around her. Then why couldn’t she imagine a life for herself that would take her down Fort Avenue and out of Locust Point? Why was she cutting school and thinking her own future was limited to a job at the Sugar House?
A knock sounded on the door, slightly tentative. From the outside, the office probably looked dark. “Come in, it’s open,” Tess called out, turning on the desk lamp and feeling as if she had been caught doing something. What, she wasn’t sure.
Her father’s red head poked around the door, the way he had poked it into her bedroom all those years- unsure of his welcome, a little nervous about entering what he considered a feminine precinct.
“I can’t believe you don’t keep this locked,” he said. “You should have a buzzer system, throw the deadbolt the minute you come in.”
She usually did, but being scolded by her father made her feel contrary.
“I don’t worry too much. After all, I have this fine watch dog-” the greyhound, Esskay, unrolled stiffly from the sofa, did her salaam stretch, and presented herself to Patrick for the obligatory tribute she demanded from everyone who crossed the threshold.
“And a gun in my desk drawer.”
If Tess were in therapy, a psychiatrist probably could have spent many, many hours on the immense pleasure she took in brandishing her.38 Smith amp; Wesson at her father just then. But, really, the gesture said more about her relationship with her gun than it did about her relationship with her father. When she first opened the office, she had kept it in the wall safe. She had been literally gun shy, afraid of her own weapon. She soon found there was no percentage in having a permit to carry if she didn’t keep the gun close at hand. The fact of gun ownership didn’t intimidate anyone, she needed the weapon nearby.
Besides, she had fallen a little in love with her Smith amp; Wesson. It felt good in her hand and it was much more reliable than other tools of her trade-the cell phone, the computer, her instincts.
“Put that away,” her father said. “It’s not a toy.”
“No, but it looks like one, which is probably why kids are always picking them up. What brings you here?” she asked. It occurred to her that this was only his second visit to the office, the first being the “grand opening” where her mother had tried not to weep and Patrick had recommended burglar bars for all the windows.
“I was in the neighborhood,” he said, and she let the lie pass. She knew-and he knew that she knew-the East Side had never been his territory.
He glanced around her office, which she thought looked best in evening’s dim light. The walls, which probably had layers of lead paint beneath the eggshell white Tess had slapped on last summer, didn’t look as rough, the floors weren’t as noticeably wavy. “I keep hoping you’ll do well enough so you could afford a nice little office in one of those strip centers out York Road, or toward Ellicott City.”
“I could swing that, if I wanted to,” Tess said, her tone a little curt. Maybe she should have brandished her bank book at her father, instead of her gun. “But some of my clients couldn’t. I need to be near a bus line, or the Metro, limited as that is. Not everyone owns a car, you know.”
“But that’s not the kind of clientele you want,” her father said. “You want to be in a place where suburban ladies feel comfortable pulling up in their mini-vans.”
“The suburban ladies like this location just fine. It gives them a thrill, as if they were coming into the city to score crack. They already feel degraded, hiring a private detective, so they might as well get the full slumming experience. I think they’re disappointed that I don’t have my name on the door in gilt letters, and a secretary named Velma out front.”
“Still, if you want to impress someone-”
“I can always meet them at the bar at the Brass Elephant, or the coffee bar in the Bibelot bookstore in Canton. But I don’t much care for clients I have to impress.” She had clawed some wisps of hair loose while working on the computer, now she pushed them back behind her ears. “Don’t worry about me, Dad. I’m doing fine.”
“I know you are.” Patrick took the seat opposite her desk. She could tell he didn’t like being on that side of the desk, sitting across from his daughter. Esskay hooked her nose in his armpit, trying to lift his hand toward her head. Esskay believed all human hands existed to rub her, just as all sofas were invented for her to sleep on.
“If you know my business is going well, why did you send Ruthie Dembrow to me with a loser case that I have about a one-in-a-million chance of solving?”
“I told you, I didn’t do it for you, I did it for Ruthie,” he said slowly. “I think Ruthie’s crazy, you want to know the truth. What happened with her kid brother tore her up. Maybe she should be spending her money on a therapist, or going to some spa. I told her that, she said this is her cure, finding out what happened.”
“How do you know Ruthie?”
“I told you. She was a cocktail waitress in Locust Point years ago. Even worked for your Uncle Spike for a summer.”
“I don’t remember her.”
“There’s no reason you would. It was around the time you went off to college.”
Tess wanted to ask her father a few more questions about Ruthie. But she wasn’t sure she was ready for the answers.
“It’s late, for you to be out. Mom will be holding supper, wondering where you are.”
“Not tonight. She’s in a book club.”
“She’s in a book club?” Tess had not heard about this development, and she subscribed to a strict double standard with her parents: She told them nothing, no matter how important, they must tell her everything, no matter how insignificant. Her father looked forlorn, and his drop-by suddenly seemed less sinister. He just didn’t want to go back to the dark house in Ten Hills and eat whatever Judith had left him in her color-coordinated Rubbermaid containers.
“You want to grab a bite?”
“Just us?” he asked, and she realized it was never just them, there was always Uncle Donald or Uncle Spike or Judith.
“Why not?”
They sat in silence, mulling their own answers to that question. Finding none, they ended up at the Austin Grill, part of the renovated American Can Company complex, one of the many unlikely success stories in the once-working-class neighborhood of Canton.
Tess wanted to go Salvadoran-her taste buds had been somewhat transformed by her recent trip to Texas. But the Austin Grill was about as far as her father could go, culinarily.
He studied the menu as if it were in Sanskrit. “It all looks very…exotic.”
“Have the fajitas,” she said. “It’s just meat in some bread, think of it that way. I’m going to have migas. Oh, and two Shiner Bocks on draft, please.”
Her father frowned. “You’re driving.”
“You’re driving farther. It’s one beer, Dad. Get a grip.”
He looked around the restaurant, surveying it with a practiced eye. Like an architect who couldn’t help seeing the details that went into a building, Pat was never truly off-duty when he was in a bar. His gaze was drawn not to the sponge-painted red walls and industrial pipes running through the ceiling, but to the patrons in the high booths, the bartender behind the counter.
“Ten years ago-heck, five years ago-I would have taken odds they’d never get this old place developed. Wish I’d bought me some real estate in Canton. Never did have an instinct for making money. If you had told me people would want to live in these little old rowhouses, just because they can see water-” he shook his head. “But what do I know? Other than the fact that if I was on duty, I’d be writing this guy up for serving underage drinkers.”
Tess looked at the crowd, which was chic, by Baltimore standards. Almost everyone was wearing black, although there were a few patches of bright, preppy colors bursting through, the usual pinks and greens.
“They don’t look like college kids to me,” she said.
“That’s because they’ve put a lot of effort into not looking like college kids. Too much effort. The drinks give them away. The boys go cheap and the girls go sweet. See that table over there. The guys all have Budweisers, the girls have-what is that, anyway? Strawberry margaritas.”
“Swirlies, as the menu would have it.”
“Yeah, well I bet a lot of them will be going swirlie before the night is over. But it’s not my problem, not my territory.” He took a chip from the basket, held it tentatively toward the salsa, then decided to eat it plain. “Oh, like
