In A Strange City

Chapter 8

Cecilia. Cecilia Cesnik.“ Tess had hoped to catch up with her casually, to create the illusion their paths had crossed accidentally. But Cecilia had barreled out of the roped-off press area in such a rush that Tess had practically chased her down Fayette and onto President Street, overtaking her outside the garish facade of Port Discovery.

Cecilia Cesnik had always been in a rush.

She stopped and turned at the sound of her name, smiling warily. The wariness did not fade when she recognized who had called after her.

“Tess Monaghan,” she said, after a beat. It was not a pause to grope for a name, but a moment of reflection, as if she weren’t sure what to say or if she wanted to say anything at all. “What can I do for you?”

That was the assumption in the world Cecilia had chosen: Everyone always had an agenda. After all, she did.

In looks, she was remarkably unchanged from the young law student Tess had met two years ago, when they were both rearranging their assumptions about what their lives might be. Her face was, if anything, more delicate, her dark hair still a short feathery cap that enhanced her birdlike appearance. Cecilia had been Cece then, a scared but determined East Baltimore girl who had decided she wanted more from life than a neighborhood boy and a march down the aisle in a twenty-pound white dress, followed by a reception in her father’s tavern and sixty years of not much else.

But Cece had been more tentative, too, her assertive-ness waxing and waning. This diffident manner had been dropped, along with the nickname.

“You haven’t changed much,” Tess observed, referring to the surface details.

Cecilia bristled. Tess had a feeling she would have taken equal offense if the opposite opinion had been offered. “You’re one to talk. Don’t you ever get a yearning to cut off all that hair?”

“I get a trim every six months, or when the tip of my braid passes my bra strap. Whichever comes first. It’s kind of like Jiffy Lube, three months or three thousand miles. I should have one of those little stickers on my mirror.”

“I’d hate to be a slave to my hair.”

“Long hair is as easy as short, when you wear it like this.”

“Huh.”

Cecilia was an extremist about hair. Getting rid of what she had called her Highlandtown hair-a cascading fountain of teased dyed curls-had been the beginning of her transformation. The Baltimore accent had not been shed so easily, but it came off too, eventually.

The final step had been going home one night and telling her widowed father there would be no son-in-law, but how did he feel about daughters-in-law? Mr. Cesnik had rallied admirably. The last time Tess had seen Cecilia, she had been clerking for Tyner Gray between her second and third years of law school, and Tess had been diving into Dumpsters throughout Highlandtown, trying to confirm Mr. Cesnik’s suspicions that his competitors in the tavern trade were serving frozen pierogies and passing them off as fresh.

But that had been the summer before last. Cecilia must have graduated by now, assuming she hadn’t been so consumed by her various causes that she had stopped going to classes.

“So, you’re a lawyer?”

Cecilia nodded. “Passed the bar on my first try. I’m working for a small firm that does mostly civil work. This is strictly extracurricular.”

“And this is-”

“I work with a local advocacy group for gays and lesbians. It’s pretty ad hoc, not as organized as ACT UP. We meet on Sundays in a little office down at the Medical Arts building, swinging into action when we have something specific we want to address: bills before the City Council or the General Assembly. Or a threat to our community, such as this.”

“I’m sorry,” Tess said, shaking her head, feeling dense. Cecilia had always had that effect on her. She was one of those people who could never remember that others didn’t have access to her every thought, who sped ahead, impatient with those who didn’t keep up with lightning-quick logic. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Okay, a hate crime. And Bobby Hilliard was the victim? Someone stalked him, following him to Poe’s grave and killing him because he was gay?”

Nothing made Cecilia more impatient than a question she couldn’t answer. She flapped a hand, as if to wave off an approaching panhandler.

“We don’t know everything just yet. We do have a tip that police are looking into this crime in conjunction with the attack on Shawn Hayes in his Mount Vernon home, right around New Year’s. Do you know him? He sits on a lot of the artsy boards. He was beaten so badly he’s in intensive care. He’ll probably die the moment his family takes him off life support.”

Cecilia’s voice was flat, almost emotionless. Her passion was for the big picture, not puny individuals.

“Is this what the Blight was alluding to, in its on-line site? Aunt Kitty mentioned it to me yesterday.”

Cecilia’s face brightened. “I remember your aunt Kitty and her bookstore. She was lovely.”

Tess was so used to everyone falling in love with Kitty that the remark barely registered. “She still is. Anyway, what’s the link between Hayes and Bobby Hilliard?”

“That’s what we want the police to tell us. A sympathetic officer passed along the tip that the cops think the two cases might be linked. But our source is in vice; he doesn’t know anything more. We fear some homophobic maniac has progressed from beating his victims to shooting them-which makes this a public safety issue for a large number of Baltimore residents, something the police seem reluctant to acknowledge. If this was someone who preyed on women, or children, the police-and the press-would have trumpeted the fact long ago.”

