Baltimore Noir

AS SEEN ON TV BY DAN FESPERMAN

Fells Point

The Baltimore of Branko’s dreams was a killer’s paradise, a bleak landscape of wet streets after dark. To his mind, it was the one city in America where even a restless soldier fresh from the wars might feel at home, patrolling the long, deep trenches of its row-house streets, entire blocks walled off by bricks the color of mud. Someone who was handy with weapons could get mighty comfortable there, and that certain someone, of course, would be Branko.

Like most Europeans, he tended to embellish any fantasy involving America with touches of the Wild West. Thus, he saw himself ruling Baltimore in the manner of a desperado, careening over the potholes and sewer grates in an old nag of a Crown Vic, riding the range to the clip-clop of gunshots.

The endings to these flights of fancy never varied. Word of his murderous exploits would filter down through desk sergeants, cop reporters, and neighborhood gossips, and inevitably make its way to a script writer for Homicide, the television show that had first brought Baltimore to Branko’s attention. The resulting episode would make Branko a legend, because who could possibly resist the exotic lure of his tale: Branko Starevic, the Balkan hit man who traveled 5,000 miles for a single commission.

Imagine the disappointment, then, of Branko’s first real view of Baltimore as his plane circled to land at BWI. It was a Friday afternoon in October, and the sunlight on the fall foliage below was almost shocking in its luminescence. Flak bursts of orange and yellow were everywhere, overflowing from parks and hillsides, assaulting streambeds and riverbanks, and spilling from the cracks of neighborhoods. When the big jet looped out across the bay, the glare from the water almost blinded him. He shifted in his seat to see clean white sails in formation. A ribbon of trestled highway passed beneath them. Then the towers of downtown winked smartly as if to seal the jest, and in quick succession Branko spied a tall-masted ship at harbor, two big stadiums, and more highways, teeming with cars, coursing arteries of a place that looked disturbingly vital.

He fidgeted uncomfortably, the airline lasagna from three hours earlier executing a barrel roll, then he shut the plastic shade in disgust. For ages he had looked forward to this moment, anticipating a gloomy approach through factory smoke and low clouds. He had expected to behold a city rendered in the colors of a bruise-once upon a daylight dreary, as he pondered weak and weary-yes, he knew Poe as well, from a translated copy lent by a friend at the beginning of his Baltimore fixation.

The weak and weary part he had cold. Branko had been traveling for twenty hours, a low-budget itinerary from Sarajevo via Zagreb, Frankfurt, and JFK, with lengthy layovers at every stop.

Here is what the passport control officer saw as Branko lumbered forward with his overnight bag and his documents (his boss, Marko Krulic, had fixed the visa with a cooperative consular officer, paying twice the amount Branko would be earning for the commission): He was a tall man, about 6’3", with the rangy build and sharp cheekbones of those Slavic toughs the NBA favors for their Euro guile and rigid fundamentals. Pale skin with the translucence of boiled cabbage. He wore a black leather jacket, too large and with too many silver buckles. His black pair of acid-washed jeans sported a label no American had ever heard of, and his lank black hair was a longish version of a style from 1957.

But it was Branko’s eyes that prompted the passport officer to ask a few extra questions, just before they took his prints and snapped his photo. It wasn’t the bleached-out blue that demanded your attention; it was their chilly quality, as if he were staring up at you through an inch of frozen pond. The war had done that for him, the war and all its enthusiasms of killing on the run, house by house.

Krulic, his commander, was now his boss, and in the manner of most war profiteers he had diversified into the multiple rackets of peacetime-drugs, stolen cars, bootleg designer wear, and duty-free vices of every ilk. Branko was a hired gun, and the target in Baltimore had only recently to Krulic’s attention. It seemed that war-crimes investigators in The Hague had finally made their way down the pecking order to Krulic and were struggling to collect evidence. Krulic knew something that they didn’t: that the most incriminating witness now lived in the States, having made his way to an apartment on the fringes of Fells Point back in ’98.

Branko had to have the job the moment he heard about it. Dubbed episodes of Homicide were an obsession, and he felt he knew the entire cast by name. He spoke just enough English to believe he would be able to engage them in witty conversation, should he happen across them in a bar. And, who knows, now maybe he would.

Krulic was aware of Branko’s television addiction, but figured that a killer was a killer. His bigger worry was Branko’s inexperience with handguns. Most local jobs were dispatched with AK-47s or RPGs.

“You won’t be able to just blow up his house, you know,” Krulic had said. “Well, not unless you can arrange some sort of gas leak. But be tidy, be smart.”

To Branko, being smart meant carrying out the deed in such a fashion that, one day, he would settle down on his couch before his Soviet-made television to see his exploits immortalized by the actors he knew and loved. Perhaps the killer-the one modeled after him-would even have a fling with Melissa Leo, or at least a flirtation. He liked it when she talked tough, although he suspected from the clothes she wore that maybe she didn’t like boys. But surely, he had thought, he scanned the credits of an episode only two nights before his departure, some of those writers must be yearning for a breakout idea. Well, he was about to give them one.

These were the contents of Branko’s pockets and overnight bag as he exited customs: two changes of clothes, a toothbrush, $50 in cash, a credit card (he was under strict orders to use it only to rent a car), a fake New Jersey driver’s license, the address for a homeless shelter where he was supposed to sleep, a telephone number for a contact who would supply his gun, a Fells Point address for a bar called Flip’s, and a return ticket to Sarajevo, reserved for Sunday. That gave him only two nights, but he was a fast worker.

The target was Dusko Jevic. Branko knew only that the man worked at Flip’s, at 1900 Aliceanna Street, where he supposedly swabbed floors, hauled garbage, killed rats, and did a little bouncing. His name was pronounced “DOOSH-ko” and, barroom clientele being what it was, the regulars called him “Douche Bag” or just “Douche.” Not being particularly fluent in English, Dusko didn’t seem to mind.

Branko’s expectations took another hit at the Hertz counter. Instead of a Crown Vic he got a Ford Focus. An upgrade to make things right would have cost $39.50 a day, and Krulic wouldn’t have approved. So he grabbed the keys, bought a map from a newsstand-at $6.95, it was obvious his $50 wasn’t going to last long-then plotted a course for Fells Point.

At first, the drive into town only depressed him further. The procession of colorful trees continued, straddling the highway. There was even a welcome sign, painted on the sort of rustic timbers you normally found at alpine retreats.

Then he reached the fringes of Westport, and his spirits began to lift. He got only a glimpse, but it was enough. To his right, battered rowhouses were bunched like the cars of a derailed train. To his left was a small slag heap. Just ahead, a lane was shut for repairs, lined with unsightly orange barrels. The pavement seemed to have suddenly gone to hell, rippled and rutted and scarred. This was more like it. His mood brightened at every alarming jolt of the axle.

The clincher was a huge factory-like building that reared up suddenly on his right, just as the downtown skyline came into view. He slowed for a better look. It was sheathed in brown corrugated metal, at least a dozen stories high, with three chimneys belching steam and a fourth, taller and thicker, pouring white smoke a good half-mile into the blue. But the best part was the sign out front. Someone had actually had the balls to tout this monstrosity as an “Empowerment Zone.”

Well, Branko certainly felt empowered now, and he drove onward with spirits revived, unflagging even as he skirted the touristy attractions of the harbor-that damned tall-masted ship again and those long pavilions with cheerful green rooftops.

It took only a mile before he was back in his milieu. Crossing Central Avenue, he entered a gloomy block of low-slung homes built of dark brick. Their flat rooftops and barred windows made them look like prisons. Yet children played in the streets, and the homes extended for blocks. Could this, perhaps, be “the projects”? His pulse quickened in excitement. He half expected to come upon a bleeding body at curbside, surrounded by yellow crime-scene tape. Then a cruiser would round the corner, and Bayliss and Pembleton would leap from either door. Okay, okay, he knew they were just actors, so he accommodated reality by also imagining a film crew. Lights, camera, action. A cameo of Branko in profile, idling by in the car, a first and ominous sighting of the mysterious man in black from the Balkans.

“Stay in your lane, asshole!”

A honking horn ended his reverie and he swerved to let a Jeep Cherokee roar past, some white guy on a cell phone who flipped him the bird. Branko was out of the projects now, but fortunately the view was no happier. Over the next several blocks, in fact, the nicest house to be seen was a mural of a house painted on the side of a vacant one. As if on cue, a police helicopter throbbed past overhead. Perfect.

In his growing enthusiasm, Branko missed the turn for the shelter, so he doubled back after heading north on Broadway, reaching his destination a few blocks later. Krulic had instructed him not to park too near the shelter, lest anyone realize he was an impostor. His contact, a Balkan émigré whose name had not been revealed, arrived within minutes of Branko’s call from a pay phone. They met on the shelter’s front steps.

“You’re good for two nights here,” he said. “I told them your name is Bob King, and did the paperwork for you. They think you’re out of a job, so act depressed. Here’s the gun.”

The bag seemed ridiculously small, no heavier than a couple of potatoes. Branko started to peek inside.

“Not here, stupid! They’ll kick you out before you even get inside. The doors open at 6, in twenty minutes. Here, put it in your overnight bag. It’s already loaded-one clip, don’t waste it. Dusko the Douche Bag gets to work at 7. Give me the phone number.”

Branko handed it over.

“Don’t call me again. You’re finished with me, and I’m finished with you.”

“But…”

The man was already walking away. Branko watched him go half a block before climbing into a huge pickup truck and driving away. He had yet to see anyone at the wheel of a Crown Vic.

By the time the shelter opened there was a line to get in. He sauntered upstairs and settled on a camp bed, everyone calling him “Bob” as he opened the city map on his knees. The overnight bag was tucked between his feet. He had already stuffed the bag with the gun into a pocket of his jacket, but not before a peek inside. It was a Glock. He’d heard of them, they were mentioned often on Homicide, so he didn’t feel so bad anymore about the size.

He ran an index finger along the grid of the map until it rested on the location of Flip’s, at Aliceanna and Wolfe. It was a good twenty blocks from here. There was still more than an hour to kill, so he decided to drive into Fells Point for a look. He would take a stroll, loosen his limbs for the kill. His stomach growled. Better have dinner too.

Parking was tougher than he had expected, and he ended up forking over a precious fiver at a small lot near the waterfront, a few blocks east of Broadway.

Fells Point was a puzzle to him. He traversed a block on the upper end that looked dilapidated, yet the next few were downright beautiful, disgustingly so, with gas lamps and flower boxes, and bars that were far too cute and proper for a man in a black leather jacket with too many silver buckles. He passed a few restaurants, but the prices posted on the menus made him weak in the knees.

Just when he thought he had figured the place out, he rounded a corner to see a drunk covered in tattoos and a three-day beard, swaying on a cloud of malt. In the next block, he passed a junk shop. He spotted a Latin dance bar, then a nice boutique. Across the way he saw a ratty-looking bridal shop, and something called the Polish Home Club. He wondered vaguely if there might also be a Bosnian Home Club, which produced a spasm of panic. What if the show had already filmed an idea just like his, and it had yet to air? The possibility had haunted him to some extent ever since prosecutor Ed Danvers had joined the cast. The actor’s name had leaped out from the credits: Zeljko Ivanek. Possibly Russian, not Balkan, but he couldn’t be positive.

At some point in his wanderings, Branko ended up on Lancaster Street heading west; he was about to cross Broadway when a familiar sight caught his eye. It was the green oval sign for Jimmy’s Restaurant. His spirits soared. He’d seen them eating at Jimmy’s on Homicide. One block further to the right was the waterfront, which meant that somewhere nearby was the locus, the Mecca, the center of his universe-Baltimore Police Headquarters, home of the homicide bureau, the place where they did so much of the filming. His pulse quickened, yet he also felt uneasy. He had an illegal piece in his pocket and murder on his mind. Correction: homicide on his mind. This was no time to be bumbling into a policeman.

Jimmy’s was another matter, seeing as how he was hungry. What were the terms the Americans used for such places? Diner. Greasy spoon.

It was crowded and Branko settled himself to one side of a partitioned table for four, set apart from two men at the other half by a red slab of wood running down the middle. Everything was familiar-the long counter, the sizzling griddle, the huge urns of coffee-right down to the red-checked tablecloths, although he was disappointed to discover that they were plastic.

The menu baffled him. Too many choices across too many groups of food. He was about to settle for a burger when the word “scrapple” caught his eye. Hadn’t someone ordered that once on the show? Bayliss? Meldrick Lewis? Or maybe Crosetti, the one who offed himself? Whoever it was, Branko had to try some. He even liked the name: scrapple, like a piece of food that had been in a fight. He had no idea what it was made of, and was too embarrassed to ask, although he knew enough to say “Over easy” when the waitress asked how he wanted his eggs.

A steaming platter arrived in what seemed like only seconds, and by process of elimination he determined that the scrapple was the crispy brown wedge next to the home fries. It looked like a flattened croquette. He took a bite, and appalled. Inside was gray mush, liverish and creepy. He wanted to spit it out, but didn’t know who might be watching. Besides, if it was good enough for Detective Meldrick Lewis, then Branko could tough it out.

Later, mopping the last of the egg yolk with toast, he got up the nerve to ask the waitress the question that had been on his mind since he came through the door.

“Tell me, please,” he said, painfully conscious of his heavy accent. “The Homicide TV show. They come here still for the filming?”

The two men on the other side of the table smiled and shook their heads.

“Oh, hon, that’s dead and gone,” the waitress said.

“Dead?”

“Years ago. Packed up and left.”

Then she disappeared, off in a flash with her order pad, oblivious to the desolation in her wake.

“Got canceled,” said one of the men, perhaps sensing Branko’s disappointment. “Long time ago.”

