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Valentine smiled. “Am I detecting a new hardness of heart?” he asked. “No pang of emotion contemplating returning to the apartment where Sweeney was done in? No outrage against the perpetrator of this heinous malefaction? No discomfort that Mr. Drysdale breathed his last in your boudoir?”

“If you must know,” Clarisse said as she balled her fist tightly around the straps of the shopping bag, “I'm putting up a very brave front. But the fact is, I'm completely on edge.”

“So much on edge that last night you ate two Napoleons for dessert, finished off half a bottle of Cutty Sark, and then passed out in the middle of a ‘Twilight Zone' rerun.”

“Emotional distress,” Clarisse said shortly, dragging the Hoover into the living room.

Valentine followed her, still stirring the mixture in his bowl, but more slowly now, as it seemed to be stiffening. He went around and opened the door for her. Susie stood in the hallway; one hand was raised and poised to knock.

“Can I come in?” she cried, sweeping past both Valentine and Clarisse. “I've just been locked out of my own apartment!” Throwing herself down into the platform rocker, she kicked off her heels and drew one leg up beneath her. She wore gray-flannel slacks and a maroon silk blouse. With her dangling foot, she pumped the chair back and forth violently. She plucked an emery board from the pocket of her blouse and began working it furiously over the edges of her long, sculpted nails. A massive charm bracelet on one wrist jangled madly with the motion.

“Good morning,” said Linc brightly.

Susie suddenly jammed her foot against the floor. The rocker stopped immediately; the charm bracelet jangled on.

“If you people are gonna be cheerful,” she said darkly, “put a lid on it.”

Valentine stood with his hand on the knob of the open door. Clarisse still held the Hoover in one hand, the shopping bag in the other. No one asked Susie what the matter was; her remark hung in the air.

“Julia has two friends,” said Susie. “One of them just got married and moved to Charleston—South Carolina? And the other is in Framingham—on a ten-to-fifteen for extortion.”

Valentine and Clarisse glanced at each other. Neither said anything. In the pause, there was only the rhythmic sound of Linc's brushstrokes.

“So,” Susie went on inexorably, “everybody who comes to see us are
my
friends. So Julia thinks, 'cause they're
my
friends, she don't have to be pleasant. She thinks that 'cause they are
my
friends, they are trash.”

“Maybe she's jealous,” suggested Linc. Valentine darted a warning glance at him, but Linc didn't see it. “Maybe she's afraid somebody'll come along and take you away from her. A lot of people get bent out of shape because of jealousy. I know, I've—”

“No woman on this earth is gonna lure me away from Julia,” Susie declared. “And she knows it, and she knows all I want is for her to be nice for about five minutes when my friends come over and then she can go in her room and watch some tapes with the earphones. I just told her that she'd be a whole lot happier if she put a little sugar on her tongue when the doorbell rang. I said to her that
I'd
be a whole lot happier if she put a little sugar on her tongue. I said I deserved that. That's when she showed me what the other side of our door looks like.”

“Well,” said Clarisse, dragging the Hoover out into the hall, “I hope you two work things out.”

The expression on Susie's face suddenly changed. She looked up at Clarisse. “Honey?”

“Yes?” said Clarisse.

“When the cops were over here yesterday, they kept asking questions about
you
. Did you know that?”

Clarisse exchanged glances with Valentine and then looked back to Susie. She came back inside the room and propped the Hoover against the doorjamb.

“Susie,” said Valentine, “what kind of questions were they asking about Clarisse?”

Susie was about to answer, but her attention was suddenly drawn to the television. “‘All-Star Wrestling' was great today. I just about fell out of my chair when the Animal came on and ate that sparkler. Y'all mind if I switch on ‘Creature Double Feature'?”

Clarisse sighed and dropped down onto the couch.

“What sorts of questions?” Clarisse repeated as Bud Abbott, some cartoons, and a monster devouring a woman holding a handbag flipped silently past on the television screen. “Val, did they ask you about me too?”

“They wanted to know if you was datin' Sweeney, honey,” said Susie, pushing herself back into the platform rocker.

Clarisse just stared.

