Baltimore Blues (27 page)

“I see—it was in the best interest of the taxpayers. What if the taxpayers preferred not to pervert our legal system?”

“Lawyers pervert the system,” she replied. “The jurors pervert it. We sidestepped it.”

“And Jonathan Ross?”

“The reporter? What about him?”

“He was murdered.”

“Really? I read his death was ruled a hit-and-run, an accident.”

“He was going to figure this out. He was starting to research foundations. He had talked to Fauquier. He would have put it together as I did, eventually.”

Mrs. O’Neal just smiled.

“Am I going to be in a police report, Mrs. O’Neal? Am I going to be an accident?”

“Seamon tends to…panic. You’ve seen how red he becomes, how his voice starts squeaking. Another sign of the
compulsively tidy. But when he has time to think—time to listen to advice—he is quite rational.”

“Fauquier will write more letters to other reporters. He wants to tell his story. He wants attention.”

“Yes, he does. You visited him yesterday, I understand. Your name was on the sheet. We’ve been taking note of his visitors since Mr. Abramowitz’s death. Today—” She glanced at her watch, the kind of gold simplicity that costs dearly. “It’s already happened. Shay held a press conference at one-thirty and announced the firm was going to take over Mr. Fauquier’s appeals as a memorial to their slain colleague, Mr. Abramowitz. Larry Chambers, a quite capable young man, will handle the case. And if Mr. Fauquier tries to tell him any stories about fake confessions, Larry’s going to assure him it will only hurt his appeal. He’s also going to inform prison officials that you are not to visit Mr. Fauquier again, nor will any reporter. You need the lawyer’s permission, you know.”

“I know.”

Now it was Tess who did not want to meet Mrs. O’Neal’s eyes. If Luisa saw the past through her window, Tess saw the future. Fauquier’s appeals would run out. His lawyer would whisper to him: “Don’t say anything about that fake confession yet. We have a plan. We’re going to announce it just before they give you the injection. You’ll get more publicity than any condemned prisoner in the country.” And so Fauquier would go obediently, quietly, sitting in the chamber and waiting for the door to be flung open, waiting for his lawyer to rescue him. The pellets would drop, and Fauquier would die. The last living witness.

“There’s only one thing I don’t understand, Mrs. O’Neal. Why did you have Abramowitz killed? Was he so miserable that he was going to confess?”

“I’m afraid, dear, you can’t blame us for that. We have no idea who killed Abramowitz, although we probably owe whoever it was a debt. It has worked out nicely for us. He was becoming quite a nuisance.”

“Aren’t you worried I’ll tell?”

“No. I think, on some level, you see my side of things, Miss Monaghan. Justice was done. A boy was killed, a man confessed. My son is in a hospital for the rest of his life, which is longer than he would have stayed in jail. What more would you ask?”

“I don’t see your side. I could never think the way you do.” Tess was almost yelling, frantic in her hope that she was telling the truth.

“Well, then, I’ll tell you the second reason I’m not worried. You’re no one, and no one will ever believe you. But if you’d like a little money, a reward for being so clever, it could be arranged.”

“Actually,” Tess said, surprising even herself, “I might.”

T
ess left the O’Neals’ and drove to a copy store out in the suburbs, a bright, lively place with an espresso bar and throngs of people. Despite Mrs. O’Neal’s kind assurances that she was too inconsequential to kill, she felt safer in public. She paid for computer time and typed up the story she had told Mrs. O’Neal, fleshed out now with Mrs. O’Neal’s details. At the end she listed all her resources, a bibliography of sorts. She smoothed out and photocopied the crumpled, damp faxes, paid for the disk on which she had worked, and put everything in a manila envelope, which she then sent by certified mail to Kitty. She wrote on the back flap, “
To be opened only in the event of my death
.” Kitty was one of the few people who would unquestioningly follow those instructions. She wouldn’t even find it particularly odd. Tyner, while the more logical choice in some ways, would have opened it immediately.

