Laura Lippman (27 page)

She looked into Paul’s face. Fear was there, but something else as well—something evil and ecstatic. It was al
most as if he was welcoming her to his world, grinning and nodding, saying “Come on in.” Maybe it was simply that he’d rather die than go to prison. Nicola’s assurances notwithstanding, he was going to be a very old man before he got out. Tess could kill him now, even with Tull standing there, and there was a certain power in that.

But there was a greater power in letting him live. She stood up and walked over to the bar, where she put down Repete’s knife and poured herself a Rolling Rock from the tap. The officers came through the door, guns drawn, handcuffs ready. Tull told them to leave the old woman alone, it was just the boys who were going to Central lockup.

“How’d the one on the floor get that goose egg on his head?” one officer asked.

“Fell out of his chair,” Tull said.

O
N THE
F
RIDAY BEFORE
C
HRISTMAS
, T
ESS SAT AT HER
desk in the winter twilight, looking at the envelope that had come in that day’s mail, an envelope with two tickets to a $1,000-per-person fund-raiser for Sen. Kenneth Dahlgren. There was no return address, and she didn’t recognize the handwriting on the unsigned note, which said simply: “Be my guest.” Her name had been written on one ticket, while the other bore the name of Herman Peters. She felt a small shiver down her spine. Even now, it was unsettling to be reminded of how closely she had been watched these past few weeks. She pulled Peters’s business card from her desk and punched in the beeper number, happy to give him a small jolt at waist level.

Her phone rang almost the moment she placed it back in the cradle.

“Peters here.”

“Monaghan here.” It was hard not to mimic him. “That
big story I promised you is here, just in time for Christmas.”

“If you mean the confession in Gene Fulton’s murder, I got it on my own, and it wasn’t such a big story. It didn’t even make metro front. Sorry.”

“Come with me to Martin’s West tonight, and I’ll make sure you get a page-one story, with enough fallout to keep you on page one every day through Christmas.”

“Martin’s West? What is it, some fund-raiser?”

“What else?”

“When did a fund-raiser ever make news?”

“Make a leap of faith, Herman. And wear a tie. We should look like the paying guests we’re not, at least for a little while.”

Tess supposed it was possible to spend one’s life in Baltimore and never venture into Martin’s West, but she didn’t know anyone who had managed this feat. All roads eventually led to this glitzy, overwrought banquet hall on the western edge of the Beltway. If Dante’s
Inferno
were updated and relocated to Charm City, it would have to include a new circle of hell—political fund-raisers at Martin’s West.

But she was enjoying herself this evening, grabbing hors d’oeuvres from the trays that whizzed by—once she ascertained there was no crabmeat in them. She didn’t want to have an allergic reaction and miss all the fun. The food was pretty good, for banquet hall slop, but Dahlgren, a Baptist, had made predictably poor wine selections. All the money in the world, and he cheaped out on the wine, serving Romanian swill. Tess sipped a gin-and-tonic, a relatively foolproof drink.

Herman Peters paced in restless circles around her, disdaining food and drink, keeping in constant touch with the city desk by cell phone and pager.

“There’s a homicide in the Eastern district,” he said mournfully. “A woman shot her husband because he wouldn’t stop changing the channel with the remote. It would be my five hundred thirteenth homicide straight. I hate to miss it.”

“You’d hate missing this more,” Tess assured him. “By the way, you did make sure Feeney was there to do rewrite, right? This is going to break close to deadline, and you’ll need someone who actually knows something about Maryland politics.”

“Yeah, yeah, he’s there. I just wish you’d tell me more about what’s going to happen.”

“Go with the flow, Hermannator. Show’s starting.”

A mediocre jazz band had been playing standards, interspersed with the inevitable Christmas music, on a stage at one end of the hall. They broke after a particularly funereal version of “A Christmas Song,” and Whitney came out in the WASP seasonal uniform—long velvet skirt and white silk blouse. At least she didn’t have on one of those embroidered Christmas sweaters that so many otherwise sensible women donned this time of year.

“If I could have your attention for a moment, ladies and gentlemen.” Between her vowel sounds and golden hair, she had it immediately. “This fund-raiser was to have been a joyful event, celebrating the fact that the campaign has already passed the $1 million mark in contributions. But I’m afraid it has been overshadowed by a tragedy, the apparent death of Senator Dahlgren’s legislative aide, Adam Moss.”

