Charm City (16 page)

Sterling laughed. "You do whatever
you like. I told Colleen I've given you a special
assignment." His voice changed, warming a shade.
"Tess?"

"Hmmmm?"

"You sounded hoarse when I called,
as if you were sleeping. Are you in bed?"

"Uh-huh."

He hesitated. "Are you
alone?"

Again, she told him what she assumed he
wanted to hear, what she wanted him to want to hear.
"Uh-huh."

"Go back to sleep, Nancy
Drew." He hung up the phone, as did Tess. But she did not go
back to sleep. It was only 7 o'clock. She rolled into Crow,
and they made love like an old married couple, quickly and silently,
with small, efficient movements that barely rocked the bed. Esskay
slept on, undisturbed by their rhythms, still chasing rabbits.

When they were finished, Crow put on his
jeans and went whistling into the kitchen to prepare
everyone's supper. Tess, who had never been a
stare-at-the-ceiling sort, found herself studying the old-fashioned
light fixture over her bed as if she had never seen it before.
Something worrisome was skulking around the edges of her mind. Not one
thing. Three things.

One: the men in the salmon-under-shit car
wanted Esskay, whom Spike expected her to protect. She had to find a
safe place for the dog, someplace with no connection to Spike. Then she
had to make Tommy tell her whatever he knew.

Two: she and Crow, usually so conscientious,
had forgotten the whole safe sex routine tonight.

And three: she hadn't thought
about this until now, because she had been thinking about Jack Sterling
all along.

"D
id
you get her blanket?" Tess asked Crow the next morning.
"And the kibble? What about her Teddy bear?"

"I got everything," he
assured her, slamming the trunk of his Volvo. "Even the Teddy
bear. I know Esskay considers him her own personal boy toy."

"Everybody needs a little Crow.
And it's toy boy. Girls
have
toy boys. Think about it."

Toy boys, smart ones, had their uses. Last
night, after a skittish Tess had gone to the window a third time to
check for the two-tone Buick in the empty alley below, Crow had
demanded an explanation. It was Crow who had come up with the idea of
asking one of Tess's friends, someone who considered himself
forever in her debt. That was Plan One. Tess had figured out Plan Two,
how to force Tommy to talk.

They drove south in silence, heading toward
Annapolis, then veering down Route 2, into one of the old summer towns
along the Chesapeake's western shore. These villages had once
seemed remote, appropriate only for August-desperate escapes from
Washington and Baltimore. Now the houses here were considered within
commuting distance of both cities and tear-downs were common, as shacks
made way for million-dollar mansions. A few rough cottages still stood
along the South and West rivers, but only a hardy soul would consider
them tolerable in the winter. Darryl "Rock" Paxton,
the nationally ranked sculler who Tyner always held up as a role model
for Tess, was the very definition of a hardy soul.

Some people chose to live close to work;
Rock had chosen to live close to his workout. He had found the cottage
a few months ago and used his savings to buy it. The house needed much
in repairs and updates—a new roof, siding, double-hung
windows to keep out the drafts. The long, twisting driveway from the
main road had lost most of its gravel and was little better than a dirt
trail. Those things could wait. Rock's only improvement
project so far had been to clear the overgrown path to his dock. It
gave Tess a pang to realize she wouldn't see Rock on summer
mornings along the Patapsco any more, now that he had this place.

Today's workout behind him, Rock
was waiting for them in his kitchen, a homely room furnished with one
table, two chairs, and an elaborate array of coffee-making accessories.
Despite the coffee consumed on the way down, Tess and Crow quickly
accepted Rock's offer of a fresh cup. Rock was famous for his
coffee.

"Today's selection is
Jamaican Blue Mountain, prepared in a French press," he said.
If ever lost his job as a researcher at Johns Hopkins, he could always
try Donna's, Baltimore's answer to Starbucks. The
three stood with their steaming cups, watching Esskay amble from room
to room. The cottage had only four rooms and there wasn't
much for a dog to sniff, although Rock's futon provided some
momentary interest. Inspection finished, Esskay came back to stand
between Crow and Tess.
Simple but intriguing
,
she seemed to be saying.
Now let's go
.

