as well. No chic or funky restaurants, just a shoe repair and a corner liquor store, which was enjoying a pre- Christmas run on Big Game lottery tickets.
Tess was on a side street that afforded an unobstructed view of the district office’s front door. Unfortunately, she had to move her car every two hours. Because of Federal Hill’s night-time attractions and the proximity of both Camden Yards and Ravens PSINet Stadium, South Baltimore was death on parking. Being in one’s car was no protection against the overzealous meter maids who patrolled the area. Twice already, Tess had been forced to drive around the block and find a new spot, just to stay within the law. Surveillance was a cruel mistress; it brooked no lapses. For all she knew, she had lost Adam Moss in one of those quick swings around the block.
Campaign finance laws had made watching Adam Moss more complicated than Tess had realized when she made that first call to Whitney. He worked for the senator, not the unofficial congressional campaign, and the two had to be kept as separate as possible. So while Whitney was in another storefront in an Anne Arundel County strip center, stuffing envelopes and enduring paper cuts, Tess was following Adam Moss through his average day. It was so average as to be mind numbing: Baltimore to Annapolis to Baltimore and back again. All he did was work, as far as she could tell, but she continued to follow him. He was the only lead she had.
He lived in a small rowhouse on Grindall Street, within walking distance of the district office. Most mornings, he stopped there about 7:30 A.M., then left for Annapolis after grabbing coffee at the 7-Eleven on Light. Tess would have thought Adam Moss was a Starbucks kind of guy, or at least a Sam’s Bagels kind of guy. Normally, she would have liked someone better for being a 7-Eleven coffee-and-cruller man, but since Moss might be an accessory to a murder her goodwill toward him was tempered.
Once in Annapolis, Moss was largely inaccessible, closeted in the inner rooms of the senator’s office. Dahlgren had ridden the hobby horse of the ethics probe as far as it could go. Senator Hertel was history-he had finally and abruptly agreed to resign just before the vote for explusion, which meant the Democratic Central Committee was hand-picking his replacement. Dahlgren had no official role to play in this process, but his opinion was suddenly valued, and would-be kingmakers came and went, eager for an audience with the rising star. Tess tried to linger in the halls of the senate office building, but strangers were too conspicuous with the General Assembly out of session, and the security guards kept asking what she wanted.
But if she stationed herself outside, Adam Moss could bypass her by using the subterranean passages that linked the buildings in the State House compound. So she ended up spending a lot of time on Lawyers Mall, waiting for him to pop out of any number of doors. She felt as if she were engaged in a large-scale version of the boardwalk game Whak-a-Mole. Whak-a-Moss, actually, and how she longed to. She wanted to grab him by the lapels and demand to know how he had come to have that phone list, and who else might have seen it.
But she couldn’t. If Adam Moss realized she was following him, it would get back to Arnie Vasso and, before too long, her father would get another call. Perhaps just a courtesy call this time, an acknowledgment that since he had failed to keep his nosy daughter at bay, Gene Fulton was going to be history, and so was he.
So she waited and watched, grateful for the boring, predictable routine that was her subject’s life. Adam Moss was all business. If he went out for lunch, it was always takeout-sushi from Joss Cafe or the Marvin Mandel sandwich from Chick ’n’ Ruth’s deli. If the senator had a committee meeting, Moss was there by his side, the first to arrive and the last to leave. The senator cut out early, headed for his campaign office or various fund-raisers, but Adam Moss stayed long after the December sun set. He sometimes cruised through a Burger King drive-in on West Street on his way out of Annapolis, or grabbed dinner-to-go from Matsuri, the sushi restaurant back in his own neighborhood. Adam Moss had a taste for raw things. Then he disappeared into his house and didn’t come out until the next morning. Tess knew, because she had spent one cramped and cold night on his block.
Today, he had left Annapolis at three, but he had been here, sequestered in the district office, since arriving in Baltimore. A man and woman had been waiting for him. Constituents, small business owners, judging by their simple, neat clothes, and cheap briefcases. They probably needed a law tweaked in the next session.
Her cell phone rang.
