Laura Lippman (18 page)

H
ER FACE WAS STILL RED AND BLOTCHY WHEN
T
ESS
banged through the front doors of Women and Children First almost an hour later, but she could blame the December wind if anyone noticed. Luckily, the store was thronged with customers, so Kitty and Crow could barely afford to call out a greeting, much less indulge in a prolonged interrogation about how she had spent her day.

But observant Crow did say, even as he worked the cash register with his deceptively laid-back efficiency: “You okay? Your eyes look kind of swollen, and your face is puffy.”

“Really? Must be something in the Chinese carryout I had for lunch. Is Tyner coming for dinner tonight?” Her question was for Kitty, who was ringing up a set of out-of-print Oz books. Not the truly rare ones, just the white cover editions of the 1960s. But Kitty had found out that self-referential boomers would pay astronomical prices to reclaim the artifacts of their childhoods, even if the
books weren’t rare by strict collectible standards. Her only problem was staying ahead of eBay and other online auction sites, which were cannibalizing so much of the children’s books market.

“He’s already here,” Kitty said, nodding toward the rear of the store. “We’re so swamped he volunteered to assemble gift packages.”

“Tyner is putting together your Christmas gift baskets? This I gotta see.” Tess pushed through the swinging doors, into the small storeroom that separated Kitty’s living quarters from her business.

Tyner was seated at the round oak table in the kitchen’s center, mangling sheets of red and green cellophane in his hands. A stack of empty wicker baskets sat next to his wheelchair, while the table held the piles of books and tchotchkes Kitty used for her largely Charm City-centric themes. Tess recognized the basket in front of Tyner as a “sampler” of Kitty’s favorite living fiction writers—Anne Tyler, Stephen Dixon, Ralph Pickle, Dan Ellenham, Sue Roland—as well as a small box of Konstant Kandy peanut brittle and a snow globe with an Inner Harbor scene inside. The paperbacks had been tied together with gold string, and arrayed in shredded green-and-red confetti. Theoretically, all Tyner had to do was bring the cellophane to a point at the top, tying it off with a gold ribbon, then place the finished basket in one of the preassembled cardboard boxes, surrounded by bubble wrap.

But the cellophane was too slippery for him, slithering to the floor. In the process of reclaiming it, Tyner rolled back and forth, leaving a few tire tracks. All in all, he looked about as helpless as Tess had ever seen him.

She loved it.

“Let me,” she said at last, taking the basket from him.

“Damn cellophane,” he said. “How can anyone work with this stuff?”

“You’re welcome. Why would you offer to do something for which you’re so ill-equipped?”

“It wasn’t my idea exactly,” Tyner said. “I wanted to work out front, but Kitty said she needed me here.”

“Tactful of her. She probably just thought it was bad business to send the customers rushing out of the store in tears. You never did master the concept that the customer is always right. Unless
you’re
the customer, of course.”

Tess consulted the list in front of Tyner. The next order was for a “Crabtown Special”—a set of H. L. Mencken’s
Days
books, a tin of Old Bay seasoning and two crab mallets. Tess’s hands fell naturally into the rhythm of assembling the items. Last Christmas season, she had still been filling in at the store, even as she began working toward getting her private investigator’s license. In hindsight, it seemed a most desirable job. The hours were regular; Kitty had made sure her staff had medical benefits.

Besides, no one ever backed bookstore clerks against their cars, threatening to rape them if they showed their faces in a neighborhood again. And sleazy lobbyists didn’t play the dozens with you, insulting your father just for the hell of it.

Tyner watched intently as Tess assembled the next three or four baskets, then started on the next, a Birdland special, which was built around the histories of the Orioles and the Ravens. He was never going to be as fast as Tess, and his ribbons left much to be desired, but he was catching on. They worked in a companionable silence, making steady progress.

“Something you want to talk about?” he asked after a while.

“Is it that obvious?”

“It is to me.”

She told him of the day’s events, hoping she wouldn’t become emotional. She hated betraying any weakness in front of Tyner. Funny, the conversation with Vasso troubled her more in the retelling than the encounter with Pete and Repete. At least they hadn’t been so damn oblique, or dragged her family into it.