Canceled. Dead Fatal words, leaving him as shattered as if a gunshot had just torn through his chest. He had never expected to hear such words associated with his favorite show, not even one called Homicide. No wonder the city had looked so wrong from the air. He should have taken it as a sign, an omen.

His feelings of utter defeat must have showed, even through the icy film of those eyes, because the guy next to him spoke up again, in a tone that suggested the man was trying to cheer him up.

“They did make a movie, though, a few years back.”

“Yeah,” his companion offered, finding the Samaritan spirit contagious. “A good one. And now they got this other show, The Wire.”

“The Wire?” Branko could barely speak. Worse, he still tasted scrapple on his breath.

“It’s another crime show.”

“Here?” A glimmer of hope. “Filmed in Baltimore?” In his accent it came out as “Balty-more.”

“Sure. Gotta have HBO, though. And shit, cable’s forty-five a month as it is.”

The two men began griping about cable service, and Branko quickly lost the thread, so he rose, still too stunned to even say goodbye. But by the time he was out the door he was trying to take hope in a new possibility. Somewhere in town, he supposed, men and women were yet huddled over cigarettes and beer, dreaming up plots for made-up cops and killers, even if it was a different show with a different name. With luck he would still be able to offer a winner for their consideration. It wasn’t what he had planned on, it wasn’t the dream, but it was a chance.

There was still a job to do, however, and now it was after dark, and after 7. Dusko Jevic awaited him at Flip’s.

It was only five blocks away, and he was there in a few minutes. A banner outside advertised something called “Natty Bohs in a can” for a dollar apiece. The way his budget was dwindling, that sounded like a smart choice, even if it involved one of those sweet drinks that came with a paper umbrella.

It turned out to be a beer-weak and watery lager, but beer nonetheless-and Branko downed his in a flash while wondering where Dusko might be. Maybe it was the fellow’s day off, or he had quit. If he didn’t show up in the next hour, Branko would ask for him, risky or not. In two days he’d be out of the country, so what would it matter?

Then he got lucky. Just after the barmaid took his order for a second Natty Boh, she turned and shouted into the back, “Hey, Douche, how ’bout bringin’ up a new case?”

And just like that, there he was in the doorway behind the bar, an apparition in black, grim and nodding, then grunting as he slammed not just one but two cases of beer into a big fridge.

“Thanks, Douche.”

Dusko said nothing. Just nodded again and set off for the back. To get to it you had to be behind the bar. Branko wondered how he was going to do that. He fingered the gun in his jacket, just to make sure it was ready.

A few minutes later he got another break. The barmaid hailed some friends as they came through the front door. Then, perhaps because it wasn’t yet crowded, she delivered Branko’s second beer and walked out from behind the bar to chat with them, at a table next to an automatic bowling machine across the room. Now was his chance. He dropped from the stool and slipped through the opening, which she hadn’t closed behind her, then darted through the back doorway. There were no shouts in his wake, so apparently no one had noticed. He opened a second door down a small hallway, and Dusko looked up suddenly from a small crate where he sat watching a baseball game on a black-and-white television.

“You are a baseball fan?” Dusko asked, a quizzical look on his face. “You wish to know the score?” Then a change came over his face, as if Dusko had recognized something from home in Branko’s eyes, or perhaps in the black leather jacket with too many silver buckles. He stood slowly, and his next words were in their native tongue.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

Branko pulled out the Glock.

“Marko Krulic sent me.” He nodded toward the rear door. “Let’s go.”

Dusko backed toward the exit, not taking his eyes off Branko as he fumbled with the dead bolt and chain. The door creaked open to the night. Still no pursuit or noise from behind, although Branko didn’t dare risk a glance in that direction.

“Outside,” he said.

Dusko stepped into a tiny alley, barely lit, but kept a hand on the door frame.

“Let go of that. Move it.”

Then something stirred in the darkness, startling Branko. It was a rat, he saw now, a huge one scuttling toward a hole in the concrete. But it provided just enough of a distraction for Dusko to lunge for the Glock, his hand striking Branko’s just as Branko squeezed the trigger. In the tight space of the alley the shot sounded like a small, sharp explosion. The gun clattered to the pavement. Branko reached quickly to pick it up, but Dusko kicked it with a huge grunt, then shouldered past him as Branko lunged across the alley to retrieve it. Got it. But by the time he turned, Dusko was slamming home the dead bolt, safely back inside.

Branko felt like an idiot and began to worry as he heard shouts inside, a real commotion. He looked around for an escape, but just ahead the narrow alley was blocked by a small fence running from ground to rooftop. He went the opposite direction, and the alley turned one way, then the other, before reaching a cinderblock wall topped by chain link and two strips of barbed wire. Branko climbed to the top of the blocks, then jumped, catching a sleeve on the wire, tearing leather and feeling something rake his hand on the way across. He landed awkwardly in a parking lot filled with forklifts, then had to climb a second fence, more carefully this time, before he was back onto Aliceanna, about half a block east of Flip’s. He didn’t dare head in that direction, so he ran east, then turned left on Washington Street before slowing to a brisk walk. No sense attracting unnecessary attention. His heart drummed. He couldn’t believe he’d let Dusko slip away, and so easily. Now he’d have to replan everything, and the man would be on his guard.

Branko needed to get back to his car, so he headed west on Fleet Street, averting his face as he crossed Wolfe in case anyone was on the lookout down at Flip’s. Once safely across he felt better. Then he began wishing he had the rest of that second Natty Boh. Watery or not, he needed a beer in the worst way.

A few blocks later he was calmer, perhaps because he had yet to hear a police siren. What Branko didn’t know was that the police were the last people Dusko would have called. For one thing, his green card was expired. For another, he too had old friends from the old country who would be happy to lend a hand.

In any case, Branko’s wandering as he tried to get his bearings-it was too dark to get out his map-had put him within sight of a bar on Ann Street. It was called the Wharf Rat, a promising name even if it briefly reminded him of his embarrassment back at Flip’s. A second beer would be all he needed to settle down. Then he would check the map and make his way back to the car.

The beer here was better, but it was $4 a pop. Another major dent in his stash.

“You should get that looked at,” the waitress said, and for the first time Branko noticed an ugly cut on his left hand, already crusting over with darkened blood.

“Yes,” he said, “you are right. I caught it in my car door.”

No sooner had he drained his glass than he had company-two rangy fellows, also in black leather jackets. Branko experienced a moment of recognition, much as Dusko had earlier, before one of them said in their native tongue, “Come with us.”

He reached for his jacket pocket, but a huge hand stopped him, while a second hand reached inside to retrieve the Glock. So much for self-defense. He figured he had better act quickly, while there were still other people around. So, just as the fellow was pocketing the gun, Branko bolted.

He barely eluded their grasp in his sprint for the door. He bowled over an entering couple, then managed to slip out just as the door was closing, heading left down the cobblestoned street. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the two men were only ten yards behind. He expected gunshots at any moment. The waterfront was dead ahead, and he dered if he was going to have to leap into the harbor. He n’t a good swimmer, and the water hadn’t looked like the sort you’d want to swim in. Footsteps pounded behind him, loud slaps on the stones, but still no shots. Nearing the end of the block, he was relieved to see a cross street going in both directions along the wharf.

But it was the sight to his right that suddenly seemed to make all the difference. He recognized it instantly. In fact, he would have known it anywhere, in any context, but especially here in Balty-more-the hulking brick building with grand arched windows and five fat marble columns aligned across the second-story façade, the blue and white lampposts out front flanking the marble steps of the entrance. And now, as his racing footsteps and rising spirits led him closer, he could make out the black and gold lettering on the plate glass above the door: “Baltimore City Police.”

No wonder his pursuers hadn’t fired shots. They’d been practically standing in the cops’ backyard. Branko ran harder even as his sense of relief grew. How appropriate that some desk sergeant would now be his salvation. Sure, he had botched the commission, but that too might sell as a script: the hapless hit man, so far from home, saved by the homicide squad, then sent home amid gales of affectionate laughter and promises that he would be a good boy from now on.

He still heard footsteps, but they’d be giving up soon. They wouldn’t dare pursue him inside, although it certainly was curious how dark the building seemed. Not at all the vibrant sort of place it was on television. And you would have thought a policeman or two would be in sight by now.

It wasn’t until Branko reached the top steps and found the doors locked that he realized his mistake. He shook the handles in vain, peering inside. Empty. Dark. Probably had been since the show left town. Wallpaper peeling in great shards, the floor in ruins. A pigeon strutted into view from the shadows, shitting as it walked.

But even as his assailants reached him, and even as they spun him round by the shoulder and sank a cold barrel into the flesh of his scrapple-filled stomach, Branko couldn’t resist a last fleeting vision of what this might all look like on film-camera dollying high for a downward shot of his darkened head and frightened face, the Balkan hit man with the tables turned, yet still with stars in his eyes.

THE HAUNTINGOF SLINK RIDGELY BY TIM COCKEY

Greenspring Valley

It wasn’t simply that the ghost of Slink Ridgely couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for Annie Brewster’s marriage to the red-haired man. It was more than that. Much more. Slink knew. Of course he did. Ghosts know. Slink watched the ceremony mainly from the area of the empty choir stalls at Saint David’s, where he could best see Annie’s nervous and hopeful face. He watched the strong freckled fingers take hold of Annie’s shaky hand and work the ring onto her finger. Coming in close, he saw the mean truth in the man’s eyes. Annie’s truth, he already knew. He’d known it for quite a while now.

Doomed, he said to himself. Doomed, doomed, doomed, doomed…

Slink’s real name had been Edward. “Little Eddie,” up until he was around five, when he had landed in Johns Hopkins Hospital for a fairly nasty appendectomy and had received not one, not two, but three Slinkies as get-well gifts. Little Eddie was nuts for his Slinkies. Shing, shing, shing, he undulated them from hand to hand for hours at a time, one eye trained on the black-and-white television in the corner, for he was nuts about television as well. Hands-down favorite? The Early Riser. It was Little Eddie’s dream to grow up and get a job like the Early Riser, a janitor in a darkened TV studio who said, “Pssst, come over here,” to the camera first thing in the morning before anyone else had arrived for work, and then put cartoons on for the kids at home to watch.

It didn’t work out that way of course. There such job, except for the one guy who already had it, and of course he wasn’t a real janitor, he was the station’s weather guy wearing fake dusty clothes and a large fake bottle-brush mustache. Instead, Little Eddie grew up to be a milkman for Cloverland Dairy. Though by then he wasn’t Little Eddie anymore, nor Edward, nor Ed, and not even Slinky, which was what the large nurse with the nose mole had taken to calling him during his five days at Hopkins and which Little Eddie’s mother had picked up on. By the time he hit his tenth birthday, the diminutive had dropped away and he was Slink Ridgely, right up until his twenty-seventh year and the school bus/milk truck collision at the intersection of Caves Road and Garrison Forest Road. Slink’s tombstone read Edward Charles Ridgely. The first time Slink saw it he’d scoffed, “Right. Who the hell is he?

Strange day for Slink, that first day of being dead and buried. He logged ten straight hours hovering in one spot-directly in front of his tombstone-and just thinking. Unusual for a guy like Slink Ridgely, who had been a bobber and a weaver, always on the go, go, go.

Slink had loved his job. Four hours sleep was generally all he had needed, so rising and shining at 4 in the morning to start his route had been no big deal. He’d slide behind the wheel of his trusty Olds 98 with a cup of coffee in one hand and a Chesterfield dangling from his lips and be halfway to the dairy before the first light of day cracked the horizon. Skinny as a post, Slink would slip into his white delivery suit in the company locker room, lower his hat carefully over his precious wavy hair, then give a poke to the underside of the brim, easing the cap back on his head just so. Loading the truck took about twenty minutes, then a quick pop into the office to tell pale Sally a racy joke and have her straighten his bow tie for him, then he was ready to roll. The company frowned on its drivers smoking while on their routes, which is why Slink’s customers grew to know him as the skinny milkman with the rakish grin and the ever-present toothpick.

Housewives left instructions in the milk box. Extra gallon of chocolate milk, please. Two dozen eggs next time. When are you getting the sugar donuts in again? Slink was shown the tooth knocked out in football, the newest edition to the family, he heard vacation plans, the great news about the new job. He caught the sometimes whiff of bourbon on Ellen Matthews’s breath, he got the updates on Hal Fenwick’s slow cancerous march to the grave. “Christ,” he used to say to the boys at the Pimlico clubhouse, “There’s this couple on my route. The Burtons? Damn marriage is coming apart right in front of my eyes. Personally, I think the guy is a jerk. Gotta say, I side with wifey on this one.”

Slink’s luck with the horses wasn’t all that great. He had about a half-dozen different systems for picking them, and they all pretty much stank. He ran feverish formulas on his racing form with his No. 2 pencil. You’d have thought he was splitting the atom. “Got it! High Commander to place. Hundred clams.” And High Commander would proceed to prance crookedly around the track like a lame Chinaman pulling a rickshaw. Afternoon regulars at Pimlico were accustomed to the sight of the skinny wavy-haired guy with the ripped bits of his losing tickets raining down on him like confetti.

But generally speaking, Slink enjoyed himself. He could never quite get a gal to hang on his arm for very long-which would have been nice-but he knew she was out there somewhere. Just a matter of time. Meanwhile he ran with a pretty fun crowd, had himself a nice collection of swizzle sticks. Holly’s Cocktail Lounge. The Chanticleer. The Blue Mirror. True, there were a few “debt sweat” episodes here and there-once he was mildly roughed up out back of the Belvedere, just as a friendly reminder-but on the whole, Slink was considered good people, looking to harm no one. If it’s true that he never met a mirror he didn’t like, well, there have been far more serious faults in far more flawed people.

