Charm City

by Laura Lippman

  “As long as I’m walking against the traffic, I should be okay,” she told herself, speaking out loud from nervousness. She started up St. Paul, and although she walked quickly, she hadn’t covered an entire block before the same car—an old Buick, she saw now—passed her again. She looked for a license plate, but there wasn’t one, not on the front, and the back plate was thick with mud.

  Tess stopped for a moment to think. She’d never make it to her car, not along these increasingly desolate blocks north of downtown. She could disappear into the Tremont Hotel just ahead, or turn around and go south, vanishing into the shops at the Gallery or Harborplace. Even on a Monday night, the restaurants would be busy enough to offer her some protection while she waited for Crow, or a taxi. But she had to be sure it was the same men. There had to be a way to confront them without putting herself at risk.

  To the east, City Hall’s gold dome shone in the misty dusk, all the inspiration she needed. She checked her wallet. Forty dollars in small bills. Should be enough. She sprinted for South Street, but not so quickly that her friends in the brown-and-salmon-mobile couldn’t see her.

  Because of the parking problem in downtown Baltimore, an underground economy of de facto valets had taken hold in the more congested areas near City Hall and the district court building. Homeless men earned money by feeding parking meters for people who “tipped” them. Even if one didn’t plan to stay beyond the meter’s time limits, it was smart to offer a dollar or two, if only to protect one’s car against the men offering protection. Tess, who had patronized these attendants while on various errands for Tyner, knew they scorned the local shelters, preferring to sleep near their place of business. They should be settling down for the evening just about now, having scored some sandwiches from the nearby missions. The trick was getting them to emerge from the cubbyholes and doorways where they slept.

  “Anybody want to make a few bucks?” she called. “Easiest five dollars you’ll ever make in your life!” She heard a rustling noise, then three men appeared out of the shadows. Three large men, she noted happily. She pulled out her wallet, showed them the cash, then slipped the wallet back into her knapsack.

  “All you have to do is stand around me and look mean. Think you can do that?” The three nodded, unfazed by the strange request. They huddled close to her and Tess caught the bitter scent of sweat dried on old wool, the too-sweet grape of bad wine.

  “You do something wrong?” asked one man, a white man who was brown all over—brown hair, brown clothes, brown eyes, skin the color of a pecan from what must be years of living outdoors.

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  Within a few minutes, the brown-over-salmon car turned onto South Street, stopping short of where Tess stood. Even without a valid license plate, it would be an easy car to recognize. The windows were one-way mirrors, the job done so cheaply that strips of the reflective material were already peeling away. The paint job was new but cheap, a flat shade of dung-brown. The fenders were pitted with dents and scrapes, one headlight was cracked, and the muffler appeared to be loose. But these guys had a habit of changing cars—first a bright blue AMC Hornet, now this Buick. Or was the Hornet the first car, after all? She suddenly remembered the high beams of a car behind her on Franklintown Road, the car she had lost by running a red light the night she had acquired Esskay. The night Spike had been beaten.

  The front passenger window rolled down slowly and a familiar pair of oversize sunglasses studied Tess. The concerned friend of Joe Johnson, the one who had wanted to give her a lift the other day. Then the rear passenger door opened, creaking horribly.

  “Miss Monaghan?” The voice, thin and reedy, came from the backseat. Tess did not reply.

  “It is Miss Monaghan, isn’t it? Spike Orrick’s niece? He has always spoken so highly of you. We saw him just the other day.”

  “Did you go see him when you visited your pal Joe?”

  “For various reasons, we didn’t have a chance to stop in and visit. But we did see Spike before he went into the hospital.” A low, rusty chuckle. “Just before.”

  Her paid protectors drew closer, as if they understood the threat implicit in this exchange. Or perhaps they wanted to be sure to grab her knapsack if someone bolted from the car and dragged her away. In the space between the door and the car, Tess could see a leg, a beefy one in tight black denim. A brown leather jacket, styled like a blazer, hung over the jeans. But she couldn’t see any faces. Somewhere deep inside the car, a small dog yapped.

