Charm City

Chapter 3

Tyner Gray's law office was in an old town house on Mount Vernon Square, a pretty neighborhood clustered at the feet of George Washington, who kept watch from the top of a modest monument. "But it's older than the one in DC," some local was always quick to point out. Tess didn't care much about the monument, but she liked the pretty park outside her office window, the strains of classical music that drifted over from Peabody Conservatory, and the good restaurants in the neighborhood. Last fall, fate and circumstances had brought her here, in what was to be a temporary job. Tess had ended up staying on, although Tyner reminded her every day that her goal should be to obtain a private investigator's license and open her own office.

As she came through the heavy front door at 9:15, she could hear the whine of the old-fashioned elevator only Tyner used. Tess darted up the broad marble steps between the first and second floors, then took the narrower staircase to the third floor, confident she could beat the wheezing lift. They had timed it once with Tyner's stopwatch, the one he used when putting novice rowers through drills. It took exactly one minute and thirty-two seconds for the elevator to make the trip from first to third. By the time Tyner arrived, she was at her desk in the front room, which she shared with Alison the receptionist, making notes on an interview she had conducted last week, some woman who hoped to sue her neighbor in a boundary dispute.

"I'm not fooled, you know," Tyner said, rolling past her in his wheelchair.

"Really, Mr. Gray, she's been here all along," volunteered Alison. A preppy beauty, as overbred as a golden retriever, Alison was a good egg. She couldn't lie to save her life, though.

"I heard you on the stairs," he called back to Tess. "You have a very heavy tread. I never remember-do you pronate or supinate?"

"Pronate," she said, following him into his office, a spare, uncluttered room. In a wheelchair for almost forty years, Tyner hadn't waited for anyone to make the world accessible to him. Although his office was in a nineteenth-century town house better suited to antiques, he had chosen sleek, modern furnishings, which took up less floor space. His desk was a large, flat table, custom made so he could roll right up to it. The chairs facing it were tall and slender, expensive maple pieces with narrow strips of leather for seats. They also were wretchedly uncomfortable, and, not incidentally, reminiscent of the sliding seats in a racing shell. Rowing was Tyner's true passion, even if his years as a rower had ended up being only a fraction of his life.

"My uncle got robbed last night," Tess told him, perching on one of the chairs. "Someone worked him over pretty bad."

"Jesus. Which one? Which side?" Unavoidable questions, and difficult ones, for Tess had nine other uncles-her father's five younger brothers, her mother's four older ones. Spike was actually a cousin, and to complicate things further, no one had ever agreed to which side of the family he belonged. His last name was Orrick. Changed from O'Rourke, Tess's mother always said. Could be one of those Eastern European Jew names, her father inevitably countered, screwed up the immigration officials.

"The one who owns The Point, that bar on Franklintown Road. It was a robbery, and they were pissed because he didn't have anything."

"This city is becoming unlivable."

"You say that every other day. You're just looking for a reason to buy that house in Ruxton." This green, sheltered suburb, no more than five miles outside the city limits, was a kind of code between them, symbolizing the ultimate surrender.

Tyner smiled ruefully. "The city doesn't make it easy for a taxpayer to stay here, Tess. Especially after this winter. My street wasn't plowed or salted even once. Every time it snowed, I was stranded."

"You don't have to tell me. Remember, I was the one who drove out there five times, using cross-country skis to get up your street. You always acted as if it were a terrible imposition, having me show up with groceries."

"I wanted brandy, not food. You'll never make it as a St. Bernard, Tess."

St. Bernard. Tess's mind jumped from the past to the present, free-associating. Dog. She should call that greyhound rescue group Steve had been blathering about.

Leaving Tyner to his usual grumpy funk, she went back to her desk and flipped through the phone book until she found a listing for Greyhound Pets of Maryland.

"Greyhound Pets." The breathless person on the other end was a woman with a sweet, throaty voice. Dogs barked frantically in the background. Tess had an instant image of someone in blue jeans, covered in dog hair. Yech.

"Hi. I seem to have inherited a greyhound from my uncle and I'm trying to find out what I need to do for it. Food, exercise, routine, that stuff."

"How long has your uncle had the dog? I mean, is he a recent adoptee, or has he had him some time? How's he doing?"