Slink never had sex with a regular customer. Not even Ellen Matthews, despite the sometimes sloppy fall of her bathrobe. There had been one occasion. Sort of. Ginny Curry’s sister visiting from Morgantown. But that hadn’t been on the job. Just pure coincidence. The two had struck up a conversation at Sweeney’s Bar, sparring good-naturedly over the bitters-to-sugar ratio of old-fashioneds, and ended up on Slink’s red plaid blanket in the backseat of his Olds, parked up near Memorial Stadium. It was several mornings later that Slink spied the same woman sitting at the kitchen table with the Curry twins as he was dropping off milk and butter and eggs and cheese. Pure coincidence. Slink grinned and saluted the woman with his toothpick just as she’d turned in her chair and spotted him through the crack of the kitchen door, her red mouth forming a perfect O

And then Slink died.

Technically, it was the fault of the Brewster’s frisky Chesapeake Bay retriever, Sandy. And also a nameless squirrel. Sandy had been accompanying the children on their way to the school bus stop when she suddenly took off after the squirrel that was crossing directly in front of Slink Ridgely’s milk truck. Slink spun the wheel, but by mistake he slammed down on the accelerator pedal instead of the brake. The square truck broke through the picket fence of crabby Gus Fulton’s place, bounced across a corner of the yard (the perfect pile of raked yellow leaves going up like an explosion), and toppled over sideways at the roadside ditch just as the school bus was coming down that steep part of Caves Road way… too… damned… fast.

The milk truck was lying half on and half off the road. After the collision, it lay completely on the road, twice spun and partially crushed. Bottles of white milk and chocolate milk trundled along the pavement like errant bowling pins. As the crowd gathered, no one noticed the Brewster dog at the edge of Gus Fulton’s yard, happily lapping up milk and pebbles.

The kids in the bus were fine. Frightened out of their wits, but fine. The driver of the school bus suffered a bloody nose. But Slink Ridgely was dead. Crushed ribs. Broken neck. His arms were snaked so thoroughly through the spokes of the steering wheel that it was like solving a puzzle trying to get him freed up and out of the truck.

Seven-year-old Annie Brewster felt horrible. She’d been the one holding Sandy’s leash on the way to the bus stop, but she hadn’t held it tightly enough when the squirrel darted out from the trees. Now I’ve killed a man, she thought. I don’t deserve to live Children think this way. She stood saucereyed, staring at the dead milkman, while anguish planted itself deep, deep in her belly. He’d been at their house just fifteen minutes ago. He’d brought those sugar donuts. She remembered the toothpick the milkman was always chewing on. She remembered how he always tilted his cap back whenever he talked to her mom. That very morning he had turned to her-to Annie-and winked at her. And now he dead She felt her tiny heart being slipped into a box and the flaps being folded closed. She spotted something on the road and she reached down and picked it up. It was a toothpick, slightly gnawed on one end. She put it in her pocket and made a vow to keep it forever.

Slink saw all of this from his new vantage point. The dead one. He watched as his body was pulled from the truck and set down on Gus Fulton’s grass. He watched as the children were ushered off the bus, and he joined in the sense of relief that they all seemed fine. His eyes rolled as he spotted Ellen Matthews making her way down the street in her robe and worn fluffy slippers. The woman’s gait listed somewhat, and Slink worried that when her feet stopped moving she’d topple forward onto the pavement. But she didn’t. She came to an unstable stop some ten feet from Slink’s body, then folded her hands together and muttered a tearful prayer into the autumn air.

The funeral was held at Druid Ridge Cemetery three days later. Slink’s cronies were there. Pale Sally presented the wreath from Cloverland. A few of the drivers banded together to wear their uniforms to the grave site, which Slink thought was pretty classy. It was a beautiful crisp autumn day. Yellow leaves fell from the trees, cascading down like a rain of canaries. Slink watched the proceedings from several dozen angles, one of the many benefits of being dead that he was already catching on to. He was especially touched when little Annie Brewster, who had insisted to her parents in a foot-stomping fit that she be allowed to attend, stepped forward to add a single rose to the flowers already atop the casket. Annie hesitated after carefully placing the rose, then removed her black wool gloves and set them, palms down, next to the flower. She stepped back between her parents and thrust her hands into her coat pockets. There, in the left pocket, she fiddled with Slink’s toothpick as the color began to rise into her frowning face.

Her parents were already worried.

Slink took to his new condition like a kid to a sliding board. No problem. Being dead-he discovered-was a lot like dreaming. Or, for that matter, like the feeling that comes from a bellyful of old-fashioneds. The altered state. The affairs of the living were a lot more comical and nonsensical from the perspective of being dead, much the way dreams are freakish and pointless to the living. Tit for tat, figured Slink. And time-he also discovered-was completely irrelevant. The school bus had hit him twenty years ago, the school bus had hit him yesterday. No real difference. The borders between today and yesteryear were completely blurred and he could move back and forth at will. Studebakers and bigfinned Chevrolets in the Memorial Stadium parking lot? That would be Jim Gentile on first and the amazing Luis Aparicio filling the hole at short. The Light Rail pulling into the Camden Yards station? That would be the whole new set of over-priced bums.

Other spirits appeared to Slink and he spent time-whatever that was-with them. He still went to Pimlico to watch the races, only now, if he wanted, he could ride with the jockeys as they lumbered into the homestretch. And now, of course, he knew the winners. For what it mattered. He kicked around the long-gone fish market at Market and Pratt, where he had ventured sometimes as a kid. The fishmongers in their high rubber boots shot their hoses right through him and had no idea. Even dead, the smell of the place was still rank and briny. Slink and another dead crony took in some shows at the Two O’clock Club, but Slink had found Blaze’s act a little too agitating, even in his dreamy dead state. That became his joke. “I ain’t dead yet.” And he’d laugh. But he’d also feel an uncommon warmth in the area of his heart and he discovered that what he was was sad. Being dead brought with it a melancholy streak that was brand new to Slink, something he hadn’t experienced much in his living days. It wasn’t bad feeling necessarily. The feeling made him thoughtful. Reflective. Gave him something to chew on. Threw a new light on things. Slink meandered into the tiny backstage dressing room at the Two O’clock and watched Blaze playing mother to a tearful dancer, and he was so filled with sadness and joy he didn’t know what to do with himself.

“This dead thing,” he said to one of his cronies, “it’s really something, isn’t it? I had no idea.”

And he kept his eye on Annie Brewster. That move with the gloves and the flower at his funeral, that stuck with him. He worried about her. A month after his funeral, Slink had watched Annie in her bedroom, jabbing his toothpick against her thighs over and over, just to make it hurt. She was a peculiar kid, cracked odd jokes at odd times, didn’t harvest much in the way of close friends. Her teachers called her “artistic” when they weren’t calling her “problematic.” Annie liked to spend time alone. She read depressing books, she liked to draw, she liked to get into fights with boys. Slink drifted forward to when Annie was sixteen and watched her almost get into some serious trouble with the Burton boy. It was one thing when they were both eleven and pudgy Ted Burton had a loyal puppy crush on her. Then, Annie’s little cruelties didn’t hit home so much. But later, Annie carelessly plucked a ripe nerve in the hulking boy and he nearly pinched her arms off shaking her the way he did.

Slink worried.

“I feel responsible,” Slink told another dead person as they were looking in on the incredible 1958 Colts-Giants game. “She blames herself for my death. You can see it, it’s really screwed her up. That’s not a healthy girl there. It’s like I’m haunting her or something.”

Slink checked things out in Annie’s sophomore year at Bennington. It was none of his business, he knew, if she was sleeping with her roommate’s boyfriend. But he also knew-he’d seen-how she would willfully misplay the affair when it came to light in the spring and earn herself a half-dozen solid enemies. Or the following year, when she would nearly cause her faculty adviser to be tossed out of the school.

And he knew what was coming. He’d been there over and over again already.

“She’s got no self-regard, you know what I mean? Poor crazy kid. You just open yourself up for big-time trouble. She’s a sitting duck. I feel rotten about it.”

Slink attended Annie’s graduation. The day was steamy and thick. Everyone, the guests, the students, the faculty, were fanning themselves with their programs. The commencement speaker-a famous actor with an equally famous wife-urged the new graduates to “seize the day” and “to march to their own drum.” Annie squirmed in her folding chair and laughed derisively. She contorted the advice, and when she met the actor at a reception following the ceremony, she held firmly to his hand and leaned forward to whisper into his ear, “Seize the drum.”

Slink watched sadly as the two refreshed their drinks and sought a quiet corner to chat. Slink moved forward two months to watch the end of the affair, the famous wife arriving unexpectedly at their Manhattan apartment.

“Who the hell is this little thing?”

Annie was out on the sidewalk in under five minutes, still fumbling with the buttons on her blouse. Slink knew that her next three months would go poorly. She’d get no traction in Manhattan. The city spooked her. Her veneer of insular confidence shattered like a sheet of sugar candy. She never found her stride, and in early autumn she left her rent unpaid and took the subway to Penn Station and bought a one-way ticket back to Baltimore. She was crying quietly as she boarded the train. Slink also took the ride. He took it over and over and over again. Each time he knew there was no way to keep Annie from taking the seat next to the red-haired man but each time he tried anyway to will her to keep moving on to the next car.

The man’s name was Paul. The toothpick in his mouth wiggled as he turned and smiled at the pretty young woman. Each time she was slow to react, but each time, when she finally did, it was as if her face might crack into a hundred bits. Such a smile.

“Hi.” And she slid her small hand into his. Just handed it right over. Slink could’ve killed her.

No!

Paul Jacobs had blood on his hands. Slink went back a few years to Loch Raven Reservoir on a half-moon night in May, and there he was. Slink couldn’t stand to see the act-not after that first time-so he always arrived just when it was over. Clouds drifted swiftly past the moon, giving the scene a pulsing, blue-strobe effect. The trees, the rocks, the flat black water, the shovel. She was a Maryvale girl. Cindi Blake. Car broken down. Help from a passing stranger. The doors on auto-lock, controlled by the driver.

The grave wasn’t terribly deep. But deep enough to let a week go by before a couple of teenagers would happen on it. Cindi Blake’s photograph had led all the local newscasts the entire week. Her parents pleading for their daughter’s safe return. The police asking “for any information.” One of those ugly weeks, ending on an even uglier Thursday, when the newscasters looked balefully into the cameras and paused before announcing, “It’s over.”

He had charm, this Jacobs character. He had the gift of gab, the twinkle in the eye. Slink knew this type. The rough diamond.

And that was the thing. Rough. Annie got a little taste of it even before she married him. A backhand at the breakfast table, so fast it was a blur. No marks, and followed that time with apologies, then brooding, then calculated sheepishness, and finally the unchecked fawning. It had worked. She hadn’t broken off the engagement. The honeymoon in Bermuda was pretty nice, except for the few minor incidents. Paul charmed his way out of the misunderstanding with that one couple from Charlottesville, though his temper back in the hotel room wasn’t a pretty sight. Annie had never learned to swim very well, so she spent her beach time sitting on the pink sand trying not to compare herself to the others. She ran across a short piece in a magazine about the famous actor she’d spent time with in Manhattan. He was divorcing his famous wife. Annie felt like all that was a thousand lifetimes ago. She was amazed now to recall that she had done such a thing. She felt that those crazy brave days were over. Forever. She looked up from the magazine and stared out at the surf. Her voice was barely audible.

“Take me.”

And that evening, in the hotel bar, she watched her husband flirting with a systems analyst from London. She watched as the woman laughed and plucked the ubiquitous toothpick from Paul’s lips. Back in her room, Annie pulled Slink’s toothpick from her travel jewelry case and studied it for several long minutes. Slink was there, in the room. It broke his heart when Annie began to cry in great heaving sobs. It broke his heart even more when she stuck the tip of the old toothpick against her arm and pressed it hard against her skin, until the pucker point was bone white.

Slink shot himself forward to the 1984 Hunt Cup, right up to the fifth jump, as Bewley’s Hill cleared the fence with balletic grace. Such a horse. Slink thought he was one of the really great ones. He drifted over to the hill, the irony there that always tore him up. Cindi Blake’s parents and their friends enjoying their big picnic while not two blankets away, in low menacing tones, Paul Jacobs was reading his nervous wife the riot act for the unspeakable crime of spilling a smidgen of white wine on his shoe.

Slink hated it. If he’d had hands, he’d have wrapped them around that no good murderous neck.

But Jacobs would die soon enough.

By the time Annie hit twenty-seven, the same age as Slink had been when he’d been broadsided by the school bus, she felt as if she was already dead. She knew that Paul was making time with that realtor who had found them their small brick house just off Lake Avenue. The realtor was a big blonde, with the kind of perverse preppy allure that had always spoken to Paul. Annie picked the long white strands off Paul’s sweater as she folded it and stowed it in the dresser. Personally, she didn’t know how the realtor could stand him. There wasn’t much charm left as far as Annie could see and what little remained was increasingly edgy. Half the nights, Annie slept on the couch. Though maybe half of those half, he’d come out and pull her roughly by the arm back into the bedroom.

Leave him, Slink would plead wordlessly. Go. Scram. You don’t need to be doing this.

He revisited seven-year-old Annie. He watched himself leaning against the Brewster’s kitchen door, pushing his cap back on his head and chatting with Annie’s mother. He watched Annie sitting at the kitchen table in front of a cereal bowl, her legs dangling above the floor. He watched as he winked at her and as she giggled, the legs swinging faster, back and forth and back and forth…

Leave him. C’mon, kid. For Christ’s sake, I forgive you already, okay?

And finally, she did just that. She left him. Dead on the living room floor on a crisp October morning. He was wearing one of those sweaters with the blond hairs on it. And he was wearing a lump the size of a lacrosse ball on the back of his head. Annie had worried that the bottle would break, but it didn’t. He’d been down on one knee, tying his shoelace. She had no idea where the strength came from to swing the bottle with such force. At breakfast that morning, he had pointed out an article in the Sun It had to do with the tenth anniversary of the unsolved murder of Cindi Blake. Annie remembered the photograph of the girl from back when the murder had occurred. She’d been a senior herself. Same age as Cindi Blake.

