In A Strange City

Chapter 26

When the phone rang in Crow’s apartment at 4 a.m. five days later, it came as something of a reprieve from an increasingly dark and ominous dream world. Tess had wandered these ugly precincts nightly since Jim Yeager’s murder. She couldn’t quite remember what happened while she slept, only that she awoke each morning feeling unsettled and hung over with fear.

“Gretchen?” Tess muttered, her mouth pressed into the old-fashioned black receiver, so much harder and more solid than modern phones. Trust Crow to have a phone that had to be dialed, with a mechanism so tight the puny Touch-Tone-trained finger was barely up to the task. “I know I said I’m a morning person, but anything before sunrise is a little extreme.”

“You’ll want to see this,” Gretchen said softly. “If I went in by myself, you’d be mad, later. I know how you think. Besides, I can’t get in without you.”

“Get in where?”

“I’m off MLK, beyond the B amp;O roundhouse, a side street south of Pratt.”

Tess dressed quickly, urging Crow to go back to sleep even as he argued sleepily that he should accompany her everywhere. She reminded him that Gretchen and her Glock were waiting for her, and he let her go off into the night alone.

The address Gretchen had given Tess was in Southwest Baltimore, in a neighborhood known as Pigtown. It was nicer than it sounded-but then it would have to be. Her sleepiness abated, as she headed down Martin Luther King Boulevard, and she realized she was excited. Gretchen’s call held the promise that something was finally happening.

They had been following Pitts for almost a week, with no real results. He lived the life he claimed to live-going to estate sales, visiting private homes, meeting with restaurateurs who wanted vintage dishes or flatware. Saturday had been a particularly long day, with Tess trying to trail Pitts through flea markets and Salvation Army stores without being seen. Even with fake glasses and her hair stuffed into one of Crow’s knit hats, she dared not get too close to the sharp-eyed dealer.

He was easier to track on the streets, meandering in a coral-colored van that reminded Tess of a swollen stomach, for it spent the day swallowing and disgorging various goods. Pitts was a horrible driver, no surprise there, at once vague and unpredictable, drifting across lanes, accelerating for no reason, capable of throwing on the brakes if he spotted an old table or chest of drawers placed in an alley for bulk trash day. Once, he almost wrapped the van around a utility pole in Perry Hall, where an unusually blunt consignment shop owner advertised his wares as dead people’s things for sale. Pitts tried to buy the hand-lettered sign, only to be rebuffed.

It seemed to Tess that Pitts’s mission in life was to reapportion the planet’s stuff, buying it from one person and selling it to another. The van started empty and ended empty, while Pitts and his wallet grew fat. And it was all quite legal, as far as Tess could determine. When she checked with Pitts’s customers, claiming to be a member of a Baltimore Police Department task force on burglary, everyone had the proper paperwork and bills of sale. They also had effusive praise for Pitts, saying he was fair and dependable. Sure, he charged top dollar, but he knew what things were worth.

What Pitts didn’t do during the week was almost as notable. He didn’t meet with Ensor. He didn’t return to Bobby Hilliard’s apartment. Tess assumed he knew he was being watched, although not by whom. Whatever his shortcomings, Pitts was revealing himself to be a patient man, one who could bide his time and wait for what he wanted. She wondered if he was willing to wait right up to next January nineteenth. She wondered if the Visitor would come to the grave again as long as Bobby Hilliard’s killer was at large. Then again, if the Visitor was Bobby Hilliard’s killer-but her mind continued to reject that scenario. Bobby had crashed the Visitor’s party, not the other way around. The Visitor had been an unwitting and unwilling witness.

She pulled her gray Sunbird behind Gretchen’s white Taurus. Rental cars were a thing of beauty-not only untraceable but unmemorable too, absolutely generic. It was as if the industry had been created for private detectives.

“Is he here?” she asked in a whisper, climbing into the passenger seat. She didn’t see his van anywhere on the street and, like its owner, it was hard to miss, big as he was small, its paint job flat and dull.

