Slate (12 page)

Brosnan nodded, his mouth full. He pointed at the small stack of files in front of him on the table.

“Rauseo…” he began, but paused to swallow.

“I beg your pardon?” said Clarisse.

“That was the detective who questioned us last week,” Valentine told her.

“Oh, yes,” said Clarisse.

Brosnan nodded and stuffed his mouth full of the steak fries.

Valentine and Clarisse glanced at each other. Clarisse pointedly looked at her watch.

At that moment, the door behind them opened, and Detective Sergeant Rauseo entered the room. He was a dark-complexioned, heavyset man in his late thirties. He wore a rumpled white shirt with a coffee-stained tie, and brown suit trousers with heavy wrinkles at the backs of the knees. His black hair was close-cropped. He sat heavily in the chair next to Brosnan and glared at him.

“That was my breakfast,” Rauseo said. “You're eating my breakfast. I had that sent up here.”

Brosnan swallowed the last of the hamburger. “Sorry.” He shoved the fries over toward Rauseo, who pushed them back.

“Now I gotta order some more,” Rauseo complained and got up and left the room.

Brosnan grinned after him as he wiped his greasy hands on a napkin. “Well,” he began, flipping open the top file. He reached absently into his jacket pocket. “Mind if I smoke?” he asked, but it was clearly no question.

Valentine said impatiently that they didn't mind at all.

As Brosnan took a pack of Kools from an inside suit pocket, Valentine and Clarisse glimpsed his holstered revolver strapped just below his left armpit. He slipped a matchbook from his vest pocket and, taking his time, lighted the cigarette. He drew smoke deep into his lungs and released it slowly, watching both of them.

“Detective—” began Valentine.

“Rauseo'll be right back,” said Brosnan quickly.

Clarisse and Valentine began to fidget. Valentine shifted in his chair, and Clarisse uncrossed her legs and then recrossed them the other way.

Rauseo came back in, sidled around the desk, and seated himself beside Brosnan. “It'll be half an hour. I'll starve,” he said reproachfully. He glanced at Valentine and Clarisse.

“Don't be so nervous,” he said. “Everybody comes in here scared shi—” he caught himself with a quick flick of his eyes to Clarisse and went on—“shirtless, but we're not so bad.”

“It's not you,” said Valentine. “It's the cigarette.”

“I thought you said you didn't mind,” said Brosnan defensively.

“We gave them up recently,” explained Clarisse, following the Kool from Brosnan's hand to his mouth and back.

Brosnan took a last deep drag, and crushed out the cigarette. “You should have said something.” He stood up and went to the window. “My wife gave it up a couple of years ago.” He unlatched the window and drew it up a few inches. Crisp air streamed into the room. He sat back down at the table. “Five packs,” he said.
“Five packs
. The one thing she said helped her—”

“Sweeney Drysdale,” interrupted Clarisse. “He's dead, and you don't know who killed him.”

“And you wanted to ask us some questions,” said Valentine.

Rauseo drew the files toward him.

Clarisse pulled her coat up to cover her shoulders.

“You want me to close the window?” asked Brosnan.

She shook her head. “Just tell us how we can help you.”

“You got some pretty strange characters hanging around that place,” said Rauseo, turning a page of the report, without looking up.

Valentine and Clarisse said nothing.

“You know,” Rauseo went on, “everybody we talked to about this Drysdale character hated his guts. I mean, really
hated,”
he emphasized, glancing at his partner.

“One corpse,” sighed Brosnan, shaking his head. “Seven hundred suspects.”

“Hell,” said Rauseo, “I talked to his mother. Even
she
didn't like him.”

Brosnan slipped one of the folders out from the stack that Rauseo was reading and opened it in front of him. Not looking at it, he said, “Mr. Valentine, Sweeney Drysdale came to visit you a few days before he was killed, isn't that right?”

“He wanted to see what I was doing with the bar.”

“Did you show him around?”

“No.”

“You two had a fight. You both got hot under the collar. You threw him out on the street.”

Valentine replied without hesitation. “He was insulting, and I asked him to leave. I didn't get ‘hot under the collar,' and I didn't throw him out on the street.”

