Baltimore Blues

by Laura Lippman

  Lost in this thought, Tess didn’t notice that Ava had moved on. By the time she spotted her, she was a floor below, getting off the escalator. Tess tried to follow quickly, but the escalator was stacked with carefree tourists, the kind of people who don’t stand to one side because they assume everyone is on vacation. Unless she wanted to send bodies flying, she had to wait her turn to travel the ten feet of ribbed rubber Ava had already crossed.

  By the time Tess reached the first floor, Ava had disappeared. Tess thought she saw her toward the rear of the building, where the shops ended and the hotel lobby began. But there was no flash of crimson or pearly gray, no briefcase overflowing with green camisoles and burgundy panties, no dark hair.

  Ava was gone.

  Tess ran outside, thinking she might still catch her. Perhaps she was heading back to the office to stick death certificates in the files of asbestos victims or turn away another grieving relative. Or maybe she had stopped by the small amphitheater across the street, where jugglers and fire-eaters performed in the warm-weather months. But when Tess worked her way through the semicircle of gawking tourists, there was no performer at all, just an old man sleeping on the hot sidewalk.

  “Do you think he’s dead?” a woman asked no one in particular.

  Disgusted, Tess yanked the Gabor wig from her head, exposing her own matted, sweat-flattened hair. Three Scandinavian students mistook this for the opening flourish of a street performer’s act and threw a dollar bill at her, applauding wildly.

  “What do you think this is, some G-rated version of the Block?” Tess asked. “Or my performance-art tribute to Blaze Starr?”

  The students clapped and shouted something that appeared to be “More, more, more” in their native tongue.

  Tess dangled the wig in her hand and looked at the dollar bill on the pavement. The trio of blondes, their faces red with sunburn, stared at her hopefully. She started to throw the bill back, then thought better of it. She had given her last dollar to the old woman on the bench. This, with the change in her pocket, would buy a cup of Thrasher’s fries. Twirling the wig, Tess pocketed the money, blew her Scandinavian admirers a kiss, and ran to the food stands. Surveillance could wait.

  It was lunchtime.

  Chapter 4

  For eighteen years Tess’s Uncle Donald had been a moving target in the state government, jumping from do-nothing job to do-nothing job just ahead of the legislators who tried to sack him in a fit of fiscal responsibility. His latest resting place was a small office high up, literally at least, in the Department of Licensing and Regulation. His official title: director of the Office for Fraud and Waste. His unofficial deputy: Tess.

  “You know, it sounds as if you commit fraud and waste,” Tess said, entering her uncle’s office. It was small, but it had a window on St. Paul Place, with a nice view of a long, narrow median, overgrown and choked with weeds.

  “Maybe I should,” he said amiably. “I wouldn’t mind. It would fill up the day.”

  A short man with a round belly and thinning brown hair, Donald Weinstein had been handsome as a young man, but his looks had faded along with his power, leaving only a full, pouting mouth and lustrous brown eyes, incongruous in his pale, lined face. He handed his niece a slim folder, which represented a week’s work for him. Tess sat in the brown plastic chair opposite his desk and sifted through notes and memos from other agencies.

  “Very impressive,” she said. “I see the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has cut its water bill by repairing a leaky faucet. The Department of Human Resources has found a cheaper doughnut shop for its monthly staff meetings. And the Department of the Environment has dropped its 800 line for tidal wetlands information, which no one ever used except employees who patched in and made long-distance calls. What will Maryland do with all this extra money?”

  In Tess’s hands, at her computer, these items would be transformed into press releases. Department of Health and Mental Hygiene slashes bills and does the environmentally correct thing! Or, in the case of the doughnuts: Enterprising DHR employee Linda Fair found out switching catering contracts could result in significant savings. She would type two copies—one for distribution within the state system, the other intended as a press release. She would leave the Department of the Environment off the second sheet, as it was stamped NFMU (not for media use). No reason to alert the media about those long-distance calls. For all this work Donald paid her a hundred dollars, which came out to fifty dollars an hour, although it was billed as ten dollars per on the state time sheet she filled out each week. It wasn’t a bad way to make a living. She could have used seven more jobs just like it.