“No, I let him go.”

“Gretchen-”

“Look, I’ve been pulling the six-to-six night shift all week, and it couldn’t be more boring. You’ve had all the action.”

“I wouldn’t call it action,” Tess said. “Although I have picked up some knowledge about Fiestaware, Jadeite, and something called Vaseline glass, which shines as if it’s been exposed to radiation. I also found a nacho platter, with four little dishes named for the Four Corner states, which fit into a larger tray. It was only fifteen dollars. You put the salsa and the queso in Utah and Arizona -”

“Well, while you’ve been shopping for knickknacks, I’ve been sitting in the street most nights, watching a dark house. But tonight, a little before eleven, he came out and got in his van and came straight here. Spent most of the night inside, by himself as far as I can tell. I followed him back to his house, where I assume he tucked himself in. Then I came back here and called you. We’re not going to have a better time to do this. The door has a standard lock and a deadbolt. Unpick-able, at least by me.”

Tess’s mind was stuck on the fact that Arnold Pitts was now unsupervised. For all Gretchen knew, he could have spotted her and devised this maneuver, so he could go and do something else this morning while they sat outside an empty, meaningless building. “You could have come back here after I started my shift.”

“This is going to take both of us. And it’s better to do it now, when we know he’s been and gone, right? C’mon, Tess, time for a little B and E.”

Tess studied the building. To say it was nondescript would be flattery. A squat double-wide rowhouse of crumbling brick, it had a heavy metal door and no windows at all on the first floor. There were three windows on the second and third floors, the glass panes painted so they were as dark as the old brick.

“I can’t get to those windows. They’re too high.”

“There’s a smaller one, in the back, about midway between the two floors. I think it might go to a bathroom. Painted, like the others, but not quite as high. I can boost you in.”

“Why am I going in?”

Gretchen’s eyebrows rose in an imitation of innocence. “I thought you liked glass cutting. You were telling me the other day, when I told you I thought we should search Pitts’s house while he was out one day, how good you were with your glass cutter.”

Tess didn’t remember bragging about her skills, but she did prefer cutting glass to picking locks. Sighing, she went back to her rental car, where she had stowed her tools for the duration of this surveillance, and walked with Gretchen to the back of the old rowhouse. The block appeared to be deserted. The other houses had boarded windows and doors, along with paper signs that warned against trespassing-which didn’t mean they were empty, far from it. Tess couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching them, but she told herself it was probably some wide-awake addict. If she and Gretchen could break into this little fortress, the neighborhood men would quickly follow, harvesting the metal inside.

They had to circle the block to get to the trash-strewn alley where rats waddled, placid and serene as sheep in a meadow. When Gretchen had said a boost, Tess had assumed she would make a cradle with her hands and allow Tess to step up to the window. But Gretchen crouched down, indicating she wanted Tess to stand on her shoulders.

“No way you can hold me like that,” Tess argued. “I’ll fall and break my neck.”

“I can do it, I’m strong. Just take your boots off. I did this with my kid sister, playing circus.”

The fact that she had a sister-the fact that no-nonsense Gretchen had ever done anything in her life resembling play-was the only personal detail that Gretchen had volunteered to date. Tess decided to trust her. Bracing her palms against the building, she placed one socked foot, then the other, in the broad grooves between neck and shoulder. Then, to her astonishment, she was up, Gretchen lifting her to the window-not easily, but steadily-without too much wobbling. Tess thought she was strong, but Gretchen clearly was doing a little more upper-body work.

“Could we be this lucky?” Tess called out. Her voice was so loud that it echoed in the quiet street, but it seemed ridiculous to whisper.

“What?”

“This window was painted shut at some point, and someone must have counted on that to hold it, because it’s unlocked. But the wood is so soft from years of damp that I think I can get it open without cutting.”

She banged her fist around the edges of the frame and then started to push at the lower sash with all her might. Forgetting that Gretchen’s shoulders were all that stood between her and the earth, she tried to use her weight by stepping forward with her right foot. They staggered crazily for a moment-yes, this would make for a nice circus act-but Gretchen held fast to Tess’s ankles and managed to regain her balance.

