“—Mr. Twirlin’ Whirlin’!”
Clarisse leaped down from the stage, for she knew what was coming. Mr. Twirlin’ Whirlin’—a short, fat Hispanic man about forty—surged out between the red curtains on roller skates. He was twirling a baton dramatically above his head, changing hands and spinning his entire body about as he glided along the rim of the stage. Mr. Twirlin’ Whirlin’ wore a headband with two small American flags attached to the end of springs, a silver sleeveless shirt encrusted with white-and-blue blinking lights, and skintight red-and-white satin shorts. His roller skates were red and white; his athletic socks, blue. He flung his baton into the air with one hand and caught it with the other and then performed the same feat while bent far forward and reaching up between his legs behind himself.
When Kate Smith was done, so was Mr. Twirlin’ Whirlin’, but the audience demanded an encore. Mr. Whirlin’ was evidently prepared for this, for after a few seconds of blank tape, Kate Smith went into the “Ballad of the Green Berets.” Regular Ethel hit the light switch, and the stage was in darkness—except for the nubs of Mr. Whirlin’s batons, which glowed a phosphorescent yellow.
The people in Slate who had remained for the second act were glad that they did, for even though there were only four performances, each was, in its way, very special. After Mr. Whirlin’ came a large woman dressed in a muumuu that had been silk-screened with silhouette images of Lassie. Her name was Rona Barrette, and she wore a half-dozen barrettes on her lank brown hair. She was accompanied by a collie named Clover, and Clover wore barrettes, too. Clover was a well-behaved dog and sat when he was told to sit. Rona Barrette announced, “Clover is the smartest dog in the world. Clover can talk.” Rona Barrette knelt down on the stage next to Clover, placed her pudgy hands around Clover’s muzzle, and squeezed. “Talk,” Rona Barrette said to the collie. Then, to the intense astonishment of the crowd, Clover said, “Hamburger.”
“More! More!” screamed the audience, but Rona Barrette said, “Not unless I win this contest. If Clover and me win this contest, then I’ll come back out, and Clover will talk some more. But only if we win. Got that, you people?”
“More! More!” the crowd shouted, but Rona Barrette and Clover returned to the ladies’ room to wait out the end of the show.
The third act was a bartender from Rhode Island who did the shimmy while dressed as Our Lady of Fatima.
“And now,” said Clarisse weakly when both she and the audience had recovered from the bartender’s display, “we have the final act of the evening. It’s the one I know you’ve all been waiting for. This is a young woman we all know from Boston Magazine and the ‘Channel Five Evening Report’—a young woman who has been arrested more times than any other street performer in Boston. You’ve seen her jeered at on the Common, you’ve seen her jostled out of the way in front of Filene’s, you’ve heard her being drowned out by the subways at Park Street Under, you’ve watched her dry her rain-soaked clothing on the fence outside this very establishment. This evening, she tells me, is the first time that she has worked indoors in two years, so I want you all to give a warm welcome to—”
The audience was already clapping, because they knew who it was.
“—Miss Ruby Charisma! In her brand-new act, never seen before, of the Moth and the Candle Flame!”
Felix and George, the Slate runners, came out of the ladies’ room, bearing with them what looked to be a large cocoon. It was in reality a sheet with the hems basted together. The cocoon was left alone on stage in the spotlight. It began to writhe obscenely, as if in a Disney nature film. It split open at the top, and after some struggle, a young woman emerged. She had a round, vacuous face and kinky black hair. Kicking the torn cocoon aside, she looked around as if she were seeing the world for the first time.
She was wearing a black leotard and cape, and when she tentatively raised her arms, she revealed wings with great spots of luminous violet and red. She began to flutter around the stage, like the moth she was costumed to be.
Felix came back onto the stage, bearing a lighted candle.
Ruby Charisma was fascinated by the candle. She danced around it, humming her own accompaniment through clenched teeth. She went ever closer to the flame until she had lit the small sponge that was hung around her neck on a string. It had evidently been soaked in cold fire and burned brightly on her breast. Then Ruby went into a slow death agony, humming Chopin’s funeral march, her moth life and the lurid flame on her breast expiring at the same moment.
