Charm City

Chapter 18

There were only two Wynkowskis listed in the Baltimore phone book and Tess had already made the acquaintance of the first. The second, Linda Stolley Wynkowski, lived in Cross Keys, one of the city's first gated communities. An understated cluster of townhouses and high-rise condos on the city's north side, Cross Keys over the years had attracted such disparate individuals as John Dos Passos, onetime NAACP director Ben Chavis, and-most impressive to Tess-the original Romper Room teacher, Miss Nancy. Tess still had a soft spot for Romper Room, despite the fact that the Magic Mirror never saw a Tess, or even a Theresa, in all the years she watched.

She had not called ahead. It was so much harder to say no to a face than it was to a voice, especially someone who looked as harmless as Tess. Her mother might have despaired of her hair and clothes, but mild dishevelment worked for Tess. She looked like a jock, or jockette, and people equated jocks with stupidity, or at least a certain rah-rah thickness. It wasn't flattering for people to assume you were dumb, but it was often an advantage.

Sure enough, the building's front desk clerk-Karl the concierge, according to his name tag-was positively chummy when Tess asked him to ring Mrs. Wynkowski's apartment.

"I should have made an appointment, but I happened to be in the area and it is terribly urgent," she said, then lowered her voice. "It's about her ex-husband's will."

As she had hoped, the concierge was the type of young man who loved being taken into one's confidence.

"You just missed her," he said in an affected, campy voice, his eyebrows twitching in a way that suggested his every utterance arrived with an overcoat of irony. "Wednesday is Octavia day."

"Excuse me?"

"At least, I think it's Octavia day. Or is it Ruth Shaw day? I do have trouble keeping them straight."

"She alternates Octavia and Ruth Shaw," said the doorman, who was leaning against the front desk, seeking refuge from the day's sleety rains. "Octavia or Ruth Shaw on Wednesday, Jones amp; Jones Thursday, the shoe store on Friday, Betty Cooke jewelry from the Store, Ltd., on Saturday. I know because she always has the packages dropped off later, and I have to carry 'em up to her apartment."

"And on the seventh day, she rests," Karl said. "But only because the stores in Cross Keys are closed on Sunday."

"The malls are open," Tess said. "If she's such a shopaholic, she could go find plenty of other places to go."

"True, in theory," Karl the concierge said. "But in practice, Miz Rhymes-with-Witch never leaves Cross Keys. Hasn't been off the reservation in years, to my knowledge. Says everything one needs can be found right here-shops, restaurants, the tennis barn. Doesn't need a gas station because she never takes her car out of the garage. And she may be the only person in America who doesn't own a VCR, because you can't rent videotapes in Cross Keys. Thank God for cable and pay-per-view, or she wouldn't even know who Brad Pitt is, and that would be truly tragic."

Tess glanced at a framed Christmas photograph of Karl, a heavy-set woman, and five children who favored him, with their lean builds and mean little mouths.

"I'm getting the impression you don't like Mrs. Wynkowski very much," she said.

"Moi? Dislike anyone? Why, I adore the woman, especially at Christmastime, when she gives me ten whole dollars for all the little extra services she expects through the year. You trot over to Octavia and I'm sure you'll see just how charming Miz Rhymes-With-Hunt Cup can be."

The shopping center at the heart of Cross Keys was small and set on an open plaza, an arrangement that seemed quaint and dated in this age of malls. Tess did not see how its dozen or so shops could keep one busy for a single day, much less fill six days a week.

There were no customers in Octavia and the sales clerks were too dispirited by the gloomy day to force themselves on Tess. She held a plain black dress in front of her, glancing at its price tag. Too rich for her blood, but then, she wasn't guaranteed $20,000 a month for life. As she returned the dress to the rack, a frosted, frosty blonde stalked out of the dressing room in a bright turquoise suit and stocking feet.

"Marianna," the blonde whined. "Marianna, this doesn't hang right. The jacket should be more fitted through the waist, don't you think?"

"Would you like to have it altered, Mrs. Wynkowski? You know we're always glad to have alterations done for you."

