Baltimore Blues

by Laura Lippman

  Still, Tess couldn’t see a killer in that group. Whatever VOMA stood for, being a victim was the one constant. These women had built their lives around passivity and inaction.

  She could feed the story to Jonathan—support group formed around slain lawyer celebrates his death with Hawaiian Punch and homemade cupcakes—and see what happened. Although leaks and balloons were the common metaphors, Tess had always thought placing a well-timed newspaper story was like testing a griddle: Toss a few drops of water on it and see if they pop. But she didn’t want Jonathan to turn his attention back to the Abramowitz story. Besides, he wouldn’t be interested now that he was happily frying bigger fish. Perhaps she could feed this morsel to Feeney or one of the lesser mortals at the Blight.

  “She doesn’t know what you’re doing.” Crow, interjecting again. She had forgotten he was there.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She doesn’t know you work for Rock, or that you’re interested in the murder. She knows you’re not a cop, so she’s not worried about anything criminal. She thought you were checking her out for something else.”

  “How do you know so much? How do you know I’m working for Rock?” He was right, though. Cecilia had never mentioned Rock or Tyner. Tess had steered the discussion toward Abramowitz’s death, but anyone who read a newspaper might have done that. Cecilia only knew Tess wasn’t the victim she pretended to be. She hadn’t figured out who she was, or what she wanted.

  “I listen a lot. It helps when you forget I’m here—the way you did just now. The way you do all the time.”

  He smiled, pissing Tess off. It seemed as if everyone was a step ahead of her today—Feeney with his computer, Donna Collington with her long red nails, Kitty with her not-so-secret reservations about Jonathan, Cecilia with her mysterious mission. Now Crow had joined the gang. It didn’t help that he was right.

  It also irritated her to notice how fair Crow’s complexion was. His skin was blue white, like milk, which made the dreadlocks framing his face seem even darker. The skin of someone who stayed out at night, prowling.

  “Do they call you Crow after that robot on ‘Mystery Science Theater,’ or because you look like that singer from Counting Crows?” Actually he was better looking, with good cheekbones and a broad forehead. If he stopped slouching he would have six inches on Tess.

  “I was Crow long before either came along. Back in my native Virginia. If you’re nice to me I’ll tell you the story some day.”

  “Sorry, that’s too high a price to pay.” But he had gotten her to smile.

  Tess finished her shift, then spent the rest of the evening trying to call Abner Macauley’s number, a Dundalk exchange. Each time she dialed, a woman answered and refused to put Mr. Macauley on the phone unless Tess identified herself. Each time Tess refused.

  The impasse continued through the evening and into the next morning, after she had returned from rowing. Rock had been at the boat house, looking confused and distracted. The Head of the Ohio was in two days, and Tess knew from looking at him that he wasn’t even close to being ready. He didn’t look as if he could even complete the course.

  “How are you holding up?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure I am. Ava still won’t talk to me.” He looked guilty. “I know, I know—I’m not supposed to talk to her. But I don’t understand why her story changed. She tells me—tells you—one thing. Then she tells some newspaper reporter it’s all a figment of my overheated imagination. Why would she do that?”

  Because she’s a louse. “I have a hunch she had to choose between you and the law firm. Given her credit card situation, she had to go with the law firm or risk losing her job.”

  “Maybe. All I know is I’m not going to row well until this is cleared up. Tyner says I’ll be lucky to go to trial by January.”

  Rock looked so low, so discouraged, she wanted to hold out some hope. “Look, this is kind of premature, but I’m working a lead. I think I might find the guy who really killed Abramowitz, or at least someone with a good motive.”

  “Tyner didn’t say anything about that.”

  “He doesn’t know yet. Let’s keep it this way for now, OK? Just between us, I have a feeling I’m on to something.”

  “Just between us.” She tensed, waiting for the inevitable punch, another black-and-blue mark to add to the collection of marks Rock’s affection left on her. To her surprise he kissed her brow instead.

