while Tess grabbed Weejun by the collar and uttered a piercing scream as close to his ear as possible. “Stop it, asshole. The cops are coming.”
The man nodded, seemed to compose himself-then charged the shoeshine man again. Tess tried to hold him back by the belt, and he turned back, swinging out wildly, hitting her in the chin. Sad to say, this physical contact galvanized the crowd in a way that his attack on an elderly black man had not. By the time the blue-and-whites rolled up, the valet parkers were holding Weejun and Whitney was examining the fast-developing bruise on Tess’s jaw with great satisfaction.
“You are so going to file charges against this asshole,” she said.
“Well, I’m going to file charges against him, then,” he brayed, unrepentant. “He started the whole thing.”
The patrol cop was in his mid-thirties, a seasoned officer who had broken up his share of fights, although probably not in this neighborhood. “If anyone’s adamant about filing a report, it can be done, but it will involve about four hours down at the district.”
That dimmed everyone’s enthusiasm, even Whitney’s.
“Good,” the cop said. “I’ll just take the bare details and let everyone go.”
The laundry truck moved, the valet parking attendants regained their usual efficiency, and the crowd moved on, more anxious about their destinations than this bit of street theater. The shoeshine man started to walk away, but the cop motioned for him to stay, taking names and calling them in, along with DOBs. “Just routine,” he told Tess, but his expression soon changed in a way that indicated the matter was anything but routine. He walked away from them, out of earshot, clicking the two-way on his shoulder on and off.
“You can go,” he said to Whitney and Tess upon returning. “But I gotta take him in. There’s a warrant.”
“Him?” Whitney asked hopefully, jerking her chin at Weejun.
“No, him.” The cop looked genuinely regretful. “Could be a mix-up, could be someone else using his name and DOB, but I still have take him downtown.”
“What’s the warrant for?” Tess asked.
“Murder, if you really want to know.”
Weejun looked at once gleeful and frightened, as if he were wondering just who he had challenged in this fight. It would make quite a brag around the country club, Tess thought. He’d probably be telling his buddies he had taken on a homicidal maniac and won.
Yet the shoeshine man was utterly composed. He did not protest his innocence or insist that it was all a mistake, things that even a guilty man might have said under the circumstances. He simply sighed, cast his eyes toward the sky as if asking a quick favor from his deity of choice, then said: “I’d like to gather up my things, if I could.”
“IT’S THE DAMNEDEST THING, TESS. He couldn’t confess fast enough. Didn’t want a lawyer, didn’t ask any questions, just sat down and began talking.”
Homicide detective Martin Tull, Tess’s only real friend in the Baltimore Police Department, had caught the shoeshine man’s case simply by answering the phone when the patrol cop called him about the warrant. He should have been thrilled-it was an easy stat, about as easy as they come. No matter how old the case, it counted toward the current year’s total of solved homicides.
“It’s a little too easy,” Tull said, sitting with Tess on a bench near one of their favorite coffeehouses, watching the water taxis zip back and forth across the Inner Harbor.
“Everyone gets lucky, even you,” Tess said. “It’s all too credible that the warrant was lost all these years. What I don’t get is how it was found.”
“Department got some grant for computer work. Isn’t that great? There’s not enough money to make sure DNA samples are stored safely, but some think tank gave us money so college students can spend all summer keystroking data. The guy moved about two weeks after the murder, before he was named in the warrant. Moved all of five miles, from West Baltimore to the county, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who left a forwarding address. Or the cop on the case was a bonehead. At any rate, he’s gone forty years, wanted for murder, and if he hadn’t been in that fight night before last, he might’ve gone another forty.”
“Did he even know there was a warrant on him?”
“Oh yeah. He knew exactly why he was there. Story came out of him as if he had been rehearsing it for years. Kept saying, Yep, I did it, no doubt about it. You do what you have to do, officer. So we charged him, the judge put a hundred thousand dollars’ bail on him, a bail bondsman put up ten thousand dollars, and he went home.”
“I guess someone who’s lived at the same address for thirty-nine years isn’t considered a flight risk.”
“Flight risk? I think if I had left this guy in the room with all our opened files, he would have confessed to every homicide in Baltimore. I have never seen someone so eager to confess to a crime. I almost think he wants to go to jail.”
“Maybe he’s convinced that a city jury won’t lock him up, or that he can get a plea. How did the victim die?”
“Blunt force trauma in a burglary. There’s no physical evidence and the warrant was sworn out on the basis of an eyewitness who’s been dead for ten years.”
“So you probably couldn’t get a conviction at all if it went to trial.”
“Nope. That’s what makes it so odd. Even if the witness were alive, she’d be almost ninety by now, pretty easy to break down on the stand.”
“What’s the file say?”
“Neighbor lady said she saw William Harrison leave the premises, acting strangely. She knew the guy because he did odd jobs in the neighborhood, even worked for her on occasion, but there was no reason for him to be at the victim’s house so late at night.”
“Good luck recovering the evidence from Evidence Control.”
“Would you believe they still had the weapon? The guy’s head was bashed in with an iron. But that’s all I got. If the guy hadn’t confessed, if he had stonewalled me or gotten with a lawyer, I wouldn’t have anything.”
“So what do you want me to tell you? I never met this man before we became impromptu tag-team wrestlers. He seemed pretty meek to me, but who knows what he was like forty years ago? Maybe he’s just a guy with a conscience who’s been waiting all these years to see if someone’s going to catch up with him.”
Tull shook his head. “One thing. He didn’t know what the murder weapon was. Said he forgot.”
“Well, forty years. It’s possible.”
“Maybe.” Tull, who had already finished his coffee, reached for Tess’s absentmindedly, grimacing when he realized it was a latte. Caffeine was his fuel, his vice of choice, and he didn’t like it diluted in any way.
“Take the easy stat, Martin. Guy’s named in a warrant and he said he did it. He does have a temper, I saw that much. Last night it was a soda can. Forty years ago, it very well could have been an iron.”
“I’ve got a conscience, too, you know.” Tull looked offended.
Tess realized that it wasn’t something she knew that had prompted Tull to call her up, but something he wanted her to do. Yet Tull would not ask her directly because then he would be in her debt. He was a man, after all. But if she volunteered to do what he seemed to want, he would honor her next favor, and Tess was frequently in need of favors.
“I’ll talk to him. See if he’ll open up to his tag-team partner.”
Tull didn’t even so much as nod to acknowledge the offer. It was as if Tess’s acquiescence were a belch, or something else that wouldn’t be commented on in polite company.
THE SHOESHINE MAN-William Harrison, Tess reminded herself, she had a name for him now-lived in a neat bungalow just over the line in what was known as the Woodlawn section of Baltimore County. Forty years ago, Mr. Harrison would have been one of its first black residents and he would have been denied entrance to the amusement park only a few blocks from his house. Now the neighborhood was more black than white, but still middle-class.
A tiny woman answered the door to Mr. Harrison’s bungalow, her eyes bright and curious.
“Mrs. Harrison?”
“Miss.” There was a note of reprimand for Tess’s assumption.
“My name is Tess Monaghan. I met your brother two nights ago in the, um, fracas.”
“Oh, he felt so bad about that. He said it was shameful, how the only person who wanted to help him was a
