Cobalt (20 page)

“I thought you had left town,” she said. “After the unfortunate business of the corpse in the pool.”

“Yes,” said Axel. “I did.
But
,” he said with a quick nod and a smile, “I'm back now.”

“Do you and Scott still have your cottage?”

He squinted at her. “Ah, no,” he said, “in fact I'm staying here.”

“Here? Daniel didn't say anything—”

“No, not
here
, I mean in the other apartment. I'm renting from Noah for a couple of weeks. Are you getting ready to go out?” he asked, taking note of her outfit. “Don't let me hold you up.”

“I have to be somewhere in a while, but I have time to brew you another teaspoonful of instant.”

“Thanks,” he said, and seated himself at the table. “I'm still dripping,” he apologized.

“You're in better condition than most of the men I serve coffee to in here. Where's Scott?”

“New Hampshire. Lake Winnipesaukee.”

“I've always believed,” remarked Clarisse, “that a good lover was like the international fishing limit—about two hundred miles out. Did he take a wrong turn at the courthouse?”

“He's visiting his sister and her family. But actually it's a trial separation. We're trying to mend things. It's the first time he's ever let me go anywhere alone. I think it's a good sign. He'll be down here in another week or so.”

Clarisse allowed herself once again to be impressed by this handsome man's unself-conscious vulnerability. Underneath the rain she could just make out the sound of the courtyard gate scraping open.

“That must be Val,” she said, glancing at the clock. “He's due.”

Within a few moments, the kitchen door was pulled open, but it wasn't Daniel who filled the frame. Water poured down off the plastic cover of Matteo Montalvo's policeman's hat and splashed on the quarry tiles.

“I was on my rounds and—” he began, but then caught sight of Axel. From where Matteo stood he could not see Axel's briefs, and it looked to him as if the man were sitting naked at the kitchen table.

Matteo looked Axel over, quickly sizing him up as a potential competitor for Clarisse's lustful affections. Clarisse perceived an unmistakable flicker of jealousy in the policeman's eyes. Axel looked Matteo over also, but with a different intention and a different result in mind. Axel was pleased with what he saw.

Clarisse introduced them, employing first names only, and added, “Axel is Noah's new tenant.”

Matteo retreated into the darkness and the rain, letting the screen door slam shut. “Well,” he said from outside, “I have to be on my way.”

“Wait,” cried Clarisse. “Wait, Matteo!” He paused but did not open the door again. She could scarcely see his face through the screen. “Can you walk me up to the Swiss Miss? I'm meeting Noah there in fifteen minutes.”

Without waiting for his reply she ran for her umbrella. When she came back into the kitchen, she walked over to Axel and said in a low voice, “The cop is taken. He's mine. If you even speak to him again, I will handcuff you to a leper.”

Axel folded his arms across his bare chest and smiled. He nodded a farewell to the cop over Clarisse's shoulder.

Leaving Axel to wait for Valentine, Clarisse stepped out the door and opened the umbrella over herself and Matteo. He was silent.

“Despite what you may think,” said Clarisse, “Axel had no designs on me. He's a married man and he never fools around. He just came over to borrow a bulb for his slide projector.” She slipped her hand beneath Matteo's slicker and rubbed the pistol in his holster. “Oh, God,” she sighed, “every woman ought to have an armed escort…”

N
OAH LOVELACE HAD an elegance of demeanor that Clarisse was sure had been achieved only through a long life unencumbered with nine-to-five cares. He did not try to be clever, he did not try to be kind, he did not seek to be envied—yet everyone who came near him was eager to be regarded as his friend, confidant, or lover. He was a man who hid neither his faults nor his troubles nor his disappointments—and because he was so free with these intimacies one had the distinct impression that there were many matters that he was keeping entirely secret. Somewhere within him, Clarisse sensed, there was a wall over which no one had ever been allowed to look.

“You look done in,” said Clarisse to her uncle, as she sat across from him in one of the private dining rooms of the Swiss Miss. “Bad day?”