"I don't know. I'm not sure the color is right, either. And it feels awfully heavy for a summer-weight wool." Glumly, she walked over to a rack of suits and began shoving the clothes back and forth as if she wanted to punish them for not being exactly what she wanted.

Studying her, Tess again was struck with the sense that Wink had gotten his wives in the wrong order. Here was what one expected in a second wife-a bottle blonde, pampered and reconfigured. If something could be painted, tugged upward, or filled with plastic, Linda Wynkowski had tended to it. And unlike Lea, her eyes were not red and underscored by black circles. She hadn't been losing sleep lately.

"None of these is right," the first Mrs. Wink muttered to herself. "I hate all these Easter egg colors they're showing this year."

"What about this?" Tess held out the black dress, whose only real distinction was its price. "This would look great on you."

The first Mrs. Wink snatched the dress from Tess's hands. "Not bad," she agreed. "But I probably have fifteen black dresses. I'm not sure I need another one."

Fifteen black dresses, yet she never left Cross Keys? Why did she need even one?

"You're Linda Wynkowski, right?" Tess asked. "Actually, I came here looking for you. We need to speak."

Linda frowned slightly, then willed her face back into blankness, as if conscious of the wrinkles caused by too much animation.

"About what?"

"The annuity, which guarantees your alimony, now that Wink is dead."

"Are you from the insurance company? You should be talking to my lawyer, not me. He'll explain how it works. No matter what else Wink owes, I still get my money. That was the point."

Tess allowed the misunderstanding to stand. "His wife says-"

"The little breeder? She's nuts. You'd think I'd stolen her husband instead of the other way around, that girl is so jealous of me." Without a trace of self-consciousness, Linda began disrobing in the store, unbuttoning the turquoise jacket and exposing a royal blue slip with lace inserts. "Look, if you wanna keep talking about this, you better come into the dressing room with me."

Tess followed Linda to a curtained cubicle with a chintz-covered chair and at least a dozen outfits, most of them wadded up and left on the floor.

"What's your problem with Lea?" Tess asked, as Linda quickly stripped down to her camisole and pantyhose. Although thin and surgically improved, her body had the soft, oily sheen and consistency of Brie at room temperature. "Your marriage to Wink was long over before she showed up."

"I don't have a problem with her. She has a problem with me." Linda looked Tess up and down. "Are you one of her lawyers, trying to figure out how to break the annuity? Don't waste your time. It's air-tight. Besides, it's not my fault Wink offed himself and she won't get anything from the life insurance. Maybe she should have made him happier, you know what I mean, and then he wouldn't have been so quick to take a one-way trip in his Mustang."

Tess decided trying to fake an identity would be too complicated. "I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not from an insurance company. I work for the Beacon-Light, where I was…double-checking some of the files on your husband today. I saw your alimony had been increased several years after the original divorce decree. That's a pretty unusual arrangement, and I thought there might be some explanation."

Linda slipped a cashmere turtleneck over her head, then stepped into a knee-length plaid skirt, apparently her own. "Let's just say Wink finally did the right thing by me. About five years ago, I was diagnosed as an agoraphobic and couldn't work anymore. He came through for me. I asked him to set up the trust because I always had a hunch Wink would die before I did. I didn't expect it to happen this soon."

"Lea told me she and Wink were really strapped. She thought you might have coerced him into signing that agreement."

"Lea shouldn't try and think," Linda said. "She'll get dents in her adorable young forehead."

"Did Wink threaten to cut you off after the story came out and the secrets of your marriage were exposed? Did he tell you all bets were off?"

Linda Wynkowski smiled strangely. "If anything, the stakes were higher than ever after the story came out."

"Did you talk to the Beacon-Light? Were you the source?"

Linda's eyes remained fixed on her image in the mirror. "Wink and I had an agreement to never discuss our marriage with anyone. I kept my part of it. I told that other girl from the Beacon-Light that I wouldn't comment at all."

"The article said you didn't deny the charges."