  “You eat?”

  “Yeah, down at the harbor.”

  “Too bad. I thought we could go up the hill to Tio’s.”

  “I haven’t been to Tio Pepe’s for years.” Not since Jonathan Ross had treated her, flush with the success of landing a new newspaper job while he had yet to cash his severance check from the old one.

  “We could drink sangria. See and be seen. Make them bring us the dessert cart and then not order anything. Well, maybe one slice of pine nut cake. I don’t care what anybody says, it’s still the best restaurant in Baltimore.”

  “It’s still expensive, too. You got an expense account now? Or did you bet some real money at the track?”

  “I guess you’d call it a discretionary fund.” He winked. “Same one I pay you out of.”

  “So you do commit fraud and waste.”

  Donald laughed. “If it hadn’t been for the economy, Tess, I could have found a full-time job for you. Then you’d get six hundred dollars a week and benefits for the same job you do now for a hundred dollars. And I’d have some company.”

  “Thanks, Uncle D., but I don’t think I would have made a very good state employee. I have a hard enough time getting the jargon down in these news releases. You know—‘accessing,’ instead of just ‘getting’ something. Or a ‘comprehensive service delivery’ plan. I’d never be the kind of bright young thing to track down cheaper doughnuts.”

  She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. He smelled like an old lady’s living room. Hair oil and musty upholstery, tinged with peppermint candies. Her mother’s siblings were old, much older than Judith Weinstein, an afterthought born almost twelve years after Mickey, the youngest of the four boys. Donald was in his early sixties, Tess calculated.

  At the door she turned back to look at him. He had been an important man once. A bagman, sure, but an up-and-coming one. If his boss hadn’t been convicted of mail fraud, Uncle Donald might be in the state house today, whispering in the governor’s ear instead of killing time in this barren room. Uncle Donald had been transferred so often he no longer brought anything personal to the office with him, except the Daily Racing Form and a legal pad. Ponies on paper, Uncle Donald called his habit.

  “You ahead?” Tess asked.

  “For the year. Bad week, though. I don’t like these California horses. I can’t get a feel for ’em.”

  “You’re not betting any real money?”

  “I bet my real money in the market. It’s more exciting. Hey—you sure you don’t want me to ask around, see if something’s available with the state? I bet I could find you a nice little $30,000-a-year job, with good medical.”

  Tess looked at the bare office, with its one window and the racing form on the desk. She blew her uncle a kiss, then ran down eleven flights as if something were chasing her. Once on the street she slowed to a brisk walk, but she kept going until she was back at her apartment.

  Seven hours later, her work for Uncle Donald already done, her evening run behind her, Tess again took up her post outside the garage at Eden’s Landing. This time, however, she was in her Toyota, waiting to see if Ava was going to leave her apartment. She knew she was there, because Rock had gotten off the phone with her minutes earlier, then called Tess.

  “She told me she didn’t feel up to dinner out,” he said. “Said she was just going to stay in all
evening.” He had not asked Tess to go watch, and she had not told him she would. He was paying Tess to think those unsavory thoughts for him.

  Twenty minutes later she felt almost smug as Ava zipped out of the garage at Eden’s Landing in her silver Miata. Tess followed her about a mile, through downtown and into Federal Hill, to the Sweat Shop, a cavernous building where three women had died in a small fire at the turn of the century.

  “Why lie about working out?” Tess asked Ava from inside her car. “That’s one thing Rock always approves of, even if the gym’s name isn’t exactly PC.”

  When the Sweat Shop opened it had been deemed officially insensitive by the editorial writers at the Beacon-Light. Men and women claiming to be descendants of the dead women picketed. Television reporters swooped down on the place, but the handsome gym photographed so well that people clamored to join. Eventually someone remembered the victims had been teenagers, childless and unmarried, and the pickets disappeared. The Sweat Shop was an unqualified success.