“I did that,” Paul had said casually, poking his finger into the photograph. “I picked her up, beat her with a shovel, and buried her. Stupid-ass cops. It’s a piece of cake to kill someone in this country.”

Then he stuffed a toothpick into his mouth and gave her a big uncharming smile.

The bottle didn’t break. It landed with a satisfying crack, and Paul slumped to the floor. Annie stood over him and watched to see if he moved. He didn’t. But to be sure, she went into the kitchen and returned with the largest knife she could find and planted it directly between his shoulder blades. The strength in her arms weakened and she ended up placing her foot against the handle and shoving the knife the rest of the way in with her foot.

She went back into the kitchen and fetched the newspaper. She circled the article with a marker, then returned to the living room and dropped the paper on her dead husband. It fluttered down onto him like a sheet.

I did that,” she said.

She left the house, wearing only a thin sweater for warmth. She picked her way through the woods to Lake Roland and down to the edge of the water. Finally, she stepped out of her shoes, then hugged herself tightly, watching a pair of mallards as they scuttled across the water. She felt enormously calm. Tranquil. It was a stupid little life, she thought. It didn’t really work.

Annie dove awkwardly into the water and began paddling toward the middle of the lake. Slink was watching. As always, he could see that she was a lousy swimmer. In fact, she was no swimmer at all. It was a dog paddle, and a lousy dog paddle at that. Her arms lost their strength well before she even reached the middle of the lake. As always.

She paused. Her arms slapped the surface of the water a few times, and then she went under. Silence, and then one final splash as an arm groped from the water. It looked almost like she was waving. The arm disappeared and concentric circles grew from the spot, wider and wider, until they too were gone.

Slink bowed his head. A wind blew and the trees around the lake released their leaves. They cascaded down like a rain of canaries.

THE HOMECOMING BY JIM FUSILLI

Camden Yards

He felt his stomach clench as he approached the Fort McHenry Tunnel, and already he had a pounding headache, a growing tightness in his throat. But then Tess spotted the towering cranes in the harbor, said, “Giraffe skeletons,” and laughed aloud as flatbed containers swung across the graying sky. He saw her smile through the rearview mirror; sitting back there among the empty seats, she pointed east with the eraser end, amusing herself again, and then made a note in her diary, shaking her head, beaming.

As he packed the van, she asked if he’d show her where he grew up, where he went to school, where he took his trumpet lessons.

“Sure, sweetheart,” he said, wishing she hadn’t.

Six hours later, crossing the Delaware Memorial Bridge, he could feel the red brick closing around him, the dry dust of the bocce courts at St. Leo’s scratch-scratching his shoes, and he heard the murky water slapping Pier 5 at 4 a.m. as the Domino Sugars sign flickered across the harbor: a fourteen-year-old boy with his horn, Little Italy over his shoulder, and his father telling him there was nowhere to go, that he would never change.

Cars were backed up at the tunnel mouth.

Tess swung her bare feet in rhythm as she hummed and sketched, and he remembered her mother would do the same as she read a script, straddling the arm of their red love seat, iced tea on the table, a mint leaf.

He didn’t know if Tess thought her mother the ice-eyed murderer on TV’s Spencer: For Hire or the playful strawberry blonde in the photo he placed in a floral frame in her bedroom.

The photo was taken in Harvard Square the day he quit Berklee to follow her down. He wasn’t ready to play the New York clubs, and he’d already been shunned by Julliard, but she wanted Broadway and there was nothing he could do.

And then came the news, and Margaret Mary turned to fury, a relentless blame spout. Seven months later, only five pounds, six ounces, but otherwise fine. She insisted on Therese Ann, bitterly and without explanation. He shrugged, thinking Tess. Short for tesoro, his treasure.

Her figure returned in less than a year, and Margaret Mary bolted west. Her two-word exit line: “Keep her.”

He got the furniture too. Needing sanctuary, he loaded the van and went back to Boston, buoyed by his love for little Tess but certain one day she would leave too. A promise: For as long as he had her, they’d be together and he’d give her something they could always share. He couldn’t chance it’d only be music-Margaret Mary hated jazz, snickering at his tears when Miles played “Summer Nights”-so he brought his esor to Fenway Park. Baseball, and fathers and daughters, sprinkled throughout the stadium. Tess holding his hand, little steps, mustard on her dimpled chin.

At the end of each summer, they traveled south: Yankee Stadium, Shea, Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, and now they were going to see the Orioles at Memorial Stadium, Cal Ripken Jr. on his toes where Mark Belanger once roamed. Tess liked the O’s logo, the blackbird with the orange beak, the sly grin.

By the time they finished the new ballpark at Camden Yards, it’d be too late. She’d be a teenager, gone.

On went the dome light so Tess could keep sketching. He was going to mention he’d never been in the tunnel before, since it was built after he fled. But knowing Tess, she’d ask why he left and he couldn’t lie to her.

They beat the Brewers, but it’d started to rain in the fifth and the sparse crowd filed out early. He saw Tess yawn, and she was drawing in her diary, no longer keeping score. When Ripken popped to third to end the seventh, they packed up to go. A cold August night now, Tess in his denim jacket, O’s cap on the back of her head, her auburn ponytail draped over the black plastic band. Smiling, but she was dragging.

By the time he warmed up the van and headed south on Ellerslie, she was asleep, stretched across the seats, hands folded under the side of her head.

Mind wandering, listening to Chuck Thompson call the ninth, he missed Lombard, and then he was lost on the way back to a Holiday Inn standing less than two miles from his childhood home. A detour sign pulled him into the construction site for a ballpark where the B & train yard once stood: orange cones and wooden horses pressing him toward the long, narrow warehouse looking ghostly, hovering above a hole in the ground where the freight shed had been. Eutaw Street blocked off like they were going to make it disappear, and he muttered, “Where the hell…?”

Tess mumbled, brought her legs close to her chest, using his jacket now as a blanket.

He didn’t know where he was, the rain a thick mist. Lost in his old hometown, streets gone. Yellow bulldozers parked haphazardly, oily balls of light, flames flapping in the wind, and he decided he’d go east, away from the warehouse and toward the harbor. Find Lombard and get Tess to bed. The Aquarium tomorrow, a drive over to the Peabody, and then Obrycki’s for lunch on the way home.

He stopped, using the sideview to see if he could turn around without winding up in the muck.

A man shouted loud, harsh, and he snapped back, startled.

Bursting from the darkness, a girl scrambled as she raced away, terror in her eyes. Naked above the waist, her blouse torn, she tried to hold her heavy breasts in her arms as she ran, her skirt ripped too, her olive skin glistening in the van’s harsh headlights.

And the shouting man drew toward the high beams. Pockmarked and stern, short-cropped curly hair and vacant, wide-set eyes, he tugged angrily at his slacks as he splashed through a puddle and another.

The girl hurried toward the old roundhouse, her face gripped by fear.

The man stopped, his shoes catching in the mire, and he looked directly into the van, raising his hand to block the beams.

Two fists clutching the wheel, his daughter asleep behind him, and he recognized the man.

Bigelow was his name, and he could tell Bigelow didn’t know whether to chase the girl into shadows or to come over to tell whoever was in the driver’s seat to go the fuck home, sealing his mouth forever along the way.

Walking relentlessly toward the van, Bigelow tucked in his shirt and did up his zipper.

He saw Bigelow eye the Massachusetts license plate.

“Dad?” Tess said, sitting now, rubbing off the sleep.

Reverse, a K-turn, and he roared away from the construction site, then said, “Let’s get out of the rain, esoro “ Juggled in the seat, she watched as he drove onto 395, exiting to use the pay phone at an Amoco station. Rape at the Camden Yards construction site, he reported. Look for the girl at the roundhouse.

Arthur Bigelow, he added, mimicking his father’s thick accent.

Half a mind to drive to 95 and head north, but their clothes were at the hotel, and Tess’s Barbies. His Jerwyn mouthpiece in a velvet pouch.

Bigelow saw him despite the blinding lights, and Bigelow had the letters and numbers on his rear plates.

He came back around on 395 and he was near the B & warehouse again, and there was the green Holiday Inn sign, where it had been all along.

Parked underground, and as he hoisted his drowsy daughter onto his shoulder, damp jacket and her diary tucked under his arm, he tried to remember when Bigelow went from the Baltimore City Jail to the Maryland State Pen. Figured maybe Bigelow was twenty years old by then, a man, since he was entering his junior year at Mount St. Joe’s High.

Even as a kid, Bigelow was a thug, a moron, and he had a mouth on him too, and he ran down the son of the fruit-stand man, a quiet boy who wasn’t quick to fight, the boy who now clutched his daughter, the elevator rattling as it rose.

His classmates, a loud, swaggering bunch, encouraged him to smash a two-by-four across the back of Bigelow’s head. But he found it easier to withdraw, spending late afternoons and early evenings alone in the tumbledown three-room flat off Slemmers Alley.

He took a job at age thirteen as a bus boy at Sabatino’s, offered as charity to his father who held off the Arabers from his shoebox store, doing his sums on the backs of brown paper bags, totaling the cost of a half-pound of this, a quarter-pound of that, knowing not a word of English save greetings and numbers. “Grazie, mille grazie,” his father would say, bowing his head, his brown chin dotted with prickly gray stubble, his vest pocket torn, his pencil a nub.

While his father worked seven days from dawn to dusk, he put in forty hours a week, and with his own money he bought a trumpet and paid for lessons. His father didn’t approve, and telling him his teacher studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music meant nothing. “Stupido corno,” his father muttered, his suspenders hanging loops at his sides.

“My teacher said I-”

“You can’t be like everybody else. No, not you, eh? With the goddamn trumpet. What’s wrong with you?” he spit, flinging his hand in the air. “And let me tell you, quiet boy, as for this teacher making miracles: non ci sono angeli.

No angels? “Pop, I’m saying-”

Having made his point, the old man suddenly fell into his thoughts. He headed for his bedroom and, as if talking to himself, said, “Or maybe it’s too much, too rough. This kid, he don’t fight for nobody.” Patting his pockets for a tobacco plug, he added, “Trumpet. Bah.”

In his mind, there was a red-brick wall around Little Italy, high as the warehouse at Camden Yards, high as the moon. He felt it even when he was out on Pier 5, blowing flawless scales until dawn, the cops letting him be. Blue notes disappearing in the early morning haze, and he wished he could too.

Meanwhile, Bigelow: his face a sudden riot of pimples and pustules, and now the neighborhood girls found him repulsive too. He turned to cold stone, hooked up with a gang, worked his way up to armed robbery.

The elevator stopped hard, and the man flinched, remembering Bigelow had tried to rob the Colombo Bank with a face like that and no mask. Pistol-whipping plump Mrs. Ghiardini, who had two sons at St. Leo’s and a baby girl at home, their father a fireman killed tumbling off the back of the truck one snowy night. Fifteen, twenty years ago, said the guys at Sabatino’s, nodding knowingly, they would’ve taken care of it; the cops would’ve found Bigelow floating in the harbor, hands missing, his skull a jigsaw puzzle. But out of respect for his mother, born Ana Riccardi over on Eden Street…

“We home, Daddy?” Tess whispered as he opened the door.

“Close enough, tesoro “ he replied.

He set her on the bed, knelt to remove her sneakers. Her pajamas were in the drawer under the TV.

“I can brush my teeth better than you,” he said, trying to smile.

Waving off the nightly challenge, she offered her baby-soft cheek, then slithered under the covers, clothes and all.

Tess slept as if exhausted, unaware he was sitting on the bed across from hers, staring at her, reaching over now and then to stroke her hair. Tess, who resembled his mother as much as her own: olive hue, the round chin, deep brown eyes. His mother in the photo, him too. Easter Sunday, he’s five and she’ll be dead in three months.

“Your mother, she was some firecracker,” said one of the guys at Sabatino’s. “A temper? Madonna mio…”

Left unsaid: How did she wind up with a slug like that? Out of earshot, in the coffee shops off Broadway, actors, writers, producers said the same about Margaret Mary.

“Tess,” he cooed in the dark room, and he was thinking as his heart began to pound, and the headache again.

Bigelow could find him-a witness who could confirm the girl’s story of assault, of rape. And maybe Bigelow saw beyond the high beams and recognized the man behind the wheel, as the man had recognized him. The fruit-stand man’s son down from Massachusetts, the boy with the horn.

On his heels, running his hand across his forehead, he tried to envision the limits of Bigelow’s imagination, as if he could fathom a criminal mind.

He figured Bigelow, though full of bad intent, would do what was easiest first: return to Little Italy and see if the fruit-stand man still lived in the crumbling, graffiti-stained wood frame off Slemmers Alley.

He went to a chair by the window, and in the hotel room’s darkness a cold shiver swept over him, his stomach leaping to his throat.

Finding no satisfaction behind the rusted bars on the building’s windows, Bigelow would calculate: The fruit-stand man’s son had been lost in the construction site; his father dead, no doubt; a hotel near the yards, it being too late to drive home to Massachusetts.

Bigelow would find the van.

Tess slept serenely, a wry smile on her face.

He pulled back the heavy drapes. Looking through the rain, he saw the warehouse, pile drivers, excavators, remnants of the old roundhouse, and in his mind, the girl Bigelow had attacked, the panic in her eyes, desperation.

He stood and, as the drapes swung shut, he recalled a restaurant, its back to Slemmers Alley: Mo’s Fisherman’s Wharf, and maybe the staff was gone by 2 o’clock. The restaurants throughout Little Italy shutting down, Stiles Street empty, the alley also.

Bigelow would wait until then.

Looking at Tess.