Rona Barrette and the promise of more speech from Clover were completely forgotten.
The Applause-O-Meter went right off the scale for Ruby Charisma.
Chapter Ten
“WHAT HAPPENED?” ASKED Clarisse, looking around with apparent surprise. It was only twenty minutes after Ruby Charisma had received her $350 prize for the talent show. The crowd that had viewed and cheered and laughed with all the acts was almost gone. The twenty or so patrons who remained in Slate were scattered listlessly against the walls or sat nursing beers at the bar. “Where did everybody go all of a sudden? Did Saturday night suddenly shut down?”
“Self-preservation took over,” Valentine said with a grimace. He stood behind the bar, transferring bottles of beer into a cooler. “As soon as the show was over, everybody decided that Slate wasn’t the safest place in the world to be, so they went somewhere safer, and more exciting.”
“Safe?” Clarisse said with a scowl. “This bar isn’t safe? There are five police cruisers parked practically at the front door. District D is less than a hundred feet away—”
“I’m talking about murders, Lovelace, not muggings. It’s gotten around that the necktie killer hangs out here in Slate. Bander wasn’t just being flip this afternoon when he said people were staying away from here. People are worried enough about picking up AIDS. You think they’re also going to risk ending up like Jed and the All-American Boy and—”
“So we spent over a thousand dollars to set up this evening, and everybody leaves five minutes after the show’s over. Boy, that’s ingratitude,” Clarisse said loftily.
“Not everybody’s gone,” said Valentine. “The cops are still here.”
Clarisse swiveled slowly around on the stool. “There are cops in here?” She glanced over the tiny crowd.
“Since Jed was killed, they’ve been stopping by here almost every night before closing time. This evening they’ve been in here since the show began.”
Clarisse turned back around and put down her glass. “Why haven’t you told me this before now?” she asked soberly. “Why were you holding back?”
“Because I didn’t want you worrying about it, and I didn’t want you thinking every other man who came in here was a cop.”
“What does this say about the trust that exists between you and me?” Clarisse exclaimed. “Did you tell Sean? I’ll bet you did. Did you tell Niobe?”
Two men sitting a few stools down at the bar glanced over at Valentine and Clarisse as if waiting to hear more of the argument.
Valentine made a sharp motion for her to lower her voice. “Don’t get hysterical.” He tossed the empty box and leaned his elbows on the bar as he spoke in a low, confidential tone.
“Niobe doesn’t know about it, and neither does Sean, but I suppose it really wouldn’t be fair not to let you in on it. When the cops talked to me after Jed was killed, they told me they were putting this place under surveillance. They told me not to tell anybody else, and I said, ‘Does that include Clarisse, my best friend in the world?’ and they said yes, it did. And that’s why I didn’t tell you.”
Clarisse smiled. “All right, I get the picture.” She looked past him to the mirror behind the bar. “Where are the cops? Point them out to me. I hate being watched without knowing who’s doing the watching.”
“I promised I wouldn’t.” Valentine hedged.
Clarisse’s mouth dropped. “I cannot believe you’re saying this to me. Me, who would walk over white-hot coals and eat raw ancho
vies if it would help you.”
Valentine relented but said seriously, “Promise you’ll keep a very tight lid on this. It really is important, Lovelace.”
“I swear on the very earth that will cover me one day. Where are they?”
“Keep looking in the mirror. Now, you see the guy leaning against the cigarette machine? The one with the mustache, wearing the tank top?”
“That hunk?”
“And the guy against the mirror with the five o’clock shadow beard wearing the green T-shirt and denim cutoffs?”
“The blond bombshell?”
“Now, look over there. See B.J. and her two friends? Follow their heavy cruise to the one with no shirt and the leather vest.”
“The clone with the mustache?” Clarisse drew her eyes away from the glass and eyed Valentine suspiciously. “Did you handpick them?”
