Baltimore Blues

other people, too. Especially the increasingly sympathetic O'Neal. In fact this could solve all your problems. Maybe you'll get a nice fat settlement. Maybe Abramowitz will get fired and you'll get another chance. It was a good plan. With Abramowitz dead, it was an even better plan.'

'How do you figure that?' Ava's voice was sharp again, stripped of the velvety tone she had used when talking about Rock.

'If Abramowitz is dead no one can contradict you, right? And I assume a firm that hates publicity would prefer to pay you off, as long as you agree to tell the press a more genteel version of events.'

Tess gestured at the new furnishings around them.

Ava sighed. 'You're right, more or less, but what's the point? None of this changes the case against Darryl. He thought Abramowitz had forced me to go to bed with him. He went down there and he killed him. Don't get me wrong, I hope he gets acquitted, or manslaughter, but I still think he did it. Frankly it's a little frightening to think I came so close to marrying a man with that strong a violent streak.'

For the first time she seemed absolutely without guile. There was no indication that Ava remembered her own pivotal role in this, that her lies had sent Rock to Abramowitz's office, that none of this would have happened if she hadn't been such a schemer. They had both been so clever. But Tess couldn't afford to think about this now.

'There are still some missing pieces. Why didn't Abramowitz have any work to do? Did people in the firm know he wasn't doing anything? Did he have something on O'Neal?'

'I asked Shay about that once.' Shay, Tess noted. 'Of course, I didn't ask it quite as rudely as you did. He told me Abramowitz had screwed something up, an important case. He didn't really have a lot of experience in this kind of practice, you know. He knew the law, but he didn't have the style the firm's clients expected. He upset an important client. So they stopped giving him work, hoping he would leave. That's how they do things at O'Neal, O'Connor and O'Neill. But Abramowitz wasn't gracious enough to cut his losses. He was greedy.'

Tess could hear the too-hearty voice of Seamon P. O'Neal-no, Shay-reeling off those last few sentences. Ava was a quick study, at least at some things.

'Did everyone know he was being frozen out?'

'No, no one was suppose to know. Not even me-I. They just wanted him to leave; they didn't want to destroy his reputation. But after three months of creating busywork, he began running out of things for me to do. At first I thought he didn't trust me because of my problems with the bar. Then I saw his files were empty, and one day… well, one day I opened his briefcase. All he had in it were a law journal and a ham sandwich.'

So Abramowitz had never lost his taste for trayf. Tess liked that.

'He never got mail. Almost no one called, never any clients. The Sims-Kever people were always meeting with Larry Chambers, a young partner at the other end of the office, while I was moving death certificates around in my files.'

'No mail or phone calls at all? What about personal stuff?'

'He did get letters from inmates-I saw the Department of Corrections numbers on the envelopes. He said a lot of his clients from his public defender days stayed in touch. He was proud of that, which was odd. Those were the cases he lost.'

'Maybe he was proud the men liked him, even though they lost.'

'Maybe. One sure didn't, though. He used to call and harangue him, which always upset Michael.'

'Did he ever say anything about those calls, who they came from? Maybe a client with a grudge had been released from prison recently.'

Ava shook her head. 'He'd just get all red in the face and say, ‘I hate that-' Well, I'd prefer not to repeat what he would say.'

'Give me a break, Ava. We've established you're not exactly Emily Post. Tell me what he said.'

'He'd say…‘I hate that twisted fucker.''

'Twisted fucker? He called him a twisted fucker?'

'Yes, and it was odd, because he never used words like that, not around me. When I complained he told me everyone called him that.'

And when Tess had told Jonathan not to refer to his source by that name, he had said the same thing. 'It's not just me. It's practically his nickname.' The twisted fucker.

'Ava, this is important. This guy could have been released from prison, he could have come after Abramowitz.'

'No way. Not this guy.'

'Why?'

'Because this man is on Death Row, I know that much. The only way he's leaving prison is on a gurney.'

Death Row. Jonathan's source had been on Death Row, too. It had to be the same man. He had contacted him after he wrote about Abramowitz. The night before he died, Jonathan admitted the source was connected to the lawyer, but not to the lawyer's death. But Jonathan could have been wrong.

Tess stood up to leave. 'You've actually been a big help, Ava, although I can't tell you how.'

'You're not going to give that letter to the newspaper, right? That was our understanding.'

'The letter? Oh, you mean Abramowitz's diary, with all that stuff about you in it? Well, I should tell you two things, Ava. First of all the newspaper could give a fuck about your story. It's not news and only an egomaniac would think it was. The second thing is-I made it all up. Oh, Abramowitz was gay, but he never mentioned you, or your attempted seduction, although he did work out some practice questions for you. I lied to get you to talk to me, Ava. I owed you that much, don't you think?'

Ava dropped the glass of wine in her lap, spilling the dark red burgundy. Tess had been wrong: The wine and the dress were not the same color. The wine made a satisfyingly dark stain across the skirt of her dress, then ran down the sofa to the rug. Yes, that color did look nice next to the green.

'You know, my mom always uses plastic slipcovers on the good furniture,' Tess told Ava. 'You might want to try that, given your problems holding on to wineglasses.'

Chapter 25

Tess did not have to dig far through her file of Abramowitz clippings to guess the identity of the twisted fucker. The 'nickname' was a play on the man's real name-Tucker Fauquier. During his trial his name had become a spoonerism of sorts, with would-be wits calling him 'that fuckin' queer.' Times had changed. 'Fucker' was more acceptable, 'queer' less so. Fauquier had, wittingly perhaps, provided the alternative. In one of the clips from the newspaper file, he called himself 'one twisted fucker.' Actually, Tess saw, he had called himself 'one twisted f____________________,' but even a child could have solved that puzzle.

'I was lucky to have a lawyer like Michael Abramowitz,' he had told the reporter. That was after his conviction for the one killing with a witness, after he had pleaded guilty to the other murders, receiving so many sequential life sentences he would have to top Methuselah's 900 years before he would qualify for release.

Why had his gratitude metamorphosed into rancor? Tess slumped back in her chair and tried to find an answer. Was it simply because death seemed more likely now than it had ten years ago, when it appeared Maryland would never again execute someone? Was it the result of time alone, time to think up new grievances? She studied the old photo of Fauquier, his arm slung around his lawyer's neck. It was Abramowitz who looked unhappy, staring down at his feet. Abramowitz, the man who was glad to receive mail from his other clients in prison, could not bear to be with Tucker Fauquier. Was it because he had lost the case? Or because, as a man grappling with his own sexuality, he could not bear the touch of someone who raped boys, then killed them so no one would ever know?

Fauquier had been Jonathan's source. Fauquier had been Abramowitz's client. Both men were dead. Did she dare go see him, too? She felt she had no choice. It was as if she were in a boat, a boat rushing forward of its own momentum along an unfamiliar route, with no coxswain to steer or warn her about obstacles in her path. Of course she could always stop, give up, go to the police or Tyner, tell them everything she knew. Or she could keep going.