Bigelow saw the little girl in the backseat, and she’s a witness too

He parked the van over on Aliceanna a block from the harbor, and he took out the old baseball bat he kept with a couple of tattered mitts under the rear seat. He headed north in the rain, fist wrapped around sullied tape above the crack in the handle.

When he turned the final corner, ready to enter the litter-strewn alley from the south end, he saw a figure.

Darting, he avoided a puddle and pressed himself into the shadows of a garage door and watched as Bigelow looked at the side of the tilted wood frame, stepping back, peering up, down.

He held back as Bigelow, frustrated, turned in the direction of Stiles.

Coming off the door, he shifted the cracked bat to his right hand.

Bigelow was maybe twenty feet away, easing toward a streetlight’s halo.

On Stiles Street now, Bigelow went wide eyed suddenly, retreating, raising his hands.

Three men marched at him, scowling, shoulders hunched, and Bigelow protested. “Hold on, fellas,” he said. “Hey, hold-”

With startling quickness, one of the dark-haired men brought a tire iron onto Bigelow’s head.

Bigelow mewed, staggered, and then issued a sickening gurgle as he fell to his knees.

Another blow, equally efficient, and he heard Bigelow groan.

Bat in hand, he ran forward and, bursting among the men, he slammed Bigelow, cracking him hard across the back of his head, sending him face first onto the wet sidewalk.

The men stomped Bigelow, swearing in Italian.

“My sister,” said the heavyset one, “my kid sister. Son of a bitch.”

Bigelow tried to roll into a ball.

Tess’s father raised the bat and smashed him again, and then again.

And again. And again.

Panting hard, his chest heaving, he looked down, tears mingling with the rain on his face.

Bigelow’s blood spread across the concrete.

He heard the thin, beak-nosed man to his left grunt as he drove his foot into the beaten man’s ribs.

Lisa. Lisa Ghiardini,” the thin man said. “First the mother, then you rape the daughter!”

The girl he’d seen running through the yards was the daughter of the woman Bigelow had pistol-whipped at the Colombo Bank. A girl from the neighborhood.

He staggered back, the bloody bat dangling from his fingers.

As two thin men continued to pound Bigelow, the stout Ghiardini looked up.

“Pete?” he said, gulping air, steam rising from the top of his head. “Pete Sangiovese?”

The two other men stopped for a moment, and Bigelow let out a low groan.

“Pete,” Ghiardini said, gesturing with a meaty hand, “over here. You want another shot? Come on. Take another shot.”

He turned, trotting along the alley. Running. Eager to disappear.

The bat went in the river at Fell’s Point, sinking beneath Styrofoam cups, condoms, and bobbing pop bottles. Before returning to the van, he ran his hands through a puddle, washing away Bigelow’s blood.

He drove quickly back to the hotel, knowing he’d done what he’d had to.

Tess was sleeping, purring gently, and the bathroom light was still on.

The note he’d attached to the mirror above the sink was still there: “I’ll be right back. Brush your beautiful teeth!”

Her pink toothbrush was dry.

He showered, and planned to wash his shirt and jeans in the hotel’s basement laundry room. He’d have to get new running shoes: Bigelow’s blood soaked through the gray laces, clung to the soles.

Putting on his pajama bottoms, he sat on the bed next to his daughter and he stared at her.

For as long as he had her, they’d be together. He would not let her feel alone.

His eyes moistened as he studied her sweet smile, heartshaped lips, long eyelashes; contentment…

No angels?

How could his father have been so wrong?

FROG CYCLE BY BEN NEIHART

Inner Harbor

Cell Scope is a science education park that sits like some new blown-up nanotech herpes sore on the lip of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. It’s a massive glass-and-steel base topped with a billowing white roof. Tonight it’s all lit up: holograms, fireworks, lasers, an immense smoke-pot that puffs DNA helixes into the air. Just off Pratt, on the torch-lit front esplanade, a four-girl Cirque du Soleil spinoff band plays whale-call jazz, and it actually sounds haunting, not phony. CEOs from New York and California, Maryland biotech investors, Japanese boys, a couple dozen news cameras, and, lucky me, fifty or sixty print reporters swarm through the mammoth glass doors for tonight’s big opening of Frog Cycle, the demented new exhibit I’m supposed to be promoting.

Or, I should say, Frog Cycle in the Kel-Shor Virtual Pond. Seriously, if Kel-Shor’s paying $4.5 million, I can spew the full name.

And to be truthful, I should state for the record that I am promoting the frogs, no mordant “supposed to be” bullshit.

But you know what? Pushing through the crowd, angling my way inside the main hall, circulating, I’m a redundant publicist. The frogs sell themselves. They’re not just a perfect example of Cell Scope’s mission, the translation of bone-dry sci-tech jargon into lip-smacking juicy lovely-bones show biz; no, they’re wicked, they’re wrong, they’re the end of the world as far as I’m concerned. And this morning, on the test run, they malfunctioned.

The problem is the virtual frogs, the ones featured on the poster. They’re big, they’re ugly, they’re mean. And they slobber. There are a half-dozen of them; they’ve been re-engineered by geneticists who’ve broken off from UMBC. They look fine, just like Florida gopher frogs, except they’re three times as big. Part of Frog Cycle’s appeal is designed to be the interaction between the virtual frogs and Florida tree frogs and green tree frogs and several other scarce tropical frogs and toads. The virtual frogs are supposed to be dominant, but in the misfire this morning the virtuals attacked the naturals, killed them all, ate most of them.

The Kel-Shor people have no idea.

I pop a mint into my mouth and smile past the badges and lapels. There’s a lot of dialogue in the air, a lot of bragging and favor-making. I snag a cup of white wine from a waiter, slurp it in two swallows, and duck into the alcove where a smallish crowd ponders a glass-encased model of Frog Cycle that sits on a silver pedestal. I stand on tiptoe and look over the shoulders of some gruff Japanese guys; it’s a bit Disney, the model, and before I know it I say, “Ah, kawai!” That means super-cute.

The taller of the Japanese guys looks sideways at me and nods grimly. “Very very kawai.”

Laurie Hauver’s the money girl. She’s my boss. I usually have a problem with all three categories-girls, money, and bosses-so it’s a pleasure to report that I’m a slave for Laurie, and when I see her disentangle herself from a dilapidated, rouge-unto-death Gilman girl, circa 1990, I kind of plow through the atrium, dodging a Sony robot, an ax-man from used-to-be-Legg-Mason, and a martinet from the Sun’s biz page. I almost bounce against Laurie, but her force field does its work, and I stand a few inches back, giving her the once over. She looks like someone who is written into a number of substantial wills. A couple of them death-bed, chickenscratch revisions, screw the notary. She’s just had her hair cut short and dyed goldenrod; she’s wearing a black backless slip dress, black Laboutin stiletto provocations.

“You don’t look too bad,” I tell her, almost taking her arm. “How was it-Lovely Lane? How was the funeral?”

“It’s something else,” she whispers. “It’s the first time I’ve heard the minister refer to the subsequent amputation of the widow’s arms during a proper kind of ceremony. I mean, I know the story, but I don’t care. It made the minister seem a little bit inside Like he had his own blog or whatever. I took two propranolol-I’m not coming across numb, am I?”

“The opposite.”

“Thank you.”

I check my watch. “Seven-thirty.”

Laurie looks past me. “When the band finishes, we should go in. Oh, I think they may have just stopped. On cue.”

A sweetly modulated voice urges us to head into the Kel-Shor Virtual Pond. I’ve got to say, I feel sick to my stomach, but some of the people rushing past me, they look like they’re heading into a medieval tribunal. Someone has defaced one of the Frog Cycle posters; now, a drop of blood hangs from the gopher frog’s bottom lip.

“So the Kel-Shor people seem happy,” I say. “Naïve.”

“They know,” she says. “We had to tell them about the misfire. The scientists, um, I think they were persuasive.” “So I’m the naïve one, actually.”

Laurie nods.

“You ready?”

“Let’s go.”

The Kel-Shor Virtual Pond is a five-thousand-square-foot body of water encased in glass with about twenty yards of open air above it. The scientists have really, really messed with nature and speeded up the virtual frogs’ metabolisms. They’ve rigged the weather in the pond so the frogs go through one year in about three hours. What happens is, you sit there looking at the pond in winter, and the frogs are frozen and the pond is frozen and all of the plants are either dead or frozen and the air looks forbidding. So you watch, and the artificial sun gets brighter and the plants bud and start to grow and the ice on top of the pond breaks and the water totally sparkles and it’s fresh-looking and the frogs start to come to life.

The pond is ringed by a metallic mesh barrier, and it’s covered with a frosted white plastic dome. Beneath the dome, green and brown blobs move like blips on a cardiac monitor.

Movie theater seats run in tiers at a steep stadium pitch away from the pond. The capacity is 312. The first three rows are reserved for staff, VIPs, and the differently abled.

I’m in the front row, at a bad angle, getting settled into my seat, when a taut woman in a forest-green sheath, pearls, and sparkling silver flip-flops gives me her hand and introduces herself as Rie. I’ve already been briefed on her; she’s a potential “problem,” so I’ve got to baby-sit.

“My brother runs Kel-Shor,” she says, and plops into the seat beside me.

Without warning, the dangling halogen chandeliers begin to dim and the Frog Cycle soundtrack-cellos, moogs, crickets, a faux-Enya-swells over the sound system.

The modulated voice, this time slightly perturbed, says, “Welcome to the Kel-Shor Corporation’s Virtual Pond, home to Frog Cycle.”

Applause. Applause. Standing O. Someone says hush. Ssshhh The cowfolk settle themselves.

Rie sort of winces at me, and then the funniest thing happens: She takes my hand.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I’m scared

“It’s fine. I’ve seen it twenty-seven times. It’s astonishing.”

The voice is back: “The development of a successful farming industry-for any amphibious species-depends on the regular and predictable supply of eggs. To harness efficient, safe technologies, to spawn domesticated amphibious species, is the goal. We look to Frog Cycle in the Kel-Shor Virtual Pond. We look. We see.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Rie whispers.

“The company thinks it’s subliminal,” I say. “Believe me.”

“I hate my brother.”

“Oh.”

The frosted dome cover begins to gently lift from the Virtual Pond. It hovers for a moment before it snaps into a lattice harness on the ceiling, pulling with it, like so many spider webs, the clinking clear-filament netting that encloses the pond and its environment.

Rie whispers, “Whoa.”

Uncovered, the Virtual Pond looks like a cel from a Pixar movie. The blues are so wet and the greens are so crisp. The plantlife is gnarled but it’s accented with, um, “cute” touches, such as tawny freckled trunks and smile-pattern leaves. The water itself is clear as a spring. Silver fish dive and spiral to the surface. You can see the pebbled bottom-ferns, tricks of light, the blipping brown creatures.

At first, you don’t think that the showpiece frogs, the engineered virtuals, are in the pond. You think they’re waiting for the air to warm up, for the sun to blaze a little bit more brilliantly.

I look down the aisle, trying to catch Laurie’s eyes, when it happens. The gasps-all at once, like the whoosh of a roller coaster twisting its first descent. Rie’s got a strong grip, the muscles in my arm are tense where her fingers poke me.

“It’s them,” she says.

“Yeah,” I say.

Them. Three chunky brown rocks covered with moss at the edge of the water. The three sit side by side like little lords, grinning insouciantly. Like boulders that grin-broad, immovable.

Until it moves.

The smallest-it’s the size of a small fat cat-opens its mouth and lets out a low rumble. It lifts its head and takes an astonishing leap and lands with a moist thud, eight yards to its left, scattering a group of small navy-green pygmy frogs, who let out high-pitched shrieks.

The voice purrs: “In spring, the frogs come out of hibernation. To mate.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Rie says. She lets go of my arm and makes a pucker-face at me.

The voice goes on: “The male frog embraces the female, holding her tight with his arms. This is the act of oviposition. It may last several days.”

“Oh, come on!” Rie snorts.

The second of the three virtual frogs flies into the air and leaps the entire long length of the pond, like a hurdler showing off. It lands on the opposite shore, bellowing in the direction of a tiny albino toad. Its glistening haunches tremble in the light.

Suddenly, lights mounted in the pond increase in brightness so the water’s utterly translucent. There are hundreds of tadpoles in the water, zipping in circles.

The voice says, “Cell Scope scientists have patented a gene technique that speeds up the frog’s internal clock.”

“That’s enough,” Rie says. She looks out at the audience, in tiers behind us and in a high, quivering voice shouts, “Somebody stop the music!”

There’s some laughter, a lot of shhs and “be quiets.” I’m relieved. The audience is loving Frog Cycle. The way you love a hunt, a dog fight. You’re supposed to yell, Stop! Maybe you’re supposed to yell, Somebody stop the music!

I take Rie’s hand. “This is real,” I tell her. “This is really happening.”

Suddenly I feel warmth. I smell algaeic warm wet air. Breath. Venting on my cheek and down my neck. I look over at Rie, and she shakes her head at me. “It’s not me, asshole,” she says.

I turn and meet its eye. The biggest frog. We’re talking twenty pounds. It’s less than a yard from me, its big bull head pushing against the mesh barrier, wheezing and looking right at me. A string of drool hangs from its lower lip.

I let out a little cry, my feet scrabbling along the floor. The frog roars. The mesh is chinking and clanging and groaning with its weight.

“You’re making it happen,” Rie says. “My brother’s making it happen.” But she lets me hold her hand, so I know we’re safe. I look up the tier; Laurie gives me a quick nod.

We’re in a helicopter out of Martin State. There’s an after-party in Talbot County. I am completely smashed, nearly falling asleep, head bouncing against a window. Over the roar of the engine, I can hear Rie behind me, slurring, giggling. “All I could think of was reproduction,” she’s saying. “I kept looking, against my will, at those hips moving like a piston, spewing that filthy clotted cream. Wasn’t it so terrible? Wasn’t it? That was so disgusting. Every time I close my eyes, I just see it-and I think it should be outlawed. Oh, but maybe I want to see it just one more time.”