"She'll want to sleep
with you," Tess told Rock. "She jumps into my bed,
and that's a foot off the floor. There's no way to
keep her out, unless you lock her in another room, and then she
cries."

"No problem. She'll keep
me warm."

"We never did get her a new leash
to replace this chain. If you do, I'll pay you back. Did I
tell you she tears up trash when she's lonely? And she needs
ointment for those bare patches, at least for a little while
longer." Tess felt a strange sensation in her throat, an itch
at the back of her eyes. Crow took her hand.

"It's not
forever," he said.

"I bet you'll be back to
pick her up before the first race of the spring season," Rock
said. In Rock-speak, this was the shortest time span imaginable.

Tess hugged her friend, marveling as she
always did at the aptness of his nickname. In every sense, he was the
most solid man she knew. He was so hard and competent that people often
made the mistake of assuming he needed nothing from others: he was
Rock, he was an island. Tess, who knew more than she wanted about the
circumstances of his broken engagement last fall, thought Esskay might
prove good company in the short term. And with the dog here, she would
have incentive to visit him, something she had neglected to do since he
had moved from the city.

Rock and Esskay stood on the back porch as
Tess and Crow climbed into his Volvo. Tess tried not to turn her head,
stealing a quick, final glance through her eyelashes and hair. The dog
looked puzzled, glancing at Tess and Crow in the car, then back at
Rock, who had placed his hand on her collar. Ever so slowly, in her
ever so tiny brain, Esskay was realizing that something was amiss. They
would be down the gravel driveway before she figured it out. By the
time they reached Baltimore, she would have forgotten she had ever
known anyone but Rock.

"He'll have to build a
fence or keep her on a leash all the time," Tess muttered,
more to herself than to Crow.

"She couldn't be in a
better place, or a safer one. You know that."

Esskay cocked her head to one side, as if
saying "What? What? What?"

Don't be a
sap. You've never been stupid about animals. Don't
start now
.

Rock's hand rested on the
dog's collar, but he hadn't curled his fingers
around the fabric. So he wasn't ready for Esskay's
quick surge as the Volvo started rolling down the driveway. Rock was
strong and fit, but he wasn't a sprinter, and he
wasn't as fast as Esskay, now trotting after the Volvo. The
dog was moving at twenty mph, Tess judged. Maybe twenty-five. At any
rate, she was right on their bumper.

"Greyhounds can reach speeds of up
to thirty-seven miles per hour," Crow said.

"I'm more interested in
what speeds you can reach right now."

"I can't go any faster
on this driveway. But don't worry. Once we're on
the highway, she'll give up."

The car's speed had notched up to
thirty now. Esskay still kept pace. She did not seem angry or upset,
just determined. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth, giving her an
antic appearance. She was enjoying the chase. This was a game, the dog
had decided.
They would never really leave me
.
She looked a little like a kangaroo, the way her rear legs kicked up
behind her as she ran. She took the driveway's twists and
turns better than the Volvo did, cutting sharp on the corners.

"Stop the car, Crow."

"Don't worry, I see her,
I won't clip her. We're almost to the
highway."

"Stop the car
now
."

The Volvo was still rolling when Tess threw
open the passenger door and leaped out. Esskay jumped up, placing her
paws on Tess's shoulders, ready to be congratulated for her
effort. Crow braked and put the car in park, but Esskay ignored him,
intent on licking Tess. Rock arrived a few seconds later, panting much
harder than the dog.

"This gives me some ideas for
cross-training," he said, when he caught his breath.
"I'll take her back to the house and you can be on
your way. I promise I'll hold tighter this time."

"She loves you," Crow
said wonderingly, and Tess could hear a trace of bitterness in his
voice. "She loves you."

The dog licked her from chin to eyebrow. Her
breath was nothing short of awful, but it was familiar to Tess now. She
almost liked it.

