Charm City (23 page)

"I think Charlton'll be
okay. It was only a puncture wound." She sank into the
vacated Morris chair, her knees a little wobbly. Esskay tucked her nose
under her elbow, looking for the treat she was sure she deserved.

"Wish we had a TV here,"
he said. "NCAA basketball is on."

Not a Baltimore accent, but close. Obviously
not familiar with the city at all, if they needed directions to Route
40. Philadelphia? Wilmington? Spike had claimed to be coming from the
Delaware racetracks when he'd left the mulch for her mother.
And Spike didn't go in for elaborate lies, preferring simple
sins of omission when he couldn't tell the truth. What was
the other thing they wanted? How could she find out?

"I know a good way to pass the
time. Do you know how to play Botticelli?"

"Is that Italian for
‘Spin the Bottle'?"

"No, it's like twenty
questions. You see, you pick a letter—say, S—and I
ask you a question about a person whose name begins with S. For
example, say your person was Mike Schmidt—"

"Greatest third baseman to ever
play the game."

Definitely from
Philadelphia
, Tess decided.
A
local would pick Brooks Robinson every time
.
"Whatever. Anyway, if your letter is S, I might ask,
‘Are you a classical composer?' If you
can't think of an answer—say,
Stravin-sky—I get to ask a yes-no question about your person,
until I have enough clues to finally guess the identity. Get
it?"

Long pause. "Yeah."

"Good. Now to make it really
interesting, why don't you tell me the letter of what
you're looking for, and we can play for that."

"I dunno—"

"Oh, c'mon. What are the
odds I'll actually guess?"

Another round of deep thought, as if he were
actually calculating her chances. "You got a point."

"Good. Now what's your
letter?"

"I guess it's V. Could
be C—no, it's V, definitely V."

"Okay. Are you a twentieth-century
writer with a cult following?"

"You gotta be fucking kidding
me."

Tess imitated the sound of a game show
buzzer's rude call. "You're not Kurt
Vonnegut. Now I get to ask a yes-no. Are you—the item
you're looking for—related to betting?"

"Can I say kinda?"

"Usually not."

"Well, I'm gonna say
kinda. It's kinda about betting, but not really. Tangential,
you might say."

"Fair enough. Next question. Are
you Lolita's creator?" The real rules were clear
that only last names could be used, but Tess had been deliberately
vague in explaining the rules.

"I am not…I am
not…I am not Valentine? Volare? Some Greek god,
right?"

"Good try. Vladimir Nabokov. Do
you have a monetary value?"

"No, I mean, it could, but only to
a few people. You couldn't sell it from the back of a truck,
but some people might pay you big money for it."

"Okay. Are you the
Pope's residence?"

Her competitor looked insulted.
"I'm not the Vatican." He crossed himself.

"Good. Very good." A
right answer would soften him up, she decided, although she
hadn't intended to ask him anything he knew. "Are
you a UN official with Nazi past?"

A blank look.

"Kurt Waldheim," she
said, giving it the German pronunciation. He wouldn't know
how it was spelled. "Was this thing ever alive? Or part of
something alive?"

"That's two questions.
But no to both of them."

"Well, I guess that's a
good sign." Esskay stuck her snout in her lap, insistent on
affection. Tess rubbed the dog under the neck, trying to think of her
next question.
Botticelli was harder with an it
than with a person
. Esskay's fur was
matted and chafed beneath her collar.
She could
ask him a question about Voltaire, or Venus
. The
greyhound books said you were suppose to use a nylon leash, but there
had never been time to replace this length of chain, Spike's
improvisation.
Sid Vicious? Dick Van Dyke
?
She played with the catch, clicking it open and closed, holding the dog
close to her all the while.

"C'mon, ask me another
question. This is kind of fun."

"Are you a moron?" Tess
asked.

"Wait, I know this one. Some
comedian, right? The guy who plays retards in all his movies. I am
not…I am not…"

Tess leaped from the chair and lashed out at
him with the chain, catching him across the face. He wasn't
quick enough to grab the lethal leash, and he wasn't close
enough to grab her. Tess backed away from him, moving toward the door
and away from the fireplace, where his gun still sat on the mantel. He
kept advancing, so intent on taking the chain away from her that he
didn't think to retreat and grab his gun.

