Charm City (27 page)

Sterling tapped the cell phone he kept in
his breast pocket, beneath his camel's hair coat.
"Don't worry, I won't let him miss the
big story. I always put the paper first."

Always? Abruptly, Tess dropped the cup and
bottle, spilling the drink in her lap while the bottle skittered under
the Honda, spilling out the rest of the bourbon before Sterling could
retrieve it.

"Dammit," he said
angrily, then softened his tone. "I'm sorry,
it's just that I tore the knee of my pants leg crawling
around on this gravel. And I admit, I was hoping for a little of this,
too."

"I guess I'm a little
nervous. My hands are shaking."

"Don't worry.
I'll take care of you." He opened up his arms as if
to embrace her.

"How do you mean that,
exactly?"

Sterling looked at her strangely.

"Never mind." She
glanced back at the road to see if there was any
traffic—deserted, but there was an apartment complex on the
other side, not even 100 yards away.

"You know, I bet he's
not coming," she said. "If he's not here
in fifteen minutes, let's bag this meeting and try it again
tomorrow. What do you say?"

"You are a smart girl,"
Sterling said. He reached out and caressed her cheek with his gloved
hand, then leaned closer, as if to kiss her.

"Look,
Sterling—" she began. He punched her so hard in the
stomach she bent double and fell to the ground, the gravel tearing and
scraping her palms.

"Jesus." She
wasn't sure if she had spoken out loud, or only cried out in
her mind. She tried to rise to all fours, but Sterling kicked her in
the ribs, flattening her. On the proper foot, a Bass Weejun could feel
like a blackjack.

"But—I—didn't—drink,"
she panted. And if you didn't drink the drug-laden drink, you
didn't pass out, and if you didn't pass out, Jack
Sterling couldn't put you in a running car or toss you from a
balcony, then page his star reporter. She had figured that much out. So
why was she down on the ground, feeling as if there were small fires
burning all over her body—in her knees, on her palms, in her
side, on her face?

"The Jack Daniels did have a
little something in it, to slow you down, but three suicides would have
been over-kill—if you'll forgive the
expression," Sterling said, straddling her, digging his heels
into her waist as if she were a horse he was trying to break.

"However, it
is
plausible you'd be found murdered, Tess. After all, you had
that nasty run-in with those kidnappers. It was even written up in the
paper, remember? I told you how worried I was that one might come back.
I mentioned my fears to others, too—Feeney, Whitney, even
Lionel. Lionel couldn't help noticing how fond I was becoming
of you." He kicked her again in the ribs, then bent down and
grabbed the collar of her coat, jerking her head back so hard she
thought she might have whiplash.

Tess could not believe how quickly he moved,
how expertly. Then she thought about the West Baltimore shopkeeper, his
heart giving way after a boy, a boy who grew up to be this man, whipped
a pistol back and forth across his face.
Wink
could never hurt anyone
, Lea had cried.
He
never hit me back
, Linda had sneered. No,
Wink's great shame was that he couldn't hurt
anyone, although he could stand by with the best of them and watch a
man die.

"You were Wink's
accomplice," she said. Her rib, cracked or broken, made it
hard to talk. She felt as if she had tumbled down a long flight of
stairs and was still falling. "
You're
the one on the yearbook page. If I had seen it again, I would have
known you."

"Actually, I'm on the
facing page. And Raymond Sterling was so fat, with such long hair
hanging in his face, you probably wouldn't have recognized
him. But I couldn't take that chance."

"Raymond?" If she
hadn't been in so much pain, she might have laughed.

"Raymond John Sterling. I started
using my middle name after my parents sent me to military school in
Indiana. That was the deal my father cut with the
judge—military school instead of Montrose. After all,
I'd never been in trouble before. Wink was the bad boy. Wink
was even bad at being bad—the only time I ever got caught was
when I was with Wink. That's the real difference between bad
boys and good boys, you see. Bad boys get caught."

She tried to rise again and he pushed her
down by stomping on her back with his foot, then squatted over her. His
mouth was close to her ear, his voice the soft, encouraging voice of
the man she thought she knew. "I have to hit you a few times,
Tess, to make it look realistic. Just a few more taps, then
I'll shoot you, I promise. One quick, clean shot in the head,
okay?"

