Charm City

Chapter 9

Tess began Saturday by visiting Spike at St. Agnes. Unfortunately, her parents had the same idea. Not that she had anything against her parents, but a little bit went a long way, and she had been over for dinner just three weeks ago. Now here they were, chairs drawn up to the foot of Spike's hospital bed as if it were a television set and he was the host on the old Dialing for Dollars show. The amount is $35 and the count is 4 from the top. They stared at him intently, not speaking. A stranger might have concluded that Patrick and Judith Monaghan were the kind of long-married couple comfortable with silence. Their daughter knew they were merely resting between bouts.

"Hi, Mom. Pop."

"The hair," her mother said.

"It's nice hair," her father said.

"I didn't say it wasn't nice. But she's too old to wear it hanging like that, in a tail."

"It's very neat."

"It's blah. And those pants. Tess, if one's pants have belt loops, one should wear a belt."

"These are blue jeans, Mom, and belts are for people who don't have hips to keep their pants up. Never been one of my problems. Besides, I dress differently when I'm working. Honest."

"How would I know? It's been months since we've seen you." Judith was turned out with her usual monochromatic perfection, in a dark mustard sweater with matching tweed skirt and suede flats. Tess suspected her mother shopped with paint samples from the hardware store, so flawlessly did she match everything. Patrick wore his winter uniform: Sansabelt pants, long-sleeved white shirt, and a plain red tie. Come Memorial Day, he would vary the look by switching to a short-sleeved white shirt and pale blue tie.

"What does the doctor say about Spike?" Tess asked, hoping to divert her mother from such loaded topics as grooming, wardrobe, and lack of attentiveness.

Judith shrugged. "A lot, but all it means is they don't know why he's not doing better. Maybe he'll wake up, maybe he won't. Maybe there'll be permanent damage, maybe there won't."

"Weinsteins are slow to heal," her father observed slyly.

Although everyone agreed Spike was a relative, neither side would claim him. Legend had it that he'd appeared shortly after Tess's birth, working his way through a sesame seed bagel with lox at one of Momma Weinstein's Sunday brunches. But he seemed equally at home at the Monaghans' gatherings, eating Easter ham and neatly side-stepping any question attempting to pinpoint his origins.

Today, however, Tess's mother chose to ignore her husband's invitation to this familiar favorite argument. "You know, we saw him just two days before this happened. It always feels strange, when someone you don't see very often pops up, then the next thing you know, they're… different."

Different. Her mother was given to such euphemisms. Well, a coma sure was different, even for Spike.

"Did he say anything to either of you about a greyhound?"

"Greyhound? No, he brought us two cases of Old Milwaukee-he gets it for your father at cost. And he brought me ten bags of mulch, which I asked him for last fall. Ten bags! Two would have been plenty, I wanted them for the flower beds along the front. But he was being thoughtful, in his own way. I'll be able to use most of it when I put my vegetable garden in this spring." She smiled triumphantly at Patrick. "So maybe he is a Weinstein. The Monaghans are not given to thoughtfulness. I remember when your mother-"

Spike seemed to stir slightly, and everyone turned back to him expectantly. But it was nothing.

"I guess it doesn't do much good for us to sit here and stare at him," Tess said. "I think I'll go downtown and take advantage of the Beacon-Light's database, see if there's been a string of tavern robberies, or anything about greyhounds in the news recently. It's a long shot, but it's all I've got."

"You're going into work dressed like that?" her mother murmured, as Tess bent down to kiss her cheek.

"I like the way she looks," her father insisted. And they started again, like some museum exhibit with a tape-recorded loop.

It was almost 4 before Tess stopped to meet Tyner for a late lunch at Roy Rogers, one of their shared guilty pleasures along with gangster films and fried green pepper rings dipped in powdered sugar. Tyner ordered what he insisted on calling the Trigger special, the quarter-pound cheese-burger with a side of macaroni salad, while Tess settled for the "holster" of french fries. That was their term, not hers.

"Happy trails," Tyner said, as he always did, lifting his twenty-ounce Coca-Cola, another shared vice.

"Same back at you. I'm surprised some do-gooder group hasn't targeted the fries packaging for extinction. Baltimore has always been good at symbols, even if it sucks at doing anything about real problems."

"You're so crabby you remind me of me. You know what you need?"

Tess gave him a dark look. "That is not an issue in my life right now, thank you very much."

