Baltimore Blues

wall, waiting for her to rush the stairs.

Would she make the paper? Given the hour, she had a good chance at the front page. The street final of the evening paper was always looking for a cheap, late-breaking crime to create the illusion there was news in the later editions. She tried to write the story in her head. A twenty-nine-year-old city woman was found dead today…City Woman was quite famous, almost as famous as City Man. She died, she fell, she was rescued. But what would be the phrase, stuck between two commas, that would summarize Tess's life for posterity? The appositive, it was called. Baltimore native? Former reporter? Bookstore clerk? Lanky brunette with overbite? She imagined the rewrite man bent over his keys, happy with the details of her death, the tiny, knowable mystery of it all. Rich, but not too rich, easily captured in 400 words and fifteen minutes. A death dispatched in one edition, then reduced to a brief.

The twenty-nine-year-old native, who police described as an unemployed woman playing at detective…Yes, that would be it, except it should be whom. Whom police described.

The boot was squeaking, coming closer now. Only one squeaked. Up one aisle, down the next. Dawn was filtering into the boat house, sneaking in around the edges of the heavy metal doors. And now that Tess thought about it, wasn't 'dawn's early light' redundant? What else could the dawn's light be? The boot seemed to chirp an off-key accompaniment to the song in her head. And the rockets' red glare/The bombs bursting in air. God, she hated that song.

She tried to shrink into the corner and had to stifle an involuntary cry when a splintery piece of wood pressed into her back. A broken oar. At first she cursed the lazy rower who had left it there. Then she grabbed it, squeezing it tight as she listened to his boots. Otherwise he was silent, unnervingly so. He wasn't stupid, the kind of person who felt he must explain why he was killing someone. Had he killed Abramowitz? Or Jonathan? Either way, it didn't matter to him if Tess went to her grave knowing the full details. It was only important she go to her grave.

She heard the squeaking boot again, heading up the final aisle. Her aisle. Squeak, squeak, squeak. Straight toward Tess's hiding place. Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave?

She considered her options. She could stay hidden, assuming she was hidden. She could beg, stalling for time. Both were cowardly, prone to failure, and not entirely out of character for her. She waited, listening to his footsteps, watching his feet approach in the dim light. If she could see his feet, it was only a matter of moments before he could see her. She thought about how a race started, a sprint, the kind of race decided with the first few strokes. 'Etes-vous pret? Partez!' Are you ready? Go! And then the gun would go off.

No penalties for a false start here. She was so low to the ground, oar in hand, her cheek brushed the cement floor. His rubber boots were about eighteen inches from her nose. A Hail Mary ran through her mind, followed by the one ragged piece of Hebrew she knew from Passover. Why is this morning different from all others? Because someone is about to kill you.

She stared at his boots and thought about her unfinished life, wondered if she would get an obituary proper along with a news story. Maybe not. It pissed her off, thinking about how her death would be treated. Another little death, not even good enough to make what the obit writers called the mort du jour. She deserved better. But if she wanted better she'd have to live a little longer and die a little differently.

Still low, she took aim and cracked the oar across the man's shins as hard as she could, just above the rubber boots, then rose with a terrible noise, unlike any sound she had ever made or would ever make again. With her second swing, the flat end of the oar caught him smack in the face, throwing her forward with its motion. Talk about a power piece. Talk about a burst. If she had been able to muster this much adrenaline in a race, Washington College would have had the best women's eight in the country. She swung again, knocking him backward. This time he held on to the gun with both hands as he fell. Good-he didn't have a hand free to grab her.

She leapt over him and headed for the door straight ahead, yanking its cord just enough to raise it twelve inches, allowing her to roll under it. Her attacker was broader; if he wanted to follow, he'd have to stop and raise it farther. Now outside, she looked up the hill to Waterview Avenue, empty at this time of day. Her car keys were back in the locker room. The garage door groaned as it opened wider, its cord tugged by rough, impatient hands. How fast could he run? How well could he shoot? How far could a bullet go?

The phrase 'between the devil and the deep blue sea' popped into Tess's head and she looked toward the not-so-deep, not-so-blue Patapsco. Her worse nightmare, once upon a time. It had just been supplanted. She ran at top speed across the pavement, down the ramp and across the splintery dock, flinging herself into the dreaded water. Mouth shut tight, she swam beneath the surface until her skin was burning and her lungs bursting.

She came up about thirty yards from the dock. Was it far enough? She knew nothing of guns or how they worked. She heard two shots and submerged again, turning west, toward the marina and the glass factory, gliding under the water, then coming up for air every twenty yards. Two more shots sounded, but she was almost to the marina now. She stopped at the first boat, a Boston whaler, and grabbed its side. Peering around it, she looked back to the boat house, coughing up the filthy water.

The man was standing on the pier, looking around him. Behind him the boat house was coming to life. Lights were on in the storage room, cars pulling into the lot. A solitary sculler walked toward the water with his oars. The man looked back to the boat house and out to the water one more time, raised the gun to his head, and fired. Even as he pulled the trigger, the sculler had dropped his oars and was running toward him, shouting as if to stop him.

Tess continued to hold on to the Boston whaler. It had a name painted on the stern, one of those whimsical names so many boat owners prefer. Paddy's Wagon, it proclaimed in merry green letters. She was holding on to the boat and still staring at those letters when someone from the shore finally spotted her and sent out a launch. It was Rock. Without saying a word he pried her fingers from the Boston whaler, lifted her into the small motorboat, and took her back.

He tried to lead her away from the body, but Tess wanted to look. It was a surprisingly neat suicide. There was a small black hole at his right temple and a little blood pooling beneath his head. She could smell burned wool where the powder had made contact with the ski mask. Ignoring Rock, shaking off his arm as if he were some frail old man, Tess dropped to her knees by the body and pulled the mask up.

The mouth was slightly open, exposing perfect white teeth. The cheeks were cherubically round, the belly full beneath the windbreaker. It was, even in death, even after attempted murder, still an appealing face. The body still had the jolly girth that made one think of a beardless Santa Claus.

'You are conscientious, Miss Monaghan,' Frank Miles had told her more than once. She had thought he meant it as a compliment.

Chapter 30

After a tetanus shot and a visit from two homicide cops who wanted to review the morning's events, Tess took to bed-actually, Kitty's bed-with a bad case of paranoia. Twice she bolted to Kitty's turquoise tiled bathroom to vomit up small portions of the Patapsco. Her muscles and joints were stiff and sore, the way they can be with a fever. Exhausted, she tried to sleep. But whenever she started to doze off, she jerked awake, terrified.

Frank Miles was O'Neal's hit man. She had not told the police that; she had not told them anything but the morning's barest facts, for fear she would be transported to Spring Grove and wake up in a ward full of poor William O'Neals whose mothers could not afford alternative justice systems. Miles had killed Abramowitz and probably killed Jonathan. Unquestionably he had wanted to kill her. She would bet anything it was Macauley's gun he was brandishing this morning, stolen from Abramowitz's office. Perhaps he had originally planned to implicate the old man, then Rock had given him a better opportunity.

No, it didn't wash, not even in her weary, confused mind. A professional wouldn't have been lurking in the Lambrecht Building as a custodian, biding his time. He wouldn't have to steal someone's gun. And he certainly wouldn't kill himself when trapped. Of all the deaths and near-deaths, only Jonathan's had been competently handled. Miles had been an amateur. Like her. His only link to Seamon O'Neal was his compulsive neatness. A