Charm City

Chapter 29

On the first Friday in May, Spike left the hospital in a wheelchair. It wasn't altogether for show. Despite weeks of therapy, he still dragged his right leg, but his speech was clear now, or as clear as it had ever been, and his long-term memory no longer seemed like a piece of Alpine Swiss, the lacy stuff that was more holes than cheese. He could walk with a cane, but it was laborious and he didn't see any reason to pass up one last free ride. Especially, Tess suspected, when he saw the pretty young nurse who was to push him to the curb.

"You know, it was coincidental enough, you coming out of your coma just in time to get some action on the NCAA Final Four," she said, once they were settled in his car and heading to The Point. Tommy was driving Spike's rusting Lincoln coupe, so she could turn around in the passenger seat and study her uncle, regal and serene in the backseat. "But when your hospital discharge date happens to fall on the day before the Kentucky Derby, I know something's up."

"You saying I faked my coma 'til Tommy came and told me about how those guys who beat me so bad got themselves arrested, thanks to you?" Spike asked. "You think your old uncle could fool a whole staff of doctors and nurses, with their collitch educations? Then why would I stay so long, after I knew you was fine?"

"No, but…I mean-" Tess looked at Tommy, grinning as he perched precariously on the edge of the seat so he could reach the pedals with the toes of his zippered ankle boots. She looked back at Spike, studying the fast food joints and grimy stores along Caton Avenue as if they were the eighth wonders of the world. Perhaps they were to him. His recovery had bordered on the miraculous, doctors said, and Spike seemed to have a heightened appreciation of everything around him.

She was resigned to never knowing the whole story. Was Jimmy Parlez a real person, or some red herring Tommy had tossed out to distract her? Had Tommy been in on everything from the beginning, or had Spike, knowing how weak he was, made sure he was equally ignorant? Oh, well, some aspects of Spike's life had to remain mysterious, in part to protect the family from its seamier side, and in part because Spike liked being mysterious.

At The Point, Tommy pulled a small, brown-wrapped package out of the safe and handed it to Tess, while Spike settled on one of the vinyl padded chairs closest to the television.

"V is for videotape," Tess said, turning it over in her hands. "I guess my Botticelli buddy was playing fair and square, after all."

"Bottle of what?" Tommy asked.

"Never mind, it's too complicated to explain."

"Put it in the VCR under the bar TV," Spike said. Then, almost as an afterthought: "You eat breakfast today?"

"Of course."

"You'll wish you hadn't."

The video was of poor quality, a grainy black-and-white with the date and time in the lower right corner. But the images were clear enough-a large wooden fence in an oval shape, the suggestion of meadows on either side, stands of evergreens in the distance, all blurry as an Impressionist painting.

"What is this? What does it have to do with the ears?"

"It's a private ‘hunting' club in Cecil County."

"I've never heard of such a thing."

Spike gave her a look, as if he expected more of her. "But you've heard of stocked ponds, for fishermen? Well, these are kinda the same thing. Rich guys come from all over the state-Washington and Philadelphia, even-hunt birds for sport. You ask me, ain't a sport if you can't bet on it, but they pay plenty for the privilege of bringing home a few mangled birdie bodies."

"Is it legal?"

"Yeah, if you're just shooting up ducks and pheasants. The legislature seen to that, year in and year out. But these guys take it a step further. Got a little gambling room on the side-poker, blackjack, roulette. I got no problem with them being enterprising. I've even played a few hands there myself, when I found myself in the neighborhood. But this year they added a new attraction. That's what you're about to see."

Tess studied the television. Even without the date, she would have known this video was shot in March-the scudding clouds, the muddy ground with patches of ice. It seemed so long ago.

"Fifteen seconds to post," Spike intoned. Tommy held his fist to his mouth, making a mock trumpet call with real spit. "Dew-dew-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-deeeeeeeeew."

