Baltimore Blues

Chapter 15

The president of the United States came between Tess and her bagels the next morning, and it wasn't in one of her strange dreams.

Nor was it the first time. Like most Baltimoreans, Tess had more experience than she wanted with visiting presidents, First Ladies, cabinet secretaries, and their ilk. Just forty-five miles up the parkway from Washington, Baltimore had become the destination of choice during the last decade, an easy photo op for those who wanted to surround themselves with local misery or color. Real folks. Even the queen of England had felt obliged to put in an appearance at an Orioles game. But whether it was a monarch or a president, a Democrat or a Republican, it all meant the same thing for the local populace-traffic jams and security checks, breathless reports on television for a week before and after, a disruption of life in general.

Cranky at being deprived of her breakfast routine, Tess splurged on a chocolate-filled croissant and a cup of hazelnut coffee from one of the stalls inside the old Broadway market. She had planned to savor the high-calorie treat and gourmet coffee, but she ended up bolting both when she saw the bus crossing Broadway. One reason her Toyota had survived this long was because she used public transportation when possible, as long as she didn't have to transfer. Baltimore 's bus system didn't make it easy. Today she ended up six long blocks from her destination, the complex of state office buildings at Preston and Martin Luther King Boulevard.

The bland gray towers here housed hundreds of state employees from several divisions. Tess took the elevator to room 808, home to all corporate charters filed in the state of Maryland, for businesses and nonprofits alike. Cecilia's smeared copies must have come from here, from the old microfilm files, a technology now almost as quaint as telegraphs and Morse codes.

It was a dusty, overheated room, always crowded and tense. When Tess was a reporter, jazzed up on caffeine and deadlines, just being here had pushed her to the edge of teeth grinding irritation. The too-small room seemed to affect everyone's reflexes, until employees and visitors alike moved as if suspended in honey. There was always a crowd at the banks of filing cabinets, always a line at the front desk, never enough clerks to help out. Strange little gnomes, male and female, hogged the microfilm machines and tables. Tess had never known, or cared, who these people were or what they were doing.

Now she was one of them. A free spirit, liberated from the forty-hour-a-week grind. Tess waited to surrender to the same lethargy the others had, to shuffle to the front desk, where she would get the folio number for the file she wanted, then to the cabinets where the files were kept, and to the machine where she could scan to the page number she needed. But the only feeling she had was her usual urgent desire to get out as quickly as possible. It took a mere five minutes to get the reel of microfilm, but the microfilm readers were already taken by people with piles and piles of film stacked at their sides. A bad sign, Tess decided, a very bad sign. She would have to rely on her more devious instincts, becoming sharper by the day, to jump ahead in line.

"Anybody parked on Howard Street?" she asked brightly. "Because they're ticketing."

Immediately three people rushed for the doors. One left a microfilm reader vacant and Tess usurped it, ignoring the glares of those who had not moved quite so quickly. She scanned on fast, which made her head ache as the pages rushed by in a blur. The machine gave off a noxious smell, a combination of ink and dust, laced with a burning odor from the old motor. VOMA's charter began on page 1,334, fairly deep into the file. She slowed the scan to a crawl, but she had already passed it by and had to reverse direction for several hundred pages before she could zero in.

She was looking for more names to add to her growing list. Tess knew from writing about charities that a nonprofit typically had officers and a board. A lawyer filed the incorporation papers, but the lawyer usually didn't have any further dealings with the group. Still, it seemed an unlikely coincidence that Abramowitz filed the papers for a group that had at least one member who hated his guts. The original filing for VOMA, the Victims of Male Aggression, listed only Prudence Henderson as president-treasurer, and the "agent," lawyer Michael Abramowitz-the same names she had found on Cecilia's fragment in the coffehouse. No board, and nothing unusual in the bylaws, basically a statement of purpose ("a nonprofit that seeks to educate about sexual assault") and a promise not to support or oppose individual political candidates. That was boilerplate, a federal law any tax-exempt group had to follow.

Tess scanned idly through the other charters in the file, curious to see if Michael Abramowitz often helped out with filings. His name did not come up again. But there were hundreds of thousands of corporations on file here. Abramowitz could have filed for any number, or helped out on just this one. Searching for his name this way was useless. She scanned back to the VOMA charter and pushed the "print" button. The greasy, smudged copies were free, and Tess believed one should always take advantage of government freebies. Your tax dollars at work.