"Well, it was half right. I told her I wouldn't confirm or deny anything she asked me about my time with Wink. Funny, how much it changes the meaning, losing a word here and there. I called Miss Ruiz to complain and she told me the error had been edited into the story and she would ask for a correction. I'm not holding my breath. I've lived in Baltimore all my life, I know how arrogant the Beacon-Light is."

One of the sales clerks opened the curtains and gave an involuntary cry when she saw Linda and Tess ankle-deep in hundreds of dollars of clothes. "Oh, Mrs. Wynkowski, couldn't you at least put the dresses over the chair? You know I'm glad to hang them for you when you're done, but we can't have them on the floor."

To Tess's amazement, Linda shoved roughly past the young woman, knocking her into the wall, then stepping down hard on her foot.

"The customer is always right," she called over her shoulder, as tears came to the clerk's eyes. "Didn't anyone ever tell you that?"

On the way back to the Blight, Tess puzzled over what Linda Wynkowski had told her. Despite her antipathy toward Rosita, she knew editors did insert errors into stories. And people often complained of being misquoted when what they really had was a bad case of interviewee's remorse. Possibly Rosita had confused Linda with a jumble of reporting jargon: on background, off the record, not for attribution. Given that most reporters couldn't agree on the meaning of those terms, it was impossible for a civilian to understand. But Linda had seemed quite definite that she had told Rosita she would neither confirm nor deny. She was right: dropping one word made a lot of difference in that quote. She had offered a no comment; Rosita had twisted it into serving her needs.

As Tess got off the elevator on the third floor, Feeney got on, barely glancing at her. She darted back in at the last second, the elevator doors bouncing off her shoulders.

"It's funny, Feeney. You're one of two people I know in this whole building and you're the one person I never see or hear from. Whitney at least sends me electronic greetings and drops in."

Feeney studied his shoes. Penniless penny loafers, as usual. Worn with no socks, as usual. "This basketball story has taken over my life. It's like a greased boa constrictor. It twists, it turns, and just when I think I've got it pinned down, it turns out the snake's about to swallow me."

"Does Baltimore still have a chance to get a team?"

"Maybe. The deal has lost a lot of momentum since Wink's death, although there's actually more real money connected to it, now that the Tucci family has decided to put its full weight behind it. With Paul as the majority partner, the family is willing to put up a lot more than before. But money isn't everything. Wink may not have brought that much money to the table, but he did have cunning and charisma, something Paul Tucci can't fake. Tucci's not exactly the brightest light on the Christmas tree. Why do you think he's still not a full partner in his father's business?"

The elevator had reached the first floor. Tess walked outside with Feeney, determined to prolong their conversation. She wanted to bring him around to his phony alibi, the lie that had her wrestling with her own greased boa constrictor, but she knew better than to be too direct or confrontational.

"What a difference a week makes. Last time we talked, you were delivering the eulogy for your own career. Remember?" The night you lied about your whereabouts, and dragged me into this whole mess.

Feeney made a strangled noise, half-grunt, half-laugh.

"Then comes what your publisher likes to call the ‘unscheduled publication' and-bam-everything starts falling into place. The first story leads to the tip from the guy in Georgia and you suddenly have the story of your career."

"And Wink is dead."

"How did you get there so fast the night Wink died, then get the story in the paper? It must have happened right on deadline."

"I dictated from a pay phone outside a Royal Farm on Reisterstown Road."

"But the story said the cops didn't arrive until ten-thirty, so you had to be right behind them. Who tipped you off? County police? The medical examiner? An ambulance driver?"

"I didn't get there right behind the cops, Tess. I got there right before them."

Tess stopped at the bottom of the long, low steps in front of the Blight and grabbed Feeney's arm, forcing him to stop and look at her.

"Wink? Wink called you?"

"He called my beeper and left his phone number. I recognized the number-I'd been dialing it almost every day, if only to get a ‘no comment' from him or a ‘drop dead' from his wife. I called back, no answer. I figured if Wink was ready to talk to me, I shouldn't let the mood pass, and I drove out there. The garage was closed and locked, but the front door was unlocked, as if he had been waiting for me all along. And I guess he was, in a way. Wink always did do things with flair."

