The Sugar House

chapter 7

HER FATHER’S IDEA OF CHECKING THE BAR FILES WAS AS good as any she had, which was to say not very. Certainly, it didn’t seem particularly urgent when Tess rose the next morning, not as urgent as her desire for a specific kind of rush, a rush found only in one place. She hurried Esskay through their morning walk, then headed to a small, perfectly kept rowhouse not even 500 feet from where she lived.

“I need a Laylah fix,” she told Jackie Weir when she answered the lacquered goldenrod door on Shakespeare Street. “Has she eaten breakfast yet? May I take her to Jimmy’s with me?”

“She’s not eaten breakfast, but that’s not my fault,” Jackie said drily. “The kitchen is knee-deep in Cheerios and bananas. Please take her with you. Keep her for a little while, why don’t you? You can bring her back when she has a college degree.”

“Right,” Tess said. She’d hate to see what happened to anyone who dared to get between Jackie Weir and her toddler daughter, Laylah. She followed Jackie into the kitchen, noting with great glee the disorder that Laylah brought to what otherwise would be a too orderly house. She had wrought the same transformation on her just-so mother, softening the grim perfection that had been her trademark. If anything, Jackie was more beautiful these days, lipstick forgotten as often as not, her clothes decorated with juice stains and smashed banana bits.

“What brought on today’s sudden urging?” Jackie asked, wiping down Laylah’s face and then lifting her from her booster seat. They were both still in their night clothes-a pale pink sleep suit for Laylah, a red cashmere robe over what appeared to be silk pajamas for Jackie. “Did the biological clock go off in the middle of the night? Did Crow try that ‘I-want-to-have-a-baby-with-you’ crap that some men think is so sexy?”

“Please-I don’t have generic baby needs. I have Laylah needs, pure and simple. Morning, sweetie.”

“Sssser. Sssser.” Laylah held out her arms to Tess and chugged her feet, as if she could run through the air. Tess thought she might be able to. She looked like more of a person as she grew, but she still had her Puckish features, her endless delight at the world around her. People who didn’t know better were always commenting on the resemblance between mother and daughter. Their skin was the same color, a velvety dark brown that was richer, lusher than the prosaic comparisons it inspired. But Jackie’s features brought to mind Nefertiti, while Tess never looked at Laylah without thinking of an African-American Harpo in full googly mode.

And never failed to feel better for it.

“What does Laylah want for Christmas?” She asked her question sotto voce, as if Laylah might know what was going on.

“Nothing,” Jackie said, her voice sharp, her smile fond. “Between your mother and you, this girl is already spoiled rotten. It won’t be long before she’s presenting me with a careful list of her material needs, with links to Internet toy sites, and a cc of her e-mail to Santa. Let’s enjoy this part while it lasts.”

Laylah pulled at Tess’s braid with warm, sticky palms. She liked to pull on Esskay’s tail, too, but the dog wasn’t as easygoing.

“Whatever you say, Mom. What do you want for Christmas, by the way? You’re terrifying to shop for, your taste is so good.”

“I’d like a four-year plan that will put Baltimore schools on track before I have to start paying $10,000 a year for Laylah to go to private school, or give her a crash course in Catholicism so she can attend the parish school. I’d also like a boyfriend who’s not a spoiled momma’s boy, and peace on earth, goodwill to men. But I’ll settle for a scarf with some green in it, to go with my new suit. You?”

“Same, except for the green scarf. I could use some earrings that make me look like a grown-up.”

“Can’t be done, child,” Jackie said. “Much as it pains me to say it, some things are beyond the power of accessorizing.”

They smiled at each other over Laylah’s curly head. Tess and Jackie were relatively new friends, and the relationship had almost the same tang as two lovers might have at this six-month mark. To make it more complicated, they had met through Tess’s business, only to find out they had more in common than Tess had ever dreamed. They were still courting each other, with Tess being the one who had to pursue a little harder. Jackie had a natural reserve, she kept most people at arm’s length. She was not unlike Whitney that way. Right now, for example, Tess would have liked to make some physical contact, to squeeze Jackie’s arm or give her a hug. But it was unthinkable. So she kissed the top of Laylah’s head, hoping Jackie knew the kiss was for her as well.

