just as her father had asked her to do. But if vice detectives busted the place, she was even less likely to know how Gwen’s fate was connected to the bar. No, she would do it her way, but quietly, so her father wasn’t on the receiving end of any more calls from Arnie Vasso.
“I know I don’t have carte blanche at the phone company. I’m just appreciative. I was going to send a little Christmas remembrance. You can’t begrudge me the right to try and make friends, to stay on someone’s good side. They did a rush job. I want to say thank you.”
“What kind of Christmas remembrance?”
“A Noel buche, something like that.”
His voice still reluctant and suspicious, Tull gave her the name and number. Then he asked: “Were you in Philadelphia yesterday?”
“Yeah. Divorce case. It got ugly.”
“So it would seem. Philadelphia homicide called down here today, wanted to know if you were legit. Rainer took the call. He said you were okay, for a dope-smoking smart-ass lunatic who always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” A pause. “They say you might have saved someone’s life.”
“They’re much too kind.” One life had been saved, but one life had been lost, too. Tess didn’t know how the Philadelphia cops did math, but she counted it as a wash.
“You telling me everything, Tess?”
“Yeah, sure.” She wished, sometimes, that she didn’t have quite so many people interested in her well-being, paying attention to her moods. “It’s just-I’m tired of dead people.”
“Tell me about it.” But his voice was more sympathetic than she had any right to expect. Tull had seen hundreds of dead bodies and she wasn’t even in the double digits. Yet.
“John Updike, in that book you gave me, he said the dead make space,” Tull added. “You know what I think?”
“What?”
“Updike doesn’t know dick about what it’s like to be a homicide cop in Baltimore.”
She laughed, although there had been a time she would have considered such an opinion sacrilegious. Not because it was a smear on Updike, but because it impugned all writers, and writers had been gods to her once. In college, she had read books as if all the secrets of the universe might be revealed in a single line. She had swooned at those moments of communion, when someone so distant from her-someone male, of a different generation and place-had expressed so perfectly what she thought existed in her heart alone. Now she knew writers were no different from anyone else, just humans fumbling with the same questions, albeit with better language skills.
“Hey-” Tull said.
“What?”
“I want a Noel buche, too. Support your local sheriff.”
Name and number in hand, she called Tull’s contact at Bell Atlantic, a woman named Kelly. It took endless twists and turns through a voice mail system to get to her, but a human eventually came on the line.
“Kelly, this is Janet over at Martin Tull’s office. He wanted me to thank you for getting those phone logs out so fast to us.”
The young woman sighed. “Not fast enough for some people, I guess.”
“Did someone at the police department give you a hard time?”
“No, you guys were great. But the guy from the senator’s office gave me fits. He was here first thing yesterday, throwing his weight around. Detective Tull said I could fax the logs, but nothing would do for this guy but to get his photocopies first thing in the morning. He was nice to look at, but he sure didn’t have good manners. Not one ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ in the mix. I guess being that pretty makes a guy kind of conceited.”
Maryland had forty-nine senators. More than one could have a pretty male working in the office, Tess told herself.
“Did you get his name? I’d like to talk to his boss, and remind them that Bell Atlantic is our partner in these ventures, that everyone should be treated with respect.”
“His name?” Tess heard a tapping sound, as if the woman was bouncing a pen on her front teeth. “Alan? Aaron? I just remember that he worked for that nice state senator.”
“That nice state senator,” Tess repeated.
“You know, the one who’s on the television now. Dahlgren.”
“Adam Moss.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s Dahlgren.”
“Adam Moss is the man who was rude to you. Indian, with dark hair and skin. Very handsome.”
“Yeah, that’s him. Very handsome. And doesn’t he just know it.”
“Well, we’ll remind him not to be so high-handed next time. I’m embarrassed you had to make two copies of the same record, one for the senator and one for the police department. You’d think city and state agencies could co-ordinate a little better.”
“Oh, I’m used to it,” Kelly assured her cheerily. “You guys never have your act together. The senator’s request came in first, I think that’s why his aide got all huffy.”
“It came in
“Yeah. They called late Thursday. Detective Tull called first thing Friday morning. The requests weren’t exactly the same. The detective asked for November fifteenth only, while the senator’s office wanted the whole week. They said it was for the ethics probe, and they’ll probably need to pull lots more records before it’s all over. Just my luck, huh?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” Tess said. “I think they have everything they want.”
She hung up the phone and rested her head on her desk blotter.
She couldn’t confront Adam Moss or Dahlgren, not without risking the very things Patrick Monaghan had feared. His job, his livelihood. But she couldn’t see how any of this was connected. Dahlgren had cleaned up the liquor board and thrown out the most corrupt inspectors, only to let Gene Fulton stay. Did Fulton have something on him? Did Nicola DeSanti have more influence than Tess realized? How did someone know what she was going to do before she did it?
If she asked any of these questions, her father would find out she had lied to him. If she went to Tull, she risked losing control of the investigation. Besides, bringing the police department into it wouldn’t guarantee her father’s job security. Fulton could still figure it out, and he could still take her father down with him. He would do it, too, just for spite.
Punching Whitney’s various numbers into her phone, she finally tracked her down at a Mount Washington hair-dresser’s. Even over the unsteady line of a cell phone, with the roar of several blow dryers in the background, Whitney’s voice was clear and silvery as a bell.
“What’s up, Tesser?”
“How long will it take them to get that same millimeter of hair cut off that you have cut off every six weeks?”
“They still have to blow me out, but I had a manicure scheduled.”
“Can you come see me as soon as you’re done? I really need your help, Starsky.”
Whitney needed a half beat. “I thought I got to be Hutch.”
“You can be whoever you like. It turns out I do need a partner. But not just any partner. A Valley girl with connections and time on her hands. Someone who would make a very credible, very desirable volunteer for Senator Dahlgren’s fledgling congressional campaign. You know anyone like that?”
“Why I just might,” Whitney drawled. “I might know someone who fits that description to a T.”
chapter 26
TESS WAITED IN HER CAR OUTSIDE DAHLGREN’S DISTRICT office, a plain storefront in a part of South Baltimore that didn’t even pretend to be fashionable. A few yuppies had tried homesteading here, but the rowhouses in this block still leaned heavily toward Formstone and painted screens. The businesses were mundane