A tiny object zipped across the railing and a blurry pack surged into the camera's view, trailing it. Tess needed a moment to realize they were greyhounds, not horses, and that the object of their frenzied desire was a mechanized rabbit.

"Illegal greyhound races? Why would anyone go to the trouble of setting those up?"

"Wait," Spike said grimly.

The dogs disappeared on the far side of the track, and Spike provided a fake call while they were off-screen. "And as they move past the second post, it's Down on His Luck in the lead, with Bum Steer hard on his flank. Down on His Luck. Bum Steer. Down on His Luck. Bum Steer. Now Dead Last is making a move on the outside and down the stretch they come."

The dogs swung back into view and Spike, using the VCR remote control, switched to slow-motion. The picture was a little clearer at this speed and Tess could see the dogs straining toward the finish, almost a frame at a time, like an animated cartoon reduced to its individual cels. The dogs looked as Esskay had when Tess first met her-too skinny, with raw patches on the fur-but their power was truly impressive. Tess unconsciously hunched her shoulders in rhythm with the dog in the lead, neck stretching forward until the cords were visible.

Then, just a few feet short of the finish line, the leader collapsed. A broken leg? The other dogs parted around the fallen dog, still intent on the rabbit. Another one fell, then another. In all, four dogs collapsed on the track well short of the finish, dark stains spreading beneath them.

"I-I don't understand," Tess said, fearing she did.

"They get retired racers from some sleazy trainers," Tommy said. "Pay 'em twenny dollars a head, which is twenny dollars more'n most people would pay. Then these guys pay $200 to shoot 'em while they're running. Hit a dog, take home a set of ears. They haul the dead dogs off and bury 'em somewhere, somewhere secret. Don't matter if anyone finds them. Without the ears, there's no way to trace 'em."

"But not all those dogs were killed. Two are still moving." She pointed to the dogs' limbs, twitching as Esskay's did in her sleep.

"They put down the maimed ones," Spike said. "In some ways, it's the nicest thing they do. Now, hush a minute. The important part is coming up."

Tess watched as a group of men streamed onto the track, waving their rifles over the heads and dancing around the bodies of the fallen dogs. They were quite pleased with themselves. It is difficult, after all, to hit a target moving almost forty miles an hour. One man leaned heavily on his gun as he grabbed the lifeless body of one dog, and Tess thought she could read his lips. "This is mine! This is mine!" The face was a little blurry, but awfully familiar. There was something in the walk, in the set of his shoulders.

"Is that-?"

"Shore is," Spike said. "Now you know why we're gonna do it the way we're gonna do it. Keep us all out of it, but still shut ' em down. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Tess said weakly. She had held onto her breakfast, but not by much. "How did you come to have this tape, Spike?"

"Guy who runs this place is a friend. Was a friend. Ran a decent joint, wasn't my business if people wanted to come shoot ducks. That was legal, after all. But when I stopped by last March and saw this-well, I couldn't stand by no longer. That night, when the action had moved to the house, I took the videotape out of a surveillance camera and grabbed the ears I found in the barn. I knew he'd send some guys after me. I just thought I'd have a bigger head start."

"If you hadn't taken Esskay, too, they might not have been able to link you to the missing ears and tape."

"But she smiled at me, when she saw me in the barn," Spike said, smiling himself. "How could I leave her behind?"

"I guess it's as good a time as any for me to give you something," Tess told her uncle. She walked over to the store room and opened the door Tommy had opened almost two months ago. But the dog who bounded out was a different creature-glossy fur, bright eyes, the compleat hedonist. Esskay pranced around Spike, rooting under his armpits in search of treats. Just like she had with Crow.

"See, she's glad to be back with you," she said. Her voice didn't catch so much as it slipped.

"Aw, she likes me because I got the keys to the pantry. That's not real likin'. Anyway, how'm I gonna walk a dog, with my burn leg?" he asked, slapping the leg in question. "You do your old Uncle Spike a big favor and keep this mutt for now, okay?"

