Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets (29 page)

He put the papers down and took up the wine and toasted me, slipping his arm through mine for the sip. “You’re good to me, John. Good
for
me.”

I blushed and picked up the papers he’d put down.

“There’s something there. I can see the whole thing, but I can’t explain it all. My head is buzzing too much.

“Listen: Adler was been pushed out of the Factory six months or a year ago. Must have met Valerie at the same time. It doesn’t make
sense
that she’s a real socialite. She might have taken Warhol out in that case, but not all those people. The rich hang on to their money exactly by not giving it away. No. She wanted them to believe that she was wealthy. Buying her way into stardom? She had money, clearly, but the class? Breeding? I find it hard to believe.

“She met Solanas, and Solanas would have been the perfect bomb. Chaos incarnate. Delicate. Wounded. Fractured in places. If she could get Valerie angry enough, and directed, she’d go off in some unpredictable way. Hurt Warhol? Damage his reputation? Scare him? Could be anything.

“Why would she run, though? She didn’t do anything. Introduced Valerie to Girodias and Warhol. Possibly stoked the coals of resentment, a bit, but nothing that would be out of the ordinary in the circles she ran in.

“But here’s the thing: Valerie suddenly got set off. She turned from building up a head of steam to murderous in a few days. She was fine when we met her, just a couple of days ago. Solanas was a practice run, I’m sure of it. I don’t have enough data, but she must have been grooming someone else, someone fragile and vulnerable. Someone poor. Getting her ready. Why would she go off now? Solanas has claimed friendship with Warhol on the most tenuous of links. There’s no way the pigs would go after a rich socialite. Warhol is a distraction. Important, but something to get people to look at New York.

“The polls are opening any time in California for the Democratic Primary. Bobby Kennedy is the only candidate campaigning in Southern California. It’s all there, John.”

“I know, Sherlock. Just relax. It makes sense. It’s plausible, but there’s no way we can let anyone know now. I could possibly get one of Andy’s groupies to trust me, but who would we call? The FBI? The LAPD? The NYPD? They’re all pigs. One of the newspapers? They’d have us out as crank callers in a second. We can barely string sentences together.”

He put his head in my lap. “I know. I know. I just... I’m sure of it.”

“Could be the amphetamines orthe ’ludes. We’ve had quite a lot.”

We sat there for a few minutes, the morning sun bouncing off the windows of the building opposite, the smells from the bakery coming up and turning our stomachs. We drank the water, and the wine, and then Sherlock turned to me and kissed me again, and in his kiss was hunger and desperation. We made love on and on and it was like nothing I’ve experienced before or since. It—he—was filled with an intensity and urgency that was simply indescribable.

He was right, of course. Probably, anyway. Bobby Kennedy was shot just after midnight as the polls closed, and Nixon went on to win the election. It was the beginning of the end as well. The Factory stopped being so open. The hippies grew up. Irene Adler disappeared, and was forgotten by pretty much everyone. She would become a footnote in the Factory, a face flashing by in some of Warhol’s films.

Sherlock was devastated.

He spent three days and the six blues that he had left wandering around the apartment, listless. He smoked cigarette after cigarette, shouting out the window into the night at the girls downstairs. He went down onto the street and bought bags of grass, then bags of brown powder later, cooking them up and, for want of a syringe, snorting the brown liquid.

I went out and bought a deadbolt and locked him into the bedroom on the top floor to let him dry out, leaving him newspapers, a carton of orange juice, some bananas, and water. After twenty-four hours, I went in to him, and he was sitting on the floor in the beam of the setting sun, holding his knees and rocking, my newspapers strewn all around him in a disordered mess, all the articles on the Kennedy and Warhol shootings arrayed around him, and a book open in his lap—Voltaire’s writings after the revolution.

“It’s my fault, John. I did it. I had it all figured out. I could have saved him, if I was able to speak. Knew who to speak to. Solanas was the practice run. Revenge on Warhol. She wasn’t even really an heiress. She came in, flashing around money, acting the type, wanting something from Warhol, but her star fell too fast. Solanas was an opportunity, but Sirhan Sirhan was the long game. Irene Adler probably wasn’t even her name.

