Vermilion (20 page)

Clarisse ground her cigarette in the ashtray and stared out the front window. The snow continued. She had realized, while she was talking to Lewis, that there was something that she ought to tell Valentine: something that he ought to know, or perhaps that she ought to know herself. But she couldn't think what it was. She picked up her listing book again. If it was important, it would come to her later.

“J
OSEPH'S GOING TO drive me back with him, Daniel,” said Mark.

When Valentine had returned to his apartment after leaving Clarisse, he found Mark sitting in the living room, his pack on the floor at his feet. He looked as if he were waiting for a train.

“Where is he?” Valentine asked, as he removed his new jacket and placed it carefully on a chair. He patted it and smiled at Mark.

“Putting gas in the pickup. You don't mind, do you, Daniel, my popping in and out like this, I mean?”

Valentine smiled. “You really like him, don't you?”

Mark nodded.

“And you're going to continue the whirlwind romance in New Hampshire, in the cab of the oil truck?”

Mark nodded again.

“I'm jealous.”

Mark's timid smile fled. “I don't want you to be jealous.”

“Not jealous of him. Jealous of you. You know how partial I am to Italian truck drivers. I'm greener than green.”

Valentine made coffee and the two men talked until Joseph arrived. He did not ask them to stay longer, for he saw how anxious they were to get off together. He did, however, tell them that they had an open invitation to visit Fayette Street anytime they chose.

Standing at the bay window Valentine waved to the two men as they climbed into the pickup, and then watched as it disappeared around a corner. He hadn't even had time to turn around, before a green '56 Chrysler New Yorker pulled up into the same spot. When Randy Harmon stepped out, Valentine raised the window and leaned out. Randy held one hand over his eyes to shield them against the falling snow.

“Come on up,” called Valentine. “I've just been abandoned, without being seduced.”

“I'm having an anxiety attack, Valentine.”

Valentine sighed. “Dr. Usen's not in town?”

Randy dropped his hand at his side. “Venezuela. World Hypnotism Conference. I'm in a bad way, Valentine. You'll have to go to the Green Grocer with me.”

Valentine nodded and pulled back inside. After lowering the window he slipped on his jacket, took extra money from the desk, and ran downstairs.

Randy was sitting on the passenger side of the front seat. Valentine was fond of the car and Randy always let him drive whenever they went anywhere together. Valentine climbed in, and sighed contentedly as he released the brake and depressed one of the panel buttons to put the car in gear. As they pulled away from the curb, Valentine ritualistically pressed more buttons—to push the front seat forward and back and then up and down. The last button turned on the radio.

“So,” he said at last, “why the anxiety?”

“Actually, I lied to you. I feel fine—I really did have an attack, but Dr. Usen left me cassette tapes when he went away, so I just played through the one marked ‘Anxiety,' and it was just like having him there. But I still thought I needed to get out of the city for a while, and I do have to go to the Green Grocer. I've got a crave on for endive.”

“You tricked me,” said Valentine. He gripped the large steering wheel hard. “You know how I hate the suburbs. It's a jungle out there, Randy.”

“You'll get over it. Besides, you can buy veg too.”

Valentine drove through the city and got onto Route 93 heading north toward New Hampshire. The Green Grocer was a specialty store about ten miles out of town; it carried a certain kind of pear from Morocco, and fresh lichees from China, and little potatoes from a tiny farm on the Snake River, and half a dozen kinds of fungi from Japan. They had discovered the place when they shared an apartment in Medford while students at Tufts, and now returned as much for the nostalgia as for the fine vegetables.

Shopping there took three-quarters of an hour, since everything was worth examining even when they had no intention of purchasing Brazilian melons that went for six dollars apiece, and Randy took over for the drive back to Boston. He got back onto Route 93, but went only two exits before turning off again.

“Where are you going?” cried Valentine. “This isn't Boston yet!”

The light was beginning to fail as a blue winter dusk gathered about them.

“I want to show you something—”

“What!”