Valentine wrinkled his brow. “But they
knew
he was gay. Why would he be dating Clarisse?”

Susie shrugged. Then she turned to Clarisse again. “And then they wanted to know if I heard you say you was gonna off him.”

“What!” exclaimed Clarisse with astonishment. “I had never even
met
the man. I didn't even know who he was when—”

“Well,” said Linc, “they asked me if I had heard Julia say
she
was going to kill him.”

“When Julia and me left the party,” Susie continued, “Sweeney said something derogatory to me and to my profession, and Julia didn't like it one little bit. Julia doesn't like my profession neither, but she sure won't allow nobody else to jump down on me about it. Julia just said she was gonna remove a certain part of his anatomy, and not use anaesthesia doing it. And then,” Susie took a breath, looking at Clarisse again, “they asked me if you ever went fishing or anything.”

“Fishing?” echoed Clarisse weakly.
“Fishing?”

“And used a harpoon or anything,” Susie explained darkly.

“Harpoon?”

“Uh-oh,” said Valentine.

“What's wrong?” demanded Clarisse, still bewildered.

“Remember?” said Valentine. “When you found out who Sweeney was and that he'd written that article, you were so angry you asked me to find you a harpoon. Somebody must have heard and told the police, and since he was found in your bed—”

“A harpoon!” shrieked Clarisse. “He was
shot
! Nobody's going to kill a man in their own apartment with a
harpoon!
Oh, God,” she wailed miserably. “I'm being framed for a crime I didn't commit! They'll throw me out of Portia Law! I'll end up in Framingham. They'll put me in the laundry and I'll smell like bleach till the day I die. Oh, God! Where was I supposed to have gotten hold of a harpoon!”

“At the Marine Supply Store in Gloucester,” Linc suggested mildly.

“Lovelace,” said Valentine, “calm down. You and I have an alibi. Remember? Half a dozen people must have seen you at the library that night. The DJ at Buddies who tried to pick me up, he'll remember we were there. And don't forget the cabdriver.”

“And I was at home,” Linc added between brushstrokes.

“Were you here all evening?” asked Clarisse, turning to Susie.

“I wish we hadn't been,” snorted Susie. “I wanted to go out dancing over at the Saint, but Julia said the place would be full of my friends. She was afraid I'd go off and talk to them the whole night and there she'd be left nursing at the bar all alone.”

“So you stayed here after you left the Tease 'n' Tint,” said Valentine.

“Sure. We watched a rerun of Boom Boom Mancini's heavyweight match. We always do that when we get mad at each other 'cause it's both of our favorite show and we always make up.” The file paused on the edge of a nail. “See, this wouldn't have happened, Clarisse, if you had just locked your door up there.”

“I
did
lock my door,” protested Clarisse. “I
always
lock my door.”

“Not the night he was killed,” said Valentine. “Remember, it was open when I tried to put the key in.”

“I know it was, but I didn't leave it unlocked. For Christ's sake, I've lived in this city for ten years. I don't go off leaving my door unlocked. Which means,” she said after a moment of reflection, “that the killer is walking around with a key to my apartment!”

Linc looked back over his shoulder. “Not necessarily. You can pop these old locks with a credit card.” He glanced at Valentine. “I've been meaning to tell you to replace them.”

“Let's have it done today.” Valentine said.

“I'm getting paranoid,” Clarisse said in great distress. “I
am
paranoid.”

“Maybe,” suggested Susie, eyeing the credits for
The Leech Woman
, “the gypsies came back and did it. For revenge—you know, for throwing them out. You could be a marked woman.”

“Maybe,” said Linc, “somebody thought it was you, and they made a mistake.”

Clarisse sat up straight, and said stiffly, “Nobody would ever mistake Sweeney Drysdale for me. Not even in the dark.”

“Especially not in the dark,” Valentine added.

C
LARISSE EVENTUALLY dragged the vacuum cleaner and shopping bag of attachments upstairs. A short while later, Valentine noticed that the door to the apartment across the hall had been propped open. That was Julia's notice of impending reconciliation, Susie explained as she crept back home. Mr. Fred's Favorite was congealing to a rock hardness in the refrigerator, and
The Leech Woman
was reaching its improbable climax. As Valentine sat on the sofa nursing a warm beer, Linc joined him. He stretched out and laid his head in Valentine's lap. Valentine stroked Linc's smooth jaw and then gently rumpled his curly blond hair.

