Charm City

Chapter 1

Nothing wet was falling out of the sky. No snow, no ice, no hail, no rain changing to sleet, no sleet changing to rain. And that was reason enough, Tess Monaghan decided, to feel celebratory. She would walk home from work instead of taking her usual bus, maybe stop at Bertha's and squinch up her nose at the tourists eating mussels, or nurse something warm and alcoholic at Henniger's. A March Monday night in Baltimore would never be Mardi Gras, or even Lundi Gras, but it could have its moments, for savvy natives inclined to seek them out. Tess was inclined. For the first time in more than two years, she had a full-time job and a full-time boyfriend. Her life might not have the party-all-the-time euphoria of a beer commercial, but it was definitely edging into International Coffee territory.

The first few blocks of her walk home were deserted. Downtown tended to empty out early. But as Tess approached the Inner Harbor, she suddenly found herself in the thick of a jazzed-up, happy crowd. Were those klieg lights up ahead? Tess might have left newspaper reporting behind, but her instincts could still be juiced. Besides, she had caught a whiff of food-hot dogs, popcorn, pretzels, something sweet and scorched. Cotton candy, one of those seductive foods that smelled so much better than it tasted.

"It's all free, hon," a vendor said, holding out a hot dog slathered with mustard and relish. "Courtesy of the Keys." Tess had no idea what he was talking about, but she took the hot dog anyway.

What would draw so many people to the harbor on a usually dead Monday evening, she wondered, finishing off the free dog in three bites. Businessmen types, coming from work. Young men in athletic gear and polished-looking women in gabardine raincoats, high heels striking sidewalks only recently liberated from the last ice storm. Then there were the suburban moms, in leggings, oversize sweaters, and fluffy jackets, holding tight to the hands of small children, who held even tighter to small black-and-violet flags.

Carried along by the crowd and its feverish anticipation, Tess found herself at the small outdoor amphitheater between Harborplace's two pavilions. Hundreds of people were already there, massed in front of the small stage. A man with a bullhorn, a local television anchor, was leading a chant. It took Tess a moment to understand the blurred, electronically amplified words.

"Slam dunk! Jam one! Slam dunk! Jam one!"

Other men filed out, a ragtag basketball team in black-and-violet warm-up outfits. Some wore shorts, their legs all purple gooseflesh in the brisk evening. Who would be crazy enough to come out like that on a night like this? Tess recognized the governor. That figured; he had never met a costume he didn't like. But the mayor, not known for his sense of whimsy, was there as well in a black warm-up suit, his trademark Kente cloth tie peeking over the zipper. Tess spotted another television type, two state senators, and a few pituitary cases from the old Baltimore Bullets, now the Washington Wizards, renamed in deference to that city's homicide rate. Surprisingly, the name change hadn't done much to quell the capital's violence.

"Slam dunk! Jam one! Slam dunk! Jam one!"

Beneath the crowd's chant, Tess picked out a tinny recording, the city's onetime public service jingle, which had encouraged people to keep the streets clean by playing "trash ball." She remembered it vaguely. The city's orange-and-white wastebaskets had been decorated with slogans such as Jam One! or Dunk One! Then they'd ended the campaign and collectors of Baltimorebilia had stolen the trash cans before they could be taken off the streets and repainted.

Another man limped out on stage, an aging athlete whose cane gave his garish warm-up suit a strangely aristocratic look. "Toooooooooooch. Toooooooooooch," men yodeled and a few women actually screamed when he acknowledged the cheer with a thumb's-up. Yes, Paul Tucci still had his Loyola boy good looks and the build of the star athlete he had once been, although he was fleshier since his much-publicized knee replacement surgery earlier in the winter. Tess suspected the women were swooning not for the Tucci physique, but for the Tucci fortune, which had started in olive oil, then oozed into virtually every aspect of Baltimore life, from food importing to waste disposal. "The Tuccis get you coming and going," it was commonly said.

The music on the P.A. system changed to the sprightly, whistling version of "Sweet Georgia Brown" associated with the Harlem Globetrotters. The governor, inexpertly dribbling a basketball, broke from the group, jigged forward, then passed the ball to the mayor, throwing it over his head. They had never worked together very well. The mayor recovered nicely, retrieving the ball and passing it beneath his legs to a state delegate with a quite new, quite bad hair transplant. The crowd roared its approval. For the pass or the plugs? Tess wondered. Tucci caught the ball and spun it on the tip of his cane, prompting a few more female screams. Then the real basketball players came forward, upstaging the pols with their perfunctorily perfect passes and moves.

After a few minutes, the television anchor-At least he's not dumb enough to come out here bare-legged, Tess noted-seized the floor again.