"Stupid bitch," he
panted. "I am going to" —another futile
grab—"make you so sorry." He caught her
left wrist just then, but Esskay interceded, sinking her teeth into his
hand. Not much of a grip, but she could do some damage. He yelled and
fell back, then scrambled for the other side of the room, where his gun
waited. But Tess and Esskay were at the door by then and Tess wrenched
it open, letting Esskay go first and set the pace, praying the dog
would have the good sense to run toward the streetlights, not into the
alleys, where they were less likely to be seen. Her keeper might have
enough power to overcome her in a sprint, but she was sure she could
outlast him over anything more than a few blocks. And she was pretty
sure he wouldn't want to fire his gun on this quiet suburban
street.

Esskay ran, easy and happy, kicking up her
back legs in the now-familiar kangaroo style. Tess followed
breathlessly behind. By the time they stopped, they were at a Royal
Farm a quarter-mile up Frederick Road and their captor was long behind
them, if he had tried to chase them at all. Tess had never looked back.
She called the police from the pay phone, then convinced the clerk to
let her and Esskay wait in the back, where the greyhound finally
received her long-awaited treat—two slices of bologna and
three of her own namesake hot dogs.
Taste the
difference ka-wality makes
, indeed.

"D
id
you really hit him with a dog chain?"

"Don't you believe
everything you read in your own paper?"

"The story won't be in
‘my' paper until tomorrow. Remember, we
didn't find out about your little adventure last night in
time for today's editions. It's a good read, too,
but I can't help being nervous, dining with a woman known to
lash men with dog chains."

For once, it was Tess who blushed, while
Sterling smiled at her discomfort.

They were in the Joy America Cafe, the
restaurant on the top floor of the American Visionary Art Museum. The
food at the Joy America, as visionary and unusual as the
museum's world-class collection of outsider art, was a little
determinedly creative for Tess's taste. Citrus and
pumpkinseed seared antelope with Virginia ham and butternut squash
succotash. Food miscegenation, Whitney called such cuisine. Tess
thought of appropriating the line as her own, then worried Sterling
would be offended. He could be a little on the earnest side.

"Have you noticed people still
call this the
new
Visionary Museum, although it's been open for almost two
years?" she asked instead, falling back on the reliable
conversational gambit of mocking her hometown.

"There are people here who still
think of the Inner Harbor as new, and it was redeveloped almost two
decades ago. I'm resigned to being called the new guy for the
rest of my career at the
Beacon-Light
."
Sterling took a tentative sip from the soup before him, a deep terra
cotta color with a slash of avocado green through it, like the mark of
Zorro. "Chili powder and cilantro in mango soup. Not bad, but
I detect some cream in here, despite the waiter's
assurances."

Tess tried not to make a face. She was
eating field greens dressed in raspberry vinaigrette, a prosaic choice
by Joy America standards. The waiter had
not
approved. That was fine, she had not approved of the waiter. While her
brain understood this was one of the city's best restaurants,
her palate secretly yearned for less determinedly fashionable places.
Antelope was a poor substitute for Hausnner's potato
pancakes, or a plate of tortellini from the Brass Elephant. But you
couldn't veto your host's choice and Joy America
did have a spectacular view of the harbor—the National
Aquarium and the Columbus Center, the row houses and churches of Little
Italy beyond them. She could even see the Fells Point waterfront,
lights blazing on a Saturday night.

"If it were daytime, you might be
able to see my terrace," she said, waving her fork toward the
windows.

"Sounds quite grand."

"Only if you consider living over
a store grand. But it's a nice place and Aunt Kitty gives me
a break on the rent."

"Kitty?" Sterling looked
up from his soup. "Wasn't she in the photograph,
the one that's running with your story?"

"Um, yes." Upstaged by
her aunt again, whom the
Blight
photographer had insisted on getting in the shot.

"Tell me—"
Here it came. He was going to ask for Kitty's number, try to
find out if she was available. "Aren't you worried
those guys are going to come back for you?"

She almost laughed in her relief.
"Only one got away. The cops picked up the other three while
they were still in the vet's waiting room. The fourth one
drove my car to the Maryland House rest stop on I-95, helped himself to
another car, then dropped that outside Philadelphia. The cops think
he'll be more concerned with staying out of the state, now
that he's wanted for felony kidnapping."

"Still, it sounds as if these guys
were working for someone else. What's to keep them from
sending new recruits to find whatever it is they want?"

