Baltimore Blues

by Laura Lippman

  Tess weighed her options. She could lie, tell them what they wanted to hear, only to have them weather another disappointment eventually. She could come clean and admit she had nothing to do with the check. Or she could choose a middle path—telling them it was unlikely while not confessing her own masquerade.

  “Soon,” she said emphatically. “I have a good feeling about it.” And she got up to leave, hoping she had given them just one afternoon in which they didn’t need to think about $850,000 and the days clicking by faster than the tenth-of-a-mile marks on a taxi meter. If Mr. Macauley had a year to live, each day was worth at least $1,700, she calculated, even after attorney’s fees. It was the most expensive gift she had ever given someone.

  Mrs. Macauley walked her to the door.

  “Miss?”

  “Monaghan. Tess Monaghan.”

  “If they find Abner’s gun, will they send it back to us?”

  “They might.” After the trial.

  “Maybe that’s not such a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, hon, if we still had that gun, I’d probably use it on Abner one night, then do myself and the dogs. Abner wants the money because he needs proof he won. It’s a trophy to him. But they can’t pay me enough to sit here and watch my husband die.”

  Chapter 20

  By the time Tess returned to Women and Children First, she knew she had to find out if Abner Macauley’s gun was still in Abramowitz’s office. It wasn’t much, but it could give Tyner something else to play with. They needed every toy they could find at this point.

  She waited until 4:55 to call the Triple O. Seamon P. O’Neal was true to his word: The request to visit Abramowitz’s office was rejected—through an intermediary, of course. Fine. Tess considered the refusal an invitation to get what she wanted by any means, fair or foul. Not that she had told them why she wanted to look around. It had been risky to call at all: O’Neal might order a sweep of the office and dispose of anything out of the ordinary. That’s why she had called just before 5 P.M. on a Friday. It gave her the entire weekend. To do what, however?

  Kitty refused to brainstorm with her. “It gets complicated,” she said, “dating a cop.” But Crow was all too willing a coconspirator.

  “Disguise yourself as a janitor,” he suggested. “No—a courier. Put on bike shorts, a helmet, the whole uniform. Maybe the guard will be confused enough to let you up.”

  “The guard knows me, unfortunately. Even if he didn’t, a courier wouldn’t necessarily get upstairs,” she said, thinking about Joey Dumbarton, the earnest security guard who never let anyone by him unless the person signed the sheet or slipped him a twenty dollar bill. Then again Joey might regard her as a quasi-official, deserving of certain privileges. If she played it right he would wave her up. Then, the gun found, she would leave it in its hiding place and call Tyner, who could get a court order to search the office. Or something—she was a little fuzzy on the legal issues here. The hardest part would be explaining her scheme to Tyner after the fact.

  “You need backup,” Crow announced. “I should come with you.”

  “It’s a borderline felony, and Tyner’s not going to bail your ass out of jail if we get caught. I’ll be lucky if he bails me out.”

  “You need a lookout, someone to keep watch while you’re rifling through things,” he said with the conviction of someone who had watched too many detective shows. “Be bold. It’s the only way.”

  In some circumstances this might have seemed a straightforward if slightly stilted statement. But something in Crow’s tone—an arch, self-mocking tone—caught Tess’s ear.

  “Say that again.”

  He grinned. This time his treatment was even campier. “Be bold. It’s the only way.”

  “Double Indemnity. Insurance salesman Walter Neff says that to Phyllis Nirdlinger when they’re planning to kill her husband—”

  “She wants to do it in a bathtub, but he tells her it’s a bum idea. He tells her everyone thinks the bathtub is the way to go—since some insurance adjuster put out a newsletter saying most accidents happen there. Which is funny because…”

  “A bathtub accident was the plan Cora and Tom first hatched in The Postman Always Rings Twice.”

  “Exactly. I never thought anyone else noticed that.”

  She stared at Crow. A James M. Cain fan. And not just any Cain fan, one who could quote him.

  “Have you read all his books? What’s your favorite?”

  “Double Indemnity.”

