In A Strange City

Chapter 25

I knew I wasn’t going to accomplish anything. But it felt good, hitting you. I owed you.“

Most assault victims do not invite their attackers into their homes for tea and brandy much less share the Entenmann’s coffee cake that was to be the next day’s breakfast. But Tess, despite the ringing in her ears and the disorientation brought on by Gretchen’s sneak attack, had been able to think quickly enough to offer a deal: Talk now, and there would be no charges later.

“I haven’t done anything to you,” Tess said, handing Gretchen a mug of tea, which she put down on the floor, uninterested, and a snifter of brandy, which she bolted in one gulp.

“You almost cost me my license, twice.” Gretchen appealed to Crow, as if he were the chief justice on a neutral panel comprising him, Esskay and Miata. The three perched solemnly on the foldout sofa, while Gretchen had the one comfortable chair in the room.

Tess sat cross-legged on the floor in front of an electric heater, warming her back and massaging the tender muscles in her neck.

“How did Tess do that?” Crow asked.

“First she rats me out to Pitts, telling him I didn’t see the visitation because I got screwed up about the date. And then, the minute she gets called in by the cops, she has to throw my name around. Baltimore PD and I are not exactly on the best terms. It’s better for me when they forget I’m out here.”

“Why is that?” Tess was curious to hear if the answer matched with what Rainer had told her.

“We have some… history.” In someone else’s mouth, this might have sounded like a euphemism. But there was something raw and unfiltered about Gretchen O’Brien tonight. She seemed to be speaking carefully, groping toward the truth as best she could.

“I’ll be honest, if you’ll be honest,” Tess said. “The first time, with Pitts, getting you in trouble wasn’t my goal, but I didn’t lose any sleep over it. You broke into my office, told me I was a piece of shit, and wouldn’t tell me why you were there. So, yeah, it felt a little good, letting Pitts know you had screwed up. It didn’t occur to me you had lied to him about it, tried to take money under false circumstances.”

Gretchen looked into the bowl of the brandy snifter the way Esskay sometimes stared at her supper dish, as if her powers of concentration could summon the food back. Crow walked over and tipped the bottle into her glass.

“I was playing catch-up. That’s why I came to your office and talked my way into Bobby Hilliard’s apartment. I figured no one knew much anyway, and I wouldn’t have been able to follow the guy even if I’d been there, because of the shooting. If I had been there, I would have run, because Pitts sure as hell didn’t want me talking to the cops.”

“I imagine Pitts saw it differently.”

“Yeah, he had me where he wanted me. He said if I told anyone about him, he’d complain to the state licensing division, tell them I took his money under false pretenses. I thought he’d make me do some more work for free, but no, he just wanted to make sure I knew he could screw me if I so much as said his name out loud.”

“He approached me for the same reason, if that’s any consolation. He did his research; we have to give him that. He knew we were vulnerable.”

“How do you figure?” Gretchen was perplexed. “He couldn’t know ahead of time that I was going to screw up.”

“But he could know the real story behind why you left the department.”

Tess put the tiniest of spins on the word real, so Gretchen wouldn’t miss it going by. She didn’t, and her face darkened with a quick intimidating anger that made the muscles in Tess’s neck twitch.

“Rainer told me,” she added. “I wasn’t trying to get you in trouble when I talked to him, I was just running down the list of everyone known to be in Bobby Hilliard’s apartment after his death. Rainer jumped on your name like a cat pouncing on a mouse.”

“Rainer,” Gretchen said, her voice flat. “That cock-sucker.”

“Yeah.”

Crow piped up, “That’s funny, if you think about it.”

“What?” Gretchen and Tess chorused.

“Cocksucker as an insult. I mean, so what? You are or you aren’t, but it’s not a pejorative unless, of course, you’re desperately homophobic. Which I guess Rainer is, but why would either one of you think that’s an appropriate insult? And asshole-everyone has one, so what does it mean to call someone that? Sure, it’s rude, but it’s not worth a fight. Then there’s motherfucker, which I get, but it’s never used in cases where it might be true. Do you think anyone ever called Oedipus that?”

Gretchen looked at Tess. “Is he on drugs?”

