Vermilion

by Aldyne, Nathan

  “Not that I know of.” Clarisse paused, with the door open. “Oh well,” she said, “the two Michaels aren’t the type to prosecute anyway.”

  Valentine followed her out into the cold. “What about Searcy?” he hissed.

  “Better looking with his clothes off than on. Real definition. But Hougan certainly isn’t, I’m sure that man doesn’t work out. He ought to join—”

  “What? Searcy already had his clothes off?”

  “No. He was wearing chaps, black leather chaps…”

  “And?”

  “And nothing else.”

  “Was he…”

  “He was getting there,” said Clarisse. “Now this is embarrassing me, Val, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “Embarrassed? You drag me into someone’s apartment in the middle of the night, and we’re liable to be caught and prosecuted, and then you crawl out on a third-floor fire escape when the windchill factor is twenty below and stare in somebody’s window, and you tell me you’re embarrassed?”

  “I’m not going to say another word. If you weren’t so lily-livered and had come out on the fire escape with me, you would have seen everything yourself.”

  “We’re going back to the Vendôme, and you’re going to tell me everything you saw.”

  “You’re paying,” she said, “and I get the bartender.”

  “I’m paying,” he said.

  Half an hour later, Valentine had got all the details and a date with the bartender. Before parting, Valentine and Clarisse decided to walk once more past Hougan’s building to see if the lights were still burning, and if the blue Fairlane were still there.

  They stood at the edge of the boulevard, in the light of a streetlamp, and stared up at the lighted windows of Hougan’s apartment.

  The door of the building opened and Searcy appeared at the top of the stairs.

  In one swift graceful movement Clarisse dropped her cigarette, and threw her arm over Valentine’s shoulder. Her coat falling open obscured both their bodies, and she pressed her mouth hard over his. Her thick black hair covered both their faces from the policeman’s sight.

  Biting at Clarisse’s tongue with playful malevolence, Valentine peered through her black hair at Searcy descending the steps. The man hailed a taxi.

  Clarisse and Valentine held the embrace. “Tremont and Boylston,” they heard Searcy say to the driver, and listened with relief to the slamming of the vehicle’s door.

  Clarisse pushed Valentine violently away from her. “Beast!” she cried.

  Valentine leaned against a tree trunk and gasped dramatically for breath.

  “Forty-five minutes, wouldn’t you say?” said Clarisse, staring up at Hougan’s window.

  Valentine stood beside her. “When you’re playing with toys, forty-five minutes is just a quickie.”

  “Maybe forty-five minutes is all a cop can afford.”

  “He’s got enough to take taxis.”

  “Here to Tremont and Boylston won’t cost him more than two dollars, with tip,” said Clarisse. “Probably he just parked over there.”

  “Or maybe he’s going to Nexus.”

  “Why? You think he’s interested in little boys? Christ, Val, the man just did a performance with the Lunt and Fontanne of the leather set.”

  “No,” said Valentine. “I don’t think he’s interested in little boys, but if he’s into humiliation, getting worked over by a pair like Hougan and Slater, he’s probably also into aggression. He’s probably feeling like shit now, and he’s probably on his way over there to take it out on somebody.”

  “That’s the cheapest psychology I’ve heard since the Happy Hooker told Dinah Shore why she was so damned cheerful.”

  “Look, Clarisse, I don’t want Searcy over there messing with Mack. It’s too easy for a cop to threaten an ex-con.”

  “Is Mack one of yours?”

  Valentine nodded. “He was in Charles Street for five-to-seven. Part of a car theft ring. Out of the whole gang, he was the only one caught and sentenced. He was in charge of painting the cars. I got him furloughed once a week to take the bartending course at Harvard, and then when he was released, I got him the job at Nexus. I thought he’d move on to a straight bar, but he says he likes it there. Mack’s one of my success stories.”

  “Into the breach then! You throw yourself in front of Mack, and I’ll hold Searcy off with a can of Mace and a cattle prod!”

  “When you were out on that fire escape—”

  “What?” demanded Clarisse.

  “I should have locked the window.”

  Chapter Twelve

  SEARCY’S TAXI LET him off at the Trailways terminal. He walked, a little unsteadily, through the parking lot, craning his head to make sure that his unmarked car hadn’t been stolen from its place on Carver Street. The half a joint he’d smoked left him depressed and uncoordinated; he wondered sullenly if it had been treated with something.

  As he approached his car, he had his keys out of his pocket. But with his hand on the door, he changed his mind, thrust the keys back into his pocket, and hurried past Herbie’s Ramrod Room up to Tremont Street. He turned in the direction of the Combat Zone and Nexus.

  Searcy was angry, with himself and with the entire confused investigation. For an insignificant teenager, who probably wasn’t any colder in his grave than he would be on the streets tonight, William A. Golacinsky certainly had caused the police force a great deal of trouble.

  The papers had by no means downplayed the murder, and this was certainly because of Scarpetti’s involvement in the case. The representative, in a muddleheaded way that was characteristic of his entire life, public and private, had not yet determined for himself whether it was a good thing or a bad that little Billy’s corpse had been discovered beneath his hemlocks. In general, corpses of hustlers couldn’t help but be an embarrassment when they were strewn over the landscape, but Scarpetti dimly reckoned that he might turn the circumstance to his political advantage. He decided to take it as a personal affront. He first accused the homosexual community of murdering one of their number, and leaving the corpse upon his lawn in order to discredit him. There was a homosexual in his very neighborhood, he said indignantly, who might well have engineered the entire thing. He had also hinted that liberal legislators in the House had stolen the body from the morgue and planted it in retaliation against his having worked to defeat so many of their precious bills. He even dug in a little at Mr. Golacinsky himself, just in case it turned out that the teenager had committed suicide in obscure protest.

