The Sugar House

by Laura Lippman

  “Gwen Schiller worked there. She’s dead.”

  “Right. She went out on her own, and got killed by the first trick she turned.”

  “Is that what Gene Fulton told you? Because it’s not true.”

  “How do you know?”

  But Tess wasn’t telling anyone what she knew, not anymore. For all she knew, everything she had told her father had gotten back to Gene Fulton. She was trying to remember now if she had told him about the phone logs, or her first trip to Philadelphia.

  When her father spoke again, his tone was cajoling. “I’m not saying we’re not going to shut them down. I’m just asking you to get out of the way. Talk to your cop friend, the one in Homicide. He’ll pass it on to Vice. This doesn’t have to concern us.”

  “And what do I tell Ruthie?”

  “That accidents happen. That the past is the past, and we can’t do anything about it.”

  She was holding the glass, but had yet to take a sip. It was cold, she felt the chill of the wine through her fingertips. It was the coldest thing she had ever touched in her life. Colder than snow, colder than the ice that skidded beneath her palms when her father had taught her to skate above the dam at Gwynn’s Falls. Falling is part of it, he had told her. You have to fall.

  “Daddy—what does Gene have on you?”

  The blood that swept across his face made him seem, for a moment, all of one color, the red of his complexion blending into his hairline.

  “That’s a helluva question to ask your father.”

  “Yes, it is,” she agreed. “But it’s on target, isn’t it?”

  “Ancient history,” Patrick said. “Small potatoes.”

  “Does Ruthie know the story behind these so very ancient, so very small potatoes?”

  He nodded. Tess knew the price of asking another question, knew what she was giving up. But she couldn’t stop.

  “What happened between you and Ruthie?”

  An eternity passed in the next five seconds. Her father studied the top of his beer can. She swallowed some wine, noticing how tart it was, how sharp.

  “We met about thirteen, fourteen years ago,” her father said. “She was a barmaid in a neighborhood joint, a place that catered to the shift workers in Locust Point. Actually had a seven A.M. happy hour, if you can believe it. But after all, that’s when those guys got off and they wanted what anyone wants when he finishes a long day at a hard job. They wanted a beer, they wanted to shoot pool, flirt with a pretty waitress. Play video poker. The usual.

  “Ruthie was…a stickler. You know, she’s kind of churchified, active in her parish. She saw people getting addicted to the machines. Her dad had a problem that way, and it hadn’t made life easy on her family. So she decided to turn the owner in. She filed a complaint with me, asked me to keep it anonymous. Problem was, the guy who owned the place was a big contributor to a certain senator. The senator who happened to appoint me. Ditter asked me to look the other way. I did—I mean, it’s not like every bar in the city doesn’t pay on its video poker—and Ruthie ended up losing her job. Which she blamed me for, and I guess she was right. I got her a job at Spike’s, and she got back on her feet, went to school to get her accounting degree.”

  “And what did you get?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, did you stay quiet as a favor to your pal, Senator Ditter, or was there a gratuity built in for you as well?”

  Irish temper was a cliché Tess had never actually experienced. All the temper in her family had come down on the Weinstein side. Her father was a gentle man, hard to anger. So when he rose to his feet, his face now almost purplish red, and began jabbing his finger at her, she was undone by the sheer fact of his rage.

  “You want to know what I got, for looking the other way? I didn’t get shit. But my daughter, who had decided the University of Maryland wasn’t good enough for her, that she had to go to some fancy private school, got a fake scholarship. Ditter set up a little fund, helped to pay your tuition the whole four years. That’s what I got. A college education for an ingrate of a daughter who’s incapable of ever doing anything just because her old man asks her to.”

  “I had a senate scholarship,” she said. “Sleazy, but legal.”

  “You got a kickback.”

  Tess found her mind reaching back, trying to remember the financial aid package her family had pieced together so she could attend Washington College. She had gone after every little pocket of money, no matter how small—grants from the local chapter of the DAR, an essay contest sponsored by the VFW. Her father had told her the state grant was for students who had scored well on the PSAT, but just missed National Merit status. And she had believed him. She believed him because she was eighteen and relatively confident that she was the axis on which the world spun, that she was worthy of all good things that accrued to her.

  “You see?” he asked. “You see why you can’t say anything? Gene was tight with Ditter, he knows what happened. He’ll take me down with him, if he suspects I had anything to do with this. You gotta stop.”

  “But it’s not fair,” she said.

  “Jesus Christ, Tess.”

  “What you did, what Gene is doing—it’s not the same. He’s taking a bribe from a pimp, and he’s going to go on doing it. You bowed to political pressure and were rewarded after the fact.”

  “Once it’s in the newspaper, those are the kind of fine distinctions that will be lost, Tess. The statute of limitations may have run out on what I did, but the morality police can come for you anytime. Gene and I will both be fired, and no one will touch me, because I’ll be a snitch. I’ll be a fifty-two-year-old man, with no connections and no real skills. No one will hire me.”

  “Someone—”

  “No one, Tess. I can’t afford it. I can’t afford to lose my job. Don’t you get that? So unless you’re ready for your mom and me to move in with you, I’m begging you to drop this, before it’s too late.”

