Baltimore Blues

by Laura Lippman

  She leapt over him and headed for the door straight ahead, yanking its cord just enough to raise it twelve inches, allowing her to roll under it. Her attacker was broader; if he wanted to follow, he’d have to stop and raise it farther. Now outside, she looked up the hill to Waterview Avenue, empty at this time of day. Her car keys were back in the locker room. The garage door groaned as it opened wider, its cord tugged by rough, impatient hands. How fast could he run? How well could he shoot? How far could a bullet go?

  The phrase “between the devil and the deep blue sea” popped into Tess’s head and she looked toward the not-so-deep, not-so-blue Patapsco. Her worse nightmare, once upon a time. It had just been supplanted. She ran at top speed across the pavement, down the ramp and across the splintery dock, flinging herself into the dreaded water. Mouth shut tight, she swam beneath the surface until her skin was burning and her lungs bursting.

  She came up about thirty yards from the dock. Was it far enough? She knew nothing of guns or how they worked. She heard two shots and submerged again, turning west, toward the marina and the glass factory, gliding under the water, then coming up for air every twenty yards. Two more shots sounded, but she was almost to the marina now. She stopped at the first boat, a Boston whaler, and grabbed its side. Peering around it, she looked back to the boat house, coughing up the filthy water.

  The man was standing on the pier, looking around him. Behind him the boat house was coming to life. Lights were on in the storage room, cars pulling into the lot. A solitary sculler walked toward the water with his oars. The man looked back to the boat house and out to the water one more time, raised the gun to his head, and fired. Even as he pulled the trigger, the sculler had dropped his oars and was running toward him, shouting as if to stop him.

  Tess continued to hold on to the Boston whaler. It had a name painted on the stern, one of those whimsical names so many boat owners prefer. Paddy’s Wagon, it proclaimed in merry green letters. She was holding on to the boat and still staring at those letters when someone from the shore finally spotted her and sent out a launch. It was Rock. Without saying a word he pried her fingers from the Boston whaler, lifted her into the small motorboat, and took her back.

  He tried to lead her away from the body, but Tess wanted to look. It was a surprisingly neat suicide. There was a small black hole at his right temple and a little blood pooling beneath his head. She could smell burned wool where the powder had made contact with the ski mask. Ignoring Rock, shaking off his arm as if he were some frail old man, Tess dropped to her knees by the body and pulled the mask up.

  The mouth was slightly open, exposing perfect white teeth. The cheeks were cherubically round, the belly full beneath the windbreaker. It was, even in death, even after attempted murder, still an appealing face. The body still had the jolly girth that made one think of a beardless Santa Claus.

  “You are conscientious, Miss Monaghan,” Frank Miles had told her more than once. She had thought he meant it as a compliment.

  Chapter 30

  After a tetanus shot and a visit from two homicide cops who wanted to review the morning’s events, Tess took to bed—actually, Kitty’s bed—with a bad case of paranoia. Twice she bolted to Kitty’s turquoise tiled bathroom to vomit up small portions of the Patapsco. Her muscles and joints were stiff and sore, the way they can be with a fever. Exhausted, she tried to sleep. But whenever she started to doze off, she jerked awake, terrified.

  Frank Miles was O’Neal’s hit man. She had not told the police that; she had not told them anything but the morning’s barest facts, for fear she would be transported to Spring Grove and wake up in a ward full of poor William O’Neals whose mothers could not afford alternative justice systems. Miles had killed Abramowitz and probably killed Jonathan. Unquestionably he had wanted to kill her. She would bet anything it was Macauley’s gun he was brandishing this morning, stolen from Abramowitz’s office. Perhaps he had originally planned to implicate the old man, then Rock had given him a better opportunity.

  No, it didn’t wash, not even in her weary, confused mind. A professional wouldn’t have been lurking in the Lambrecht Building as a custodian, biding his time. He wouldn’t have to steal someone’s gun. And he certainly wouldn’t kill himself when trapped. Of all the deaths and near-deaths, only Jonathan’s had been competently handled. Miles had been an amateur. Like her. His only link to Seamon O’Neal was his compulsive neatness. A generous man, he had credited her with solving Abramowitz’s murder when she had never been further away. There were probably reams of physical evidence to link him to Abramowitz’s murder, but no one had paid attention. After all, he was the custodian, the man who had found the body, the man who scrubbed the bloodstains from the carpet.