“Bad days seem to come once a week in Provincetown,” Noah mused. “Mine are usually Friday.”

“Why, do you suppose?”

He shrugged. “Habit, I guess. Nothing particular happened today. I told the Prince that I wanted him to leave at the end of the summer, but I've told him that so many times, it's like saying good-morning. This time I'm serious, however.”

“I had no idea you had decided to break up.”

Noah laughed. “Did you really think we were together?”

“No,” she admitted. “Val and I have wondered exactly what the relationship was.”

“The relationship is habit, that's all.”

Clarisse looked around the room. “And business too, now.”

“And business. But it's time, I think, to break the habit. I've told him that when the season's over I want him to find another place to live.”

“How did he take it?” asked Clarisse curiously.

“He didn't.”

“Didn't what?”

“Didn't take it. He doesn't believe I mean it. Every week I tell him I want him out, I tell him it's over between us, and he ought to be sending out résumés and checking the want ads.”

“You're firing him too?”

Noah shook his head. “Angel and I have pretty much decided to close this place in November. We really only get tourist trade, so there's no point in keeping it open all year. We'll open up again in May—but without the Prince. This winter, Angel will concentrate on Brookline and I think I'll spend a few months in Morocco. I like Morocco.”

“Didn't Truck-Stop Betty move to Morocco?”

“Yes, he did. And I'll stay with him. He lives in the medina in Rabat. In a house that overlooks the old Portuguese fortress and the Atlantic. You can stay there about three months before you get overwhelmed by its picturesqueness.”

“That'll be good for you. It'll help you over the trauma of the breakup.”

He smiled. “There won't be any trauma. Not with the Prince. I think the only thing that will convince him I'm serious is if I lock up the house and the restaurant and disappear for three months.”

Beyond the rain-streaked window Clarisse could see that although the garden dining area was deserted, the lights there still burned, casting halos of yellow in the wet evening air. Footsteps moved constantly past in the hallway and the low chatter of customers could be heard distantly and not at all unpleasantly. Angel's yodel warbled in the distance. The waiter appeared with the wine and poured some for Noah to taste.

Noah looked up with a smile. “George, I picked out the cellar here. If the wine's no good, it's my own fault.” And George went away.

Noah poured for Clarisse and himself. “Sorry,” he said, “I didn't mean to depress you. Besides, breaking up with the Prince is nothing to get depressed about. I haven't slept with him since Valentine's Day two years ago.”

“It's something else.”

“What?”

Clarisse took her cigarettes from her pocket, tapped one out and leaned over to light it in the candle flame. She drew in deeply and let the smoke slowly escape her mouth. She tossed her head ever so slightly and looked directly into Noah's eyes.

“The reason I'm depressed,” she said, “is that I've been putting off talking to you, and I can't put it off any longer.”

Noah smiled. “Family business? All family business is nasty.”

“Not family business.”

“You want to borrow money?”

She laughed. “No, I have my food stamps and a quartz heater.”

“What then?”

She tapped the ash off her cigarette and took a deep breath. “I need to ask you a few impertinent questions.”

Noah sat casually back in his chair and took a sip of the wine. Clarisse leaned forward, resting her arms on the table.

“I need to know everything about Jeff King.”

Noah laughed. “You mean, my relationship with Jeff King.”

“Yes.”

“Well, how much do you know already? You've obviously found out that I knew him.”

“I knew he lived with you on Queensbury Street eight years ago.” Noah looked at her with surprise. “Nobody told me that directly,” Clarisse explained. “I just put together a number of stories I heard—from Angel, from the mysterious Margaret, and so forth. I know he stole your jewelry and your Rosenthal china, and I know you forgave him.” He grinned now. “And I know he came to see you on the afternoon before the Garden of Evil party.”

“You know a lot,” he said, without any animosity or hesitancy, “now what else do you want to know?”

“What did he want when he came to see you that Saturday afternoon?”