Strangely Tess almost believed Mrs. O’Neal when she said they had not arranged Abramowitz’s death. More importantly she believed she couldn’t prove it if they had. All this work, all this effort, and she had ended up solving the wrong case—Jonathan’s death and the death of a little boy whose name she had not even known two days ago.

That’s why I hated being a reporter. You were always getting the wrong answers to your questions
.

The thought darted across her mind like a cockroach run
ning from the kitchen light, trying to disappear into a dark crevice. But Tess caught it before it vanished. Hated being a reporter? No, she had loved it. She had worked hard at it. It was the only career she had ever known. She had been a reporter because…because.

Because Whitney wanted to be a reporter, and you could never stop competing with Whitney. Because Jonathan was a great reporter, and you loved him once and wanted him to love you. Because James M. Cain was a reporter who went to Washington College, then had gone on to write wonderful books and have an interesting life. You wanted to be a writer with a regular paycheck. That didn’t make you a reporter. Or a writer. It made you a coward and a fake. An imitation
.

Her package mailed, she drove home and flopped on her bed. She had not exercised for five days, since Jonathan’s death, and she’d eaten little. Her body felt puny and weak, her stomach flat, the kind of flat that comes from the atrophy of muscle.
A workout’s effects are lost in seventy-two hours
, Tess chided herself, then tried to remember the last time she had gone three days without running or rowing. About five years ago, when she had sprained her ankle. Even then she had done bicep curls with cans of Progresso plum tomatoes and tried chin-ups from her door frame.

She stood up, determined to run, but her legs felt too rubbery. Instead she left her apartment and began walking. First north, then east. The neighborhoods through which she walked were the cornerstone of the Baltimore myth, the places enshrined in the travel pieces written by every slumming journalist who had ever swung a crab mallet at Obrycki’s. Here were the marble stoops, the celebrated ethnic mix, the vast green spaces of Patterson Park. It looked good, from a distance. But Tess knew teenagers were smoking PCP and crack in the alleys, and that no one walked in Patterson Park because of the crime. She knew fewer and fewer women scrubbed their marble stoops every day. Even the Elvis mural had been defaced, so it had to be painted over. And when Baltimoreans started turning on Elvis, times were bad.

She walked past the old Francis Scott Key Hospital and through Greektown. The air was full of grape leaves, roasted lamb, potato pancakes, and, near the Brazilian restaurant, a scorched pork scent her nose recognized as the “national dish of Brazil.” She passed Cesnik’s Tavern. It could be Cecilia’s father’s place. She walked all the way to Dundalk, down Holabird Avenue, to the small hideous rancher owned by Abner Macauley.

Mrs. Macauley, her hair a few inches higher since Tess’s last visit, opened the door.

“Oh, hi, hon,” she said. “He’s not well enough to talk.”

“He doesn’t have to.” Almost rudely she pushed past the woman and into the living room.

Mr. Macauley looked worse, if that was possible. Grayer, thinner, frailer, a husk of a man. Tess thought his arm might collapse when she touched it, dry as dust beneath her fingers.

“Mr. Macauley?”

He was dozing and woke with a start, not recognizing her at first. He looked around her, found his wife, and relaxed. He was not dead, then, facing down an Amazonian angel at heaven’s gate.

“You’re going to get your money, Mr. Macauley. All of it. I talked to someone from the law firm and they promised. By next week.”

He smiled. Gently Tess picked up one of his hands. The palms were still rough, all these years later, but the backs of his hands were paper thin. She stroked his hand and listened to his breathing through the plastic tube, the squeak of his recliner. An old Perry Mason show was on television. Tess had forgotten Raymond Burr once had a dark, frightening grace. She also had forgotten what a weenie Hamilton Burger was.

“I’ve seen ’em all,” Mr. Macauley rasped. “I never remember who did it.”