  Finally she slept, her body surrendering to sleep as it had surrendered to the river. She didn’t want to go, but she had to. It was almost six when she woke, and the room was dim. Through the filmy curtains that shrouded Kitty’s four-poster, she saw someone waiting for her.

  “Kitty?” Her voice came out thick and rusty. She had already taken two showers today, but there were parts of her that would not come clean. The river seemed to coat the insides of her ears, her mouth, and her throat. It clung to her hair, thick and stiff. “Crow?”

  Little Cecilia approached the bed, a rolled-up newspaper under one arm, looking impatient as always. She pushed the curtains aside.

  “Your aunt said I could wait here for you to wake up, but she’d toss a dictionary at my head if I didn’t let you sleep. I’ve been here almost an hour.”

  Tess slid down under the covers, pulling them up to her chin. “I’m sorry, Cecilia, I’m not in the mood to help you investigate anything today. Can’t you come back later?”

  “Who said I need your help? Didn’t it ever occur to you I could help you?”

  Cecilia unfolded the newspaper. It was the final evening edition, but Tess had not made the front page. In fact she was on the back of the state section, next to the weather map. Maybe if she had died she would have gotten better play.

  “A sixty-two-year-old former middle school vice principal shot himself outside the Baltimore Water Resource Center after attacking a woman there,” Cecilia read slowly.

  A vice principal? She thought Miles was a custodian with the city schools. But that had been her assumption because of his current job. Miles had said only: “I used to be with the school system.”

  Cecilia continued, picking up speed, a random Baltimore “O” occasionally creeping into her speech. Otherwise her voice was almost accentless, a trick of transformation that had taken far greater effort than cutting her hair and letting it return to its natural color. “Police are now investigating whether Frank Miles may be linked to the recent hit-and-run death of Jonathan Ross, witnessed by the same woman, Theresa Esther Monaghan of Bond Street. Mr. Miles met Ms. Monaghan, who works for lawyer Tyner Gray, when she conducted a routine interview in connection with the Michael Abramowitz murder case.” She tossed the paper on the bed.

  “Except for the fact that’s one of the worst-written stories I’ve ever heard, I’m not sure why you decided to come over and read it to me this evening. But thanks for sharing.”

  “It’s not the story. It’s the photograph.”

  Tess picked up the paper and looked at Frank Miles, smiling his gentle smile in a staff photo that must have been at least fifteen years old. Nice of the school system to provide it to the paper, she thought. Would they have been so cooperative if he was still employed by them?

  “Typical head and shoulders shot. Probably every principal and vice principal in the city has one on file. What’s so interesting?”

  “Because if it wasn’t for the photo, I wouldn’t have remembered him by name. I know Frank Miles. He tried to join VOMA. Abramowitz had defended two men who raped his daughter.”

  “Did he know the group’s real name, or was it just a happy coincidence that a real VOMA happened into VOMA?”

  “We’ll never know.” Cecilia sat on the bed
. “Pru turned him away, of course, the way she always did. I see now she recruited the original members with an eye to finding women who wouldn’t look too closely at the group’s finances. She wanted weak people, passive people. She didn’t want anyone she couldn’t control.”

  “Did he get angry when you turned him away?”

  “No. He was very sweet and understanding. He had brought brownies to the meeting, so Pru let him stay, just that once. His daughter was raped back and front by two neighborhood boys, classmates of hers. They said she was a whore who had done everyone in the neighborhood. She killed herself a month after they were acquitted. Pru told Mr. Miles he should find a group for people who had lost children to suicide.”

  Tess remembered his shadowy living room, the dusty photographs on the wall. “I don’t have any children,” he had told her. “Just nieces and nephews.” But there had been a beautiful girl in a graduation gown.

  “Can you prove this? Will the others remember?”