“He wanted to stay with me. I said no, I didn't have a spare room, so then he said he'd sleep with me. I respectfully declined. Jeff had a kind of paranoia—he wasn't comfortable unless he knew he had a place to stay. It's a kind of insecurity that goes with having been a foster child, I guess—always moving from one place to another. He couldn't even think straight unless he knew where he was going to end up for the night. It's a pity he never went to jail—I think that's the only place he would have been really at ease. Anyway, when it got through to him that I wasn't going to let him stay at the house, he tried to sell me drugs. I told him I didn't use drugs. That's not quite true, but I would never buy anything off him—I didn't trust him, and I didn't trust his drugs. He asked if the Prince was home and could he see the Prince. I said the Prince wasn't there and I didn't know where he was or when he'd be back. Then he went away and that was that.”

Clarisse said nothing for a moment, but appeared in deep troubled thought.

“What's wrong?” asked Noah. “Don't believe me?”

“I do believe you,” replied Clarisse, taking a sip of wine. “It's just hard to believe that you and Jeff King were lovers.”

“Lovers implies equality,” said Noah. “I
kept
Jeff King. He was nineteen and I was thirty-one. He ran around—I ran around too, of course, but when
he
ran around he charged—and he
stole
from me. And what was worse, he stole from other people in the apartment building. After Jeff I learned my lesson, and never got involved with anyone twenty years younger than me again. Jeff didn't care about me, he cared about money, and drugs, and a roof. He drove me to tears and Valium. When he left, I didn't care—I didn't owe him anything. He started coming to Provincetown about five years ago, ostensibly to get a tan, but I suspect really to deal drugs. He was dealing even when he was living with me, but it was just small-time when you compare it to what he'd been doing lately. I didn't mind small-time stuff, but big-time stuff—you have to get involved with all sorts of nasty people. I'm not interested in having big-time dealers for friends—they have short life expectancies. Just when you get to know one of them, he dies in some very messy way. The Prince changes dealers every year—they get used up fast.”

“They all die?”

“Or disappear. Most of them just disappear. And there's nobody to tell you where they went.”

Their appetizers were brought; they paused in the conversation to eat.

Noah finished his first, and asked, “Anything else?”

“Yes,” replied Clarisse after a moment. “When did you find out Jeff was dead?”

“About an hour after you found him, I guess. The Prince told me.”

“The Prince! How did he find out?”

“He heard it on the meat rack.”

“But you two left the party early. I assumed you went home to bed.”

“We came home, and
I
went to bed. But the Prince was speeding his spikes off and couldn't even sit down, much less sleep.”

“And as soon as you found out Jeff was dead, you took off for Boston.”

Noah laughed. “It wasn't cause and effect. That trip had been planned. I was meeting Calvin Lark for breakfast at the Swiss Miss in Brookline and we were going over business that I had been putting off for a long time. I left very early to miss the heat and the traffic.”

Clarisse sighed and shook her head. “You don't know how relieved I am…”

“This has been bothering you? You thought I had something to do with Jeff's death?” Clarisse shrugged. “I'm not the killer type. In a way,” he said, smiling, “it's a fault. You know, I just stop caring. I'm not a man of strong passions. I don't even get bitter. After he left me I never even thought of Jeff unless he was standing right in front of me. Jeff King was a stranger who knew my name, that's all. He's dead and I wish I could say I was sorry, but the fact is I'm not. I just don't care.”

“And you forgave him for what he did to you?”

“Oh,” shrugged Noah, “I got the Rosenthal back, you know…”

V
ALENTINE TOOK A long swallow of his beer and looked about the bar. It was only nine-thirty but Back Street was already crowded; the rainy streets had driven the men inside. He rested an elbow on the bar and hooked the heel of his boot over the brass footrail. Rock music pounded from the half dozen speakers suspended in the corners of the large basement bar. He looked to his right and left and then straight ahead, trying unobtrusively to check his image in the framed mirrors attached to the bare brick walls. The red track lights, he decided, were sufficiently low to mask his burn, and if he were careful which profile he presented, he might even give the appearance of having a healthy tan.