"Look, if Esskay wants to stick it
out with me, I guess I have to take her home. We can walk her after
dark, turn the terrace into a dog run, get a bodyguard. We'll
figure something out. If Spike wanted me to take care of this dog,
there must be a reason."

Smugly now, the dog took her position in the
backseat, insisting on standing, just as she had the first night Tess
had taken her home. But this time, Esskay was more firmly rooted,
holding her stance on the turns. A week ago, a day ago, even five
minutes ago, Tess had firmly believed dogs could not smile. Yet this
one was practically leering in her delight.

"So much for Plan One,"
she told Crow. "Still up for Plan Two?"

"Sure," he said, eyes on
the road. "It doesn't seem fair, though."

"Plan Two?"

"The fact she loves you more than
she loves me. You've hardly done anything for her, while I
was reading books and making special meals and pulling bones out of her
throat. She should love me best. But I guess that's how it
works, sometimes."

"Sometimes," Tess
admitted.

At the Point, Crow parked near the delivery
door. While he rang the bell, Tess crouched out of sight behind the
car. After a few minutes, Tommy came out, blinking in the morning sun.
Although he wore what appeared to be sleep clothes—a dingy
white T-shirt and Carolina blue sweat-pants with a crotch that bagged
to his knees—he had taken the time to put on his ankle boots,
the zippered ones that wouldn't slip off his thin ankles.

"We don't start serving
for a couple hours, buddy," he told Crow between yawns.
Luckily, they had never met, although Spike had checked Crow out when
he and Tess had first started seeing each other. "You and
your collitch friends can come back at noon."

"But Mr. Orrick, you won the
television set in our fraternity raffle," Crow said with
sunny sincerity. Tess was impressed. She hadn't known he
could lie as well as she could.

"I won a TV?"

"Big-screen," Crow said,
gilding the lily. Tommy could be had for a Walkman, or an old
transistor radio. "You are Spike Orrick, aren't
you? I wasn't here the night you bought the raffle ticket,
but my fraternity brother said I would find you here."

"Oh, sure, sure," Tommy
said excitedly. "
Now
I remember."

"We've got it back at
the frat house. I thought I'd take you over so you could get
it today. Do you have time now?"

Tommy practically ran to the car, settling
himself in the front passenger seat. Esskay, who had finally stretched
out in back, stuck her head between the bucket seats and licked his
neck.

"Hey, where'd ja get
this dog—" Before Tommy finished, Tess had slipped
into the passenger door and plunked herself in Tommy's lap,
fastening the seat belt over both of them. Crow roared out of The
Point's parking lot like an experienced getaway driver.

"What the fuck are you
doin', Tess? This is kidnapping." Then, as an
afterthought, "Damn, you're a big girl,
ain'cha?"

"We're taking you down
to my Aunt Kitty's place and we're going to keep
you there until you tell us what happened to Spike and what Esskay has
to do with it." She curled her hands over his, so he
couldn't pinch or tickle her. Tommy was not above fighting
dirty.

"I don't know
anything," he whined, pulling his head to the side so he
could breathe. Esskay licked his forehead with increasing interest,
perhaps trying to decide if Tommy might be a good substitute for her
Teddy bear, left behind at Rock's. Certainly, he was larger,
with more surface area to lick.

"This is kidnapping,"
Tommy repeated. "That's a feral offense."

"Luckily, Kitty isn't
dating anyone in law enforcement right now, so who's going to
know? And with your only real friend in a coma, who's going
to
care
? You remember,
your good friend Spike, whose big-screen TV you were about to take for
yourself."

"I just wanted it for the bar, to
help business. By the way, I'm adding torture to those
charges. This dog stinks."

"As you once said so memorably,
Tommy, that's like the pot telling the kettle to get out of
the kitchen if it can't stand the heat."

Y
ou
couldn't call Tommy tough, but he had a stubborn streak, and
that could be almost as good under the right circumstances. For most of
the morning, he sat sullenly and silently in Kitty's kitchen.
Tess sensed his dignity had been offended by her ploy, which had been
predicated on Tommy not being a serious physical threat. To make him
feel better, she tied him to his chair with a pair of Kitty's
silk scarves, although she doubted he would try to run and knew she
could catch him if he did. His zippered ankle boots would slow him down
on the cobblestones of Fells Point.