  “I’m a few steps ahead of you—again.” Cecilia smiled. “He filled out a membership form so he could get on our mailing list. Not that Pru ever mailed anything but fund-raising solicitations. I got her to give it to me after I saw the paper this afternoon. She raised a stink, but I reminded her she’s not in a position to call the shots anymore.”

  She unfolded the old sheet of paper. Frank Miles’s handwriting was neat and plain. Tess recognized his West Baltimore address.

  “Are you going to the cops with this?”

  “That’s my next stop. Not because I care about your friend, although I guess no one should do time for a crime he didn’t do. I want people to know a sweet, gentle man was driven crazy by what happened to his daughter. If Abramowitz had driven me to my death, I’d like to think my pop would have killed him, too.”

  Tess reached out and put her hand on Cecilia’s arm. “I know you hate Abramowitz, but he did have a conscience. He agonized over the choices he made in his life and he paid for most of them. I read parts of a diary he left. He was very…self-aware. I grew to like him, reading it.”

  The corners of Cecilia’s mouth moved in an odd way that, technically, would qualify as a smile. The ends turned up, a shadow of a dimple showed in her right cheek, but it was the saddest face Tess had ever seen. “Did he ever mention the rape cases in his diary?”

  “Well, I didn’t read it all,” Tess said. It sounded weak, even to her. She saw Cecilia’s point. Michael Abramowitz may have been tortured by his capital murder cases, his estrangement from the law, his futile campaign against Seamon O’Neal. But the rape cases weren’t important to him.

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought. Ever read Don Quixote?”

  “No, I keep meaning to read it, but—I did see Man of La Mancha at Painters Mill when I was a kid.”

  “The nuns make you read it in honors. I keep thinking of this one line. ‘What thanks does a knight-errant deserve for going out of his head when he has good cause?’ Frank Miles had good cause, Tess. His family played by the rules and was destroyed by them.”

  “He didn’t have good cause, not against Abramowitz. If he wanted to avenge his daughter’s death, he should have killed the rapists.”

  Cecilia shrugged. “For all we know, he did. I can do research, too. The two guys who raped his daughter were killed in a drive-by last year. Together, just the two of them. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.”

  With that she walked to the door, then turned back. “I am sorry Frank Miles tried to kill you. I guess that was uncalled for.”

  In spite of herself Tess had to laugh. Cecilia had a talent for making her laugh at the oddest things, when she thought nothing in the world would ever seem funny again. She was still giggling when she fell back asleep, a restful sleep this time. When she woke again it was Saturday morning and Kitty was kneeling by the bed, shaking her awake and telling her Tyner was on the phone. The police had agreed to review the physical evidence from the case. Cecilia was not the only new witness who had come forward. Ava Hill, accompanied by lawyer and mentor Seamon O’Neal, suddenly remembered all sorts of suspicious behavior on the part of Frank Miles.

  The charges against Darryl “Rock” Paxton were dropped by mid-October, a week before the Charm City Classic.

  Epilogue

  Tess, Whitney, Crow, and Cecilia stood on the west side of the Hanover Street Bridge, leaning over the railing and waiting for Rock’s race to start.

  “You’re supposed to call it the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge now,” Whitney informed the others. “But no one does. The Vietnam veterans want us to write an editorial on it next month for Veterans Day.”

  “Great, another group of victims, showing up to demand their due,” Tess said, then looked at Cecilia. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  Cecilia shrugged. “No offense,” said VOMA’s newest director, who in just three weeks had opened the group to all sexual assault victims as well as their relatives and spouses. She had also become ubiquitous in the media. Surprisingly she could be tactful and thoughtful in front of television cameras, decrying Frank Miles’s violence, but maintaining he had been driven to it.

  They heard the crowd’s roar: The 2,000-meter race had finally started. Crow and Cecilia, not even sure which one of the five scullers was Rock, yelled and clapped indiscriminately. Whitney, watching through field glasses, shook her head and passed them to Tess. Rock was out in front, but his timing was off, his form ragged. Tess could tell he wasn’t holding anything back, he was going to collapse toward the finish. Shorter races, head-to-head with other boats, had always been tougher for him than the longer races, run against the clock and himself.

