Canary (16 page)

“These men,” Clarisse said after a reflective moment, “who slept with Father McKimmon—”

“I didn't say they slept with him. They were just ‘with' him, that's all.”

“They were good friends of yours?”

“Some.”

“Would I know any of them? I mean, are they still in Boston?”

“Most of 'em.”

“Customers who come in here?”

“Some of them do; some of them
did
.”

Clarisse looked at him sharply. “What do you mean—
did
?”

“Until they were murdered.”

Clarisse's brow furrowed. “Who?”

“Jed Black. He took money from Corny for sex a couple of times.”

“What?” Clarisse blurted. “
Jed
took money?”

“It was five or six years ago, when Jed was a student and living in this slummy rooming house on the wrong side of Beacon Hill.”

“I see. Who else?”

“Remember the Shrimp? The smallest cowboy in the world with the nastiest mouth?”

“
He
fooled around with Father McKimmon?”

Newt shrugged. “He bragged about it. Said it was kinky to do it with a priest. He didn't even get paid.”

“You're making all this up, aren't you?”

“No, I'm not,” said Newt staunchly.

“You realize what you're implying, don't you—about Father McKimmon and the necktie murders, I mean?”

“I'd be a fool not to realize it.”

“Have you told any of this to the police?”

“You know what they'd say? First thing they'd say is, he's a priest and priests don't commit murder. Second thing they'd say is ‘You're trying to get back at him because he had you thrown out of school.' Third thing they'd say is ‘Hey, you knew all these dead guys, and you went to bed with 'em, didn't you?'”

“Did you?” asked Clarisse.

“Unfortunately,” he said quietly.

“The number of men in this town that Newt
hasn't
gone to bed with,” said Niobe, passing by on her way to the cash register, “you could count on the fingers of one maimed hand.”

Clarisse was silent a moment. Then she asked, “How does McKimmon manage not to get defrocked?”

Newt grunted a laugh. “Like I said, Father McKimmon is one sneaky son of a bitch. Until now, didn't you think he was just this harmless priest right out of some Forties Bing Crosby movie who just happened to have a little drinking problem?”

Clarisse admitted he was right.

“He had you fooled, too.”

“Whatever happened to your mother?” she asked suddenly.

Newt averted his eyes and said quietly, “My mother committed suicide.”

“Oh, Newt,” Clarisse said, greatly distressed. “I—”

“That is not true!” Niobe cried indignantly, on her way back to the hard hats with change. “Clarisse, Newt's mother runs a broken-down chicken ranch in the backwoods of Appalachia! Nine years ago she just woke up one day, drew all her money out of the bank, bought a used camper, and just drove away. She ended up in Kentucky, and that's where she is today.” Niobe swiped at Newt's shoulder with the back of her hand. “You stop telling people your mother offed herself!” She shot a sidewise glance at Clarisse, still swiping at a now dodging Newt. “Honestly, he'll make up a story about anything, and it all sounds real!”

July Fourth

A
T A QUARTER TO EIGHT
on the evening of July Fourth, a taxi pulled to a stop mid-block on Beacon Street between Exeter and Fairfield streets. The back door banged open, and Clarisse, struggling with an enormous glass bowl covered with plastic wrap, lurched up out of the backseat. She angled her hip smartly against the door and slammed it shut. Giving a toss of her hair to get a wayward wave out of one eye, she took a breath and dashed through a break in traffic across to the Charles River side of the street. She collided with a group of laughing young women carrying blankets, radios, and six-packs, regained her precarious balance, and hurried up the stoop of a brownstone. She carefully backed through the outside door into the foyer.

Clarisse balanced the chilled bowl precariously in the crook of one arm while she used her free hand to punch the button under the end mailbox. The identifying label on the mailbox read: “N. Feng—
not
Newton.” The mailbox next to it was labeled “Newt Newton.” On the day after a marital rift noticeably more violent than the one that had preceded it, Niobe had announced in a voice of doom she was moving out of the apartment and Newt's life forever. She made a great production of bag packing and immediate division of property. The next day, Niobe kept her promise and moved out—into the apartment directly above. Newt claimed that she caused the fight just because she wanted a better view and a whole bathroom for herself, but Niobe claimed that the apartment coming available that morning was a fluke of fate. Although friends of the couple repeatedly pointed out to her that her action could hardly be construed as a true separation, Niobe claimed that the politics of her action far outweighed its illogicality.

As Clarisse awaited a reply over the house intercom, she looked up and down Beacon Street. Knots of people with blankets and picnic baskets and plastic coolers were making their way toward the Esplanade. At sundown the Boston Pops would begin its annual Independence Day concert on the banks of the Charles River. As usual, the crowd was predicted to be in the hundreds of thousands. Soft twilight deepened the shadows between the elms and lindens bordering the sidewalks. Amplified music, rock mostly, underscored the parties in progress up and down both sides of the street. Exploding firecrackers echoed every few seconds, and an occasional Roman candle, launched from a rooftop, made a bright streak in the slowly darkening sky.

“That better be Clarisse with the lobster salad,” came Niobe's voice over the intercom. “Confucius say: No eat/No greet.”

“Clarisse say: If you think that I spent two hours murdering innocent crustaceans so that I could make small talk over an intercom, you've got another think coming, sister. It doesn't rhyme, but I trust you get the message.”

The latch buzzed immediately, and Clarisse pushed her way through the heavy oak door. She trudged up the stairs to the sixth floor, realizing for the first time in her life just how heavy a bowl of lobster salad could be.