He patted her cheek, then slapped her so
hard that her teeth cut the inside of her mouth and blood began
dribbling down her face. It was a strange sensation, wet, cold, and hot
all mingled on her face.

"Silver and gold," she
panted, spitting blood with each word. "Sterling and
Wink."

"Yeah, that's
me," he replied, not realizing she was still fitting the
pieces together. The cell phone in his pocket, and the convenient call
to Feeney the night of Wink's death, making sure the
Blight
got the story. The edge in his voice, when he'd found her at
his computer tonight. He had spoken that roughly to her only once
before—the day she'd confessed she had been to see
Linda Wynkowski. Turkey sausage on Rosita's pizza, his
constant quest for low-fat food. Little things, but they had come
together in one moment of perfect clarity. If only she could have had
that moment in a less deserted, better-lighted place.

Sterling brought a sleek, almost elegant gun
out of the pocket of his coat. Even Tess, with her complete ignorance
of firearms, knew it was exactly the sort of weapon the greyhound gang
would have used on her. Sterling was careful, he thought things out.

"Rosita?" she asked. God
help her, but she really wanted to know.

"She jumped," he said.
"Honestly. We had been…together for a while, after
I first came to the paper. Consenting adults, a no-fault break-up. But
she tried to use that to get her job back, said she'd go to
Lionel and complain I had harrassed her. Another blackmailer, like
Wink. She crawled out on the balcony railing, said she would jump if I
didn't get her reinstated. As if I could, after all she had
done."

After all
she
had done
?

"All I want to do is get on with
my life," he said, almost as if he expected some sympathy.
"That's all I've ever wanted."

High beams from an oncoming car swept across
the parking lot and Sterling dropped his left hand to his side, so the
gun was out of view. Feeney, Tess thought, at once hopeful and
despairing. Sterling would simply kill him, too.

But the car that idled fifty feet away was
an expensive utility vehicle, something Feeney wouldn't be
caught dead driving. Tess heard its door open and slam, heard a key
clicking in a lock, a trunk's springs yawning.

"Fancy meeting you two
here." It was Whitney's voice, as clear and
obnoxiously self-assured as if they'd met at some restaurant
or museum.

"Gun," Tess said, or
tried to say. Her nose was bleeding and her speech was getting gummy
and thick. Sterling backed away until his car was between him and
Whitney. Tess heard a shot, then a muffled sound of surprise. Jesus, he
had killed her. She almost wished she could live long enough to see how
Sterling was going to arrange this "accident."
College
Roomies in Bizarre Murder-Suicide in Leakin Park/Longtime Relationship
Suspected
. Both their mothers would die.

A second shot, much louder than the first.
Tess still couldn't see
anything—Whitney's lights must be on bright, they
were so blinding. How had Sterling been able to aim? He
hadn't. Sterling staggered forward, his right hand pressed to
his shoulder, where a shiny mass, purple-black in the headlights, was
spilling across his camel's hair coat. He dropped his gun and
fell forward.

"That's the problem with
hunting rifles," Whitney said, walking toward Sterling, who
had joined Tess in the gravel. "They rip the shit out of
things at this range. You probably won't have a tendon left
in that shoulder, Sterling. No more squash for you."

Sterling didn't give up easily. He
tried to crawl toward his weapon, reaching for it with his right hand.
But he was left-handed, and his injury made him clumsy and slow.

"Oh, Sterling, give me a
break." Whitney cracked the rifle hard against his injured
arm, and he screamed again, a pathetic, high-pitched sound. For good
measure, or perhaps for the sheer hell of it, Whitney took the butt of
the rifle and brought it down hard on Sterling's nose,
breaking it with a fearsome crack almost as loud as the gunshots.

"It's very important
that you stay still now," she told him, as if he were a small
child and she his babysitter. "I've had enough from
you."

The passenger side door of
Whitney's Jeep opened then. Tess, still at ground level, saw
a pair of sockless ankles, red and chafed in the wintry night. It was
the most beautiful sight she had ever seen.

"I called 911 on the car
phone," Feeney said. "I told them we're
going to need an ambulance."

"Feeney," Tess said.
"Whitney?" She wondered if she was ever going to
speak in complete sentences again, or even lift her arms over her head.
But Feeney understood what she was trying to ask.

"When I got the message from you,
I thought I could get Whitney to give me a ride in her four-wheel
drive, maybe play peacemaker between the two of you and get my big
story at the same time. It never occurred to me Whitney's
hunting rifle would come in even handier than her Jeep
Cherokee."