  “Hush, Charlton,” the reedy voice admonished indulgently. The voice was colder, steelier, when it addressed her again. “Miss Monaghan, your uncle has something that belongs to a friend of ours. It has no real monetary value, but it is his, and he wants it back. Do you know where we could find this…item?”

  Tess shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Are you sure?”

  One of the homeless men, the nut-brown man, stepped forward. “She said no. Isn’t that good enough?” There was just enough light to catch the short blade clenched in his right hand.

  The man in the front passenger smiled and held up a gun. Paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, gun beats knife, Tess thought. But the rear car door slammed shut and the old Buick took off, accelerating so quickly it bounced off one curb and then the other. Her bodyguards stayed close to her until the car disappeared, and Tess was touched, until she remembered she owed them money. She doled out five dollars to each. The first two said nothing, but the third one, the one with the knife, was curious.

  “You owe them money?”

  “I don’t, but my uncle might. He’s a bookie.”

  “That’s a bad business. Stay away from that.” With those words of advice the brown man was gone, melting into the dusk. A taxi pulled up as he vanished, and Tess, who had already spent fifteen dollars on her trip home, decided to spend another five dollars to reach her car. Shifting her weight to avoid the bad springs in the cab’s backseat, she thought of how Spike had always kept the family at arm’s length from what he called “my little sideline.” Until now, she had assumed he was being dramatic, indulging his proclivity for mystery and secrets. Until now.

  Chapter 13

  “Reminder: when you want to destroy files, simply hit Command X. When private files are transferred to the Trash directory, it is recommended you erase them first, for the Trash directory can be ACCESSED BY ALL USERS. Many reporters and editors forget to delete their files, allowing prying eyes to skim them. Remember, each department—Metro, Features, Sports, etc.—has its own Trash directory. D. Starnes.”

  Puzzled, Tess stared at the computer screen. It was Tuesday, about 11 A.M., and she had just started her day at the Beacon-Light, after checking in with Colleen’s secretary, as required. Funny, she had expected Colleen to have a male secretary, an unctuous himbo guarding her office, but the secretary was a pleasant moon-faced matron, who put a little smiley face next to Tess’s name, along with a notation of the time—to the minute.

  In her office, Tess had turned on the computer thinking she might fill her daily sentence of six hours by exchanging e-mail with Whitney, or reading the wires, only to see this message pop up. It was phrased as if it were a directive to all users, yet she knew enough about the system to realize the message was addressed only to her. Strange. Dorie wanted her to find something, but didn’t want to make it too easy, or appear to be doing her any special favors.

  With a quick glance at the cheat sheet posted next to the keyboard, Tess typed in the command instructing the computer to call up all items in “Trash Metro.” The computer obliged, quickly and silently, and Tess soon found herself sifting through the electronic equivalents of cigarette butts, half-empty coffee cups, and tissues with lipstick traces. Here were memos as dull and plodding as any corporation’s. Here were reporters’ ill-crafted leads, the false starts they would have crumpled and tossed across the room in the typewriter era. Here were notes from tele
phone interviews. “Sez city mayor No can do/Constinal ish big. Pres. no agree. Wld req ref. More stdy requrd.” Good fodder for a libel trial, Tess thought. It was doubtful the writer could reliably decode this Tarzanese. Fortunately, the notes would soon disappear: whatever was dumped in the trash expired in twenty-four hours.

  Moving from Metro Trash to Features Trash and Sports Trash, then back to Metro Trash, Tess found daily staffing reports from each department’s executive secretary and a log of overtime requests. Anyone filing for more than ten hours per week was flagged and expected to provide an explanation for daring to request what the contract guaranteed. Rosita, who had filed for twelve hours of overtime in the last pay period, had written an obsequious little note to Colleen, with copies to Mabry and Sterling, reminding them that the Wynkowski story was the reason.

