Vermilion (15 page)

“Well, well, well,” said Searcy finally, “if it isn't Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.”

“Are you on duty?” said Randy, looking Searcy directly in the eye.

Searcy wavered slightly, but said nothing.

“No,” said Mack, “he's off.” He set two Black Russians on the bar. He pulled a bottle of Miller Light out of the cooler, snapped off the cap, and put it at Randy's elbow. “Combat duty.”

Valentine lifted his glass in a toast. “Here's to Representative Mario Scarpetti, recently deceased William A. Golacinsky, and Lieutenant William Initial Unknown Searcy, hustlers and victims all.” Valentine took a swallow. Randy smiled. Clarisse opened her coat and pushed it back on her shoulders.

Searcy's eyes drifted over her body.

“Why do you hang out with these guys?” he demanded thickly. “Why don't you find a real man?”

Clarisse sighed. “I don't know who writes the dialogue for the Boston police,” she said, turning to Randy and Valentine, “but he ought to be laid off.” She turned back to Searcy. “Because I like men who do kinky things. Do you ever do kinky things, Lieutenant?” She smiled sweetly.

“No,” said Searcy, “and I don't waste my time with fags either.”

“Is this an official inquiry into the private lives of Boston real-estate agents?”

“I'm just curious,” said Searcy, and smiled unexpectedly. “I'm curious about a lot of things.”

“Like what?” said Valentine.

“Oh,” said he, maintaining the smile and turning to Valentine, “like I think it's curious that you should just happen to see Golacinsky on the Block the night he's murdered, and that
you
,” nodding to Randy, “should just happen to check Golacinsky into the baths and not remember what the man who was with him, and paid for him, looked like. And that your friend behind the bar there”—he waved in Mack's direction—“should just happen to see Golacinsky with the same man, and not remember anything about him except exactly what Harmon here remembers. I think that's real curious. But what really gets me is that the three of you just by chance should happen to be friends. None of you knew Golacinsky, and all three of you came across him that night.” Searcy smiled at them all.

“It's a small world,” said Valentine, shrugging.

“It's not that small. Golacinsky bounced off the three of you like he was a pinball that night.”

“The gay community here is close knit, Lieutenant,” said Randy, “if you're a bartender or work at the baths, you see just about everybody there is to see, at one time or another. Besides, Mack and I admitted that we knew Golacinsky, we just didn't know him well. It was only Valentine who didn't know him at all.”

“I think you're all a little too close, a little too friendly. Real close, real friendly, and real suspicious.”

Randy reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He flipped it open languidly and extracted a small card. This he handed to Searcy. “It's my lawyer,” he said dryly. “Talk to him about suspicion.”

“Oh,” said Valentine, “small world again. That's my lawyer too.”

Behind the bar, Mack nodded and smiled.

“I'm surprised he's not here,” said Searcy after a pause, “because he's going to have a lot of business real soon, defending the three of you.” His voice was thick. He pointed an unsteady finger at Randy. “You
know
who Golacinsky was with that night at the baths, and I want him. You know him too,” he cried, stabbing toward Mack. “And don't pull that crap about not seeing him. I don't believe it, and no judge in court is going to believe it either, and I don't care if you've got ten lawyers up there to defend you and five faggot doctors testifying that you suffer from loss of memory—”

His voice rose, and those nearby turned to watch. Valentine and Randy were perfectly still and remained expressionless. Clarisse rubbed slowly at a spot of liquor that had spilled on her pants. Mack stood behind them, a little to the side, and slowly wiped the bar with a white cloth.

“—and one of you”—his finger wavered—“is going to tell me who he was.”

Randy blinked. “You touch me and you'll have an assault charge slapped on you faster than it takes a queen to spot a closet case.”

Searcy's hand dropped.

“Ever hear of something called ‘harassment'?” said Mack, from behind the bar.

Clarisse looked up. “Why don't you go out and hunt for clues?”

“There aren't any clues,” cried Searcy savagely.

“What about the lipstick on Billy G's handkerchief?”

“What about it?”