"You never know when
you're going to need a little protection." Whitney
raised an eyebrow at Tess, keeping her rifle trained on Sterling.
"I believe I tried to tell you that once, back in the sub
shop."

Feeney picked up Sterling's gun
and held it in his palm a little tentatively, as if it might bite him.
Then he pointed it at his boss, now almost unconscious from the loss of
blood.

"I've waited my whole
life to hold a gun on an editor," he said. "I
thought it would feel better than this."

"Speak for yourself,"
Whitney said, but her voice was shaking.

O
n
the first Friday in May, Spike left the hospital in a wheelchair. It
wasn't altogether for show. Despite weeks of therapy, he
still dragged his right leg, but his speech was clear now, or as clear
as it had ever been, and his long-term memory no longer seemed like a
piece of Alpine Swiss, the lacy stuff that was more holes than cheese.
He could walk with a cane, but it was laborious and he didn't
see any reason to pass up one last free ride. Especially, Tess
suspected, when he saw the pretty young nurse who was to push him to
the curb.

"You know, it was coincidental
enough, you coming out of your coma just in time to get some action on
the NCAA Final Four," she said, once they were settled in his
car and heading to The Point. Tommy was driving Spike's
rusting Lincoln coupe, so she could turn around in the passenger seat
and study her uncle, regal and serene in the backseat. "But
when your hospital discharge date happens to fall on the day before the
Kentucky Derby, I
know
something's up."

"You saying I faked my coma
'til Tommy came and told me about how those guys who beat me
so bad got themselves arrested, thanks to you?" Spike asked.
"You think your old uncle could fool a whole staff of doctors
and nurses, with their collitch educations? Then why would I stay so
long, after I knew you was fine?"

"No, but…I
mean—" Tess looked at Tommy, grinning as he perched
precariously on the edge of the seat so he could reach the pedals with
the toes of his zippered ankle boots. She looked back at Spike,
studying the fast food joints and grimy stores along Caton Avenue as if
they were the eighth wonders of the world. Perhaps they were to him.
His recovery had bordered on the miraculous, doctors said, and Spike
seemed to have a heightened appreciation of everything around him.

She was resigned to never knowing the whole
story. Was Jimmy Parlez a real person, or some red herring Tommy had
tossed out to distract her? Had Tommy been in on everything from the
beginning, or had Spike, knowing how weak he was, made sure he was
equally ignorant? Oh, well, some aspects of Spike's life had
to remain mysterious, in part to protect the family from its seamier
side, and in part because Spike liked being mysterious.

At The Point, Tommy pulled a small,
brown-wrapped package out of the safe and handed it to Tess, while
Spike settled on one of the vinyl padded chairs closest to the
television.

"V is for videotape,"
Tess said, turning it over in her hands. "I guess my
Botticelli buddy was playing fair and square, after all."

"Bottle of what?" Tommy
asked.

"Never mind, it's too
complicated to explain."

"Put it in the VCR under the bar
TV," Spike said. Then, almost as an afterthought:
"You eat breakfast today?"

"Of course."

"You'll wish you
hadn't."

The video was of poor quality, a grainy
black-and-white with the date and time in the lower right corner. But
the images were clear enough—a large wooden fence in an oval
shape, the suggestion of meadows on either side, stands of evergreens
in the distance, all blurry as an Impressionist painting.

"What is this? What does it have
to do with the ears?"

"It's a private
‘hunting' club in Cecil County."

"I've never heard of
such a thing."

Spike gave her a look, as if he expected
more of her. "But you've heard of stocked ponds,
for fishermen? Well, these are kinda the same thing. Rich guys come
from all over the state—Washington and Philadelphia,
even—hunt birds for sport. You ask me, ain't a
sport if you can't bet on it, but they pay plenty for the
privilege of bringing home a few mangled birdie bodies."

"Is it legal?"

"Yeah, if you're just
shooting up ducks and pheasants. The legislature seen to that, year in
and year out. But these guys take it a step further. Got a little
gambling room on the side—poker, blackjack, roulette. I got
no problem with them being enterprising. I've even played a
few hands there myself, when I found myself in the neighborhood. But
this year they added a new attraction. That's what
you're about to see."