  “Now that the story has appeared, I’m sure you can appreciate how much time it took. I would never take advantage of your generosity. In fact, I worked almost 20 hours of overtime, but deferred the rest to comp time.”

  Tess thought she detected a lot of attitude in that one word, “Now.” Feeney had filed for eighteen hours of overtime without bothering to defend himself in writing. That, too, was in character.

  Why would any reporter, especially a cagey type like Rosita, allow her craven brown-nosing to be on display? Tess couldn’t be the first pair of “prying eyes” to pass through these directories. She checked the history field, the way Dorie had shown her. Of course: reporters created the files, but the editors dumped them. And the editors weren’t concerned about safeguarding anyone’s privacy except their own. Reganhart, in particular, never erased reporters’ notes before trashing them, while Sterling was erratic. Only Lionel Mabry, who had seemed so vague and out of it, scrupulously expunged everything he discarded.

  Digging deeper into the electronic trash, Tess found yesterday’s news budget, which included ongoing projects at the bottom. Reporters assigned to the Wink story were to keep checking with county police, on the off chance the death would be classified as an accident or homicide when the toxicology reports came back from the medical examiner. The budget also indicated at least five other reporters had been deployed in case Wink had even nastier skeletons in his closet. So far, they had come up empty. Meanwhile, Feeney was responsible for tracking the basketball deal, which was expected to unravel unless Paul Tucci could find more backers, but there had been no developments on that front, either.

  In fact, the only Wink-related story in today’s editions was a thin piece on his wake by Rosita. As published, the piece had been flat and unremarkable. The original, sent to the trash by Reganhart, was inappropriately vicious, the kind of piece in which the writer mistook mere bitchery for wit. Tess was particularly struck by the description of Wink’s high school basketball team members in “green-and-gold letter jackets that would never button again, not in this lifetime.” At least Reganhart, whatever her weaknesses, understood how disastrous this would have been. Death demanded reverence not only for the deceased, but for his mourners.

  “So what’s moving on the wires this morning?”

  Startled, Tess jumped and banged her right knee hard on the lap drawer of the old metal desk, which caused her to swear under her breath. Jack Sterling was leaning against the door jamb, hands in his pockets, shirt sleeves rolled up. A solid blue shirt today, which made his eyes almost too blue.

  “Not much,” she lied automatically. Even if she wasn’t actually hacking, she didn’t want to admit she was digging through the Blight’s electronic trash. “Spring training stories.”

  “In March, it’s hard to believe Opening Day will ever come. In August, when you’re a Cubs fan like myself, you sometimes wish it never had.”

  As Tess casually cleared her screen of any incriminating files, Sterling came in and sat on a corner of the desk, inches from her right elbow.

  “Do you like baseball, Tess?”

  “I watch the World Series. Want to know my deepest, darkest secret?”

  “I’m a journalist. I live to know secrets.”

  “I don’t even know where the Orioles finish, most years.”

  He laughed, a sound so spontaneous and generous that Tess wished she could find other secrets to confide in him. I didn’t report all my income on my taxes last year. I think you’re cute. I’ve been known to be something of a round-heels under the right circumstances.

  “Let me ask you something, Tess.”

  Yes.

  “Did anything bother you about the first Wynkowski story? The, um, unofficial one?”

  She knew she was suppose to say she had been bothered, and she hated to disappoint him. But what had been wrong? She wracked her brain.

  “I know there were a lot of anonymous sources. Then again, you let the guy in Georgia cloak his identity, too.”

  “At least I know who he is this time, and what his motivation is. I don’t know anything about the sources in the first story. I’ve got a bad feeling in my gut about this whole thing. What about you? What do your instincts tell you, Tess?”

  It was an uncomfortable question for Tess, who had once watched as her best instincts had collapsed against the backdrop of three separate deaths. But it was foolhardy to tell the unvarnished truth to an employer, and Jack Sterling was still just that: her employer.

  She settled for a partial truth. “My gut tends to be opinionated, so it’s not infallible.”