"Would you like something to
eat?" Crow, although fortified on doughnuts, had prepared a
large breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, hopeful the smell of food
would entice Tommy into talking. But food had never interested Tommy.
He ate only enough to balance his beer intake.

"No, thank you, I'm
maintaining just fine," he said, giving Tess a wounded look.
Laurence Olivier couldn't have delivered the line with more
gravitas.

"A coma's a serious
thing," Crow told Tommy, pushing the plate of eggs a little
closer.

"Uh-huh. Serious as a heart
attack," said an unmoved Tommy.

"And what if Spike never comes
to?" Crow asked. "These guys may not go away. They
may hurt Tess, or her parents. They seem to be pretty dangerous
guys."

"The dredges of
society," Tommy agreed.

Tess leaned over and whispered in
Crow's ear, "This is hopeless. We're
going to have to pull out our big gun."

Crow left the room and Kitty returned in his
place, red curls bouncing, bright red high heels dancing across the
wooden floors. Just looking at her, Tommy flushed a shade even darker
than her shoes. He had never actually spoken with Kitty—he
had always been too tongue-tied to dare. But Tess knew he had noticed
her. All men did.

"Good morning, Tommy,"
Kitty said, as if it were perfectly normal for him to be tied to a
chair in her kitchen. "I hear you've been doing a
great job running The Point in Spike's absence."

Tommy nodded curtly. Even with his pillow
hair and baggy baby blue sweats, he had an odd dignity.

"He'll be so proud of
you when he hears." Kitty leaned over Tommy, her mouth
deliriously close to his ear, her long skirt brushing against his
ankles like a friendly cat. "I really do think
he'll wake up, that he'll be with us again. People
do come out of comas, you know, sometimes with remarkably few ill
effects. There's still so much we don't know about
the brain."

"I have read that
myself," Tommy said, his thoughtful tone suggesting he
gleaned his medical news from the
New England
Journal of Medicine
, instead of the
Weekly
World News
.

"What worries me is how Spike is
going to feel if he finds out you refused to tell Tess what she needs
to know," Kitty said. "I'm sure you think
you're protecting him by not sharing his secrets with Tess,
but I can't imagine Spike wanted Tess endangered."

Tommy looked confused and troubled.
Suddenly, this conversation was headed somewhere he didn't
want it to go.

"But she kidnapped me!"
he protested. "She used brute force!"

"Only because you
wouldn't talk to her when she visited you at The Point that
last time. And now these guys are following her, because they think she
has whatever it is they want. Maybe because you told them
that." Kitty was at eye level with him now, her mouth so
close to his it must have hurt a little. "What if they hurt
her as badly as they hurt Spike? Do you want to be the one to explain
that to him? Do you want to be the one to tell
me
something has happened to my niece?"

Tommy looked at Kitty and licked his lips,
helplessly enthralled. "Okay," he said at last.
"But I'm gonna tell Spike how Tess tricked me. He
wouldn'ta liked the way she squashed me like a bug. I almost
smothercated."

Kitty kissed him on his sweaty forehead,
then went back to the store, as Tess untied the scarves at his wrists
and ankles. Tommy made a big show of rubbing his wrists and forearms,
as if his bonds had been tight ropes instead of loose, silken scarves.

"So where did Esskay come
from?" Tess asked.

"I swear on my mother, I
don't know the answer to that. Two weeks back, Spike showed
up with this dog, looking like Monday's meatloaf on
Friday."

"Come again?"

"You know. He was all gray and
lumpy looking. Said he had met with this guy he knows, and the guy
wanted him to have the dog?"

"What guy?"

"Jimmy Parlez. It's a
French name? As in parlez the English, you know?"

"Why did Monsieur Parlez give him
a greyhound?"

