Charm City (24 page)

"Rosita says he was
murdered."

"If Rosita said nice day,
I'd check it out. She lies all the time, about little things,
just to stay in practice. I swear, I've caught her in the
most idiotic inconsistencies. What she majored in, for example. What
part of Boston she grew up in. Who lies about stuff like that?
She's crazy."

"Crazy," Tess agreed,
but she wasn't going to allow Whitney to distract her so
easily. "So does being Lionel's favor buddy
guarantee you Japan? Was that the deal?"

Whitney lifted her chin, which had a smear
of chocolate on it. "It doesn't hurt. Look, I kept
you pure in all this by not telling you everything. You did your job
beautifully and you made good money doing it. What's your
problem?"

"The problem is you told me some
lies as well."

"Not really. I just left out a few
details here and there."

"What about Feeney's
alibi?"

Again, Whitney waited Tess out to see what
she knew, or had guessed. She picked up a third Milano, but was rattled
enough to eat it as a normal person would.

"Did Feeney really tell you that
he was with me that night, or was that your way of ensuring I would
take the job, because I'd be so worried about him
I'd want to protect him?"

"I did ask Feeney where he was
that night, and he did say he had been with you." But Whitney
could no longer make eye contact. In fact, she couldn't even
face Tess, shifting her body so it was a three-quarters turn away from
her. "He didn't remember what time he left you. In
fact, he doesn't remember much about that night at all. He
more or less blacked out. I knew if you thought he needed you as an
alibi, you'd be hooked. You've always had a soft
spot for him."

Tess saw Feeney walking north on Eutaw after
their last angry conversation. He had been furious with her, absolutely
enraged.

"What did you tell him? I mean,
you had to make sure that Feeney and I didn't compare notes,
right? How did you arrange that?"

Whitney's voice was almost
inaudible now. "I told him you were hard-up for cash and he
should keep his distance from you, because you had denied knowing him
to the bosses. I also told him you said you were keeping an open mind
about who had done it, and you wouldn't cut him any slack if
you thought he was the one. But he wasn't, so what was the
big deal?" She finished off her Scotch. "I think my
confession slate is clean now. Am I forgiven? Do you want to assign me
some form of penance?"

Tess felt dizzy, the way a child feels after
turning in endless circles, staring up at the sky. Bad enough to have
been used and manipulated by Lionel. But Whitney had been his willing
agent, playing friend against friend in order to get the Tokyo bureau.
It was one thing to use the elevator technique, quite another to have
taken everyone for a ride.

"Why did you call me tonight? You
could have handled this alone."

"Maybe I figured it was my last
window of opportunity between boyfriends. Or are you double-dipping
now, keeping the little boy at home while you let Sterling take you out
on the town?"

"You're
jealous."

"Of Sterling? No, losing to him at
squash was as far as I was willing to go to advance my career. Not that
he ever asked. But don't worry, Tesser, I'm sure
you'll have another date with him. You always have another
date. Me, I have my job. If I'm lucky, I'm going to
have a foreign assignment, then come back to an editing position. Very
few women run newspapers. I plan to be one of them."

"Why? So you can end up like
Colleen in there, passed out on your sofa on a Saturday night, in an
empty apartment, with no friends, no family?"

"Colleen is
sui
generis
. The other editors have families, lives,
outside interests."

"The other editors are men. Look
around you, Whitney. It's not just Colleen. It's
you, it's Rosita. Work is all you have. Jesus,
you're still living at your parents' place because
you've never taken the time to find an apartment of your own.
Most of your relationships last about two weeks, when the guy realizes
Friday night is reserved for
Washington Week in
Review
, while Sunday mornings belong to
Meet
the Press
. What are you going to do if you want
to have a baby—ask Tim Russert to be the sperm
donor?"

Whitney stood up, dusting cookie crumbs from
the lap of her tweed trousers. "Look, I have to go. Do you
want a ride back to your place, or do you want to walk?"