  Her stomach picked this exact moment to groan with hunger. Tess wanted to crawl under the desk, or find some graceful way to inform Sterling she did not normally make such noises.

  “Running on empty? Let me treat you to lunch at Marconi’s.” Tess grinned at him the same way Esskay the greyhound grinned at any offering of food.

  They walked down Saratoga Street to the restaurant. It was a little cool, but the sun was out and the sky clear. A few brave crocuses peeked out among the stunted trees planted along the sidewalks. A horrible tease, Tess knew. Did spring have an equivalent term for Indian summer, a way to describe these March flirtations with nice weather?

  “We’ll probably have another snowstorm before the month is out,” she said. How lame could she be, falling back on the weather to make conversation? She should have said something about politics, or today’s front page. But that would have involved actually reading the front page. She had been having far too much fun wallowing in the electronic trash heap.

  “Baltimore is lovely in the snow,” Sterling said, “even if Baltimoreans aren’t.”

  “Are you going to go into that usual out-of-towner rap, about how we can’t drive in it, and we all act like idiots, rushing to the store for supplies?”

  “It’s the nature of the supplies I’ve never understood. Bread, milk, and toilet paper, hon.” Sterling did a decent Baltimore accent for a newcomer. “The holy trinity of Baltimore life. Can you explain it, hometown girl?”

  “My parents always say it goes back to the Blizzard of ’66, which seemed to come out of nowhere,” Tess said, as they climbed the marble steps outside Marconi’s. “Milk for the kids, bread for sandwiches. And I think the toilet paper was for women to wrap their beehives.”

  Good, she had made him laugh again. “And now people run to the Giant or the SuperFresh near Television Hill so they can be sure of making the evening news.”

  “Hey, don’t knock it. Being identified as a ‘panicky snow shopper’ is how most locals earn their fifteen minutes of fame.”

  “Funny, how that phrase has been perverted over the years,” Sterling mused, as they followed an ancient maître d’ to a table in the rear dining room. “Warhol actually wrote in an exhibition catalog, ‘In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.’ Now we talk about it as if it were an entitlement, or part of the Declaration of Independence. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of our fifteen minutes of fame. Have you had yours yet?”

  Tess took her seat, thinking about the brief article the Blight had run last fall, when she had been attacked.
If she was going to be famous for fifteen minutes, she hoped it wouldn’t be for that. “I might have slept through mine.”

  “Well, then, you can have my fifteen minutes. Unless I’m on the masthead, the only time I ever want to appear in any newspaper is when I die.”

  It was Tess’s turn to laugh. “How Junior League of you. What’s the rule? A proper person’s name appears only three times: at birth, marriage, and death.”

  “Exactly. So I have two more opportunities left.”

  She ducked her head, taking more care than necessary as she unfolded the linen napkin, hoping Sterling couldn’t see the wide grin spreading across her face at the realization he had never married.

  Marconi’s was a dowdy grande dame. The dining room was too bright, the food too heavily sauced, the wallpaper faded and waterstained. Prices, while not steep, climbed quickly on the a la carte menu. And although the owners had finally agreed to a reservation system, the last seating for dinner was at 8 P.M., ensuring the regulars were at home in time for reruns of Matlock and Murder, She Wrote. But Baltimoreans cherished the place. Tess opened the menu with happy anticipation.

  “I’ll have the house salad—it’s big, we can split it if you like—fried pork chops, and potatoes au gratin,” she told the waiter, who was young by Marconi staff standards, not even sixty. “And please make sure the kitchen doesn’t run out of fudge sauce. I know I’m going to want a sundae for dessert.”

  Sterling seemed slightly taken aback by Tess’s appetite, but he tried gamely to keep up with her. His choices were healthier, however—broiled sole and a plain baked potato. And while he urged Tess to have a drink, he settled for club soda and lime. After hearing his abstemious order, Tess wished she could at least rescind her request for a glass of white wine. Bad enough to be such a pig, did she have to be a drunkard, too?