He held up the Voltaire. “With power comes responsibility, John. I’ve got to make my work mean something. Save lives. Stop the corrupt.

“And for my diversions, and distractions, you and your magical tablets, those are for afterwards. When the lives are saved and the city is safe. To keep us from being bored.”

Soon enough, we had a string of people coming in to 221 Avenue B, eating one of Mrs. Hendrix’s cakes or bean pies, explaining to Sherlock and me their unsolvable riddles, which he’d go and unwind, rooting out evil and corruption across America.

Bored? We were never bored.

Sherlock got harder, colder. I think I was the only one who ever saw his sense of humour, and hardly ever again. He never spoke about our lovemaking, not after that one time. We were friends and associates. People suspected, sure, but they never found anything concrete. The times changed, the world got darker.

He never forgot Adler, though. She was always the Woman. I think he was a little in love with her. The only one to ever outsmart him, and to get away, He’d only find shreds, suggestions of her existence. A few lines in the Solanas transcripts. Scenes in Warhol’s unwatchable films. Occasional cuttings from the newspaper.

She created him, in her own way. Would 221 Avenue B have given such hope to the hopeless? Would those we’ve caught have killed and stolen more? Would we have been something more than friends? Happier? Would New York be as safe, or any more—or less—interesting? Where would we have been without her?

A huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, Gini came into my life when she eavesdropped on me talking about this project at WorldCon. A few minutes’ mutual enthusiastic gushing later, I was clutching a new business card and promising to get in touch with her about the anthology. And I’m very glad I did. ‘All the Single Ladies’ not only adds a frankly brilliant new Holmes to the canon—breezy and flippant where so many of her predecessors are haughty and insufferable—but offers a remarkable modernity by setting the story against the hysteria of a reality TV programme...

“I’
M SORRY
,” M
RS
. Hudson said, sticking her head into my office. “But these detectives insist they need to speak to you, Doctor.” She looked worried. I couldn’t blame her. A visit from the police is rarely a good thing.

As I slid the file I’d been perusing into the top drawer of my desk, three people entered my office: two men and a woman. One man was at least a half a foot taller than the other, but the shorter man was the one who stepped forward. He had dark hair and eyes, with sharp features that reminded me just a bit of a rodent.

“Dr. John Watson?”

“Yes. What’s this about?”

“I’m Detective Straude. This is Detective Saunders.” He indicated the taller man, who was fair to Straude’s dark, and who also looked as if he’d played football in school. “The lady is Sherlock Holmes. She’s with us.”

Holmes was between the two men in height; tall for a woman. Slender, but clearly well-muscled, with long, dark hair pulled back into a severe ponytail. She wore a grey turtleneck sweater, grey slacks and grey high-heeled boots, and had a grey wool coat draped over her arm. Apparently, grey was her color.

Holmes was what, about a hundred years ago, would have been called a
handsome
woman—not pretty, certainly not beautiful, but not unattractive, either. Like Straude, she had sharper features, but unlike him, she didn’t resemble a rodent in any way. She reminded me more of an eagle, or even a wolf—a solitary, noble predator.

“Clearly, seeing as she came in with you.” I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my tone, but didn’t feel I’d been too successful.

Holmes hadn’t been looking at me—she’d been examining the room, looking everywhere with seemingly great interest. I had no idea why—mine was a typically small office, with the standard diplomas and certificates on the walls. I didn’t go in for much clutter, so the bookcases were filled with books helpful to my practice and some few mementos displayed on top. Otherwise, there wasn’t much to see.

However, my sarcasm caught her attention. She turned to me and I realized why she was so committed to one color—her eyes were a piercing grey, and they radiated intelligence, more than I’d ever seen before, from anyone, man or woman. The resemblance to an eagle was even more pronounced.

She turned those eyes onto me and her lips quirked. “What a feat of deduction. Forgive Lee. He’s the master of stating the obvious.” She had an English accent, and a husky voice. She could make a fortune as a phone sex operator, but I knew without asking she wasn’t interested in that kind of work.

“Sherlock, please,” Straude said tiredly. “Not now.”