Tess became confused, thinking "he" must be her uncle. Then she realized the woman was referring to the dog. "Um, pretty recent, I guess. She didn't know how to go up stairs."

"Is he from here?"

"The dog? I don't know."

"Your uncle. What's his name?"

"Spike Orrick."

"That name doesn't ring a bell, and we do most of the placements in the Baltimore area." The woman's voice suddenly sounded much less pleasant. "Are you sure he adopted this dog through proper channels? Has he gotten her fixed? You have to get them spayed or neutered, you know. It's part of the agreement. Is the dog with you now? We do have an identification system, and if you'll just…"

Tess placed the receiver back in its cradle. Who was she kidding? Spike had never gone through proper channels for anything. If only Esskay could talk. If only Spike could talk.

But a call to St. Agnes dashed those hopes: Spike was in a coma now, prognosis uncertain.

"What is so rare as a day in spring? What is so rare as a Baltimore day in March when the sun actually shines?" Tess muttered to herself, climbing the stairs to the Brass Elephant bar that evening, her mood a strange muddle of anxiety and anticipation-worry over Spike, delight at spending time in her favorite bar, with one of her favorite drinking companions.

The Brass Elephant bar was a well-kept secret and the regulars conspired to keep it that way. An inexpensive hide-away above an expensive restaurant, it had been an essential place to Tess when she was unemployed, a refuge where she could feel civilized, pampered, and well fed for as little as fifteen dollars. The lights were low, as was the volume on the stereo, with Chet Baker, Johnny Hartman, and Antonio Carlos Jobim murmuring their songs of love so quietly that one caught only an occasional rhyming whisper of love/above, art/heart, or sky/thigh. There had been an ugly scare a few years back, when a new bartender had begun playing a jazz version of the hit ballad from the latest Disney cartoon musical, but someone had quickly set her straight. The Brass Elephant survived good and bad fortune, from Maryland 's peripatetic economy to those best-of-Baltimore ratings that stumbled on its martinis, creating a brief flurry of interest among people who didn't necessarily like martinis, but liked to say they had tried the best.

Good, her favorite bartender was here. So was Feeney, settled deep in the corner banquette, fingers pinching the stem of his martini glass, a telltale mound of toothpick-skewered olives on the white tablecloth in front of him. Tess pointed to Feeney's glass, signaling she wanted the same, and slipped into the chair across the table from Feeney's slumped body. But he didn't acknowledge her, unless one considered a few muttered lines of Auden a suitable greeting.

"I sit in one of the dives / On Fifty-Second Street / Uncertain and afraid / As the clever hopes expire / Of a low dishonest decade."

Tess sighed. Richard Burton couldn't have done it much better, or much drunker. Auden was a particularly ominous sign, reserved for all-time lows. Only Yeats or Housman was worse.

"You're on Charles Street and the Brass Elephant is hardly a dive, although I won't debate you on the merits of this particular decade."

"All I have is a voice," Feeney countered, his voice slipping into a singsong cadence as he notched up the volume. "To undo the folded lie, / The romantic lie in the brain / Of the sensual man-in-the-street…"

"Is that what they did to you today? A man in the streets?" A minor complaint, one Feeney could be jollied out of. Tess knew the real folded lie was the media's never-flagging belief that ordinary people knew anything about current events. Whenever anything big happened far away, the editors sent reporters into the street to sample the common sense of the common man.

The bartender appeared at the table with her drink. The ritual was part of the pleasure-his wrist action with the shaker, the way he poured the martini with a nice bit of showmanship. Tess took a sip and immediately felt better, stronger, smarter, ready for Feeney in extremis.

"So what was today's question? Something about NATO? NATO is always good for a man-in-the-street. I remember back in my Star days, when someone in Pigtown thought NATO was an indoor swimming pool the mayor wanted to build in Patterson Park."

"You disappoint me, Tess," Feeney said balefully, gnawing on one of the toothpicks from the pile in front of him. "You're as literal minded as my dumb-fuck editors."

Tess took a second, more generous sip from her glass, relishing its chill and the tiny tongue of heat behind it. Truly a lovely drink.

"It's nice to see you, too, Feeney."

"Nice to see me? You can't even bear to look at me."