Tess shrugged, unconvinced. The police usually had good reasons for not telling everything they knew. The press, too, much as she hated to impugn any good motives to them.

“So do you know for a fact that Shawn Hayes was beaten by some homophobic creep?”

“No-but it was brutal and nothing was taken. The problem is, Shawn Hayes wasn’t out-out.”

“Out-out?”

“His friends were aware of how he lived his life, and he had been in long-term relationships over the years, but he was still… extremely private. He has grown children from a marriage that ended in divorce years ago. I mean, his kids know, of course, but he was never in-your-face.”

Tess thought about the Hilliards’ confused expressions at the press conference. Shawn Hayes wasn’t the only person who wasn’t out-out.

“Then I can see the cops’ reluctance about discussing the lead publicly. You don’t want to start talking about hate crimes against gay men if the victims aren’t openly gay.”

“Why not?” Cecilia’s anger flared as suddenly as a manhole cover popping from some unseen pocket of pressure. “Is it so awful to be gay? Is it libelous to be called a homosexual? Do you get upset when someone mistakes you for a nice Catholic girl, because of your last name and freckles?”

“No,” Tess said slowly, trying not to rise to the bait. For the first time, she understood what was meant when it was said someone was spoiling for a fight. There was something sour about Cecilia right now, as if the confrontation with Rainer had left her feeling unsatisfied, unfinished. “And I let a lot of anti-Semitic remarks go by, because most people don’t know there’s a Weinstein inside the Monaghan and it’s not always worth the effort to remind them. But you can’t go around claiming a crime for your own political ends before all the facts are in. What if you’re wrong? If you shape these two crimes in such a way as to influence the public, you run the risk of confusing potential witnesses who might have information that doesn’t gibe with your scenario.”

“I don’t see how. It’s up to the homicide cops to pursue all the leads they have. I didn’t notice they had many. Did you?”

“No, they don’t seem to know much.”

The conversation stalled. Tess was reminded of the reasons she and Cecilia had dropped out of one another’s lives, once their missions were no longer congruent. Cecilia’s awakening as an activist had crowded out everything she deemed discretionary. Tess hadn’t made the cut.

“About Rainer-” She stopped, aware she was going to give advice she herself had been given but never taken.

“The cop? What about him?”

“I wouldn’t make an enemy out of him. He doesn’t have the biggest brain, but he does have a capacious memory. He remembers every slight and not much else. It’s a deadly combination.”

“This isn’t about him. It’s not personal.”

“He won’t see it that way. It’s his case; that was his press conference.” She stopped, distracted by the memory of the mob scene on War Memorial Plaza. How tiny the Hilliards had looked between those huge horses. “I feel bad for the parents.”

“Of course. Their son is dead.”

“His… lifestyle doesn’t seem to have any reality to them. It’s not just that they didn’t understand the concept of a hate crime. It’s that they couldn’t see how their son could be the victim of one. Did you really need to press it home?”

“Bobby Hilliard wasn’t in the closet.”

“He moved almost two hundred miles away to live the way he wanted to. Maybe he was willing to allow his parents a certain amount of denial about a choice they might not understand or accept.”

“It’s not a choice.” Cecilia lifted her chin. “Besides, this is bigger than one cop, one family, or two grieving parents. This affects an entire community.”

“If you’re right. A vice cop’s half-assed tip isn’t a guarantee of anything.”

“Well, that’s all I’m trying to find out. Rainer could have answered my questions over the phone-if he had deigned to take my calls. He didn’t want to play. So I had to move the game into the open. What brings you here, anyway?”

Tess used the excuse she had prepared for Rainer. “I was just passing by, wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

“Ever curious, aren’t you, Tess?” Cecilia held out her hand, an oddly formal gesture that served only to remind Tess how distant they had become. “Well, it was nice seeing you. Drop by Shawn Hayes’s house on Mount Vernon at six, if you want, watch me go live on all the stations, one after another. I’ve turned into quite the pro.”

“You were always a pro,” Tess said, “but I don’t think I could stomach another media event today. Why don’t you call me sometime, and we’ll have a drink?”

“You got an office now?”

“An office, a house, a dog, and a boyfriend. I’m downright respectable. You?”

“An office, an apartment, a cat, and a girlfriend. I guess I’m pretty respectable, too. We’ve come a ways, haven’t we, since I knocked you on your ass in that coffee bar. Remember?”

“Only because you had the element of surprise going for you,” Tess felt obliged to point out. “Under any other circumstance, I could have taken you.”

“Sure you could, Tess. Sure you could.” But for the first time since they had begun speaking, Cecilia was smiling, her features genuinely warm. Then she turned and rushed down the street toward a pay parking lot.

Tess wished she was always so sure of where she was going.