  By Friday morning Tess had still not been able to get past the hound of hell guarding Macauley’s telephone. She had to be on the right track. Then she remembered she was an investigator, not a reporter. Time to lie again. She put on a thick Baltimore accent and dialed the number, which she now knew by heart.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, could I speak to one Abner J. Macauley?”

  Her long Os and nasal tones worked like a mating call on the woman, presumably Mrs. Macauley, whose Bawlmer accent Tess could have been parodying.

  “He’s here, hon, but can I ask who’s calling and why? He don’t get around that well, you know.” No, just occasional forays downtown armed with baseball bats.

  “Oh sure,” she said. “I’m from O’Neal, O’Connor and O’Neill, and we wanted to talk to him about his settlement.”

  The woman squealed with excitement. “Oh hon, he’s taking a nap, but I know he wants to hear about that. Can you call back in a half hour?”

  “Actually we’d like to send one of our people out to talk to him in person. Could he see someone in an hour?”

  “Well, that’s during the noon news, but I guess it would be OK. You tell him just to come on out. You know the way? We’re off Holabird Avenue, past Squires, the Italian restaurant?”

  If Tess had not lived in Baltimore all her life, she would not have had a clue what the woman was saying. “Holabird” came out “hahlaburd,” while Squires was “squi-yers.” Italian, of course, was pronounced with a long “I.”

  “Sure,” she replied, almost slipping into her normal voice. “By the way, it’s a girl who’s coming out, not a gentleman. But she’s OK.”

  “OK, hon. See ya!”

  Despite Tyner’s repeated exhortations to dress like a grown-up, Tess sensed the Macauleys would be more comfortable with someone who looked as if she had gone to Catholic school with their daughter or dated their son. She paired a plaid skirt with a white blouse, then added a man’s navy vest. To do the Catholic girl bit properly, she thought, I should put on knee socks and roll my waistband up until the skirt barely covers my ass. That had been the parochial school look of her era. Instead she slipped penny loafers onto bare, tanned feet and braided her hair. Fetching, she decided, sort of like a field hockey player on her way to church.

  In her Toyota she headed east past Canton, past the quaint row houses of Greektown and Highlandtown, leaving the city limits and heading into Dundalk. On a map East Baltimore County looked promising. It sat on what should have been prime real estate, the meandering coastline of the Chesapeake Bay, with tiny points and inlets. And perhaps it was gorgeous, once upon a time, a time before Bethlehem Steel. But there was no Dundalk before Beth Steel, which had built the community in 1916 to house its workers. In the 1950s, when steel production was at its height, red dust from the mills had fallen steadily over the community, sifting over everything. Cars, clothing on lines, the rooftops and windowsills. They called it “gold dust” and were grateful for it, because it meant the shipyards were busy and jobs plentiful.

  There was still gold in Dundalk, but not so much for those who lived there as for the men who represented them in court. Few households had been spared asbestosis or one of the other degenerative diseases associated with the onetime wonder fiber. One lawyer alone had built an empire on asbestos, earning more than $250 million in a single class action suit. Now he owned the Orioles. Some of the widows of Dundalk were doing pretty well, too, but none had a sports franchise, not yet.

  But, as Mr. Miles had, Tess wondered why Mr. Macauley was so focused on money. Technicall
y he was one of the lucky ones. There were thousands of men throughout Baltimore who had been diagnosed with asbestosis, or the related cancer, mesothelioma. Asbestosis—white lung—was said to be a particularly horrible way to die. The lungs collapsed slowly, until you felt as if you were suffocating. And it wasn’t enough to prove asbestos had done it. You had to know which brand of asbestos was poisoning you if you wanted to collect.

  Yet Abner Macauley had won in court, one of eleven plaintiffs in the last of the preconsolidation trials. He was due $850,000, and he had won it before he died. The other rewards ranged from $900,000 to $2.1 million, according to the clip Feeney had found, for a total of $15 million. How had the jury decided the costs of eleven men’s lives? Macauley had worked a relatively short amount of time—a mere eight months during World War II—and had been able to show he was never exposed again. Someone who could enjoy the money should get more, Tess decided, not less. The scale of suffering seemed inverted to her.