Lost in his own private pity party, Feeney had spoken an unwitting truth. Tess was avoiding his eyes, squinted tight from bitterness, and his turned-down smirk. Feeney had always been gray-gray-blue eyes, gray-blond hair, even a grayish-pink pallor, only a few shades lighter than the undercooked hot dogs he bought from the sidewalk vendors outside the courthouse. But tonight, everything looked a little ashier than usual, as if he wasn't getting enough oxygen. Against his drained face, the broken blood vessels on his cheeks were stark blue road maps leading nowhere. Gin blossoms, the one flower you could count on finding year-round in sodden Baltimore.

"What's wrong, Feeney?"

"My career is over."

"You make that announcement once a month."

"Yeah, but usually it's only free-floating paranoia. Tonight, I got the word officially. I don't belong. Not a team player." The last sentence came out so slurry it sounded more like "Knotty template."

"They couldn't have fired you." The Beacon-Light was a union paper, which made it difficult for them to dismiss employees, although far from impossible. But Feeney was good, a pro. They'd have a hard time building a case against him. Unless he had done it for them, by ignoring an editor's orders. Insubordination was grounds for immediate termination.

"Suppose you had written the story of your life, Tess?" he asked, leaning toward her, his face so close to hers that she could smell the gin on his breath, along with the undertones of tobacco. Strange-Feeney had given up smoking years ago. "The best story you could ever imagine. Suppose it had everything you could ask for in a story, and everything had at least two sources? And suppose those goddamn rat bastard cowardly pointy-head incompetents wouldn't publish it?"

"This has something to do with that basketball rally, doesn't it? The story you wouldn't tell me about last night."

Feeney picked up his fork and began stabbing the happy hour ravioli, until little spurts of tomato sauce and cheese freckled the tablecloth. "Well, I can tell you now. In fact, the only way anyone is ever going to hear this story is if I tell it to 'em. Maybe I could stand on a street corner with a sign, offering to read it at a buck a pop."

"How good is it? How big?"

He slipped back into his singsong poetry voice. "Wink Wynkowski, Baltimore's best hope for luring a basketball team back to Baltimore, has many things in his past he prefers no one know about, especially the NBA. His business is a house of cards, perhaps on the brink of bankruptcy, beset by lawsuits, from ambulances to zippers. He may be able to get up the scratch for a team, but he isn't liquid enough to keep it going."

"Then why buy it if it's going to make him broke?"

"Good question. Two answers. He's a fool-doubtful. Or he plans to unload the team pretty quickly, as soon as the city builds him that brand-new arena, which will double the team's value overnight."

"That seems a little far-fetched."

"Hey, remember Eli Jacobs? He bought the Orioles for $70 million in the 1980s. When his business collapsed in the recession, he sold them for almost $175 million and it was Camden Yards, paid for by the state, that made the team so valuable. If Wink can keep all his spinning plates aloft for a couple of years and sell the team before his creditors come calling, he stands to see a huge profit."

"Is there more?" Feeney scowled. "Not that there has to be," she added hastily. "You connected the dots, and I can see the picture."

"But there is more. Much more. Dark secrets. A rancorous first marriage. Bad habits, the kind professional sports can't abide. How much would you pay for this story? $39.95? $49.95? $59.95? Wait, don't answer-what if we throw in a set of ginsu knives?" He began to laugh a little hysterically, then caught himself. "Trust me, Tess. It's solid. I wish my house had been built on a foundation half as good."

"Then why won't the paper print it?"

"All sorts of reasons. They say we don't have it nailed. They say it's racist to cover an NBA deal so aggressively when we let football, which appeals to a white fan base, slip into town without a whimper. They say we used too many unidentified sources, but some of the people who talked to me still work for Wink, Tess. They have damn good reasons to want to be anonymous. One guy in particular. The top editors told us this afternoon we had to turn over the names of all our sources before they ran the story. They knew I couldn't do that, I'd see my story spiked first. Which was the point. They want an excuse to kill the story because they don't trust us."

"Us?"

"Me and Rosie. You met her. She's good, for a rookie. You ought to see the stuff she dug up on Wink's first marriage."

"It's probably her they don't trust, then. Because she's new, and young."