  Tess thought of Philadelphia, of Pete and Repete, perched on her car like a couple of buzzards. She knew it was already too late, but she could not bear to tell her father this. Children protect their parents as surely as parents protect their children.

  They do it the same way—by lying.

  “Okay, Dad,” she said. “I won’t press the issue. I’ll tell Tull what I know, and then I’ll let the whole thing drop.”

  Her father came around the table and hugged her. They were not a physical family, so it was an awkward, clumsy embrace, but no less sincere for its clumsiness.

  “You’re a good girl, Tesser,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”

  Tess, her head bumping beneath her father’s chin, thought of how long she had waited to hear those words.

  And how unfortunate it was that they had to come now, when she was lying through her teeth.

  chapter 25

  IN HER OFFICE THE NEXT MORNING, TESS CLICKED HER way to the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Internet site and found the story about Hilde’s slaying. It wasn’t played on page one, as far as she could tell, and the juiciest details—the gunfire, Tess and Devon taking cover behind the cheesesteak cart—were missing. Nor was there anything about a possible kidnapping. In fact, Devon’s name didn’t even appear in the story, so the Whittakers must have more pull than Tess realized. According to the Inquirer, the woman killed was a “Swedish nutritionist,” living here on a visa. The landlord said she had a roommate, but the roommate had not been home at the time of the slaying and was not available for comment.

  “Not available for comment.” Newspaper-ese for “I fucking couldn’t find her, okay?” Tess sat back in her chair, feeling safe. If the police were withholding Devon’s role from reporters, then Tess’s identity also would remain a secret. There would be no awkward questions to answer from the Philly press, which means it would be unlikely that the story would trickle down Interstate 95 and show up in the Blight. She had escaped being the local angle.

  Then she checked her messages.


  “Miss Monaghan?” The voice was male and bill-collector polite. “Herman Peters, at the Beacon-Light. I had a tip this morning that you might know something about an incident in Philadelphia yesterday. I need to ask you a few questions.”

  Great. Herman Peters was only the sweetest, gentlest, and most indefatigable son of a bitch at the local paper these days. One of the Philadelphia cops must have been checking her out through Baltimore PD and hit one of Herman’s sources, who had then offered this tidbit to him to make him go away.

  She gathered up her keys and knapsack, jangling the hook on Esskay’s leash, which signaled the dog to roll from the sofa and follow her out. It suddenly seemed like a good day to work at home, where Kitty could keep unwelcome visitors at bay.

  But when she stepped out the door to her office, Herman Peters was getting out of a surprisingly clean Honda Accord, talking on a cell phone.

  “Yeah, I heard the fire call for Northwest,” he was saying, as he walked toward her. He spoke rapidly, so rapidly that it was almost as if he were speaking in a foreign language. “Vacant rowhouse. We don’t need to worry about it unless the wind picks up, and it goes to extra alarms. Gotta go—I’m here on an interview.”

  “That’s okay,” Tess said sweetly, walking past him and unlocking her car door. “I’m on my way out, anyway. Why don’t we catch up later?”

  Herman Peters had brown eyes that Keene would have been proud to paint and bright pink cheeks that brought to mind impossibly wholesome activities, like cross-country skiing. However, Tess knew from her Blight friends that he hadn’t taken more than one day off in the last two years and outside murder scenes provided the only sunshine and fresh air in his life. Cal Ripken’s streak had ended, but Peters hadn’t missed a homicide yet. This had led to a saying around town: If a body drops and the Hermannator isn’t there to hear it, does it make a sound?

  He was a crafty son of a bitch, too. Instead of trying to change Tess’s mind, he took a package of Nabs crackers from his pocket and offered one to Esskay. The dog all but dragged Tess back to the man she was trying to avoid.

  “So, about Philadelphia—” he said, offering Esskay a second Nabs.

  “It’s not a city I know very well,” Tess said. “I used to go there when I competed in crew races, but I haven’t done that for years.”

  “Then what were you doing there yesterday? Patching the crack in the Liberty Bell?”

  “Davy Crockett,” Tess sang back to him. “I bet you had a little raccoon cap when you were younger and galloped around the yard on a hobby horse, shooting at imaginary Mexicans.”

  “Actually, I did have a coonskin cap, when I was a little kid.”

  “And that would have been, what, three years ago?”

  The Nabs were gone, but Peters was now stroking Esskay’s muzzle and scratching her behind the ears, and the dog was so rooted to the spot that Tess wasn’t sure she could yank her away with both arms. She remembered yet another stray piece of gossip she had heard about Peters: Despite his boyish looks, or perhaps because of them, he was extraordinarily successful with women. He had triple-timed female co-workers at the paper, and then hooked up with some starlet who was making a movie in town.

  All this, without ever taking his beeper off.

  “I can get the police report from Philadelphia,” he told her. “I’ll have it faxed to me this afternoon. I’ll let them keep back whatever they’re keeping back, as long as I can have the part about you. That’s all our readers care about.”

