Slate (3 page)

Barefoot, Valentine appeared in the hall, threading a leather belt through the loops of his jeans.

“Who was that?” demanded Clarisse, stabbing a thumb toward the hallway. “He knew who I was.”

“Lincoln Hamilton,” said Valentine. He motioned her to follow him into the kitchen.

“Good Lord,” breathed Clarisse after a moment's reflection. “That was the man next to you in the hospital? I didn't recognize him at all. Is the construction drag real?”

Valentine nodded with satisfaction. “You want a cup of coffee, I assume.” He took three mugs from the cupboard.

“Just give it to me in a hypodermic,” said Clarisse, sitting at the table by the window. “The caffeine will work faster that way. Did you two make this date in the hospital?”

“No, I ran into him last night over at Chaps. I went there because I knew I'd come home alone. Attitude City. When somebody gets picked up at Chaps, the DJ stops the music, a woman in a red velvet harness swings down from the ceiling, the bartenders pass out cigars, and the bouncer pounds a star into the floor. Anyway, Linc was there, and the rest you probably don't want to hear about in any kind of detail.”

“I certainly don't,” said Clarisse peevishly. “Valentine, I want you to know that while you were here doing whatever it was that you two were doing all night long, I suffered through a night of living hell. I was psychologically abused, placed in mortal physical danger, and cursed in an obscure foreign tongue.”

“You had another date with that Swedish architect?”

“No,” said Clarisse balefully. “I spent the evening evicting the gypsies. I'll tell you something, Daniel Valentine: I am very angry with my uncle.”

“What did Noah do?”

“Well, if you remember—while you and he were having a fine old time signing agreement papers in the hospital, he casually mentioned that I would have the pleasant task of persuading an entire tribe of squatters to vacate the building they've called home for the past five years.”

“I remember, vaguely. Maybe he should have done something about those people before now.”

“Noah didn't care! It was just a tax write-off for him. One of those upper-bracket dodges that nobody but a tax accountant really understands.”

The door buzzer sounded, and Valentine went into the front room to buzz Linc inside. A few moments later, they both came back into the kitchen. Linc had bought not only orange juice but Danishes.

Clarisse nodded pleasantly to Linc and then continued talking to Valentine. “Somehow, Noah made more money not collecting rent from them than he would have if they had paid on the first of the month.” Clarisse sighed. “I guess I shouldn't complain about what I had to do—after all, he's giving us the place free.”

“Is this the bar you want to open?” Linc asked, leaning back and stretching out his legs. He pushed his construction hat back on his head.

“I told Linc about your railroading me into this,” Valentine said to Clarisse. He took a bite of Danish. “When do we get to move in?” He looked around him doubtfully, as if unsure he was ready to give up his present apartment.

“Not quite yet,” said Clarisse vaguely. “The former tenants left a bit of a mess. It may take a little while to get things in shape.”

“How many people were living there?” asked Linc.

“Seven adults, nine children. Of course that was just the top-floor apartment.”

“You threw sixteen people out onto the street?” Valentine exclaimed.

“Well,” Clarisse conceded, “maybe not that many, but they were moving so fast that I probably kept counting them over and over. But don't waste your time feeling sorry for them—remember how long they'd been there without paying rent. Not to mention that half the neighborhood was out there cheering me on. These were not people who made a lot of friends during their freeloading tenure.”

“You make it sound like you routed the PLO. Exactly how did you perform this eviction?”

“Don't make me relive it, please,” groaned Clarisse, slugging down the last of her coffee. “Maybe someday I'll be well enough to tell you about it.” She staggered to her feet and wandered toward the coffeepot again.

Linc nudged Valentine's bare foot with the steel toe of his boot. “You want to show me around your new bar?”

“Sure,” said Valentine.

“Now?” said Clarisse. “Couldn't you make it later? Like next month or something? I thought I'd spend a pleasant Saturday morning hiding between sheets. I tried to make it home this morning, but my feet started sending out distress signals.”

“I'm a carpenter,” Linc explained to her. “I love to see unrenovated buildings. I think it helps to sharpen my technique.”

“As far as I'm concerned,” said Valentine, “your technique is just fine.”

“Maybe I can give you some ideas,” said Linc. “About the renovations, I mean.”

“How much do you know about modern demolition techniques?” Clarisse asked and drained half the mug of coffee.

Twenty minutes later, Clarisse, Valentine, and Linc Hamilton stood in front of the District D police station, staring across Warren Avenue at the two buildings owned by Clarisse's uncle, Noah Lovelace. Warren Avenue was typical of many streets in Boston's South End, where restored elegance stood in direct, jarring contrast to decaying ruins. Those who lived there claimed this contrast was part of the area's charm; others longed for the hour when gentrification would be complete. The trio stood on the sidewalk in front of the large brick and stone station house. Policemen went in and out with spasmodic regularity. Once, a docile but handcuffed prisoner was wrenched out of the back seat of a squad car and hustled up the short flight of steps into the building.

The two buildings owned by Noah Lovelace, and now in Valentine's care, were the sole structures on one end of a narrow, triangular block formed by Warren Avenue, Tremont Street, and Clarendon Street. Not too many years before, the houses on either side had been torn down. Beyond the vacant lot on one side was the gray stone back of the Boston Center for the Arts, extending all the way up to Clarendon Street. On the other side, a small, abandoned playground was littered with beer cans, liquor and wine bottles, smashed hypodermic syringes, cans of Lysol and Sterno, cigarette butts, and stained sanitary napkins.

