But her good manners could not save the tea party twice. 'Don't worry about it, Seamon,' Tyner said, his voice oddly jovial. 'You've got a few years. With some luck you might have something to be proud of, something better than a law firm and your father-in-law's millions.'
Tyner's line cried out for a grand departure, but the O'Neals' home, for all its graciousness, did not provide him with the unfettered passage needed to roll out dramatically. Tess helped him navigate the kilim rug and the slippery runner in the hallway, a thin rug that bunched up under his wheels. At the front door she had to help him back away from the door before she could wrench it open. When she finally threw it open, a screeching noise filled the air, a horrible sound that echoed endlessly up and down Cross Place. She had set off the O'Neals' alarm system, apparently programmed for automatic, as if they expected Tyner and Tess to bolt.
Tyner made his way down the driveway and swung himself into the van's passenger seat. The days were growing shorter, and the fading light barely penetrated through the trees along Cross Place. In the doorways of the houses to the left and right, Tess saw silhouettes of men drawn by the still-shrieking alarm. As her eyes grew used to the dusk, she saw one had a lacrosse stick and another held what appeared to be an antique revolver. Slowly the men started moving toward the van. Tess threw the wheelchair in the back, not taking time to fold it. The Wasp avengers had reached the end of their curving walkways and were still approaching, silent and sure of themselves. Tess leapt into the driver's seat and floored the engine, backing out of the driveway and burning rubber as she accelerated off Cross Place, the alarm screaming in their ears, the neighbors almost on them. She was on St. Paul, heading back to the city, before she realized the blue and white flag still flew from the antenna.
'I think I'll save that,' she told Tyner, pointing at the wind-whipped flag. 'After all, we might be invited back for tea sometime soon.'
Chapter 17
After dropping Tyner and his van off at his office, Tess walked up to the Brass Elephant and ordered a Scotch and water at the restaurant's upstairs bar. The long, narrow bar deserved to be famous, if only for its martinis. Its regulars, however, were jealous and, as if by unspoken agreement, brought few new customers. Tess had some unresolved feelings about vermouth, but she drank martinis here because she believed in supporting artists at work, and Victor the bartender was nothing if not an artist.
Tonight, however, she was still thinking about all those golden liquids lined up in crystal decanters at the O'Neals. She was convinced their liquor was finer than anything she would ever taste, finer than anything she could buy, no matter how much money she had in her pocket. Then again, perhaps the O'Neals were cheap, the sort of rich people who bought inexpensive brands of Scotch and bourbon and cognac and put them in decanters so no one knew their pedigree. Scotch and water wasn't what she really wanted. Gloomy and out of sorts, she left her drink unfinished on the bar and went home.
Kitty and Officer Friendly were in their bathrobes, wolfing down one of those postcoital picnics peculiar to a relationship's beginning, when sex brings other appetites to life. Tonight they were working on a hunk of summer sausage, Italian bread slathered with olive oil, sliced apples, and Camembert. They invited Tess to stay, but her memory of O'Neal's blood red face robbed her of the usual pleasures she found in cholesterol.
'Not even some bread?' Thaddeus asked. 'Olive oil is a relatively benign monosaturate.' She wondered if Kitty had taught him that, or if he had unplumbed depths. Shaking her head no, Tess grabbed an apple, sawed off two thick slices of bread, poured a healthy slug of white wine, and carried it all to her rooftop. She would rather have her own solitary picnic than be an unwanted guest at someone else's.
Her dinner finished, Tess felt so cozy in her wallow of self-pity that she decided to smoke a joint. She didn't pay much attention to the harmonica tune wafting up from the alley below. Fells Point had no shortage of panhandlers who tried to pass themselves off as musicians. And this was a particularly overachieving busker who seemed to fancy himself the Jimi Hendrix of the harmonica, segueing raggedly from 'The Star-Spangled Banner' to a blues song.
'Oh, shit.' She knew this song. It was Jonathan Ross's mating call.
Jonathan took the stairs two at a time and began kicking the door lustily, his harmonica still wheezing in his teeth. She knew by the sound of his cowboy boots on the door that he had come to crow. Tess experienced Jonathan only at his extremes-cocky and in need of affirmation, or depressed and in need of affirmation. Once, in conversation with Whitney, she had compared her Jonathan encounters to eating Oreos without any filling.
'Well, that's what you sign up for when you keep company with men who are virtually engaged to other people,' Whitney had said in her blunt way. 'Licked-clean Oreos.'
Tonight the plain chocolate cookie in question had brought, along with the harmonica, a bottle of mescal, a Big Mac, and a large order of fries. He pressed the warm, grease-stained bag into Tess's middle as he hugged her, giving her a wet kiss tasting faintly of salt and Hohner Marine Band steel.
'Oh, you shouldn't have,' Tess trilled in falsetto, cradling the brown paper bag. 'Let me get a vase for these fries.'
He grabbed the bag back from her, growling deep in his throat, and began to cram French fries in his mouth by the fistful. When obsessed at work Jonathan sometimes forgot to eat until his need for food became so acute he almost fainted. Once he did find sustenance he guarded it as jealously as a dog. Tess knew what a hunger like this meant.
'Big story?'
'Huge,' he said around a mouthful of fries. 'Enormous. Gargantuan. Pulitzer material. Do they give the Nobel in journalism? I'll win that, too.'
Tess felt her stomach lurch. Feeney, damn Feeney. If he had told Jonathan about her call, Jonathan might be following the same lead now. He would find the mystery man with the Louisville Slugger first. He would solve the murder. He would win.
'Abramowitz?'
Jonathan held up his hand as if he were a traffic cop, motioning her to wait while he worked his way through the last handful of fries. 'Better. Much better than any dead lawyer.'
He offered Tess the mescal bottle, but she shook her head. With a glass of wine at her side and a half-joint still in her system, she had enough substances going. Jonathan took three swallows, then began pacing back and forth, bent over in an unconscious parody of Groucho Marx.
'Tell me,' Tess wheedled, unconvinced Abramowitz was not part of it. 'You know you're dying to tell someone.'
'No. Not yet. I don't have it on the record yet, but I will. I will!' Jonathan dumped a shot of mescal on the Big Mac, then consumed the burger and his own special sauce in three bites. Like Kitty and Thaddeus gulping summer sausage, Jonathan's appetite had little to do with his stomach.
'Give me a hint. Tell me something. Tell me how big it is.'
Jonathan stopped pacing, if not chewing, and considered her question. 'It will change…everything. It will be like a coup, by journalism. Killers will roam the streets of Baltimore. Institutions will be suspect.'
'And the president will resign, right? You don't have to hype your story to
'You'll buy it eventually. You'll take your fifty cents down to the newspaper box and you'll buy it along with 300,000 other people. No, make that a dollar fifty and 500,000 people. This is a Sunday story, all the way.