Tess pushed again, and the window moved up by no more than eighteen inches. Enough, she judged, for her to get through. She grabbed the ledge and pulled her torso through the opening. Her legs dangled for a moment, but she pressed against the inside wall with her hand and slid forward, grateful for the coat and gloves that protected her from the splintery, mushy wood beneath her belly.

“Hey!” Gretchen called out, as if worried about being left out.

Tess stuck her head out. “Toss up one of the flashlights and I’ll go down and see if I can unlock the front door. And bring my boots and my bag, okay?”

She was on the landing of a rear staircase. Tess crept down, taking care to watch where each shoeless foot landed. But the old building, while not particularly clean, was neat. There was no debris on the stairs, no waste, animal or human, and the kitchen she entered still had its old fixtures. The metal scavengers had not gotten inside here, not yet. She found a narrow hallway and followed it to the front. The metal door had a dead-bolt, just as Gretchen said, but Pitts had been kind enough to leave a key in it. Tess loved people’s stupidity when it benefited her.

“Did you see anything?” Gretchen asked, thrusting Tess’s boots and duffel bag at her and rushing past, as if worried that Tess had searched the building without her.

“I came straight to the door,” Tess said. “Slow down, take a minute to think about what we’re doing here. For one thing, let’s find out if there’s any electricity in this place.”

They were in the hallway of what appeared to have been a grand home, before someone had bricked in the first-floor windows. A wide stairway rose to the upper floors, and a chandelier hung overhead. The beam of Tess’s flashlight found the switch and they turned it on. The light was dull, the bulbs smoky with age and dirt, but it was better than creeping around by flashlight. Gretchen started down the narrow hall.

“I’ve been that way already,” Tess called after her. “It’s nothing but an old kitchen. Let’s see what’s behind these sliding doors.”

The ornately carved doors were another remnant from the house’s better days. They balked at Tess’s touch and then gave way, rolling back to reveal an old-fashioned parlor.

“What a bunch of junk,” Gretchen said, after flicking the light switch in this room. This was Tess’s first thought too. Boxes were piled almost to the ceiling, while sheeted pieces of furniture stood among them like so many ghosts. The room was so crammed with stuff it was impossible to venture more than a few steps inside. Yet it projected a sense of order, suggesting that its caretaker would know instantly if anything had been disturbed.

“Let’s check the upstairs rooms,” Gretchen said, and Tess could see no reason not to follow her. But as she turned to go, her boot heel caught on one of the sheets, dragging it from its moorings and revealing an object she had never thought to see again. It was a lighthouse made from Bakelite, standing almost as tall as she was, with a green-and-white striped base and what appeared to be a gaslight fixture in the top.

“It’s the Beacon-Light beacon!”

“What?”

“The replica of the image that appears on the Beacon-Light’s masthead. It used to stand on a pedestal above the Beacon-Light offices on Saratoga Street,” Tess explained, walking around the lighthouse. “It disappeared in the mid-eighties, during the renovations. A boy at an antiques store in Fells Point told me they still get calls about it, from time to time, but they’re always false alarms.”

“Who would want it?” Gretchen asked dubiously. “It’s tacky as hell, and it doesn’t look like it would be worth much.”

“It could be,” Tess said. “To the right person, it would be worth a lot. I wonder how it came to be here.”

“People get rid of stuff all the time, don’t they? The city spent years trying to get that damn RCA dog back from the guy in Virginia who bought it, then put it in that crazy museum. I never understood why people care so much about some big plaster dog, just because it once sat on a building they drove by when they were kids.”

“It’s a harmless sentiment, unless-Gretchen, let’s see what else is here.”

While many of the boxes were, indeed, filled with porcelain and china and crockery, a second theme quickly emerged as they worked feverishly in those predawn hours. It was “ Maryland, My Maryland,” as sung by Arnold Pitts. Here were boxes filled with National Bohemian merchandise, from coasters to signs, all declaring Baltimore the Land of Pleasant Living.