Tess studied the television. Even without
the date, she would have known this video was shot in
March—the scudding clouds, the muddy ground with patches of
ice. It seemed so long ago.

"Fifteen seconds to
post," Spike intoned. Tommy held his fist to his mouth,
making a mock trumpet call with real spit. "
Dew-dew-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-deeeeeeeeew
."

A tiny object zipped across the railing and
a blurry pack surged into the camera's view, trailing it.
Tess needed a moment to realize they were greyhounds, not horses, and
that the object of their frenzied desire was a mechanized rabbit.

"Illegal greyhound races? Why
would anyone go to the trouble of setting those up?"

"Wait," Spike said
grimly.

The dogs disappeared on the far side of the
track, and Spike provided a fake call while they were off-screen.
"And as they move past the second post, it's Down
on His Luck in the lead, with Bum Steer hard on his flank. Down on His
Luck. Bum Steer. Down on His Luck. Bum Steer. Now Dead Last is making a
move on the outside and
down
the stretch they come."

The dogs swung back into view and Spike,
using the VCR remote control, switched to slow-motion. The picture was
a little clearer at this speed and Tess could see the dogs straining
toward the finish, almost a frame at a time, like an animated cartoon
reduced to its individual cels. The dogs looked as Esskay had when Tess
first met her—too skinny, with raw patches on the
fur—but their power was truly impressive. Tess unconsciously
hunched her shoulders in rhythm with the dog in the lead, neck
stretching forward until the cords were visible.

Then, just a few feet short of the finish
line, the leader collapsed. A broken leg? The other dogs parted around
the fallen dog, still intent on the rabbit. Another one fell, then
another. In all, four dogs collapsed on the track well short of the
finish, dark stains spreading beneath them.

"I—I don't
understand," Tess said, fearing she did.

"They get retired racers from some
sleazy trainers," Tommy said. "Pay 'em
twenny dollars a head, which is twenny dollars more'n most
people would pay. Then these guys pay $200 to shoot 'em while
they're running. Hit a dog, take home a set of ears. They
haul the dead dogs off and bury 'em somewhere, somewhere
secret. Don't matter if anyone finds them. Without the ears,
there's no way to trace 'em."

"But not all those dogs were
killed. Two are still moving." She pointed to the
dogs' limbs, twitching as Esskay's did in her sleep.

"They put down the maimed
ones," Spike said. "In some ways, it's
the nicest thing they do. Now, hush a minute. The important part is
coming up."

Tess watched as a group of men streamed onto
the track, waving their rifles over the heads and dancing around the
bodies of the fallen dogs. They were quite pleased with themselves. It
is difficult, after all, to hit a target moving almost forty miles an
hour. One man leaned heavily on his gun as he grabbed the lifeless body
of one dog, and Tess thought she could read his lips. "This
is mine! This is mine!" The face was a little blurry, but
awfully familiar. There was something in the walk, in the set of his
shoulders.

"Is that—?"

"Shore is," Spike said.
"Now you know why we're gonna do it the way
we're gonna do it. Keep us all out of it, but still shut
'em down. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Tess said
weakly. She had held onto her breakfast, but not by much.
"How did you come to have this tape, Spike?"

"Guy who runs this place is a
friend.
Was
a friend. Ran
a decent joint, wasn't my business if people wanted to come
shoot ducks. That was legal, after all. But when I stopped by last
March and saw this—well, I couldn't stand by no
longer. That night, when the action had moved to the house, I took the
videotape out of a surveillance camera and grabbed the ears I found in
the barn. I knew he'd send some guys after me. I just thought
I'd have a bigger head start."

"If you hadn't taken
Esskay, too, they might not have been able to link you to the missing
ears and tape."

"But she smiled at me, when she
saw me in the barn," Spike said, smiling himself.
"How could I leave her behind?"

"I guess it's as good a
time as any for me to give you something," Tess told her
uncle. She walked over to the store room and opened the door Tommy had
opened almost two months ago. But the dog who bounded out was a
different creature—glossy fur, bright eyes, the compleat
hedonist. Esskay pranced around Spike, rooting under his armpits in
search of treats.
Just like she had with Crow
.

"See, she's glad to be
back with you," she said. Her voice didn't catch so
much as it slipped.

"Aw, she likes me because I got
the keys to the pantry. That's not real likin'.
Anyway, how'm I gonna walk a dog, with my burn
leg?" he asked, slapping the leg in question. "You
do your old Uncle Spike a big favor and keep this mutt for now,
okay?"