“What color was it?”

“Red.”

“There are four hundred shades of red when you're talking about lipstick, Lieutenant,” said Clarisse. “Don't tell me that the crime lab couldn't come up with any better than ‘red'! Did you see it?”

He nodded distractedly.

She lowered the Black Russian from her lips, turned and tilted her head so that her mouth was lighted by a small white spot from above the bar. “Was it this shade?”

“Are you in on this too?” cried Searcy.

“Was it this color?” said Clarisse, still with her lips pouted in the light.

“Yeah, that color,” said Searcy, “but a little darker.”

“This is cerise, not red.”

“Why? What does it matter?” said Searcy.

Clarisse shrugged. “I just wanted to know what shade was fashionable with murderers these days.”

Searcy reddened.

“Go home and take a couple of Valium, Lieutenant. Get some rest,” said Valentine solicitously. “Put some Vaseline on the rope burns.”

“What!”

Clarisse turned and smiled. “
Frankly
, Lieutenant,” she said, “how do you look in
Boots
?”

Valentine and Clarisse laughed. Searcy backed away. He staggered back to his stool, grabbed his coat, and rushed up the ramp.

Valentine and Clarisse turned languidly back to the bar. Randy and Mack looked at them in astonishment. “What was that all about?” Randy demanded.

“Just another runaround,” said Valentine.

“The grapevine of wrath,” said Clarisse.

“Did he bother you, Mack?” asked Valentine.

Mack shook his head. “Nothing I couldn't handle,” he said proudly. “I don't know what you said to him, but I don't think it improved his temper.”

“No,” said Clarisse, “I don't think it did. But he'll think twice before he attacks one of us again.”

“Spit it up,” demanded Randy.

“It's Clarisse's story,” said Valentine. “Brenda Starr on assignment couldn't have done it better.”

Clarisse twisted about proudly on the stool. Then, at her request, Valentine related what had happened earlier in the evening. Clarisse smiled smugly.

Randy and Mack laughed with amazement throughout. “That takes care of Searcy,” said Mack, and started to move away.

“Never underestimate a wounded straight man,” cautioned Randy.

Valentine nodded. “You're right. Especially that one. We got rid of him tonight, but that's all the ammunition we've got. I'd be real surprised if he didn't come back. There's no—” He glanced at the clock behind the bar. “Oh, Christ! It's after twelve. Clarisse, we've got to run. I'm late for my divorce!”

A
FTER HAILING A TAXI outside Nexus, Valentine and Clarisse rode in silence to Clarisse's apartment building on Beacon Street in Back Bay. While Valentine tried to count the rounds of Black Russians he had ordered that evening, Clarisse rested her head groggily on his shoulder. The driver was a small man hunched down in the front seat; Valentine could not see him through the heavily scarred Plexiglas divider.

Clarisse was jarred by a sharp turn around the corner of the Public Garden. “What you think Searcy'll do now, Val?”

Valentine shrugged. “We'll talk about it in the morning. Go home and get some sleep. He won't do anything tonight.”

“I still have to walk Veronica Lake.” She stared out the window at the blocks of brick townhouses and seemed surprised when the taxi stopped before her own building. She kissed Valentine quickly and whispered, “Don't start anything tonight that has to be finished in New Hampshire. If there's any real problem, though, just send Mark over to me and I'll straighten him out.”

“That's not his problem,” said Valentine.

“You know what I mean.”

“I'll call you in the morning.”

“Good-night,” she said, and climbed out of the cab, tucking her leather envelope beneath her arm. Closing the door behind her, she said loudly. “Call me at the office, I plan to be in by nine tomorrow.”

Valentine laughed and pulled the door closed; he asked the driver to wait until she was safely inside the building.

Clarisse waved from the lighted vestibule. Valentine looked at his watch; it was already twenty minutes past midnight. Mark would be stationed by the entrance to the Eagle, hoping every time the door opened that it would be Valentine who had pulled the latch. Mark was the type who felt these small disappointments. “You know where the Eagle is?” asked Valentine of the cabbie.

