Charm City (15 page)

"I met him. I talked to him just
last Friday." At least this was the truth.

"What did he say?"

"He said you were very good to
him, that you had a good marriage." And this was sort of true.

Lea might have pressed her for more details,
but a key was turning in the lock. Tess assumed it would be her mother
and the children, but there was only one person, someone with a heavy,
irregular tread. A tanned man in a navy windbreaker came into the room.
It took Tess a second to place the familiar face in an unfamiliar
place. Paul Tucci. Tooch.

"Oh, Tooch!" Lea said.
"Wait until you hear, this woman is from
Weinstein's Jewelers, where Wink bought me the most beautiful
bracelet last week." She held up her arm so he could inspect
it.

"Weinstein Jewelers? That a
fact?" Tucci stared at Tess, who hoped he would not be able
to match her to the sweat-slick cyclist from Durban's.
Certainly Wink's conquests and would-be conquests must blend
together over the three decades he and Wink had known each other.
"When did you say Wink stopped by?"

"I didn't, but it was
recently. Just last week."

Tucci looked at Lea's face. You
couldn't call it happy, but it was slightly more animated
than the dull, flat countenance that had greeted Tess. Lea was looking
at the bracelet, as pleased as a child. Over her head, Tess shot Tucci
a pleading look.
Yes, I did something really
shitty, but don't take this away from her. Let her believe
her husband did something nice for her before he died
.

"Nice work," he said.
"Very classy. Maybe I'll stop by
Weinstein's, pick up something for my mama's
birthday."

"Call first. I'll
personally help you."

"Oh, I'm counting on
that," Tucci assured Tess.

T
ess
was just pulling out of the Cotswolds when she caught the latest
traffic report on the radio. "An accident on the inner loop
of the Beltway has traffic there backed up all the way from Providence
to Security," announced a cheerful man who happened to be
hovering above it all in a helicopter. "Better find an
alternate route unless you have a lot of time to kill."

This day was just getting worse and worse.
Sighing, Tess snapped off the radio and resigned herself to making her
way home along secondary streets. But her mind was still back at the
Wynkowskis'. Would Tucci tell Lea who she really was? How
dear a friend did someone have to be to warrant his own house key?

Preoccupied, she didn't notice she
was on Route 40, not even a mile from her parents' house,
almost as if her car had a homing device. Perhaps the Toyota was
looking out for her best interests: surprise visits were worth big, big
points in her family. And her mother had sounded a little plaintive at
the hospital. A drive-by schmoozing, if handled properly, might erase
all Tess's other demerits.

The Monaghans lived in a too-big house in
Ten Hills, a neighborhood that had run to huge Catholic families when
Tess was growing up. Six kids, eight kids, ten, eleven, twelve. This
was normal; it was Patrick and Judith Monaghan, with just one child,
who had seemed freakish. Tess's classmates had assumed the
Monaghans hadn't had more children because they eschewed sex,
an abstinence adolescents found admirable in their parents. Tess had
seen no reason to disabuse her friends of this notion. How much more
embarrassing for them to find out her parents were certifiable
voluptuaries. But now that she was grown, she was secretly proud her
parents' marriage was still a passionate one.

Judith was sitting at the kitchen table,
rubbing a foot just freed from an Italian pump, and reading the morning
paper. For a second, Tess saw her as the rest of the world must see
her—not as her maddening, monochromatic mother, but as a
handsome woman, even a pretty one. She was both right now, her face
smooth, without the frown lines her daughter so often provoked.

"Tess!" Judith cried
when she sensed her standing there. Then, almost reflexively:
"Your
hair
."

Tess put a hand up to her forehead, unsure
what offense her hair had committed this time. It was loose, which her
mother usually preferred to other styles—the long braid down
the back, the ponytail low on the neck. Wait, here was the problem: she
had used an old plastic headband to hold it back, one in a
tortoiseshell pattern. Her mother did not approve of headbands for
females over fourteen. Judith wore her glossy brown hair in a short,
thick pageboy, which required exactly twenty-five minutes with a
blow-dryer every morning. And today's outfit was perfect, as
always, if not exactly fashionable. Navy shoes, now discarded, navy
hose, navy skirt, white silk blouse, and navy jacket. Her earrings were
lapis, dark enough to match the suit, and set in silver, which went
with the silver beads at her neck.

"When a woman turns thirty, she
shouldn't have a
mane
,"
Judith chided. "You need to shape it."

"I was in a hurry this morning.
I've been working on special assignment."

