Baltimore Blues

'For what?' Eyes still downcast. He had a talent for sulking.

'You never told me where you got your nickname.'

He looked up then. 'My nickname? Well, you've had a few clues. First of all, there's my hometown, Charlottesville, Virginia.'

'Is the crow the UVA mascot?'

'Second hint: the name of my band.'

'Po' White Trash. So?'

'Third hint: my initials.'

She had to think about that one. She had only heard them once, when Kitty told Ferlinghetti his full name. 'E. A.?'

'Right. My dad couldn't resist naming his only son Edgar Allan, after Virginia's great writer.'

'Excuse me, but Edgar Allan Poe is a Baltimore writer.'

'He was born in Virginia. He died in Baltimore. You can argue about which place has the greater claim. Anyway, my dad started reading Poe to me when I was a little kid-the poems, not the really dark stuff. And when he read ‘The Raven,' I didn't know what he was talking about. My dad explained it was a big black bird. And I, with the wisdom of a six-year-old, said, ‘Why not call a crow a crow?' It's been my name ever since. It's better than Edgar or Ed.' He closed his book. 'There-you've finally solved a mystery.'

'So your band is really Poe White Trash?'

'You got it. It's a great name, cuts across class lines. The rednecks from Hampden and Remington come because they think it's a redneck industrial band. But the literary college students like it, too.'

'Not very politically correct, is it?' she said in that strange schoolteacher voice Crow inspired in her. 'If you think about it, white trash is a term with overtones of racial superiority.'

'Shit, you don't need to find Michael Abramowitz's killer. You need to find your sense of humor.'

Tess, who felt she had come legitimately by her newfound dourness, shocked herself by bursting into tears at Crow's gentle rebuke. Holding her groceries, she cried and cried, unglamorous, racking sobs that shook her body. Her nose ran, her eyes began to swell, but she held her ground and she held her groceries. She wept for Jonathan, she wept for Abramowitz. She wept for Damon Jackson. She wept because she had spent the past two weeks tightening the noose around a good friend's neck, systematically eliminating every other possible suspect. She barely noticed when Crow put his arms around her, hugging her tight until her tears ran out.

Crow was not the kind of person who would have a handkerchief or even a crumpled Kleenex. Inelegantly she wiped her nose on her own sleeve.

'Well, that was pretty,' she said. 'I'm sorry.'

'You don't have to apologize.'

'Yes, I do. I'm tired and worn-out. One of my friends is dead and another is probably a killer. I don't even care. To tell you the truth, alongside some of the people I've met recently, Rock seems absolutely wholesome. He got mad, he did it himself-temporary insanity. He probably doesn't even remember. Maybe Tyner ought to go that route. Get enough men on the jury, put Ava on the stand, and they'd buy it. She is the kind of woman men would kill for.'

'That's a compliment, I guess. But if there's one thing you know about a man who would kill for you, it's that he might kill you, too.'

'You're pretty smart for-how old are you, anyway?'

'Twenty-three. A mere six years younger than you.' He took the grocery sack out of her arms and sat it on the counter behind him, then drew her to him. Tess lifted her face to his, then changed her mind and dropped her chin, so his kiss caromed off her forehead. She was trying to find the resolve to deflect any other attempts when Kitty walked into the store, her high heels like castanets on the wood floors. Odd, for Kitty usually made no noise when she walked, no matter what she wore.

'Sorry to interrupt,' she said, waving a slip of paper. 'But I wanted to make sure Tess got this message that came in on the office phone this afternoon. Your rowing buddy called and said he needs to talk to you. Said to meet him early at the boat house tomorrow, before anyone else gets there.'

'How early?'

Kitty peered at her own handwriting. 'Five-fifteen.'

'Typical Rock. He wants to see me, but he doesn't want to sacrifice a second of morning light for his row. He's so efficient he'll probably do push-ups and sit-ups while we talk.'

She grabbed her groceries and headed to the back stairs. But she couldn't resist looking back over her shoulder at Crow. He was smiling, as if he knew he would have made contact on his second attempt. It had been a strange week. Make that a strange month.

Technically the difference between getting up at 5 A.M. instead of 5:15 is fifteen minutes. But for Tess the earlier hour was much more difficult, especially after a week of not rowing at all. She contemplated staying in bed, pretending she had never gotten Rock's message. But that was why people called the store. They knew Kitty was more reliable than Tess's answering machine.

She detoured through the bookstore, careful to lock it. She still didn't trust the alley, not in the dark. She drove through downtown in silence, not awake enough to stomach the radio, or any sound at all.

The boat house was dark, with no cars in the parking lot and no sign of Rock's bicycle. Of course he knew she had a key-it was a copy of the one he had pilfered. She locked her purse in the trunk, unlocked the door, threw her key ring in an empty locker, and stretched out on a mat in the small workout room between the two locker rooms. A bar with about forty pounds on it lay nearby. Mindlessly she picked it up and began doing bench presses. It only weighed fifty pounds, much too light for her. What had happened to her 100-pound goal and the seven- minute mile? What had happened to all her goals for the fall? They had been subsumed by what she once thought would be the easiest job she ever had.

She heard footsteps in the men's locker room and glanced over, expecting Rock's sturdy calves to come through the swinging door. Instead she saw the lower half of a crabber, a bushel basket in gloved hands, heavy black rubber boots on his feet. Sneaking a bathroom break and taking a shortcut through the building-not permitted, but what did she care? She continued to pump the bar, indifferent, until her eyes traveled up and she noticed something odd. The crabber was wearing a ski mask.

'Look-' she began as the crabber fumbled in his bushel basket, then took out a revolver.

'I'm sorry,' he said, and took aim.

Tess threw the bar at his head. It caught him in the chest, knocking him down with a hard thump, the handgun flying from his hand. Only fifty pounds, but the bar had done its job. But when she tried to rush past him toward the locker rooms, he grabbed her ankle, pulling her to the floor. Now he was crawling toward the gun and trying to hold on to her ankle at the same time. Tess kicked free, got up, and fled down the circular staircase, sprinting to the storeroom where the boats were kept.

It was dark there, and she could only hope he wouldn't know the location of the light switches, hidden behind a small closet door at the foot of the stairs. If he stopped to look for them, she might have time to go out the dock doors. Behind her she heard his heavy tread on the metal stairs. Scared to stand upright, she crawled across the floor, ducking under the rows of hanging boats. Oh say can you see…Why was 'The Star-Spangled Banner' playing in her head?

The concrete floor was cool on her palms and knees. By the dawn's early light…Of course, she was worried about the dawn. Finding the logical connection almost made her smile. Soon the pale morning sun would start streaming through the oblong windows on the dock doors. But if she raised the doors, she would be backlit, the perfect target.

She pictured the boat house's layout in her mind. The doors to the dock were about sixty feet away, three of them, one at the end of each long narrow aisle. A gunshot could destroy one of the Baltimore Rowing Club's beautiful shells. Silly, but she'd hate to have that debt follow her through eternity.

Tess kept crawling until she ran out of room, wedging herself into the southeast corner. Perhaps she could hide until the other rowers started arriving. She glanced at her watch-5:20. No, ten minutes was too long to play this game of hide-and-seek, assuming anyone even showed up that early. Most of the rowers didn't arrive until six. The light would start coming in, his eyes would adjust to the darkness, he would find her. She could hear one of his rubber boots squeaking as he walked back and forth, sighing patiently. He was keeping sentry along the west