"I'll walk."

"Any more flaws of mine you want
to enumerate, failings you want to catalog? I said I was
sorry."

"No, in fact that's the
one thing you haven't said this evening."

"Well, I'm saying it
now. I'm sorry. Isn't there something
you'd like to say in return?"

"Yes, yes, there is."
Tess fluttered her fingers. "Sayonara, Whitney."

T
ess
ended up staying at Colleen Reganhart's until dawn broke. She
had postponed leaving after Whitney's exit, stalling to make
sure there would be no awkward encounters at the elevator, or on the
street. Then, just when she thought it was safe to go, Colleen began
retching. Her old college instincts kicked in; it was inhuman to leave
someone alone in that condition. Fortunately, tending to Esskay had
inured Tess to cleaning up after others. It was almost refreshing to
deal with a mess that required nothing more than paper towels and some
Lysol.

She sponged off the sofa and
Colleen's face, then helped her upstairs, to a bedroom as
barren as the rooms below—a bed, a nightstand, and several
stacks of newspapers. At least the plain white sheets felt expensive,
and the duvet was real goose down. She tucked Colleen in, positioning a
plastic wastebasket next to the bed, then went downstairs and made a
pot of coffee, resigned to a long night. Luckily, Old Mother
Reganhart's cupboard was not quite bare—she had a
pound of Jamaican Blue coffee and ten packs of Merits in the freezer,
an almost empty carton of half-and-half in the refrigerator, and an
economy-size box of microwave popcorn on the counter.

Tess passed on the popcorn, finishing off
the Milanos while reading one of Colleen's books, a
collection of Molly Ivins columns. The
Blight
had never run the tart Texan's work, their loss. "
Too
funny and too smart about politics
,"
Whitney had explained. "
Women pundits
are supposed to be uterus-centric. Besides, the problem with funny
women is that the next joke might be about penis size, and we just
can't have that, can we
?"

She smiled in spite of herself, wondering
how long Whitney's voice would live in her head, how many
more times she would think of something funny or trenchant, then
realize the observation belonged to Whitney. Maybe it was a good thing
Whitney had sold her soul, throwing a couple others in for good
measure, to get the Tokyo job. Baltimore was too small a town to hold
two friends who couldn't be friends anymore.

"Any coffee for me?"

Colleen's voice had the rough-hewn
rasp one would expect from someone who had been on both sides of a
tequila bottle in the last twelve hours, but it was otherwise pleasant.
Tess found a
Beacon-Light
mug in the sink, rinsed it out, and poured her a cup.

"I'm afraid I used the
last of the half-and-half."

"That's okay, I take
mine black." Cory gulped the coffee as if it were medicine
she had to force down. "Where's Talbot? She
contract this job out to you?"

"She left first and I was about to
leave, but you—you weren't feeling very well. I
thought someone should stay here, in case you did an Edgar Allan Poe.
Although they say he died from rabies now, not in a drunken
stupor."

"Kind of you," Colleen
said, in a tone that made clear she didn't necessarily
respect kindness. "But I don't remember much about
last night, except for the quitting part. That was fun."

"Whitney said you threatened
Lionel Mabry, too."

"Threatened him? All I did was
rattle off a series of large, ungainly objects I wanted to insert into
a particular orifice. I'm sure Lionel was shocked, but I
doubt he actually feared for his life."

"You might be able to take your
resignation back, under the circumstances."

"I don't want to. Better
to leave now than wait until Lionel forces me out. The
Washington
Post
has been flirting with me, maybe I can
consummate the deal with them before word leaks out about my
protégé's spectacular fall. I
wouldn't be a managing editor, but I'd still be
moving up, and on."

Colleen's face was streaked with
make-up, her black hair still had traces of dipping sauce on the ends,
and her red wool dress was so creased and stained that it was beyond
the help of any dry cleaner. Yet she looked happy, as if giving up the
fight for her job was a relief. She had been so lost inside protecting
her position that she had lost sight of her other options. It was like
watching a blind person recovering her sight.

