Baltimore Blues

she had always been good at not being caught.

She picked up the paper again. There was nothing new beyond that third paragraph, only boilerplate on Abramowitz and his career. Certainly, nothing was new to Tess. Even the style and the reporting were as familiar to Tess as a lover's kiss. In a sense, it was her lover's kiss. The article was the handiwork of Jonathan Ross, her sometime bedmate and a consistent star in the Blight's galaxy. In her shock at the headline, she had skipped over the byline. All his trademarks were there-unnamed sources, a memorable description of the death at hand, over-the-top prose, a damning detail. 'The staid law firm.' Was there another kind? Still, she felt genuine admiration at the guard's log; she bet no one else in town had that.

'But I know more,' she said out loud. What Jonathan wouldn't give to know what she knew-the woman at the center of this triangle, the trysts at the Renaissance Harborplace, Rock's suspicions. She was the one person who could put it all together. With that thought she threw the paper down and called for Kitty, her voice thin and shrill.

'Tesser?' Kitty came on a run, dressed in an Edwardian frock of white lawn, a white ribbon in her curls and white canvas Jack Purcells on her size five feet. The effect was a little bit flapper, a little 1920s Wimbledon, a little 1970s Baltimore, when anyone who wore shoes other than Jacks was ridiculed for appearing in 'fish heads.'

Tess thrust the paper at her: 'Remember my detective job? It was quite a success. I caught Rock's fiancee with her boss. Now the boss is dead and Rock's in jail.'

Kitty skimmed the article.

'Did you tell Rock what you found out?'

'No, I goaded Ava into telling him last night. She says it was sexual harassment. She had to sleep with Abramowitz to keep her job. The last time I saw her, she was on her car phone, telling Rock her story.'

Kitty was a quick study. 'You need to disappear for a while,' she announced decisively. 'Take a little trip and don't tell me where. Given my relationship with Thaddeus, I'd prefer not to know too much so I won't have to lie if anyone comes looking for you.'

'I'll have to talk to them eventually.'

'Yes, you will,' Kitty agreed. 'But it wouldn't hurt to be unavailable for a few days while you figure out how you want to handle this. Take any money you need out of the cash register and leave me a check. I won't cash it unless I have to. Find a cheap motel or a friend's house, then call me collect from pay phones. In a few days we'll know where this is headed, and you can come home.'

Tess took the stairs to her apartment two at a time and began throwing clothes into a battered leather knapsack. Her friend Whitney's family had a house on the shore near Oxford, with a small guest house on the property's edge. She and Whitney had used it during college when they had wanted to get away. Rich friends had their charms. She would have to assume she was still welcome there, as calling Whitney would only further complicate things. Whitney worked for the Beacon-Light, too, and although she would be under no legal requirement to talk, Tess didn't want to find out what would happen if Whitney had to choose between her friend and some tantalizing details in what promised to be a big story. Asking Whitney not to act out of self-interest was akin to asking a cat not to chase a bird. Better not to test her.

The telephone rang as Tess was gathering her toothbrush and shampoo from the bathroom. She let the machine pick it up. A hoarse, familiar voice filled her small apartment with such force that the glass doors in her kitchen cabinets rattled: Tyner Gray, a rowing coach whose years of working with young novices had turned his voice into a perpetual shout.

'Tess, it's Tyner; call me at my law office as soon as you get a chance.

'It's not about rowing,' he added, as if he knew she was standing there and could read her mind as well. 'It is about a rower we both know well.'

The volume of his voice dropped to a husky whisper, still impossibly loud and piercing. 'He asked me to call you, Tess. For some reason he thinks you can help him. Although, from what I know, it would appear you've done quite enough.' His voice roared back to its usual volume, as if he were shouting a drill to her across an expanse of water. 'Call my office, Tess. ASAP.'