Feeney shook his head. "New and young is better than old and old at the Beacon-Light these days. Her. Me. Both of us. I don't know and I don't care anymore. I'm tired, Tess. I'm so tired, and it's such a good story, and all I want to do is go to sleep right here on the table, wake up, and find out they're going to print it after all."

"Feeney, I'm sure they'll do right by you, and you'll have your big scoop," she said, pushing his water glass closer to him, hoping to distract him. He seems to be settling down, she thought. Maybe the evening can be salvaged.

Feeney lurched to his feet, martini glass still firmly in hand. "This isn't about me, or my big scoop!" he shouted. The other people in the bar looked up, startled and apprehensive.

"Okay, it is about me," he hissed, bending down so only Tess could hear him. He had drunk so much that gin seemed to be coming through his pores. "It's about my career, or what's left of it. But it's also about all that important stuff newspapers are suppose to be about. You know-truth, justice, the first amendment, the fourth estate. We're not suppose to be cheerleaders, going ‘Rah-rah-rah, give us the ball.' We're the goddamn watchdogs, the only ones who care if the city is getting a good deal, or being used by some scumbag."

He swayed a little as he spoke, and his words were soft, virtually without consonants, but he wasn't as drunk as she would have been on five martinis. His melancholy had a stronger grip on him than the liquor.

"Feeney, what do you want me to do about it?" Tess wasn't the best audience for a speech on the glories of journalism.

"Why, drink to the end of my career!" he roared, toasting the room with his now empty glass. The crowd, mostly regulars, raised their glasses back in fond relief. This was the Feeney they knew, acting up for an audience.

"What are you so happy about?" a white-haired man called out from the bar.

"Am I happy? Am I free? The question is absurd! For it is a far, far better thing I do now than I have ever done before!"

Feeney smashed his ratty cap onto his head and swept out of the bar, the tasseled ends of his plaid muffler flying behind him, martini glass still in hand. Tess was left behind with a half-finished martini, Feeney's tab, and no company for the tortellini she had planned to order. Feeney knew how to make an exit, credit him that. Only the Tale of Two Cities allusion was the slightest bit off-too recognizable for Feeney's taste. He preferred more obscure lines, like his penultimate one, Am I happy? Am I free? It was tauntingly familiar, but she couldn't place the source.

It wasn't even eight o'clock and she was now alone, as well as ravenously hungry. And Tess loathed eating alone in restaurants. A character flaw, she knew, and a reproach to feminists everywhere, but there it was. She finished her drink, took care of Feeney's staggering bill, along with her own, then left. She could stop at the Eddie's on Eager, grab a frozen dinner for herself, maybe a stupid magazine to read in the bathtub. Damn Feeney. Her big night out had been reduced to no company, one gulped drink, and a frozen low-fat lasagna.

But when she reached her apartment thirty minutes later, the fragrant smells in the hallway came from her own kitchen, not Kitty's. Her nose identified lamb, hot bread, baking apples. She took the steps two at a time, leaping as wildly as Esskay had that morning.

Crow met her at the door, wrapping his lanky frame around her before she could take off her coat or put down the grocery bag.

"I didn't expect to see you here," she muttered into his scratchy wool sweater, hoping he couldn't see how pleased she was. "I left a message on your machine that I was going out with Feeney tonight."

"I closed for Kitty tonight, so I figured I'd let myself in and make some dinner. Worst case scenario, you'd come home from your drinking date all giggly and fun, I'd tuck you in, then eat lamb stew and apple pie for lunch tomorrow."

"Trust me, Feeney was neither giggly nor fun tonight."

Crow wasn't really listening. He was kissing her brow and her ears, patting her all over, always a little surprised to see her again, even in her own apartment.

"Your face is cold, Tesser," he said, using the childhood nickname she had given herself, a blending of her two names, Theresa Esther. A name reserved for family and very old friends. Crow was neither of those things, not in five months' time. He was twenty-three to her twenty-nine, a happy, careless twenty-three, with glossy black hair almost as long as hers, although usually with a green or red stripe, and a bounce in his walk. It still surprised her that she had to look up to see his thin, angular face, as if their age difference meant he must be shorter, too.

"What do you think of the new addition?" she asked, pointing with her chin toward Esskay, who was staring at Tess as if trying to place her.

