The Sugar House

chapter 19

YOUR FATHER KNOWS ALL ABOUT FAVORS .

Tess started to call Pat from her cell phone, then thought better of it. Vasso was full of shit, throwing out her father’s name with the same instinct that caused some street kid to insult your mother. Vasso was an old chauvinist who thought Tess’s daddy could boss her around. There were favors, and there were favors. The liquor board had a less-than-illustrious history, but her father had never taken a dime from anyone, never bent the rules for anyone. Well, maybe for Spike, here or there. But that was different. That was family.

She felt as if her car were heading up 97 on its own. The Toyota seemed full of purpose, as if it always knew where it was going, while she felt lost and confused. Vasso’s words were like a slow-working poison moving toward her brain.

Your father knows all about favors.

The Toyota headed up Martin Luther King, but hung a left instead of a right, heading into the Hollins Market area. Winter light wasn’t kind to the neighborhood. She had to park several blocks away from Domenick’s, but she found a space on a small alley street. When she walked in, it was as if no one had moved in the days since she had first visited. Same bartender, same two young blond guys playing pinball, same old men in the booths, same lone woman in the corner.

“I need the owner,” she told the bartender.

“Not here,” he said.

“Gwen Schiller worked here,” she announced to the room at large. No response. “Gwen Schiller, the girl who was killed by Henry Dembrow in Locust Point last year. Before she died, she told someone she worked here.”

The only sound in the room was a pinball, rolling down the length of the table and past flippers, flippers that were not engaged. She had everyone’s attention.

The woman in the corner lowered her newspaper and spoke. “People say lots of things. That don’t make them true.”

“You the owner?”

“I run the place.”

“What’s your name?”

“My name is for my friends. You going to be my friend?” Tess didn’t say anything. “I’m Nicola DeSanti. My husband was Domenick DeSanti.”

“So you’re the real owner?”

“I run the place,” Nicola DeSanti repeated, and Tess wondered how she was defining “place.” The bar, the neighborhood, the precinct, the ward, Southwest Baltimore?

“How do you know Arnie Vasso?”

“We move,” Nicola yawned, “in the same circles.” Tess couldn’t imagine her moving at all. Her dark hair had almost no gray in it, her flat brown eyes were shrewd.

“What about Henry Dembrow?”

“Never knew no Henry,” she said, and went back to her paper. The two blonds sauntered out of the bar, as if responding to some signal Tess had missed. They made a point of getting too close, of brushing by her, and she caught their scent, body odor with an overlay of something pharmaceutical. The pinball machine gave off one last ring. Game over. Show over.

“Gwen worked here, though.”

“Never knew no Gwen.”

“She might have used a different name.”

“Might of.” Nicola DeSanti’s voice was mild, even agreeable. So why did she frighten her so much?

“Would you at least look at a photograph of her, just to put my mind at ease?”

“No,” Nicola DeSanti said.

The waitress who had brought Tess her green pepper rings on her first visit came out of the kitchen then. She was wearing an ivory dress, semi-formal, and not quite right for any occasion. The dress looked as if it couldn’t decide whether it was intended for a cocktail party or a first communion. Some female instinct told Tess that a man had picked out the dress, a man who didn’t know too much about clothes.

“What do you think?” Her question seemed to be for the room in general.

“I think,” Nicola DeSanti said, “that you should go back in the kitchen and wait for your ride.”

It was only then that the waitress registered Tess’s presence. She nodded, flustered, and backed out of the room. She seemed nervous in the dress, as if worried about keeping it clean. A legitimate concern in dusty Domenick’s, but wouldn’t the kitchen have more hazards?

“Gwen worked here,” Tess said. Not a question this time.

“I don’t think so,” Nicola said.

“How can you know, if you won’t even look at her photograph? How can you be so sure, unless you do know Gwen already?”

“Her picture was in the paper.”

This wasn’t a cross-examination, there was no jury to which Tess could appeal, or point out the inconsistency in the woman’s conversation. She wondered if the waitress might have known Gwen, but she was so clearly new-Tess remembered how overwhelmed she had seemed, just carrying a tray, how she had dropped everything with a crash-that she couldn’t have been working here a year ago.

She left the bar. No one said goodbye. Instead of walking back to her car, she went around the block and headed down the alley behind Domenick’s. There was a large green dumpster there, and she crouched behind it, watching the back of the bar. Something was wrong, something was missing. It was the smell of food. Granted, no one was in Domenick’s eating just now, but taverns always smelled of the fried foods they served. And her hiding place, the dumpster, should have been a stew of ripe, rotting smells. She glanced inside-bottles, cans, broken-down cases. Go figure, the owners of Domenick’s didn’t recycle. Still, whatever brought people to Domenick’s wasn’t the food. She had probably been the first person to eat there in ages.

She wedged herself behind the dumpster, lying flat on the ground, and continued to watch the back door. She didn’t know what she expected to see, but her gut told her that if a girl in an ivory dress disappeared, she eventually had to reappear. Fifteen minutes passed-a short time, yet much longer when one was lying on a cold, rough patch of cement. A car pulled up in the alley. From her place on the pavement, all Tess could see were tires, a strip of shiny maroon paint on some kind of sedan. Gray trousered legs went from the car to the back door, disappearing inside. Soon the same legs appeared, accompanied by a pair of girl’s calves. Tess couldn’t help noticing that the girl’s legs were stubby and thick-ankled.

“I thought they were going to pick me up,” the girl was saying.

“Here? No, not here. I told you. You’re going to Harbor Court for tea.”

“Iced tea in winter? That’s all I get? Jesus, I thought this guy had money.”

“Hot tea, with little sandwiches. You’ll like it. Just don’t eat too many. This is a look-see, remember. You might not get it.”

“And it’s a good thing to get?”

“Honey, it’s the best gig in town. If you get it. Most don’t. For every ten that go, maybe one gets picked.”

They climbed into the man’s car. Tess was able to catch sight of the license plate, the make of the car. A Mercury Marquis, fairly new. She waited until it turned out of the alley and then stood up, unkinking her knees, brushing herself off. She wondered if she could pass muster at the Harbor Court’s high tea. She’d have to. She walked slowly through the alley, and the five blocks back to her car. Running, rushing, attracted attention, and it didn’t gain that much time in the end. She’d make it to Harbor Court before tea was over.

Or so she thought, until she rounded the corner and saw the blond duo from Domenick’s, sitting on the trunk of her car.