Before she left, she asked at the front desk to see the group's latest filing, an annual update known as the pink sheet, because of its color. If a board had been installed since the original filing, or if new officers had been named, VOMA would provide the list with its annual statement, another source of names and leads. When Tess was a reporter, a clerk would bring out the entire file, standing guard to ensure one looked only at the top pink sheet, which was public. The rest of the file was confidential. It had been a simple and painless process. Too simple and painless apparently: The legislature had changed it. The clerk told Tess she now needed twenty-six dollars, check or cash, to get the pink sheet today, nothing if she could wait for them to mail it, which could take up to two weeks. Tess wondered if she could bill it to Tyner without explaining to Tyner what she was doing. Nope. Better to go the cheaper route. Why gamble twenty-six dollars on a long shot?

She left the building, heading south to the greatest library in the free world.

Well, not anymore. Probably not ever. But the central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library still was a place of wonders to Tess, even if the book budget had been slashed and the hours cut. Her parents had made a lot of mistakes, a fact Tess compulsively shared on first dates, but she gave them credit for doing one thing right: Starting when she was eight, they gave her a library card and dropped her off at the downtown Pratt every Saturday while they shopped. Twenty-one years later, Tess still entered through the children's entrance on the side, pausing to toss a penny in the algae-coated fish pond, then climbing the stairs to the grand main hall. If she could be married here, she would.

She found a seat in the business and technology section, between two homeless men researching the Voting Rights Act, and pulled out a small, spiral-backed notebook and her sheaf of lists, all the names she had been able to link to Abramowitz. She started with the current phone book and worked backward, using the old directories on microfilm to find numbers and addresses for those not in the most recent book. It was boring detail work, the kind of thing she had always done well. Too well. Tess had a talent for the small stuff. It was the big picture that often eluded her. In another time, another place, she would have been bent over a large quilt, sewing away at her one tiny block of fabric, the pattern so close to her eyes it had blurred.

But there were few rewards today. Most of the names on her list were not there, or too common to track. People had left Baltimore, disappeared, or died.

Except for Prudence Henderson, on University Parkway in the current directory. Tess was familiar with the area, a place of old apartments and co-ops, with a few rambling brick houses thrown into the mix. Of course, she could have found the same information by just looking it up in her phone book at home, but the discovery still pleased her. Heartened, she checked for a Cecilia Cesnik in Highlandtown, only to find too many Cesniks with East Baltimore exchanges. Did Cecilia say she still lived with her father? He could have been anyone from Anthony to Zachary.

She looked through her lists again. Who was missing? Oh, the mystery man, the disgruntled plaintiff with the Louisville Slugger. No one at the library could help with that, but she had an idea about someone who could. She gathered up her papers and went to one of the old pay phones, shutting the folding glass door and dialing a number to an office only blocks away.

"Feeney," a bored voice answered. It was a low, gruff voice, a voice that choked off all pleasantries. Kevin V. Feeney, the courthouse reporter for the Beacon-Light, worked out of a small pressroom in the courthouse, the better to escape his editors.

"Hey, Feeney, it's Tess Monaghan. Saw you in court the other day, but I didn't see your byline on Sunday's story. I bet you did a lot of legwork for Jonathan's story."

He grunted. "Yeah, I did all the scut work. As usual. But you know Jonathan. At least, that's what they say."

Tess let the last remark go. Feeney needed to get his shots in.

"OK, I'll admit it, I'm calling for a favor. Did one judge handle most of the asbestos cases before consolidation? I'm trying to track down a plaintiff, but all I know is how much he was awarded and that he's still pretty feisty for someone who's dying."

"Those cases go from judge to judge. It's a real dog assignment. And I can't see any plaintiff standing out from the crowd. They're just a bunch of sick old men."

"That's the thing: This old man was healthy enough to chase someone around with a Louisville Slugger not long ago."

Feeney laughed. "Well, unless he chased the judge, he's not going to have made much of an impression. But drop by some day-not today, because I have a hearing in fifteen minutes-and we'll play with the Beacon-Light's library, see what it can kick out for us."

"Thanks, KVF."

"See ya, Tess."

She hung up and left the library the way she had come in, and headed to Tyner's office, ready for a day of photocopying and answering phones. Tyner had started sneaking all sorts of work on her plate, things that had nothing to do with Rock's case. The secret tasks, the ones she assigned herself, made those dull jobs tolerable. In fact she loved sitting in Tyner's office, knowing she had done an end run around him.

At dinner that night, Tess had Kitty to herself, a rare thing. She adored Kitty, but even thirty years after junior high her aunt still threw herself into her affairlets with a single-minded vigor that left everyone else behind. Tess missed Kitty when she was in love, and she was almost always in love.

Kitty topped off their wineglasses. "You've got the Monaghan constitution, Tesser, despite that unhealthy obsession with exercise. I'm not sure it's such a blessing, though. For one thing, it costs more to get a buzz on."

"I don't know. I think my high tolerance for all things comes from both sides. The Weinsteins probably were all addicts, back when they had the drugstore. I bet Poppa had pharmaceutical cocaine and the Weinstein women scarfed down speed to keep their weight down."