  Because his mind was entirely fastened to the notion of putting the corpse to account, Scarpetti had been surprised by the attacks that had been leveled against him. The Gay Community News and Esplanade, the weekly gay newspapers in Boston, published extensive accounts of the crime on Wednesday, and included long interviews with mindless hustlers who had known Golacinsky. The papers suggested that some zealous adherents to Mr. Scarpetti’s political beliefs had run out, murdered a hustler in an excess of admiration, and brought the corpse to Scarpetti’s doorstep, as it were—rather after the fashion of a faithful but stupid dog that kills rodents and lays them as devoted offerings at the foot of its master’s bed. The daily papers, on their editorial pages on Thursday morning, had reprinted these speculations without comment.

  Scarpetti suddenly found himself on the defensive, and was very angry. Thursday noon, he made a personal appearance at District 2. Searcy missed that scene, but the effects were brought home to him by his immediate supervisor. Scarpetti wanted an arrest; he didn’t care how unlikely the suspect was, so long as the murder could be pinned on somebody. If the jerk was innocent, then he’d get off; but it was essential that Scarpetti be exonerated, and that would only come with somebody’s being brought in for murder. It would be very convenient, Searcy was given to understand, if the suspect were homosexual.

  Searcy turned into Nexus and walked down the ramp with determined heavy steps. He pushed his way through the
two dozen dancing couples beneath the whirling glitter ball. The swimming pinpoints of white and yellow lights broke across his eyes, and he tried to brush them away as if they had been gnats.

  Searcy took the stool he had had two nights before, the stool on which Golacinsky had sat the night he was murdered.

  Mack spotted him from the opposite end of the bar and crossed down smiling. “You thinking of becoming a regular here?” he asked in a friendly voice.

  “No,” said Searcy curtly.

  Mack raised his eyebrows warily. “Then you’re on duty?”

  Searcy looked back blankly. “I’m on my own time now, unofficial overtime, you might say. I came back to find out who the man was that Golacinsky left here with on Monday night.”

  “I told you everything I know,” replied Mack. “I don’t remember the man any better tonight than I did when I talked to you before.”

  “I think maybe that’s a lie. I think maybe if you were in the right atmosphere, and in the right place, you could remember exactly what that man looked like and maybe you could dredge up his name and his address and his telephone number.”

  Mack said nothing for a moment, then remarked, “I think they must have shown Edward G. Robinson films at the training academy. If you want a drink, order it now because I’m busy. Thursday is the beginning of the weekend on this street.” Without waiting for Searcy’s reply, Mack poured bourbon into a glass, dropped in ice from too great a height so that the liquor splashed over the rim. He slid it down in front of the policeman. “It’s on the house. And it’s also the last.”

  Mack turned to go.

  “Don’t walk away from me!” cried Searcy, loudly enough to turn half a dozen heads.

  Mack leaned forward over the bar, turned his head slowly until he faced Searcy, and then hissed, “Listen. I cooperated with you down the line. I told you everything I know. I could tell you some other things but I’d be making them up. Now you come in here and threaten to drag me in to Berkeley Street. That’s not good for my business, and you drag me in you’ll find that it’s not so good for your business either. When you’re on duty, I’ll listen to you, but right now you’re just another customer.”

  Searcy took a pack of cigarettes from his jacket, extracted one and tapped it on the bar. “You’ve seen the movies, haven’t you?” He lit the cigarette. “You watch television? You’ve heard of ‘withholding evidence’ and ‘suspicion of being an accomplice’?”

  “Your line’s getting old, Lieutenant. You pulled that one on Randy Harmon last night. Didn’t work then, won’t work now.”

  Searcy drew hard on the cigarette. “News gets around this neighborhood fast. Do the fags have a community newsletter?”

  “Yes, and in today’s issue there’s a warning against a nasty cop with curly hair and a drinking problem.”

  Mack moved down the bar, and resumed waiting on customers. Searcy fumbled with his cigarette and it fell to the floor. He lit another. Glancing over the dance floor, he saw Daisy Mae sidling toward him. She was smiling slyly, but seeing his expression, she pivoted and disappeared into the crowd.

  Searcy took a swallow of his drink and looked toward the entrance.

  Daniel Valentine and Clarisse Lovelace, shivering with cold, stepped into the light. They made their way down the ramp without even glancing over the room. They nodded to Mack, crossed directly to the bar and seated themselves. Mack moved over and whispered to them a few seconds. Clarisse looked up over Valentine’s shoulder and stared at Searcy, without expression. Valentine turned briefly also, then back to Mack. The bartender moved away to prepare them drinks.

  Searcy stared at the couple through two long swallows of bourbon.

  Two of the dancers on the floor separated suddenly. One disappeared into the men’s room, and the other made his way over to Valentine and Clarisse.

  “Hot enough for you?” said Randy Harmon, as he moved to stand between them. He leaned back against the bar and propped the heel of one boot on the brass rail. “And I’m not talking about the temperature.” He jerked his head in Searcy’s direction.

  “We know,” said Valentine.

  “Oh, God,” said Clarisse flatly, “I feel like Joan Crawford in Rain. The boys are going to start to break up the place.”

  “It won’t be over you,” said Valentine. “Not in here.”

  Searcy, as soon as Randy had joined Clarisse and Valentine, had dropped off his stool, and now approached them slowly. He stopped directly before them. Mack hovered a few feet down, behind the bar. No one said anything for several seconds.

  “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.