"As
an…investigator?" Her mother was lukewarm about
the job with Tyner. When Tess was unemployed, she had insisted any job
would do. Now she longed for Tess to be a professional, someone with
regular hours, a fat salary, and a thin husband.

"Yes, as an investigator, although
this is a contract job. But I think I'm suppose to keep
things confidential. Like a lawyer."

The word "lawyer," even
in passing, had a softening effect on her mother. If Tess worked at a
law firm, perhaps she would go to law school and become someone Mrs.
Monaghan could brag about, ever so casually. Better yet, maybe
she'd meet a doctor on a malpractice case. Tess knew how her
mother's mind worked.

"Would you like something to drink
as long as you're here? A Coke? Tea?"

Although still full from her
Marconi's lunch, Tess knew this was a cheap way to make her
mother happy. "Tea would be nice. Let's have a cup
together."

The kitchen had been redone three years ago,
and it reflected Judith Monaghan's single-minded approach to
color. Almost everything was white—walls, cabinets,
appliances, the tile floor—with a few red and blue accents
placed carefully throughout. As the water boiled in a bright blue
teapot, Tess took down fire engine red mugs. The spoons, the everyday
ones, had blue wooden handles. A bright red Le Creuset casserole sat on
a back burner. When spring was further along, there would be red and
blue flowers in a white vase on the whitewashed table. Perverse Tess
sometimes longed to bring her mother pink tulips, or something yellow,
to see if Judith could tolerate these unchosen, clashing colors.

"Forsythia," she said
out loud, and her mother looked out the bay window in the front, to the
row of ancient forsythia beginning to bud.

"I told your father to cut it back
last fall, but I think he got carried away. It looks straggly,
doesn't it?" Then, without transition, without any
change in inflection, "That car again."

A brown car, with ever-larger portions of
salmon showing through, was driving slowly down the street, the Buick
that had trailed Tess the night before.
Damn, my
car is in plain view
. But it seemed unlikely
they could have followed her today, from downtown, through the maze of
the Cotswolds and on her aimless journey. Were they keeping tabs on
everyone close to Spike?

"Again. You said, ‘That
car
again
.' Have
you seen it before?"

"It was here on Saturday, when we
got home from the hospital. It drove up and down a couple of times, so
I called the neighborhood patrol. That's one good thing about
the mayor's people moving into this neighborhood. You get
action when something is going on."

"The mayor's
people" was her mother's code for professional
blacks. Tess usually corrected Judith's euphemistic racism,
but enlightenment could wait. The Buick was pulling over, parking at
curbside.

Tess shrank back behind the kitchen island,
trying to find a place where she could watch the car through the
kitchen window without its occupants seeing her. The front passenger
door opened and, after a few seconds, a man came up the walk. A short,
chunky man in a leather blazer, with a face that defied any specific
description. It was a generic face, a clean-shaven oval beneath bushy
brown hair, dark glasses hiding the eyes.
A good
face for a criminal
, Tess thought, as the
doorbell pealed.

"Mother—" her
voice was urgent enough to stop Judith, who was bending over and
putting her shoes back on.

"He's probably selling
something," she assured Tess. "I'll send
him on his way and we'll have our tea."

"Don't let him know
I'm here."

Judith could be distressingly obstinate and
slow at times, but she picked up on Tess's tone.
"Is this something to do with your work?"

"Yes." There was no
point in letting her parents know that the unsavory side of
Spike's life was in the ascendance. "This man is
very angry with me. Don't let him in. Whatever he says,
don't let him in. I'm going to stand by the phone,
ready to call 911 if I have to. But I won't unless I
absolutely have to."

Her mother studied Tess. She was torn, Tess
knew, between lecturing her daughter on her unorthodox life and
enjoying this sense of mission between them. The bell rang again. She
walked to the door with the brisk air known to quicken the pulses and
words-per-minute of the clerk-typists in her division at the National
Security Agency. Tess crouched down by the wall phone, eavesdropping on
their conversation.

"Spike Orrick told me he was gonna
leave something for me here," the man was telling Judith.
"You know anything about that?"

"I think you must have the wrong
house," she replied. Tess could tell she tried to shut the
door on him as firmly as possible without slamming it, but her swing
ended prematurely with a dull thud. The man must have stuck his shoe
between the door and the frame.

"Maybe you better let me come in
and look."