“You get the license plate on the car you saw in the alley?”

Tess nodded. “But it’s blocked. The MVA lets citizens safeguard their information now. As a licensed PI, I think I can still get it, but it means a trip to Glen Burnie tomorrow.”

“Did you go to Harbor Court Hotel?”

“Of course. I didn’t see the girl, though, and all I know of the man with her is that he wore gray trousers and drove a maroon car. She was probably in a private room.”

“A prostitution ring.”

That was the nice thing about Tyner. His mind worked quickly, and he always saw where she was going, even if he didn’t necessarily agree it was the right direction.

“What else? I’ve never heard of Nicola DeSanti, but Baltimore has so many low-level criminal bosses that no one can know all of them. The bar is clearly a front for something. I’m betting her husband’s name isn’t on the license because he was a convicted felon. When she took over, she saw no reason to bring the paperwork up to date.”

“You going to ask Tull to run a background check on her or the late Mr. DeSanti?”

Tess shook her head. “No. I thought about it. I even considered filing charges against those two guys. But I don’t think the police department is going to be as inclined to help me out when I’m trying to pry open a case they consider closed twice over.”

“Tesser—” Kitty’s influence had softened Tyner, made him a little nicer. He was not as quick to tell Tess that she was wrong, or thinking poorly. He resorted to tact. This should have been an improvement, but it was more like having a Band-Aid lifted very slowly.

“Just say it, Tyner. No Zig Ziglar homilies, please.”

“You could be right. Gwen Schiller may have worked at this bar. She may even have been a prostitute there. But do you really think they’d kill her for that?”

“Maybe there was something else. Maybe she saw something, or heard something. They could be running numbers through there, or drugs.”

“So Nicola DeSanti hires Henry Dembrow, an addled spray paint addict, to kill her? Pretty far-fetched.”

So it was. Tess was going on her gut, and what did her gut know about anything? Pete and Repete weren’t likely to take a shine to any stranger who showed up at Domenick’s. They hadn’t threatened her because she had asked about Gwen, but because she came back, asking questions.

She tied a ribbon on the last basket, a Decadence Deluxe: John Waters’s essays,
Tender Is the Night
, which Fitzgerald had worked on while Zelda had been in and out of the local mental hospitals, a box of Rheb’s chocolate, and a bottle of Boordy, a Maryland wine.

“Sometimes,” Tyner said, “things really are what they appear to be. A stupid kid knocks down a girl, she cracks open her head. He runs. She dies. End of story.”

“Sometimes,” Tess said, agreeing, yet not. She was staring at the bow on the package. Why had Henry marked Gwen’s body, as if to send a message to someone? “And sometimes you just have to go back to the beginning, and start all over again.”

“Back to Locust Point?”

“No.” Funny, she had been speaking just to be speaking more or less. But Tyner’s question made her focus, made her see where the beginning was. “Back to the liquor board. That’s where I found the discrepancy in the license, where I found Arnie Vasso’s name in the file.”

It also happened to be where her father worked. Her father, who knew all about favors.

She found him at his desk the next morning, doing whatever he did at his desk. Funny how little she knew about his work. Liquor board inspector had always sounded so self-evident. Had she ever asked her father a question about his job beyond, “How was your day?” She didn’t think so.

Nor had she registered how impersonal his office was, for a man who had been in the same job, the same cubicle, for thirty years. The only touches he had added were three photographs. One of him with Senator Ditter at the annual Crisfield Bull Roast; a startlingly sexy photograph of her mother, when she was still Judith Weinstein; and an old photo of Tess, circa junior high. Taken during her plumpest period, it showed a girl with a face as round and shiny as a full moon, hair in two thick plaits. All she needed was a horned helmet and she’d have been Ring Cycle-ready.

“I really wish you’d get rid of that,” she said, as she had said every time she visited the office since it had appeared on his desk.

“It’s cute,” her father protested, truly perplexed. “You look so healthy.”

Presexual, he meant. Climbing trees instead of boys.

But she was still his little girl, even at five-nine and
God knows how many pounds. Mindful of this, she edited carefully as she told him about the parts of her investigation that had touched on Domenick’s.