"She's cool. Kitty and I took her out for a walk earlier, then made her some rice and steamed vegetables. She's a very old soul, our new dog."

Tess frowned. "Our" was a word to be avoided at all costs. Their rules of engagement-more precisely, their rules of disengagement-said no shared books or CDs, dutch treat for all meals out, and no joint purchases of any kind.

But all she said was: "I don't know why you made it rice and vegetables. I have a twenty-pound bag of kibble."

"I like to cook for my women," he said, pulling out her chair at the mission table that did double duty as a dining room table and Tess's desk. "Hey, did I tell you Poe White Trash has a gig Saturday?"

"Where?"

"The Floating Opera."

"I guess this means I can't request any Rodgers and Hart," she said, trying not to make a face. The Floating Opera was an ongoing rave with no fixed location, hop-scotching across the city-or, at least, its more fashionably decadent neighborhoods-according to a pattern understood only by its denizens. As a result, the F.O. had none of the amenities of a real club, such as alcohol, food, or bathrooms, and all the drawbacks: cigarette smoke, too-loud music, too-young crowd.

"Rodgers and Hart," Crow groaned. "We don't go in for that retro crap."

"Elvis Costello sang ‘My Funny Valentine.'"

"Tesser, Elvis Costello is old enough to be my father."

"But not old enough to be mine, right?"

He smiled, disarming her. "Was Feeney's mood contagious? Or are you itching for a fight tonight?"

"A little of both," she confessed, and, embarrassed by her crankiness, scooped up her stew meekly and quietly.

With dinner done, she put the bowls in the sink, only to have Crow snatch them back for Esskay, who made quick work of their leftovers. Crow patted the dog and thumped her sides. For a skinny dog, she had a lot of muscle tone: Crow's affectionate smacks sounded solid, drumlike.

"Is stew good for her, after all that rice and vegetables?" Tess asked, remembering Steve's dire predictions from the morning.

"Kitty had this book, in the ‘Women and Hobbies' section, on greyhounds," Crow said, rubbing Esskay's belly. The dog had a glazed look in her eyes, as if she might faint from pleasure. "It said they usually need to gain weight after they leave the track, so I don't think a little stew will hurt, although the woman who wrote the book recommended making your own dog food, from rice and vegetables. She also said you're suppose to put ointment on these raw patches, like for diaper rash."

The dog shoved her nose under Crow's armpit and began rooting around as if there might be truffles hidden in the crevices of his fraying thrift shop sweater. Crow laughed and gave the dog another round of smacks, then sang, in a wordless falsetto, "Rou-rou-rou."

Esskay answered back, in a higher key, the vowel sounds slightly more compact, "Ru-ru-ru."

"I'm not really a Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy fan," Tess said, turning on the stereo. Sarah Vaughan's voice filled the room, drowning out the Crow-and-canine duet. "And I'm beginning to feel like three's a crowd. Would you two like to be alone?"

Crow walked over to her and gave Tess's backside the same affectionate thump he had given the greyhound. Tess was solid, too, but meatier, so her tone was deeper, mellower.

"I'd put ointment on your raw patches if you had any," he whispered. "Do you have anything that burns, Tesser?"

Through her clothes, his hands sought out the places where bones could be felt-the ribs below the heavy breasts, the pelvis bones sharp in her round hips, the knobby elbows. He pulled her blouse out of her long, straight skirt and stuck one hand under the waistband, rubbing her belly as he had rubbed Esskay's. With the other hand, he traced the lines of her jawbone and her mouth, then moved to her throat and the base of her neck, where he freed the strands of her long braid.

"Do you like this, Tess?" She could only nod.

Sarah was running through the list of the things she didn't need for romance: Spanish castles, haunting dances, full moons, blue lagoons. The greyhound moaned to herself, softly now, almost in tune. "Ru-ru-ru." Tess's breath caught and she reached for Crow's face. Sex would seem almost less intimate than this, and therefore much safer.

"Tesser?" Crow held her wrists, forcing her to meet his gaze.

She waited, apprehensive about what he might say next. Afraid he would start lobbying to move in again. Afraid he would say he loved her. Afraid he would say he didn't.

Sarah sang that her heart stood still. Tess's was beating faster and faster.

"Let's go to bed," Crow said.