For a while, no one speaks. I’m kind of staring out at the purple night clouds and the sparkle of the shoreline in the distance.

Rie makes a little purring noise. I can hear her lips. I guess she’s kissing the guy in the seat next to hers.

“My God, honey,” she says all throat, “my brother made that happen.”

GOODWOOD GARDENS BY SUJATA MASSEY

Roland Park

Jeannie always made it a point to say that the house on Goodwood Gardens had never been her choice. Charlie, however, clung to his belief that their first home in

Baltimore had been a marital compromise. It was an argument without an ending-like their family, and like the house itself.

Goodwood Gardens was not actually a park, as the name suggested, but a short residential road in Plat Four, the fourth portion of land developed in the early twentieth century in Roland Park, a magical neighborhood of curving, tree-shaded streets that boasted grand, century-old houses of stone, stucco, and shingle.

The omission of a word such as “street” or “road” or “avenue” in the Gardens’ address was something Jeannie found maddeningly pretentious, but Goodwood Gardens had been established as the city’s millionaire’s row back at the dawning of the twentieth century, and its identity had held. It didn’t seem like a place that anyone, least of all a girl who’d grown up in a ranch house in San Mateo, should have disliked so heartily.

Jeannie and Charlie’s house had been built in the 1920s, making it one of the newer houses on the street. The residence was huge-ten bedrooms, ten baths, and two powder rooms-more than enough room for a family of three. The place reminded one of an embassy, perhaps located in Salzburg or some other romantic Teutonic locale. The exterior was beautifully half-timbered white stucco, and was ornamented with two battlements from which hung, respectively, the flags of the United States and Maryland.

Jeannie had wanted to remove the flags-the previous owners had left in a hurry, not bothering to take them along-but Charlie thought the neighbors would wonder why. So the flags remained, respectfully illuminated through the night by the klieg-like spotlights that nestled around the house: an excellent security feature, but also another way of showing off the structure, making it look more like a State Department residence than the home of a computer game designer, his three-year-old heir, and the heir’s out-of work, out-of-sorts mother. The only solace, Jeannie thought, was that the house had experienced a succession of seven active owners during the last ten years, so it was completely updated and there were almost no home improvements to be done.

“Just needs a little Restylane,” Hodder Reeves, the real estate broker, had said with an airy wave of his hand the first time he’d walked them through. The house was for sale, but without a sign in front. The house had never needed any signage; the real estate agents knew when it was on the market, and brought select clients registered with their own firm who’d been pre-authorized as having sufficient buying power, and who clearly understood that only offers in the range of two million would be considered.

“A little patch-up on the plaster, here and there, to make things perfect. You’re from California. You know how that stuff’s done,” Hodder had said, winking at Jeannie, who was lingering on the first floor while Charlie was leading their son, Ivanhoe, through the second floor’s maze of interconnecting bedrooms and baths.

Charlie and Jeannie had offered that day, and six months later, as Jeannie weeded the grass underneath the ancient boxwood hedges that now belonged to her, she thought more about Hodder Reeves. He knew the house well, having managed, for the last five go-rounds, to be both the listing and selling agent for it. Six percent of a house like theirs-that appreciated between twenty or thirty percent each time it sold-was practically enough to live on, although Hodder had plenty of other listings in the charmed North Baltimore trifecta of Roland Park, Guilford, and Homeland. Having grown up on Ridgewood Road in a handsome eight-bedroom Greek revival house that backed up to the one next door to Charlie and Jeannie’s, Hodder was a Roland Park boy through and through. His father had founded the region’s largest party services company, which Hodder’s older brother, Stuart, had taken over; Hodder had also mentioned that all the Reeves men had graduated from Gilman, which would be the perfect school for Ivanhoe.

Jeannie couldn’t imagine what a school full of boys would make of a new student called Ivanhoe. Charlie had wanted his firstborn to have a unique name with a historic pedigree. He had suggested Ivanhoe right after birth, when Jeannie was still delirious from mood-altering drugs. When she came to full consciousness and saw the name Charlie had ordered inscribed on the baby’s crib chart, she was upset at first, but once again her husband got what he wanted.

Jeannie had gotten over the name brouhaha, but what continued to bother her, she thought as she yanked at some stubborn clover, was that Ivanhoe was one of the heroic personalities in the educational computer game that Charlie had made his fortune designing. Although Charlie would point out that the game’s success was Jeannie’s doing because of how she, an English major temping at Charlie’s fledgling games company, had suggested Charlie read Sir Walter Scott and Mary Shelley for ideas-after all, these were stories old enough not to be copyrighted.

The game was a language-building tool, packed with sharp swords and SAT vocabulary. The American Library Association had called Charlie a hero; and once public libraries and elementary schools started buying the program-well, Charlie could either let himself be bought out, which he thought he was too young to do, or do something creative, like take a wrecked old factory in inner-city Baltimore and remake it into a manufacturing plant for the game.

It was like Goodwood Gardens’ past come to life, Jeannie mused, as she continued pulling up weeds from between the bricks. Charlie was the lord of an old factory in East Baltimore; he even went to work in a three-piece suit, wanting to seem like anything but an ordinary computer game programmer. He lunched with people like the mayor, and the lawyer who owned the Baltimore Orioles.

“You know, you could hire someone to do that-but aren’t you cute doing it yourself.” Hodder Reeves’s private-school drawl cut through Jeannie’s gardening trance.

The real estate agent was standing a few feet away from her, hands splayed on the hips of his creaseless khakis, which broke crisply on the tops of his cordovan Gucci loafers. He had no socks on, as usual, and was wearing a turquoise Lacoste shirt that made his eyes look even bluer, and the longish hair that curled around the shirt’s upturned collar seem youthfully thick and blond, though Jeannie knew for a fact he was over forty and got his highlights at the same salon that she frequented.

“Hi, Hodder. Actually, one of my neighbors offered to share her gardener. It’s just that I don’t have that much to do anymore, now that Ivan’s at St. David’s Day School three mornings a week. He’s going into his second week there-I can hardly believe it! He loves school.” Jeannie didn’t mention how it tugged at her heart that her son went so cheerfully, without a second glance back.

“Ivan. Is that a new nickname?” Hodder’s voice sounded teasing.

“His teacher suggested it. Ivanhoe’s a bit… wordy… for three-year-olds, don’t you think?”

Reeves crouched down beside her, his breath smelling of Altoids. “I think it’s charming. As are you. Let me take you to lunch.”

“But why?” Jeannie blurted, feeling self-conscious about the dirt on the knees of her Levi’s.

“I stopped by to see if you’d come for a quick lunch at Petit Louis. After all, it’s our anniversary.” At Jeannie’s blank stare, he added, “We closed on your house six months ago to this day. Don’t you remember, I took you and Charlie out for champagne at the bar there?”

A loud honk came from a black Lexus. Jeannie looked over and realized that Hodder had left his Porsche, with its driver’s-side door hanging open, smack in the middle of the street. The more successful a man was in Baltimore, the smaller his car-and conversely, the larger his wife’s. Charlie had given Jeannie a Humvee as a Christmas present, and it devoured two-thirds of their garage.

“All right, all right.” Reeves gave an apologetic wave to the driver who, after all, could be his next client. “Is it okay if I pull into your driveway? Charlie coming home anytime soon?”

“No, he isn’t coming home till late tonight, but I still don’t think I can have lunch with you. Look at the state I’m in, and I have to pick Ivan up at 11:45-”

The driver honked again.

“Go in and change, and I’ll get over to St. David’s and wait with Ivanhoe for you.” Hodder grinned. “Then we’ll all walk to the restaurant. It’s never too early for a boy to learn the fish fork from the salad.”

The small, smiling maître d’ at the French bistro three blocks away welcomed Ivanhoe without the slightest show of dismay, and Hodder with a great deal of enthusiasm. Immediately, they were seated at a fine table with a booster seat for Ivanhoe, who was delivered a mountain of golden-brown pommes frites.

“So, tell me you’re happy ever after,” Reeves said, after they’d clinked glasses of the Côtes du Rhône the sommelier had suggested.

“What do you mean?” Jeannie unwillingly put down the menu, which looked fabulous.

“It’s a great house for a family, right? Almost everyone who’s lived there had a litter of little ones.”

“If it’s such a good house for children, why did everyone leave? Seven families in ten years, right?”

Hodder frowned. “Oh, they all have their reasons. Some divorce, some overstretch financially… some change jobs. Most of them choose to sell because, well, the Roland Park market being as hot as it is…” he paused. “The house is worth ten percent more now than it was when you bought it in April. If you sold next spring-twenty-five percent more.”

Jeannie picked up the menu again, because the last thing she wanted to contemplate was the hassle of moving house with a toddler. It was time to change the subject. “I wonder if I should bother with this three-course menu. It seems like a lot-”

“You have the kind of body where three courses is not a crime, and the cost should not be a factor, Jeannie,” Hodder purred. “If you want something light, go for the grilled salmon on greens. But don’t miss the chocolate roulade. You know what they say about chocolate!”

“Ivan will like the chocolate if I can’t finish it.” Jeannie blushed again, as Hodder was wont to make her do. Chocolate was a substitute for love, or, specifically, sex. Charlie was still interested, but Jeannie found herself so tired after a long day with Ivan that she’d rather have a cup of cocoa than anything.

They put their orders in, and more wine came. Ivan seemed to be growing smaller and quieter, and Hodder larg and louder, as the hour went on. He talked about how it was easy to make inroads in Baltimore society because all native Baltimoreans had inferiority complexes when it came to California and New York-and how he’d come back, after his years at Washington & Lee, and a brief stint on Wall Street, because he wanted to be with real people. He told her about his other clients, one a baseball player who had just signed with the Orioles, whose wife might be a nice friend for Jeannie. The baseball couple had driven down Goodwood Gardens during their tour of Roland Park and would have bought in a flash, except nothing was on the market. So now Hodder was shepherding them through Ruxton, though that was technically out of the city, less convenient…

“Are those houses old, too?” Jeannie asked. She’d heard of Ruxton because, for some reason, a lot of the teachers at Ivan’s school lived there.

“Yes. Nineteen-twenties, mostly. Yours is a good ten years older than that.” He smiled. “If the walls in your house could talk, I wonder what they’d say.”

Was Hodder talking about the past or the present? Jeannie wondered, as she picked at her salad, which had seemed delicious at first but had become suddenly acidic. She felt chilly, too, as if the scoop-necked cashmere sweater and tweed pants she’d changed into weren’t warm enough, even on a sixty-degree day. Well, the sweater had a low neck. Possibly too low a neck, from the way both the waiter and Hodder seemed to be smiling at something below the diamond-tipped choker she was wearing. Blame it on the Wonderbras Charlie insisted she wear.

“I wonder what the walls in Ivan’s room would say.” Hodder changed his voice to a sly, light chirp. “Welcome, little big man! We’d like to teach you how to bowl!”

Jeannie put down her fork, because the truth was, she’d sometimes thought she heard a rolling sound when she was in the kitchen. “Why did you mention bowling?”

“Didn’t I ever tell you? That series of rooms in the basement-the au pair suite, if you ever get one-used to be a bowling alley. The first family had it installed for their entertainment.”

“You mean underneath the kitchen?”

Hodder cocked his head to one side, as if he was tracing the house’s floor plan in his mind. “Yes. Right underneath.” Jeannie nodded and went back to eating. “Interesting.”

“Will you put it back to its original use?” Hodder’s eyes gleamed. “You might be able to get a tax credit for that, through the Maryland Historic Trust.”

“No, the last thing I need in my life is a bowling alley.” Jeannie laughed weakly. The whole thing seemed preposterous, given that she’d grown up in a working class town where the bowling alley was where you went on dates as a teenager. To think that the people in Goodwood Gardens bowled in private-it made her mind spin.

“Hmm. It seems that you do have the energy to go after minute weeds that nobody would ever notice under all that old boxwood.”

“Come on, little weeds grow into trees! How do you think the boxwood got that big?” Jeannie felt suddenly defensive.

“Is everything okay?” Hodder’s voice softened. “I recall how, when you were looking at the house with Charlie, he was a little more gung ho than you were. But I honestly thought you loved the house. I would never have agreed to sell it to you if I thought anything different.”

Emboldened by the champagne, Jeannie sputtered, “Come on, do you mean to make me believe that you would turn down two million in cash because you thought one of the partners wasn’t quite there?”

“Touché! I didn’t know you had such fire in you.” Hodder sighed. “You’re right. Who am I to say I didn’t want to make the deal? But now you’re making me feel like a bastard.”

“I know it’s a great house.” Jeannie looked at Ivan, who was pulling at the tablecloth as if he was having as bad a time as his mother. “Still, my gut says that it’s just a bit too… over-the-top. For me, anyway.”

“Just like you, my dear, are over-the-top,” Hodder said, taking an undisguised, lingering glance at Jeannie’s bosom before sliding his hand over hers. “But in the words of the Romantics song-that’s what I like about you.”

Was this how he did it? Jeannie wondered wretchedly, hours later, as she rinsed the dinner dishes while Charlie tucked Ivanhoe into bed in the nursery on the floor above. Was this why all those people moved out within a year or two of buying because Hodder preyed on the sexual insecurity of the wives and made them want to leave their husbands? Jeannie didn’t want to leave Charlie. Her husband was devoted o Ivanhoe, an excellent provider, a considerate lover-so what if he never read books? He knew lots of SAT words, a definite sign of intelligence. And though Hodder was certainly handsome, Jeannie believed from his manner and dress that he was gay, or at the very least bisexual, and what girl wanted to deal with that in this day and age?