“What are you gonna call the place?” asked Rauseo curiously.

“Nightmare Alley,” said Valentine. “The way things are going.”

Clarisse bit her lip to keep from smiling.

“I like that,” said Rauseo, then abruptly continued. “So Drysdale was on your case before he died, was he? He said some pretty nasty things about you in his column. Got away with it, too, didn't he?”

“Sweeney said nasty things about everybody. He could have found something mean to write about the Easter Seals child.”

“He put in his column that you had a nervous breakdown when you were actually in Beth Israel Hospital with pneumococcal pneumonia,” Rauseo went on.

“How did you know it was pneumococcal?” asked Clarisse.

“We're detectives,” said Brosnan, reaching for the cold, soggy steak fries. “That's damaging, isn't it?” he asked Valentine. “To call a man crazy who's trying to set up his own business? Establish a good credit rating? I mean, you were fired from your last job. You were in the hospital. You were on your last legs, and here's this twerp who tells the world that you're a psychological incompetent. How does that make you feel?”

“I was furious!” cried Clarisse.

“Not you,” said Rauseo. “Him.”

“I wasn't thinking about anything except trying to get well,” said Valentine.

“I tried to get him to sue,” said Clarisse, “but he wouldn't do it. Too much trouble,” she said, glancing at Valentine with a little leftover reproach.

“And then,” said Brosnan, “the same guy comes back and writes a nasty piece about your bar. Trying to kill your business before you've even got your doors open. That's enough to drive a desperate man to desperate measures.”

Valentine looked from one detective to another. “If I had wanted to kill Sweeney, “ he said quietly, “I wouldn't have done it with a gun because I don't know how to shoot, and I
certainly
wouldn't have done it in my business partner's apartment.”

Rauseo made no reaction to this, but only turned to Clarisse. “So there was Sweeney Drysdale, sabotaging the future of the bar in which you had invested heavily. If that bar fails, you stand to lose a great deal of money, don't you?”

“I have no money invested in the bar,” said Clarisse. Then she added loyally, “But I have every confidence that Slate will be an incredible financial success. If I did have a few thousand dollars that wasn't already invested in my wardrobe, I'd give it to Valentine in a minute. I could end up one of the ten richest single career women in eastern Massachusetts.”

Rauseo nodded and then asked, “What time did you leave for the library that night?”

“About ten,” said Clarisse.

He looked at Valentine. “And you met her there?”

“Yes, at about eleven. A little after. What are you getting at?”

Ignoring Valentine's inquiry, the detective went on, “And this whole business about your claiming to be gay.”

“Claiming?” echoed Valentine.

“You live in the same building. Last summer you shared a house in Provincetown. Hell, we see you two coming and going together, day in and day out. And, Mr. Valentine,” Rauseo concluded with a triumphant smirk, “your fingerprints were found on Miss Lovelace's nightstand, on the headboard of her bed, and on the wall above the bed.”

Clarisse stared, as if unable to find words for her astonishment.

“I helped her to move her furniture in,” said Valentine. “My fingerprints must have been on every damned piece of furniture she has.”

“Your place was covered with prints,” said Brosnan to Clarisse, as he swallowed some of the cold coffee. “You must have a pretty active social life.”

“Besides Valentine,” said Clarisse coldly, “there were workmen in and out of that apartment every day for two weeks. And, in reply to the rude implication of your question, may I say that no first-year law student has
any
sort of social life.”

“Sorry,” said Brosnan, “I wasn't implying anything.…”

“Aren't you two going to deny that you're actually lovers,” asked Brosnan, “and that this homosexual business is just a front?”

Valentine groaned.

Clarisse shook her head in increasing wonderment. “I can't believe this. Why on earth would anybody pretend to be gay?” she demanded.

“Because he's opening a gay bar, that's why!” Brosnan exclaimed.

“Pretending he's one of them so they'll come and buy his booze.”

Valentine said with Job-like patience, “If you checked to find out what kind of pneumonia I had, then you probably checked out our alibis for that night. So just what the hell are we doling here today? Instead of a few of the other seven hundred suspects you mentioned?”

