Baltimore Blues

by Laura Lippman

  Her package mailed, she drove home and flopped on her bed. She had not exercised for five days, since Jonathan’s death, and she’d eaten little. Her body felt puny and weak, her stomach flat, the kind of flat that comes from the atrophy of muscle. A workout’s effects are lost in seventy-two hours, Tess chided herself, then tried to remember the last time she had gone three days without running or rowing. About five years ago, when she had sprained her ankle. Even then she had done bicep curls with cans of Progresso plum tomatoes and tried chin-ups from her door frame.

  She stood up, determined to run, but her legs felt too rubbery. Instead she left her apartment and began walking. First north, then east. The neighborhoods through which she walked were the cornerstone of the Baltimore myth, the places enshrined in the travel pieces written by every slumming journalist who had ever swung a crab mallet at Obrycki’s. Here were the marble stoops, the celebrated ethnic mix, the vast green spaces of Patterson Park. It looked good, from a distance. But Tess knew teenagers were smoking PCP and crack in the alleys, and that no one walked in Patterson Park because of the crime. She knew fewer and fewer women scrubbed their marble stoops every day. Even the Elvis mural had been defaced, so it had to be painted over. And when Baltimoreans started turning on Elvis, times were bad.

  She walked past the old Francis Scott Key Hospital and through Greektown. The air was full of grape leaves, roasted lamb, potato pancakes, and, near the Brazilian restaurant, a scorched pork scent her nose recognized as the “national dish of Brazil.” She passed Cesnik’s Tavern. It could be Cecilia’s father’s place. She walked all the way to Dundalk, down Holabird Avenue, to the small hideous rancher owned by Abner Macauley.

  Mrs. Macauley, her hair a few inches higher since Tess’s last visit, opened the door.

  “Oh, hi, hon,” she said. “He’s not well enough to talk.”

  “He doesn’t have to.” Almost rudely she pushed past the woman and into the living room.

  Mr. Macauley looked worse, if that was possible. Grayer, thinner, frailer, a husk of a man. Tess thought his arm might collapse when she touched it, dry as dust beneath her fingers.

  “Mr. Macauley?”

  He was dozing and woke with a start, not recognizing her at first. He looked around her, found his wife, and relaxed. He was not dead, then, facing down an Amazonian angel at heaven’s gate.

  “You’re going to get your money, Mr. Macauley. All of it. I talked to someone from the law firm and they promised. By next week.”

  He smiled. Gently Tess picked up one of his hands. The palms were still rough, all these years later, but the backs of his hands were paper thin. She stroked his hand and listened to his breathing through the plastic tube, the squeak of his recliner. An old Perry Mason show was on television. Tess had forgotten Raymond Burr once had a dark, frightening grace. She also had forgotten what a weenie Hamilton Burger was.

  “I’ve seen ’em all,” Mr. Macauley rasped. “I never remember who did it.”

  They watched the show together, silently. As a little girl Tess had watched it with Poppa Weinstein and he, much like Mr. Macauley, had seen every episode. She had thought this was how it worked—that everyone sat in the courtroom together, that attorneys were frequently surprised by the answers they heard, that the case was always solved as a witness dissolved in tears or shouts. In the back of her mind she had thought it would be like this for Rock.

  “Jew bastard,” Mr. Macauley said suddenly.

  “Perry Mason?” Raymond Burr? Hamilton Burger?

  “Abramowitz,” he said. “Jew bastard.” He fell back asleep. She continued to hold his hand. Everyone thought she was on their side, that she was one of them.

  “You should go,” Mrs. Macauley whispered a little nervously. Did she worry her husband would wake up again, or was she simply frightened by this odd woman in her living room, holding her husband’s hand in front of an old Emerson?

  “Sure.” She walked to the door, Mrs. Macauley trailing her. “I meant to tell him. You won’t get the money all at once. You’ll get quarterly payments over the next few years. And the checks will be from a local foundation, one associated with the law firm. That way you can get it faster.” The idea had come to her so quickly. If the William Tree Foundation was so generous with its funds, why shouldn’t Abner Macauley get his cut? Mrs. O’Neal had been amused but happy to help. Tess would be quiet as long as Macauley got his checks.