  The Macauley house, off Holabird Avenue as promised, was a hideous 1950s-era ranch, a sprawling structure of brick and sea green trim that looked as if it had crawled out of the bay and died on this lot.

  Small yappy dogs threw themselves at the Macauleys’ storm door when Tess rang the bell. They didn’t seem particularly vicious, but she wouldn’t have turned her back on them. After almost two minutes, which seemed longer with dogs panting and snarling, a short, chubby woman came to the door. She wore cherry red pants, a red and white striped jersey, and toilet paper rolls in her tinted strawberry blond hair. Tess knew the look. It was one of the favorite local methods for preserving a salon-made beehive.

  “You must be the girl!” the woman said cheerfully. “Just let me get this last bit of paper off my hair. One of those mornings, I guess you know.”

  “Sure,” Tess said, feeling agreeable now that she was on the threshold of an important discovery. On the drive over she had convinced herself Macauley had to be involved in Abramowitz’s death. She hadn’t figured out the details, but her intuition was practically buzzing.

  Inside, the house was early Graceland, decorated with ceramic monkeys and kittens. Mrs. Macauley led her to the family room at the end of a long dark corridor. Here, two recliners sat side by side, facing an old-fashioned console television whose color had taken on a distinct lime tint. TV trays stood in front of both chairs, and two hot microwave dinners waited next to sweating cans of National Bohemian. It was how the O’Neals might have lived if their fortune had been a hundredfold less.

  “We always eat lunch in here,” said the woman, presumably Mrs. Macauley, although she had never introduced herself. “Abner loves his programs.”

  “Where is Mr. Macauley?”

  “He’ll be out directly,” Mrs. Macauley said, eyes fixed on the television screen. Her beehive, now unwrapped, was remarkable, a towering structure whipped from hair normally as thin and runny as egg whites. It wasn’t a look to which Tess aspired, but she admired its defiance of nature and gravity.

  She stared at a door at the end of the corridor, eager to lock eyes with Macauley. In her imagination everything would be revealed in a glance. Her only fear was that her earnest face would inspire an inadmissible confession on the spot.

  Finally a door swung open and Macauley stepped out, dragging a reluctant animal on a thin, pale yellow leash. She saw him give the leash a yank, swearing under his breath. A sadist, she thought with some satisfaction as he started down the hall, practically dragging the poor animal.

  He moved deliberately, with the measured tread of someone quite sure of himself, a hideous yellowish smile frozen on his face. As Tess’s eyes began to adjust to the dim light, she realized he didn’t have a pet with him, but something on wheels. Squinting into the dark hallway, she saw the yellow leash was a tube, leading to some contraption at his feet.

  “Sweet Jesus Christ,” she said under her breath.

  What she had taken for a grotesque smile was a breathing tube stretched across his face. The “pet” was his portable oxygen tank. Macauley came down the corridor as slowly as a debutante bride moving across rose petals at the cathedral. And when he finally arrived in the family room, Tess was the one ready to burst into tears, equal parts frustration and pity.

  “I’ve only been on the tank a month or so,” he said by way of introduction. “Takes some getting used to.”

  “Certainly,” Tess said, bobbing her head in inane affirmation. She was still trying to reconcile this frail old man with the wrathful monster she had imagined.

  “Vonnie says you have news of my check.” Each syllable was breathy and measured, a sibilant wheeze. “I was glad to hear of it. I had begun to think I might not live long enough to see my money.”

  “Yes, the check.” She was mesmerized by his face and the tube, staring like a little kid who didn’t know any better. “Of course. I’m afraid…it’s not good news. You see, Michael Abramowitz’s death has only complicated things.”

  Mr. Macauley flushed, but it was an anemic, blue-tinted rush of blood to his face, so he looked more as if he were choking. In his disappointment he couldn’t form any words at all, only a faint hiss.

  “Abner! Abner!” Mrs. Macauley cried, looking up from the television, and Tess remembered how Donna Collington and the judge had laughed over her cries in the courtroom. “Control your breaths! Remember, the doctor says you have to control your breaths.”

  He waved his hand in front of his face, miming he was fine. It was several seconds before he spoke again.

