The Sugar House

chapter 1

SOUR BEEF DAY DAWNED CLEAR AND MILD IN BALTIMORE.

Other cities have their spaghetti dinners and potluck at the local parish, bull roasts and barbecues, bake sales and fish fries. Baltimore had all those things, too, and more. But in the waning, decadent days of autumn, there came a time when sour beef was the only thing to eat, and Locust Point was the only place to eat it.

“I’m going to ask for an extra dumpling,” Tess told her boyfriend, Crow, as his Volvo edged forward through the neighborhood’s narrow streets. The unseasonably warm day had sharpened her appetite, but then a cold one would have done the same thing. Just about everything goosed Tess Monaghan’s appetite. Good weather, bad weather. Good news, bad news. Love affairs, breakups. Peace, war. Day and night. She had eaten when she was depressed; happy now, she ate more. Then she worked out, so she could eat again.

But the primary reason she ate was because she was hungry, a feeling she never took for granted.

“You deserve an extra dumpling,” Crow said. “You deserve whatever your heart desires. What do you want for Christmas, anyway?”

“Nothing, I keep telling you, absolutely nothing. I have everything I want.” She squeezed his knee. “Although if I could have anything, it would be one of those neon signs you see at beauty supply stores, the ones that say ‘Human Hair.’”

Crow started to slide the car into a mirage of a space, only to realize the gap was really an alleyway. He sighed philosophically. “Locust Point feels like it’s at the end of the world.”

“Just the end of Baltimore.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?” He was teasing her, in a way that only he could. There was no bitter under Crow’s sweet, no meaness lurking in his narrow face. When they had first known each other, that almost-pretty face had been lost under a head full of purple dreads. Shorn now, and back to his natural black, Crow was a guileless little beacon, beaming his feelings out into the world. She liked that in a man.

Unless the man was her father, standing on the church steps, frowning at his watch. Her Uncle Spike was next to him, chewing placidly on a cigar. Uncle Spike didn’t take time so seriously.

“Great, we’re late, and we’ll never find a parking space this close. Look, even the fire truck is illegally parked.”

“Just for carry-out,” said Crow, who couldn’t shake his bad habit of thinking the best of everyone. “See, there the firefighters are now, with a stack of plastic containers. What does sour beef taste like, anyway?”

“Like sauerbraten, I guess. Not that I’ve ever had sauerbraten.”

“I thought sour beef was sauerbraten.”

“Yes, but-well, Baltimore, Crow.” Funny how much could be explained with just those four words. Yes, but, well, Baltimore. “If we don’t get in soon, there’ll be a line. The dinner’s late this year, because of a fire in the kitchen. Usually it’s before Thanksgiving.”

“Why don’t I let you out here, and then come in when I find a place to park? Just save me a seat-and make sure it’s next to you.”

Tess leaned across the gearshift for a quick kiss. Crow grabbed her and gave her the sort of deep, passionate, open-mouth probe suitable to sending a loved one behind prison walls, or into the French Foreign Legion. Since they had reunited this fall, he was living in the moment with characteristic fervor. Tess found it overwhelming, exhausting, and altogether glorious.

Although the glory faded a little when she surfaced for air and found her father’s blue eyes focused on them in a hard, unapproving stare. Tess disentangled herself, slipped out of the car, and crossed the street, wishing she didn’t blush so easily. It was the one thing she had in common with her father, one of those red-all-over redheads.

“You went all the way to Texas to get him?” Patrick Monaghan asked, not for the first time.

“She brings ’em back alive,” Uncle Spike said around the butt-end of his cigar. His bald head gleamed in the weak winter sun, and his liver spots seemed to have multiplied since Tess last saw him, making his resemblance to a springer spaniel all the more pronounced. “Her and Frank Buck. They bring ’em back alive. He’s a good kid, Pat-”

“Kid being the operative word,” her father said.

“Just six years younger, Dad,” said Tess, determined not to let anything mar this annual ritual. “If the sexes were reversed, you wouldn’t think about it twice.”

But the word sexes was a mistake, even in a neutral context. Her father winced at the associations it raised.

“Has he had any luck finding a job?” Uncle Spike asked.

“The state’s hiring,” her father put in. “Your Uncle Donald says he could find something for him at the Department of Transportation. He’s got a lot of pull now, since he was posted to the comptroller’s office.”

Tess laughed. “Crow as a state employee? I can’t quite picture that. Don’t worry, he’ll find something. He’s part time at Aunt Kitty’s bookstore through Christmas, playing a few gigs around town. But that’s more for his own pleasure than the money.”