“Valentine, don't get panicky. We haven't been out of the city much more than an hour. You're not going to have a breakdown yet.”

Valentine slid down in his seat as the car moved through streets lined with large houses set back on neat, snow-covered lawns. “How much further?” he groaned.

“We've only gone six blocks, Valentine.”

“I'm not going to have to meet anybody, am I? If I meet somebody and he invites me to a party or something, expecting that I'll come back out here again, I'm going to kill you.”

“You don't have to meet anybody.” Randy swung the car around a corner and up a slight grade. Valentine could see that the street ended in a cul-de-sac.

“You're taking me to meet somebody, I know it!”

“No, I'm not,” said Randy, and stopped the car. He got out and motioned Valentine to follow.

Valentine sighed and climbed out. He moved around to the front of the car. He smiled broadly, lifted his arms and pivoted from the waist. “Oh, God, it's beautiful out here! It's just beautiful! So much nicer than the city! The air is clean, the light is gorgeous, the snow is clean and untrampled!” He shook the falling snow from his outstretched arms—“Now let's get the hell back to Boston.”

Randy pointed at a row of hemlocks just on the other side of a concrete walk. “The scene of the crime,” he said quietly.

Valentine looked down. The ground was slightly more uneven here than it was on the lawn behind the evergreens, but otherwise he saw nothing to distinguish the place. He glanced up at the large stucco house beyond the linden and spruce.

“That's Scarpetti's house?”

Randy nodded.

“Why did you bring me here?” said Valentine.

Randy shrugged. “Why not? If Searcy's going to try to pin this thing on me, I want to know exactly where it was that I dumped the kid. Actually,” he said, looking about, “I wouldn't mind living around here. It sure beats the hell out of Goodwin Place.”

They turned to get back in the car but halted immediately. Randy drew in a sharp breath.

Standing motionless at the back of the Chrysler was a tall bearded man in a fur coat. The red pulsating light of the car's directional signal was reflected off his round-lensed eyeglasses.

“Your treads are too wide,” he said.

Valentine and Randy exchanged puzzled glances.

“To be the ‘death car,' I mean. Of course, you could have had your tires changed to avoid detection, or you might have been driving a somewhat less recognizable automobile.”

Professor Philip Lawrence stepped forward. He lifted his glasses, and looked carefully from Randy to Valentine. He dropped his glasses back in place.

“Valentine and…ummm, Harmony,” he announced.

“Harmon,” said Randy. “Professor Lawrence?”

Lawrence smiled. “I never forget history majors, especially when they're…blond.”

“Sorry,” said Valentine, “I didn't recognize you at first, in the dusk.”

“No excuse. It's been only nine years.”

Lawrence invited them inside the house to get warm. Once they were settled comfortably in the living room before a blazing birch fire, Neville served them sherry and a kind of Chinese tea roll neither Valentine nor Randy had ever had before. Their conversation centered naturally around the murder of the hustler, and Randy and Valentine each told his connection with it.

“Of course, there's no doubt that Scarpetti's upset,” said Lawrence with a gentle smile, “because he's had a dozen cars in front of his house every night, cronies to talk over the matter and whatnot. Police cruise up and down the street every ten minutes, all night long, guarding against a repetition of the embarrassment. He's had floodlights installed on the side of the house, and they shine directly in my windows. I'm furious about that. When all this dies down, I have a friend who's promised to come down from New Hampshire and shoot them out for me. I can imagine that Scarpetti's coming down hard on the Boston cops—O'Brien's a good friend of his. They've even put a watch on me, I think, because Scarpetti told them that he lives directly across the street from a known, practicing, avowed homosexual—though I don't think he has the sense to have figured out exactly what my relationship to Neville is—but surveillance I don't mind particularly, as long as they don't ring my doorbell…”

When Lawrence then discovered that he had in fact been visited by the same Boston policeman who loomed so large in the consciousnesses of Randy and Valentine, he said, “The thing that struck me odd about him, other than the fact that he said he was straight, was that it seemed that all he wanted was to be sure that I
hadn't
seen the body being disposed of. He didn't much care for my thoughts on the matter, which were a great deal more developed than his own. He seemed, in fact, almost relieved that I hadn't seen anything the night before.”