  “I have a soft spot for Mildred Pierce. The working girl trying to make something out of herself.”

  “‘In Glenwood, California, a man was trimming trees,’” Crow recited.

  “What did you do, learn it all by heart?”

  “I have a photographic memory of sorts. After I read something twenty or thirty times, I remember it. So can I go? No one in a Cain novel ever tried to pull something by themselves.”

  “No one in a Cain novel ever got away with anything, either,” she reminded him sourly. “But I guess you know what you’re getting into. Meet me back here about ten tomorrow night. We’ll just have to hope even the most ambitious young lawyers take Saturday night off.”

  The truth was, if Crow hadn’t been so impossibly gung ho, she would have been tempted to blow it off. Perhaps it was better to do what Tyner told her to do, and nothing more. Well, this would be her last burst of initiative.

  On Saturday night Tess donned her version of work clothes: Blazer, jeans, plain white shirt, loafers. Crow, however, seemed to think he was in a spy film. He had on a black turtleneck, black jeans, a black cap pulled down over his black and green hair, even black gloves. Everything but coal smudged on his face. He carried a large flashlight and looked enormously pleased with himself.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “This is kind of like our first date.”

  “Are you settling for me since Kitty is taken? I should mention I’m not partial to green highlights.”

  “It wouldn’t be settling,” Crow said. “And I can make my hair whatever color you like.”

  “Great, we’ll get some Lady Clairol later. Let’s get going and get this over with.”

  They took Crow’s car, which Tess had assumed, with some dread, would be on a par with his art school hair and personality. Original. Dangerous. Slightly annoying.

  Instead it was a Volvo station wagon, a late model with private school decals and a state-of-the-art stereo system that almost blasted her into the back seat when he turned the key in the ignition.

  “Demo tape,” Crow explained. “I have my own band. Po’ White Trash.”

  “I guess I should have seen that coming.” Then again, my perceptive powers haven’t been 100 percent lately.

  “I suppose you listen to opera,” Crow said. “Cain did.”

  “Crow, I like reading Cain. I don’t want to be him. I’m a word person. I like old songwriters—Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern—because of the lyrics. I like Bob Dylan and those folksy, waifish bands on ’HFS. Stephen Sondheim is as close as I get to opera.”

  “He writes for gay men,” Crow said matter-of-factly.

  “I thought colleges today gave demerits for remarks like that. Who cares if musical theater appeals to gay men? They have the best taste of anyone; that part of the stereotype is true. And don’t gay men like opera, too?”

  “I have a theory about this. Gay men like things in code, and maybe that’s justified, given they historically have been forced to live in hiding. They like musicals because they’re camp. They like Sondheim because so much is hidden in his lyrics. So a Sondheim musical is for people who like hidden meanings and thick layers.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “In opera, if you don’t know the language, you have to listen to the music. You have to leave words and cleverness behind. Cleverness is the last refuge for smart people. That’s your problem, Tess. You’re too clever. You’re listening to the words instead of the m
usic.”

  “Is there something wrong with cleverness?” Tess asked sharply, uncomfortable with Crow’s attitude. He was suppose to be her Sancho, servile and worshipful, not a hectoring Henry Higgins. “We’re about to embark on a potential felony in which cleverness will be our only protection.”

  “If you say so.”

  They parked on a side street to the west of the Lambrecht Building. There was no home game tonight and, once one got past the Inner Harbor, downtown had its usual ghost town feel. There are a lot of things one can do to make a city look good, and Baltimore had done it all. But they couldn’t put its heart back. Downtown was hollow at night.

  Joey Dumbarton was at the guard station, beating on the desk to whatever head banger tune ran through his headphones, played at a volume loud enough to make normal ears bleed. At night, under fluorescent light, he was exceptionally pale, like one of those white catfish living deep in an Arkansas cavern. Evolution and history had passed him by. A generation ago he might have been a steelworker, making good wages with his high school education, set for life. Now he was a minimum wage rent-a-cop. At least he didn’t have to worry about asbestos or environmental hazards. If he was lucky he’d get shot in the leg before he was thirty and retire on workman’s comp.