  Tess experienced the kind of disgust and anger only an ex-reporter can feel for the press. Peters had no standing, he couldn’t force her to talk about what had happened. Without her account, she doubted he could piece a story together. But he could make her life hell in a dozen different ways. She had to make a deal, had to persuade him to trade what was in the box for what was behind the curtain.

  “What happened yesterday is a tiny detail on a much larger canvas. The Philly paper won’t scoop you because the Philly cops are holding back the most interesting stuff, in order to protect the life of a possible witness.” Slight lie there, but only slight. “I’m really small potatoes.” Her father’s leftover phrase. It tasted like soot in her mouth.

  “But you’re the local angle,” he repeated, ever dogged.

  “Think big, Herman. If you’re patient, I’ll give you a head start on the story when it finally comes together.” It was an easy promise to make, and it would be an easier one to break if she had to. She didn’t owe Peters anything.

  “You didn’t cut me in on the Gwen Schiller story early. We had the Washington media breathing down our necks on that, because her family lives in Potomac. They had us surrounded.”

  Ah, so there was the grudge unmasked. Peters was pissed because he had been forced to scrounge for scraps at that feeding frenzy of a press conference, which had come too late in the day to allow the Blight to put together the kind of comprehensive package on Schiller that the Washington paper had been able to churn out effortlessly.

  “It was the communications officer’s idea to schedule the press conference on the television stations’ time clock. I’d have much rather given it to you first. You’re the only reporter in town whose work has any nuance.”

  Peters’s cheeks bloomed even rosier at this praise and he put his hands in his pockets in aw-shucks mode. Esskay head-butted him, and he resumed petting her.

  “Is it a good story?”

  “I don’t have all the pieces yet. But so far it has sex and death and civic corruption.”

  His brown eyes glowed the way Esskay’s might, contemplating another package of Nabs. “That’s a good start.”

  “But just a start. When I move toward the finish line, I’ll call you. Tell me how to get you on that.”

  Tess gestured toward Peters’s belt buckle and he looked down, momentarily confused. Once he realized she was talking about his beeper, he gave her the number, as well as his office, home and cell phone numbers.

  “You’re on call,” she said. “You’re the first one I’ll contact. I assume you’ll do me the same courtesy if you hear of anyone trying to slip my name into the paper for any other reason?”

  “It’s a deal,” he said, shaking her hand.

  “Just remember, Peters. Keep thinking big.”

  “My beeper,” he said.

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “It’s the vibrating kind.”

  “Well, then you must be one of the happiest men in Baltimore, given how many times it goes off in a day.”

  But Herman Peters was already getting back into his car, off to visit Baltimore’s latest ex-citizen.

  As soon as he was off the block, Tess retreated into her office and called Martin Tull.

  “Thanks for those phone numbers,” she said.

  “Did it pan out?”

  “No, I guess the kid was lying to me. But I still appreciate the help. Who does that, anyway? I mean, is it one person at the phone company, or do they have a whole department?”

  “It’s not like you can do that on your own, you know. You have to have a legit reason for getting phone logs.”

  He knew her so well. For a moment, she was tempted to tell him about the prostitution ring at Domenick’s, just as her father had asked her to do. But if vice detectives busted the place, she was even less likely to know how Gwen’s fate was connected to the bar. No, she would do it her way, but quietly, so her father wasn’t on the receiving end of any more calls from Arnie Vasso.

  “I know I don’t have carte blanche at the phone company. I’m just appreciative. I was going to send a little Christmas remembrance. You can’t begrudge me the right to try and make friends, to stay on someone’s good side. They did a rush job. I want to say thank you.”

  “What kind of Christmas remembrance?”

  “A Noël buche, something like that.”

  His voice still reluctant and suspicious, Tull gave her the name and number. Then he asked: “Were you in Philadelphia ye
sterday?”

  “Yeah. Divorce case. It got ugly.”

  “So it would seem. Philadelphia homicide called down here today, wanted to know if you were legit. Rainer took the call. He said you were okay, for a dope-smoking smart-ass lunatic who always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” A pause. “They say you might have saved someone’s life.”

  “They’re much too kind.” One life had been saved, but one life had been lost, too. Tess didn’t know how the Philadelphia cops did math, but she counted it as a wash.

  “You telling me everything, Tess?”

  “Yeah, sure.” She wished, sometimes, that she didn’t have quite so many people interested in her well-being, paying attention to her moods. “It’s just—I’m tired of dead people.”

  “Tell me about it.” But his voice was more sympathetic than she had any right to expect. Tull had seen hundreds of dead bodies and she wasn’t even in the double digits. Yet.

  “John Updike, in that book you gave me, he said the dead make space,” Tull added. “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  “Updike doesn’t know dick about what it’s like to be a homicide cop in Baltimore.”

  She laughed, although there had been a time she would have considered such an opinion sacrilegious. Not because it was a smear on Updike, but because it impugned all writers, and writers had been gods to her once. In college, she had read books as if all the secrets of the universe might be revealed in a single line. She had swooned at those moments of communion, when someone so distant from her—someone male, of a different generation and place—had expressed so perfectly what she thought existed in her heart alone. Now she knew writers were no different from anyone else, just humans fumbling with the same questions, albeit with better language skills.

  “Hey—” Tull said.