They watched the show together, silently. As a little girl Tess had watched it with Poppa Weinstein and he, much like Mr. Macauley, had seen every episode. She had thought this was how it worked—that everyone sat in the courtroom to
gether, that attorneys were frequently surprised by the answers they heard, that the case was always solved as a witness dissolved in tears or shouts. In the back of her mind she had thought it would be like this for Rock.

“Jew bastard,” Mr. Macauley said suddenly.

“Perry Mason?” Raymond Burr? Hamilton Burger?

“Abramowitz,” he said. “Jew bastard.” He fell back asleep. She continued to hold his hand. Everyone thought she was on their side, that she was one of them.

“You should go,” Mrs. Macauley whispered a little nervously. Did she worry her husband would wake up again, or was she simply frightened by this odd woman in her living room, holding her husband’s hand in front of an old Emerson?

“Sure.” She walked to the door, Mrs. Macauley trailing her. “I meant to tell him. You won’t get the money all at once. You’ll get quarterly payments over the next few years. And the checks will be from a local foundation, one associated with the law firm. That way you can get it faster.” The idea had come to her so quickly. If the William Tree Foundation was so generous with its funds, why shouldn’t Abner Macauley get his cut? Mrs. O’Neal had been amused but happy to help. Tess would be quiet as long as Macauley got his checks.

“What will you do?” she asked Mrs. Macauley. “With the money?”

“Oh—nothing.” She shrugged, as if $850,000 was no more than hitting a Pick 3. “He’s so far gone. We thought Florida, once. Or one of those places with a golf course right next to your house. Now I’d just like to see he has as little pain as possible.”

Tess hiked up to Eastern Avenue and caught a westbound bus home.

“Sweet Jesus Christ,” she announced to Crow as she banged through the front door of the shop, empty except for him. “We ought to get stipends for being part of the local color. Someone just took a picture of me carrying my gro
ceries home, like I was a Parisian with a string bag. Welcome to Charm City.”

“How’s the case?” Crow asked, looking up from his book and giving her a full-force smile, obviously trying to cheer her up. “Have you found out anything new?”

“There is no case,” she said harshly. Hurt, Crow went back to his reading.

“I’m sorry. I’m not having a great day.” No answer from Crow, his eyes still fixed on his book.
Possession
, by A. S. Byatt. Interesting choice, she thought. A literary mystery in which a man and a woman team up to solve a puzzle and fall in love. “Look, I owed you an apology and I gave it to you. Now you owe me an explanation.”

“For what?” Eyes still downcast. He had a talent for sulking.

“You never told me where you got your nickname.”

He looked up then. “My nickname? Well, you’ve had a few clues. First of all, there’s my hometown, Charlottesville, Virginia.”

“Is the crow the UVA mascot?”

“Second hint: the name of my band.”

“Po’ White Trash. So?”

“Third hint: my initials.”

She had to think about that one. She had only heard them once, when Kitty told Ferlinghetti his full name. “E. A.?”

“Right. My dad couldn’t resist naming his only son Edgar Allan, after Virginia’s great writer.”

“Excuse me, but Edgar Allan Poe is a Baltimore writer.”

“He was born in Virginia. He died in Baltimore. You can argue about which place has the greater claim. Anyway, my dad started reading Poe to me when I was a little kid—the poems, not the really dark stuff. And when he read ‘The Raven,’ I didn’t know what he was talking about. My dad explained it was a big black bird. And I, with the wisdom of a six-year-old, said, ‘Why not call a crow a crow?’ It’s been my name ever since. It’s better than Edgar or Ed.” He closed his book. “There—you’ve finally solved a mystery.”

“So your band is really
Poe
White Trash?”

“You got it. It’s a great name, cuts across class lines. The rednecks from Hampden and Remington come because they think it’s a redneck industrial band. But the literary college students like it, too.”

“Not very politically correct, is it?” she said in that strange schoolteacher voice Crow inspired in her. “If you think about it, white trash is a term with overtones of racial superiority.”

“Shit, you don’t need to find Michael Abramowitz’s killer. You need to find your sense of humor.”