Niobe's apartment door was ajar. On the door itself was a gaily-painted image of the Laughing Buddha. Niobe had taped tiny paper American flags into his upturned palms. Clarisse edged the door open with the side of her foot and kicked it closed once she was inside. Clarisse walked the length of the narrow hallway connecting all the rooms of the apartment without finding anyone. Just before she reached the kitchen, however, she heard Valentine's laughter from above. The skylight was open, and the collapsible ladder had been attached. Clarisse shoved her bowl of lobster salad onto a refrigerator shelf already crowded with containers of prepared food. She took a bottle of Grolsch from a door rack, a glass from a shelf, and carefully mounted the flimsy ladder to the cedar roof deck.

Newt took the bottle and glass from Clarisse, and she was able to negotiate the sharp metal lip of the skylight without doing much more than snagging a thread in her brand-new pair of pleated linen trousers. Standing near a hibachi and wearing a white chef's apron and a too-large chef's hat, Newt wielded a greasy metal spatula. Valentine and Niobe stood at the low ledge at the back of the building's roof, looking out over the Esplanade and the Charles River.

A radio on the corner of the ledge was tuned to one of the stations that would broadcast the Pops concert live. A soft-voiced female announcer, stationed on the roof of a building two or three numbers down, was describing the scene from very nearly the same perspective. The riverbank for a mile in either direction was a sea of people lounging on blankets or cross-legged on towels. The crowd was most dense just in front of the Hatch Shell, where the white-jacketed musicians were setting up. The river itself was filled with boats—yachts, rowboats, rubber rafts, sunfish, and nearly anything that stood a pretty good chance of staying afloat for a few hours. Traffic had been closed on Storrow Drive, and the six lanes were nearly rush-hour busy with strollers, skaters, skateboarders, bicyclists, and joggers.

Valentine and Niobe were staring out over the crowd with matching binoculars.

“Don't everybody jump up and down, cheer, wave, and generally risk falling over the edge in euphoria over my arrival,” Clarisse announced as Newt poured her Grolsch out into a glass.

“Here's to the twilight's last gleaming,” he said as he handed her the beer and reached for a swallow of his own drink.

“Glad you could make it,” said Valentine over his shoulder. He immediately turned back toward the crowd with his binoculars.

“Make yourself comfortable,” said Niobe—but she didn't even turn around.

“Thanks,” said Clarisse, giving up. She stood beside Newt at the grill and watched him fan the glowing coals with a folded section of newspaper. Next to the hibachi a round table was covered with a red-and-white checkered tablecloth and laden with plates, the Newton-Feng wedding silverware, embroidered napkins, a silver ice bucket, and several bottles of liquor, mixers, and glasses. On an enormous tray close at hand was a bountiful display of cubed beef and lamb and a variety of vegetables for shish kebab. Skewers with brass finials in the shape of pineapples were laid out in a fan shape next to the tray.

“How were things at the bar when you left?” Newt asked. “Pretty empty, I bet. Probably everybody's on the river tonight.”

“It was pretty quiet,” replied Clarisse. “Sean said he didn't mind being left alone. When the concert's over, I'll run back and help him with the post-fireworks mob.”

“Be careful,” said Newt. “Not only is it Fourth of July, but it's the full moon.”

“Here's one!” Valentine exclaimed suddenly.

“Oh, God, where? Where?” demanded Niobe, scanning the crowd with her binoculars.

“Just leaving Back Street,” Valentine reported, “crossing Storrow Drive at Exeter.”

Clarisse shot Newt a questioning glance. He answered with an elaborate roll of his eyes.

“Oh, God!” cried Niobe. “There she is. I see her! I see her! She's the best one yet!”

“I'm almost afraid to ask what they're up to,” Clarisse said to Newt as she took a swallow of the dark beer.

“They're looking for the fattest person wearing the tightest outfit in Boston tonight.”

“Oh, God,” cried Niobe ecstatically, “three hundred twenty-five pounds if she's an ounce, and horizontal stripes.”

“And wearing a Walkman. I love her,” said Valentine with low-voiced reverence. “Oh! Did you see? She just knocked over a kid on a racing bike.”

“Total style,” said Niobe.

“They've been doing that for the last hour,” Newt confided to Clarisse.

“You mean I took two hours off work, leaving Sean to take care of the bar on the Fourth of July, and schlepped a bowl of lobster salad all the way across town to be subjected to
this
? What happened to sensible pastimes, like Trivial Pursuit and getting drunk and viciously gossiping about all your friends?”

“Valentine's got the eyes of an eagle,” Niobe said admiringly, putting her binoculars down with a sigh. “It's getting dark. I'm going to get the candles.” She slipped easily over the raised lip of the skylight and started down the ladder.

“Niobe?” Newt called down the opening. “Start handing the food up to me. The concert's going to start in a little while, and I don't want to cook during the whole thing. While you're at it, bring up more beer and a bottle of soda water.”

“You are
not
my lord and master, Newt!” Niobe shouted from below.

“I am until the divorce is legally finalized,” he sing-songed back.

“I'll go help her,” Clarisse offered and got up. She climbed down the ladder, leaving the two men alone.

Valentine put his binoculars aside. From below he could hear the mingling of conversation with the clinking of ice against glass. He moved aside one of several potted geraniums lined up along the parapet and looked over the edge. The fire escape zigzagging down the apartment building was filling up as people climbed out of the windows of the lower floors. A blonde woman directly below caught sight of Valentine and smiled up alluringly. Valentine returned the gesture and then withdrew from sight. He joined Newt at the hibachi.

Newt was skewering the meat. The blood of the raw beef and pork stained his hand and sizzled in the hot coals. Valentine dropped several ice cubes into his glass and looked all around. In the direction away from the river, light from the street lamps made a lacelike illumination through the trees. Many of the rooftops of the buildings to their right and left and across the street were crowded with people, and Newt's wasn't the only barbecue going. Roman candles erupted from rooftops deeper in Back Bay. The warm-up sounds of the Pops were emitted tinnily from dozens of radios throughout the area.