To her surprise Joey left the front desk empty as he took them up to the Triple O offices. Certainly this was not in the Minutemen manual, either. Something else to tell Tyner.
The Triple O offices were dark and empty, as Tess had hoped. Joey let them in, then lingered, as if he intended to supervise.
'If we pull the door to when we leave, will it lock?' Tess asked.
'Oh, sure. Yeah. Just pull the door to.' And Joey headed back to his desk and his Walkman.
Once he was gone Crow took his post by the receptionist's desk and Tess let herself into Abramowitz's office. The police tape was long gone, as were any stains left behind by his demise. But no one had rushed to claim the office, despite its panoramic view and lush appointments. Apparently lawyers were a superstitious lot.
She went to the obvious places first. In Tess's experience people weren't creative when it came to hiding things. Certainly she wasn't. If the cops ever raided her apartment, it wouldn't take more than five minutes to find the box of marijuana under the bed. Burglars would need less time to find the coffee can in the freezer, where she kept a few pieces of good jewelry and loose bills. She pulled open desk drawers, searched behind the legal books. Nothing. If the police had found the gun, it should be on an evidence list. If the Triple O had done its own sweep, for whatever reason, there would be no gun. Or could Abramowitz have taken it home?
She was trying to jimmy open a file drawer with a Swiss Army knife, without much success, when she heard Crow's voice in the hallway. 'Hello there, sir. May I help you, sir? Sir? Sir?' She crouched under the desk and listened to footsteps drawing closer.
'Can I help you, sir?' Crow's voice, insistent and panicked.
'I don't think so, young man,' a familiar voice said. 'I don't think you're supposed to be here at all.'
Tess peered around the desk. Crow was in the doorway, trying to keep the custodian, Frank Miles, from entering the office. The weekend custodian. Their visit coincided perfectly with his shift. Sighing, Tess crawled out.
'Hey, Mr. Miles. I'm just looking for some things that might be relevant to the case.'
He looked at her knowingly. Not suspiciously or meanly. Just knowingly. 'Then why do you have to come sneaking around at night?'
'Mr. O'Neal isn't kindly disposed to my boss or his client these days.'
Mr. Miles continued to take her measure, sober and thoughtful. It was the kind of face you saw when you tried to sneak in past curfew, Tess thought-wise, beyond bullshit. He may never have been a father, but his years as a custodian in the school system apparently had taught him everything he needed to know about a young person's cunning. Tess knew he wasn't fooled, that he was deciding whether to throw them out or call the cops.
'We won't be long,' she promised. 'It's not our fault we had to sneak in. Frankly Mr. O'Neal's being a prick, if you'll pardon the expression.'
He smiled at that. 'Have it your way. But I don't know what you expect to find. I cleaned that carpet myself after the police were through. I guess you just had to see for yourself. You really are conscientious, Miss Monaghan.'
He pushed his cart down the long hall to an office in the southwest corner. Tess realized he was making a point of trusting them, of not watching them too closely.
'Cool guy,' Crow breathed. 'I love his voice.'
Now that Mr. Miles had given his tacit consent, Crow helped Tess go over the room one more time. It was an impersonal room, without a trace of Abramowitz in it. She had expected he would be the type to put his clippings on display, matted and framed. Or, failing that, some silly, in-your-face piece of art, a raucous poster or obscene sculpture. There was nothing to suggest Abramowitz had ever been here. Even the calendar on his desk was snowy white, devoid of appointments. She noticed it was still on April, almost six months behind. She ran her hands over the paper, marveling at its virgin state. There were no indentations, no sign that the previous months had been any less pure. But something at the center felt odd. Puzzled, she pressed down again. It wasn't her imagination; there was a thin, square shape in the middle. Flipping the calendar over, she found a computer disk taped to the inside of the cardboard backing.
'Got something,' she said to Crow. 'What kind of computer does he have here?'
'Macintosh, a really powerful one.'
'Good, it's compatible with mine, as long as he uses the same word processing software.' She pocketed it. 'I guess this is it.'
'The files?' Crow asked.
'Locked. I was trying to get into them when you and Mr. Miles showed up. I don't have much experience at breaking locks.'
Crow looked at the filing cabinet with great concentration. Then he kicked it as hard as he could. Nothing happened, except that he fell over backward in pain, holding his foot.
'Did you check his desk drawer for a key?' he asked after several seconds, when he started breathing normally again.
Tess slid out the center drawer and immediately saw a key glinting among the pens. They unlocked the first bank of files. This was tricky territory. Lawyers' files are private, and random pawing could affect cases. But Abramowitz's files were as empty as his calendar. Legal-size folders sat, waiting for labels and files. Nothing more. The other drawers didn't even have folders in them. Finally, in the bottom drawer, they found a few mouse droppings.
'I guess the floppy is going to be our only souvenir from this trip,' Tess said, patting her pocket.
'What about the gun?' Crow asked.
'If it's here, it's too well hidden. Or maybe it's in his house. Still, we'll always have Macauley's deposition about what happened. That might help.'
'Won't he testify when the time comes?'
'When the time comes Macauley may not be alive.'
Mr. Miles watched them leave. 'Did you get what you came for, Miss Monaghan?'
'Not exactly,' she said. 'We found something, but it wasn't what we were looking for. I'm not sure what we found.'
In the car, as Crow's voice assaulted her in stereo, she expected to feel depressed. They had failed. They had not found the gun. The legal status of the diskette in her pocket was dubious at best, its utility unknown.
But they had gotten in. She felt a buzz of pleasure from that fact alone.
'C'mon,' Tess said. 'I'll buy you a drink, as long as you order something that doesn't embarrass me. No girlie drinks.'
'Sexist. What's a girlie drink?'
'Anything made in a blender, except a frozen margarita.'
She directed him to one of her favorite bars, Frigo's, a neighborhood place that could not, despite the best efforts of five subsequent owners, be stripped of everything that made it pleasant and interesting. After five renovations, which included the addition of a Formstone exterior and a rickety deck, Frigo's, on the boundary between Fells Point and Little Italy, still had a tin-pressed ceiling, gleaming wood floors, and a mahogany bar.
More importantly it had one dollar drafts and a metal rack of Utz potato chips, which provided Crow and Tess with a three-course supper: barbecue, sour cream and onion, and, for dessert, crab flavored. The meal went surprisingly well with bourbon and water, Tess's drink of choice that night and, inevitably, Crow's. She suspected if she chose to dive into the harbor fully clothed, or announced a little bank job as their next assignment, Crow would have followed her without batting a thick black eyelash.
It was as if he had slipped his heart into her purse while she wasn't looking, so complete was the transference of his affection. Now Tess had the peripatetic, panicky feeling you have when guarding something special to someone else but of no particular value to you. She assumed she was safeguarding it only temporarily. Any day, any moment, he would want it back, undamaged, to hand to someone else.
'Do you think you'll find anything on the diskette?' Crow asked. 'Should we go back to your place and read it now?'
'I don't expect to find anything. And, no, I don't need you to implicate yourself in this crime as well. There's a chance some privileged stuff might be on there. I did appreciate your help tonight, though.'
Crow gave her a lovesick smile. His silly all-black garb was oddly flattering. In the dim light of the bar, his green highlights temporarily hidden, he looked halfway normal and almost attractive. He also looked very