  Tess whipped out her driver’s license, flashing it past him as if it were a badge. “Remember me, Joey? I need to go upstairs, check out Abramowitz’s office. You can let me in, right?”

  “That’s against regulations.”

  “Honestly, Joey. You know I’m a private investigator working for a lawyer. What’s the big deal? We’re only looking for something the cops might have overlooked.”

  “I could get in trouble,” he said, a dent appearing above his nose, a sign of deep thought.

  “Hey, I’m going to sign in. So is my buddy here.” Crow gave Joey his most dazzling grin. “And we’re going to sign out. What I’m not going to do is give you a twenty dollar bill, the way some visitors do.”

  Joey may have been dim, but he knew a threat when he heard one.

  “I only did that a few times. And I didn’t do it the night you’re worried about, I can tell you that.”

  She didn’t say anything, just kept staring at him.

  “OK, OK. I’ll let you up.”

  To her surprise Joey left the front desk empty as he took them up to the Triple O offices. Certainly this was not in the Minutemen manual, either. Something else to tell Tyner.

  The Triple O offices were dark and empty, as Tess had hoped. Joey let them in, then lingered, as if he intended to supervise.

  “If we pull the door to when we leave, will it lock?” Tess asked.

  “Oh, sure. Yeah. Just pull the door to.” And Joey headed back to his desk and his Walkman.

  Once he was gone Crow took his post by the receptionist’s desk and Tess let herself into Abramowitz’s office. The police tape was long gone, as were any stains left behind by his demise. But no one had rushed to claim the office, despite its panoramic view and lush appointments. Apparently lawyers were a superstitious lot.

  She went to the obvious places first. In Tess’s experience people weren’t creative when it came to hiding things. Certainly she wasn’t. If the cops ever raided her apartment, it wouldn’t take more than five minutes to find the box of marijuana under the bed. Burglars would need less time to find the coffee can in the freezer, where she kept a few pieces of good jewelry and loose bills. She pulled open desk drawers, searched behind the legal books. Nothing. If the police had found the gun, it should be on an evidence list. If the Triple O had done its own sweep, for whatever reason, there would be no gun. Or could Abramowitz have taken it home?

  She was trying to jimmy open a file drawer with a Swiss Army knife, without much success, when she heard Crow’s voice in the hallway. “Hello there, sir. May I help you, sir? Sir? Sir?” She crouched under the desk and listened to footsteps drawing closer.

  “Can I help you, sir?” Crow’s voice, insistent and panicked.

  “I don’t think so, young man,” a familiar voice said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here at all.”

  Tess peered around the desk. Crow was in the doorway, trying to keep the custodian, Frank Miles, from entering the office. The weekend custodian. Their visit coincided perfectly with his shift. Sighing, Tess crawled out.

  “Hey, Mr. Miles. I’m just looking for some things that might be relevant to the case.”

  He looked at her knowingly. Not suspiciously or meanly. Just knowingly. “Then why do you have to come sneaking around at night?”

  “Mr. O’Neal isn’t kindly disposed to my boss or his client these days.”

  Mr. Miles continued to take her measure, sober and thoughtful. It was the kind of face you saw when you tried to sneak in past curfew, Tess thought—wise, beyond bullshit. He may never have been a father, but his years as a custodian in the school system apparently had taught him everything he needed to know about a young person’s cunning. Tess knew he wasn’t fooled, that he was deciding whether to throw them out or call the cops.

  “We won’t be long,” she promised. “It’s not our fault we had to sneak in. Frankly Mr. O’Neal’s being a prick, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  He smiled at that. “Have it your way. But I don’t know what you expect to find. I cleaned that carpet myself after the police were through. I guess you just had to see for yourself. You really are conscientious, Miss Monaghan.”

  He pushed his cart down the long hall to an office in the southwest corner. Tess realized he was making a point of trusting them, of not watching them too closely.