"I don't know. The man
who got away did have the presence of mind to take the ears with him.
They won't be able to trace the dogs who were
killed."

"Presumably killed."
Sterling's correction was automatic, an editor's
tic.

"Well, I guess there could be some
earless greyhounds running around somewhere, but what would be the
point?"

The waiter cleared away their dishes. The
mango soup had proved too rich for Sterling, who had abandoned it after
only a few spoonfuls.

"At any rate, you've
fulfilled Warhol's prophecy. Sorry you won't get
better play. I thought the story merited the local section front, but I
decided to recuse myself from that decision, as I have a conflict of
interest here." He paused. "That is, I hope
I'm going to."

Tess felt as if she were right at the edge
of the kind of happy normalcy that had eluded her for so many years.
Dinner on a Saturday night. A nice man, with a real job instead of a
band. Everything was perfect. Then something began ringing in
Sterling's jacket pocket.

"Sorry," he said,
pulling out a cell phone. "I always have to stay in touch
with the desk."

The connection must have been bad, he almost
had to shout to be heard, and the other diners stared in pointed
disapproval. "Who? What? Where are you?"

"Don't forget when and
why," Tess teased, even as Sterling handed her the phone.

"It's Whitney. Says
it's some kind of emergency."

Whitney sounded as if she were shouting from
inside a wind tunnel, a wind tunnel with loud music and hoarse laughter
in the background. "There's a situation here I
really need your help with," she said without preamble.
"I'm at the Working Man's Bar and
Grille."

"Feeney?"

"Close. Colleen Reganhart is here
and she's about sixty seconds away from leaving in a cop car,
but she says she wants to talk to you before she goes
anywhere." Whitney paused. "Look, I know my timing
sucks. But there will be other dates, right?"

"How did you know
about—" She didn't want to say
Sterling's name in front of him, or repeat the word
"date," so teen-agerish and vapid. "How
did you know where to find me?"

"Newsrooms can't keep
secrets, Tess. Don't you know that by now?"

The Working Man's Bar and Grille
was the most notorious of Fells Point's megabars, a sprawling
warehouse on the waterfront. Its deck, strung with Japanese lanterns,
had been part of the pretty lights that made the view from the Joy
America so charming. Close up, the charm quickly dissipated. The
bar's ersatz Marxist decor—machine parts from its
paper-recycling past, the '30s-style posters of brawny
working men and the real picket signs from famous Baltimore
strikes—was incongruous, almost offensive, alongside
five-dollar microbrews and margaritas at seven-fifty. And its
college-kid patrons thought working with one's hands
déclassé, although urinating in public and
walking on top of the parked cars of Fells Point was apparently just
another Saturday night.

Whitney was at the rubber-topped bar,
designed to look like a conveyor belt. Colleen Reganhart was more or
less
on
the bar, facedown,
arms spread in a crucifixion pose, black hair fanning out into the
dipping sauce from a half-eaten plate of Buffalo wings.

"She looks pretty
docile," Tess said.

"Watch this." Whitney
patted her arm. "Colleen, don't you think we ought
to be running along now?"

Colleen raised her head a few inches, looked
at Whitney with bleary eyes and said, "Fuck you, Talbot.
You're the last person I want to see tonight."

"Tess is here. Didn't
you say you wanted to talk to her?"

Colleen managed to pull her entire upper
body from the bar and turned toward Tess. "Did I? Well, fuck
you, too."

The bartender came over. It was Steve,
Kitty's most recent dalliance. But Kitty had already dropped
him, so he saw no percentage in being helpful to her niece.

"Look, Tess, I cut her off half an
hour ago, but she won't leave and our crowd is starting to
pick up. I can't have this broad taking up prime real estate
and mouthing off at anyone who brushes against her. Blondie here said
you'd take care of it."

Whitney raised an eyebrow. She
didn't feel a bit guilty, Tess could tell. She might even be
relishing the way she had interrupted her dinner with Sterling.

"My car's out
front," she said blandly. "I need your help to
carry her, then we'll drop her off at her apartment and put
her to bed."

"How did you become the
chaperone?" Tess said, tucking a hand beneath
Colleen's armpit, as Whitney propped her up on the other
side. Colleen didn't put up much of a fight, simply muttered
a cursory list of curses as they propelled her to the door.