“An out-of-work musician,” her father mused. “Yeah, that’s what I envisioned the day you were born, honey. It’s what every father wants for his little girl, you know. Does he have a criminal record, too? That would just make my day.”

Tess considered and rejected several replies. “Let’s get inside, before the line gets too long.”

A volunteer, resplendent in a green and red double-knit pants suit, took their money and pointed them to four places at a long cafeteria table in the farthest corner of the parish hall. Tess inhaled-deeply, happily, nostalgically. Food was only part of the draw here. Sour Beef Day was a scene, and the Monaghan-Weinstein clans had always been in the thick of it. Politicians paid their respects, in memory of the power Uncle Donald, her mother’s brother, had once wielded behind the scenes. Shadier types shook Spike’s hand, whispering things better not overheard.

And everyone, it seemed, had a kind word for her dad. He had worked this territory thirty years ago, when he was just starting out at the liquor board, and he was still much beloved.

Today, as they squeezed their way through the narrow aisles, Tess found herself on the receiving end of the occasional back clap and elbow squeeze. “I seen about you in the Star,” one old man cackled. This didn’t quite track. Did he mean he remembered her bylines from the Star before it folded three years ago, or was he referring to the profile the Beacon-Light had finally deigned to run? In her opinion, it had been a snarky piece, full of stupid private-eye puns. Still, it was ultimately less embarrassing than her ranking on the local city magazine’s list of “hot” singles. Tess suspected her father of rigging that bit of false advertising. She loved her hometown, but it was too damned easy to be a celebrity here.

“You look better in person,” another man said, his back slap landing a little low of the mark. “You’re really just a girl, ain’cha? A girl in a pigtail, not that much different than when you was riding your tricycle around the Stonewall Democratic Club.”

Her father glanced back over his shoulder, smiling, and suddenly it didn’t matter how she was known, or where she was patted. Tess felt like royalty, a legacy from two families-maybe three, given that Spike’s relationship to the Monaghans and Weinsteins had never been settled to anyone’s satisfaction. She was proud to be descended from this long line of b’hoys and muldoons, the political foot soldiers who had made the city work. Well, who had once made the local Democratic clubs and city elections work. What followed was out of their hands.

They were taking their seats when Crow arrived, breathing hard from his run through the neighborhood. Normally given to exuberant, bear-hug greetings, he restrained himself and offered his hand, first to Spike, then to Patrick. Her father looked uncomfortable at even this brief contact.

“I had no idea this was such a huge thing,” Crow said. “I had to park at Fort McHenry, practically.”

“No South Baltimore politician with half a brain would dare miss it,” Patrick said. “State Senator Dahlgren’s already here, working the crowd. He’s over there talking to Senator Della, paying his respects.”

“Which is funny,” Spike said. “’Cause Locust Point don’t lie in the first congressional district, and that’s the prize Kenny Dahlgren has his eyes on these days, even if he does have zero name recognition. He ain’t a smart fellow, is he?”

Her father shook his head. “No, he’s just scared because the last election was so close. It reminded him he needs to do the basic stuff, not take anything for granted.”

“Sure,” Spike said, laying his cigar next to his plate, a treat for later. “I guess it’s just coincidence he’s in the newspaper every day now, spearheading that investigation into his poor sap of a colleague who had the bad luck to be the first one caught in the new ethics law.”

Tess turned toward the front of the hall and saw a man with the bland good looks that politics favored. Senator Kenneth Dahlgren, another lawyer in the so-called citizens legislature of Maryland, which was ninety percent lawyers, with the occasional beautician, farmer, and schoolteacher to keep it honest. He looked earnest and humorless, the kind of dullard to be avoided at any cost.

“No name recognition?” Tess said. “Try no face recognition. That’s the most forgettable man I’ve ever seen.”

Now the young man at his elbow, following so closely he might be a bodyguard, was more intriguing, one of the most beautiful men Tess had ever seen. One of the most beautiful people, period. Indian, his coloring begged for a Whitman sampler of bad metaphors-caramel skin, chocolate eyes, a mouth red and ripe as a cherry center. Tess had to remember to close her own mouth as she stared. The man didn’t project a sexual aura, so much as he brought to mind a host of exquisite objects that made one dizzy with longing. Ode to an Indian urn, she thought. Baby, you can sit on my mantel anytime. If Crow ever vacated the premises, she amended in her mind. A recent convert to monogamy, Tess had the convert’s typical zeal for her new religion.

Yet no one else seemed to notice him. Beauty for beauty’s sake was not a prized commodity in South Baltimore. The sour beef diners tried to push past the young man and toward the senator, children swamping the mall Santa. Gimme, gimme, gimme. Only their lists were full of road projects and state grants, zoning variances and jobs for otherwise unemployable relatives.