Tommy shook his head. "Spike
wouldn't tell me nothin'. He said ignorance was
piss."

"Bliss. Ignorance is
bliss."

"You sure?" Tommy
wrinkled his forehead as he thought about this. "Anyways, the
only thing he did tell me 'bout was the numbers."

"Numbers? I
knew
this had to do with book-making."

Tommy shook his head. "Uh-uh.
Spike don't run no street numbers no more. Can't
compete, what with the state doing Pick 3, Pick 4, and all those
gimmicky instant win games. He's down to a sports book now, a
little action on Pimlico."

"And on dog races?"

"Tess, there are guys who come
into The Point and put money down on how much a bushel of crabs is
gonna cost on July fourth, but nobody around here is gonna bet some
greyhound race in Florida or New Hampshire when ya got stakes races
right down the road. Now, tell that dog to come to me."

He waggled his fingers, but Esskay ignored
him until Tess placed a piece of the dog's namesake bacon in
Tommy's hand. Gingerly, he held the crunchy bite out to the
dog, who snatched it with such alacrity Tommy almost lost part of a
finger. He clambered on top of the chair, but Esskay only became more
agitated, leaping around him wildly until Tess gave her another piece
of bacon.

"I'm a little scared of
dogs?" Tommy confessed unnecessarily.

"Don't worry,
she's harmless unless she thinks you're a piece of
food," Tess assured him.

He climbed down from his chair and
tentatively began scratching behind Esskay's ears. As the dog
relaxed under his touch, he pulled the left ear back and turned it
inside out, exposing the ghostly pale interior, the way one might turn
a little leather glove.

"All racing dogs have tattoos
here, like ID numbers. That way, the tracks can keep track of
'em. But the numbers also mean you can trace 'em
back to their trainers."

"Why would you want to do
that?" Tess asked.

"'Cuz a few bad trainers
can't be bothered to do the right thing when the dogs
can't race no more. They'd just as soon kill
'em and dump 'em. The ear tattoos make that hard to
do."

"So who was Esskay's
trainer? How do we track her number?"

"You
can't
.
That's what I'm tellin' ya."
Tommy ran his finger over the smooth skin inside the dog's
left ear. "Someone put a new tattoo on this dog, a home-made
job like you see in prison. See? Where this dog once had numbers, all
she has now is these red Xs. It's like filing down the serial
number on a car or a TV set. Untraceable."

Tess looked at the crude markings inside
both ears. Although a vivid red, they would be easy to miss unless you
knew to look for them, or spent a lot of time playing with a
dog's ears, something Tess was not inclined to do.
Esskay's breath had kept even Crow from going nose to nose
with the dog. The marks still looked a little raw, and there were tiny
scabs. It must have been painful, being on the receiving end of a
tattoo gouged with penknife and filled in with ballpoint. No wonder
Esskay had been so fearful at first.

"Okay, so you cover up the
dog's tattoo and no one knows who it belongs to. Seems like a
lot of work to dump some racing dog. And this dog is still alive. So
what does it all mean?"

"That," Tommy sighed,
"is what Spike and only Spike knows. Look where it got him.
You know what? He
did
say
ignorance is piss. Ignorance is piss, and knowledge ain't
shit, that's exactly what he said the last time I talked to
him."

Armed with Tommy's tissue-thin
leads, Tess headed to the
Beacon-Light
,
figuring its computer databases could help narrow her search. But
Tommy's scraps led nowhere fast. In the
Beacon-Light's
Nexis account, Tess searched for "greyhound" and
"ears" in various combinations, but found only a
few stories from the country's major newspapers, most of
which recounted successful rescue efforts. There was no Jim Parlez at
all in the court files, no matter how she spelled it, and no possible
explanation for why someone would go to so much trouble to change a
greyhound's tattoo.

As for the MVA, its records claimed there
were no salmon Buicks in all of Maryland, and there were too many brown
ones to count. That didn't surprise her: the car had probably
been stolen, then hastily painted so it was as untraceable as the
greyhound its occupants sought. The only thing left to do was to go to
the courthouse and feed Parlez's name through the computers
there, just in case he had a record that predated the
Blight
's
system, which only went back to the late '80s.
Spike's associates usually had had at least one brush with
the city's criminal system, although Spike himself had never
been caught doing anything illegal.

