Canary (2 page)

Clarisse came up beside him and gazed down into Slate. On the tile floor in the back, a man and a woman were dancing elegantly through slowly revolving blue-and-amber circles of light. “Blue Tango” played on.

“I spent seventy-five thousand dollars of your uncle's money to open a new leather bar in Boston,” Valentine explained. It was Clarisse's uncle Noah who actually owned the property, the bar, and the liquor license, but he had moved to Morocco and left the entire management of the operation to Valentine in exchange for a share of the profits. As part of the deal, Valentine and Clarisse lived rent-free in the apartments on the upper two floors. “And what do we get for all that money and work? A racially balanced, bisexual married couple performing period dancing.”

The woman executing an elaborate dip at that moment was Niobe Feng, Slate's day bartender. She was dancing with her husband. “But they're not bisexual,” Clarisse remarked thoughtfully.

“Niobe likes men, and so does her husband. If that's not bisexual, then I don't know what is.”

“It's just the eighties, that's all,” Clarisse mused.

Valentine slipped off his jacket and hooked it onto the coat tree by the door. “As long as Niobe has abandoned her post, why don't we go downstairs and you can serve up your first drink as an official substitute purveyor of liquid refreshment.”

“Deal,” said Clarisse excitedly. “Just let me get rid of these things.” She put down the diploma and went up to her apartment with her robe and mortarboard. Clarisse occupied the floor-through at the top of the building, while Valentine had just consolidated for himself the two small apartments on the second floor, directly above the bar and office.

While waiting for Clarisse to return, Valentine sat down in his swivel desk chair. He yawned and leaned back, swinging his feet up onto the corner of the desk and crossing them at the ankles. He hooked his hands behind his head. The tango faded into a rock version of a waltz. Valentine hadn't any doubt that Niobe and her husband continued to dance. He stared up at the ceiling, and after a few moments his expression sobered.

Clarisse returned to the office wearing a loose-fitting white linen blouse, jeans, and sandals. She stopped before the desk. “I'm ready,” she said confidently. Then, catching sight of his expression, she demanded, “Are you brooding again?”

Valentine shook his head and sat up. “I just keep thinking there's something I ought to remember about that man who got murdered…”

“Come on, let's go downstairs and jog your memory with a drink.”

He agreed, and they went down the spiral staircase, through the empty coat-check, and into the barroom.

The room had high-ceilings, and a long mahogany bar on the right-hand side. Above the six-foot wainscoting, all four walls were covered with sheets of smooth slate rising to the moulding of the patterned tin ceiling. Two square pillars with a shelf bolted between them divided the room. In the back were an antique telephone booth, an ice machine, rest rooms, and a door that led to a small kitchen. Three globe-and-fan lights as well as track lighting provided illumination.

The low lights made the room dim and cool. At one end of the bar two men sat nursing beers and earnest conversation. One of them paused long enough in his talking to nod to Valentine as he and Clarisse walked past. He looked at Clarisse carefully, and not approvingly. He wore a business suit with his tie loosened. He was one of the shortest men of drinking age Clarisse had ever seen. His shoes dangled eighteen inches above the bar footrest. A third man sat on a stool against the far wall next to the unplugged jukebox. He swayed slightly in time with the music—a cha-cha now—and watched with a half smile as Niobe and her husband floated in and out of the semidarkness at the back of the room.

Valentine slid up onto a stool at the end of the bar near the ice machine. With a broad proprietary smile, Clarisse ducked beneath the counter and came up behind the bar. She retrieved a roll of clear tape from behind the old-fashioned ornate cash register and tore off two strips. She untied her diploma and used the tape to secure it to the wall next to a black-and-white photograph of herself and Valentine taken the previous New Year's Day at the official opening of Slate.

Clarisse admired her diploma a moment before turning back to Valentine. She placed her hands on the mahogany bar and said, “You look like you've had a hard day, buddy. A stiff belt ought to make you feel better. Name your poison, fella. Dubonnet Fizz? Passion Daiquiri? Sherry Flip? Widow's Slap?”

