Baltimore Blues

What more would you ask?'

'I don't see your side. I could never think the way you do.' Tess was almost yelling, frantic in her hope that she was telling the truth.

'Well, then, I'll tell you the second reason I'm not worried. You're no one, and no one will ever believe you. But if you'd like a little money, a reward for being so clever, it could be arranged.'

'Actually,' Tess said, surprising even herself, 'I might.'

Chapter 29

Tess left the O'Neals' and drove to a copy store out in the suburbs, a bright, lively place with an espresso bar and throngs of people. Despite Mrs. O'Neal's kind assurances that she was too inconsequential to kill, she felt safer in public. She paid for computer time and typed up the story she had told Mrs. O'Neal, fleshed out now with Mrs. O'Neal's details. At the end she listed all her resources, a bibliography of sorts. She smoothed out and photocopied the crumpled, damp faxes, paid for the disk on which she had worked, and put everything in a manila envelope, which she then sent by certified mail to Kitty. She wrote on the back flap, 'To be opened only in the event of my death.' Kitty was one of the few people who would unquestioningly follow those instructions. She wouldn't even find it particularly odd. Tyner, while the more logical choice in some ways, would have opened it immediately.

Strangely Tess almost believed Mrs. O'Neal when she said they had not arranged Abramowitz's death. More importantly she believed she couldn't prove it if they had. All this work, all this effort, and she had ended up solving the wrong case-Jonathan's death and the death of a little boy whose name she had not even known two days ago.

That's why I hated being a reporter. You were always getting the wrong answers to your questions.

The thought darted across her mind like a cockroach running from the kitchen light, trying to disappear into a dark crevice. But Tess caught it before it vanished. Hated being a reporter? No, she had loved it. She had worked hard at it. It was the only career she had ever known. She had been a reporter because…because.

Because Whitney wanted to be a reporter, and you could never stop competing with Whitney. Because Jonathan was a great reporter, and you loved him once and wanted him to love you. Because James M. Cain was a reporter who went to Washington College, then had gone on to write wonderful books and have an interesting life. You wanted to be a writer with a regular paycheck. That didn't make you a reporter. Or a writer. It made you a coward and a fake. An imitation.

Her package mailed, she drove home and flopped on her bed. She had not exercised for five days, since Jonathan's death, and she'd eaten little. Her body felt puny and weak, her stomach flat, the kind of flat that comes from the atrophy of muscle. A workout's effects are lost in seventy-two hours, Tess chided herself, then tried to remember the last time she had gone three days without running or rowing. About five years ago, when she had sprained her ankle. Even then she had done bicep curls with cans of Progresso plum tomatoes and tried chin-ups from her door frame.

She stood up, determined to run, but her legs felt too rubbery. Instead she left her apartment and began walking. First north, then east. The neighborhoods through which she walked were the cornerstone of the Baltimore myth, the places enshrined in the travel pieces written by every slumming journalist who had ever swung a crab mallet at Obrycki's. Here were the marble stoops, the celebrated ethnic mix, the vast green spaces of Patterson Park. It looked good, from a distance. But Tess knew teenagers were smoking PCP and crack in the alleys, and that no one walked in Patterson Park because of the crime. She knew fewer and fewer women scrubbed their marble stoops every day. Even the Elvis mural had been defaced, so it had to be painted over. And when Baltimoreans started turning on Elvis, times were bad.

She walked past the old Francis Scott Key Hospital and through Greektown. The air was full of grape leaves, roasted lamb, potato pancakes, and, near the Brazilian restaurant, a scorched pork scent her nose recognized as the 'national dish of Brazil.' She passed Cesnik's Tavern. It could be Cecilia's father's place. She walked all the way to Dundalk, down Holabird Avenue, to the small hideous rancher owned by Abner Macauley.

Mrs. Macauley, her hair a few inches higher since Tess's last visit, opened the door.

'Oh, hi, hon,' she said. 'He's not well enough to talk.'

'He doesn't have to.' Almost rudely she pushed past the woman and into the living room.

Mr. Macauley looked worse, if that was possible. Grayer, thinner, frailer, a husk of a man. Tess thought his arm might collapse when she touched it, dry as dust beneath her fingers.

'Mr. Macauley?'

He was dozing and woke with a start, not recognizing her at first. He looked around her, found his wife, and relaxed. He was not dead, then, facing down an Amazonian angel at heaven's gate.

'You're going to get your money, Mr. Macauley. All of it. I talked to someone from the law firm and they promised. By next week.'

He smiled. Gently Tess picked up one of his hands. The palms were still rough, all these years later, but the backs of his hands were paper thin. She stroked his hand and listened to his breathing through the plastic tube, the squeak of his recliner. An old Perry Mason show was on television. Tess had forgotten Raymond Burr once had a dark, frightening grace. She also had forgotten what a weenie Hamilton Burger was.

'I've seen 'em all,' Mr. Macauley rasped. 'I never remember who did it.'

They watched the show together, silently. As a little girl Tess had watched it with Poppa Weinstein and he, much like Mr. Macauley, had seen every episode. She had thought this was how it worked-that everyone sat in the courtroom together, that attorneys were frequently surprised by the answers they heard, that the case was always solved as a witness dissolved in tears or shouts. In the back of her mind she had thought it would be like this for Rock.

'Jew bastard,' Mr. Macauley said suddenly.

'Perry Mason?' Raymond Burr? Hamilton Burger?

'Abramowitz,' he said. 'Jew bastard.' He fell back asleep. She continued to hold his hand. Everyone thought she was on their side, that she was one of them.

'You should go,' Mrs. Macauley whispered a little nervously. Did she worry her husband would wake up again, or was she simply frightened by this odd woman in her living room, holding her husband's hand in front of an old Emerson?

'Sure.' She walked to the door, Mrs. Macauley trailing her. 'I meant to tell him. You won't get the money all at once. You'll get quarterly payments over the next few years. And the checks will be from a local foundation, one associated with the law firm. That way you can get it faster.' The idea had come to her so quickly. If the William Tree Foundation was so generous with its funds, why shouldn't Abner Macauley get his cut? Mrs. O'Neal had been amused but happy to help. Tess would be quiet as long as Macauley got his checks.

'What will you do?' she asked Mrs. Macauley. 'With the money?'

'Oh-nothing.' She shrugged, as if $850,000 was no more than hitting a Pick 3. 'He's so far gone. We thought Florida, once. Or one of those places with a golf course right next to your house. Now I'd just like to see he has as little pain as possible.'

Tess hiked up to Eastern Avenue and caught a westbound bus home.

'Sweet Jesus Christ,' she announced to Crow as she banged through the front door of the shop, empty except for him. 'We ought to get stipends for being part of the local color. Someone just took a picture of me carrying my groceries home, like I was a Parisian with a string bag. Welcome to Charm City.'

'How's the case?' Crow asked, looking up from his book and giving her a full-force smile, obviously trying to cheer her up. 'Have you found out anything new?'

'There is no case,' she said harshly. Hurt, Crow went back to his reading.

'I'm sorry. I'm not having a great day.' No answer from Crow, his eyes still fixed on his book. Possession, by A. S. Byatt. Interesting choice, she thought. A literary mystery in which a man and a woman team up to solve a puzzle and fall in love. 'Look, I owed you an apology and I gave it to you. Now you owe me an explanation.'