Slate

by Nathan Aldyne

  “Sounds like a good time to me.”

  “You go on. I’ll be all right. I’ve got two hundred and thirty cops within hailing distance if someone tries to attack me. Just leave me the umbrella.”

  Valentine nodded, relinquished the umbrella, and bade her good night. Cinching up his coat over his head, he headed across the bricked expanse at the corner of Berkeley and Tremont streets.

  Clarisse watched after him a moment and then turned onto Warren Avenue in front of the police station. She sidled between two parked cruisers, then ran across to her building. As she fished for the keys in her pocket, she saw that the light was on in the back of Mr. Fred’s Tease ‘n’ Tint. It gave an eerie illumination to the purple walls within. She walked over and peered inside but saw no one inside.

  She at last found her keys, held them up to the light from Mr. Fred’s, and picked out the one to the front door. She then became aware of an odd scraping noise, somewhat like that of a foot being dragged through gravel, from somewhere above her. She looked up and squinted. Rain splashed into her eyes and blurred her vision. She wiped away the moisture with the back of her hand, and in that instant heard a whoosh as something square, black, heavy, and metallic smashed onto the sidewalk no more than six inches in back of her.

  Clarisse froze, her heart hammering. She listened. She heard another scraping sound—like a step on gravel—above.

  Then nothing.

  She stared at the wreckage of the object behind her and then cautiously looked up along the edges of the buildings. She saw nothing. She glanced down again and prodded the metallic wreckage with the toe of her shoe. Then she turned and walked swiftly across the street to the police station, keeping an eye over her shoulder.

  In her wet fur, she quickly attracted the attention of one of the officers behind the desk. He came over, clicked open a ballpoint pen, and slapped down a blank report sheet on the counter between them.

  “Someone just tried to kill me with a video cassette recorder,” Clarisse blurted.

  The officer flicked his eyes up from the report sheet and looked her over. With his pen poised over a box halfway down the page, he asked, “VHS or Betamax?”

  PART THREE

  Chapter Fifteen

  A FEW MINUTES AFTER eight o’clock on Christmas night, the screech of the casement of one of Clarisse’s front windows being thrust up drew the attention of two policemen coming out of the quiet District D policestation. A moment later the bottom of the Scotch pine was thrust through the opening. It wavered there a moment as if testing the air, and then the lower branches of the tree, temporarily caught by the window frame, were suddenly released as more of the tree was pushed out. The boughs of the pine were laden with glass ornaments, strings of lights, ropes of glass beads, and silver icicles. A number of the colored glass globes were shaken loose and dropped with little shattering explosions to the sidewalk below. The icicles fluttered in the frigid night air and caught the reflection of the station’s blue neon light.

  The two policemen watched with curiosity as the tree was eased farther and farther out of the window. At last, as the tree bent of its own weight and hung against the side of the building, they caught sight of two gloveless hands clutching the narrow top just below the lopsided silver star.

  The hands suddenly let go of the tree, and it crashed—decorated boughs, silver star, and all—to the sidewalk midway between the doors to Slate and the gutter. Clarisse poked her head out the window and stared down at it with a satisfied smile. She then pulled back inside the window and slammed down the sash. This second screech, louder than the first, echoed eerily down deserted Warren Avenue.

  Inside the apartment, Valentine sat comfortably sideways in an easy chair, his legs hooked over the arm, sipping his third bourbon and water of the evening.

  Clarisse walked casually toward him, picking pine needles off her white blouse and gray wool slacks.

  “Some people would at least wait until the day is officially ended before getting rid of the tree,” Valentine remarked.

  “I’ve been dying to get rid of that vision of Christmas Present ever since I walked in yesterday afternoon and found you decorating it.”

  “I shudder to think what you would have done if I’d erected a life-sized crèche in here.”

  “No problem,” said Clarisse, removing a final needle from her cuff. “I still have that acetylene torch in the closet.” She grabbed the metal tree stand and then snatched up the small mound of wrapping paper and ribbon off the table and carried them into the kitchen. She came back a moment later with a scotch on the rocks. “The neighbors are going to start talking,” she said, sitting back in the chair opposite Valentine. She reached out and edged the table lamp back a bit so that she could see him.

  “About what?”

  “Every time they look out the window, somebody’s hurling something from an upper story onto the sidewalk. And usually it’s being aimed straight for my head.”

  “You’re lucky you weren’t killed that time. Or maimed. Or scarred for life.”

  Clarisse gave him a tight smile. “Always the kind word. The gentle thought.”

  The police had been of no use in discovering who it was that had thrown the video cassette recorder from the roof. Two officers had accompanied her back across the street that night. In the rear of the building, they discovered the fire escape ladder pulled all the way down to the ground. They climbed to the roof but found no sign that anyone had been lurking. The roof doors of both the buildings were firmly secured from inside. It wasn’t that the police didn’t believe her story—they had seen the crushed machine on the sidewalk—they just didn’t have anything to go on. Clarisse had gone back to the station house and filled out some forms, which didn’t have appropriate boxes for “Attempted Crushing,” but when she went back home, she was startled to discover that the tangle of broken machine had been removed from the sidewalk. She then realized, too late, that its surface ought to have been dusted for fingerprints.