“I’ll drop her off before I go to work,” Tess said. “What times does the babysitter get here?”

“Nine,” Jackie said, holding out her hand and letting Laylah grab it. “Try to keep her hat and mittens on, even if it is only two blocks from here to Jimmy’s. It’s raw this morning.”

“Okay, mommy.”

“Mommy,” Laylah said suddenly, as if it were a wildly original thought, a concept of her own invention. “Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy.”

And Tess knew whatever she got Jackie for Christmas, it could never match the gifts that Laylah gave her every day.

Take Your Daughter to Work Day was still twenty years in the future the last time Tess had visited the sad little downtown midrise that housed the liquor board inspectors. It hadn’t changed at all, which was mildly disheartening. Perhaps it was simply too ugly to tamper with. Employee’s daughter or no, she followed the procedure required of all visitors, calling from the lobby and waiting for an escort upstairs.

“Your father’s out, but he told us what you wanted,” said the secretary, Marley, who greeted her. A new face to Tess, but she acted as if they were old friends. If this had been her mother’s office, Tess would have worried that her life was the office soap opera, a tale told in exhaustive detail over every lunch hour and coffee break, until everyone felt as if he or she knew her. But her father wasn’t as inclined to babble about his life.

“I have to say, from what Pat says you’re looking at, it sounds like kind of a wild goose chase.”

“You’re telling me,” Tess muttered. How many bars did Baltimore have anyway? Given the size of the files before her, it appeared there was one tavern for every one hundred citizens.

A man in a boxy leather jacket walked through the office, head down as if distracted by his own thoughts. Still, he managed to give Tess the quick once-over some men automatically throw toward any remotely female form. Tess had even seen them do it at mannequins in department stores.

This man blushed when he got to the face. “Tess,” he said. “Little Tess. How long has it been?”

She recognized the man as one of her father’s longtime colleagues. Not a friend-her father always said he wanted to be respected, not liked. But he thought well of this guy, she remembered that much, if only because he was one of the few old-timers left, and this gave them a bond. She groped for the name. George Foreman, Georgie Porgie, Gene-Gene Fulton.

“It’s been quite some time if you still think of me as ‘little’ Tess. I hit five-nine in the eighth grade.” She didn’t use his name, because she couldn’t decide if he was still Mr. Fulton to her, or now an equal named Gene.

He apparently suffered no such confusion, given the way his heavy-lidded eyes continued to track up and down, up and down. Big Tess was fair game in a way that Little Tess had never been.

“When you going to settle down and give your old man some grandbabies?” Gene asked, as if he couldn’t sleep nights for wondering if Pat Monaghan was ever going to dandle a baby on his knee. Tess knew he was fishing, trying to find out where she was on the dating-engaged-married-divorcing continuum.

“Between us”-Tess leaned forward, a finger on her lips, knowing her words would get back to Pat before the day was out-“sooner than he might think.”

“You engaged then?” That was Marley. Tess had suddenly dropped off Gene Fulton’s radar. Some men live to poach. Others figure it’s too much trouble. Fulton was a lazy bastard, bless his heart.

“Practically,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a jeweler’s box beneath my tree this Christmas.”

Which was the truth, because she was sure Jackie would, in fact, find the perfect pair of earrings.

“Huh,” Fulton said. “Well, don’t be a stranger. I’ve got my beeper, Marley, anyone needs me.”

Tess was left with the files. The temptation was to plunge in, but she had learned to be systematic in such things. One by one, bird by bird, she’d go through each report, looking for the syllable Dom, the word sugar or an owner’s name that correlated. On a computer, she could have done this in seconds, but Tess preferred paper files. She was no Luddite, but she knew the trade-offs in using computers. A search could be too targeted, too easy. On the Internet, plugged into a search engine, one traded serendipity for straight-up dippiness, for page after page of worthless hits, while the thing one wanted might be tantalizingly out of reach, a single keystroke off. Getting lost had always been part of the journey for her.