“No, but his serotonin levels are off the chart. Look, I agree with you. Rainer’s a prick”-she gave Crow a warning look, uninterested in hearing this particular profanity deconstructed-“but he said you were a thief. Did you steal from other officers? Were you forced to resign?”

“I was a scapegoat.” Gretchen held herself very still, as if she had to have every muscle under control to tell this story. “Stuff was disappearing so someone had to disappear too, and it couldn’t be the real culprit. You see, there was a sergeant-good guy, popular guy, long history with the department. And a long history of problems, related to his drinking. His wife had put him on an allowance; he had to account for every penny. So he began to steal in order to have money to drink. They come to him, because he’s such a good guy and all, and he says, ”Well, I don’t know anything for sure, but I’ve seen O’Brien going through other people’s stuff.“ I get fired, he sobers up for a little while, and the thefts stop. He felt bad, but not bad enough to tell the truth.”

“I have a hard time believing no one else knew about this,” Tess said. By which she meant: Bullshit.

“Oh, the top brass figured it out. After, when he got caught shoplifting at a liquor store in his neighborhood, they put it together. But, see, I had negotiated a settlement, agreeing to leave if I could get part of my pension and never sue the department. I signed some paper, so it wasn’t like I could do anything. I can’t complain too much. I used the pension money to set myself up in business, and I make three times what I made in the department, even without the overtime.”

The story was almost plausible and absolutely uncheckable-no names, no real specifics. Tess didn’t want to put Gretchen on the defensive, not about this.

“So did it make you feel good,” Tess asked, “sneaking up on me and hitting me from behind? I happen to be living here because I’m worried about some crazed psychopath who may or may not want to kill me. For a moment tonight, I thought my number was up.”

She knew she was being overly melodramatic, but Gretchen seemed shocked and that’s what she wanted to see-Gretchen’s reaction.

“You thought I was trying to kill you? I never thought about that. I just… I just wanted to confront you.”

“Confront me from behind?”

“I’d been waiting here for hours, sitting in my car, planning on talking to you. Nothing more. But when he left you alone on the street”-she indicated Crow with a flick of her head-“knocking you down was kind of a last-minute inspiration. I was mad after Rainer came to see me yesterday. I followed you home last night, to see where you lived, and made a note of this address.” Gretchen paused. “You should have picked up the tail. Especially if you’re so worried about your safety right now. I mean, I’m a pro, but so are you. Allegedly.”

She was right, and now Tess was the defensive one.

“So you’ve been following me, huh? Do you leave me roses and cognac? Write me poetry?”

Gretchen’s slack-jawed expression was a more convincing expression of denial than any impassioned speech she might have made in her defense. She clearly had no idea what Tess was talking about. Trying to steady her suddenly shaky hands, Tess took a sip of her brandy which Crow must have had lying around since some student party in his art school days. It was at once too sweet and too harsh, making her long for the Martell’s she had turned over to Rainer. She wondered if she’d ever get it back. Well, she’d probably get the bottle back.

Gretchen said, “You know, we always seem to be having this conversation, but-are you going to press charges?”

“Maybe this wouldn’t come up if you didn’t break into my office and try to beat the crap out of me. But no, I promised I wouldn’t, and I won’t.”

“People break promises,” Gretchen said. “Pitts promised me I’d be famous if I pulled off this job.”

“Infamous, perhaps. People would not have been kindly inclined toward anyone who unmasked the Visitor.”

“I get that now. But he was persuasive-and willing to pay triple my usual rate.”

Tess could not fault Gretchen for her greed. On the right day, at the wrong moment, the right amount of money could recalibrate one’s moral compass. With her house leeching every cent out of her bank account-the house from which she was now exiled, with no return date in sight-she could have taken on an unsavory job. Not this one but another one, one that Gretchen might have found unconscionable, for whatever reason. She shouldn’t sit in judgment, not on this. The Poe visit was precious to her, but that didn’t mean it had to be important to Gretchen.

“What did Pitts want, exactly? I mean, beyond witnessing the visitation?”

“Go to the grave, follow the guy home. Write down a license plate if he drove. If he went to a private residence, I was to stay there all night and resume following him in the morning, in case he was using a friend’s place to crash. Pitts wanted me to stay with him as long as possible and to note every place he went.”