And not a single one was claiming to have been a particularly good boy or girl.

“I can’t believe he’s our best hope to win the first,” Spike muttered. “All politics is loco.”

“Local,” Crow corrected, even though he knew Spike had mis-spoken on purpose. “I’m pretty sure Tip O’Neill said all politics is local.”

But the mere sight of Dahlgren had made Spike grumpy. “It’s one thing to be ambitious, and my hat’s off to anyone who can get Meyer Hammersmith to sign on as his campaign chairman. Meyer’s a rainmaker, and a class act. But Dahlgren don’t play the game. He cares only about himself. He’s jumping ’cause he knows his seat is going to be carved up in redistricting. If he had worked with his colleagues to begin with, they wouldn’t be so gleeful about screwing him after the Census.”

“A Democratic congressman will do more for the state than anyone in the General Assembly.” Tess sensed her father was disagreeing just for the fun of getting Spike worked up.

“Do more to the state,” Spike said. “ Maryland, my Maryland. The despot’s heel is on the shore, for sure.” In his Baltimore accent, the state song became “Merlin, my Merlin” and the word despot sounded more like a place to catch a train.

The waitress took their orders, sour beef all around, and everyone wanted an extra dumpling, although Tess debated with herself back and forth. Diet averse, she believed one should always eat what one wanted, but knowing what one wanted-ah, that was another question altogether.

No longer able to contain herself, she leaned forward: “Who’s the pretty boy with Dahlgren?”

“Adam Moss, his chief of staff,” her father said. “Came down from Massachusetts, I think. Has a rep for being very bright, very quick. People underestimated him at first, him being so young and all. But I hear he’s good. Good enough that someone tried to start a rumor he was queer, hoping it would tarnish Dahlgren.”

“C’mon,” Crow said, eyes bright. He loved anything that smacked of inside information. “Being gay doesn’t matter anymore. Look at Barney Frank.”

Patrick gave Crow a smile so patronizing Tess wanted to kick him under the table. “You look at Barney Frank. Things haven’t changed as much as you think. People started gossiping about Moss because they wanted to create trouble for Dahlgren. But it didn’t work. Dahlgren’s married to his high school sweetheart, had twin daughters a year ago.”

“A week before Election Day,” Spike said. “Had his wife induced and held a press conference at the hospital.”

“Why are you so hard on Dahlgren?” Patrick asked Spike.

“Why are you so soft? He forced out Senator Ditter, the guy who got you appointed to the liquor board, in one of the ugliest, dirtiest primaries I ever seen. Ditter was a good guy. These new inspectors that Dahlgren appointed, they’re such sticklers they take all the fun out of running a tavern. It’s enough to make a man think about gettin’ out of the business.”

“Ditter did himself in, with that kickback scandal, and almost brought down all of us with him,” Patrick spoke slowly, as if the memory still caused him some pain. Tess remembered when they had come for Ditter, how helpless her father had been to help his old patron. “Dahlgren could have pushed for a total housecleaning of my office, forced us all to resign just to make a show of how he was starting fresh. But he let those of us who were already there prove ourselves. That’s class.”

The moment was tense, and it was a godsend when plates started appearing before them. They had given their food orders to a short, wizened woman with cropped gray hair and bifocals on a beaded chain. The woman who returned with their food was considerably younger-and friendlier, at least to the men.

“An extra extra dumpling for you, hon,” she said to Pat. She was around forty, with the kind of compact, curvy body that aged well, as long as the waist stayed slim. Hers had. In a tight green sweater and matching eye shadow, she was a classic Baltimore hon, knockout variety.

“Thanks, Ruthie. You already know Spike. This is my daughter, Tess.”

“And Crow,” Tess prompted. “Crow Ransome, my boyfriend.”

“And Crow,” her father echoed weakly.

Ruthie inspected Tess. “This the one?”

“My onliest one.”

“She looks awfully young.”

“She’s thirty.”

“Well, honey, that is young.”

“She’s wise beyond her years, though. And a hard worker, too.”

What was her father doing, trying to sell a horse? Tess had an uneasy feeling Ruthie was about to pry open her mouth and start counting teeth.

Instead, the waitress frowned and said: “Well, I’m pretty busy here.”

“Sure. I just wanted you to meet. We’ll talk later, all of us. Maybe go to one of the old places around here.”

“Not around here,” Ruthie said shortly. “I like to get out of Locust Point sometimes.”

“Frigo’s then. For old time’s sake.”

“Frigo’s?” Ruthie took a minute to think. “Why not? It will bring back some memories, won’t it?”