What had really given Jeannie chills, she decided, hadn’t been Hodder’s fingers lightly stroking the back of her hand before she’d belatedly pulled it away. It was what he’d said a few minutes earlier about the bowling alley. She’d heard the rolling sound, usually late, when she’d come downstairs to put her cocoa cup in the dishwasher.

During those times, Jeannie had never opened the basement door. She’d always loathed the actresses in horror movies who heard the omens of their upcoming death, yet still went down to investigate. Jeannie wasn’t going into that basement no matter how many track lights were on.

On Saturday evening, Jeannie arranged for Fernanda, her neighbor’s housekeeper, to stay with Ivan, because Charlie had bought a table at a gala for the Maryland Historical Society, and he needed her there. Charlie had summoned a salesclerk from Octavia over to Goodwood Gardens with an armload of potential evening dresses, so Jeannie would have no excuse about not having the right kind of dress for an October function in Baltimore. The perfect dress proved to be a floor-length hunter-green silk charmeuse, cut on the bias and decorated with elaborate crystal beading. It had a high halter neckline and Jeannie hadn’t thought the gown was that provocative, but knew she was wrong when Hodder Reeves passed the two of them and ran his fingers down her bare back while he greeted the couple.

“What was he doing to your back?” Charlie demanded, sotto voce, after Hodder was gone.

“I didn’t ask for it,” Jeannie said under her breath, as they were mercifully interrupted by an elegant white-haired dowager already sitting at the table.

“What a pretty dress. I see everyone’s admiring it, including that crazy Hodder Reeves. I’m Hortense Underwood, by the way.”

“Charles and Jeannie Connelly,” Charlie said, reaching out a hand to her and slipping back into his happy, social personality. “We’re new in town, and this is our first time at the Historical Society gala. How about you?”

“Oh, I’ve been coming for about a million years. Can’t you tell?” Hortense said dryly.

“We just moved here,” Jeannie said. “Hodder is our real estate agent. That’s why he stopped to say hello.”

“Oh, so you moved here to buy a house! How exciting. Where is it?”

“Roland Park. On Goodwood Gardens,” Charlie added. “Not the German Embassy? I heard sometime back that a young family had bought it.”

“I can’t believe anyone really calls it the German Embassy, because my own private name for it is the Austrian Embassy.” Jeannie smiled at the woman, who was turning out to be a rescuer.

“The house was built for a furniture tycoon whose lineage was German. In those days, houses went to children, so there were two generations there, and I knew all the Erdmanns. During the war, you can imagine how hard it was for them. They spent all their time at home; nobody would receive them.”

Jeannie knew the name: Erdmann & Sons was a company famous for building reproduction furniture from 1900 through the 1960s that cost almost as much as eighteenth-century Maryland antiques. Charlie had seen a picture of an Erdmann sideboard in an auction catalog and been on the hunt for one ever since. Maybe it was fated that they were in the house. But still, Jeannie was unsettled. She said, “I heard they had a bowling alley in the basement.”

“Oh yes! I grew up on Edgevale Road and I played with the daughter while we were at Roland Park School-the public primary school,” she added. “I was invited to bowl at her home a few times during the ’30s. I heard the alley was taken out by some of the later owners. Heaven knows what’s there now.”

“An au pair suite. As if there aren’t enough bedrooms in the house already.”

“Yes, but that goes with the territory, my dear.” A wry smile cut new creases in Hortense’s worn, intelligent face. “So, how is the embassy changing under your command?”

Jeannie glanced at Charlie, who, from his spot across the table, was watching her. It was a loaded issue, because he’d asked her to hire a decorator and she hadn’t done so yet.

“Not much,” Jeannie admitted. “I’m doing a little bit of weeding, trying to keep up appearances-”

“You do your own gardening?” Hortense Underwood raised her almost nonexistent white eyebrows.

“Yes. I’m from California, originally. I like to be outside.”

“There are a lot of others in the neighborhood who garden, too. Once you meet them, you’ll feel at home.” Hortense smiled, as if Jeannie had been doing the right thing all along. “I’ll stop by one day next week. Now’s a good time of year to cut back your hydrangea. I want to show you a personal trick that I bet they don’t know about in California.”

Jeannie didn’t know why the visit of an eighty-year-old neighbor should throw her into such a tizzy, but it did. She declined Hodder when he called, inviting her for lunch again, and she practically bit Charlie’s head off when he wanted her to organize a dinner party for his friends the night after. Everything, Jeannie felt, had to be just so for Hortense. Their furniture-a motley mix of Pottery Barn, Maurice Villency, and Gaines McHale-was minimal, but at least it could be free of the litter of toys and newspapers and food. The parquet floors were to be swept, the marble ones mopped. Charlie was useless at cleaning-what millionaire would be otherwise?-so Jeannie finally broke down and begged Fernanda to come by in her off hours to give the place a quick dusting, which quickly turned into an all-out cleaning, a two-night marathon of vacuuming that drowned out the sound of bowling that Jeannie seemed to be hearing more often over the past few days.

The prospect of serving a cocktail was also an unending worry. Jeannie usually had a few bottles of wine stashed somewhere, but she sensed an eighty-year-old woman would probably take a mixed drink, or some kind of spirit straight up. She wished the walls would talk, in this case, tell her something like, Sherry, neat! Or, Old-fashioned! Jeannie could mix a margarita, but that was about all.

Charlie thought she should hire a bartender to come with his own stash, and thus be perfectly assured of making the drinks right, but Jeannie figured this would be pretentious. In the end, Jeannie ran into the liquor section at Eddie’s, where a nice young man helped her spend $200 in fifteen minutes, and had someone drive it back to the house and actually unpack it in the butler’s pantry. Too bad everything in Baltimore wasn’t that easy. She had to drive to Hecht’s in Towson to buy Waterford glasses of every shape and size, and was just unpacking them when the doorbell chimed.

Hortense was an hour early. Jeannie hadn’t time to change from her shopping clothes to her gardening ones, let alone get all the sticky labels off the bottom of the glasses. The doorbell awoke Ivanhoe from his nap so he was screaming from above, and Jeannie now felt the picture was complete; she was a totally decadent, uncaring trophy wife who knew nothing about caring for children or gardens.

“Oh dear,” said Hortense, immediately ascending the stairs. “May I?”

Ivanhoe was terrified when he saw Hortense peeping round the edge of the door, and had to be mollified with a sippy cup of warm soy milk. Then the three of them went outside and Hortense started snipping away, much lower than Jeannie would ever have cut.

“Are you sure I’ll get them all back next year?” she asked, looking at the stumps where outstretched boughs holding faded blue blooms had been.

“It’s good wood. It will survive. Just like this house.” She paused. “Just like you, my dear.”

“You can tell I’m out of my element, can’t you?” Jeannie said, starting to collect the flowers and branches in a trash bag. She knew that a more organized woman would save the hydrangeas to dry them and then spray-paint gold for the holidays. The holidays. She found herself flinching at the thought of putting on the kind of Christmas Charlie would expect in the house.

“I don’t think that’s the case.” Hortense looked levelly at Jeannie. “If there’s a problem, you’ll be the only one in this house to solve it. That’s all I meant.”

The problem. Over drinks-it turned out that Hortense drank whiskey, straight up-Jeannie tried to fish around and find out exactly which of her many discomforts was the problem Hortense had gleaned. But for a straight talker, she was surprisingly evasive-as curvy, in fact, as Edgevale Road.

That night, Jeannie awoke at 2 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. The whiskey she’d had with Hortense and Charlie, who came home early, true to his word, had thrown her sleep-wake cycle out of whack. She’d be a mess when Ivanhoe woke up at 6-although he seemed to be awake now.

As the whimpering continued, Jeannie slipped out of bed and padded down the hallway to his room. Ivanhoe was sitting bolt upright in bed, and when he saw her, his whimpers turned to an outright scream. Jeannie pressed him against her breast, and gradually the cries lessened.

“Did Ivan have a bad dream? Everything’s okay now-”

“Bad boy,” said Ivanhoe. “Bad, bad boy in room!”

“Nobody’s here, Ivan. You just had a bad dream.”

“No, Mama, he real.” Ivan pointed toward the closet. “He shine like, like moon.” Ivan pushed the curtain over his window aside, pointing with emphasis at the full moon outside. “He have bib on. He roll a big ball.”

Jeannie felt herself shudder. She reached back and switched on the light. No bowling balls anywhere, and all the windows were latched shut.

“Come on, Ivan, let’s get you some milk.” She stood up, still holding him close, and started down the stairs and the hallway, snapping lights on as she went. The alarm panel downstairs still said ARMED the doors were all locked. Nobody had penetrated the embassy. She settled Ivan in his booster seat while she microwaved his cup of milk. But when the hum of the microwave finished sixty seconds later, she heard it. Rolling, then a crash. Rolling, rolling, another hit.

“What that, Mommy?” Ivan demanded. “What that sound?”

So her son had heard the rolling sound, too. It was time to get Charlie involved.

Charlie took a logical approach to the whole thing. After Jeannie had woken him, he pulled on a bathrobe and plodded downstairs, cordless telephone in hand. When they’d entered the kitchen, it was silent at first, so Jeannie was frustrated; but then the long rolling sound began again.

“Do you hear it?”

Charlie listened a minute, then said, “It sounds like something’s rolling around on the lower level.”

“Yes, yes! Exactly. And Hortense Underwood said it used to be a bowling alley.”

“Now a nanny suite.” Charlie looked thoughtful. “I can’t remember what the house inspector said about the foundation being level.”

“What does that matter?” The house inspector had been one Reeves had recommended; he’d said the house was perfect, of course.

“I do have my tennis things stored down there. Last time I was getting ready, I took Ivanhoe downstairs with me and gave him a ball to play with. It’s probably just rolling around.”

“The basement is carpeted. And the sound is too loud to be a tennis ball.”

“What else could it be?”

“Let’s go downstairs and look,” Jeannie said.

Charlie paused. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll call the police.”

That wasn’t what Jeannie had expected. She thought Charlie would have gone down with the unregistered Beretta he’d received from a client in L.A., years ago, who couldn’t come up with a cash payment; the gun that he kept fully loaded, but locked up in a safe in the bedroom. Jeannie thought Charlie would bear arms because so many of the superheroes in his games did; but then again, why should she expect heroics from her husband, eighteen years her senior and already with a slight predisposition for heart trouble?

Since the call for help had come from Goodwood Gardens, three squad cars arrived within two minutes. Six cops trooped downstairs. By then, of course, the sound had stopped. And they found nothing.

“You have reached Hodder Reeves’s answering service. Leave a message, and I will personally return your call as soon as possible. Have a super day.”

Jeannie had been calling Reeves every day for a week, but she kept getting the same recorded message; and he hadn’t called her back, not once, which seemed peculiar given all the special attention he’d lavished on her so recently. Maybe he was closing a deal with other clients. Or maybe he was worried that Jeannie had figured out he’d sold her a haunted house.

Now Jeannie understood why seven people had owned the house in ten years. Nobody could stand to keep living with the sound of German-American bowlers, night after night. Ivanhoe had dreamt about the boy in the bib again. He wanted to sleep in their room, which Charlie sternly forbade. Adding to the stress in the house, Charlie’s sexual appetite had increased-something Jeannie felt sure was connected to his witnessing Hodder touch her at the gala.

Jeannie’s men were exhausting her. If she wasn’t servicing Charlie at night, she was spending extra hours at nursery school because Ivanhoe had started to have separation anxiety. During the afternoons, when he was home, he tucked himself into the cabinet next to the stove, hugging himself while Jeannie cooked massive starchy meals she hoped would send everyone to sleep after bed.

In the few hours she had to herself, Jeannie read: three books about the paranormal and a history of Maryland furniture makers that mentioned the decline of Erdmann & Sons due to the death of the heir apparent, Martin Erdmann, after a bout of tuberculosis. The only surviving siblings were girls; and girls, in those days, did not become furniture builders.

Jeannie thought things over during the night, when she would customarily make one trip downstairs to check for the rolling sound, which seemed to be happening sometimes, but sometimes not. After too many sleepless nights, she finally opened her copy of the Blue Book and discovered the phone number for Hortense Underwood, who was not listed in the regular telephone directory. When she said she needed to talk, Hortense promptly invited her to come for a visit to Edgevale Road with Ivan.

“I’ll come when he’s in school,” Jeannie said. She was trying to help him forget what had happened in his room, not engrain it any further on his troubled mind. “I do have one favor to ask, if it isn’t too much trouble. Do you still have photo albums and school yearbooks, anything with pictures of the Erdmanns? I’m interested in Martin Erdmann, in particular.”

There was a long pause. “Martin was a few classes ahead of me at school, but there’s a chance. I’ll see what I can find for you.”

Over strong cups of Eddie’s Breakfast Blend served in bone-thin Limoge cups, Jeannie and Hortense examined an ancient, falling-apart literary anthology of student work. There was no yearbook per se, but mixed in with childish poetry were a few cloudy black-and-white photographs of boys and girls lined up on a step, wearing sailor suits.

“This is my class,” Hortense said, pointing to a small girl with braids, who looked into the camera with a slightly accusatory gaze. “And yours truly. The girl on the far end is Agatha Erdmann.”

“You said Martin was a few years older?” Jeannie stared at Agatha, as if her appearance might spark some recognition.

“Yes. I thought there might be photos of him here, but… he must have already died. It was very sad.” Hortense shook her head.

“What did he look like? Can you remember?”

“Red hair, freckles, skinny. Oh, and I guess the thing I remember is how the Erdmanns dressed. They were always dressed like diplomatic children, even at a neighborhood public school.”

“Do you mean in fancy clothes?” Jeannie pictured a Fauntleroy suit, the kind of costume Charlie had suggested Ivanhoe wear for the family portrait.

“No, I mean a sailor suit, like Agatha’s wearing in the photograph. The children always wore sailor suits, had to wear them well into their teens, much to their chagrin.”