"Hellooooo, Baltimore." The crowd caroled the greeting back. "As you know, the city has been without basketball since 1972 and has only recently seen the return of football, despite the initial reluctance of the National Football League-"

"Kill the commissioner!" screamed one frenzied fan, straight into Tess's right eardrum. "Kill Tagliabue! Damn Bob Irsay! Fuck the rotting corpse of Bob Irsay!" Irsay had taken the Baltimore Colts away on a snowy night in 1984, and although the city had a new football team and Irsay was dead, he was still anathema. Baltimore sometimes forgot, but it never forgave.

The television anchor continued smoothly over the outburst. "But one man never said die. And now that man is going to bring basketball back to Baltimore. Within days, he expects to sign a letter of intent with a pro franchise that wants to relocate to Charm City. In return, the city has agreed to build a beautiful new facility, and you fans turned out tonight to show the NBA we can support a team here. Now, that's teamwork!"

And a great use of tax dollars, Tess thought sourly. Then again, the state had already done the same for the Orioles and the Ravens. If ever a city needed a self-help book, it was Baltimore: Towns That Love Sports Too Much, and the Greedy Team Owners Who Use Them.

"So please welcome the team captain, the guy who's brought us this far, the guy who ‘winked' at everyone who told him it couldn't be done, our very own Gerard ‘Wink' Wynkowski."

A slender, not quite tall man bounded onstage. He had bypassed the warm-ups in favor of a violet polo shirt, black jeans, and a black leather bikers' jacket. Gray-and-white cowboy boots of some exotic and politically dubious skin-ostrich, maybe snake-added a few inches to his height, so he appeared lanky alongside the governor and mayor. Shrewdly, he kept his distance from the former pros, who would have dwarfed him.

"Are you ready for some basketball?" he drawled, in an unmistakably Baltimore accent.

His face, angular and sharp, was deeply tanned, his brown curls worn in a white boy's Afro. Tess recalled a caricature of that sharp face and wild hair as the logo for one of his businesses, but which one? In the past decade, Wink's company, Montrose Enterprises, had created a half-dozen businesses, each more successful than the last.

"Wink! Wink! Wink! Wink!" the crowd yelled to their sports savior, much as they had yelled it on high school basketball courts twenty-five years ago, when the idea of a 5'11" Polish kid going on to a pro career had not seemed quite so ridiculous. His last name had provided the nickname, of course-his last name and, it was rumored, a tendency to hoodwink anyone he could.

"You guys are the greatest," he told the crowd. "You came out on a night like this, not even knowing which team I'm negotiating with. Imagine how many people will be here in a week's time, when I expect to make an official announcement about our new team, the Baltimore Keys."

The crowd chanted back eagerly: "Jam one! Slam dunk! Jam one! Slam dunk! Jam one! Slam dunk!"

Tess moved forward through the cheering crowd, curious enough to want a better look at this local hero. Wink's life story was straight out of some old thirties movie: a fatherless young hood who was actually rehabilitated in the system after a string of petty crimes had landed him in the infamous Montrose facility for juveniles. She had known he was rich, but hadn't realized his restaurants and health clubs had made him enough money to consider buying a sports team.

When the crowd became too dense to let her advance through the center, she cut left, zigzagging until she was down front, but far to the side. This close up, Wink's flat blue eyes were not the merry or dancing lights she would have expected above such a broad grin. Large and grave in his small face, they took everything in and gave nothing back.

Suddenly, someone shoved Tess roughly from behind, with the sense of entitlement found only in popes, royalty, and television news crews. Given that the Pope wasn't expected back for a while, and native daughter Wallis War-field Simpson was the closest Baltimore had come to the throne in this century, Tess knew she would be face to lens with a cameraman when she turned around. She had wandered into the media clot, where the television reporters were taping segments for the 11 o'clock news.

"You're in my shot," the cameraman hissed at her.

"How inconsiderate of me." She didn't move-at least, not right away.

Nearby, two print reporters, a man and woman, stood with notebooks in hand. The woman scribbled madly, while the man just stared at Wink as if he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. For a moment, Tess felt as if she should be with them, as if she, too, should have a notebook. Then she recognized the man-not by his face, which was turned away from her, but by his ankles, always bare, even on a night like this.

"Feeney!" she yelled. He looked up warily from beneath the bill of his battered wool baseball cap, smiling when he saw it was Tess who had called his name.

"Darlin' Tess!" Kevin Feeney called back, beckoning to her. "Come over here. We're just gathering atmosphere."