“A Miller.”

Clarisse frowned. She pulled a bottle from the cooler and snapped off the cap. Foam sprayed across Valentine's hand as she slid it across to him. He caught it deftly and toasted her as he raised the beer to his mouth.

Valentine reached into his pocket, withdrew a handful of change, and slid it across the bar in a little heap. “Inaugurate your tip glass.”

Clarisse rummaged around on the shelf below the bar for the largest beer mug she could find. She noisily dropped the coins inside, one by one. When she looked up at Valentine, his eyes were wide with surprise.

“The man in the Fenway last December!” he exclaimed.

“What?”

“Strangled with his own belt! Then, on Easter Sunday, a man who got killed on Commonwealth Avenue!”

“No,” she said calmly, “I did not commit those murders. I'm sure of it. I have a splendid memory for capital crimes.”

Valentine rapped his fist against the bar. “
That's
what I've been trying to remember.” He took a swallow of his beer.

“I don't remember the one on Comm Ave. Was he strangled, too?”

“Panty hose,” said Valentine smugly.

Clarisse raised an eyebrow.

“He had a female roommate,” Valentine explained. “See the pattern? Three gay men strangled with whatever was nearest at hand. A belt. Panty hose. Necktie.”

“Robbery?” Clarisse asked.

“Not on Comm Ave. Nothing taken. On the Fenway, I don't remember.”

Clarisse's brow furrowed. “Do you think the police have made the connection? Three gay men strangled in six months?”

“Somebody at
Gay Community News
will point it out to 'em,” said Valentine. “Then
Bay Windows
and the
Mirror
will print editorials cautioning against panic in the community.”

The recorded cha-cha crescendoed. Valentine and Clarisse looked over as Niobe and her husband ended their dance with a flourish. The two men at the end of the bar and the man by the jukebox applauded briefly as the couple walked over and slid up onto stools on either side of Valentine. Niobe was slightly winded, not so much from the exertion as from the fact that her clothes were so tight it was impossible for her to take a deep breath.

Niobe was Chinese, large boned and solidly built but not heavy. Her thick black hair was discreetly greased and spiked. She wore a black, low-cut, snugly fitting leotard top and a short black-and-white checked skirt, white hose, and black kung-fu slippers with white embroidery. Beneath her leotard her breasts were hiked up by a stiff old-fashioned brassiere with nose-cone cups. Whatever Niobe wore, she always gave the impression of being trussed.

Niobe's husband was short and slender. His name was Ricky Newton, which everyone who knew him shortened to “Newt.” He and Niobe had been married for four years, three and a half of which they had spent apart in a legal separation. Their proceedings for divorce had become so extended and complicated that they had become friends again in trying to sort out the matter. Also, in that time, Newt had come out of the closet, and it was through one of his new gay friends that Niobe had gotten the job at Slate. Niobe Feng had retained her maiden name for esthetic rather then political reasons— she couldn't imagine allowing the name Niobe Newton to be imprinted on her checks.

“A Pearl Harbor, please,” Niobe said. Her voice was low and breathy. “And Newt wants a Whiskey Sour.” Niobe reached inside her leotard top and violently yanked at the right strap of her brassiere. On Valentine's other side, Newt wore a pair of green army fatigues and a starched tan shirt with epaulets, open to the sternum to display a hairy, tightly muscular chest. He was handsome, with short, wavy black hair, dark eyes, and a beard kept at the five-o'clock-shadow stage.

When Clarisse delivered their drinks, Niobe grabbed her glass and angled it toward Clarisse. “Congratulations!” she said, then added with a rush, “Welcome to the wonderful world of long, thankless hours, lousy tips, inadequate pay, and an endless flow of slurred sob stories.”