  “Cool guy,” Crow breathed. “I love his voice.”

  Now that Mr. Miles had given his tacit consent, Crow helped Tess go over the room one more time. It was an impersonal room, without a trace of Abramowitz in it. She had expected he would be the type to put his clippings on display, matted and framed. Or, failing that, some silly, in-your-face piece of art, a raucous poster or obscene sculpture. There was nothing to suggest Abramowitz had ever been here. Even the calendar on his desk was snowy white, devoid of appointments. She noticed it was still on April, almost six months behind. She ran her hands over the paper, marveling at its virgin state. There were no indentations, no sign that the previous months had been any less pure. But something at the center felt odd. Puzzled, she pressed down again. It wasn’t her imagination; there was a thin, square shape in the middle. Flipping the calendar over, she found a computer disk taped to the inside of the cardboard backing.

  “Got something,” she said to Crow. “What kind of computer does he have here?”

  “Macintosh, a really powerful one.”

  “Good, it’s compatible with mine, as long as he uses the same word processing software.” She pocketed it. “I guess this is it.”

  “The files?” Crow asked.

  “Locked. I was trying to get into them when you and Mr. Miles showed up. I don’t have much experience at breaking locks.”

  Crow looked at the filing cabinet with great concentration. Then he kicked it as hard as he could. Nothing happened, except that he fell over backward in pain, holding his foot.

  “Did you check his desk drawer for a key?” he asked after several seconds, when he started breathing normally again.

  Tess slid out the center drawer and immediately saw a key glinting among the pens. They unlocked the first bank of files. This was tricky territory. Lawyers’ files are private, and random pawing could affect cases. But Abramowitz’s files were as empty as his calendar. Legal-size folders sat, waiting for labels and files. Nothing more. The other drawers didn’t even have folders in them. Finally, in the bottom drawer, they found a few mouse droppings.

  “I guess the floppy is going to be our only souvenir from this trip,” Tess said, patting her pocket.

  “What about the gun?” Crow asked.

  “If it’s here, it’s too well hidden. Or maybe it’s in his house. Still, we’ll always have Macauley’s deposition
about what happened. That might help.”

  “Won’t he testify when the time comes?”

  “When the time comes Macauley may not be alive.”

  Mr. Miles watched them leave. “Did you get what you came for, Miss Monaghan?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “We found something, but it wasn’t what we were looking for. I’m not sure what we found.”

  In the car, as Crow’s voice assaulted her in stereo, she expected to feel depressed. They had failed. They had not found the gun. The legal status of the diskette in her pocket was dubious at best, its utility unknown.

  But they had gotten in. She felt a buzz of pleasure from that fact alone.

  “C’mon,” Tess said. “I’ll buy you a drink, as long as you order something that doesn’t embarrass me. No girlie drinks.”

  “Sexist. What’s a girlie drink?”

  “Anything made in a blender, except a frozen margarita.”

  She directed him to one of her favorite bars, Frigo’s, a neighborhood place that could not, despite the best efforts of five subsequent owners, be stripped of everything that made it pleasant and interesting. After five renovations, which included the addition of a Formstone exterior and a rickety deck, Frigo’s, on the boundary between Fells Point and Little Italy, still had a tin-pressed ceiling, gleaming wood floors, and a mahogany bar.

  More importantly it had one dollar drafts and a metal rack of Utz potato chips, which provided Crow and Tess with a three-course supper: barbecue, sour cream and onion, and, for dessert, crab flavored. The meal went surprisingly well with bourbon and water, Tess’s drink of choice that night and, inevitably, Crow’s. She suspected if she chose to dive into the harbor fully clothed, or announced a little bank job as their next assignment, Crow would have followed her without batting a thick black eyelash.

  It was as if he had slipped his heart into her purse while she wasn’t looking, so complete was the transference of his affection. Now Tess had the peripatetic, panicky feeling you have when guarding something special to someone else but of no particular value to you. She assumed she was safeguarding it only temporarily. Any day, any moment, he would want it back, undamaged, to hand to someone else.