"What did you do?"

"I called the cops from his house. And then I got out my notebook, took down all the information, and filed my story, like a good boy."

"The story said the cops found the body."

"No, we neatly sidestepped that detail. I wanted to put it in-I thought it made for a nice ironic touch. You know how the editors like those phrases ‘The Beacon-Light has learned,' or ‘As the Beacon-Light first reported.' I dictated: ‘The Beacon-Light last night discovered the body of Wink Wynkowski, an apparent suicide.' Colleen and Jack over-ruled me."

"It is a little melodramatic."

"Have you ever seen a dead body?" Feeney asked, then blushed, remembering Tess had seen her share. He jammed his hands in his pocket and began walking north along Eutaw. She fell in step beside him, too intent on their conversation to be put off by his rudeness.

"You shouldn't feel guilty, Feeney. I bet Rosita doesn't have any guilt pangs, and she's as responsible as you are."

"Rosita's young. She's probably mad he didn't beep her. Rosita always thought she could crack the story wide open if she had a few minutes with Wink. She does get people to open up to her, I'll give her that. I don't know how she does it."

I do. She doesn't let their quotes get in the way of the story.

"How much reporting did she contribute to the first story? Without any help from you, I mean."

"Most of the personal stuff about Wink, the details about his marriage and his childhood. And she was the one who got the call from the guy who knew him at Montrose. She wanted to do that interview by herself, but Sterling was skeptical about the guy, wanted to good-cop/bad-cop him, make sure he wasn't some petty psycho. Rosita went in all empathetic, while I was the hard-ass. The guy was solid, though, and my courthouse source backed him up."

"Did the courthouse source help you out on the first story? Was he one of the people you didn't want to identify?"

"Yeah, he's given us lots of stuff over the years, it would be crazy to burn him. But the key was the financial source, someone who-well, let's just say he was a former business associate whose creative accounting tricks for Wink could have resulted in jail time. Now he's born-again, the father of three little girls, soccer coach, PTA president. I was so careful to protect his identity I never even wrote his name in my notebook. He was just U.C.-the Unknown Citizen."

In her memory, Tess tasted gin, heard the congenial buzz of the Brass Elephant, saw Feeney's red face as he slurringly declaimed a few lines of poetry.

"That's what you recited to me in the bar, the allusion I couldn't place. Auden's ‘The Unknown Citizen.' ‘Am I happy? Am I free?'"

"Did I?" Feeney asked unhappily. "I don't remember."

"It was your exit line," Tess reminded him. "When you stormed out at eight o'clock and left me alone with your tab." He squirmed a little, as she had expected he would, as she wanted him to. Good: now they had acknowledged the lie between them, the way he had used her.

"Well, obviously he was on my mind," Feeney offered. "I'm surprised I didn't blurt out his name, in the state I was in."

"Go ahead and blurt it out now. I'm an old friend, you can trust me." Tess's mind was racing ahead: if Rosita had conducted any of the interviews with the Unknown Citizen, perhaps she had twisted his words the way she'd twisted Linda's. It was worth checking out.

Feeney's face was pensive, the way he sometimes looked before a poetry jag, although he was obviously stone-cold sober now.

"Tess, as long as you work for management, you're not my friend and I don't trust you. And if you want to continue this conversation, I suggest we find my union rep."

He turned and began walking quickly toward the Shrine of St. Jude. Tess stood on the corner, as breathless as if he had just punched her in the stomach. How had Feeney gotten things so twisted? She was here because of his deceit, because he had used her as his alibi, and if she didn't make the case that Rosita had sneaked the story into the paper out of unalloyed ambition, Feeney might take the fall. Typical Feeney, going on the offensive when he should be offering profuse apologies.

"Fuck you, Kevin Feeney," she called after him, although he was already too far away to hear her. "You can take care of yourself from now on."

The sleet had finally stopped, but the wind had picked up, stinging and bitter. That's the only reason my eyes are tearing, Tess told herself as she walked back inside. Because of the wind.