“I’m bored, Tesser.”
“Welcome to detective work, Whitney. I hope you’re not calling me from headquarters.”
“I’m on a pay phone, outside a Royal Farm. I volunteered to make a soda run. You know, we probably shouldn’t be talking on a cell phone. It’s not a secure line. It can be picked up by shortwave radio.”
“Whitney,
“Oh, yeah.”
“Have you found out anything?”
“Only that the money is pouring in. Dahlgren himself came in and dialed for dollars for a few hours this afternoon, then took off for some Christmas party. He asked me if I wanted to come with him.”
“The happily married senator asked the young blond volunteer to go to a Christmas party with him? That’s interesting.”
“Actually, it’s not. Dahlgren’s only passion is money, far as I can tell. He thought I could help shake some loose just by standing there, eating hors d’ oeuvres. You know how some men mentally undress you with their eyes? Dahlgren makes me feel as if he’s assessing my jewelry. It’s my mother he really wants. Not very likely, given his voting record on AIDS programs. Give Mother her due-she still believes it’s respectable to be a liberal Democrat.”
Tess was only half listening. The lights in the office had gone out, the couple had left, and now Adam Moss was locking the door behind him.
“Gotta go,” she told Whitney. “Work hard, and maybe you’ll be promoted to answering phones before the week is out.”
She followed Adam Moss’s car up Light Street. Do cars give any insight into character? Adam Moss, who looked as if he should be behind the wheel of a sports car, drove a Geo, the American-made cousin to Tess’s Toyota. The navy blue car was clean, outside and in-Tess had crept up to its windows the night she waited outside his house. There was nothing inside, not even a road map. The radio was a good one, the high-end kind with a detachable face. He had a Club, but almost everyone in South Baltimore did.
He took her past the harbor, onto President Street and the JFX beyond that. He turned off at the Falls Road exit, heading into the heart of Hampden, a working-class neighborhood enjoying a burst of popularity in the city’s suddenly, inexplicably hot real estate market. Here, yuppies and rednecks coexisted peacefully. Most of the time.
He parked around the corner from Cafe Hon, a place where Tess indulged her frequent need for comfort food. She found a parking spot a block up, then sprinted toward the Avenue, as 36th Street was known here. Adam Moss’s tall figure was on the south side of the street, heading east, his navy wool coat open despite the chill in the air. She let him stay a block ahead, trying to look as if she were window shopping, then trying not to be distracted by the Avenue’s wares. Antiques left her cold, but how she yearned for a painted screen scavenged from one of her East Baltimore neighbors, or one of those old tins from the sausage company that shared her dog’s name. It would be even better than a neon sign that said Human Hair. But $75 seemed a bit high just for the honor of owning an Esskay can that boasted its contents were made with pure lard.
Adam Moss was not a window shopper. He walked purposefully, without a single sidelong glance for the people or places he passed. He was almost to Chestnut Street before he turned into a small shop, one of the galleries that had begun springing up in the neighborhood. In Tess’s experience, a neighborhood could not pretend to hotness until galleries began to open there. This gallery had no name, not that Tess could see, but it was brightly lit and its front windows had two large, abstract oil paintings on display-angry, red-hued triangles that reminded Tess vaguely of mountain ranges. Or knives.
She crossed to the other side of the street and found a convenient bus stop bench. People still waited for buses, didn’t they? Plus, she had the advantage of being in shadow, while the gallery was so bright it was like peering into a diorama. It was empty, except for a striking young woman. Thin, confident enough to wear her hair cut close to the scalp, like a feathery cap-together, she and Adam Moss were almost unbearable in their pulchritude. Yet there was no sexual buzz between them. The kiss Adam gave her was light, almost fatherly. And while they stood very close as they spoke, their body language revealed only matter-of-fact comfort.
They talked for no more than five minutes. Another light kiss, and Adam was gone, heading back down the Avenue. Tess was torn. She had intended to follow him as long as he was out. Yet here was a lead, someone who knew him, and had no idea who she was. What if the girl wasn’t there when she came back another day? It would