The two buildings were four-story town houses whose ground floors had long before been given over to commercial ventures. A weathered metal sign for Sam's Bar and Grill swayed gently above the shadowed recess of the wide doorway to the bar. The windows on either side of it had been painted black. A narrow doorway to the right of this opened onto a stairwell leading to the apartments on the upper floors.

The storefront of the adjacent building was occupied by Mr. Fred's Tease 'n' Tint. Its large plate-glass window was dark. Behind it there was a suggestion of purple and lime-green decor.

“I wouldn't think he had much off-the-street trade,” said Linc, looking doubtfully at a large border of sun-faded Agfacolor photographs, circa 1963, of women modeling “exotic hairdos.”

“You'd be surprised,” said Clarisse. “At any rate, the street is where most of his customers have their trade.”

“Oh,” said Linc. “I see.”

“You know,” said Valentine at last, “this city doesn't really need another gay bar.”

“Ummm…” Linc agreed.

“No,” Clarisse granted, “it certainly doesn't need just
another
one, but it sure could stand a really
good
one—the kind of bar you'd like to go to yourself.”

“How do we know Boston
wants
a good bar? I could be back on the unemployment line by Christmas. Except this time I'd be neck-deep in debt.”

“When was the last time you ever heard of anybody with a liquor license going bankrupt?” Linc asked.

“That's right. You could make money out of a Dempsey Dumpster if it had a liquor license,” Clarisse added.

They crossed the street. The line of police cars had obscured their vision of the sidewalk in front of the bar. Perplexed, Valentine stopped short. In front of the bar was a scattering of broken pottery, a smashed television set angled into the gutter, and a pile of heavily soiled and torn garments wrapped high around the pole of a parking meter. Two large boxes of food lay split open and spilled in the recess of the doorway. Everywhere there was broken glass.

“What the hell happened here?” asked Valentine.

“
This
,” said Clarisse meaningfully, “was the battlefield.” She pushed through the wreckage to the door of Sam's Bar and Grill, then took a large ring of keys from her pocket and began trying one after another. “I meant to mark which of these was which,” she grumbled.

Linc looked up at the facade of the building. Some of the broken glass had evidently come from windows smashed out above. Dirty red curtains billowed through the broken panes.

“I thought you said you got everybody out,” he remarked.

“I did.”

“Well, there's somebody upstairs. I just saw them step back from the window.”

“Me too,” Valentine said.

“Third or fourth floor?”

“Third,” Valentine and Linc answered.

“Oh, that's all right. That's Julia Logan and Susie Whitebread. They have the third-floor front. You'll be neighbors.”

“
Whitebread
?” Valentine repeated incredulously. “How cute can you get?”

“Well, I don't actually think it's her real name,” Clarisse admitted. “But it's how she signed her lease.”

Valentine eyed her warily. “I want to know more about this one.”

Clarisse shrugged. “She claims she was a slave in a former existence and that Whitebread was the name her cruel master gave her.”

Valentine groaned. “What you mean is that she's a white woman with a black fetish. And I'll bet she talks like she just walked in from the cotton fields, right?”

“Something like that…”

“Is the other one black? Julia?”

“Yes,” said Clarisse uncomfortably.

“I'm moving in next door to a walking cliché.”

“They always pay their rent on time,” said Clarisse. “Julia repairs swimming pools for a living. She gets flown all over the country at a moment's notice. She's the best in her field.”

“And Miss Whitebread? What does she do now that cotton-picking season is over?”

Clarisse took a deep breath, and said quickly, “Susie dates a lot.”

Linc's eyebrows rose questioningly, and Valentine kicked idly at a box of food. Powdery meal from an open package shot up in a little dun-colored plume. “I refuse to live across the hall from a hooker,” Valentine said in a low voice. “They're noisy and bad for security. They answer the buzzer for anybody.”

“Susie is not a
hooker
,” said Clarisse in a hot whisper, rattling the keys. “She's a
call girl
—an
out
-call girl. And besides, she's recording secretary for PUMA.”

“What's that?”

“The Prostitutes Union of Massachusetts,” Linc cut in.

“And if that's not respectability, I don't know what is,” said Clarisse. “She's certainly the only call girl I ever met who had a résumé. She and Julia are very respectable, very responsible, and very much in love. They're so quiet you'll think you're living across the hall from two librarians with narcolepsy. Besides, Noah already told them they could stay.”

Clarisse took out a second ring of keys from her jacket pocket. Valentine and Linc wandered over to the window of Mr. Fred's and intently examined the photographs of beehives and bubble cuts.

After a few moments they went back to Clarisse, who was still struggling with keys.

“What's this Mr. Fred like?” Valentine asked.

“He saved my life last night,” said Clarisse offhandedly.

“Really?” Linc asked, impressed. “How?”

“Well, when the two teenaged girls threw the television set off the fire escape at me, he yelled ‘
Jump
'.”

Both Valentine and Linc looked at the smashed set in the gutter.

“They threw
that
off the fire escape at you?” Valentine asked, glancing up.

“See what I mean?” said Clarisse, at last pressing the correct key into the lock. “Mr. Fred saved my life.”

She grasped the two large handles and yanked the heavy doors outward. The hinges squealed metallically. Sunlight glinted briefly off two round windows in the inner red-leather padded doors as Clarisse and Valentine pushed them open, bracing for the first glimpse of their new life.

T
HE LINOLEUM ON the floor of the barroom had been patched in so many places that the original pattern was entirely lost. From the cracked red vinyl on the battered barstools to the dingy forty-eight-star American flags that were stapled to the wall above the mirrored bar, the building stank of grease, cigarettes, and old alcohol.