Slate (13 page)

Valentine smiled. “All that is in ‘Gloria'?”

“See what I mean? You miss so much if you don't listen. You've got to go beyond the beat and the melody; you've got to listen to the words, the story of the song. There are messages in the music—and that's what Disco Digest is all about.”

“I guess,” replied Valentine vaguely. He unsnapped one of the large breast pockets of his jacket and removed a medium-sized manila envelope. “I brought a rough layout of the Slate ad, and—”

Valentine was cut off by the sudden appearance of a handsome large-boned woman with thick blond hair. She wore jeans and a crimson sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up on her forearms. She had an officious air about her and barely glanced at Valentine as she stepped up to the desk and dropped a cassette tape on Joe's desk.

“This is the new People Buying Things tape, Joe,” the woman said. Her voice was edged with urgency. “I want a report on every cut for the next issue. I ran it twice myself last night, and it's all about race relations after the nuclear holocaust. Except for one song, and that one's about getting all dressed up and going out dancing.”

“Bernie,” Joe said, waving a hand toward Valentine to direct her attention that way, “this is Daniel Valentine. Bernie's our assistant editor,” he added to Val, completing the introduction.

Bernie's brow furrowed momentarily. “You're Slate, aren't you?”

“Yes,” said Valentine, pleased.

“Slate's a good name,” said Bernie, smoothing a wayward strand of hair off her cheek.

“Thank you.”

“Scene of the Crime's a better one though,” the editor said with an impish grin. “It's not too late to change. I mean, just think what kind of publicity Sweeney's already handed you.”

Valentine blinked, but said nothing.

“Hold my calls,” Bernie said, turning to Joe. “I'm going to think up the nasty replies for the Letters to the Editor—and while I'm at it, I'll think up the letters too. By the way, are you and Ashes coming with the rest of the staff next weekend?”

“We're still thinking about it,” said Joe doubtfully. “Something may come up at the last minute,” he added vaguely.

Bernie looked at Val. “How about you? Would you like to share in the Advocate Experience next weekend? It'll change your life.”

“For the better?”

Bernie looked displeased with the small joke and started to turn away. Valentine stopped her with his voice. “Look,” he said quickly, “who do I see about this advertising copy?”

“Vinny's out right now,” said Joe helpfully.

“God knows.” Bernie sighed bravely. “I do everything else around here.”

Valentine removed a five-by-seven-inch sheet of cardboard from his envelope and handed it to Bernie. Joe half-rose from his chair in order to peer at it. Angled across the paper was the name of the bar in scripted black type against a mottled gray background. There was no other information.

“An ad generally advertises,” Bernie remarked, and glanced up at Valentine.

“You said yourself,” shrugged Valentine, “Sweeney's already put the place on the map. Besides, we're not opening until New Year's Eve. I'll run the ad like this for a couple of weeks. Then I'll include the address, and then the information about the party, and so on.”

“A teaser campaign,” mumbled Bernie, disapprovingly.

“I thought it was more tasteful than a photograph of the corpse,” said Valentine.

Bernie glanced at Valentine, then peered at the advertisement a moment more. She said in a low, insinuating voice: “
‘Chalk up a hot one at Slate.'
” She looked up and smiled. “How's that for a clever slogan?”

“Very clever,” said Valentine impassively.

“Yes,” agreed Bernie, “it really is. So look, I'll give this to Vinny and it'll go in next week, just as it is. If there's any problem, he'll call you.” Bernie stepped back into the inner office, saying quickly over her shoulder, “Get right on that People Buying Things tape, Joe.”

Joe obediently took out the tape that he had been listening to and inserted the new one. “Bernie's a little on edge,” Joe explained in a whisper. “She had to write all Sweeney's columns this week. Fashion. Entertainment.
And
gossip.”

“I thought Sweeney just wrote a gossip column,” said Valentine.

“That was the only column he had a by-line on,” said Joe. “The others got pseudonyms. They didn't want to make it look like one person was writing the entire paper—which was just about the case.”