Tess smiled tremulously: Esskay was hers.
She hadn't dared to hope for it. She hadn't even
admitted to herself that she really wanted the dog. As she bent down to
fasten the leash to Esskay's collar—a proper nylon
one, no need for a heavy chain any more, not since she had broken down
and purchased her first gun two weeks ago—she asked Spike a
question that had nagged her for some time.

"Where was the tape all this
time?"

"In the safe deposit box Tommy and
I share. Whaddaya think I am, stupid or something?"

Tess laughed then, although laughing still
hurt her ribs. Sterling's kicks had cracked two of them,
keeping her off the water for much of this spring and limiting her
other workouts. A fitting revenge for the former fat boy, always so
covetous of her metabolism. Until she healed, she actually had to watch
what she ate. She wondered if this would be much of a consolation to
Sterling as he sat in the city jail, charged with Wink's
murder and her attempted murder.

The police had found his fingerprints on the
door to Wink's Mustang; the tox screens had turned up a
prescription drug that matched the painkiller Sterling had been given
for his on-again, off-again carpal tunnel problems.
THE EDITOR WAS A KILLER
.
Juicy stuff, but the
Beacon-Light
wasn't giving the story much play, preferring to concentrate
on Paul Tucci and his increasingly desperate attempts to land a
basketball team. The
Blight
had left it to the
Washington Post's
media critic to chronicle Sterling's rise and fall. It
hadn't been a particularly difficult story to report, despite
the former editor's refusal to be interviewed. Raymond John
Sterling had left a trail as bright and as slimy as a slug in the
moonlight.

"No, Uncle Spike, I know
you're not stupid," Tess assured him, holding her
aching sides. "After all, you're the one who is
going to tell me how to shut down this place without going to the
police."

"I've just never felt
the police really
understand
me," Spike said.

"They're such strictlers
for detail?" Tommy added.

Tess hadn't planned on having
Esskay with her when she'd made the 11
A.M.
appointment with
Lionel Mabry earlier that week, but there wasn't time to take
the dog home. Maybe it was for the best. Mabry might have kept her
waiting even longer, if it weren't for the snorting canine
companion with the impulsive bladder.

"Miss Monaghan," Mabry
said, entering the conference room. Not the grand one off the
publisher's office—she no longer rated that; but a
ratty one in the news room, the site of the endless editors'
meetings.

"How you doing, Lionel?"

He seemed a little taken aback to hear her
use his first name. "I am sorry it took so long for
accounting to prepare your check—they raised a stink about
some of the expenses you submitted. Something about a bill for a
bracelet? But if you hadn't
insisted
on picking it up in person, you could have had it days ago through the
mail. You didn't need to come down here again."

"The thing is, I have something
for you," she said, holding out the tape, along with a letter
explaining its contents, the circumstances by which it had been
obtained, and a list of those people Spike knew frequented the hunting
club. Lionel scanned it quickly. He was a quick study, Tess realized. A
shrewd man, shrewd enough to let others think he was soft and
unfocused. An act not unlike the dumb jock one she liked to pull.

"It's a good
story," he said. "A very good story indeed.
Generous of you to bring it to us. I know your experiences with the
paper have not been exactly, uh, copacetic."

"You should know that Paul Tucci
is one of the men on the tape. In fact, he'd probably be
doing a victory dance if it weren't for his bad knee. Is that
going to be a problem?"

Mabry looked puzzled. "What a
strange question. If anything, it heightens our interest."

"But you didn't want to
run the original Wink story, the one with all the unsavory information
about
him
, because you
didn't want to kill the city's chance for a
basketball team. What's the difference?"

"Miss Monaghan, you
shouldn't believe everything a reporter says, even when the
reporter is one of your friends." She squirmed a little under
Mabry's knowing smile. "Our publisher did have some
concerns along that line, but I was uncomfortable with the Wink story
simply because I didn't see the point of dredging up pieces
of his past when that had nothing to do with his fitness to own a
sports franchise. Jack Sterling understood my feelings and he played on
them. Of course, now I know Jack had his own agenda and that his
articulate speeches about letting people reinvent themselves were
neither dispassionate nor disinterested. But I still stand by my
decision that Wink was entitled to know the names of his
critics."