“Are you worried?” asked Linc.

“Yes, a little.”

“I don't think the police really think that Clarisse did it,” said Linc consolingly.

“No, of course they don't.”

“I mean, she had an alibi. She was out with you.”

“For another thing,” said Valentine, “Sweeney wasn't killed in her bed. There wasn't enough blood. He was shot somewhere else and then moved to her bed.”

“Does that make any sense to you?”

“No. But that's what the police figure happened. They're out combing the streets for bloodstains even as we speak. Though why anybody would shoot Sweeney in a dark alley and then drag him up four flights of stairs to a stranger's apartment is beyond me. No, I wasn't thinking about Clarisse. I was thinking about something else.”

“I know,” said Linc. “You're worried about the bar. Well, you don't have to be. People will still come. Nobody's going to stay away just because Sweeney got killed upstairs. Nobody liked him because he was so nasty to everybody, right? And New Year's Eve is more than two months away. Nobody's even going to remember by then.”

“I wasn't thinking about that at all,” said Valentine.

“Oh,” said Linc, disappointed. “What were you thinking about?”

“I was wondering,” said Valentine casually, “if Sweeney had an orgasm before he died.”

Linc glanced up, startled. “Had a what?”

“I wonder if Sweeney had sex with the man who killed him.”

“It might have been a woman,” Linc suggested.

“No,” said Valentine. “Sweeney was gay, and he had a real aversion to women. If he did have an orgasm beforehand, that pretty much means the murderer was a man.”

“Unless the man he had sex with left and then a woman came in and killed him,” Linc went on thoughtfully.

“That wasn't Grand Central Station,” said Valentine.

“It was Clarisse's apartment. And the front entrance to this building
was
locked. We don't even know how
Sweeney
got in. In any case, I wouldn't mind a gander at the coroner's report.”

“You know,” said Linc, “even if he had had an orgasm, that doesn't
necessarily
mean that somebody else was there, you know.”

“You don't leave a party and break into a stranger's apartment in order to masturbate,” sighed Valentine.

They were quiet for several moments, and then Linc said, “Let's talk about something else.”

“In the past six weeks,” said Valentine, “I've only had one subject of conversation, and that's the bar. I was sort of glad when Sweeney came along and got killed. Now I have something
else
to talk about.”

“We can talk about the bar,” said Linc. “I
like
to talk about Slate. You know, Val, I'm proud when I tell my friends that you own the bar.”

“Clarisse's uncle owns the bar,” said Valentine. “I just manage it.”

“But he's gay, too, isn't he?”

“Yes,” Valentine admitted.

“And you run it. I think it's very important for bars and gay businesses to be gay-owned and -operated. It's a service to the community. Clarisse did a good thing when she got you into this.”

“I guess,” said Valentine. “I just feel—I don't know— cast adrift. It all happened so fast, and the building still looks like the set for
This Property Is Condemned.”

“Well, you might be depressed about it,” said Linc with a sigh, “but I'm just jealous.”

“Jealous?” Valentine echoed skeptically.

“I don't want to be a carpenter forever,” Linc said. “I mean, I was working with wood and tile today and I'll be working with wood and tile tomorrow, but when I'm fifty-seven, I don't want to still be working with wood and tile.”

“What else would you want to do?”

Linc smiled. “Retail.”

“I was in retailing for a while—about eight years ago,” said Valentine. “It wasn't all that great.”

“Maybe for you,” Linc said, “but I've got a plan.” He glanced at Valentine, who said nothing, but whose eyes prompted Linc to continue. “Once I get the money up,” Linc said, “I'm going to open a shop in the South End. I'm already looking out for the right storefront. The location has to be right—that's the most important thing. That's another reason I'm jealous, because you were
given
these two buildings right here in the South End, the best place to be. I mean, it's practically a gay ghetto now,” he said enthusiastically.