  Valentine had questioned Linc again about what happened between him and Sweeney on the night of the murder, but Linc’s story remained the same in every detail. Since Valentine and Clarisse had questioned him at Fritz, Linc had been sullen and silent. He came to Slate every day, did his work, supervised the work of the others under him, and went home at five. He didn’t go up into the office unless he had to, and he never visited Valentine’s apartment above. He seemed to avoid Clarisse altogether. Valentine thought this was on account of embarrassment and humiliation, but Clarisse felt that it might be something else.

  Clarisse was spending most of her waking hours in the law library. The semester had ended before Christmas, which meant that papers, exams, and reports had had to be suffered through and handed in before the holiday. Valentine’s time was devoted to tying up last-minute details for the opening of Slate. He dealt with liquor and soft-drink distributors; he set up schedules for the simultaneous shifts he and Ashes had agreed to work behind the bar; he arranged for Joe to work the door every night but Monday, the slowest bar night all over the city. And he designated work shifts for his newest hirelings, Felix and Larry, who would perform stock-running and pickup duties. At the same time, he had to put together a separate crew to manage the bar during the day.

  “The problem was,” said Clarisse, “the cops didn’t think that the attempt to murder me was deliberate. That is to say, they thought it was just an accident that a video cassette recorder was hurled at me off the top of a four-story building in the middle of a rainy night.”

  “We’ve been over this a dozen times,” returned Valentine. “And we still can’t figure out who in the world would want to kill you.”

  Clarisse sat up a bit. “A pretty desperate character with a bad aim.”

  “That,” Valentine agreed, “or some psycho out to harm a fashionably dressed and defenseless woman. But let’s not forget the gypsies. Those people hold vendettas. They were also pretty fond of dropping things off the roof in your general dir
ection the night you evicted them.”

  Clarisse took a long swallow of her scotch. “No matter how you look at it, I’m a marked woman.”

  “Nothing’s happened in three weeks,” Valentine pointed out.

  “But I still feel like I’m living under sentence of death,” said Clarisse. “Maybe someone has been trying to do me in and I haven’t noticed.”

  “I hardly think you’d miss a hail of bullets whizzing about your head, or butcher knives thwacking into the wall behind you. And what if whoever it was wasn’t trying to kill you? What if it was only a warning to stop snooping around about Sweeney Drysdale?”

  “I would have preferred an anonymous telephone call or one of those messages with the letters cut out of magazines.” She took another sip of her drink and then said in a brave, resigned voice, “No, I’m a marked woman, Val.”

  “Oh, brother…” Valentine groaned softly.

  “Will you still be so heartless when you have to go to the Southern Mortuary to identify my battered, barely recognizable remains?”

  Valentine shrugged nonchalantly, drained his glass, and set it on the table. “I think what you should do and what I should do is stop talking about this.”

  “Fine,” Clarisse said. “As long as we start doing something about it.” She looked at him with a steady eye. “Agreed?”

  Valentine considered. “All right. I suppose. But tomorrow. Tonight, I think we ought to do something to mark this holiday. We can’t have people saying we’re not traditionalists.”

  “I already threw the tree out the window. I lied to my family, telling them I was in Barbados for two weeks with someone whose last name was DuPont so that I could spend the holiday with you. What more do you want?”

  “To do the same thing we did last Christmas night.”

  Clarisse leaned over her chair and grabbed the Globe from the carpet. She scanned the entertainment pages and then looked up at Valentine over the edge of the paper. “It’s either Cinderella at the Beacon Hill, or Dr. Butcher—Medical Deviant at the Palace.”

  Valentine thought a moment. “The Disney film,” he said. “I prefer my sadism animated this evening.”

  Cinderella proved as delightful as they had remembered it. When they emerged into Government Center at eleven-thirty, the clock tower of Park Street Church marked the time with a single chime.

  “We still have half an hour of this festive day left,” Clarisse said, “and the Last Hurrah is only about fifty paces away.”

  “I know a better bar,” said Valentine. “One you actually haven’t been drunk in yet.”

  Clarisse ignored his remark and walked with him across the street to hail a cab in front of the Parker House. “Where are we going? I hate surprises—especially on holidays.”

  Wordlessly, Valentine opened the back door of a taxi parked beneath the hotel marquee, and Clarisse climbed inside. Before he got in behind her, Valentine gave the address to the driver in a low voice that Clarisse could not make out.

  Ten minutes later, seated on a barstool, Clarisse said, “You were right. I have never been drunk here before.”

  Smiling with proprietary pride, Valentine stood behind Slate’s bar. Fresh drinks stood between them. A single glass ball, rescued from the wreck of the Scotch pine just outside the door, dangled from a hook over the mirror. Valentine had lighted candles rather than turning on the overhead lights. A new tape slowly revolved on the tape deck, and soft rock music filled the corners.

  “Nice place you got here,” she said.

  “I like it,” Valentine said, raising his glass in a toast. “Here’s to bleary days ahead.”

  Clarisse raised her glass and saluted him: “Here’s to prosperity and success in our chosen endeavors.”

