Slate (23 page)

“They would have thought I threw the gun away, and I was in an apartment that wasn't mine—and I had moved the body and everything.”

“Why did you move the body?” asked Ashes curiously.

“I don't know,” said Linc confusedly. “I don't know what I was thinking.”

“Are you telling us the truth?” demanded Clarisse. “Or are you just getting a little nearer to it than you were before?”

Linc leveled his eyes on her. “It is the truth,” he said with what seemed to be sincerity.

Valentine turned to his bar manager. “A stupid risk, Ashes,” he said, “climbing the fire escape to shoot Sweeney.”

Ashes seemed to have expected this. “I didn't do it,” he said simply and calmly. “I've been telling the truth all along,” he said, glancing at Linc.

“I think we'd better talk to Joe,” said Clarisse, stepping toward the door. But the door was already opening of its own accord.

Outside, in the bar, the countdown had begun at full volume. Every drunken man there was screaming the numbers.

TEN... NINE...

“Oh, God,” said Valentine. “It's midnight.”

The door opened all the way to reveal Miss America standing hesitantly on the threshold. Her mouth formed the words “Excuse me,” but nobody could actually hear her.

EIGHT... SEVEN... SIX...

“Not now, America!” shouted Clarisse.

FIVE... FOUR...

Clarisse started for the door, but before she could get to it, Miss America stepped inside the office and shut the door behind her. She smiled and opened her clutch bag. “Yes, now...” she said.

THREE. TWO.

Out of her bag, Miss America took a small .38-caliber pistol. “It has to be now.”

ONE.

Miss America began firing exactly as a deafening roar rose from the barroom below. Five hundred revelers were shouting at the tops of their lungs.

A bullet grazed Clarisse's shoulder, spattering blood across the white camellias. She dived behind the chair in which Linc was sitting.

Linc sprang for the desk.

Ashes raised a hand to his face and turned his head sideways. When a bullet ripped through the center of his palm, he shrieked and dropped to his knees.

Valentine leaped from his chair but tripped and fell back into it. The chair flipped over backward, and Valentine's head cracked loudly against the floorboards.

The third bullet Miss America fired hit the one-way mirror, and it shattered with a spectacular noise in a shower of glass. “Auld Lang Syne” and frantic cheering blasted into the room through the broken window. Black and white balloons and a storm of glitter were raining down upon the bar patrons. Just as Miss America aimed the gun at Clarisse's head and began to squeeze the trigger, the door behind her was flung open. The knob caught Miss America in the square of the back and she pitched forward. The gun fired into the floor very near Linc's foot as America's head slammed into the corner of the desk.

A moment later, Miss America slumped unconscious onto the carpet.

Joe stood framed in the doorway, one hand still on the knob.

“Oh, God, I'm sorry, Miss America,” he said automatically, and then looked about in confusion at the mayhem.

“I
T DIDN'T HAPPEN,” Mr. Fred moaned.
“Tell me it didn't happen.”

Clarisse touched the bandaged place on her left shoulder and sighed, “I wish I
could
tell you that, Mr. Fred.”

Valentine popped another Tab for Mr. Fred and then poured more vodka into his and Clarisse's glasses.

It was four o'clock in the morning. Slate was a wreck. The last customers had staggered out just half an hour before. Felix and Larry had trudged home for a few hours' sleep before returning mid-morning to begin cleaning up. The floor of the bar was blanketed with confetti and the black and white skins of exploded balloons and was laced over with trampled streamers. Some balloons and streamers were still lodged here and there across the ceiling. Broken plastic champagne glasses were scattered on every flat surface available, and the bar was crowded with empty drink glasses and bottles of beer. Valentine had lowered the lights so that the debris was only a dim confusion, and they had dispensed with the tape. Music somehow didn't seem appropriate.

None of the bar patrons had been aware of the fracas in Valentine's office. Many people had seen the window of the office explode outward exactly at midnight, but that accident had been ascribed to faulty renovation; fortunately, no one had been standing directly underneath. Valentine had summoned the police from across the street and taken them into the office through the interior entrance of the building. Clarisse, Ashes, and a groggy Miss America were taken to the emergency room of Boston City Hospital. Ashes was admitted for the night, while Clarisse was released once her flesh wound was cleaned and bandaged. Miss America, remanded into the custody of the police, confessed to the murder of Sweeney Drysdale II. She was charged and booked in night court. With a throbbing head, Valentine had been allowed to return to the bar and, assisted by Joe, had continued to serve his customers and to assure them that nothing was the matter.

When Clarisse got home, she changed from her blood-spattered gown into jeans and a loose, long-sleeved blouse that hid her bandage. She wandered back down to the bar as Joe and Valentine were pushing out the diehards.

A few minutes later, Mr. Fred, still in his red-sequined jacket, beat at the locked front doors. He was returning from his sister's arraignment and was desperate to find out what had happened to turn his whole world upside down. Clarisse had taken him into the kitchen of the bar and told him everything she knew of the business—what she had found out indirectly, what she had heard across the street, what she now surmised. When everyone was gone, Clarisse had led Mr. Fred out to the bar, and Valentine had set him up with the first of many Tabs.

Although he'd only had soda to drink all night, Mr. Fred seemed more than a little drunk now. Clarisse charitably ascribed this to his remorse over his sister's predicament.

“Oh, God,” groaned Fred. “America in jail! Accused of murder! She's sitting in a cell down at Charles Street with a Band-Aid on her head!” He took a breath and looked at Valentine and Clarisse.

“She was trying to protect you,” Valentine pointed out. “Though she didn't go about it in a very intelligent fashion.”

