Baltimore Blues

recruited to dance only one part, a Comet can in the instructor's own modern-day version of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. 'It's a big part,' the instructor promised. This was literally true. The Comet costume, more than six feet at full extension, was made of heavy painted canvas, strung on three Hula Hoops, so Tess could collapse and expand throughout the twelve-minute dance. For long stretches of time she had to hold her arms straight over her head, elbows locked, to give the Comet can its full shape. Only a strapping girl with a lot of upper body strength could have survived in that costume.

Their first performance was at the jail. The smaller girls, the real dancers, got to be 409 bottles and Brillo pads and Lemon Joy, pointing their painted Capezios and twirling lightly across the dingy linoleum. Tess rose and fell, rose and fell, creeping across the floor in bare feet, which were black afterward. Still, it was not the dirty floor, jealousy of the daintier girls, fear of the prison, or even the anonymity of her costume that convinced her to give up dancing after one performance. It was the sudden catcalls of the inmates, when she emerged from her Comet can, a lush Botticelli among the less sturdy dancers, the sweat on her leotard an obscene blueprint of the erogenous zones of her precocious body. The futility of her plan clear, fourteen-year-old Tess hung up her Comet can.

All this came back to her as she circled the complex of prisons and jails east of downtown, trying to find the right entrance. By the time she reached Super Max, home to the state's most dangerous prisoners, she was sweating heavily.

'Death Row?' she asked the guard, as she had asked at two other entrances, only to be turned away wordlessly.

'Ain't no Death Row in Maryland, miss. Some of the guys are here, some over at the state penitentiary. Who you here to see? What's your name?'

He checked his clipboard and sent her to yet another door, where a state officially waited eagerly to escort her to Tucker Fauquier.

'The guard at the other gate told me there was no Death Row,' Tess said, perplexed.

'No, there isn't. Not like in other states,' the official agreed. 'The guys are scattered around. If they're a danger to themselves or-more likely-in danger from the other inmates, they go to Super Max. Otherwise they're here in A-block. Tucker used to be over in Super Max in the beginning. But he's a model prisoner now. Besides, so few of the others remember why he's here. In prison time it was a generation ago.'

The official-Garfield Lardner, according to the photo ID clipped to his polyester jacket-was a breathless, pink- cheeked little man with a shiny bald head on which Tess could almost see her reflection. He searched her purse, apologizing for the intrusion, and barely passed the metal detector wand over her, apologizing again as he did so. She was touched by his concern and solicitous attention-until she remembered it was meant for someone else, the granddaughter of a politically connected seafood king.

The concern for security seemed to end once they passed through the various checkpoints and a series of anterooms. Lardner led her to a room with a long conference table surrounded by leather chairs. No bulletproof glass, no phone-nothing she would have expected from the prison movies she had seen. Just an ordinary, if slightly shabby, meeting room.

'The parole board usually meets here,' Lardner said. 'On the first and third Wednesdays. No one should disturb you today. But Tucker can't see you for much more than forty-five minutes. He has a meeting.'

'A meeting? With someone else from outside?'

'Oh no, it's the leadership counsel. Just an in-house thing. He's the secretary. Let me go get Tucker.'

As he scurried out, Tess called to him: 'Will the guard be in here with us? Or will you post him at the door?'

Lardner stopped, as if this had not occurred to him. 'We don't usually have a guard at all. Do you want someone, though? I'm sure I could arrange it.'

'No, no, that's fine.' At least no one will be around to eavesdrop on my 'sociology project.'

She sat in the chair at the head of the table, then decided this would seem faintly authoritarian. She moved to the far side, to a chair in the middle. Should she stand when he entered? Offer her hand? Engrossed in the etiquette of the moment, Tess did not realize it had already passed her by. Tucker Fauquier was in the doorway, waiting for her to acknowledge him.

He was a small man, clean shaven, his hair slicked back with water. Tess had carried in her mind a picture of a younger man, the man in the photograph with Abramowitz. Even scrubbed and cleaned up for the trial, that man, with his longer hair and bad skin, had lived up to expectations of a serial killer-pervert. This man had the pale, blue-veined look of someone who had not seen the sun for a long time. Yet it wasn't creepy or unhealthy looking. In fact his skin was lovely, almost creamy, an advertisement for sunscreen and broad-brimmed hats. He had to be almost forty now, yet looked younger. Involuntarily, Tess brushed a hand against her own sun- coarsened cheek.

He smiled, and she tried but failed to find anything especially chilling in his face. The canine teeth, while unusually sharp, giving him a feral look, were straight and white. A dozen years ago news accounts had made much of this smile, suggesting it had been the reason he could so easily entice his victims. It was a pleasant smile, Tess decided, but not hypnotic. You couldn't charm a bird out of a tree with it, or a young boy into a car. In fact Tess didn't think anyone would ever notice Tucker Fauquier, not under normal circumstances. Perhaps that had been the problem.

'Mr. Fauquier, I'm Tess Monaghan.'

'Yes, they told me you were coming. They said you're working on a school project.' His voice was soft and whispery, which only magnified the slight lisp Fauquier was trying to downplay.

'There must have been some confusion, Mr. Fauquier. I'm not sure why they told you that.' Aside from Uncle Donald's gossip along the phone lines. 'I'm working for a lawyer who thinks you may know something about Michael Abramowitz. Could you answer some questions for me?'

'About his murder.' It wasn't a question. He seemed amused-by her manners, or by her deceit, which he seemed to grasp instantly.

'Something that might shed light on his murder, actually. Although, if you'd like to confess to arranging the whole thing, it would make my job easier, I admit.'

Fauquier smiled again. 'I think I've made enough confessions in my day. They'll have to solve this one on their own.'

He was in the chair across from her, almost preternaturally poised, rocking slightly. He had drawn one foot under him, which seemed an odd, uncomfortable way to sit, but it also had the effect of making him look taller. Tess could tell he was enjoying himself, enjoying the attention.

'I thought there was something you wanted to talk about, Mr. Fauquier. Something you promised to tell Jonathan Ross. Only you reneged.'

She had surprised him. Fauquier leaned back in his chair, pressing the heels of his hands against the table, showing off his forearms. They were slender, but the veins stood out against them, bright blue bas-relief. A weight lifter, Tess judged, one who lifted for strength and tone, not bulk.

'Well, then Jonathan reneged, too, didn't he? He told me our interviews were off-the-record. Then he turned around and told you what I said. That's a lot worse, what he did.'

He reminded her of a little boy, rationalizing away a petty infraction by blaming his older brother for a larger one.

'Not exactly, Mr. Fauquier. Jonathan told me he had been meeting with someone condemned to die, someone ‘twisted,' who got in touch with him after Abramowitz died. That gave me a one-in-thirteen chance to guess. Someone else, a woman who worked with Michael Abramowitz, said he complained about one of his clients, also a ‘twisted' gentleman convicted of a capital crime. The odds fell to one in three. Both men called you a twisted fucker. You liked to call yourself a twisted fucker. Mr. Ross and Mr. Abramowitz are dead. Is it all a coincidence?'

'Stranger things have happened.' He grinned. 'I happened, didn't I?'

'Tell me the story you were going to tell Jonathan, the one you wanted to tell before you die. It's no good if you're dead, is it? You need the story to be told while you're alive. You want something, attention or time. Maybe both. I can give you one of those things.'

'I don't care that much about attention, and I'm not worrying too much about dying right now.'