Within an hour, she had three viable candidates-Hummers Café, whose owner was listed as Harold Sugarman; Bo’s Tavern, which had started life as Dom’s Tavern; and Domenick’s, owned by Lawrence Purdy. Although the last seemed the most promising, it had the skimpiest file of the three, with none of the usual neighborhood complaints about noise and after-hours operation.

“Why’s the file so thin? Others are inches thick.”

Marley had a smug, knowing look. “They’re either very well-behaved, or”-she glanced around, saw no one, decided to lower her voice anyway-“very connected.”

“I thought the bribery and fraud trial against the old boss and Billy Madonna would have slowed down any such activity.”

“You can chase a few bears away from a honey pot, but as long as it’s there, the bears are going to keep coming back. A lot of bar owners are willing to pay for special favors. An inspector would have to be almost inhumane to be tempted.”

The secretary’s little malaprop might have afforded Tess some pleasure, if it weren’t for the implication. “You’re not saying my dad-”

“Pat Monaghan? Oh no, Tess, I didn’t mean anything like that. Honest as the day is long. But he’s one of the old guys, been here almost thirty years now. He made a career here. It’s the ones who come and go who are trouble.”

Tess checked her watch. “Ten-thirty. I guess it’s too early to start visiting bars.”

“Not necessarily. Under law, you can open as early as six A.M.”

“You know, I’ve never actually needed to know the legal time to start.” The thought was oddly cheering. Obviously, she wasn’t anywhere near as decadent as she sometimes feared.

Hummer’s Café, out on Arabia Avenue, was closed and the dusty windows indicated it had been a long time since anyone had worked in the small frame house. Tess had slightly better luck at Bo’s, once known as Dom’s, which appeared to have taken its original name from the Latin dominatus-to rule, to exert control, to charge people ridiculous amounts of money for drinks, simply because they were served by men and women in rubber suits.

Yet Bo’s, which happened to be in one of East Baltimore ’s old synagogues, seemed strangely tepid to Tess, sort of the TGIFridays version of an S-M club. Of course, it was only noon when she arrived there, not exactly the hour at which such clubs thrive, and she did not have much experience in these matters. Like most well-brought-up women of her generation, Tess had practiced her masochism privately, within the confines of relationships.

But she was pretty sure that S-and-M shouldn’t be so…clean, so desultory, so absent of shock value. Baltimore just didn’t do debauchery well, but it kept trying.

The manager was not happy to have a private investigator on the premises, but he eventually stopped running his long, twitchy fingers through his dyed blond hair and got down to cases.

“I’ve been here two years,” said the man, who had identified himself only as Hurst. “Not Horst,” he had made a point of saying, “ Hurst.” He was extremely tall, perhaps six-foot-six, rail-thin, and tricked out with so many nervous mannerisms that he seemed to be one gigantic tic of a man. “The turnover is constant, but no different from any other bar or restaurant in the city. In fact, I think we keep our people a bit longer. Our customers tip terrifically, which really doesn’t make sense. If you were going to stiff someone, wouldn’t it be in a place where you were supposed to be, um, in command?”

“Would you have noticed if a girl just disappeared one day and never came back?”

“It happens. It happens all the time. It’s not the kind of job where people give two weeks notice and ask for references, you know what I mean? Do you have a photo?”

Tess didn’t want to show him the photo of Jane Doe’s corpse. It wasn’t only that it seemed less than helpful-she couldn’t imagine anyone making an ID from the battered, bulging face. But the photo seemed pornographic to her, degrading.

She showed him the police sketch instead, although she doubted it was a good likeness. The drawing was a little flat, but it had the particulars-the shape of the face, the high cheekbones, the large eyes beneath the winged brows, the archer’s bow of a mouth, with its plump lower lip.