Here were the T-shirts made to promote the Maryland Lottery when it began in the 1970s, back when it was considered progressive public policy to trick the state’s poorest citizens into financing construction projects for the middle class.

Here was one of the original Ouija boards, which had been invented in Baltimore, a fact Tess had forgotten. Boxes and boxes of Oriole and Colts memorabilia, including a football-shaped bank that Tess was tempted to slip into her backpack. A letter to the Baltimore Police Department from Bob Dylan, asking for details of the Hattie Carroll case, although he had already committed her story to song. The old-fashioned swimsuit and straw hat the then-mayor had worn to frolic with the seals when the National Aquarium wasn’t completed at the promised time. Finally, there were cartons of old postcards, glowing with the rich hand-tinted hues of a long-ago, maybe never-was Baltimore. Certainly, Tess had never known a Baltimore of such somber beauty.

And here was the very item that the Mu-sheum’s Mary Yerkes had coveted, one of Toots Barger’s bowling trophies. Tess picked it up, remembering it had gone for a price so dear that Mary, even with her million-dollar endowment, could not afford it.

Gretchen was bewildered. “What a lot of crap.”

“To most people,” Tess said, still holding the bowling trophy, which had a wooden veneer and featured a trim skirted female on top, crouched in perfect form as she released the ball. “But to some… to some, it’s more valuable than money or jewels. There are people who collect their own past. Everyone does it to some degree. You want things because you had them once, or because they remind you of the dishes your mother used, or the jar of candy your grandmother kept on her sideboard.”

Tess was thinking of her own objects: the Berger cookie tin on her desk, the Planter’s Peanut jar where she threw her receipts, the “Time for a Haircut” sign from the Woodlawn barbershop that had butchered her through grade school. She wasn’t immune to the impulse to preserve the past she remembered.

“You won’t catch me trying to buy the kind of stuff my parents had,” Gretchen said, her voice disdainful. “I like new things, things that work. In my whole apartment, there’s not one thing that’s more than five years old.”

The Ouija board was in its original box and Tess hesitated before she opened it. Original packaging was as much a part of its value as the board itself. But yellowed pieces of Scotch tape at either end suggested the box had been opened at least once. She took it out, balanced the board on her lap, placed her fingers on the- what was it called?-the planchette, that was it, and waited to see if the other world had anything to say. But it was silent, of course, because it takes two to Ouija and Gretchen wasn’t playing.

“Pitts and Ensor told the police they were burglarized,” Tess said, looking down at the board, with its familiar sun and moon and the ominous good-bye stenciled across the bottom. “They went to Bobby’s apartment and the Hilliards’ farm, looking for their stuff. But what stuff? According to the police reports, the things they lost were electronic items-televisions, camcorders, VCRs. Insurance would have paid the replacement cost on those. Who would go to so much trouble to find stuff that can be replaced?”

“Well, there was the bracelet, remember? If it’s really made of gold and emeralds-and never mind who it belonged to or who wore it-then it has to be worth something.”

“Yes, it’s probably worth a lot to someone,” Tess agreed. “But I’m beginning to think the bracelet is only a piece.”

“Right, it’s part of a set.” Gretchen’s voice was impatient. “You told me that.”

“No, I mean it’s a piece of something larger, something that connects all this.”

Outside, the city was beginning to come awake. The traffic noise from nearby Martin Luther King Boulevard was steady now. The windows had kept them from realizing the sun was up.

“Take the key from the door and go get copies made, so we can leave the original here and Pitts won’t know someone has been here if he comes back. I’m going to repack, make sure the room looks just as it did when we discovered it.”

“Then what?” It was a good question.

“And then… and then we’re going to find out if there are some more potential members for our little club.”

“What club is that?”

She held up one of the shirts from the cache of Maryland Lottery merchandise, bright green with a wishbone insignia. “You know: Arnold Pitts screwed me and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”