman answered with deliberate vagueness.

“I'll just bet she has one interesting alibi,” Clarisse remarked.

The policeman did not reply.

“That woman was always with Ruder and Cruder,” Valentine said. “Always.”

“They were practically Siamese triplets,” Clarisse added.

The policeman ignored their comments and asked instead, “In the bar last night, did either of you see them talk to anyone for any length? Someone they might have gotten together with?”

“The only thing I heard from them,” Valentine said, “were orders for drinks.”

The officer looked to Clarisse. “I saw you have a little encounter with them over by the edge of the stage.”

“Yes, but it was hardly a conversation. If you'd been listening, you'd have heard sexual innuendo from them and a sharp retort from me. That's all.”

The policeman accepted this with a nod. He glanced toward the station house and then back to them.

“Just one more thing,” he said to Valentine. “Were you here all night?”

“This is the first time I've been outside since the parade yesterday afternoon. Am I a suspect?”

The policeman forced an unconvincing smile of dismissal. “I have to get back. Thanks for your time.”

Clarisse and Valentine watched the policeman in silence as he turned and walked back across the street.

A
T FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE
afternoon it was hotter than it had been at noontime. The sun beat mercilessly down on the shoppers in Boston's Downtown Crossing, the designated main shopping area of the city. The heat wilted the workers who were coming down from their air-conditioned offices. Teenagers from the suburbs, radios perched on shoulders, wandered about listlessly. Street vendors and sidewalk singers shouted in such garbled voices that it was impossible to tell what they were selling or singing. There was a salsa band, in full regalia, stationed in front of Jordan Marsh's bridal display window. A bag lady with a portable loudspeaker system in a small upright shopping cart was singing at full volume a medley of songs from
My Fair Lady
. Beneath the street, the Red and Orange Line subway trains rumbled and shook every fifteen seconds or so.

Clarisse stepped out from Filene's perfumed coolness into this cacophony of heat, noise, and odor. She was laden with packages from Filene's (upper store as well as basement), Waldenbooks, Capezio, Lane Bryant, and Woolworth's. She scanned the headlines of a street vendor's afternoon papers, trying to decide if any of the headlines were worth her putting down her packages to get at her purse, inaccessible beneath the pyramid of bundles she carried in front of her.

All the newspaper stories seemed to be political or criminal. Clarisse frowned and told herself that she'd had enough of crime and politics for the rest of the summer.

The two latest necktie killings, of Ruder and Cruder, would have made the front page of the
Boston Herald
had not a well-known Mormon pop singer chosen that particular day to announce her second divorce. But the deaths of the two men made the top of page three, where a full column was devoted to a simple listing of what the dead men were wearing. Everything seemed to have been fashioned either of leather or of steel. Even the relatively sober
Globe
pointed out the sadomasochistic tendencies of the two men, referred (though not by name) to B.J., and suggested that perhaps the previous deaths should also be looked at in the light of homosexual game playing.
Gay Community News
, caught between deadlines on its regular issues, came out with a special four-page edition decrying the inability of the Boston police to make any headway in the investigation into the murders. Several letters hinted darkly that the “reprehensible police inaction and gross inactivity” was a conspiracy against the gay community in retaliation against its recent political and economic progress. Channel 4 News very quickly started up a series of reports, airing at noon and eleven, on “Fear and Trembling in the Gay Community.”