  “What will you do?” she asked Mrs. Macauley. “With the money?”

  “Oh—nothing.” She shrugged, as if $850,000 was no more than hitting a Pick 3. “He’s so far gone. We thought Florida, once. Or one of those places with a golf course right next to your house. Now I’d just like to see he has as little pain as possible.”

  Tess hiked up to Eastern Avenue and caught a westbound bus home.

  “Sweet Jesus Christ,” she announced to Crow as she banged through the front door of the shop, empty except for him. “We ought to get stipends for being part of the local color. Someone just took a picture of me carrying my groceries home, like I was a Parisian with a string bag. Welcome to Charm City.”

  “How’s the case?” Crow asked, looking up from his book and giving her a full-force smile, obviously trying to cheer her up. “Have you found out anything new?”

  “There is no case,” she said harshly. Hurt, Crow went back to his reading.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not having a great day.” No answer from Crow, his eyes still fixed on his book. Possession, by A. S. Byatt. Interesting choice, she thought. A literary mystery in which a man and a woman team up to solve a puzzle and fall in love. “Look, I owed you an apology and I gave it to you. Now you owe me an explanation.”

  “For what?” Eyes still downcast. He had a talent for sulking.

  “You never told me where you got your nickname.”

  He looked up then. “My nickname? Well, you’ve had a few clues. First of all, there’s my hometown, Charlottesville, Virginia.”

  “Is the crow the UVA mascot?”

  “Second hint: the name of my band.”

  “Po’ White Trash. So?”

  “Third hint: my initials.”

  She had to think about that one. She had only heard them once, when Kitty told Ferlinghetti his full name. “E. A.?”

  “Right. My dad couldn’t resist naming his only son Edgar Allan, after Virginia’s great writer.”

  “Excuse me, but Edgar Allan Poe is a Baltimore writer.”

  “He was born in Virginia. He died in Baltimore. You can argue about which place has the greater claim. Anyway, my dad started reading Poe to me when I was a little kid—the poems, not the really dark stuff. And when he read ‘The Raven,’ I didn’t know what he was talking about. My dad explained it was a big black bird. And I, with the wisdom of a six-year-old, said, ‘Why not call a crow a crow?’ It’s been my name ever since. It’s better than Edgar or Ed.” He closed his book. “There—you’ve finally solved a mystery.”

  “So your band is really Poe White Trash?”

  “You got it. It’s a great name, cuts across class lines. The rednecks from Hampden and Remington come because they think it’s a redneck industrial band. But the literary college students like it, too.”

  “Not very politically correct, is it?” she said in that strange schoolteacher voice Crow inspired in her. “If you think about it, white trash is a term with overtones of racial superiority.”

  “Shit, you don’t need to find Michael Abramowitz’s killer. You need to find your sense of humor.”

  Tess, who felt she had come legitimately by her newfound dourness, shocked herself by bursting into tears at Crow’s gentle rebuke. Holding her groceries, she cried and cried, unglamorous, racking sobs that shook her body. Her nose ran, her eyes began to swell, but she held her ground and she held her groceries. She wept for Jonathan, she wept for Abramowitz. She wept for Damon Jackson. She wept because she had spent the past two weeks tightening the noose around a good friend’s neck, systematically elimin
ating every other possible suspect. She barely noticed when Crow put his arms around her, hugging her tight until her tears ran out.

  Crow was not the kind of person who would have a handkerchief or even a crumpled Kleenex. Inelegantly she wiped her nose on her own sleeve.

  “Well, that was pretty,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize.”

  “Yes, I do. I’m tired and worn-out. One of my friends is dead and another is probably a killer. I don’t even care. To tell you the truth, alongside some of the people I’ve met recently, Rock seems absolutely wholesome. He got mad, he did it himself—temporary insanity. He probably doesn’t even remember. Maybe Tyner ought to go that route. Get enough men on the jury, put Ava on the stand, and they’d buy it. She is the kind of woman men would kill for.”

  “That’s a compliment, I guess. But if there’s one thing you know about a man who would kill for you, it’s that he might kill you, too.”