“You’re wasting your time,” she said. Then turned away and went back to examining my unexciting office.

“Can I help you, detectives? And Mrs. Holmes?”

“Miz,” she said, without turning towards me. “Not married, not divorced, not a sweet young thing, not looking, not interested, in you, your brother, or your sister.”

“I see.”

“I doubt it.”

“Possibly you can help us, Dr. Watson,” Straude said quickly. “I understand you’re the school physician at New London College.”

“Yes.” New London was a small, private women’s college, dedicated to the idea that young women learned better without the distraction of young men. That there were several other colleges and universities nearby, loaded with all those young men, and that much of the staff were male, never seemed to enter into consideration. “I see you’re still set on stating the obvious, since the Dean’s secretary brought you in, after all. To my office. On campus. Where I’ve answered questions from uniformed officers at least four times.” I gave up on trying not to sound sarcastic.

Holmes was in profile to me and her lips quirked. She began moving through my office, taking special interest in the bookcases, but still giving the rest of my place a closer look as well.

“Where do you live, Dr. Watson?” Straude went on without any reaction.

“I’m between residences at the moment. I’m sleeping here, on campus, in the visiting professor’s dorm room attached to the artist’s wing.”

“Why’s that?” Saunders asked.

“Private colleges don’t pay as well as rumor has it. And I’m not financially able to start my own practice, let alone afford any place close.” I had no car. And in Southern California, that meant I had to live within walking distance of my job, because the bus system was deplorable at best. New London was in the Brentwood hills, meaning I couldn’t afford to rent someone’s tool shed, let alone a room or apartment.

“No friends to stay with?” Straude asked.

“Not any I want to burden, no.”

“No family?”

“Not nearby.”

“Where were you last night between nine p.m. and midnight?”

“Here, doing paperwork, and then in my room, watching TV.”

“
Campus Queen
was on,” Holmes said.

“Yes, it was. I don’t care for reality TV, though. I watched an old movie,
Death Wish
.”

“It’s the number one reality show right now.
Campus Queen
is filming at New London this school year, isn’t it?” Holmes asked.

“Since you appear to follow the show, why are you asking me? Yes, we have film crews here all the time. They practically live here.” Some of them
were
living here, camped out to capture nighttime footage. Unlike me, they were allowed to be in the dorms, and didn’t have to troop halfway down the high hill to get to their beds. Unlike them, I actually had some hope of sleeping in peace and quiet.

“Do you know why we’re here?” Straude asked.

“I have no idea.” This was a lie. By now, I had a very good idea. Bad news traveled fast, and until I’d taken this job, the police had never visited me before. At least not in America.

“Fifth rape and murder of one of the New London students in as many months and you don’t know why we’re here?” Saunders’ tone was definitely snide.

“I do know that another one of our students was brutally murdered. I have no idea why you’re here with me, however, unless it’s to express condolences and assure me, as one of the many who work here, that you’re doing all you can to find the murderer and bring him to justice.”

“How is
Campus Queen
working the murders in?” Saunders asked. Straude shot Holmes a why-me? look. She looked like she was trying not to laugh.

“How would I know? I’m not part of the show, and I don’t expect to get a ‘secret letter announcing my potential royalty’ any time soon.”

Holmes was definitely trying not to laugh. “I thought you said you didn’t watch the show.”

“I work here. Some days it’s all the girls talk about. It’s good for the school, though.” Hollywood on campus meant money coming into the school, plus the notoriety of being one of the colleges deemed worthy to have the next
Campus Queen
crowned. From what Mrs. Hudson had told me, applications for the next school year were up from the past five years, solely due to the show. I might hate
Campus Queen
, but it was helping my employer continue to employ me.

“Can anyone confirm your alibi?” Straude asked.

“Shockingly, I was alone, seeing as it’s not exactly appealing to women to bring them back to a tiny room at an allgirl’s school for a nightcap, reality TV show filming there or not. And before you ask, no, I didn’t have a date last night, I was being sarcastic.”

“Again,” Saunders said.

“Sarcasm in the face of danger,” Holmes said with a chuckle.