intervals from the pay phone at Vaccaro's, a gelato place in Little Italy, a block away. Not even a machine picked up. How could someone ignore ten, fifteen rings? Ava didn't strike Tess as a particularly tolerant person, or one who could walk away easily from a ringing phone. Perhaps she was on the other line, so involved in another conversation that she refused to heed the click of call-waiting. Or she had unplugged the phone so no one could call her. So Rock couldn't call her.
Tess ate a
Chapter 5
After the easy rewards of her first day, Tess discovered why surveillance work pays well. On her second day, the Friday before the Labor Day weekend, Tess waited outside the Lambrecht Building until 2 P.M., but Ava did not leave until Rock came to pick her up for an Eastern Shore weekend. Tess watched Rock carry Ava's bags to his car-two, she noted, for a three-day weekend. Suddenly he reached out and caught Ava by the wrist, as if afraid she might dart off. He gathered her to him and hugged her hard. It made Tess's ribs ache just to see it. But Ava only arched her back, submitting her body to the embrace while craning her neck away from Rock, staring above his head at something Tess could not see. They headed for the expressway in Rock's seldom-used Honda, his shell strapped to the roof of the car.
And there was Ava, beautiful, accomplished, and willing. He would never question why she wanted to marry him. He would see it as a sign of extraordinary good fortune, proof that the expensive rice is always the best.
Tess spent the weekend at the bookstore, trying to make up the hours she owed Kitty. Too soon it was Tuesday, time to take up her now-familiar post outside Eden 's Landing. Then Wednesday, Thursday. The days passed uneventfully. Ava walked to work, she ventured out for lunch, she went back inside, she went home. On Wednesday she met Rock for dinner, and Tess took the night off. Later, when she checked in with Rock by telephone, he said Ava still seemed edgy and evasive, ending the evening early with complaints of work and a splitting headache. Tess, hearing the ache in his voice, wondered if she should tell him about the shoplifting. But then it would be over and Tess, much to her surprise, wasn't ready to quit.
On Friday morning she sat on her bench outside Ava's office and watched the cops rousting panhandlers. Beggars were not new in downtown Baltimore -Tess remembered a legless man at Lexington Market who had chased her down the street on his little wheeled cart when she was eight-but now war had been declared. The city had enlisted 'safety guides' who patrolled the streets, making them safer and friendlier for those who asked only for directions. The street people called these guides the Purple People, a reference to their snazzy caps. Maybe city officials thought they would lose their new football team if the NFL found out Baltimore had panhandlers. Then again, it would have been a great name for the team: the Baltimore Beggars. No-the Baltimore Hollow Men. If only T. S. Eliot had died in Charm City instead of Poe, it could have been the Hollow Men instead of the Ravens.
Most of the panhandlers went peaceably, including Tess's seatmate, who had been prying a dollar a day from her with the same routine. But she didn't ask the cops or the Purple People if she scared them, she just kept moving. 'I know how not to get arrested,' she muttered to Tess as she hurried off, surprisingly lucid. 'I'll be up at McDonald's.' Stunned, Tess watched her go.
A few feet away a gentleman in a shiny blue suit refused to yield his ground. Tall and skinny, he held himself with perfect posture, repeating: 'I drove my car over here from the Eastern Shore, but the battery died. Now I just need four dollars for the bus ride back.'
Tess knew the line well; it was a local favorite. Most people tried it and moved on. But this man would not give up, no matter how the cops cajoled or threatened. She was so entranced by this tableau that she almost missed Ava heading out the front door. She was heading toward the Gallery, briefcase in hand. But instead of one of her perfect suits-Tess so far had seen her in gray, black, red, and a stunning shade of olive green-she wore a plum-colored dress, a curious garment with a high neck and long sleeves. Curious, because it should have been demure and conservative, given its length and shape. Yet the dress exuded sex. What did Kitty call the style? A breakaway dress, made to be torn from the body with one deft movement.
In the Gallery Ava started her stealing workout with a quick warm-up. Tess watched her admire the same silver necklace at Amaryllis, caress a cashmere sweater at Ann Taylor, then smirk and shudder at goods she would never deign to pay for, although she might consider stealing them. She loved to touch things. The tactile contact seem to bring more pleasure than the actual moment of capture, when another small, bright item dropped into her ravenous briefcase. Tess found herself eager to see what she would steal today, but after a quick trip inside Coach, where she stroked the forest green twin to her own lustrous black briefcase, Ava checked her watch and abruptly left the store, making a beeline for the lobby of the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, just as she had on the first day.
Over the past week Tess had become quite adept at trailing Ava. She hung back at least twenty feet, her eyes focused on some spot two or three feet in front of her, her clothes dark and unmemorable. She no longer worried about her hair, although she wore dark glasses as an extra precaution. Primarily she counted on Ava to walk slowly and never notice people who were of no use to her.
Today, however, Ava moved more quickly than usual, getting too far ahead. As Tess tried to close the distance without attracting attention, she smacked into someone, quite hard, and found herself staring into a man's familiar face. Down into it, actually, for the man was short, not even up to her collarbone. Irritated and embarrassed, Tess looked at a face to which she could not put a name, despite a panicky canvassing of her past. College? Newspaper days? A bad date?
Although short, the man had a huge head perched on a scrawny neck. His head was so big, and his neck so thin, that his head seemed to bob like a toy dog in the back of someone's car. Tess gave him her warmest smile and heartiest 'Hello!', hoping his reply would provide a hint to his identity, or at least the time needed to fish for his name. But Big Head stared at her as if they had never met.
They hadn't. As he turned away Tess realized she had been gazing into one of Baltimore 's most ubiquitous faces, a visage seen so frequently everyone believed they knew its owner: Michael Abramowitz. His close-set eyes had stared out of newspaper pages and television screens for close to fifteen years. His ignominy began as a public defender, a loudmouth who bugged people by having far too much success with the accused killers and rapists he represented. Abramowitz liked to win, and although he had grown up as a poor relation-a distant cousin to a local fortune based on plastic slipcovers-he always insisted the wretched salary didn't bother him.
Yet when he quit a few years ago, he had gone after money with the same single-mindedness that had carried him through the public defender's office. He became the drunk driver's friend, the king of the slip and fall, the star of wonderfully campy commercials who noted, in front of a roaring fireplace, 'Two wrongs don't make a right. You may have done something wrong, but you can get the right lawyer.'
Over the years the commercials grew increasingly bizarre, adding to his fame. He appeared with a Dalmatian and, for a brief time, a fake family. When a newspaper article revealed he had never married or fathered children, he switched to playing the banjo, a line of chorus girls behind him, all singing to the tune of 'Sweet Sue.' 'Ev'ry star above/Knows when push comes to shove/You'll sue/Yes, you/Stars up in the sky/Tell you he's your guy/Michael who?/Will sue.' His lumpy face and thick Baltimore accent made him a celebrity of sorts. The business made him if not rich, then obscenely comfortable.
Yet just when people began to speculate Abramowitz could parlay his visibility into a successful run for office,