Tess smiled tremulously: Esskay was hers. She hadn't dared to hope for it. She hadn't even admitted to herself that she really wanted the dog. As she bent down to fasten the leash to Esskay's collar-a proper nylon one, no need for a heavy chain any more, not since she had broken down and purchased her first gun two weeks ago-she asked Spike a question that had nagged her for some time.

"Where was the tape all this time?"

"In the safe deposit box Tommy and I share. Whaddaya think I am, stupid or something?"

Tess laughed then, although laughing still hurt her ribs. Sterling's kicks had cracked two of them, keeping her off the water for much of this spring and limiting her other workouts. A fitting revenge for the former fat boy, always so covetous of her metabolism. Until she healed, she actually had to watch what she ate. She wondered if this would be much of a consolation to Sterling as he sat in the city jail, charged with Wink's murder and her attempted murder.

The police had found his fingerprints on the door to Wink's Mustang; the tox screens had turned up a prescription drug that matched the painkiller Sterling had been given for his on-again, off-again carpal tunnel problems. THE EDITOR WAS A KILLER. Juicy stuff, but the Beacon-Light wasn't giving the story much play, preferring to concentrate on Paul Tucci and his increasingly desperate attempts to land a basketball team. The Blight had left it to the Washington Post's media critic to chronicle Sterling's rise and fall. It hadn't been a particularly difficult story to report, despite the former editor's refusal to be interviewed. Raymond John Sterling had left a trail as bright and as slimy as a slug in the moonlight.

"No, Uncle Spike, I know you're not stupid," Tess assured him, holding her aching sides. "After all, you're the one who is going to tell me how to shut down this place without going to the police."

"I've just never felt the police really understand me," Spike said.

"They're such strictlers for detail?" Tommy added.

Tess hadn't planned on having Esskay with her when she'd made the 11 A.M. appointment with Lionel Mabry earlier that week, but there wasn't time to take the dog home. Maybe it was for the best. Mabry might have kept her waiting even longer, if it weren't for the snorting canine companion with the impulsive bladder.

"Miss Monaghan," Mabry said, entering the conference room. Not the grand one off the publisher's office-she no longer rated that; but a ratty one in the news room, the site of the endless editors' meetings.

"How you doing, Lionel?"

He seemed a little taken aback to hear her use his first name. "I am sorry it took so long for accounting to prepare your check-they raised a stink about some of the expenses you submitted. Something about a bill for a bracelet? But if you hadn't insisted on picking it up in person, you could have had it days ago through the mail. You didn't need to come down here again."

"The thing is, I have something for you," she said, holding out the tape, along with a letter explaining its contents, the circumstances by which it had been obtained, and a list of those people Spike knew frequented the hunting club. Lionel scanned it quickly. He was a quick study, Tess realized. A shrewd man, shrewd enough to let others think he was soft and unfocused. An act not unlike the dumb jock one she liked to pull.

"It's a good story," he said. "A very good story indeed. Generous of you to bring it to us. I know your experiences with the paper have not been exactly, uh, copacetic."

"You should know that Paul Tucci is one of the men on the tape. In fact, he'd probably be doing a victory dance if it weren't for his bad knee. Is that going to be a problem?"

Mabry looked puzzled. "What a strange question. If anything, it heightens our interest."

"But you didn't want to run the original Wink story, the one with all the unsavory information about him, because you didn't want to kill the city's chance for a basketball team. What's the difference?"

"Miss Monaghan, you shouldn't believe everything a reporter says, even when the reporter is one of your friends." She squirmed a little under Mabry's knowing smile. "Our publisher did have some concerns along that line, but I was uncomfortable with the Wink story simply because I didn't see the point of dredging up pieces of his past when that had nothing to do with his fitness to own a sports franchise. Jack Sterling understood my feelings and he played on them. Of course, now I know Jack had his own agenda and that his articulate speeches about letting people reinvent themselves were neither dispassionate nor disinterested. But I still stand by my decision that Wink was entitled to know the names of his critics."