“Have you got somebody to take his place?” asked Valentine.

Joe put the earphones back over his ears and pressed the play button. “Don't you know?” he asked, surprised.

“How should I know who's—”

“Because
I'm
Sweeney's replacement,” a familiar voice said behind Valentine.

He turned. There stood Paul Ashe, holding a sheaf of yellowed tear sheets. “I thought I heard you out here,” said Ashes.

Joe was already making preliminary notes on the first People Buying Things cut.

“You're
taking Sweeney's place?” Valentine noticed an open office door halfway down the narrow hallway. Ashes must have been inside.

“He'd
die
if he knew,” Ashes said with a malicious grin. “If he weren't already dead, of course. Come on in.”

Valentine followed Ashes down a short hallway and through a door that still had a three-by-five-inch index card bearing Sweeney's name thumbtacked to it. The office was small and cramped, with a gray metal desk and a filing cabinet taking up most of the space. Ashes had to slide along one wall to get around the desk to his chair. The space there was discolored where, Valentine guessed, Sweeney also must have slid against it many times. The wall also showed light-colored rectangles where framed pictures had been removed recently. These—nearly two dozen—were leaning in a stack against the wall. The photograph on top showed Sweeney smiling broadly, his arm flung about the shoulder of Wayland Flowers. Flowers' puppet Madame had her grotesque wooden face turned up to Sweeney with an expression of open-mouthed astonishment. Valentine removed a pile of books from a wooden chair by the door and sat down.

“It looks like you've just taken over,” Valentine said, eyeing the scatter of papers across the desk.

“My first day,” said Ashes. He glanced at the tear sheets he was still holding and tossed them into the wastepaper basket. “Honest to God, Drysdale kept anything and everything that had his name on it. I found a file folder with pages torn out of old telephone directories. He had circled his name in green ink on every one of them.” Ashes pulled open a drawer and scooped out a handful of small squares of pink paper. “Telephone messages,” said Ashes, rolling his eyes. “Arranged by year.” He tossed them in on top of the tear sheets.

Ashes continued to burrow into the desk drawers.

Valentine looked idly about. “Is it always so quiet around here?”

“No,” said Ashes, glancing at the watch that was attached to his wide, studded wrist band. “But this week's edition went to the printer about two hours ago. And our two star reporters— our only reporters, I should say—are out on a marathon lunch, to see who can eat the most guacamole without actually turning green.”

“Is the
BAR
running a tribute to Sweeney?”

“Well, Bernie thought they should, but she couldn't think of enough nice things to say about him that would fill up two whole lines, so they just stuck his picture on the front page with the dates of his birth and death, and what Bernie calls ‘a smart black border.' Both tasteful and chic.”

“Which Sweeney never was.”

Ashes took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair with his feet up on the desk. He put his hands together at the back of his head, and rolled one of the spurs on his boots across a pile of Sweeney's old correspondence, shredding it slightly. “Would you believe me if I said I was sorry Sweeney was dead?”

“To be honest, I'll have to say no.”

“Well, I am sorry he's dead. I'm sorry for his parents, I'm sorry for his creditors. I'm even a little sorry for Sweeney himself—”

“But?”

“But nobody believes me,” Ashes said with a shrug.

“Who is nobody?”

“Your neighbors across the street,” said Ashes.

“Have the police been bothering you?” asked Valentine in surprise.

“They haven't been bothering
you?”

“Not really. They hauled Clarisse and me in there the other day and insinuated that I'm a closet heterosexual, among other things. They've talked to Linc a couple of times, too. And they are always coming over to talk to Julia, but mostly they want to look at her motorcycle. And they
all
know Susie Whitebread. I don't think they have any leads at all; they're just fishing. How have they been making things difficult for you?”

A slight frown came over Ashes' face. “I don't have an alibi. Joe and I were in the basement that night. We got coked up, and then we wandered over to Charlie's Cafeteria for some food. But nobody saw us, as far as I know—nobody who'd remember us, I mean.”

“Are the police talking to Joe?” Valentine asked.