There was a sudden movement in the front seat and the shadowy driver sat up abruptly. He turned and peered through the small window of the Plexiglas. He was a handsome Puerto Rican with a dusky complexion, short dark curly hair and a shaggy moustache. Light from a car at an intersection sparked on a diamond chip in his right earlobe. He grinned at Valentine.

“Aha,” said the driver, “you take your girlfriend home, and then you go out and play?”

Valentine rolled his eyes, and sighed. “Do you know where the Eagle is? I'm meeting my shrink there.”

“I was going there anyway myself,” said the driver. “I get off duty at one. Tell you what, you pay me what the meter says and I turn it off. I give you a ride on the roof.” The man reached a slender dark hand over and flipped off the meter.

“You mean ‘on the house.'”

“Two thirty-five.”

Valentine pushed three dollars through the small open window, and signaled that he wanted no change. The driver took the money, and stamped down hard on the accelerator. The car screamed forward through a yellow light that was turning red and the driver didn't put on brakes until he pulled up in front of the Eagle with a grinding squeal five minutes later.

“Jesus Christ!” said Valentine shakily. “You've still got an hour till last call.”

“I don't like to have rush,” said the driver. He turned back and grinned at Valentine. “We don't have to go in. I can take you home now. No charge.”

“No,” said Valentine breathlessly, “my shrink promised to bring me four hundred downs tonight.” He crawled out of the cab.

“See you in a minute,” said the driver. By the time that Valentine had stepped the two feet to the curb, the taxi had screeched halfway down the block and was parking in a too-small space by the bumper-bashing method.

Valentine went through the open door of the bar with half a dozen other men; it was the most fashionable time for making an entrance. He jumped possessively onto an empty stool at the bar nearest the entrance, and ordered a rye, straight up. He gulped half of it down and looked cautiously behind him; Mark was not nearby. Valentine began to search further afield, holding the glass of rye to his lips.

The Eagle, Boston's largest leather-and-denim bar, had expanded steadily since its establishment two years before. The main bar was a square with fifty-foot sides; the walls were dark and not much altered or improved since it had been an establishment catering to after-game fans from Fenway Park. Along one wall was a badly executed mural depicting Custer's meeting with the Indians, that everyone wished would be painted over. Two swinging Plexiglas doors in the wall opposite the entrance led into the disco room. The lighting was dim, but high enough for good cruising. The pool table in the center of the floor had a plywood cover, and several men perched there now. On Thursday night, this part of the bar had a good crowd—about a hundred men—though this was not a third or even a fourth of the number that would be present on Friday and Saturday nights at the same hour.

The jukebox was pushed to highest volume to compete with the thumping disco music in the dance-bar. The dark leather and denim clothing of the men who stood about in small groups talking in low deep voices seemed to augment the shadows in the room. The pinball machines in the back glowed vibrantly in yellow and red, their bells ringing constantly as serious players shook and tilted them violently.

The cabdriver who had brought Valentine entered, and touched him lightly on the shoulder, smiling. He moved directly to the disco room.

Valentine slid off the stool and filtered slowly through the crowd, nodding to friends and acquaintances. When he had satisfied himself that Mark was not in the main room, he shoved through one of the swinging doors into the disco bar.

This room was characterized as much by the heat as by the flashing multicolored lights and the strobes. It was ill-ventilated and full of smoke. Though no more crowded than the other bar, everything here was intensified: the music, the light, the heady smell of liquor, sweat, and poppers. Valentine edged his way to the dance floor: the men here didn't mind the heat at all, for it gave the narcissistic the chance to shed their shirts, and it gave others who were less exhibitionistic the opportunity to look at firmly muscled chests and arms in January.

The lighting above the dance floor was so spasmodic and dim through the climax of the newest Donna Summer recording that it was some time before Valentine saw Mark, gyrating in flickering slow motion beside the long wall of mirror. His flannel shirt was tied about his waist, and Valentine noted with satisfaction what felling trees could do for a man's torso. Sweat glistened on Mark's face and flailing arms.