  “I don’t understand. I read in the paper how some of the others, the ones in the consolidated trial, got their settlements, and they came after me.”

  “It’s a different case. The consolidated trial isn’t being appealed, I guess. Truthfully it’s all a little over my head. I’m basically an…errand girl for the firm.”

  “We won two years ago. At first I said, I just want my check before I have to use an inhaler between sentences.” He paused for a breath. “And then I said, well, as long as I get it before I have to cart my oxygen tank, that’s OK, too. We could go somewhere, I thought, take a little trip. Now—” He paused, waiting for his breath to replenish itself. “Now all I can say is maybe before I’m bedridden. Maybe before I die.”

  “It’s a bum deal,” Tess blurted out. “I’m sorry.”

  “What’s $850,000 anyway? Money that big isn’t even real. We don’t have any children. The lawyer takes his cut, and it’s $600,000. It’s so much money, more than we ever had, and it doesn’t mean nothing. Just a number someone put on me.” He paused for breath again. “They plugged it into a formula, you know. It’s nice to be worth $850,000, on paper. But until I see the check, I won’t believe it. They think they can keep from paying me, you see, because they think I’m not important.”

  “Is that why you went to the office with the Louisville Slugger? Because you saw other asbestos victims were getting their checks?”

  He smiled shyly, proud of himself. “The newspaper got that wrong. It got a lot wrong. For one thing it was an Adirondack, a black bat. I got it right here.” Sure enough, there was a black bat leaning against his recliner. “And the other thing the newspaper didn’t get was the part about my gun.”

  “You had a gun?”

  “Sure did. Nice little Colt, .38 caliber. Kept it for protection. I put that gun in my pocket and made Vonnie drive me downtown—she hemmed and hawed, but she finally did it—and I told that punk security guard to let me up without announcing me.”

  “And he did it?”

  “After I gave him twenty dollars, he did.”

  “Blond kid? Lots of wrist watches?”

  “Yep.” Interesting detail about Joey—it didn’t cost so much for him to forget he ever met Miltie and his Minutemen. She’d have to remember to tell Tyner.

  “So I went up. I had never seen this Abramowitz—he wasn’t with the firm during my trial. Even after they hired him and put him in charge of the asbestos cases, I could never get him on the phone.
I just got some youngster.”

  “Ava Hill?”

  “No, Larry Chambers, same guy who handled the case in court. Smooth. Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.”

  “So you go upstairs,” she prompted, trying to get him back on track.

  “So I go upstairs. The lawyer, he’s sitting at his big desk, looking out the window at the water. No work in front of him, nothing going on. Just staring out the window, hands folded, like a kid waiting to be dismissed from school. I pointed my gun at him, told him someone should kill him for what he had done.”

  “Was he scared?”

  “No. He smiled, I mean really smiled, like I was his buddy. Then he said: ‘How right you are.’ A real smart ass, which pissed me off. So I went for him. But I couldn’t catch my breath, and he—well, he kinda hugged me, held on to me like a little boy. Then he took my gun away and called the police.”

  “So he just made up everything else—the Louisville Slugger, you running around the desk?”

  “And he kept my gun. He said it was for my own good, it being illegal to carry a revolver, even if it was registered. Which was true—I’d have been in a lot more trouble if they’d known about that. Him dropping the charges wouldn’t have made any differences.”

  “I didn’t have the impression Michael Abramowitz was someone who did things to be nice.”

  “Maybe he wanted my gun for a reason. Maybe he knew that young fella was coming for him.”

  Tess didn’t bother to defend Rock to Mr. Macauley. He thought she worked for the Triple O. It might have been unseemly if she made excuses for the man accused of killing her putative boss.

  But she was tantalized by the thought of that gun. Did Abramowitz fear someone else? Did he suspect it was only a matter of time before that person came for him? If he had hidden it well, the gun might still be there, and its existence could be used to prove Abramowitz had felt threatened long before Rock could be considered a suspect.

  “So when do you think I’ll get my check, young lady?” Mr. Macauley asked. His wife looked up hopefully.