"I'm talking about rowing. You need to get back on the water, the sooner the better. You know, you can go out this early if you dress properly. Rock told me-"

"Rock? I heard the Natural Resources police pulled him off the water in February and threatened him with charges if he didn't wait until it was safe." Tess dredged a fry through her own mixture of barbecue sauce, ketchup, and horseradish, another reason she loved Roy 's. "But you're right, I am in a mildly rotten mood. I spent most of the afternoon with the Blight's computer system, to no avail. It's a bitch to learn, and once I finally got it up and running, it wasn't much use."

"Did you find out anything you can link to Spike's beating?"

"I found out there have been several tavern robberies this winter, but no one was beaten in any of those. And the only mention of greyhounds was a two-year-old story on this annual picnic held by local people who had adopted the dogs. Totally goofy. They hold contests for the dog with the longest tail and best costume. Too bad there wasn't a halitosis prize, Esskay could win that in a walk."

Tyner rolled over to the "Fixin's bar" for a plate of free pickles and onions, which he sprinkled with pepper and ate raw. The girl behind the counter gave him a dark look-once one's sandwich was gone, these extras were presumably off-limits-but Tyner was a regular and the staff had learned long ago it was easier to let him do what he wanted. Tess knew she should learn the same lesson, but she couldn't help trying to match him for sheer orneriness.

"What about your paying job?" he asked, when he returned. "Made any progress on that?"

"I skimmed the Blight's early Sunday edition. One of the sports columnists had an intriguing rumor, says Paul Tucci might be willing to put together a new ownership group if the NBA tried to block the basketball deal on the grounds Wink wasn't morally elevated enough to join the ranks of NBA owners."

"Tucci's probably floating that rumor," Tyner said.

"Yeah, I thought the same thing. You know what he said? ‘We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that basketball would be good for the city under any local ownership plan.' Isn't it strange how quickly this has become the conventional wisdom, like an-apple-a-day, or early-to-bed-early-to-rise? A sports franchise will make you healthy, wealthy, and wise."

Tyner pointed a long finger at her nose. "I'm going to give you some advice-"

"Oh God, no, anything but that." Tess pretended to cower, even as she finished off her last fry.

"What did Deep Throat say in the garage? Follow the money? Well, I have much older, much more universal advice. Cherchez la femme, Tess. Cherchez la femme."

"La femme?" Tess needed a moment, then she smiled. "Good idea, Tyner. I think I'll stop by the home of Rosita Ruiz on my way home tonight."

"Giddyap," Tyner said, then made a whinnying sound so accurate that the other Roy diners looked around uneasily.

Nothing put Tess more in the mood to work than strict injunctions against it. If she had been Bluebeard's wife, she would have been in the secret room the first night. Pandora's box? Opened before it was across her doorstep. The editors had told her to conduct all interviews on-site, the union had told her to stop the interviews entirely. She was counting on Rosita, out of the newsroom for two days and on deadline for most of today, not to know either of these injunctions.

Rosita lived in a high-rise north of Johns Hopkins University 's Homewood campus. The strip of apartment buildings along University Parkway catered to every taste: struggling students, well-to-do seniors, young professionals, even those rich enough to pay $1 million for a view of Hopkins ' lacrosse field. Rosita's building fell in the lower part of the range. A stark modern tower, its dingy lobby had the feel of a graduate student dorm, while its balconies held the accessories of young adults in transition from school to career: expensive bicycles, cheap hibachis, plastic stacking chairs. There were two views: nostalgic residents could face south, toward the campus they had left so recently, while the strivers looked hopefully toward the stately homes of Baltimore 's north side.

In the foyer, the mailbox showed an R. Ruiz, on the eighteenth floor. It was almost too easy for Tess to slip through the security door, disappearing among the people lugging home groceries and take-out food. No one seemed to know anyone here, nor wanted to, judging from the way everyone stared at the elevator's ceiling as it ascended.

A pink-cheeked Rosita answered the door in bicycle pants and a T-shirt with a picture of a bare-breasted mermaid, labeled La Sirena. Her hair was slick and wet, her toes separated by wads of cotton, apparently in preparation for the bottle of polish she held in her hand, a very girly pink. Tess would have expected something darker, bloodier.

"Feeney's friend," Rosita said. "Bess."

"Tess. And I'm here as a contractual employee of the Beacon-Light, part of the paper's preliminary investigation into what is being called the unscheduled publication of the article you wrote with Kevin Feeney."