“That seven hundred was an exaggeration,” said Rauseo.

“Nobody's off the hook yet,” said Brosnan.

“If nobody's off the hook,” said Clarisse, “why did you single out Valentine and me to talk to this morning? Why aren't you hauling in lots of other people?”

Brosnan and Rauseo glanced at each other but chose not to answer the question.

“Unless you're going to accuse us of something,” said Valentine, “we both have things we'd like to get done today.”

“Maybe you'd just better make sure you've got a lawyer waiting in the wings,” sniffed Rauseo.

“By the time all this is settled,
I'll
be a lawyer,” murmured Clarisse, slipping into the sleeves of her coat.

Valentine reached into his shirt pocket and took out an engraved business card. He slipped it across the scarred surface of the table.

“This is our lawyer. He pretends that he's gay, too. It's a real racket these days.”

Scowling, Brosnan took the card.

A
S VALENTINE ROSE SLOWLY in the ancient cage elevator, the cables and the pulleys shook and wheezed and screeched as if they had not been oiled since their installation. When, with a rattle and a sigh, it finally lurched to a halt on the sixth floor of the narrow office building, Valentine threw back the accordion grate and the wooden safety door and stepped onto the landing. He looked around for the fire stairs and decided that that would be his way back down.

He unzipped his brown leather jacket and loosened the gray scarf that had been tightly wrapped around his neck. He glanced down the narrow hallway. Two glass-domed lights hung from the ceiling, inadequately illuminating the dingy gray walls and the chipped linoleum floor. The linoleum perhaps once had had a distinct pattern, but years of wear and patching had obliterated it. At the end of the hall, past four single office doors, sunlight filtered weakly through the dusty panes of a tiny window overlooking West Street. Valentine could hear traffic, construction machinery, and a siren from below. From behind the office doors, he heard a telephone ringing, muted murmuring voices, and a radio playing soft rock. Valentine stepped over to the wall directory and checked his reflection in the glass. He then walked down the hall and opened the last of the four doors, entering the reception area of the
Boston Area Reporter
, employer of the late Sweeney Drysdale II.

“Excuse me—” Valentine began, but then was startled into silence. The receptionist was Apologetic Joe.

Joe didn't look up. He wore Sony Walkman earphones. The Walkman itself was propped up in an open desk drawer. Joe was listening with intense concentration and jotting notes on a piece of
BAR
stationery. The clacking of a manual typewriter could be heard behind a closed door to one of the inner offices.

Valentine shut the outer door of the office, and the vibration caught Joe's attention. Valentine smiled and greeted Slate's future bouncer in pantomime. Joe pushed back the earphones, which slipped gracefully off the back of his head and closed around his neck.

“Sorry,” said Joe, “I didn't hear you. What brings you here? Can I do something for you?”

“I brought in an ad for Slate,” said Valentine. “What are
you
doing here?”

“I'm recepting,” said Joe. “I just started a couple of days ago. I mean, I can use the extra money till the bar opens— especially since they've given me a column. You know,” he added shyly, “it's always been my ambition to have a newspaper column, but I never really thought I'd get it. It's not one of
BAR
's big columns, but it's in every week.” He tapped his pen on his note pad. “That's what I was working on when you came in.”

“Gossip? Sports? What are you doing?”

“I'm writing the Disco Digest column.”

“Disco Digest?”

“I take the most popular songs of the week, and I listen to 'em real carefully,” he nodded at the Walkman, “and then I write down what the songs are about—what they're
really
about.”

“I'm not sure I follow.”

“Well, I just listened to this song about twenty times before I got the real gist of it. It's about this girl named Gloria—which is actually an alias—who tells everybody that she's real popular. She says her phone never stops ringing, but it never actually rings. Gloria whatever-her-real-name-is is having a nervous breakdown and hearing voices in her head. It's all told by her girlfriend, but you don't ever find out the girlfriend's name, and that's why it's so hard to figure the song out, but the girlfriend is real upset about Gloria's condition.” Joe took a breath.