  Even when she had a job, Tess had never been able to afford such a glossy gym, but she knew how to gain entrance to one.

  “I’d like some membership information,” she told the anorexic-looking blonde at the front desk. The blonde sighed and depressed a button behind the desk. A mechanized roar, the sound a crowd makes when someone hits a three-pointer at the buzzer, echoed through the club. Great, Tess thought. Just alert everyone that I’m here.

  Dale, as he was identified on his name tag, hurried forward. Short and muscle-bound, he wore a knit polo shirt so tight Tess could see each hair in the cleavage of his well-defined chest. There were seven in all. His white trousers were only a shade looser. Even his slicked-back ponytail, less than an inch in length, looked tight and flexed, curled like a bicep.

  “I’m Dale, your fitness ambassador,” he said, pumping Tess’s hand enthusiastically. “Are you interested in our platinum or gold plan?”

  “Probably the zirconium.”

  He looked at her blankly.

  “A joke,” Tess explained. “I’m sure I’ll want the top-of-the-line membership. But I need a tour of the place before we start talking about fees.”

  “Of course.” He put a proprietary hand on the small of her back, like a rudder. Tess removed the hand.

  “I thought I could walk around by myself first. Check out the locker rooms, you know. I assume you do have them for men and women?”

  Dale, sensing his commission slipping away, nevertheless kept his broad, peppy smile. “No problem! But I will need you to sign a liability waiver. So we have your name and phone number on file.”

  Tess took the clipboard he proffered. There was no waiver on it, only a blank piece of paper with a space for one’s name and phone number. She had a sudden vision of nightly calls and entreaties from Dale, begging her to try the Sweat Shop for three months, two months, one month.

  Tess Duberville, she wrote carefully, adding the phone number for the local weather service. Let Thomas Hardy and the forecasters deal with the sales pitch.

  Free to take her own “tour” of the old factory, Tess walked through the gym, inspecting each machine while glancing around for Ava. She didn’t have to fake her admiration for the sleek German equipment. The Sweat Shop was a well-kept place, filled with the thoughtful touches people expect when they pay upward of $2,000 a year for membership. Fluffy white towels, piles of current magazines by the stationary bikes, mounted color television sets. You could even rent headsets tuned to the TVs, making it easier to hear above the clanking weights and the whirring sounds of dozens of machines, all going nowhere. For someone like Tess, who spent up to three hours a day streaked with sweat, it was a tempting place. She would have preferred looking at the machines—and, in some cases, the men on them—to looking for Ava.

  As it turned out she could do both. The aerobics room sat in the center of the gym, encased in glass, a bigger-than-life ant farm. There, front and center in a step class, Ava high kicked her way through the routine as if it were a competitive sport. Frail and sexy in her street clothes, she didn’t look so helpless in white lace bicycle pants and a matching sports bra. Her leg muscles were long and defined, like a dancer’s. Her biceps and abdomen were strongly cut, the current style for women’s bodies. As for her breasts—impossibly large for such a tiny woman and indifferent to gravity—those appeared to have been fashioned somewhere outside the gym.

  As the class moved into the cool-down phase, Ava rushed from the room, mopping at her sweaty face with one of the club’s white towels. Only minutes later, glancing at her watch, she popped out of the locker room. She had not showered, although her makeup was fresh and her hair neatly combed. She still wore the tiny shorts and bra, with a filmy linen shirt thrown over them. The see-through shirt only emphasized all the bare skin beneath it.

  No longer in a rush, Ava sauntered toward the lobby and stopped at the water fountain. Although she pressed her mouth against the arc of water, she didn’t seem to swallow, Tess noticed, and her eyes were busy darting from side to side. When a Waspy white-haired man with a squash racket walked by her, she straightened up like a jack-in-the-box, greeting him in a sweet, clear voice.