The young woman at his side surveyed Tess in one quick, lethal glance. Tess could almost hear her brain clicking away on the sort of points system that some women used: Taller-1 point for her. Hippy-1 point against. Big breasts, long hair-2 points for. Hair, unstyled, worn in a braid down her back-2 points against. Older than me-3 points against. Face, okay. Clothes, not stylish, not embarrassing. Tess wasn't sure of her final score, but apparently it was just a little too high. The woman gave her a terrifyingly fake smile, one that suggested she had little experience with real ones, and held out her hand.

"Rosita Ruiz." Ouch-a bad case of NPR disease. The Rs rolled off her tongue like ball bearings and the T was an aural machete. Rosita seized Tess by the hand, pinching the flesh between thumb and index finger the way a crab pinches one's toes in the surf. Tess, who often did grip-strengthening exercises with an old tennis ball as she spoke on the phone, took pleasure in squeezing Rosita's hand back, taking her own inventory as she did.

Short, but most women looked short to Tess. Built like a gymnast-slender above the waist, stocky and firmly rooted below. With her even features and glossy black hair, she should have been striking, even beautiful, but something had soured her looks.

"Tess Monaghan," she said, dropping Rosita's hand and turning back to Feeney. "I can't believe you're covering this. Don't they have interns to do this kind of crap? Or sportswriters? You belong in the courthouse, covering real news."

"I told you. We're here for color. Sparkling details."

"For what?"

"Can't say, darling, can't say."

"When Feeney says color, he doesn't mean it literally," Rosita explained earnestly. "You see, in newspapers, color means-"

"Tess used to be one of us," Feeney interrupted gently, although Tess sensed no interruption was ever gentle enough for Rosita. "Now she's a private investigator."

"Well, sort of. I still have to get my license. But I'm definitely no longer a member of the fourth estate." Funny, it didn't hurt to say that anymore. The Star was dead, life had gone on, Baltimore was a one-newspaper town, and the one paper, for better or worse, was the Beacon-Light-the Blight, as it was known by its often less-than-satisfied customers.

"Well, let us know when you do. Maybe Rosita can write a little feature about you when you crack a big case. Tess Monaghan, the rowing P.I."

"No rowing this time of year," Tess reminded him. "That's for the real diehards. I'll go back on the water on April Fool's Day, not a day sooner."

Feeney didn't hear her. He was practically glowing, lighted from within by his secret story. It could be about politics, Tess guessed, given the cast of characters onstage. A new profile of the governor would require a fresh anecdote about his propensity to make himself ridiculous. Or the Tucci family might be using its considerable clout to ensure another concession for its trash disposal business, which found fewer and fewer neighborhoods wanted an incinerator down the street. Like most rich families, they were quick to cry poverty whenever a state regulation or a new fee got in their way.

No, it was more likely that Feeney was writing about the main event, about Wink and this basketball deal. But what did any of this have to do with the courthouse? And why assign a feature writer to help?

"Let's have a drink, soon," Tess said, lowering her voice so Rosita wouldn't think the invitation was being extended to her as well. "It's been too long."

He laughed. "You just want to pump me for details."

"Fair enough. But what's it to you if I interrogate you over a round of drinks at the Brass Elephant? You'll get a free drink out of it, and probably won't answer my questions anyway. Tomorrow night? Seven-thirty?"

"Make it eight. Who knows-it may be time to celebrate by then."

"Okay. 'Til then." She squeezed his hand, then lied to Rosita. "Nice meeting you."

The young woman smiled, a tight-lipped little V that dropped the temperature ten degrees. Okay, I wasn't exactly warm, either. But Tess figured she had only been responding to the little reporter's bitchiness, smashing it back the way one returned a tough first serve in tennis. Rosita wore her ambition the way oldtime reporters wore trench coats. On her young frame, it wasn't particularly becoming.

Tess grabbed another free hot dog and tried to make it last for the rest of the walk home. Out of eighteen blocks, she ended up only sixteen short. Still, she was happy and full when she arrived at her apartment. She decided to stop in her aunt's bookstore on the ground level and rehash the rally for her. Kitty had a fine appreciation of the absurd, as evidenced by her store's name, Women and Children First.

"Oh, Tesser, where have you been?" Kitty cried out, before she could even begin to act out the governor's spastic dribbling, the mayor's pseudo-cool manuvers, Tucci's gimpy plays. "Tommy's been calling and calling. He just missed you at your office, and he's been phoning here every five minutes since then-"

"Tommy, Spike's hysterical busboy? What, did someone steal the lifts from his shoes? Take an extra handful of pretzels, or walk a seven-dollar check? Trust me, Kitty, Tommy's calls are never the emergencies he thinks they are."

Kitty's blue eyes were bright with tears. "It's your Uncle Spike, Tess. He's at St. Agnes Hospital. Someone tried to rob The Point and the crazy old goat tried to stop them-and he almost did."

"Only almost?"

"Only almost."