"You're the investigator they hired?" Rosita asked incredulously. She had not dropped her arm from the door, so Tess was still in the hall.

"Yes. I work for a local attorney and have a little experience in the field." Very little.

"I thought you were suppose to conduct the interviews in the office, starting with the people who were there that night."

"There are no hard-and-fast rules. I happened to be in your neighborhood and thought I'd drop by. I guess I'm kind of a workaholic." She smiled at her lie, suspecting it might create a bond. "This isn't about guilt, you know. It's a fact-finding, cover-your-ass kind of thing, in case Wynkowski sues. That's all."

Rosita gave her terrible imitation of a smile. "Trust me, this is all about guilt. Luckily for me, I'm not guilty."

"So why don't we sit down and talk about this for a few minutes? Then I can put a little check by your name, and everyone will be happy." Except the editors, the union, and you, when you realize you weren't supposed to talk to me at all.

"Okay, but you can't stay long. I've got plans tonight and I just got home from work-we have an amazing story running tomorrow. It's going to blow the lid off this city."

"Blow the lid off this city?" If Tess hadn't been intent on charming Rosita, she might have reminded this newcomer that Baltimore had managed to keep its lid firmly in place through the great fire of 1904, the riots of 1968, the Orioles' 21-game losing streak in 1988, several crooked city officials, and a savings-and-loan scandal that had anticipated the national S amp;L crisis by several years.

Instead, she widened her eyes in a creditable imitation of amazement. "Wow, what's the latest?"

"A guy down in Georgia was at Montrose at the same time as Wink. He heard about our story from relatives up here and called the paper. It seems Wink liked to brag he was there because he killed a man."

"Maybe he was just a scrawny little kid trying to survive by manufacturing a tough-guy reputation."

"Maybe." Rosita smiled serenely. "You can read all about it in tomorrow's paper." She dropped her arm and let Tess into the apartment, walking on her heels to protect her pearly toe polish. Her legs were disproportionately short, with thick, curving calves. While not working twelve hours a day, she obviously found time to run or use a Stair-master. Probably with a newspaper propped in front of her and the all-news station on her Walkman.

Rosita sat on a wooden chair that needed refinishing, leaving Tess the full run of an ancient corduroy sofa that looked as if it had been stolen from a state institution. The decor, at least here in the living room, was Early Dorm: ratty furniture, an orange crate full of CDs, a portable stereo. Rosita hadn't even bothered to build bookcases out of cinderblock and boards, piling her few books on the floor. The only grace note was a poster of a pale pastel cowboy, literally disappearing into the landscape, and the view, which was toward the north and its expensive homes.

"Let's start with an obvious question. Where were you Tuesday night?"

"I thought you used to be a reporter. You should know you don't cut to the chase like that. You're suppose to lull me into a warm, expansive mood with a little nonthreatening chitchat."

"This isn't a profile," Tess said. She couldn't help sounding a little sharp. "It's report. If you don't want to talk to me, fine. I'll write that down and pass it on to your supervisors, who assured me everyone would cooperate. Let them worry why you don't want to answer the questions I ask in the order I ask them."

"Fine." Big dramatic sigh and a double eye-roll. "I was here."

"Alone? From what time on?"

"I left work at seven-thirty and stopped at the Giant for a salad, then bought some wine at the liquor store. I wasn't very happy. Remember, I thought the best story I had ever written had just been killed." Funny, Feeney had said almost the same thing-except in his case, it had been his story.

"Did you get any telephone calls? Did you make any calls or have any friends drop by?"

Rosita pressed her right hand to her forehead, as if the question required deep thought. "No. No calls at all. And no visitors."

"Then you don't really have an alibi. You have a story. I mean, you can't prove you were here. And the electronic security system at the paper was down, so it's impossible to prove you weren't there unless you can prove where you were. As a reporter, you should know one can't prove a negative."

When surprised, Rosita forgot her poses and mannerisms. Her eyebrows relaxed and she no longer held her chin so high it made Tess's neck ache to look at her. For a moment, she was as pretty as she should have been all the time. The moment passed.

"In that case, a lot of people aren't going to have alibis. Are you going to ask Feeney to prove where he was?"

"Feeney has a very satisfactory alibi, or else I wouldn't even be working on this. That would be totally unethical." Funny, how smoothly a lie could come, when it really had to. "And, yes, everyone will be held to the same standard."