  “You’re pretty smart for—how old are you, anyway?”

  “Twenty-three. A mere six years younger than you.” He took the grocery sack out of her arms and sat it on the counter behind him, then drew her to him. Tess lifted her face to his, then changed her mind and dropped her chin, so his kiss caromed off her forehead. She was trying to find the resolve to deflect any other attempts when Kitty walked into the store, her high heels like castanets on the wood floors. Odd, for Kitty usually made no noise when she walked, no matter what she wore.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” she said, waving a slip of paper. “But I wanted to make sure Tess got this message that came in on the office phone this afternoon. Your rowing buddy called and said he needs to talk to you. Said to meet him early at the boat house tomorrow, before anyone else gets there.”

  “How early?”

  Kitty peered at her own handwriting. “Five-fifteen.”

  “Typical Rock. He wants to see me, but he doesn’t want to sacrifice a second of morning light for his row. He’s so efficient he’ll probably do push-ups and sit-ups while we talk.”

  She grabbed her groceries and headed to the back stairs. But she couldn’t resist looking back over her shoulder at Crow. He was smiling, as if he knew he would have made contact on his second attempt. It had been a strange week. Make that a strange month.

  Technically the difference between getting up at 5 A.M. instead of 5:15 is fifteen minutes. But for Tess the earlier hour was much more difficult, especially after a week of not rowing at all. She contemplated staying in bed, pretending she had never gotten Rock’s message. But that was why people called the store. They knew Kitty was more reliable than Tess’s answering machine.

  She detoured through the bookstore, careful to lock it. She still didn’t trust the alley, not in the dark. She drove through downtown in silence, not awake enough to stomach the radio, or any sound at all.

  The boat house was dark, with no cars in the parking lot and no sign of Rock’s bicycle. Of course he knew she had a key—it was a copy of the one he had pilfered. She locked her purse in the trunk, unlocked the door, threw her key ring in an empty locker, and stretched out on a mat in the small workout room between the two locker rooms. A bar with about forty pounds on it lay nearby. Mindlessly she picked it up and began doing bench presses. It only weighed fifty pounds, much too light for her. What had happened to her 100-pound goal and the seven-minute mile? What had happened to all her goals for the fall? They had been subsumed by what she once thought would be the easiest job she ever had.

  She heard footsteps in the men’s locker room and glanced over, expecting Rock’s sturdy calves to come through the swinging door. Instead she saw the lower half of a crabber, a bushel basket in gloved hands, heavy black rubber boots on his feet. Sneaking a bathroom break and taking a shortcut through the building—not permitted, but what did she care? She continued to pump the bar, indifferent, until her eyes traveled up and she noticed something odd. The crabber was wearing a ski mask.

  “Look—” she began as the crabber fumbled in his bushel basket, then took out a revolver.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and took aim.

  Tess threw the bar at his head. It caught him in the chest, knocking him down with a hard thump, the handgun flying from his hand. Only fifty pounds, but the bar had done its job. But when she tried to rush past him toward the locker rooms, he grabbed her ankle, pulling her to the floor. Now he was crawling toward the gun and trying to hold on to her ankle at the same time. Tess kicked free, got up, and fled down the circular staircase, sprinting to the storeroom where the boats were kept.

  It was dark there, and she could only hope he wouldn’t know the location of the light switches, hidden behind a small closet door at the foot of the stairs. If he stopped to look for them, she might have time to go out the dock doors. Behind her she heard his heavy tread on the metal stairs. Scared to stand upright, she crawled across the floor, ducking under the rows of hanging boats. Oh say can you see…Why was “The Star-Spangled Banner” playing in her head?

  The concrete floor was cool on her palms and knees. By the dawn’s early light…Of course, she was worried about the dawn. Finding the logical connection almost made her smile. Soon the pale morning sun would start streaming through the oblong windows on the dock doors. But if she raised the doors, she would be backlit, the perfect target.

  She pictured the boat house’s layout in her mind. The doors to the dock were about sixty feet away, three of them, one at the end of each long narrow aisle. A gunshot could destroy one of the Baltimore Rowing Club’s beautiful shells. Silly, but she’d hate to have that debt follow her through eternity.