“Clarisse, the cops know better than to try to smoke out a killer with a troll or somebody who looks like an obvious misfit. And for God’s sake, if they come in while you’re on, don’t offer them free drinks.”
Clarisse studied the three policemen in the mirror once more. “You don’t suppose they put gay cops on this detail, do you? Those three look too right, too comfortable.”
“Not when you watch closely. They can’t quite pull it off. They’ve got the hair okay, and they’ve got the clothes down, but they can’t get the eyes right. They don’t know how to cruise, and they’re probably looking for a man walking around with ties trailing out of his back pocket.”
Clarisse heaved a sigh and slid her glass across to Valentine. “More scotch, please. I’m depressed. It’s Saturday night. It’s Gay Pride Weekend, and fifty percent of our clientele thinks the other fifty percent are murder suspects. Two months ago this was the hottest bar in town, and now look around. This place is about as popular as the lower deck lounge of the Titanic.”
“I called your uncle this week—” said Valentine.
“You called Noah? You didn’t tell me that, either!”
“I told him business is falling off because of this.”
“What did he say?”
“He gave me a bit of advice.”
“Which was?”
“Find the murderer.”
Clarisse clicked her tongue. “Easy for him to say from the safe distance of Morocco.”
Valentine looked around the bar. Three men walked out together. No one came in to bring the population back up again. “I wish I were in Morocco,” he said with a sigh.
“I wish we were both in Morocco now,” Clarisse said. “Better yet, I think you ought to stay here and worry and fret and let me go off for a relaxing week or so in an exotic foreign country.”
The house lights came on at two A.M., and at two-fifteen the last of the customers wandered out. The three plainclothesmen lingered on the sidewalk beneath the street lamp, but no offers were made to them, and eventually—with surreptitious nods to one another—they wandered off.
Sean snatched up empty bottles and glasses from around the room while Valentine cashed out the register. Clarisse had already gone up to bed. Felix and George, the two bar runners, began the preliminary cleanup, a job they’d finish in the morning at ten.
At three A.M., Valentine closed the door on Sean, Felix, and George and snapped off the barroom lights. In the darkness, he climbed the spiral stairs to his office.
At his desk, he opened a small stack of bills and mail that he hadn’t had time to tend to that day. He pulled out the checkbook and started to write out checks but found he lacked concentration for even this simple task. He opened and read a long letter he’d received from a friend in San Francisco but lost interest in that, as well. For a long moment Valentine sat in his desk chair, facing the two-way glass. He stared blankly into the darkened barroom below, glanced at the clock, and then pushed himself out of the chair. With a noisy yawn, he snapped out the light and left the office, yawning once again as he went up the stairs to the floor above. He unlocked the door to his apartment and went inside.
Valentine hesitated before flipping the lock of the apartment door. A light from his bedroom made a rectangle across the living-room carpet. He tried to remember if he’d turned off all the lights in the place before he went downstairs to work for the evening. He stood very still and listened. His brow creased in question as he became aware of soft music from inside the bedroom—jazz, just the sort of music he liked least. Valentine knew he had not left the radio playing, and certainly not to that station. Cautiously, he stepped up to the door and peered through the crack.
Valentine froze when he saw the silhouetted shadow of a human form rise up against the bedroom wall.
“What took so long?” a masculine voice inquired casually.
The shadow receded across the wall as Valentine went into the bedroom. Bander was completing a lazy stretch and settling back into the pillows propped against the headboard of the bed. He wore only a pair of low-rise navy-blue briefs. His tanned body was dark against the rust-and-cream striped sheets. His Boston Gas overalls were draped over the ladder-back chair before one of the front windows, shoes underneath the chair. On the nightstand a lighted cigarette rested within easy reach on the lip of a saucer. The shade of the lamp on the stand had been tilted away from the bed, diffusing the already low light and casting Bander in evocative shadow. He looked as if he’d taken some care to arrange himself to maximal erotic effect, legs slightly parted, one arm up behind his head.