  She glanced around, peering into the obscurity. “It looks all ready.”

  “By candlelight, sure…”

  There was a lull in the conversation, and after a moment Clarisse said, “I was serious about what I said earlier—about trying to find out why a dead gossip columnist ended up in my bed. We could try a little fancy footwork and see what we could come up with.”

  Valentine smiled. “I’ll dust off my tap shoes tonight, but I think it may be a bigger production number than we anticipate right now.”

  Clarisse finished her drink and set the glass aside. “That’s all right,” she said. “My adrenalin’s still up after a whole semester of school.”

  “Where to start?” said Valentine. “That’s the problem.”

  “We’ll figure that out tomorrow.” Clarisse eased off her stool. “Tonight I just want to settle down for a long winter’s nap.”

  “And I’m going to wander over to the Eagle and pick up one last Christmas present for myself.”

  “A GI Joe,” Clarisse asked, “or a Nutcracker?”

  Climbing to the second floor, Clarisse was engulfed by the noise of a television turned to highest volume from Julia and Susie’s apartment. She sighed and rapped her knuckles on their apartment door but got no response. She lifted her foot and slammed the side of her heel once with as much force as she could muster against the bottom of the door. The door rattled loudly.

  The noise ceased abruptly, and the door opened.

  Julia, wearing a white T-shirt and men’s army fatigues with bright red socks pulled up over the cuffs, stood with an empty punch glass in one hand.

  “Come on in,” she said by way of greeting, “I’m lonesome, and they’re just about to show A Christmas Carol.”

  Clarisse was going to refuse, but the melancholy flickering about Julia’s eyes stopped her. “Just for a while,” she said, and followed the woman inside. It was the first time Clarisse had been in the apartment in more than a month. On the television, Scrooge was silently berating Bob Cratchit.

  “Where’s Susie?”

  “On a date,” said Julia bitterly.

  “Tonight?”

  “Money talks,” replied Julia morosely. “And money dances, and Susie’s always needing a partner, even on Christmas. Have some eggnog? I made it myself. I was just going to have some more.”

  Clarisse nodded agreement, and Julia went into the kitchen. She soon came out with another punch glass and her own filled. The top of each was covered with a swirl of nutmeg.

  Julia plopped onto one end of the sofa, and Clarisse sat at the other. Clarisse looked at the television screen as Scrooge was horrified by the specter of Marley’s ghost appearing on his doorknocker.

  “I didn’t think you watched anything but sports,” Clarisse said idly, and in that moment, she noticed that the video cassette recorder was missing from its space on the shelf below the television set. “What happened to your recorder?” Clarisse asked in a choked voice.

  “It got broken,” Julia said flatly, looking over at her.

  “Oh?” Clarisse said casually. “When?”

  “The other day,” said Julia vaguely. “What’s the matter? You don’t like my eggnog? Merry Christmas. Drink up.”

  Clarisse stared at the contents of the punch glass.

  Julia laughed. “You act like it’s arsenic in there instead of bourbon and cream.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  AT A QUARTER TO ELEVEN the following morning, Clarisse opened her apartment door to admit Miss America. The young woman carried her manicure tray on her hunched shoulders. She shivered violently.

  “It’s freezing, freezing, freezing,” said Miss America. “This is how cold it gets on Mount Rainier.”

  Clarisse removed the coat loosely draped over Miss America’s frail form. Above one breast on her starched green uniform, Miss America had pinned a redwood brooch in the shape of California. Rhinestones marked Los Angeles and San Francisco.

  “Would you like coffee, America?” Clarisse offered. “I just made a fresh pot.”

  “No, but thanks. I don’t mean to rush you or anything, but I really am squeezing you in. We’re booked solid for the rest of the week—what with New Year’s and all. I’ll bet you’re pretty busy over
here too. I’ve got seventeen Spuds coming in on Thursday and Friday.”

  “Spuds?” echoed Clarisse vaguely.

  “Long Island Spuds,” Miss America said by way of explanation and looked around the room. Still mystified, Clarisse indicated the chair they would use and then went toward the kitchen. Miss America knelt before the chair and spread out a thin yard-square sheet of opaque pink plastic on the carpet. “They’re a motorcycle club. I don’t know why they’d want to name a motorcycle club after a potato, though. Anyway, I’m going to tell them to be sure to come to the opening of Slate.”

  “We’d appreciate that. You and Mr. Fred have a lot of clout in certain segments of the community.”

  “Thank you,” said Miss America modestly.

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your dropping everything to do this for me,” Clarisse called from the kitchen. “I’ve been running late all morning, and I have this interview at twelve. I just forgot to make an appointment before you and Mr. Fred went to your mother’s for the weekend. Did you have a nice Christmas?”

  “Fred gave me a doorstop made out of petrified wood,” said Miss America. “It was exactly what I’ve always wanted. Somebody must have told him.”

  Clarisse came back into the living room with a cup of steaming black coffee. She found Miss America kneeling on the carpet at the edge of the plastic, her clips, files, buffs, brushes, bowls, and liquids spread out neatly before her. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, “but Fred makes me charge double for emergency out-calls.”

  “It’ll be worth every penny, America.”