Tess, who felt she had come legitimately by her newfound dourness, shocked herself by bursting into tears at Crow’s gentle rebuke. Holding her groceries, she cried and cried, unglamorous, racking sobs that shook her body. Her nose ran, her eyes began to swell, but she held her ground and she held her groceries. She wept for Jonathan, she wept for Abramowitz. She wept for Damon Jackson. She wept because she had spent the past two weeks tightening the noose around a good friend’s neck, systematically eliminating every other possible suspect. She barely noticed when Crow put his arms around her, hugging her tight until her tears ran out.

Crow was not the kind of person who would have a handkerchief or even a crumpled Kleenex. Inelegantly she wiped her nose on her own sleeve.

“Well, that was pretty,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“Yes, I do. I’m tired and worn-out. One of my friends is dead and another is probably a killer. I don’t even care. To tell you the truth, alongside some of the people I’ve met recently, Rock seems absolutely wholesome. He got mad, he did it himself—temporary insanity. He probably doesn’t even remember. Maybe Tyner ought to go that route. Get enough men on the jury, put Ava on the stand, and they’d buy it. She is the kind of woman men would kill for.”

“That’s a compliment, I guess. But if there’s one thing you know about a man who would kill
for
you, it’s that he might kill you, too.”

“You’re pretty smart for—how old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-three. A mere six years younger than you.” He took the grocery sack out of her arms and sat it on the counter behind him, then drew her to him. Tess lifted her face to his, then changed her mind and dropped her chin, so his kiss caromed off her forehead. She was trying to find the resolve to deflect any other attempts when Kitty walked into the store, her high heels like castanets on the wood floors. Odd, for Kitty usually made no noise when she walked, no matter what she wore.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, waving a slip of paper. “But I wanted to make sure Tess got this message that came in on the office phone this afternoon. Your rowing buddy called and said he needs to talk to you. Said to meet him early at the boat house tomorrow, before anyone else gets there.”

“How early?”

Kitty peered at her own handwriting. “Five-fifteen.”

“Typical Rock. He wants to see me, but he doesn’t want to sacrifice a second of morning light for his row. He’s so efficient he’ll probably do push-ups and sit-ups while we talk.”

She grabbed her groceries and headed to the back stairs. But she couldn’t resist looking back over her shoulder at Crow. He was smiling, as if he knew he would have made contact on his second attempt. It had been a strange week. Make that a strange month.

Technically the difference between getting up at 5
A.M
. instead of 5:15 is fifteen minutes. But for Tess the earlier hour was much more difficult, especially after a week of not rowing at all. She contemplated staying in bed, pretending she had never gotten Rock’s message. But that was why people called the store. They knew Kitty was more reliable than Tess’s answering machine.

She detoured through the bookstore, careful to lock it. She still didn’t trust the alley, not in the dark. She drove through downtown in silence, not awake enough to stomach the radio, or any sound at all.

The boat house was dark, with no cars in the parking lot and no sign of Rock’s bicycle. Of course he knew she had a key—it was a copy of the one he had pilfered. She locked her purse in the trunk, unlocked the door, threw her key ring in an empty locker, and stretched out on a mat in the small workout room between the two locker rooms. A bar with about forty pounds on it lay nearby. Mindlessly she picked it up and began doing bench presses. It only weighed fifty pounds, much too light for her. What had happened to her 100-pound goal and the seven-minute mile? What had happened to all her goals for the fall? They had been subsumed by what she once thought would be the easiest job she ever had.

She heard footsteps in the men’s locker room and glanced over, expecting Rock’s sturdy calves to come through the swinging door. Instead she saw the lower half of a crabber, a bushel basket in gloved hands, heavy black rubber boots on his feet. Sneaking a bathroom break and taking a shortcut through the building—not permitted, but what did she care? She continued to pump the bar, indifferent, until her eyes traveled up and she noticed something odd. The crabber was wearing a ski mask.