Tess sat on the floor, a pair of underwear still balled up in her hand. If Rock needed her she couldn't run away. She wondered whether Rock was the best judge of what he needed. Or whom he needed. First he hired a fellow sculler to be his private detective. And see how that had turned out. Now he had a rowing coach as his lawyer. What did he think he was going to get for his jury-a men's eight and a women's four?

At sixty-four, Tyner Gray still had the lean, sinewy upper body of a lightweight rower. On warm days, when he was on the dock and took off his T-shirt, the college girls stole looks at his chest and arms. No one ever glanced at his legs, withered and lifeless in his sweatpants, almost flat. As far as Tess knew, no one had seen them since his accident almost forty years ago, a year after his Olympic victory. He had been hit by a drunk driver outside Memorial Stadium.

'Did you get a workout in this morning?' Rock asked when Tess was shown into Tyner's office by his secretary, Alison, a ravishing blonde whose pearls were as big and round as the blue eyes she fastened adoringly on Tyner. 'I hated missing practice.'

Arrested and charged at eleven, bailed out nine hours later, Rock looked good. Jail, or the lack of caffeine, had helped him get some rest for the first time in weeks. In fact he seemed almost serene to Tess. Whatever had happened, he still had Ava.

Tyner sighed. 'Rock, I know your perspective on this is you're an innocent man and some horrible mistake has been made. It doesn't work that way. I'm not sure you'll be allowed to leave the state for the Head of the Ohio, much less the Head of the Charles. You were lucky you had enough cash on hand to pay a bail bondsman.'

Rock looked stunned. Miss the Head of the Charles? Tyner now had his full attention.

'Our biggest problem is that the police are satisfied they have the right suspect,' Tyner said. 'This is the kind of high-profile case they're pressured to solve quickly, and they're already congratulating themselves on what a no-brainer it was-and that's before talking to Ava. We can only hope their investigation will founder on a lack of evidence, or that someone else might be implicated. In the meantime we can begin gathering information to help us get the charges dropped or, if it comes to that, dissuade a jury. This is where Tess comes in.'

'Back up. I thought we all agreed I caused this mess. Why involve me?'

'Because you now work for me. You're going to turn over your notes from your ‘investigation' and, if anyone asks to see them, I'm going to argue they're privileged. Same thing if the police try to talk to you, or the state's attorney. I will show them our employment contract, dated September first-the day you contracted with Rock.'

'Am I really working for you, or is this just a scam?'

'You're going to work your ass off,' Tyner promised, grinning. 'You are going to do things I hate to do. You are going to photocopy and fetch my lunch. You are going to take my jackets to the tailor if I tell you to. And you are going to conduct preliminary interviews with key witnesses, gathering the information I need to play what I call ‘tick-tock'-a little game designed to open windows for other murderers while narrowing Rock's opportunity.'

Tick-tock, Tyner explained, was Salvador Dali's timepiece, liquid and flexible. Did Rock really go upstairs at 10 P.M., as the guard told police? Could it have been 10:05? Or 9:45? If the guard was lax about procedures such as calling up, might he have been similarly lax about timekeeping? Who else went in and out? Tess's job was to interview the security guard, the custodian, and anyone else, and-politely, sweetly, deferentially-create as much confusion in their minds as possible.

'Tick-tock,' Tyner said. 'Open windows, find new doors and exits. ‘Did you happen to check your watch? A digital watch? Did you notice exactly what time it was? Of course you didn't, I guess; no one notices the exact time. Ten o'clock is an estimate, right, your best guess?'

'‘Does everyone sign in, sir? Everyone? Does anyone ever sneak in? Never? Did you go to the door to smoke a cigarette or breathe the night air? Are you sure?' That's how you play. And our first player is Rock. Except I want him to be specific and very clear about what he did, and when. Tess, you used to be a reporter. Take notes.' He threw a legal pad and a pen at her.

Rock looked at Tyner's worn rug as he spoke. The beginning of his story was familiar, at least to Tess. Ava had called him about 8:30 P.M. That could be established with a log of calls from Ava's car phone; even Tess