Ashes shook his head. “I'm the one they're coming down on. God knows why.”

“You know why,” said Valentine, looking around the office.

“Why?”

“You seem to have had a motive,” Valentine explained. “You wanted Sweeney's job—and you got it.”

“This isn't a job. This is a pastime. I can't make enough here to live off of. They'd know that if they ever saw me cash my paycheck at the fruit stand on the corner. Besides, Sweeney was going to be fired anyway.”

“Fired? For what?”

“Because he was writing libelous columns, that's why. A lot more damaging stuff than anything he said about you or the bar. He was tracking down
real
dirt.”

“What is
real
dirt?”

“Like So-and-So was paid two hundred dollars to wrap a senator in hospital adhesive tape, and it was So-and-So's roommate who saved the senator from being strangled.”

“Was it true?”

“Probably not,” said Ashes. “Though you'd be surprised at the number of men in public office who are obsessed with hospital fantasies. Sweeney wrote down stories he got third-hand. And he was too lazy to check sources. He was putting stories like that in the ‘blind' section at the end of his column, but everybody knew who he was talking about. He was also going around snapping pictures of people at gatherings when they were acting silly, and he'd run the photo with a caption like ‘So-and-So Grabs His Ankles for Fun and Profit'.”

“So why didn't Bernie—or whoever is in charge of this place—just fire him?”

“Because gay people have never discovered the joys of a libel suit. So the paper was safe. And Sweeney's column helped sell advertising.”

Bernie came to the door and leaned inside. “Have you found Sweeney's last column copy yet?” she asked Ashes.

“No,” said Ashes, “and I've looked through everything.”

Valentine looked surprised. “Sweeney wrote a column that was never published?”

“He sure did,” said Bernie. “And it was all finished except for Mr. Fred's party. He was supposed to turn it in the next morning. I was hoping to run it next week as a kind of memorial. Besides, I had already paid him for it.”

“After the way he acted at Mr. Fred's party,” said Valentine, “it was probably going to be a lulu.”

“Well,” said Ashes, sitting up and slamming shut the drawers of the desk, “I can't find it, so I guess we'll just never know for sure, will we?”

I
N MID-AFTERNOON ON the day before Thanksgiving, Clarisse entered the small office overlooking the bar. In one hand she carried a pair of leather gloves and a soft leather overnight bag. The sash of her tawny camel-hair coat was untied, and underneath she wore dark brown corduroy slacks and a charcoal-gray cable-knit sweater.

Valentine looked up from a pile of bills and advertising brochures scattered over his desk. He glanced at the desk clock and said, “I thought you'd gone an hour ago.”

Dropping her bag by the door, she came over to the desk. She scribbled quickly on a scrap of paper and dropped it on the pile of bills before Valentine. “That's my brother's telephone number. In case there's an emergency and you need me back here immediately.”

Valentine wadded the slip of paper and tossed it into the wastepaper basket.

“You mean something by that, don't you?” said Clarisse. “You're trying to tell me something.”

“Clarisse, I know that number by heart,” said Valentine. “You taped it to the fridge yesterday and last night it was on my bathroom mirror. For a while I thought it was some trick who kept breaking in.”

Clarisse threw herself wearily in one of the armchairs. She crossed her legs, grasped the arms of the chair, and pressed her head back over the top, as if preparing against the g-force of a rocket blast-off.

“It isn't fair…”

“What isn't fair?” said Valentine.

“It isn't fair that all the family holidays should be in the fall and winter—Thanksgiving, Christmas. Indoors. Overheated rooms. Too much food. Not enough to drink. Nowhere to hide. Bars on the windows. Sadistic matrons patrolling the halls.”

“You're not going to a state correctional facility, Lovelace, you're going to Beverly Farms. The third richest township in America, I believe you once told me.”

Clarisse lowered her head. She smiled a ghastly smile. “It's true, and it's beautiful there. So come with me, Val.”

“I told you, Linc and I are spending the day together. Look, you're coming back on Friday. You'll be there less than forty-eight hours.”