“Pretty,” Hurst said. “But it doesn’t ring any bells.”

Tess noticed his pupils were pinpricks set in amber, that his hands kept returning to his lank blond locks. A man with his own problems. Bo’s clientele probably came for the speed and stayed for the decor. She wondered how long Hurst had been helping himself to the house wares.

“I never knew this place existed before I checked the liquor licenses this morning, but I know there are bars that try to draw as little scrutiny as possible, for their clientele’s sake. Does Bo’s have a nickname? A kind of code name used by the people who come here, or work here?”

Hurst looked mystified. “Why would a place named Bo’s need something like that? We have tourists wander in who think we’re a crab house as it is.” He giggled. “And I guess we are, sometimes. Not everyone is as clean as he should be, you know.”

“Does anyone ever call this the Sugar House?”

“I should hope not.” He made a face. “That reminds me of that hideous song. Besides, whatever this place is, it isn’t sweet.”

Tess looked around. It was so perfect for her purposes-an S-and-M bar that trafficked in crystal meth, which had once been called Dom’s. But if Bo’s wasn’t sweet, neither did it seem particularly threatening.

“Who comes here?” she asked Hurst. “I’m not asking for names, I’m just curious. Is there really a demand for this kind of place in Baltimore?”

His bony shoulders popped up and down in what might have been a shrug on a person moving at normal speeds. “Kids come for the music and…side benefits. But we get a lot of fat, middle-aged guys from Linthicum. Go figure.”

Tess felt like saying: “Well, I’m tracking down a lead that came from a pathological liar. Go figure.” But it was only noon. She might as well check out the last place on her list, Domenick’s in Southwest Baltimore. Her mind was already skipping ahead to lunch, trying to remember if there was a decent place left to eat in Sowebo since Mencken’s Cultured Pearl shut down.

Southwest Baltimore was an object lesson in what can happen when a neighborhood’s ballyhooed renaissance falls short of the mark. Dingy and defeated, it reminded Tess of someone who jumps from one rooftop to the next, only to dangle by his fingernails from the downspout. Most of the restaurants that had cropped up in the neighborhood’s hour of hope had moved on, as had their bohemian clientele, artists attracted by the low rents. Hampden, up north, was the happening neighborhood now. No more Mencken’s Cultured Pearl, or Telltale Hearth, or Gypsy Café. At one point, the city had even put H. L. Mencken’s house on the block. Officials backed off, claiming it was a misunderstanding, but Tess never doubted they would have sold the place if they could have. The sad fact was that the biggest tourist site in the area was “The Corner,” an open-air drug market immortalized in a book by the same name. Politicians held press conferences there and the city routinely swept it clean, as if it were the only place in Baltimore to buy crack cocaine. When Hollywood came to town to film The Corner, the real corner wasn’t even good enough. The caravan of movie trailers-and, more important, the trail of money left in their wake-had ended up in East Baltimore.

But even in the most depressed areas, people need a place to throw back a drink or two. Domenick’s, housed in an end-of-group rowhouse, provided a clean, quiet place to do just that. The sign out front said only Bar, as if it were a generic place to drink. Inside, it proved to be just that. A place for regulars, this was clear to Tess when every pair of eyes in the quiet bar fixed on her. It was one o’clock, a little early to begin drinking, but not so early as to be ashamed of it. Besides, these were men and women whose days started earlier than most, if they started at all.

She took a seat at the bar and asked for a beer.

“What kind?” asked the bartender. He was a thin man in his middle forties, with a stoop and a very bad toupée. Hard to imagine telling your troubles to him.

Tess recognized the question for the test that it was.

“Not Natty Boh,” she said, “not after they left town. And I guess I can’t have a Carling Black Label either. What do you have on tap?”

“Michelob.”

“Michelob’s fine.”

“Not light beer, you understand. Just Michelob.”

“I never opt for the ‘light’ version of anything,” Tess said. “Do you serve any food?”