Baltimore's Clarence Mitchell
courthouse is an unspeakably sad place, a limestone-and-marble reminder
of how innocent the city had once been. Imagine the folly of a public
building with entrances on four sides, as if people could be trusted to
come and go at will, without passing through metal detectors and
opening purses and briefcases in front of armed guards.

Tess surrendered her Swiss Army knife to the
security guard. Now her only problem was to figure out where to go.
Normally, she would have relied on Feeney to walk her through the
circuit court computer files. But some newbie she didn't know
was filling in for Feeney while he continued to chase basketballs and
millionaires. Tess was on her own.

She fed Parlez into the criminal system. No
dice. She then tried the civil system, but still came up snake eyes.
Tommy had probably mangled the name beyond recognition. For all she
knew, she was really looking for Hervé, St. Tropez, or
Parsley.

"Ma'am?
Ma'am?"

Unaccustomed to being ma'amed,
Tess didn't respond to the earnest young voice until she felt
a tentative tap on her shoulder. She turned to face a nervous young man
with an amazing mane of bushy brown hair falling to his waist. Despite
temperatures in the forties, he wore only a denim jacket over a faded
black T-shirt.

"I don't work
here," Tess snapped. Why did people always assume a woman was
a clerk, ready to serve?

"Oh." He looked
forlornly at the computer next to her. "I just thought you
might be able to tell me if you can find divorces here. I'm
looking up my wife."

"Shouldn't you know if
your wife has gotten a divorce?"

"Yeah, sure—if it was
from me. I need to find out if she ever got one from her
first
husband. I'm her second husband. She's Mrs. Roger
Hehnke now." He thumped his chest with his index finger.
"I'm Mr. Roger Hehnke."

Disarmed by his pride in acquiring a wife,
Tess showed Mr. Roger Hehnke how to look for the file. She was glad she
did. It was gratifying to hear his relieved giggle when he found his
wife had remembered to end the first union before starting a
second—at least, in the legal sense.

"See, her first marriage ended on
April second last year, and we got married on April fifth. Our baby
wasn't born until May, so we're totally
cool."

"Congratulations." Mr.
Roger Hehnke didn't look old enough to drive, but you
didn't need a driver's license or a high school
diploma to be a father in Maryland. Unless you planned to marry, which
required one be at least eighteen or sixteen with parental consent. By
local standards, Mr. Roger Hehnke was quaintly old-fashioned.

"Thanks. Hey, you know how the
first anniversary is paper? Would tickets count? I thought if
Hammerjacks had a band that night, we could go there."

"That's good, but I
think you should take her to dinner, too."

"Oh, of course. We're
going to Chi-Chi's. And we're gonna have the
gold
margaritas, the ones they make with the good tequila. They cost five
dollars!" Mr. Roger Hehnke held up his palm and Tess
high-fived him, thinking:
I hope it lasts
forever. But I give you three years at the outside
.

Who would she have married at age eighteen?
Joel. Joel Goodwin. A neighborhood boy she had chosen precisely because
he seemed so safe and pliable, someone with whom to practice sex and
love before she left for college. Today, she probably
wouldn't recognize him if he passed her on the street.

How long had Wink and his first wife lasted?
It was of no concern to her; she had kept her bargain with Sterling and
didn't have to worry about Wink any more. Still, Tess found
herself tapping out Wynkowski's full name, if only because
she longed to have something to show for her field trip to the
courthouse. At least she knew Wink's name wouldn't
disappoint.

Sure enough, dozens of files came up, most
of them the civil suits Feeney had documented. Wink had sued and been
sued, in that never-ending shell game some sleazy businessmen played.
Tess had to go back almost fifteen years to find the case she wanted,
Wynkowski
v. Wynkowski
. She wrote down the number, then
asked the clerk for the complete file.