Baltimore Blues

assume you were a failed novelist, not a failed journalist. You were a journalist, right? I mean, when you still had a job.'

'I may have left the newspaper business, but at least it wasn't because I kept failing some test. You know, Abramowitz told Rock you were sleeping with him because you kept failing the bar. He also said he couldn't do a damn thing for you, but he slept with you anyway. Now that he's dead, are you going to start sleeping with another partner, hoping for a reprieve from the firm's ‘three-strikes-and-you're-out' rule?'

Ava's jaw muscles flickered like neon and her eyes narrowed. If she had been a dog, her ears would have flattened back, too. Tess could tell she longed to bite her, or at least throw her wineglass. Instead she took a sip of wine, then another. When she spoke her voice was calm, but only through great effort.

'If Abramowitz said that, he's lying. At any rate I can't believe Rock wants a defense based on humiliating me in court, but I'll mention it to him when he calls. He calls me all the time, you know. I just don't pick up the phone. That's why we haven't talked, not because of any instructions he received. But I may pick up the next time he calls. And perhaps I'll offer my services to his lawyer. I'm sure I could do better than an unlicensed amateur.'

'Well, you're definitely not an amateur. The services you provided Abramowitz lifted you out of that category. I won't pretend to compete with you there.'

She did throw her wineglass, then, but her aim was poor. The glass sailed past Tess's shoulder, flying out to the sidewalk. There was a tiny crash, and a woman, probably a tourist, cried out: 'Harry, did you see that?'

'Sorry you couldn't help me with Rock's alibi, Ava,' Tess said. 'Maybe you better work on your own.'

She felt pleased with herself, a little cocky, but the mood quickly vanished when she left Ava's apartment. For outside Eden 's Landing, she saw Rock on his bicycle, riding up and down President Street like the nerdiest kid in school cruising past the head cheerleader's house, lovesick and forlorn.

'You're not supposed to be doing this,' Tess admonished him. 'Tyner told you to stay away and not to talk to her.'

'I don't remember him telling you to talk to her, either,' Rock said. 'How did she look? How's she holding up?'

'OK, I guess.' Tess thought of Ava in her empty apartment. 'Tell me something, Rock. Where does her money go?'

'Well, she has a big mortgage and loans from law school. Maintenance is high, and she can't even deduct it from her taxes. But she had to have it. She figured it wouldn't be so bad once we got married and were splitting the monthly payments.'

'Were you going to live there together?'

'She thought so.' Rock looked embarrassed. 'I let her think so. But it is so small and so expensive. I was going to wait until we got married, then try to talk her into a little house down in Anne Arundel County, on the Severn. A place with a dock.'

'That wouldn't come cheap, either.'

'No, but I have some money put aside. And it would have been worth it to have a place on a river where I could practice. Now it looks like I'll be using my savings for attorney's fees.'

'Did Ava know you had a lot squirreled away?'

'Sure. She couldn't understand why I lived the way I did-driving my car only when I had to, living in such a cheap apartment. So I booted up my computer one day and showed her my investments. She was pretty impressed.'

I bet-impressed enough to accept an engagement ring.

'Look, Rock, I'm not going to tell you what to do, because you never listen to anyone. But try not to do anything really stupid, OK? Stay away from Ava. Trust Tyner and trust me. We have your best interests at heart.'

'Are you saying Ava doesn't?'

'I'm sure she does, too-as long as they don't conflict with hers.'

Rock stared wistfully up at Eden 's Landing one more time, then pedaled away, waving good-bye to Tess over his shoulder.

Although worried about Rock and effectively shut out by Ava, Tess still felt upbeat and lighthearted. She had made a start, and she had so many other leads to follow. That support group. Tracking down the mystery man with the Louisville Slugger. She had earned a reward, she decided. French fries, perhaps, or a hot dog from the Nice N Easy.

She walked over to the convenience store on Broadway and asked for a kosher dog.

'It'll take a minute,' the sullen girl behind the counter told her.

'Luckily I've got a minute. Hand me that paper, will you?'

The Beacon-Light she shoved at Tess was not the Saturday paper, but the early Sunday edition, the bulldog. Filled with fake news and feature stories, the paper was of little use, except to those who wanted a jump on real estate ads or the Super Deals at the Giant. Tess, lacking the space to store toilet paper purchased in bulk and the funds to buy property, usually had little interest in the bulldog. Then she saw Jonathan Ross's byline on page one, under a catchy headline:

THE LAWYER, THE ROWER, THE LADY: UNLIKELY TRIANGLE LEADS TO TRAGEDY

Friends called Darryl Paxton 'Rock.' The nickname was a testament to his discipline as a sculler, a demanding sport that requires an almost absolute fanaticism if one is to be successful.

But 'Rock' also referred to his daunting physique, the heavily muscled arms, back, and legs that had carried him to so many victories, time and time again.

Sunday night, police say, Paxton used that strength to crush his latest opponent-famed lawyer Michael Abramowitz, believed to be a rival for Paxton's fiancee, Ava Hill, a young associate who had been working with Abramowitz. Four days later Paxton went before a judge: not to show remorse, or enter a plea, but to request that his murder trial not interfere with his sculling schedule.

In an exclusive interview the woman at the center of this unlikely triangle told the Beacon- Light that Paxton was insanely jealous of anyone close to her. His mind poisoned by misinformation, Ms. Hill said, he had even come to believe that Abramowitz was sexually harassing her.

'I tried to tell him he had it all wrong,' said a tearful Hill, recounting the night of the murder. 'But once Darryl had an idea in his head, nothing could dissuade him.'

Paxton appears calm and cool to those who know him best, but he is no stranger to violence. In college in Pittsburgh, he once beat a man in a local bar, injuring him so badly he required medical attention. The man, however, declined to press charges. Contacted today, ten years after the incident, he says he still fears Paxton too much to go on the record against him.

Meanwhile, childhood friends of Paxton describe cold, uncaring parents, interested only in his rowing accomplishments. His father, in particular, is described as a brutal taskmaster who would berate a young Paxton whenever he failed-whether at rowing or his studies. His father wanted him to be a doctor, according to one family friend, but Paxton preferred the less stressful life of a researcher.

Neighbors in Baltimore described Paxton as a quiet man who kept to himself. 'He always seems a little preoccupied when I see him down at the mailbox,' said Tillie Van Horne, who lives in his building. 'Polite, but not real interested in other people. When his girlfriend was with him, he couldn't see anyone else in the world.'

It was all there. Rock, faithful to at least one of Tyner's instructions, had not spoken to Jonathan, so Ava's account was allowed to float out over Baltimore, unchallenged and untested. In spite of herself Tess was impressed by Ava's ability to weave lie within lie. Caught in a compromising position, she had made up the story of sexual harassment to defang Tess. When it had backfired she claimed the story was a figment of Rock's overheated imagination. Abramowitz was dead, so no one could corroborate Rock's hearsay account that Ava had initiated the affair.

By the end of the overblown piece, which Tess read still standing in the Nice N Easy, her hot dog growing cold, the average reader would be convinced of two things: Rock's guilt and Ava's innocence. Every detail of their lives had been offered up to serve that purpose. Rock emerged as the brooding, obsessive Heathcliff of the Patapsco. Jonathan even called him a 'loner,' newspaper code for deranged. Ava was a golden girl, the straight-A student from Pikesville High School whose only false step was her involvement with this lunatic. Oddly Abramowitz hardly figured into his own murder story. A single man with no living relatives, he had no one to speak for him and no life to re-create outside the law. Old associates at the public defender's office recalled him only as a prickly