Valentine drew back. “I pay you well!” he exclaimed, though not angrily. “The customers slap down everything but their lives for you. It's your own fault if you let men slobber their life stories down the front of your dress. And while we're on this, what other employer would let you take dancing lessons on the job?”

“Newt came all the way across town to teach me two new steps,” said Niobe, quite obviously changing the drift. “Wasn't that sweet?”

“Very sweet,” said Clarisse.

“How are things in Cellulite City?” Valentine asked Newt. Niobe's husband was employed as an instructor of aerobic ballroom dancing at the Universal Woman's Health Spa in Government Center.

“If my girls ever heard you say that, Daniel, they'd come over here
en masse
and practice their Urban Street Defense moves on your head.”

“Oh, you're teaching that now, too?” Clarisse said.

“Sure,” said Newt, sipping his drink. “It's your basic knee-in-the-groin, eye-gouging, Adam's-apple-crushing stuff. For the up-and-coming professional woman who is tired of being raped in garbage-filled alleyways.”

“The All-American Boy could have used some of those moves,” Niobe said with a sigh. “I'm gonna miss him. He was my four-thirty regular.”

“We were gonna go dancing at Chaps on Sunday night,” mused Newt. “Date called on account of death.”

Valentine and Clarisse exchanged glances.

Clarisse asked, “Who are you two talking about?”

“Mr. Pike,” Valentine said.

“Yes,” Newt said. “Barry Pike.”

“I never did know his name,” said Niobe. “I always called him All-American Boy. That's where he bought all his clothes.”

“He was a regular in here?” asked Valentine in surprise.

“Regular isn't the word,” said Niobe. “In at four-thirty, out at six-thirty. Wait'll you start working Happy Hour,” she groaned to Clarisse. “Remind me to show you how to administer a Vodka IV.”

“So that's why I haven't been able to place him,” said Valentine. “He was always gone by the time I came on duty.”

“When did you last see him?” asked Clarisse.

“This is Thursday,” Niobe said thoughtfully. “I didn't see him yesterday. Monday or Tuesday, I guess.”

“According to the paper, he was killed Monday night,” said Valentine.

“Very late Monday night,” Newt said emphatically.

“How do you know that?” asked Valentine.

“Because I spoke to him at two A.M. Monday night— that's actually Tuesday morning, I guess. Right out there in front of the bar. We made a date for the weekend. I was probably the last person to see him alive.”

“Except for the guy who killed him,” Niobe pointed out.

“Then he
was
in here that night?” Valentine said, perplexed. “But I still don't remember a man in an All-American Boy T-shirt—especially not one who stayed till last call.”

“I didn't say he had been in here,” Newt said. “I said I saw him outside here. He told me he was meeting somebody.”

“Who makes a date for two o'clock in the morning?” put in Clarisse, coming back from providing more beers to the men down at the other end of the bar.

“When you're unemployed,” said Niobe, “time is irrelevant. People make dates at two o'clock in the morning all the time. If they didn't, this bar would be out of business. However,” she went on severely, glancing at her husband, “men separated from their wives who should be working hard and saving up for substantial alimony payments have no business prowling the streets in the middle of the night, making dates with potential murder victims.”

“Niobe, by the time our divorce comes through, I'll be mailing your alimony payments to the Golden Lotus Nursing Home for Decrepit Chinese Divorcées.”

“Why a necktie?” Clarisse wondered aloud. “Why not a gun or a knife?”

“A necktie is a perfect murder weapon,” said Valentine. “Everybody has a tie at home, on the closet door or on their bureau. The murderer doesn't have to worry about carrying a concealed weapon around with him. The victim provides the weapon.”

“Same goes for belts, too,” Niobe added. “In case a victim doesn't happen to wear neckties.”

“True,” Newt agreed, and finished his drink in one swallow. He edged off his stool. “I better get back to the health spa. The All-American Boy is dead. What a depressing thought! Good luck, Clarisse—you'll need it if you're going to work with the scourge of the Orient here.”