He was worried, even after hearing the P.G. version.

“Nicola DeSanti,” he said, shaking his head. “Jesus, Tess, she’s bad news.”

“I picked up that much.”

“Why are you still poking around, anyway? You did what Ruthie asked. Don’t get caught up in her sickness about Henry. It’s normal for family to want to think the best of family, but you don’t have to fall in.” He shook his head again. “Ruthie. She always was a pit bull when it came to her little brother.”

“Daddy.” He was usually Dad to her, sometimes Pop. He hadn’t been “Daddy” for twenty-five years. “Did you ever work that territory?”

“No.” It took him a second to get the intent behind the question, then he was wounded. “
No
. Jesus, Tess. You think I’d be mixed up with something like that? Thanks a lot. In fact, the territory belongs to one of the new guys, straightest arrow in the office. One of Dahlgren’s handpicked boys. Eric Collins. He doesn’t even
drink
.”

“It’s not drinking we’re talking about.”

“Look, I saw him this morning when I came in. Let me see if he’s still out there; you can talk to him yourself about Domenick’s.”

Her father’s office was a place entirely without distractions, not even a view. There was a window, but her father left it covered by heavy, old-fashioned Venetian blinds. Tess tried separating the blinds so she could peek through, but the window was so dirty that it might as well have been opaque.

“Here’s Eric,” her father said. “What do you want to ask him?”

The man was young, and earnest looking, with freckles and a cowlick. He wore gray trousers, Tess noticed, but then, so did her father. So did a lot of men in Baltimore.

“Have you picked up on anything at Domenick’s?” she asked him. “Any complaints, any hints that they’re doing something other than serving beer?”

He shook his head. “It’s one of the few places over there no one ever complains about. They close on time, they don’t make noise, they don’t serve underage kids.”

“What about the girls?”

“What girls? I’ve seen a barmaid here and there, but it’s not like they’ve got B-girls at the counter, trying to hustle guys for dollar drafts, or dancing on the tables. You’ve been there, you’ve seen it. It’s a neighborhood joint. Yeah, Nicola DeSanti may be running her rackets through it, but that’s not my problem, you know? I can’t even catch her paying off on video poker. And she’s death on drugs, I can tell you that much. She’s old-fashioned that way.”

“What about the fact that a dead man is listed as the owner?”

The young inspector rolled his eyes. “So, I haul them in, and next thing you know it’ll be her daughter or her cousin. Everyone knows how that works.”

A straight arrow, and not stupid, but uninterested in converting the rest of the world.

“Sorry, Tess,” her father said. “You’re not going to find any answers here. You may have to accept there are no answers, not to the questions you’re asking.”

She left, feeling dejected. It had seemed so promising. Gene Fulton fell into step beside her as she walked down the stairs to the street.

“Looking good, Tess,” he said. “I saw you on the television the other night.”

She was surprised to find him so determinedly chummy. She thought the bit about her imminent engagement would have killed his fleeting interest. Maybe she could show him the photo of herself in her father’s office. That should dampen any man’s ardor.

“Well, you know what they say, Mr. Fulton.” She deliberately avoided using his first name. “The camera adds ten pounds. But it’s good for business.”

“Guess you don’t get to take much time off, being self-employed and all. You working through the end of the year, or you going to give yourself a little holiday, hit the party circuit?”

Oh please, not an invitation. She was not up to the tact required to deflect an unwanted date.

“I thought I was going to be working, but now I’m not so sure. My dad says I’ve got a dog by the tail, and he just might be right.”

“Well—” they were down at the street now, and Gene had his keys out, twirling them in his fingers. “Give yourself a break. Take it easy. You’re young, you should be having fun.”

She braced herself, but there was no followup. He simply waved and crossed South Street to his car, parked illegally in a loading zone. A ticket was on the windshield, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Why should it? It was probably a point of honor with him that he could get his tickets fixed. Lord knows no one in Tess’s family had ever paid a parking ticket. Fulton took the white sheet from the windshield, crumpled it and threw it in the trash. Tess watched the maroon Mercury pull away from the curb and head down South Street.