The crowd dutifully murmured in shock, although
Tess sensed they were merely being polite. If anything, the party-goers seemed a little annoyed that someone had the bad taste to cast a pall over what was to have been a festive event.

“State police found Adam’s car this morning in Sandy Point Park, along with a note, indicating he planned to jump from the Bay Bridge,” Whitney continued. “A motorist had reported seeing a man walking on the southern span about three
A.M
., but Adam’s body has not yet been found. The senator thought about canceling the fund-raiser, but the letter police found in Adam’s car specifically requested this event go on as planned.”

Herman Peters unsheathed his notebook with one hand, and began dialing his cell phone with the other. Tess put a hand on the notebook. “Not yet,” she whispered. “There’s more.”

Dahlgren walked up on the stage now, his face arranged in a suitably somber expression.

“The fact is,” Whitney took two sheets of paper from one of her skirt’s deep pockets, “Adam cared so much about the senator that his note details how Meyer Hammersmith has tainted the campaign by making illegal contributions. Apparently, Hammersmith tried to skirt the federal limits by using dead people and the employees of a Southwest Baltimore bar owner, Nicola DeSanti, to pour his own money into the campaign.”

This earned the gasps and scandalized whispers that Adam Moss’s mere suicide had failed to incite. Dahlgren stopped and stared at Whitney, forgetting to close his mouth. Tess could imagine her father saying:
Once a backbencher, always a backbencher
. Thinking about her father still stung. They had not spoken since the fire.

“Adam indicates in his letter that Hammersmith’s betrayal of the senator may have been the result of a love triangle. It appears the two men had quarreled over someone. Who, it’s not clear, but Adam seems to take personal responsibility for the rift. He asks the State Police not to prosecute Dahlgren, whom he describes as a man of integrity”—Whitney squinted at the letter as if reading it for the first time—“the only man I ever…Hmm. Well, Adam probably didn’t want that part read out loud.”

Tess had kept an eye on Hammersmith while Whitney was speaking. He had been backing up steadily along one wall of the banquet hall, until he was at the rear. She watched him slip away now, through the kitchen doors. Herman Peters saw it, too, and started after him, but Tess held his arm.

“The story’s here. Don’t run after him for a ‘no comment.’ You can get as much by phone later. I have his number.”

Dahlgren, a pale man to begin with, looked ghastly now, his broad forehead sweating, his eyes taking on that Dan-Quayle-in-the-headlights glaze. He tried to nudge Whitney away from the podium, but she didn’t yield. He pushed her more overtly. She held her ground, smiling sweetly. In desperation, Dahlgren yanked the mike from the stand and stepped around her, trying to get the crowd’s attention back.

“It’s Christmas time, a joyful time of year for all of us,” he said. “And Hanukkah time, too, of course, as well as Kwanzaa for many of our friends here tonight. But it’s not April Fool’s Day, a fact my staffers seem to have forgotten. I’m sorry for this ill-advised practical joke. It’s not at all funny.”

“No, it’s not funny,” Whitney agreed. She could be
heard even without the mike, because everyone in the vast room had fallen silent. “You see, Hammersmith made those illegal contributions only because you blackmailed him into becoming your finance manager, according to Adam. Murder and extortion and illegal campaign contributions and arson—it’s all here, in great detail. Would you like me to read the rest of it?”

At this point, Dahlgren bolted from the stage, looking as if he were going to be sick. Det. Martin Tull was waiting for him at the stage’s edge.

“Senator, I’m arresting you for withholding evidence about a homicide in the city of Baltimore, a felony crime.” A friendly state’s attorney had agreed to let Tull take Dahlgren in, knowing the charge would never stand. The real case against Dahlgren was in the campaign records, and the only punishment the state would ever exact was the end of his political career. But Tess had been adamant—she wanted a public perp walk for this very public perp. She had even called the television stations she hated so much, and instructed them to wait outside Martin’s West. “Good visuals?” the weekend assignment editors had all chirped. “Superb visuals,” she had promised.

“Now you’ve got your story,” she told Herman Peters, who wore a rapt expression, like a little boy regarding his first bicycle on Christmas Day. The end of his homicide streak was clearly forgotten now.

“Do you think she’d give me her copy of the suicide note?” He was nodding toward Whitney, who still held center stage.

“Take mine,” Tess said. “I’ve got a photocopy she gave me when I came in. It’s very complete, it explains how everything fits together—Hammersmith, Dahlgren, the death of Gwen Schiller. But grab Whitney now if you
have any questions. We’re meeting my boyfriend for a late supper at the Brass Elephant bar.”