“But you missed the visit-”

“Because the memorial has the wrong date on it,” Gretchen put in, still aggrieved at being tripped up by something that was literally carved in stone.

“So noted. Then how did you know about me?”

“I still have a friend or two on the job, guys who know I got a raw deal. They got me the witness list. Most of ‘em, I could follow up by phone, reinterview them to see if they knew anything, which they didn’t. But you being a private investigator, I assumed you’d see through any game I tried to run on you. Plus, I wanted to know who you were working for. It didn’t occur to me you were there as a tourist. Whatever I do, right or wrong, I don’t give it away.”

Tess let the insults slide by. “And what did you think you’d find in Bobby Hilliard’s apartment?”

“Anything that might help me string Pitts along a few more days, until I could track down the Visitor and get the rest of the money Pitts owed me. He was angry enough that I hadn’t followed the guy, even with the shooting and all. As if that was my fault.” Gretchen’s voice was sincerely, hilariously, aggrieved.

“You didn’t do what he hired you to do,” Crow reminded her, in his gentlest voice, what Tess thought of as his Snow White come-and-eat-the-food-from-my-hand-little birds voice. “He didn’t really owe you anything.”

“I put some time in. I was entitled-” Gretchen couldn’t maintain her own defense. “You’re right. I guess I was hoping I might come through on the back end. I saw the shooting as sort of a second chance for me. I had a good reason to fail, but if I could come through after the fact, it wouldn’t be so bad.”

“What reason did Pitts give for wanting to unmask the Visitor?”

“He said the guy who did it was someone who had cheated him, and he wanted to hold it over his head, use it to force the guy to make full restitution.”

“Over a bracelet, right?”

“No, he said it had been a car accident, that the guy’s insurance company had fought a claim from Pitts’s mother, after a fender bender left her with a bad back. He said it was the only way he could pay his mother’s medical bills.”

So Pitts had learned to tailor his tale after striking out with Tess, to upgrade it to a more moving saga of human pain and suffering instead of a bad bauble. Clearly, this was a man who could think on his little feet.

“Gretchen, did it ever occur to you that we have more in common than we might care to admit?”

“I don’t look like you,” she shot back, as if someone had noted the resemblance to her as well.

“I was thinking of the enemies we share-Pitts, Rainer. If we joined forces, maybe we could settle some scores.”

“How do you mean?”

“Do you think Pitts has told anyone the truth, at any point? You, me, the cops?”

“No.”

“He’s looking for something. Maybe it’s a bracelet, maybe it’s a 1950s dinette set, maybe it’s the fucking Holy Grail. Whatever it is, it’s important to him. And Ensor too, maybe, although he could be Pitts’s patsy as well, persuaded to play policeman with him if he thought it could lead to finding his stuff. He may not know what the real quarry is, either. You say you’re good at surveillance?”

“The best,” she said, without hesitation.

“Good, you’ll have a chance to prove it. We’re going to go twenty-four-seven on Pitts, follow him in shifts.”

“He knows what we look like-”

“That’s what wigs and hats are for.”

“And our cars-”

“I get a corporate rate through the Budget Rent-a-Car on Howard Street, as a favor for some work I did one time. You?”

“Avis, up in Towson. But who’s paying us? As I said, I don’t work for free.”

Funny how it was always the true whores who felt so superior to those who gave it away out of love or honor. “I’ve got a client, the Hilliards. If this yields results, I’ll split the fee with you.”

“Half your fee isn’t worth all my time,” Gretchen argued. And she didn’t even know her half would come to fifty cents.

“Worst-case scenario, I bet we get something on Pitts and can threaten to extort him the way he threatened to extort us. A man who lies as much as Arnold Pitts has to have some secrets, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Gretchen said, her face brightening. “Oh, yeah.”

Tess found the brandy bottle and poured what was left in their two glasses, reasoning that she was saving herself from drinking it on some future occasion when her taste buds were sharper and more discriminating. Crow was dozing between the two dogs, so the two women didn’t clink glasses, just raised them, ever so warily, partners born of necessity. They studied each other over the rim of their glasses.

Really, Tess thought, we don’t look the least bit alike.