"I don't think so. In
fact, I'm going to call the police if you don't
leave Ten Hills right this minute." This time, Tess heard a
sound she couldn't identify, followed by a quick exhalation
and a muttered curse. The door slammed shut firmly and the deadbolt
turned. As Judith marched back into the kitchen on her navy heels, Tess
lunged for the kitchen door and locked it, just in case the men tried
to come through that way. Outside, the Buick roared away from the curb.
It sounded asthmatic, the way a car does when it's going to
need a new muffler soon. Good, she'd be able to hear it
coming.

"How did you get him to
leave?" Tess asked.

"Stepped on his foot with my high
heel." Judith laughed, pleased with herself.
"He's not the first man to stick his foot in the
door. But what does this have to do with your job? That man was asking
for something from
Spike
.
Is that why you didn't want to call the police, because Spike
is mixed up in this?"

The teapot sang, momentarily sparing Tess a
reply. She poured the water over the tea bags—good old
Lipton's, nothing flavored or new-fangled for
Judith—wondering why the men would come here. Spike would
never implicate her parents in any part of his gambling operation,
given her father's job as a city liquor inspector. Yet this
was the second time they had been here in four days.

"They tried to get into
Dorothy's house on Saturday, but she didn't even
take the chain off," her mother said. "They told
her
they were looking for a dog. You know what I think? I saw something on
television about burglars who tell some story in order to get into your
house, to see what you have worth stealing. Then they back up a truck
as soon as you go to work and cart everything away."

Tess almost scalded herself with water as
she swung around, still holding onto the teapot.

"They were looking for a
dog
?"

"That was the story they used
Saturday, down at Dorothy's."

"Did they say what kind of
dog?"

"They didn't have time
to say much. Dorothy blew her police whistle in his face and slammed
the door on him."

The
greyhound—of course, they wanted the greyhound. But why? Why
would anyone want that dog under any circumstances
?

"Esskay," she said.

"You want a piece of sausage? Oh,
honey, you know your father and I don't eat those fatty foods
any more. But let me see what I have for a snack."

"I'm sorry,"
Tess said, putting her untouched mug of tea on the kitchen table.
"I have to go."

"Why?" Her mother called
after her. "What's going on?"

She searched for the only reason her mother
would accept. "I just remembered, I left my iron
on."

There was no brown-over-salmon car wheezing
down Bond Street, or waiting in the alley outside her apartment.
Inside, Esskay was in bed with Crow, napping. Tess stood over them,
watching them, feeling an odd mix of tenderness and responsibility
toward both.
I didn't ask for this
,
she thought.
I can't handle this
.

Crow's breathing was slow and
measured. The dog's inhalations were quick and sharp, her lip
curling back over her teeth, her legs moving as if she were chasing
rabbits in her dreams. Crow wrapped himself around the twitching dog,
nurturing even in his sleep. Tess took off her clothes and took her
place behind Crow, joining in their conga line. She began to fall
asleep, only to jerk awake at the sound of a car moving slowly through
the alley. She got up, looked out the window, snorted down a quick
whiff of bourbon. Back in bed, she had barely surrendered to the not
unpleasant mix of hot flesh and warm fur when the phone rang, waking
everyone entwined there.

"Hello," Crow whispered
dreamily to her, as she reached over him to pick up the phone. He
squeezed her thigh in welcome.

"Hello?" Jack
Sterling's voice came over the line, tentative and shy.

"Yeah," she said to both
men, a little groggy from being right on the edge of sleep.

"I'm sorry to call you
at home, but I admit I couldn't wait. Did you talk to Lea
Wynkowski?" Crow rolled toward her and pushed his leg between
hers, as if trying to warm himself.

"Yes, I did talk to
her," Tess said, feeling a rush of shame as she recalled her
heartless trick.

"Does she blame the paper? Does
she think we killed her husband?"

What was it about Jack Sterling that made
her want to say whatever he longed to hear? "Right now, the
only person she really seems to blame is Wink."

"Did he call her before
he…did what he did?"

She was fully awake now. "No, the
last time she talked to him was Friday. And he was in a pretty good
mood then. Said he thought the deal would still go through."
She glanced at Crow, who was looking at her expectantly, the way Esskay
sometimes stared at the kitchen table, even when there was no food on
it. "She didn't even know about the story until
Sunday night."

"I guess that's
something. Although even if she absolves us, I'm not sure I
can. Did she say anything else? Anything at all? Don't spare
my feelings, Tess."

"Nothing, really. Did I do okay?
Or does this mean I have to go back to sitting in that office six hours
a day?"