"I guess I'll head on
home."

"People are going to think you had
a much more interesting night than you did," Colleen said,
gesturing at Tess's Saturday night date garb.
"Hey—did I say anything when I was out last
night?"

"No, except for several
exhortations for me to fuck myself."

"Did I…ask for
anyone?"

"Whitney said you asked to speak
to me, but you were beyond speaking when I showed up." Tess
picked up the empty half-and-half container, shaking it in front of
Colleen before pitching it into the trash. "But a black
coffee drinker who keeps a carton of this around obviously has someone
in her life."

"Could be for cooking,"
Colleen ventured.

"Sure, it makes a great sauce for
microwave popcorn."

Colleen narrowed her eyes at Tess.
"You are a pretty good little detective—even if you
never did figure out who put that story in the newspaper."

"Everyone assumes Rosita did
it."

"I
know
she didn't."

"How can you be so sure?"

Colleen opened the freezer and pulled out a
fresh pack of cigarettes, bending over a burner on her gas stove to
light one. A crack addict couldn't have looked much more
blissed out at first puff.

"Because I did." Another
drag, another little orgasmic sigh. But she obviously enjoyed
Tess's dismay even more than she enjoyed the nicotine.

"You're the managing
editor, why would you have to stoop to such a cheap trick? You call the
shots down there."

"You'd think so,
wouldn't you? But Five-Four wanted to kill the story, and
Lionel was willing to do what was necessary to make Five-Four happy.
They thought it was bad PR if we derailed the deal. Five-Four actually
said as much to me. ‘
We don't
want to be a bad corporate citizen
.'
Total Chamber of Commerce mentality. And Sterling was no help, he was
such a sanctimonious shit about the whole thing. ‘
Don't
you believe in redemption, Colleen? Don't you believe men can
change
?' As a matter of fact, I
don't. Look, I'm sorry Wink offed himself, but we
did the right thing. The people have—"

"Please don't say
‘right to know,' or it might be my turn to
vomit."

"Well, they do," Colleen
said defensively. "The taxpayers were going to end up paying
for this, they always do. Jesus, how many more sports teams is this
town going to crawl into bed with? Doing the wave while Baltimore
burns. As if four-dollar hot dogs sold by someone making three-fifty an
hour could save the local economy."

Tess wasn't really listening to
Colleen. Her mind was back at the
Blight
,
at Dorie Starnes's elbow as she led Tess through the process,
showing her how the trickery had been accomplished.
The
story was overset, so the last five lines had to be cut
.
And then there was Leslie Brainerd, complaining peevishly about his
editor. "He cut it from the bottom."

Of course.

"I should have known it was an
editor from the beginning. You bit the story from the bottom to make it
fit. No reporter would do that to his own copy, not even Rosita. And
you kept trying to fire me because you were worried I might figure it
out if I stayed around long enough."

Colleen suddenly wasn't so chummy.
"That's a cute line of reasoning, but it
won't prove anything, and I'll say you're
a liar if you tell anyone. Besides, there's a confidentiality
clause, remember?"

"That can't keep me from
going to Sterling, or Lionel Mabry."

"Lionel won't
care—he just got two troublesome females off his staff for
the price of one." Tess hadn't thought about that.
Could Lionel be even more devious than she suspected? "As for
Sterling, he'll be too busy moving into my office to worry
about how it happened."

Colleen sipped her coffee, obviously quite
pleased with herself. This had not been an accidental confession in a
moment of weakness and vulnerability, Tess realized. Nor had it been a
secret gnawing away at her. Colleen just wanted the last word, a final
triumph over Tess.

"Don't you even feel
guilty that your do-it-yourself Page One indirectly ended
Rosita's career, while you'll be able to bounce
back without a mark?"

Colleen laughed. "If I had any
talent for self-reflection, I would have quit this business long
ago."

