Slate (11 page)

“I've noticed,” said Valentine. “What sort of shop are you thinking about? Flowers? Antiques? Overpriced clothing? Movie memorabilia? Chic housewares and fancy foods? That's about the gamut, isn't it?”

“Rent-a-Wrench.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Tools,” said Linc. “I'll be retailing what I know best: tools and so on. You know how people never seem to have the right tools on hand, so what I'll do is provide a tool rental service so they don't have to go out and buy the tools they're only going to use once. I'm going to call it Rent-a-Wrench because wrenches are the one thing that gay men
never
have when they need them. The company's motto will be ‘A Man and His Plumbing.' Like it?”

“Very much,” said Valentine uncertainly.

“I've thought it all out. I don't need much room, just one little storefront with some storage in the back: natural wood walls, marble counter, old-fashioned cash register, big neon sign in the front window, maybe with a flamingo or something. I'll have the company's logo on all the tools. I'll have hourly and overnight rates, a twenty-four-hour emergency service—”

“For wrenches?”

“Oh, sure, but other tools too, of course. When you've got to have a wrench, you've got to have one.”

Valentine smiled and took a long swallow of his beer.

“And once I get going, I'll give carpentry courses and so on.” Linc paused and gazed up at the ceiling. “I think it'd be great to stand behind a counter all day in your own place, talking to people who come in, watching people pass along the sidewalk. Join the Gay Businessman's Association, go to all the meetings. You think it sounds too much like a dream?”

“I think,” said Valentine, “that before you know it, there's going to be a chain of Rent-a-Wrenches. First a shop on Christopher Street, and then Castro Street, Santa Monica Boulevard, everywhere. And you'll keep going back and forth: New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago, and you'll write every penny of it off on your taxes.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No. I'm not. I think it's a good idea.”

“I've always wanted to be my own boss. Even when I was in school in New Orleans, I knew that that kind of education wasn't right for me. I mean, I read Blake and Conrad, but that doesn't help me, not when I'm painting a room or rebuilding a kitchen. You know what I mean? ”

“How long were you at Tulane?” Valentine asked. “Did you finish there?”

“Tulane?” Linc asked, slightly puzzled.

“You said you went to school in New Orleans. I assumed you meant Tulane.”

“Oh. No. I couldn't afford that. I went to this two-year junior college. I even had trouble getting in there because of the state residency requirement.”

“Why didn't you go to a two-year school in Maine? Why travel all the way to New Orleans?”

Linc seemed uncomfortable suddenly and shifted on the sofa. Finally he said, “I went down there with a lover. It was pretty good for a while. I got a job days and went to school at night. Then he left me.” Linc sighed slightly. “He fell in love with a guy I went to school with and used to study with at our apartment.”

“That's too bad.”

Linc shrugged. “It was a long time ago. I was too young to have a lover, anyway. He sends me a Christmas card every year, but that's the only time I ever think of him now.” He looked up at Valentine and smiled. “All I'm thinking about now is helping you get Slate opened and figuring out how to get Rent-a-Wrench off the ground.”

“And speaking of tools,” said Valentine, “Ashes was supposed to be here at three. He's probably downstairs waiting. We're going over to the restaurant supply store and look at some equipment for the kitchen. Want to come? We can go by Benton Lock on the way. I really do think I ought to get the locks changed.”

Later in the afternoon, Valentine returned to his apartment alone. He found Clarisse running the vacuum cleaner in his bedroom. She snapped it off when he appeared in the doorway.

“I've been having domestic hot flashes all afternoon,” she said almost apologetically. “So I thought I might as well do your carpets while I had this thing out.” She yanked the plug out of the wall socket and wrapped the cord around the hooks on the handle of the machine.

Valentine looked about. “You made my bed too?”

“The sight of an unmade bed drives me to distraction.”

Valentine sat on the edge of it in order to remove his boots. Clarisse seemed to linger hesitantly.

“Yes?” said Valentine.

“I've been going over a few things in my mind…”

“I'd kill for a cigarette,” said Valentine.