"You knew Sterling better than anyone here." Anyone living, Tess amended in her mind, thinking of Rosita. "Why did he follow you here, knowing someone might recognize him?"

"I think he wanted the job so badly he convinced himself no one would remember a fat boy named Raymond from thirty years ago. Then Wink came to an editorial board meeting and Jack was discovered. He still could have confessed-I wouldn't have fired him, although I would have made damn sure he had nothing more to do with the Wynkowski story. Instead, Jack promised to kill the story in return for his old friend's silence." Mabry paused. "Funny, how in the end it was Colleen who set Jack's downfall in motion. If she hadn't put the first story in the paper, there would never have been a second one, the one that so enraged Wink. And Jack might have figured out a less dire way to ensure Wynkowski's silence."

Tess made a polite, noncommittal sound. Lionel Mabry wasn't a bad person at heart, and that was a limitation. He could never imagine the Jack Sterling she had faced in Leakin Park. Yes, Sterling was trying to protect himself and the life he had created. But the man who had struck her had also been having a suspiciously good time. It was as if he had waited all these years to indulge those instincts again. "Bad boys get caught." Well, he was a bad boy now.

She stood to leave. "One more thing about the track story-I want Kevin Feeney to write it."

"Miss Monaghan, I do not let outsiders dictate internal decisions." Mabry was the Lion King again, tossing his hair back indignantly, growling and posturing as if she were an employee he could tyrannize.

"I understand that in theory. In practice, if you don't give the story to Feeney, I'm going to distribute copies of these videotapes to every television station in town, as well as the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Washington Post. Be awfully embarrassing to be scooped on a story in your own backyard."

Mabry hesitated. Tess could tell he was torn between wanting to make a point and wanting exclusive title to the story. You could almost hear the point-counterpoint echoing in his brain. Principle or potential Pulitzer? Principle or Pulitzer? Principle-Pulitzer? Principle-Pulitzer?

Pultizer won. She had thought it would. "I don't appreciate your tactics, but Feeney is an excellent reporter. I'm sure he'll do well on the story. Is it all right with you-" Mabry couldn't resist a small spin of sarcasm "-if I assign another reporter to work with him?"

"Sure, as long as it's someone who doesn't buy information or twist people's quotes." She regretted the words as soon as she said them. Rosita's crimes seemed so small now, certainly too small to die for.

"Do you ever think about going back into reporting?" Mabry asked, walking her to the door, always the gentleman. "We still haven't filled some of the vacancies caused by, uh, this spring's events. You obviously have potential as an investigative reporter."

The question was only two years too late. Still, it was nice to hear. Nicer still to say: "No thanks, Lionel. I have a job, a job I think I'm getting pretty good at."

One of her ribs sent up a little shoot of pain just then, as if to remind her not to be too cocky.

Funny, to think of the injustices to which Tess had been blind before Esskay had come into her life. For example: why was it so difficult to find a restaurant in Baltimore where dogs were allowed? The bars in Fells Point welcomed them, but Baltimore had few of the sidewalk-type restaurants that made it possible for a dog to enjoy a good meal. How species-ist.

She and Feeney settled on Donna's, a local chain of coffee bars with pretty good food, once you got past its New York aspirations. And while Mount Vernon was a little grimy for outdoor dining, the day was too beautiful to waste: a cloudless sky, a light breeze that kept the sun from being too hot. Baltimore springs had the life span of a fruit fly, so it was important to cherish each fair day. Summer would be here soon enough.

Tess ordered wine, and after a brief inner struggle, decided on the mozzarella sandwich with pesto, on olive-oil-rich focaccia. She'd be back at full strength soon enough, she'd work those calories off. Feeney had the turkey sandwich with tapenade, on sourdough, while Esskay had the roast beef and provolone, hold the bread.

"This is a great story, almost makes up for me not being able to write about Sterling," Feeney said, studying her notes. "Sure it's mine?"