There was one person who
would
care. Two, possibly—Tess felt close enough to Sterling to
know he would be interested in the truth, even if he couldn't
change anything that had happened. But it didn't seem
particularly urgent that she tell him. He was a smart man. He probably
knew how ruthless Colleen was, and how shrewd Lionel was, if not every
specific detail of their various manipulations.

But there was someone else who really needed
to know, or wanted to, someone she could tell without breaching the
confidentiality clause. Tess allowed herself a catnap, then drove to
the
Beacon-Light's
offices. Her pass was still good, although it didn't matter,
as the security system was on the fritz again. The security guard had
simply left the door propped open, then disappeared.

Even on a Sunday morning, system manager
Dorie Starnes was in her office, tapping away.

"You want something?"
she asked, refusing to look up from the monitor. "I thought
your work was done here. I've already cleaned out your
computer files."

"It wasn't Rosita who
pulled off the computer stunt that got the Wink story in the paper.
Colleen Reganhart did it. She told me so herself, then told me
she'd never admit it to anyone else. She's planning
to leave here for another job, so I guess she figures she
doesn't have anything to lose."

"
Really
?"
The tempo of Dorie's tapping changed. It was more frenzied
now, more purposeful. "Oh dear. I just accidentally erased
what appeared to be Colleen Reganhart's
résumé from her personal directory. And there
goes her computer rolodex. Dear me. I do hope she had back-ups, but I
have a feeling she never heeded all my warnings about securing files.
Aw, wouldn't you know? I printed out all her messages by
mistake, including some from Guy Whitman. ‘Doggie
style?' I don't know what that could be about. Oh,
and I printed their messages out on every darn printer in the building,
too. They'll probably get mixed up in the daily
budgets." She shook her head in mock disappointment.
"Dorie, Dorie, Dorie, you are such a butterfingers."

So Whitman was Mr. Half-and-Half.
"How long have they been having an affair?"

"Off and on since she came here.
Every now and then, she catches him sniffing around someone else and
they break up in a flurry of e-mail. But he always comes back. He has
to—she's the boss."

"Was he sleeping with Rosita, too?
She alluded to some impropriety when they fired her, and Colleen
assumed it was Whitman."

"What do you think I do, spend my
entire day spying on people?"

"Exactly. Especially if you
suspect someone of messing around with your precious system. I bet you
turned Rosita's files inside out, looking for
clues."

"Touché."
Dorie's pronunciation was flawless this time. "But
if Rosita was carrying on with Guy, she didn't leave a trail.
She was pretty cagey all around, I admit. I erased her electronic files
after they fired her Friday. They were indecipherable—no
names, no phone numbers. I couldn't make heads or tails of
'em. And there's nothing to retrieve from the hard
drive, not that I can find."

"I guess when you're
making it up, it's better to keep things a little vague. Are
there still copies of her notes in the system?"

"Our procedures clearly state that
stuff goes to the trash. It's long gone. Why would you want
to see them, anyway?"

"Curious, I guess. I'd
like to know if she really did have any leads on Wink's
death, or if she was backpedaling to save her job."

Dorie reached into the collar of her Ravens
sweatshirt and pulled out a long chain with a small key on the end,
which she used to unlock the bottom file cabinet. Tess glimpsed dozens
of manila folders, bursting with documents. Dorie pulled one out, then
slammed the drawer shut.

"I made printouts," she
said. "Force of habit. If they ever come for me,
I'll know how to keep my job."

"I didn't know they
taught blackmail at Merganthaler Vo-Tech."

"Let's just say I
acquired some real-life skills that I wouldn't trade for a
Harvard MBA."

Tess handed Dorie one of her business cards.
"Let's keep in touch. I have a feeling you might
have skills that might come in handy."

Dorie scanned the card into her computer,
then tore it into fourths and dropped it in the wastebasket.

"Paper is so dangerous,"
she explained.