“So would I,” said Clarisse.

“What things?” Valentine asked, lying back on the bed. Clarisse leaned over the handle of the machine.

“You and I have an alibi. Linc was at home, or at any rate that's what he told you. Miss America and Fred were trying desperately to get rid of the stragglers. The party that was supposed to end at ten o'clock dragged on till two in the morning.”

Valentine wriggled about on the bed as if he couldn't quite get comfortable. “And Susie and Julia were watching a boxing match, probably at top volume. They wouldn't have heard if the entire Red Chinese army had marched up the stairs, four abreast.”

“Right,” said Clarisse. “But what about Ashes? He certainly could have gotten in and out without any trouble. Do we know where Ashes was?”

“As a matter of fact, we do,” replied Valentine. “He and Joe were carrying on in the cellar snorting coke till their noses bled. Of course they told the police they were ‘checking out some new shelving.'”

“So it was either Joe and Ashes or it was Julia and Susie,” Clarisse concluded. “I wish we had a suspect whose guts we hated, but we
like
all those people.”

“I don't understand why you've narrowed it down to those four.”

“Well,” said Clarisse, “how else did Sweeney get into the building?”

“That fire-escape ladder at the back of the building is so low that a man lying flat on his back on the ground could reach it. And Linc had been painting the kitchen that day, so my windows were wide open. I'll bet your windows were unlatched too, weren't they?”

“Just the bathroom window,” said Clarisse. “But I should have been more careful about that too, I guess. I wonder if that's how they got in?”

“I don't think so. It's hard to maneuver corpses through windows that small.” Valentine shrugged.
“Somebody
knew your apartment was empty at that time. And found a way to get into it. I don't think the murderer just wandered around looking for the nearest empty bed to deposit a corpse on.”

“But why my place?” asked Clarisse. “Why not yours?”

“Mr. Fred and Miss America introduced us to two hundred people at that party, and every one of them found out that you and I live next door. It wasn't a secret, and anybody looking out Mr. Fred's window could have seen you get in a taxi on your way to the library. They probably didn't know I'd left too.” Valentine stood up off the bed, bent over, and yanked back the bed covers.

“Val,” said Clarisse suddenly, “why don't we go out for an early dinner?”

He didn't reply, but pulled back the solid top and striped bottom sheets to expose a corner of the mattress.

“Aha!” he exclaimed. “I knew this didn't feel like my mattress!”

Clarisse was backing out of the room behind the Hoover.

“This is a Sealy,” Valentine went on. “My mattress isn't a Sealy. But yours
is.”

“The bulb in my refrigerator burned out this morning,” murmured Clarisse. “I'd better go buy a replacement.”

“Lovelace!”

She stopped in the doorway, averted her eyes, and began chewing on her lower lip.

“You switched mattresses on me, didn't you? This is the murder mattress, isn't it?”

“I couldn't help it!” she blurted. “I couldn't sleep on the mattress where that man got killed.”

“But you don't mind sleeping in the same room?”

“Well…” she said falteringly. “It's not as if there were any blood on it or anything.”

“This is a new low,” said Valentine, shaking his head and pulling the covers and the sheets off the mattress. “I was going to tell you,” Clarisse protested.

“When?”

“Eventually…”

“Sure, Lovelace.”

“Oh, God… I feel awful,” she stammered.

“Of course you do. You got caught.”

“It's a Posturepedic,” she pointed out.

He glanced at the label. “I've always wanted a Sealy Posturepedic.” He took a deep breath and sighed heavily. “All right,” he said, dropping the sheets and covers back onto the bed. “I suppose I've slept on worse. And who knows? In the night, maybe Sweeney's ghost will whisper to me out of the ticking:
‘So-and-so did me in…'
”

A
BOUT A WEEK AFTER the death of Sweeney Drysdale II, Valentine and Clarisse received calls from a detective requesting them to make an appearance the following morning at eleven at District D.