  Tess kept crawling until she ran out of room, wedging herself into the southeast corner. Perhaps she could hide until the other rowers started arriving. She glanced at her watch—5:20. No, ten minutes was too long to play this game of hide-and-seek, assuming anyone even showed up that early. Most of the rowers didn’t arrive until six. The light would start coming in, his eyes would adjust to the darkness, he would find her. She could hear one of his rubber boots squeaking as he walked back and forth, sighing patiently. He was keeping sentry along the west wall, waiting for her to rush the stairs.

  Would she make the paper? Given the hour, she had a good chance at the front page. The street final of the evening paper was always looking for a cheap, late-breaking crime to create the illusion there was news in the later editions. She tried to write the story in her head. A twenty-nine-year-old city woman was found dead today…City Woman was quite famous, almost as famous as City Man. She died, she fell, she was rescued. But what would be the phrase, stuck between two commas, that would summarize Tess’s life for posterity? The appositive, it was called. Baltimore native? Former reporter? Bookstore clerk? Lanky brunette with overbite? She imagined the rewrite man bent over his keys, happy with the details of her death, the tiny, knowable mystery of it all. Rich, but not too rich, easily captured in 400 words and fifteen minutes. A death dispatched in one edition, then reduced to a brief.

  The twenty-nine-year-old native, who police described as an unemployed woman playing at detective…Yes, that would be it, except it should be whom. Whom police described.

  The boot was squeaking, coming closer now. Only one squeaked. Up one aisle, down the next. Dawn was filtering into the boat house, sneaking in around the edges of the heavy metal doors. And now that Tess thought about it, wasn’t “dawn’s early light” redundant? What else could the dawn’s light be? The boot seemed to chirp an off-key accompaniment to the song in her head. And the rockets’ red glare/The bombs bursting in air. God, she hated that song.

  She tried to shrink into the corner and had to stifle an involuntary cry when a splintery piece of wood pressed into her back. A broken oar. At first she cursed the lazy rower who had left it there. Then she grabbed it, squeezing it tight as she listened to his boots. Otherwise he was silent, unnervingly so. He wasn’t stupid, the kind of person who felt he must explain why he was killing someone. Had he killed Abra
mowitz? Or Jonathan? Either way, it didn’t matter to him if Tess went to her grave knowing the full details. It was only important she go to her grave.

  She heard the squeaking boot again, heading up the final aisle. Her aisle. Squeak, squeak, squeak. Straight toward Tess’s hiding place. Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave?

  She considered her options. She could stay hidden, assuming she was hidden. She could beg, stalling for time. Both were cowardly, prone to failure, and not entirely out of character for her. She waited, listening to his footsteps, watching his feet approach in the dim light. If she could see his feet, it was only a matter of moments before he could see her. She thought about how a race started, a sprint, the kind of race decided with the first few strokes. “Êtes-vous prêt? Partez!” Are you ready? Go! And then the gun would go off.

  No penalties for a false start here. She was so low to the ground, oar in hand, her cheek brushed the cement floor. His rubber boots were about eighteen inches from her nose. A Hail Mary ran through her mind, followed by the one ragged piece of Hebrew she knew from Passover. Why is this morning different from all others? Because someone is about to kill you.

  She stared at his boots and thought about her unfinished life, wondered if she would get an obituary proper along with a news story. Maybe not. It pissed her off, thinking about how her death would be treated. Another little death, not even good enough to make what the obit writers called the mort du jour. She deserved better. But if she wanted better she’d have to live a little longer and die a little differently.

  Still low, she took aim and cracked the oar across the man’s shins as hard as she could, just above the rubber boots, then rose with a terrible noise, unlike any sound she had ever made or would ever make again. With her second swing, the flat end of the oar caught him smack in the face, throwing her forward with its motion. Talk about a power piece. Talk about a burst. If she had been able to muster this much adrenaline in a race, Washington College would have had the best women’s eight in the country. She swung again, knocking him backward. This time he held on to the gun with both hands as he fell. Good—he didn’t have a hand free to grab her.