"As sure as I can be. There's a reason he's called the Lyin' King."

"Yeah, but he's competitive. He'll put the paper first. He always does in the end."

"So did Jack Sterling. I wonder how he would have arranged for the Blight to get the exclusive on my death?"

Esskay, who had downed her lunch in seconds, was straining at her leash, desperate to chase the dogs she saw in the park across the street. Then her quicksilver attention turned to the trash blowing past in the breeze. A white hot dog wrapper caught an eddy of air, floated upward, then reversed direction and plummeted to earth. Had Rosita fallen like that? Had she known she was falling? Had she been knocked out, like Wink, or just woozy enough for Sterling-her former boss, her former lover-to pick her up in his arms for one last embrace, then toss her over the balcony before she realized what was happening? But maybe she had jumped, as Sterling still maintained.

"Detective Tull told me they'll probably never be able to charge Sterling with Rosita's death. If she had painkillers in her blood, like Wink, it would be different. But all they found was alcohol. And it made sense for his fingerprints to be all over the apartment. He searched it, remember?"

"The yearbook never turned up, did it?"

"No, Sterling tossed it in a land fill. Lea Wynkowski has gotten it into her head that it's my fault somehow. I made it possible for her to collect the life insurance and kept her out of Paul Tucci's clutches, and she's pissed at me over a yearbook. Isn't that rich?"

"A grateful mind/By owing owes not." Feeney smirked at her blank look. "Milton. Paradise Lost."

"Well, aren't you branching out?" Her voice was harsher than it meant to be, her mind unable to turn off the image of Rosita falling through space.

"Don't mind me," she added contritely. "It's just that I should have known. From the moment I saw that pizza, I should have known it was Sterling."

"How?"

"Turkey sausage. You have to be a psycho to eat that stuff."

Feeney pointed up the street. "Speaking of psychos, look at Whitney, trotting to keep up with Tyner's wheelchair on the downhill grade. I didn't know they were coming along today."

"Whitney said she had something big to tell us. I assume she finally got Tokyo."

They arrived a few seconds later, Whitney breathless from keeping pace, but still able to bark out an order for hot tea. Tyner motioned the waitress away impatiently, as if surprised that someone expected him to place an order at a restaurant.

"Hot tea?" Tess asked Whitney. "We know you're going to Tokyo, you don't need accessories to break the news."

"I am going to Tokyo," she said, "but not for the Beacon-Light. I resigned today."

Tess looked at Feeney, but he was as baffled and surprised as she was. Whitney speared a sweet potato off Tess's plate.

"It's true," Tyner confirmed. "She was in my office, going over the terms of her trust, making sure it could support her at the current yen-to-dollar exchange rate."

"Tokyo on a trust fund," Feeney said. "Very brave of you."

Tess threw a piece of focaccia at his head, missing on purpose so Esskay could have a little more food. "Hey, it is brave. Whitney's finally doing something for herself, instead of fulfilling everyone's expectations of her. It may be the bravest thing she's ever done."

"I'm here," Whitney said with uncharacteristic quiet. "I can speak for myself. The fact is, things aren't going so well for me at the Beacon-Light. As it turns out, shooting an editor in the shoulder wasn't the best career move."

"You saved my life," Tess said. "Isn't that a mitigating circumstance?

"Only to the police and grand jury. At work, I make the other editors nervous now. Especially all the new ones they keep hiring. They point and whisper behind my back. ‘Shot a man in Leakin Park, just to watch him die.' I had a disagreement with my boss over punctuation recently, and he called security." Whitney sighed, then took a sip of Tess's wine, ate another of her sweet potatoes. They were back in synch again. How could Whitney move to the other side of the world?

"It's not forever," Whitney said. "Six months, maybe a year."

"But you'll be on the other side of the international date line. You'll know what's happening before I do."

"Tess-" Whitney's smile would put a Chesire cat to shame. "I always did."