She edged away, hips swaying in such an exaggerated fashion that they bounced off men’s shoulders as she moved between the tables.

“What was that about, Dad?”

“Nothing much.”

“Dad.” Tess crammed thirty years of hard-earned petulance into that one whine of a syllable. “What are you and ‘Ruthie’ going to discuss at Frigo’s?”

“You’ll be there, too,” her father assured her. “It’s not as if we’re plotting behind your back.”

“Dad.”

Her father pressed his fork through one of his dumplings and took a large mouthful that apparently required much careful chewing before he could speak again. “She needs a private investigator. I recommended you.”

“I don’t need the work,” Tess said reflexively, almost truthfully. Between her last case, which had paid far more than she ever dreamed, and the recent sale of some family property, she was flush by her standards. Five figures in her bank account, and that wasn’t counting the zeroes to the right of the decimal point.

“It’s an interesting case,” her father said. “I’ve never heard of anything quite like it.”

“Tell me in twenty-five words or less.”

“Tonight. Frigo’s. That’s two words. Look, you’ll like Ruthie. She’s good people. We go back.”

“How far back?” Tess asked.

“She was a barmaid around here, then at Frigo’s, while she was going to community college for a bookkeeping degree. Didn’t she even work for you for a while there, Spike?”

“Yeah, just for a little while, before she went to Frigo’s. Fifteen years ago? Something like that.”

“Thirteen years ago,” her father corrected.

“How precise your memory is,” Tess said. “If Ruthie is such a dear friend, how come I’ve never heard of her before?”

“Maybe he’s taking ginkgo biloba,” Crow suggested. “Although it’s my theory that memory isn’t really affected by age. You just have so much more to remember, the longer you live. And, unlike a computer, you can’t run a program to tidy up everything in there.”

Now that he was the beneficiary of Crow’s aimless chatter, Patrick seemed to find him absolutely charming. “You know much about computers? I hear that’s a good field to get into. Lots of money. Start a little company and then-boom-you’re a rich man.”

“It’s not for me,” Crow said. “I need more interaction with people. I was thinking of going to Baltimore Culinary College, but I feel as if I’ve been in school forever. Don’t worry about me, Pat. I’m finding my way.”

He smiled sunnily at Pat, who tried to smile back. Such a slacker mentality must be pretty alien to her father, Tess thought. At Crow’s age, Patrick Monaghan had been a husband and a father, working in the job he held to this day. If he were ever unhappy or unfulfilled in his work-well, he had never assumed there was an alternative.

Tess’s eyes tracked Ruthie as she worked the parish hall. She had the moves of a former barmaid-she could dip and weave with the heavy trays, pivot at a moment’s notice, without ever spilling a drop of gravy. She also could turn her “customer face” on and off at will. At one point, she ended up in the senator’s path, and the two orbited one another, fake smiles in place. The only difference was that Ruthie dropped her smile once their little dance was done, while Dahlgren’s never slipped.

“So did you and Ruthie decide on a time for ‘our’ meeting?” Tess asked.

“After I get off work, about six-thirty? You like Frigo’s, they have good mozzarella sticks.” Her father knew her so well. Well enough to know she’d be hungry in five hours, no matter how many dumplings she had. Well enough to know that her curiousity alone would pull her to Frigo’s, with or without good mozzarella sticks.

“That would work,” Crow said. “We’re going to drive up to Hampden to see the miracle on Thirty-fourth Street. You know, the one block that goes crazy with Christmas lights? Then we’re meeting Whitney for dinner. But our reservation isn’t until eight-thirty.”

Spike looked up from his food. “Whitney? You mean the scary one?”

“No, you know Whitney. She was my college roommate, the one who just got back from Japan,” Tess said.

“Like I said,” Spike said around a mouthful of food. “The scary one.”

The senator was homing in on their corner of the parish hall. “Monaghan,” he said, clapping Patrick on the back. He was good, Tess decided, he had the politician’s hale and hearty moves down perfectly. Then again, if he were really good, she wouldn’t have noticed it was an act.

“Senator Dahlgren,” Patrick said, beaming at the recognition. “And Adam, Adam Moss, isn’t it? I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Up close, Adam Moss’s dark eyes were heavy-lidded and secretive, while his cherry-red mouth made Tess finally understand what it meant to have Cupid bow lips. He was poised, too. He didn’t play the usual game of pretending horror at the idea that others had been talking about him. In fact, he didn’t even bother to reply. His face was impassive, as if it were a given of his existence that people talked about him. They probably did, Tess thought, when you looked like that. What had Kierkegaard written about actresses? They knew they were on everyone’s lips, even when they wiped their mouths with their handkerchiefs. She bet Adam Moss was coming up on a lot of local handerkerchiefs.