A sailor suit. What Ivan had talked about-a boy with a bib-sounded like it could have been a boy wearing a sailor suit. A chill settled over Jeannie, and she told Hortense she hadn’t realized how time had flown, that it was time to get Ivanhoe from St. David’s and take him home for lunch. Lunch, followed by a pre-nap story, which, for that afternoon, she chose Babar, the Elephant Emperor whose children all wore sailor suits. And as Jeannie had expected, when Ivan saw the illustration of Pom, Flora, and Alexander, he squealed and pointed, “That one like boy at night-night time!”

Jeannie had no more questions.

That night, she told Charlie she’d be waiting for him in the bedroom after he put Ivanhoe to sleep. Charlie did the bedtime routine in record time-thirty-five minutes-and was halfway undressed by the time he got in the room.

“So, you must be feeling better today,” he said happily, grabbing her around her hips and pressing her tightly against him. “What did you do, get some advice on how to relax from that wonderful woman of a certain age?”

“Actually, Charlie, I brought up some of the whiskey.” She removed his hands from her body, then pointed to the cut-glass decanter she’d set on the table by the window. “I think we could both use a drink, because there’s something serious I have to discuss.”

She told him everything. About the sailor suit, the bowling sounds, the long gone household of German-American children shunned by the neighborhood. He listened carefully, and to her amazement, his first words were, “It’s incredible. But believable.”

“I don’t believe in haunted houses,” Jeannie said, surprised that there was no fight. “I never did, and I don’t wan to. But something’s going on. No wonder all the young families buy and quickly leave, and Hodder Reeves keeps on reselling the house.”

“You keep calling Hodder.” Charlie sipped the whiskey, keeping his eyes on her.

“What do you mean?” Jeannie flushed.

“I saw the record of your outgoing cell phone calls.”

“It’s because-it’s because I’m trying to find out about the house! I’ve called him repeatedly this week, but he hasn’t gotten back to me. In the meantime, I’ve researched more about the family that owned the house.” Jeannie told Charlie what she’d learned from Hortense Underwood and saw the jealousy in his eyes slowly replaced by a look she remembered from long ago-the dreaming, about-to-imagine-a-brilliant-idea look.

“It’s creepy all right,” Charlie said slowly. “If we tweaked the story a little, it’d make a great computer game, maybe one that involves learning the German language.”

“Charlie! Is everything a game to you?” Jeannie was distracted, because she could hear Ivanhoe whimpering in his sleep.

“No, it’s not,” Charlie said sharply. “And don’t go to him. If you keep running to Ivanhoe, he’ll never sleep through the night.”

“I don’t know what to do.” Jeannie put her face in her hands, hiding her tears.

“Do you think we should do what the others have done-just cut our losses and run?”

“Our gains,” Jeannie said. “Hodder said we’ll make at least ten percent profit if we sell. But how can we sell a haunted house?”

“Others have done it,” Charlie said. “And before we make any big decisions, let’s see if anything else happens. The best games have their roots in reality. Let’s learn the untold story of this boy in a sailor suit.”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

Charlie thought a moment, then said, “Let’s hold a séance. See if you can line up that neighborhood woman and Hodder Reeves. And I’ll bring in our new games concept guy, Walter, to record the whole thing.”

A séance! Jeannie felt she was living in The Twilight Zone. Charlie left work early the next morning, but not before telling her he expected her to bring him at least three estimates by the end of the week. Jeannie gritted her teeth and agreed. If anything, a psychic hack would buoy her case for getting out.

There weren’t many psychics left in the new Baltimore, but Jeannie did find a listing in the phone book that wasn’t too far away, for a Sister Natalie’s House of Spirits, located on Reisterstown Road near Northern Parkway. Sister Natalie was just the psychic Charlie deserved. Sister Natalie, with her hands decked in heavy rings, her head covered in a zebrapatterned turban, and wearing a mumu, was exactly the stereotype of a woman who communicated with other worlds. And the things she asked of Jeannie-background on everything that had happened so far in the house, four hours to set up before the séance, undisturbed, and a $600 deposit to cover expenses-made Jeannie certain the whole thing was going to be an utter fraud. But that was okay. Jeannie wanted no chance of the sailor-suited boy actually materializing. Let Sister Natalie go off on her own tangent, giving Charlie the kind of glamorous ghosts he needed.

Jeannie spent a good hour with the psychic, telling her everything she could think of relating to the house and its history. Suddenly she realized it was 11:30, and she was going to have to race over to St. David’s to pick up Ivan. She wrote out the deposit check and handed it to Sister Natalie.

As their hands touched, Sister Natalie drew back sharply. The check fluttered to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Jeannie said automatically, and bent to pick it up. Sister Natalie appeared frozen when Jeannie tried to give her the check again.

“Is everything okay?” Jeannie could barely hide her impatience. “I made it out to the name you told me, Natalie Black-”

“Your family is in danger,” Sister Natalie said, her voice leaden.

“What?”

“Your family is in danger. We were talking about the house before, but there’s something else you need to worry about-something very serious-”

Aha! Angling for a return engagement, Jeannie thought. An extra consultation-extra money. “I’m really sorry, Sister, but I am going to have major worries if I don’t pick up my son from school on time. I’ll see you this Friday, okay? Call me if you need directions.”

As Jeannie’s Humvee joined a stalled line of vehicles a quarter-mile prior to her turnoff from Northern to Roland Avenue, she felt her anxiety quicken. If only she could see ahead to whether or not it was an accident. Blocking her line of vision was a truck: a big white one with red lettering on the back that said, “REEVES ENTERTAINMENT. FOLLOW ME TO MARYLAND’S GREATEST PARTIES AND MAGIC SHOWS!”

Five minutes later, when she’d managed to make the right turn and proceed toward Ivan’s school, she turned over the connection in her mind. Hodder had mentioned that his father’s family owned a large party services company. She’d thought that the company dealt solely in tents and chairs and champagne fountains. But obviously there was something more.

There was a message blinking on the answering machine when Jeannie returned home with Ivan in tow.

It’s Hodder,” the voice on the recording said. “I was in Dewey and Rehoboth for a couple of weeks getting a jump on my spring listings, but I just returned this morning. Glad you want to get together! Can we do lunch?”

Had he heard, somehow, from Sister Natalie about the upcoming séance? As Jeannie was deliberating what to do, the phone rang. She listened to it ring, and when her answering machine picked up, she heard Hodder speak into the machine.

“Jeannie? You there?”

Jeannie picked up the phone. “I’m here.”

“Hey, did you hear my message about lunch? I called both your cell and the home, but nobody picked up.”

“Actually, Charlie and I want to invite you to join us at home Friday evening.” She had to force herself to sound normal.

“Ooh, dinner in my favorite house on Goodwood Gardens, with my favorite clients. It just so happens I am free. Let me bring some wine-would you prefer red or white?”

“Neither. It’s not exactly a dinner party, it’s a kind of-games night. There will be a couple of other people there. Could you come at 8, after Ivan’s in bed?”

“I’ll knock very quietly,” Hodder said in a low purr. “And how did you know I love games-grown-up games, especially?”

The séance was going to be a nightmare, Jeannie thought, as she spread out the skirts of her black silk taffeta gown so they wouldn’t crease while she sat reading Ivanhoe his favorite Dr. Seuss stories, even after his eyes had closed. Ivan’s tiny little hand was tucked in hers, making her sweat in the room that was already too hot. Sister Natalie had insisted on raising the temperature in the house, rather than dropping it, as if to prove how genuine her psychic feats would be.

Finally, Ivan’s hand relaxed in Jeannie’s and she carefully disengaged herself and arranged his coverings lightly over him. He was already covered in a faint sheen of perspiration, so she cracked open the window across the room.

Ivanhoe’s bedroom door was slightly ajar, and she could hear voices below. Hortense Underwood had come early, of course, and she was talking with Charlie about something, until a knock came at the door. It was Hodder, who after listening to Charlie’s booming description of the evening’s agenda, exclaimed loudly about what a great surprise the séance was. Jeannie suspected this was one instance where Hodder was genuinely surprised, and not up to his usual tricks.

It had been just a few hours earlier, when late afternoon sunshine had flooded Ivanhoe’s room, and the two of them had been putting away his laundry in the closet, when she’d found the trick: the quarter-inch nail hole in the closet door. She’d seen something flash in it, and realized, under closer inspection, that there was a very thin lens embedded in the hole that reflected its presence clearly under the glow of a flashlight.

“Ivan,” she’d asked gently, “that boy with the bib you see. Where does he stand when you see him?”

Ivanhoe pointed at a spot on the wall directly across from the closet door. “Over there.”

So the show took place after dark. When the hologram, or whatever it was, would show up most frighteningly. Hodder wouldn’t even need to be in the house to pull off the stunt; he could use a remote control, like people used for their cars, and like Hodder had done when he’d illustrated the features of the house’s state of the art security system.

Grimly, Jeannie took care of the hole in the quickest way she could-stuffing toilet paper into it. Then she’d taken Ivan with her down to the basement, where, using an icing spatula, she pried up a dozen floorboards before finding the tape recorder. She’d removed the microcassette to play on the living room stereo. Sure enough, the sounds of a bowling alley, but with added clarity from the high-quality speaker system.

She was angry; blindingly angry. Her rage seemed uncontainable, rushing out in a great wave she wished would sweep over the person who had decided to intentionally frighten her little boy, had turned him into a child who was scared of the dark and hid in kitchen cupboards. And as Ivan’s mother, it was her duty to make the amoral monster pay.

Now Ivan was asleep and Jeannie stood in the hallway, listening to the sounds of the guests below and thinking about where to go. She found herself stopping in the bedroom, opening up Charlie’s safe, and tucking the Beretta into one of the deep pockets camouflaged in the side seams of her dress. Now her dress was slightly weighed down on the right, but nobody would notice, given that downstairs was dimly lit by candles. She was going to give Hodder the scare of his life, frighten him so badly that he’d ruin his Ralph Lauren khakis for good-

“Jeannie, aren’t you done yet?” Charlie’s voice came up from the landing.

“Sorry, darling,” Jeannie said as she descended the curving stairway.

“Your dress is lovely. It reminds me of the New Look,” Hortense said, fingering the black silk-satin. Jeannie thanked her for the compliment, and peeked her head into the front parlor. Sister Natalie sat before a round table draped in red silk. The psychic’s deeply wrinkled face appeared solemn, illuminated by candlelight. Her troubled eyes locked with Jeannie’s.

“How are you, Sister Natalie?” Jeannie asked with false cheer, looking away from the psychic’s hooded stare.

“I don’t like this,” Sister Natalie said in a rumble that sounded like a bad storm coming in.

“You mean the table’s not right, or-” Jeannie cut herself off when she heard the sound of Ivanhoe’s voice. She had closed his door, but even through the wood she could hear that he was crying.

“He sounds scared,” Hodder said. “Why don’t you bring him down to join us?”

“No can do,” Charlie said. “Little guy probably had a bad dream. He’s got to learn to settle himself down again.”

“Children need discipline,” Hortense agreed. “Only people can’t say that word anymore. What’s the word that you young parents favor-limits? Come, let’s limit the time that’s ticking and seat ourselves in the parlor. Sister Natalie has been waiting so patiently for the spirits to come, I’m sure they’re all present and ready to show us a very good time.”

“Hmm. Maybe Jeannie wants to go upstairs to see what’s going on.” Hodder’s eyes gleamed, and Jeannie knew, all of a sudden, what her agent wanted. He wanted her to be the one to see the hologram of the boy, to be spooked enough to beg Charlie to sell the house immediately.

“I think Charlie’s right,” Jeannie said, going against every instinct in her body. “I’ll wait a couple of minutes to see if he settles down. Now, does anybody need a second drink or-”

The sound of breaking glass cut through her last words, followed by a thud.

“You bastard!” Jeannie looked straight at Hodder. He’d pulled a new trick out of his hat, just for the evening.

She looked at Charlie for support, but her husband was loping up the stairs, two at a time. The door to Ivanhoe’s room banged open and then she heard Charlie cry: “My God, Ivanhoe-the window!”

Thank heaven for the battlements, everyone said later. The big, pretentious, sturdy stucco battlement which supported the Maryland flag was the spot where Ivanhoe had landed a mere eighteen inches under his bedroom window. The boy had enough cuts to require thirty stitches at GBMC, but the plastic surgeon assured them that scarring was unlikely.

Other scars were a different matter. Even though Hodder began burbling out apologies, rapidly, when faced with the long end of the Beretta, Jeannie had been on the verge of doing something unthinkable, but Hortense had managed to gently detangle her shaking fingers from the weapon. Hodder fled the house without so much as a goodbye. Hortense made Jeannie sit down and drink whiskey, and Walter, the new guy at Charlie’s company, paid off the rest of Sister Natalie’s fee plus a thousand in keep-quiet money. All the while, Charlie cradled his small bloody son in his arms, crying softly alongside him as they all waited for the ambulance to arrive.

Charlie wanted to have Hodder arrested on charges of attempted manslaughter, but their lawyers said the best they could do was charge him with trespassing and possibly wiretapping. It took a good year for the case to come to trial in Baltimore’s beleaguered courts. Hodder ultimately received a three-month sentence that his lawyer managed to have converted into community service.

While Hodder picked up discarded soda cans along the Stony Run, Hortense Underwood used the phones to ensure his name was even muddier than the creek’s bottom. The preppy real estate agent no longer had a job at the Mount Company, nor would Coldwell Banker, the Hill Company, Long and Foster, nor any of the other big firms in the city, hire him. In fact, the agent who ultimately sold 100 Goodwood Gardens that winter was Hortense’s daughter-inlaw, the only one who agreed to the couple’s desired asking price-ten percent below what they’d paid the earlier year.