Coffee in one cramped, crabbed hand, she shuffles to the living room to watch the news, smoke another cigarette.
Chapter Thirty-three
G wen has met many people who hate journalists-they announce it happily, proudly, often at cocktail parties where she has just been introduced-but none quite as vociferously as the private detective who tried to contact Go-Go in the weeks before his death. Tess Monaghan has refused to return Gwen’s calls and didn’t even acknowledge e-mails sent to the bare-bones Web site she maintains. After several days, she finally sent back a terse note:
I don’t talk to reporters.
Gwen wrote back, under her personal e-mail
I’m not approaching you as a journalist, but as a friend of Gordon Halloran, who died in what may well be a suicide committed after you tried to contact him, wreaking not a little havoc in his life.
Another day went by before she received this e-mail:
My office, 2 p.m.
The office is in Butchers Hill, less than a mile from the magazine’s headquarters, yet worlds away in a sense. While Butchers Hill caught a whiff of the go-go real estate boom of the century’s first decade, it is nothing like the glass canyon where Gwen’s office is located. It has retained its human scale, tucking new restaurants and shops into old rowhouses. Tess Monaghan’s office, which was virtually unmarked, sits two blocks from Patterson Park.
“It’s open,” a woman’s voice calls out. Working behind an unlocked door seems a little casual for this neighborhood, even during the daytime. But as Gwen enters, she is immediately inspected by two large dogs, a greyhound and a Doberman, and a jumpier, miniature version of the greyhound. They circle and sniff her, apparently with satisfactory results, as they then return to the sofa, where they arrange themselves in an overlapping lump. Tess Monaghan, sitting behind her desk, doesn’t rise at all, but she has good reason: she is holding a baby, who is spitting up on her shoulder.
“Way to miss the burp cloth, Scout,” she says, clearly unperturbed by the fountain of curdy white liquid that trails down her sleeve.
“He’s adorable,” Gwen says, making conversation. She can’t really see much but the dark hair. She doesn’t have any real experience with infants. Annabelle was eight months when they met her in a Beijing hotel.
“She.”
“I thought you said scout?”
“That’s her name. Her middle name.” Tess Monaghan has a manner of speaking that makes questions seem not only unnecessary but also rude. The things that Gwen might normally ask-from
“I don’t normally bring her to the office,” Tess says. “We had a child care crisis today and I didn’t want to cancel on you.”
“No one has to explain child care crises to me. Most of my employees are working moms. She’s so tiny, but-” Gwen stops, not wanting to comment on a stranger’s appearance, but this woman looks pretty fit for having had a baby recently.
“She was really early. She’s technically almost five months old, but if she had been on time, she’d be barely three months.” Again, it is somehow clear there are to be no follow-up questions. “So, Gordon Halloran. Just to be sure we are on the same page-I am speaking to you off-the-record and this is not for anything you might write, ever, on any subject.”
“Right.”
“And by off-the-record, we both agree that means nothing I say is to appear in print, attached to my name or to an unnamed source?”
“I’m not here as a journalist.”
“Would you be willing to sign something to that effect?”
“Sure,” Gwen says. “After it was reviewed by my attorney.”
Tess smiles. “Fair enough. I just have to be super careful.”
“Were you burned by a journalist?”
“Worse. I was one. Your magazine did once put me in your hot singles issue, when I was neither single nor really all that hot. Although now when I see photos of myself from back then-only a few years ago-I think I look magnificent.”
“I’m pretty sure that was before my time,” Gwen says, then blushes. She was trying to reference the magazine, not the issue of Tess Monaghan’s looks, which merit the not-quite-compliment of handsome. Strong features, hair pulled back in a ponytail, a fresh-scrubbed face. “We still do the singles issue-it sells very well, and we make a bucketload on the advertising-but I’ve tried to add some serious journalism to the mix.”
“I’ve noticed. That’s why I don’t want to talk to you about Gordon Halloran in any kind of professional capacity. Besides, there’s not much I can tell you. I’ve spoken to my client. My client prefers to remain anonymous.”
Shit. That doesn’t assuage Gwen’s conscience in the least.
“Could I have any nonidentifying information about your client?”
“Such as?”
“Age, gender, place of residence. Race.” If the client isn’t African American, there’s little chance that one of Chicken George’s relatives has hired Tess Monaghan.
“I can ask. But my client is pretty paranoid. And unnerved by Gordon Halloran’s death. As am I, since you told me it might be a suicide. The news reports last month didn’t say that. At my discretion, I haven’t passed that information along to my client yet, but I will. It-” She pauses. “It complicates things for us, and I’m afraid it will make my client, who is a very nice person, feel quite bad. Are you sure?”
“It’s unclear,” Gwen says truthfully, not wanting to admit that she guilted the PI into this meeting. “It will probably always be unclear. He had been drinking after several months of sobriety. He drove into the concrete barrier at the foot of I-70, where it dead-ends into the park-and-ride. He was speeding, but he was always a reckless, fearless person. He could have been playing some silly game, misjudged the end of the highway.”
Tess Monaghan shifted the baby on her shoulder. Annabelle had been tiny, too, for her age. Still was. But Gwen had forgotten how alien young babies look, with their comically smushed faces and toothless smiles.
The detective says: “But he was a regular at AA.”
“Was. He didn’t go to the meeting that night.”
“Right.”
“Right-wait, how do you know that? I said only that he was sober.”
“One of my employees was attending those meetings.”
“That’s