"Cocaine wasn't Poppa Weinstein's vice," Kitty said, then clapped her hand over her mouth as if she had given something away.

"What? What? What are you talking about?"

Kitty shook her head, her hand still cupped over her mouth, her green eyes wide, little tears of laughter at the corners.

"Tell me. We never have secrets." It was a lie, for Tess had always hoarded a few, but the lie worked. Kitty left the room and came back with a wooden box stamped TUXEDO SHOE POLISH.

"As you know this place was the Weinstein Drugs flagship. Well, I found this in the third-story storage room, the one that became your apartment, when I bought the place," she said, flipping up the lid and revealing a blinding flash of cleavage. The box was filled with skin magazines. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, in nightgowns and bathing suits and nothing at all. But the overwhelming impression was of breasts, in hues ranging from creamy white to coffee brown.

On closer inspection, which Kitty and Tess were glad to make, the twenty-year-old magazines seemed almost wholesome by today's standards. No S and M, no single-theme issues dedicated to big rear ends or freakish chests. Just lots and lots of naked women. Oh, Poppa Weinstein, Tess thought, and we assumed all you cared about was real estate and competing with Rite Aid.

"Are you sure they were his?"

Kitty shrugged. "It was pretty well hidden near an old safe. I don't think they belonged to Rachel." That would be Momma Weinstein, whose only known passion was for her beloved springer spaniels. If Tess had been married to Rachel Weinstein, she might have had a similar stash.

"Why did you keep them?"

"I thought I could use them for a censorship display one day, or one on pornography. They're so retro it's almost innocent. No AIDS, no condoms, and the pill was still a godsend. I was in my twenties when these magazines came out. I could have been in one of these magazines."

Kitty and Tess drifted into their discrete musings. Kitty appeared to be thinking about her glory days, which Tess doubted were one-tenth as glorious as her current life as Fells Point's resident goddess-merchant. Tess was mulling over Poppa Weinstein, her dirty old grandpa. At first she felt the way one does after making the connection between one's conception and one's parents. But after the initial queasiness subsided, Tess decided it was sweet. Well, not sweet, but OK. At least he wasn't luring little girls behind the soda fountain, just curling up with the very magazines he refused to sell.

She hoped.

The phone rang in Kitty's office, a narrow room between the kitchen and the bookstore proper. "That should be Thaddeus." She floated to the phone, ever the teenage girl, but was back in a few seconds.

"The thrill is gone?" Tess asked.

"No, it's for you. Since when do you give the store number out?"

"Tyner put it on my ‘business' cards because he knows I don't always answer upstairs. Sorry-it didn't occur to me anyone was going to use it."

In the office Tess picked up the sleek, modern phone on Kitty's desk. A deep voice, hesitant and sweet, spoke softly into her right ear. "Miss Monaghan? It's Frank Miles, the custodian from the Lambrecht Building."

"Mr. Miles." She imagined him, girth squeezed into his easy chair, scarfing down a whole bag of Hydroxes. A black Santa Claus on his throne. No beard, though. "What can I do for you?"

"I was thinking-I have so much time to myself, to sit here and think-and I remembered something. There was a man, Miss Monaghan. An angry man."

"Where, Mr. Miles? At the office?"

"Yes. He came to see Mr. Abramowitz a few months ago and said horrible things, ugly things. It was after hours, so I heard them. He wanted money. He said he would kill Mr. Abramowitz if he didn't get his money."

"Was it a man with a baseball bat? The man written up in the paper? Do you remember what month this was?"

"No-maybe spring, maybe summer."

"With a baseball bat?"

"A baseball bat? I think there was. Or maybe I just heard about it later."

"Did you catch his name, Mr. Miles? Did you see him?"

A long, sad sigh. "No. No. I'm sorry." He sounded hurt and defensive, as if he regretted disappointing her.

Tess wanted to sigh, too, with frustration. He hadn't told her anything she didn't know. But he had kept her card. He had called. Maybe he would remember something worthwhile.

"I am going to check into it, Mr. Miles," she reassured him. "It's a good tip, a really good tip. I bet there's something there."

That cheered him up. "He was an angry man, Miss Monaghan. Angry over money. Isn't that a shame? He was mad because they hadn't paid him for dying, the way they promised. Who needs money for dying?"

"It's a good tip," Tess repeated. "And I think I know who it was." I just don't know his name.

"You're good at your job, Miss Monaghan. You're very conscientious, a good, hard worker. I noticed that right off. Good night, Miss Monaghan."

Conscientious. Good at her job. When had Tess heard that last? She couldn't remember. The words almost made her want to weep, to thank Mr. Miles profusely, to make her parents proud of her, to get an MBA or go to law school.

But all she said was, "Good night, Mr. Miles."