In the end, Herman Peters never got that comment from Meyer Hammersmith. No one did. Meyer went home that night, lay down on his chaise longue, and slit his wrists. He didn’t leave a note, but the velvet-lined box of tattoo implements that police found next to him told Tess everything she needed to know. That was Peters’s second page-one story, leading the paper on Monday.

The third one explained how Whitney had infiltrated the campaign at Tess’s behest, and how she had already been on the trail of the illegal contributions when Adam killed himself, distraught over Dahlgren’s cynical reaction to Gwen Schiller’s murder. Then the state police revealed the trunk of Adam Moss’s car contained all the documents the state attorney general and the feds needed to proceed with an inquiry into the Dahlgren campaign’s fund-raising. That was page-one story number four.

But now it was Christmas Eve, and the Dahlgren saga had petered out. Or maybe it was just on hiatus, while the
Blight
fell back on the old newspaper trick of running feel-good holiday stories. Lord knows, Tess was sick of reading about it.

She sat in her office, reconciling her books for the end of the year, trying to prepare her state taxes before she took a friend to the train station. She was determined to take the last week of the year off, whatever happened. She had earned it. She sorted through receipts, pondered whether she should try to bill Ruthie for the work she had done when she was pretending not to work. Probably not. Ruthie had hung up on her the last time they
spoke. She was furious at the deal Tess had cut, letting Nicola DeSanti off the hook for Henry’s death in return for giving up her own grandson and great-grandson. Ruthie wanted more. She would always want more, Tess now realized. If Nicola DeSanti went to jail, Ruthie would just focus all her anger and grief on the inmate who had carried out the contract. Henry’s death had left her perpetually unfinished and dissatisfied.

Tess also couldn’t decide where to file her copy of Adam Moss’s suicide note. It didn’t seem to belong in her Gwen Schiller file. Adam didn’t seem to belong anywhere. She had an image of his body coming to rest on some far shore of the Bay, a ravaged, waterlogged John Doe, impossible to identify. Those were pearls that were his eyes.

But that was not to be his fate, of course, not just yet.

“Who are you, Adam?” she asked the man sitting across from her, waiting patiently for her to finish her accounts.

“The first man,” he said. “Why do you think I chose the name Adam?”

“No, who are you, really?”

He shook his head. “That’s mine, the only thing I ever really owned, the only thing I’ll never give away or sell.”

“Where will you go? What will you do?”

“West,” he said. “I’ll find a campaign. There’s a senator who’s already thinking about the next presidential race, a governor who wants to be a senator. There’s even a Hollywood actor who wants to run for office. I’ll find a way. I may have to start as a volunteer, but I’ll make staff in a matter of weeks.”

“Are you that good?”

“I’m that good. In fact, I’m better at politics than I ever was as trade.”

“I doubted you, you know,” she said. “Even when you
told me what you wanted to do, I didn’t think it would work. Never get caught with a dead girl or a live boy. You left Dahlgren with a dead boy, and all the innuendo that goes with it. He’ll never recover.”

Adam gave her his full, radiant smile. You could rule the world with a smile like that, Tess thought. But all Adam wanted was to advise the people who ruled the world. She couldn’t decide if this made him more dangerous, or less.

“I prefer being underestimated,” he said. “But then, so do you, right? It’s always an advantage.”

She handed him an envelope. “Spike got you the IDs—I don’t know how, and I don’t want to. You’re Joseph Kane now. You have a Maryland driver’s license to prove it, and a new Social Security number, courtesy of a little boy named Joseph Kane who died last year and never got to use it.” She produced a second envelope. “You also get the petty cash from Domenick’s.”

“How did you arrange that?”

“Oh, didn’t you hear?” Tess said blandly. “There was a horrible mix-up at housing. A demolition permit was issued for a vacant rowhouse one block over, but there was a typo on the work order. Nicola DeSanti showed up for work one morning and her bar was gone.”

“You took her bar?”

“She took my parents’ house. Look, it’s only three thousand dollars. It won’t last long.”

“You’d be surprised at how long I can live on how little,” he said, tucking the money into a thin leather wallet.

“No, I wouldn’t. One more thing.” This envelope was larger, a little thicker. “Dick Schiller gave me Gwen’s remains, to distribute among those who tried to help her. I already gave Sukey her part, we spread them at Fort McHenry earlier today.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“Only if you get caught. I’ve put aside another portion for Devon Whittaker, when she returns from Guadeloupe. This is yours.”