Dahlgren shook hands all around, making eye contact, pretending fervent interest in the person at the other end of the arm, at least for the three seconds that the hand clasp lasted.

“Nice to finally meet your family, Pat,” the senator said. “Family’s very important.”

“Thank you, Senator.” Tess disliked seeing her father so puppy eager for the good opinion of a backbencher like Dahlgren. Oh well, anyone who had a job had to brownnose now and then. She did it, too, and hated herself in the morning-until she made her bank deposit. “Any chance you’re going to be making an official announcement soon about your status? I hear you’ve been raising money hand over fist since Meyer Hammersmith signed on as finance chairman.”

“Well, Meyer’s not on board officially,” Dahlgren said, his fixed smile never wavering. “As for my future plans-I like to say discretion is the better part of valor.”

“Shakespeare,” Crow said. “Henry the Fourth, Part One.”

“Really?” Dahlgren said. “I mean-of course.”

“It’s not like you don’t have plenty of things to keep you busy in Baltimore and Annapolis. Like, these houses that keep gettin’ tore down because they screw up the demolition permits.” Spike’s low grumble seemed to startle the senator, as if a family pet had begun speaking. “Or maybe this could be the year the senate scholarship program finally gets defunded. I guess you’ll support that change, you being Mr. Ethics and all.”

Dahlgren’s smile was beginning to look a little strained. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not hearing a lot of complaints about senators helping kids go to college.”

“I think it’s the fact that the aid package seems tied to the parents’ political patronage that has people upset,” Spike said, his tone as pleasant, and insincere, as Dahlgren’s.

Adam Moss leaned forward and whispered something into his boss’s ear, his voice so low that even an expert eavesdropper such as Tess was at a loss to catch a word. Dahlgren listened intently, his head cocked in the manner of the RCA dog. Nipper and his master’s voice, but which was which in this relationship?

“Adam reminds me the ethics committee is meeting in Annapolis in less than thirty minutes and I am the chair, after all,” Dahlgren said. “Even by legislative standards, I’m running late.”

“You gonna bounce him?” Spike asked.

“Bounce him?”

“Senator Hertel. You know-the poor dumb sap who didn’t get his hand out of the cookie jar fast enough when you all decided to clamp the lid down. That’s his crime, innit? Not being a crook, ’cause you’re all crooks, just being dumb enough to get caught. Kinda like musical chairs. The cheese stands alone.”

“Farmer in the Dell,” Crow said under his breath.

“My committee meets privately, but I can assure you we are taking the accusations against our colleague very seriously,” Dahlgren said. The answer didn’t quite match up to Spike’s question. It was probably the rehearsed sound bite the senator used for television interviews, where there was little risk of follow-up. “We need to work swiftly, so we can settle this matter before the General Assembly convenes in January. But we are not acting hastily.”

“If there’s anything worse than a lynch mob, it’s a lynch mob that takes its time,” Spike observed.

Adam Moss was already leading Dahlgren away from them, his arm a rudder in the small of the senator’s back. Angrily, Patrick pointed his fork, half a dumpling on the end, at Spike.

“I can’t believe you needled him about senate scholarships,” he said. “Who do you think you are, that shit-for-brains who writes editorials for the Blight?”

“I got no problems with senate scholarships,” Spike said. “It’s nice, old-fashioned, out-in-the-open patronage. Tess even got a little one, didn’t she? But I do like yanking Dahlgren’s chain. First Ditter, now Hertel.”

Crow said: “Did anyone else notice how good-looking he was?”

“The senator?” her father asked.

“No, the guy with him. Didn’t you think he was good-looking?”

Spike looked confused by the question, while Patrick appeared horrified. Tess squeezed Crow’s knee beneath the table, and he squeezed back. It was nice to be in synch. She felt she had to defend him, get back at her father for the way he had treated him today.

“About Frigo’s tonight-” she began.

“You can’t back out,” her father said. “I promised.”

“No, I’ll be there. But you won’t. My business dealings are confidential. You may have acted as matchmaker, but that doesn’t entitle you to sit in on the wedding night.”

Her choice of metaphor was exact. She wanted him to wince this time, and wince he did. “I already know what she’s going to tell you. So how can it be confidential?”

“My business, my rules. You want to shop around for another private detective to help your old friend, feel free.”

“She’s not an old friend, exactly,” Pat said. “But, okay-your business, your rules.”

He returned to his food, leaving Tess to wonder just what Ruthie was to her father, if she wasn’t an old friend, exactly.