“A reporter took our picture!” Mr. Fred moaned. “It'll probably end up on the front page of the
Herald
—MISS AMERICA ON .38-CALIBER SPREE. Ma's gonna have a heart attack. Rosaries and holy water'll be flying all over the North End.” He stifled another moan with a swig of Tab. “And what'll happen after they get done investigating? They'll find out about Ashes and me. I'll spend the rest of my life in Walpole. I'll end up a hairdresser to the unparoled! Oh, God!!”

Neither Valentine nor Clarisse said anything. Both put their glasses of vodka to their lips and drank deeply.

“Where did America get the gun, Fred?” asked Valentine.

“I didn't even know she had it!” he cried. “Guns make me nervous. She told the police she got it through a mail order ad in one of those outdoor magazines she's always reading.”

“So it wasn't registered?”

“I don't think so,” said Mr. Fred.

“Why did she get it in the first place?” Valentine asked.

“She said it was to protect herself from the bears in Yellowstone,” said Mr. Fred.

“It's a lucky thing she didn't take target practice,” remarked Clarisse. “I never saw anybody with such a bad aim. The only reason she was able to kill Sweeney was that she put the gun right up to his temple. That
was
America up on the roof with the Betamax, wasn't it?”

“She confessed to that, too,” sighed Mr. Fred.

“Where did she get it?” Valentine asked. “You didn't have one, did you?”

“No, but I had bought that one for her birthday. It was going to be a surprise, and I had hidden it in the back room of the shop. I guess I didn't hide it well enough. I thought it was still back there.”

“Do you have a lawyer?” Valentine asked.

Fred nodded. “I called him from the police station. He's already over at the jail. I think he's going to try to have the charge reduced to manslaughter.”

“Manslaughter!” sputtered Clarisse. “She climbed four stories up a fire escape at night and blew away your ex-lover at pointblank range! She stood on the roof of the building next door and hurled a videocassette recorder at my head! She carried a loaded gun in her clutch bag and sprayed a room with bullets! And your lawyer wants to call it
manslaughter
?”

Mr. Fred blinked. “She was confused,” he said complacently.

Valentine and Clarisse glanced at one another. Clarisse closed her eyes and shook her head.

“Mr. Fred,” said Valentine, “I think it's time for you to go home. I'm going to call you a taxi.”

Mr. Fred nodded. “Can I take a couple of Tabs with me?”

Valentine got a six-pack out of a cooler, then punched out a number on the telephone and ordered a cab. A few minutes later, it was out front blowing its horn. Valentine and Clarisse saw Mr. Fred to the door. A light snow had begun to fall, and the street was glazed with a dusting of white.

Mr. Fred waved sadly at them as he climbed in the back of the cab with the six-pack.

“Let's go for a walk,” said Clarisse, looking up and down the almost deserted street.

“All right,” said Valentine. He went back inside and returned with two leather bomber jackets. He handed the smaller to Clarisse, explaining, “Left in the coat check.”

Clarisse struggled into hers, and Valentine locked the doors of the bar. Clarisse tucked her hands into the pockets of the jacket for warmth; a moment later she withdrew a pack of Marlboros from the left-hand pocket. She and Valentine looked at the pack and then at each other. Clarisse crumpled the pack in her fist and tossed it into a trash basket attached to a lamppost. They took off slowly down the middle of Warren Avenue, arm-in-arm.

“‘There's something I still don't understand,” said Clarisse. “How did America know that Sweeney and Linc were up in my apartment?”

“She was probably at the front of the shop and looked out the window and saw Sweeney and Linc go into our building. So she went out the back way and climbed up the fire escape, looking in all the windows on the way up. Finally she saw them in your apartment—if you look through your bedroom window you can see all the way to the living room. She probably waited to see if Sweeney would come into the bedroom—or the bathroom. And when he did, she shot him. Then she just went back down the fire escape and rejoined the party. Nobody noticed she'd been missing.”

“I feel sorry for Fred. He's the one who's lost everything. It wasn't his fault that America was so possessive and protective. Of course, he shouldn't have been selling drugs.”

“And Ashes ought not to have been supplying him,” added Valentine. “I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that.”

“Do you think the media will play this up? I'm not so sure I want my name and photograph all over the front page this time.”

“I don't want to think about it tonight. I just want to crash until Easter.”

“Slate is opening again at three o'clock tomorrow afternoon,” Clarisse pointed out. “
This
afternoon. A full buffet.”

“You'll help out with it, won't you?”

“I will be useful as well as ornamental. And speaking of use and ornament, what happened to Linc? I lost sight of him.”

“He was upset—being shot at. So he got drunker than he already was. And then when we brought the lights up, he went home with the first three men he could find that could still walk. Linc will be fine. I'm not worried about him.”

They said nothing for another block.

“How's your arm?” Valentine asked.

“I'll have an interesting scar at poolside. How's the bump on your head?”

“No worse than seventeen major hangovers.”

Here and there, in converted townhouses, parties were still winding down. Stragglers and drunks called their goodbyes and then stared up in surprise to find that it was snowing. Taxis cruised the cross streets looking for final fares. The snow increased.

“Well,” said Clarisse, “here we are. A new year. New careers. And all accomplished in four short months.”

“You make it sound like we bought a fifty-cent ticket and won the million-dollar lottery. I've never worked so hard in my life. And neither have you.”

Clarisse brushed a flake of snow from her cheek. “You know, Val, the only awful thing about these four months—other than being suspected of murder and stalked by a homicidal manicurist with a maternal instinct to rival Medea's—is that the only man who's been in my bed was not only gay but deceased.”