Butchers Hill

nieces?'

He nodded, mortified. The phone rang and he grabbed it, shouting into the phone in glad relief: 'Yeah? Well, fuck you too, Bunky. You know, if I wanted shit from you, I'd squeeze your head.'

Tess waved good-bye, still grinning at the idea of Feeney and his nieces bobbing through the Pirates of the Caribbean, Feeney with the animatronic Lincoln, Feeney being accosted by various Disney characters, who would be drawn like a magnet to his surly countenance. If only she could obtain photographic evidence, the extortion potential alone would allow her to retire.

The main office at Gwynn's Falls Middle School was in a figurative and almost literal meltdown-sweaty miscreants lined up outside the vice principal's office, all the phone lines lit up, and the air conditioner on the fritz. Tess, who had been called in by the vice principal a time or two during her own middle school days, felt guilty and paranoid just standing in the midst of this bedlam, as if the unpunished sins of her youth might suddenly come to light.

'Can I help you?' The harried secretary at the front desk didn't bother to make eye contact with Tess and her clipped words made it clear that she hoped she couldn't help.

'I'm trying to get some information about one of your former students.'

Tess was nonchalant, as if it were perfectly routine for some stranger to request a student's record, but the secretary was having none of it. A black woman with dyed blond hair, grass-green eyes, and a crumpled linen dress of a tropical pattern with glints of both colors, she stared at Tess as if trying to match her to some of the faces she had seen on the wall during her last trip to the post office.

'I take it you're not a parent.'

Tess considered lying, but decided she wouldn't get away with it. She hadn't seen a single white student in the office, nor in the school's gloomy corridors. 'No, I'm a private investigator who's been hired to find this student.'

'By a custodial parent?' The secretary drew out the legal term, cu-sto-di-aaaaaaal, as if to warn Tess she knew what was what.

'Um, no, but my client does have a legitimate interest in finding this child.'

'Really? How can anyone-someone who's not a parent, probably not even a relative-have a legitimate need to find one of our students? If it were the law, you'd have a badge. If you were from Child Protective Services, you'd have a state ID. If it's not the law, and it's not the state, then you're not legitimate and I don't want you in my school.'

Tess decided to pull rank. 'Look, maybe you should just get the principal. This is a sensitive matter, it requires someone who has authority, and the discretion to use it.'

'I am the principal, Missy, and you're the sensitive matter. Strangers who walk in off the street are something we take real seriously around here. Now clear these premises, and don't come back. If I see you again, I'll have you arrested for trespassing.'

Tess left the way she had always left the principal's office-head down, cheeks hot, certain everyone she passed knew of her misdeeds.

Donnie Moore's mother wasn't at the address Feeney had provided. The apartment had been taken over by her sister, a spaced-out woman probably ten years younger than Tess. She might have looked younger, too, if not for crack cocaine, which had cooked her body down until it was nothing more than a little skin stretched over some long, knobby bones. Or perhaps her habit was heroin; she seemed in mid-nod when Tess knocked. Head swaying dreamily, like one of those plastic dogs you still saw sometimes in the back of souped-up Chevies, she leaned against the door frame and directed Tess to a rowhouse on Washington Street.

'Near the hospital?'

'No, farther south.' In her drug-soft mouth, the phrase came out: 'Farver sauf.'

'But that's practically back in Butchers Hill.' Tess felt as if she had been driving all morning, only to find that what she wanted was a few blocks from her own office.

'Yeah, that's where Keisha's new house is. Her baby's fahver helped find it for her.' The sister faded out for a second, closing her eyes. Then her eyes popped open again. 'He treats her good?'

'Her boyfriend?'

'Her baby's fahver,' she corrected. An important distinction, apparently. 'Say hey to her for me, will you? Tell her Tonya says hey.'

'Donna?' Her words were virtually without consonants, almost impossible to understand.

'Uh-uh. Tone-ya. Like Toni Braxton, you know, 'cept different. Hey, you know my cousin know a girl who know one of her sisters, down in Severna Park, where she's from?'

'A girl knows your sister?'

'No, she know Toni Braxton. She says she's really nice, not at all stuck-up. She say she comes home and sings in the backyard, and they have chicken. They gonna call me next time she visits.' Tonya closed her eyes and hugged herself, thinking of her private backyard barbecue with Toni Braxton.

A rat waddled down the sidewalk in front of Keisha Moore's rowhouse. The house looked neat, but dark, its windows shut and curtains drawn against the bright sunlight. It had the feel of a place where everyone was fast asleep, although it was now almost noon. Tess knocked several times and was about to leave when she heard footsteps on the stairs.

'What you want?' The woman who flung open the door wore nothing but a bra and a pair of baggy athletic shorts. At least, the shorts had been designed to hang loosely. Her substantial frame filled every fold. She wasn't fat, really, but big and solid in a way Tess imagined was probably appealing to most men. Certainly, this wasn't the wasted frame of an addict.

'Are you Keisha Moore?'

'You from Social Services?'

'No-' Tess fumbled with her knapsack, trying to find her wallet and her P.I.'s license.

'Because I told you, there's no man living here.'

'No, really, I'm a detective.'

Poor word choice. 'I ain't done nothing. What the cops want with me? I ain' done nothing and Lavon ain't done nothing. Why you got to be hassling us all the time?'

'I'm a private investigator, not a cop.' Tess found the license at last and thrust it at Keisha. 'All I want is to ask you a few questions about your son, Donnie Moore.'

The woman's face seemed to go dead at the mention of Donnie's name. She sucked on her lower lip, looking at Tess's license.

'That was a long time ago,' she said softly. 'Why you coming around now?'

'Can we talk inside? It's awfully warm out here in the sun.'

But the rowhouse was far hotter, stifling and close. In the small front room, two small children slept on two old sofas, which had been set up like church pews, facing the altar of a brass wall unit with a television set and VCR. The children looked tired in their sleep, if such a thing was possible.

'My nephews,' Keisha said, stopping for a second to look at them. 'They was up late last night.'

'They belong to your sister, the one I met in your apartment?'

'Tonya told you how to find me? She never did have good sense. No, these are my brother's children. I'm watching them for my sister-in-law while she's at DSS, trying to straighten out her food stamps. They's trying to cut her off because of one of those new rules, but she don't even know which one she broke.'

'Where's your brother?'

'Gone,' Keisha said, and something in her voice kept Tess from asking for more details.

Somewhere above them, a baby began to cry. Keisha ran upstairs, her cloth bedroom slippers slapping on the uncarpeted stairs, and returned a few minutes later with a fat, copper-colored baby in a diaper. She had taken the time to throw a plaid cotton shirt over her bra, although she hadn't bothered to button it.

'She needs a change,' she said, leading Tess into the middle room. This would have been the formal dining room when the house was built, but now it was empty, except for an old-fashioned deep freezer against one wall. Keisha used this as a changing table and while her movements were lovingly efficient and competent, it made Tess