Charm City

one dog, and Tess thought she could read his lips. 'This is mine! This is mine!' The face was a little blurry, but awfully familiar. There was something in the walk, in the set of his shoulders.

'Is that-?'

'Shore is,' Spike said. 'Now you know why we're gonna do it the way we're gonna do it. Keep us all out of it, but still shut ' em down. Agreed?'

'Agreed,' Tess said weakly. She had held onto her breakfast, but not by much. 'How did you come to have this tape, Spike?'

'Guy who runs this place is a friend. Was a friend. Ran a decent joint, wasn't my business if people wanted to come shoot ducks. That was legal, after all. But when I stopped by last March and saw this-well, I couldn't stand by no longer. That night, when the action had moved to the house, I took the videotape out of a surveillance camera and grabbed the ears I found in the barn. I knew he'd send some guys after me. I just thought I'd have a bigger head start.'

'If you hadn't taken Esskay, too, they might not have been able to link you to the missing ears and tape.'

'But she smiled at me, when she saw me in the barn,' Spike said, smiling himself. 'How could I leave her behind?'

'I guess it's as good a time as any for me to give you something,' Tess told her uncle. She walked over to the store room and opened the door Tommy had opened almost two months ago. But the dog who bounded out was a different creature-glossy fur, bright eyes, the compleat hedonist. Esskay pranced around Spike, rooting under his armpits in search of treats. Just like she had with Crow.

'See, she's glad to be back with you,' she said. Her voice didn't catch so much as it slipped.

'Aw, she likes me because I got the keys to the pantry. That's not real likin'. Anyway, how'm I gonna walk a dog, with my burn leg?' he asked, slapping the leg in question. 'You do your old Uncle Spike a big favor and keep this mutt for now, okay?'

Tess smiled tremulously: Esskay was hers. She hadn't dared to hope for it. She hadn't even admitted to herself that she really wanted the dog. As she bent down to fasten the leash to Esskay's collar-a proper nylon one, no need for a heavy chain any more, not since she had broken down and purchased her first gun two weeks ago- she asked Spike a question that had nagged her for some time.

'Where was the tape all this time?'

'In the safe deposit box Tommy and I share. Whaddaya think I am, stupid or something?'

Tess laughed then, although laughing still hurt her ribs. Sterling's kicks had cracked two of them, keeping her off the water for much of this spring and limiting her other workouts. A fitting revenge for the former fat boy, always so covetous of her metabolism. Until she healed, she actually had to watch what she ate. She wondered if this would be much of a consolation to Sterling as he sat in the city jail, charged with Wink's murder and her attempted murder.

The police had found his fingerprints on the door to Wink's Mustang; the tox screens had turned up a prescription drug that matched the painkiller Sterling had been given for his on-again, off-again carpal tunnel problems. THE EDITOR WAS A KILLER. Juicy stuff, but the Beacon-Light wasn't giving the story much play, preferring to concentrate on Paul Tucci and his increasingly desperate attempts to land a basketball team. The Blight had left it to the Washington Post's media critic to chronicle Sterling's rise and fall. It hadn't been a particularly difficult story to report, despite the former editor's refusal to be interviewed. Raymond John Sterling had left a trail as bright and as slimy as a slug in the moonlight.

'No, Uncle Spike, I know you're not stupid,' Tess assured him, holding her aching sides. 'After all, you're the one who is going to tell me how to shut down this place without going to the police.'

'I've just never felt the police really understand me,' Spike said.

'They're such strictlers for detail?' Tommy added.

Tess hadn't planned on having Esskay with her when she'd made the 11 A.M. appointment with Lionel Mabry earlier that week, but there wasn't time to take the dog home. Maybe it was for the best. Mabry might have kept her waiting even longer, if it weren't for the snorting canine companion with the impulsive bladder.

'Miss Monaghan,' Mabry said, entering the conference room. Not the grand one off the publisher's office-she no longer rated that; but a ratty one in the news room, the site of the endless editors' meetings.

'How you doing, Lionel?'

He seemed a little taken aback to hear her use his first name. 'I am sorry it took so long for accounting to prepare your check-they raised a stink about some of the expenses you submitted. Something about a bill for a bracelet? But if you hadn't insisted on picking it up in person, you could have had it days ago through the mail. You didn't need to come down here again.'

'The thing is, I have something for you,' she said, holding out the tape, along with a letter explaining its contents, the circumstances by which it had been obtained, and a list of those people Spike knew frequented the hunting club. Lionel scanned it quickly. He was a quick study, Tess realized. A shrewd man, shrewd enough to let others think he was soft and unfocused. An act not unlike the dumb jock one she liked to pull.

'It's a good story,' he said. 'A very good story indeed. Generous of you to bring it to us. I know your experiences with the paper have not been exactly, uh, copacetic.'

'You should know that Paul Tucci is one of the men on the tape. In fact, he'd probably be doing a victory dance if it weren't for his bad knee. Is that going to be a problem?'

Mabry looked puzzled. 'What a strange question. If anything, it heightens our interest.'

'But you didn't want to run the original Wink story, the one with all the unsavory information about him, because you didn't want to kill the city's chance for a basketball team. What's the difference?'

'Miss Monaghan, you shouldn't believe everything a reporter says, even when the reporter is one of your friends.' She squirmed a little under Mabry's knowing smile. 'Our publisher did have some concerns along that line, but I was uncomfortable with the Wink story simply because I didn't see the point of dredging up pieces of his past when that had nothing to do with his fitness to own a sports franchise. Jack Sterling understood my feelings and he played on them. Of course, now I know Jack had his own agenda and that his articulate speeches about letting people reinvent themselves were neither dispassionate nor disinterested. But I still stand by my decision that Wink was entitled to know the names of his critics.'

'You knew Sterling better than anyone here.' Anyone living, Tess amended in her mind, thinking of Rosita. 'Why did he follow you here, knowing someone might recognize him?'

'I think he wanted the job so badly he convinced himself no one would remember a fat boy named Raymond from thirty years ago. Then Wink came to an editorial board meeting and Jack was discovered. He still could have confessed-I wouldn't have fired him, although I would have made damn sure he had nothing more to do with the Wynkowski story. Instead, Jack promised to kill the story in return for his old friend's silence.' Mabry paused. 'Funny, how in the end it was Colleen who set Jack's downfall in motion. If she hadn't put the first story in the paper, there would never have been a second one, the one that so enraged Wink. And Jack might have figured out a less dire way to ensure Wynkowski's silence.'

Tess made a polite, noncommittal sound. Lionel Mabry wasn't a bad person at heart, and that was a limitation. He could never imagine the Jack Sterling she had faced in Leakin Park. Yes, Sterling was trying to protect himself and the life he had created. But the man who had struck her had also been having a suspiciously good time. It was as if he had waited all these years to indulge those instincts again. 'Bad boys get caught.' Well, he was a bad boy now.

She stood to leave. 'One more thing about the track story-I want Kevin Feeney to write it.'

'Miss Monaghan, I do not let outsiders dictate internal decisions.' Mabry was the Lion King again, tossing his hair back indignantly, growling and posturing as if she were an employee he could tyrannize.

'I understand that in theory. In practice, if you don't give the story to Feeney, I'm going to distribute copies of these videotapes to every television station in town, as well as the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Washington Post. Be awfully embarrassing to be scooped on a story in your own backyard.'

Mabry hesitated. Tess could tell he was torn between wanting to make a point and wanting exclusive title to the story. You could almost hear the point-counterpoint echoing in his brain. Principle or potential