He picked the cigarette out of the saucer and took a drag on it. “I asked what took you so long,” Bander repeated. Smoke spiraled up from his mouth.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Valentine demanded as he came into the room. Although he did not raise his voice, his anger was clear.
Bander tapped ash into the saucer. “Couldn’t find an ashtray anywhere. I thought you were a smoker.”
“I asked you a question,” Valentine said coldly.
Bander rubbed a hand across his chest, fingers deliberately caressing the curve of one pectoral before grazing down his muscle-plated stomach and coming to rest on his crotch. He sat up slightly and stabbed out his cigarette in the center of the saucer. “You gave me your keys, remember?” He nodded toward the oak bureau next to the door, then fell back against the pillows. “Somebody told me your bedroom had a perfect view into the locker room of the police station across the street. I watched for a long time, but there wasn’t anything worth seeing. When’s the change in shift?”
“I don’t give a damn about the view. I know how you got up here. I want to know why you’re here!”
“I fixed your pilot light,” replied Bander easily. “It had gone out.”
“You didn’t get any repair call to come here, did you?”
Bander only grinned.
“What’s to keep me from calling up Boston Gas and reporting you?”
Unruffled, Bander shrugged. “I wrote up a report call before I left. When I got up here, I called to verify I was working. On the books, I went off duty at two A.M. If there’s some problem, I’ll just say you invited me to stay.”
Shaking his head, Valentine folded his arms and leaned against the bureau. “You used to have the morals of a rabid dog. I see they’ve degenerated.”
“Well, I am here, so why don’t we just deal with that?” His voice was warm now, friendly. “Listen, I know what bartenders are like at three A.M. The customers have cut out, but their adrenaline’s up, and they’re ready to play.”
“I’m not.”
Bander ignored this. His hand was still on the crotch of his dark blue underpants. “When I saw you over at Sean’s this afternoon, I started thinking how hot you used to be.”
“Really? Is that why you were so damned pleasant over there?”
“You were with what’s-her-name,” Bander said dismissively.
“Her name is Clarisse,” Valentine said shortly.
Bander raised his eyes. They were dilated and moist. “Hey, I didn’t lay myself out here
to talk about some woman.”
Valentine took Bander’s uniform off the back of the chair and shook the wrinkles out of it. He then folded it twice over his arm, stepped across the room, and flung it out the open window.
Bander shot up in bed. “What are you doing?”
“Sorry,” Valentine said. “My hand slipped.” He grabbed Bander’s work boots from beneath the chair and tossed them out the window, as well. Valentine smiled as he heard the boots hit the sidewalk two floors below.
“You jerk!” Bander spat as he sprang from the bed. “I don’t believe this!” He gripped the sill and thrust himself halfway out the window. “I don’t believe you—” He stopped and barked loudly, “Get away from those things!”
Valentine stepped over to the other window and leaned out. On the sidewalk below, one of the derelicts from the playground was eagerly gathering up the discarded overalls and shoes.
Bander’s face reddened. Veins strained in his neck. “Goddamn you!” he shouted.
The derelict scurried back across the sidewalk and into the dark safety of the playground.
Bander and Valentine pulled back inside the apartment. Bander’s fists clasped and unclasped with rage, his mouth was set tightly, his eyes were glazed with anger. He thrust himself forward, his hands clawing for Valentine’s neck.
The man’s rage made him clumsy. Valentine easily seized Bander’s right arm and flipped him about. Saliva sprayed from between Bander’s clenched teeth, and he yelped as his captured arm was jerked painfully upward. Valentine shoved him stumbling out of the bedroom and across the darkened living room. He deftly got the apartment door unlocked and flung it wide. He slapped one palm against the wall switch, and pools of light illuminated the stairs all the way down to the street entrance. Valentine, his free hand on the railing, got the two of them down the steps without falling. He unlatched and raked wide the street door in one forceful motion. Valentine released Bander’s arm and pushed the nearly naked man out across the sidewalk.
“Run and you can make it home before dawn,” Valentine offered. “Anyone sees you, they’ll just think you’re an exhibitionistic jogger.”
Canary Page 9