On that bleak Saturday morning, they lingered over coffee in Clarisse's apartment until only ten minutes remained before their appointment. Valentine wondered aloud whether they shouldn't take a lawyer with them, but Clarisse declared herself insulted. With a month of classes behind her, she felt she was practically ready for her bar examination already. Then they went downstairs and crossed Warren Avenue.

Immediately to the left inside the narrow double front doors of the police station was a room with five massive desks shoved into a kind of protective compound in the middle. At a couple of the desks, officers were filling out arrest reports and complaining about their partners, their digestions, or their wives. Prominently displayed on the Formica admitting counter was a wooden sign with stenciled lettering that read:

PRISONER VISITING HOURS

2:00 - 3:00 P.M.

8:00 - 9:00 P.M.

3:00 - 4:00 A.M.

No Food, Clothing,

or Other Paraphernalia

“They have visiting hours at three in the morning?” Clarisse asked wonderingly.

Valentine shrugged. “One hour for each shift on duty, I guess.”

At one side of the counter, a weary-faced policeman listened to three elderly Vietnamese women ranting in their native tongue. At the other end, a young female clerk was sympathetically attending to the complaints of an elderly couple from Alabama whose car had been stolen. They were providing the clerk with a minute account of their day's itinerary, which eventually led up to the car's being parked in front of the Boston Center for the Arts, from which space it had been taken.

Clarisse unbuttoned her black wool coat and Daniel unzipped his leather jacket. Clarisse wore a navy-blue skirted suit, which she thought made her look like the aspiring lawyer she was. She had coerced Valentine into wearing a maroon wool tie with his western-style denim shirt.

When the Vietnamese women paused a moment in their frantic chorus, Clarisse stepped up to the desk.

“Excuse me,” she said quickly to the officer, “but could you—”

The policeman turned away from Clarisse and barked to one of the uniformed men at the desks behind him: “Where the hell is Sergeant Chanapong? I can't understand a damn word these women are saying!”

At the mention of Sergeant Chanapong's name, the Vietnamese women showered the policeman with another barrage of chatter. The officer sighed heavily and glanced away from them to Clarisse.

“Whatta you need?” he asked.

“Sergeant Brosnan,” said Clarisse. “We have an appointment.”

“To the right, one flight up. Room two-seventeen.” He turned away from them and growled, “Hanson! Put down that damned crossword and go and find Chanapong! ”

Clarisse and Valentine followed the directions to the second floor and to the frosted glass of the third door on the left. A voice within loudly mumbled what they took to be an invitation to enter.

The tiny room had evidently been formed by the partitioning off of a much larger room. The only furniture was a rectangular oak table, much too large for the room, with two wooden armchairs on one side of it and two more on the other. Gray morning light from the single window lighted a patch of the tabletop, showing scars in the wood. The only decoration was an official black-and-white photograph of the governor and lieutenant governor of Massachusetts.

Sitting in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the table facing the door was a clean-shaven, middle-aged man wearing a three-piece suit. His tie was loose and his vest unbuttoned; he looked as if he had been trapped behind the table all morning. His fair complexion had a pinkish cast and his sandy hair was streaked with gray. He was unwrapping an enormous hamburger when Valentine and Clarisse entered. A paper container of steak fries sat nearby on a sheet of paper to absorb some of the grease. An open container of coffee so cold it didn't steam was set farther away by a small stack of folders, as if the detective was afraid he was going to overturn it.

“Valentine and Lovelace?” he asked, looking up, disappointment in his eyes and in his voice both. “You're on time. I was hoping you'd be late. Everybody's always late. They can't get by the admitting desk. If you had been late,” he said with a little reproach, “I could have had my breakfast.” He waved a hand for them to sit.

“We've eaten,” said Clarisse. “You go right ahead. Please.”

“I'm Brosnan,” he said with a smile and took a bite of the hamburger. “How are you this morning?”

“Fine,” said Clarisse.

“Fine,” said Valentine.

They waited.

Brosnan continued to eat the hamburger.

“I take it,” said Clarisse, “you called us over here to talk about Sweeney Drysdale.”