“I don't think he likes this assignment,” said Valentine.

“No,” said Lawrence, “and I can't really blame him. As murders go, it's not very sensational. That little boy wasn't much more interesting in death than he was in life. That's one reason I found it odd that Searcy would come around to talk to me when he was off duty. I even had the impression, I'm not sure now why, that he was doing a little of this on his own.”

Randy laughed. “He seems to do a lot of his work on this case when he's off duty.”

Valentine laid his hand across his heart, cocked his head, and said, “Ah to be sure, William Searcy is a dedicated cop. True blue to his very wee soul.”

“Daniel,” said Lawrence, “your Irish accent is abominable. You should never use it in public. But there's something strange there. Policemen, probably more than members of other professions, value their off-duty hours…”

Lawrence paused while Neville passed around another plate of the strange biscuits.

“Well,” said Randy, “maybe off duty's the time when he works best.”

“No,” said Lawrence, “he didn't seem a very efficient worker. A good investigator always does his homework, and Searcy hadn't done any of his. The best thing about him was his name. And of course he was rather good looking, in a Marine Corps poster sort of way…”

“Well,” said Valentine, draining the last of his sherry, “it may be that Lieutenant Searcy has a few surprises for us by the time that all of this is done with.”

V
ALENTINE HADN'T closed the door behind him when the telephone began ringing. It rang ten times while he put his bag of vegetables on the kitchen table, carefully hung up his jacket, and removed his boots.

“Yes?” he said placidly as he picked up the receiver.

“
Where
have you been?” Clarisse shrieked. “I've been calling you every ten minutes since five-thirty!”

“Clarisse,” he said, “it's only six. I went with Randy up to the Green Grocer, and then we ran into an old professor of ours—”

She cut him off. “Val,” she cried breathlessly, “I had a revelation!” Traffic ground loudly behind her voice.

Valentine rose from the couch and carried the telephone into the kitchen.

“Where are you?” he said.

“In a phone booth, with Veronica Lake.” He heard the dog's bark, and its echo. “I couldn't wait until I got home. Remember that man who bumped into me by the Art Cinema?”

“Yes.”

“Remember what he looked like?”

Valentine stared out the window at the increasing snow. “An overcoat that didn't fit particularly well, and a pair of green slacks that somebody should have put a torch to.”

“No, his face!”

“I didn't see it. What is this, Clarisse?” He leaned against the windowsill.

“I did see his face, in profile, but only for a second.”

“Yes…” said Val encouragingly, when she paused.

“It was Trudy…!” she whispered.

Valentine said nothing for a moment. He heard Veronica Lake bark again, this time more loudly.

“Go away! Shoo!” cried Clarisse. “There's another afghan outside the booth, trying to get in! Shoo!”

“What do you mean ‘Trudy'? Clarisse, that man had pants on. Trudy doesn't wear pants. I'd be surprised if she even
owned
a pair of pants. Trudy wouldn't be seen in public dressed like a man.”

“It was Trudy, Val!” Clarisse drew in her breath sharply. “Listen, you've never seen Trudy out of drag, have you?”

“No I haven't, and I don't know anybody who has.”

“Now you do. She bumped into me, and turned profile. How can you forget Trudy's profile? The only reason I didn't recognize her at first was because she wasn't wearing any makeup, and she didn't have on any kind of wig. And I've never seen Trudy without makeup and a wig, so it didn't register at first.”

Valentine laughed. “No wonder she was anxious to run away from us.” He took a breath and fished a cigarette from the pack in his back pocket. He lit it and dropped the match into an ashtray. “And you've locked yourself in a telephone booth with Veronica Lake so that you could call me up and tell me this?”

“Of course not,” said Clarisse with some exasperation. “This is important. Remember the description that Mack and Randy gave of the man that had picked up Billy at Nexus?”