"Don't be naive. There are more sets of standards at the Beacon-Light than you'll ever know."

Spare me, Tess thought. The last thing she wanted to hear was Rosita's list of grievances against her bosses. Perhaps she would do well to follow the reporter's advice after all, steering her into innocuous territory so she would be less hostile.

"You know, I don't pay attention to bylines as much as I should, so I'm not really sure when you started at the Beacon-Light, although I remember admiring your writing on several pieces. What has it been, a year or so?"

"Fourteen months, but I lost four months on the sports copy desk. I really wanted to cover baseball-I covered the minor league team in San Antonio, and Guy-Guy Whitman, the A.M.E. for sports and features-keeps promising me I'll have a shot at the number three slot covering the Orioles. Until then, he has me in the girl ghetto, features."

"What's wrong with features?"

"I want to be a real reporter. That's why I lobbied to get on the Wynkowski story. And I've done a good job. Feeney got the financial stuff, but I got the stuff about his marriage and his gambling problem. If you listen to what people are talking about around town, it's my part of the story."

Jesus, Tess thought, all roads led to Rosita, at least in her mind. The domestic violence was sweetly salacious, and the gambling could be a huge stumbling block, but that was nothing but hearsay. The financial angle was the real story.

"Are you from Texas?"

" Texas? Oh, because of San Antonio. God, no. I spent one year and seven months in that godforsaken place and it seemed as if the temperature was above ninety for all but three days. I'm from New England. I like seasons, and I prefer cool ones to hot ones."

" Baltimore 's summers are pretty wicked."

"Yeah, and the winters are wimpy, with people going crazy at the sight of the first snowflake. It's still an improvement, for now. I'll get to the Globe yet."

"Just the Globe? Why not the New York Times or the Washington Post?" Why not the Vatican?

For all her instructions on how to conduct an interview, Rosita wasn't a very good listener. "What I really need to do is get back into sportswriting. It's still something of a novelty act, the woman in the locker room. Some 22-year-old in overalls won a Pulitzer this year for an umpire story, for Christ's sake. No, there aren't many more female sportswriters than there were ten years ago. The difference is, editors don't feel as guilt-ridden about it.

"You sound like one of those people with a five-year plan you update every December thirty-first."

"I am. Two five-year plans, actually, one for work and one for my alleged personal life. Work is proving to be more manageable." Her smile this time wasn't her usual fake grin. It was tiny and rueful, fading away quickly, the Cheshire Cat in reverse. She glanced past Tess, who followed her eyes to the clock in the kitchen gallery. No wonder Tess had cats on the brain: the clock was one of those insanely grinning Kit-Kat Klock tchotchkes, sequined tail swinging back and forth in time with round eyes that cased the room.

"Look, I really don't have any more time for this," Rosita said abruptly.

"Sorry, you obviously have plans. Big date?"

"No, no, just dinner with a friend. You know, the usual unattached single woman's routine for a Saturday night. Are you married?"

"God, no," Tess said.

"Boyfriend?"

"Sort of. I mean yes, yes I do. In fact, his band is playing tonight, so I have to go do the band member's girlfriend thing. Stand in a crowd, stare adoringly at him."

"In my experience, it doesn't matter what your boyfriend does. Sooner or later, you're expected to stand in a crowd and stare at him adoringly." Rosita almost seemed likable to Tess now. She was sharp, she had a certain wit. Then she reverted to being merely sharp. "Of course in Baltimore, there are no available men, not if you have standards. I'd rather be dateless."

With someone else, it might have been mere tactlessness. In this case, there was no doubt the remark was deliberately waspish, an intentional implication that Tess did not have standards.

"Protect those toenails. I'll let myself out."

It was dark now along University Parkway and Tess, a born voyeur, glanced into lighted windows as she walked to her car. This stretch of buildings was older than Rosita's tower, with the elegant touches once common to the city's apartments-dark wood paneling, high ceilings, crown moldings. Why did people's lives, captured on the sly like this, look so enticing, like old photographs unearthed in an antique store? Tess caught glimpses of women her age, yet so much more polished looking in their real Saturday night date clothes. She saw their men, in jackets and ties. Grown-ups, headed to restaurants and Center Stage, perhaps the symphony. And where was she going to be on Saturday night? Lost in the funhouse of the Floating Opera until the wee small hours of the morning, keeping company with wee small minds.