He tossed her a stained paper menu, which featured the usual bar delicacies and a few local specialties. Tess, who had been skimping on vegetables of late, soothed her conscience with an order of green pepper rings dipped in powdered sugar. Then she sat back and studied her surroundings, trying not to be obvious, given that the other customers continued to steal looks at her.

It was a plain, no-nonsense bar. One television set, tuned to ESPN and muted. The lower part of the walls was paneled, while the upper portion was covered with gold-flecked mirrors, which may have been intended to make the bar seem wider than it was, but the mirrors were now so smeary with age that they had a funhouse quality. A minimum of neon signage, a cigarette machine, two video poker machines, with the usual disclaimers about being for recreation only. Right. The booths along the wall were filled, mostly with men. One woman, maybe in her sixties, with dark hair and a doughy face creased by a lifetime of Luckies. No one was speaking, and no one else was eating. The only sounds were the bells and whistles of an old-fashioned pinball machine, over which two stringy young blond men were practically davening.

Perhaps no one ever ate here, for the young waitress who brought out her green pepper rings was clearly overwhelmed by the task. She held the tray out in front of her, arms locked, eyes almost crossed in concentration. She traversed the short distance from the kitchen door to Tess’s barstool as if walking across ice. No wonder-she wore ridiculous shoes for a waitress, lace-up platforms with four-inch heels. Tess had waited tables off and on during college, and she knew you had to sacrifice style for comfort. This girl would learn.

“Green pepper rings?” she asked in a sweet, high voice. Well, it was clear why she was hired. She was extraordinarily pretty in a fresh, wholesome way that made Tess feel craggy, old, and tough as leather. Pink cheeks, shiny brown hair, big blue eyes, and an almost comically perfect figure, an hourglass perched on long, coltish legs.

“Just put ’em down, Terry,” the bartender said, obviously unimpressed with her skills.

She placed the plate in front of Tess with a hard clatter, so the pepper rings jumped, and she did, too. Then she scurried back into the kitchen.

“You the owner?” Tess asked the bartender, fairly sure of the answer.

“Manager.”

“How long you worked here?”

“Off and on since it opened.”

She pulled her wallet from the knapsack she carried in place of a purse-a wallet thick with bills, she let the bartender’s eyes take that in-and showed him her license, then the sketch. Even before she could explain what she wanted, he was shaking his head. “No one I ever knew.”

“What about the other folks here?”

He held up the sketch. “Anyone know her?”

A few customers squinted at the sketch, but no one got up to take a closer look.

“Sorry.”

“Is the owner around?” she asked.

“The owner?”

“ Lawrence Purdy. I checked your file at the city liquor board.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because this girl, the one I’m looking for, told someone she worked at a place with a name like Domino’s. When I checked the files, I found Domenick’s and thought that might be it.”

“Well, it wasn’t.”

“Anyway, Lawrence Purdy-”

“He’s not real active. Bought the place as an investment, I run it. Never shows his face around here. He probably couldn’t pick me out of a lineup.”

“Interesting figure of speech,” Tess said. “You ever been in a lineup?”

The bartender’s eyes met hers, and he grinned. “Nope.”

Her fingers were caked with powdered sugar. She wiped them off on the paper napkin as best she could, then counted out several bills for the check that the bartender had left by her plate. Five dollars total. Not bad for such a nutritionally complete lunch.

As she stood to leave, the waitress skittered out of the kitchen and began clearing her place. She almost made it back to the swinging kitchen door before she dropped the plate on the worn linoleum floor, where it shattered into dozens of white shards.

“Your tip will just about cover that,” the bartender told the girl, and the patrons in the bar laughed, with the exception of the guys at the pinball machine, who didn’t seem to notice anything but their game. The girl flushed, but she did not look particularly embarrassed, or cowed. More puzzled than anything else, Tess thought. It was as if she had awakened from a dream and found herself in this musty little tavern, wearing an apron and waiting tables, but she couldn’t quite believe it. She had the look of a girl who was waiting for her life to begin.

Tess wasn’t going to be the one to break it to her that it already had.