  “What a surprise! I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  Across the lobby Tess pretended a sudden interest in a poster showing the cardiovascular system, but she could hear only snatches of their conversation. The two seemed to know each other, if not terribly well. Ava was unusually deferential, possibly because of the man’s age, her eyes fastened on his face as if everything he said was fascinating.

  “—come here for the massages as much as anything else,” the patrician-looking man was saying. Tess was straining to hear Ava’s reply, when she was knocked breathless by a huge hand smacking her between the shoulder blades.

  “You want those membership detes now?” Dale, fitness ambassador, had sneaked up behind her, an ominously thick three-ring binder in hand.

  “Detes?”

  “Details.”

  “Oh, of course. Just let me go out to the Beamer and grab my checkbook.”

  Checkbook, the magic word. “Beamer” didn’t hurt either.

  Dale beamed, smacking Tess one more time. As she ran to her car, she wondered if he treated all the female clients like this, or only those at least a foot taller.

  She waited in her car for Ava to leave, watching her through the club’s glass front. She seemed in no hurry now as she talked to the man with the squash racket. Animated, almost flirtatious, she leaned toward him and touched him frequently, innocently. Feather-light touches to his shoulder, his wrist, his hand. It reminded Tess of her shoplifting technique.

  When the man finally walked away, Ava’s face seemed to shut down. She wouldn’t frown like that, Tess thought, if she knew how her face settled in deep lines along her mouth and forehead. Ava ran toward her car and shot out of the parking lot so quickly, Tess almost lost her on Federal Hill’s narrow streets. She caught up on Light Street and trailed her back to Eden’s Landing. The Toyota, usually so well behaved, sputtered and backfired, begging for attention. Tess kept it in second and hoped Ava remained oblivious.

  Once inside her apartment, Ava refused to answer the phone. Tess knew this because she called at regular intervals from the pay phone at Vaccaro’s, a gelato place in Little Italy, a block away. Not even a machine picked up. How could someone ignore ten, fifteen rings? Ava didn’t strike Tess as a particularly tolerant person, or one who could walk away easily from a ringing phone. Perhaps she was on the other line, so involved in another conversation that she refused to heed the click of call-waiting. Or she had unplugged the phone so no one could call her. So Rock couldn’t call her.

  Tess ate a pistache gelato and thought about what she had learned so far. Ava shoplifted. Ava worked out. Ava, in all likelihood, had breast implants. And more muscle than one might imagine. It didn’t seem like much. It also seemed pretty damn boring. She totaled up her hours in her head—7:30 A.M. to 12:30 P.M., then anoth
er two hours tonight. It came out to $210. Boring, but profitable. In fact she wouldn’t mind several such boring days, although she knew she should quit before her billable hours reached $1,000. She didn’t want to put too big a dent in Rock’s nest egg.

  Chapter 5

  After the easy rewards of her first day, Tess discovered why surveillance work pays well. On her second day, the Friday before the Labor Day weekend, Tess waited outside the Lambrecht Building until 2 P.M., but Ava did not leave until Rock came to pick her up for an Eastern Shore weekend. Tess watched Rock carry Ava’s bags to his car—two, she noted, for a three-day weekend. Suddenly he reached out and caught Ava by the wrist, as if afraid she might dart off. He gathered her to him and hugged her hard. It made Tess’s ribs ache just to see it. But Ava only arched her back, submitting her body to the embrace while craning her neck away from Rock, staring above his head at something Tess could not see. They headed for the expressway in Rock’s seldom-used Honda, his shell strapped to the roof of the car.

  Why are you two engaged? Tess wondered as the car disappeared. She had seen Rock in the grocery store, absentminded and indifferent about everything except his coffee beans. “The biggest one is always the best buy, right? If this kind of rice costs more, it must be better, right?” He was a few years older than she, and the life he glimpsed through his microscope, as Tess understood it, encouraged one to reproduce, to squiggle on.

  And there was Ava, beautiful, accomplished, and willing. He would never question why she wanted to marry him. He would see it as a sign of extraordinary good fortune, proof that the expensive rice is always the best.