  The five boats passed under the bridge and shot out the other side before Tess could dodge the traffic on Hanover Street and position herself to see the finish. Rock was still in the lead, but his energy was flagging. The closest boat was gaining on him inch by inch. Tess pressed her feet against the sidewalk, as if she could give Rock an extra boost. He held on, slipping across the finish line in front of his late challenger, but well off his best time.

  “I guess being accused of murder and breaking off your engagement doesn’t do wonders for a training regimen,” Tess said.

  “Not pretty,” Whitney agreed, “but it will do.”

  They left the bridge and headed to the docks so they could carry up Rock’s scull in a show of fealty. Along the banks of the Patapsco, it looked as if Whitney’s extended family was staging a reunion. Lots of sockless men in plaid pants and V-neck sweaters, women in kelly green, so much blond hair it created a glare.

  As they neared the boat house Tess found herself trying to keep her distance. Soon she would have to go back, especially when she had her own Alden hanging inside, a partial payment from Rock and Tyner. They had wanted to give her something sleeker, a Vespoli or a Pocock, but Tess had been firm. The Alden was durable, well-suited to her rowing regime, and less likely to tip. She didn’t plan on going back into the Patapsco any time soon.

  Tyner was waiting for them near the dock, squinting unhappily. Even from this vantage point, far from the finish line, he knew how badly Rock how rowed. But when Rock appeared, subdued and drenched with sweat, Tyner smiled and handed him a banana for potassium depletion. The lecture could wait. Whitney draped a stadium blanket around Rock’s shoulders, while Tess showed Crow how to hoist the scull and set it on sawhorses to be washed before it was put away. In the midst of all this activity, Cecilia hung back, overwhelmed by Rock’s bulk.

  Suddenly Tess was as happy as she had been in months. It was a beautiful fall day, she was alive, Rock was rowing again and would be in top form in time for the Frostbite Regatta in Philadelphia, the last race of the season. She was surrounded by friends, old and new. And she was going to have a job soon: Tyner had promised to apprentice her to a lawyer he knew, someone who needed a full-time investigator. A forty-hour workweek loomed, complete with benefits. It was almost enough to make her wistful for her carefree life.

  Snip, snip, snip. Every
where loose ends were being trimmed. She heard this sound in her dreams, she read it between the lines of the short items in the Beacon-Light. First there had been a story that the murder charges against Rock had been dropped when police became convinced Miles had killed Abramowitz and Jonathan. A few days later, an item about an old Checker cab abandoned out in the country, with some of Jonathan’s blood on its fenders. Stolen, of course, before the hit-and-run. By Miles, police said now, who assumed this had been the first attempt to kill Tess. How strange no one found the car until after Miles was dead, Tess thought. How fortuitous for the Triple O there would be no trial of Abramowitz’s murder, no investigation into Jonathan’s death. Tess wondered if Jonathan’s hit-and-run could go in the homicide pool now. Snip, snip, snip.

  Another brief, in the business section. Ava Hill was leaving the law firm to work with the William Tree Foundation. An in-house audit’s discovery of “financial irregularities” had prompted the board to bring in new people. Tess, thinking of Ava’s shoplifting hobby, had a hunch the financial irregularities were only beginning. But passing the bar would no longer be a problem for Ava Hill. And Ava Hill would no longer be a problem for Luisa J. O’Neal, not if she was paying Ava’s salary.

  Tess had pieced it together. Shay O’Neal, panicked by Jonathan’s visits to Fauquier, had arranged for someone to kill him, a nice anonymous someone in a Checker cab who was still roaming Baltimore, no doubt, at O’Neal’s disposal. When Frank Miles made himself handy as a suspect, O’Neal had used him with Ava’s help. Only Tess knew, or could guess this, and she could never prove it, which is why she had settled on the payout to Abner Macauley. Her deal with Mrs. O’Neal, along with the sealed envelope Kitty kept in the store safe, should protect her. This was business, another ad hoc arrangement in Luisa O’Neal’s eyes, no different than the one she had put together for her son. Tess would be fine. As long as Seamon O’Neal didn’t panic again.