"Another favor for Lionel Mabry.
He'd prefer his top people not to get arrested for public
intoxication. She called him from a pay phone here an hour ago,
threatening to quit one minute, then just threatening
him
.
He convinced her to tell him where she was, then he called me and asked
that I take care of it."

"With my assistance."

"I couldn't call anyone
from the paper." Whitney glanced at Tess, taking in the good
winter coat, the sheer hose and high heels, the upswept hair.
"Although Sterling was welcome to come along. How was dinner,
by the way? Did you make it to dessert? Did you have that whirligig
thing they serve, with chocolate and cinnamon?"

"Let's just get this
over with, okay?"

Sometimes Tess wondered if there was a
single warehouse left in Baltimore still doing an honest
day's work. Colleen lived in Henderson's Wharf,
which had started life as a storehouse for the B & O Railroad.
It sat at the end of Fell Street, a short walk from the Working
Man's Bar and Grille, assuming one could still walk. Colleen
never would have made it in her heels—the cobblestones on
Thames Street would have brought her down in only a few steps. She
passed out during the five-minute drive, forcing Whitney and Tess to
carry the editor into her building like so much dirty laundry.

"She's on the sixth
floor," Whitney said. "Harbor side,
naturally."

"Naturally," Tess echoed.

Yet the duplex apartment they entered was
simply a richer version of Rosita's spartan apartment, with
almost no real furniture and not even one picture hung, although two
rectangles wrapped in brown paper leaned against the exposed brick
wall. Another woman on the move, Tess thought, so determined to get
somewhere she never stopped and looked around at where she was.

"Should we try to put her to
bed?"

"I don't want to carry
her up the stairs," Whitney said. "Let's
leave her on the sofa and help ourselves to her bourbon. I have a
feeling that's one thing you can always find in
Colleen's kitchen."

Colleen didn't have any bourbon,
but she did have good Scotch and an unopened bag of Mint Milanos.
Whitney broke the seal on both with great glee, then selected two
mismatched glasses from one of the kitchen cabinets.

"We've earned
it," she said to Tess, as they sat in the carpeted area where
the dining room table might have been, if Colleen had gotten around to
buying one.

"I guess you can put it on your
expense account. Another favor for Lionel." She turned the
phrase over in her mind. It was suddenly rich with meaning.
"What was the first favor, anyway?"

Whitney studied Tess. They knew each other
so well. Tess could see her mind working, trying to calculate how much
Tess had figured out, which would determine how much Whitney had to
admit.

"Getting you to come work for him,
of course."

"And the second? There was a
second favor, too, right?" Whitney didn't say
anything.

"I'm guessing the second
favor was leaving the envelope on my car, the one with
Rosita's personnel file in it. Lionel wanted me to see it,
but didn't want anyone to know where it came from. What did
he want me to find, whitney?"

"Something. Anything."
Whitney went into the kitchen and came back with a steak knife, which
she used to slice open a Milano as if she were shucking an oyster. She
then licked the chocolate from the inside. "He
didn't know you'd do as well as you did, though. He
was quite pleased at how quickly you got the goods on her. Lionel
always suspected Rosita was trouble." She put the
licked-clean cookie aside, then opened another one and began reaming
the chocolate out of it. "I told him you would do a good
job."

"So this didn't have
anything to do with Feeney's story, did it? That was just an
excuse, a way to go after Rosita. Mabry wanted to be rid of her, wanted
to do an end-run around the union, and he saw this as an opportunity.
Nail her for the story, or something else equally egregious, and he
could fire her, or scare her out."

"Rosita was trouble, Lionel
figured that out early on. He tried to put her back on the copy desk,
but she screamed racism and sexism and every other ism she could think
of. So he let Colleen pair her with Feeney, figuring she
couldn't get in too much trouble working with another
reporter. But she managed to. You've heard of rogue cops?
Rosita's a rogue reporter. She'd do anything for a
Page One story. Lionel had to get her out, and he didn't have
time for her dismissal to grind through the union process. It was only
a matter of time before the
Beacon-Light
ended up with a major libel case on its hands. Jesus, it almost did,
Tess. If Wink hadn't killed himself, he could have sued the
paper over that first story."

"But he wouldn't have.
Wink paid his ex-wife hundreds of thousands of dollars never to tell
anyone what had happened. He was humiliated."

Whitney shrugged. "He might have
been willing to come forward now, because it would have undermined
everything else the paper said about him, even the true stuff.
I'm surprised he didn't think about that before he
killed himself."