Charm City

by Laura Lippman

  She leaned over the balcony, not sure what she would see from this height, not sure what she was looking for. Everything was still so brown and lifeless, even the overgrown brush in the gully that ran behind the apartment house. The only color was from the hundreds of blue plastic grocery bags caught on the dried vines, like puffy wild-flowers. And a flash of white surrounded by beige, one shade lighter than the earth.

  When the coroner pulled Rosita Ruiz from the gully, she was wearing bicycle shorts and the same mermaid T-shirt she had worn the last time Tess had visited her. La Sirena. Well, La Sirena had sung her last song.

  Tess called Sterling from Rosita’s apartment and he arrived while the two homicide detectives were still questioning her. The detectives were politely solicitous of Tess, who looked a little green at the edges, but she could tell they had no real interest in considering Rosita’s death a homicide, too. That would involve admitting fault, prolonging a case the county cops were ready to close as soon as the tox screens came in. If there was an angry lover or ex-lover, someone with a personal grudge against Miss Ruiz—fine, they were all ears. But it was inconceivable to them that Rosita had been thrown off the balcony by Wink’s killer, because it was inconceivable to them that Wink had a killer.

  “That’s kind of far-fetched, Miss Monaghan, especially when you consider Miss Ruiz was fired on Friday,” said Detective Tull, a slight, short man with remarkably tiny feet and an acne-scarred face. The scars gave his handsome face a touching vulnerability. He must be used for the remorseful ones, Tess thought, the tearful women who yearned to confess.

  “You see, Miss Monaghan, it makes more sense if she jumped—especially when you see the empty bottle of white wine. Alcohol is a depressant and she was probably plenty depressed, right? She drinks, she eats a little pizza, she thinks about her life, and she steps out on her balcony, then steps out into space. The medical examiner will look for signs of a struggle—skin beneath her fingernails, scratches on her body that might tell us more about how she fell. But everything here is saying suicide. A footstool is pushed up next to the balcony, so she could climb up to the railing. The open balcony door. No one reported hearing a scream last night or early this morning, and no one saw anyone going into her apartment last night.”

  “No one here ever sees anyone,” Tess protested. “Besides, she was a writer, or thought of herself as one. She would have left a note.”

  “Notes are less common than you think. A whole bottle of wine is considerable when you’re as small as she is and you haven’t eaten very much—there are only two slices of pizza gone. My guess is the M.E. is going to find she was legally intoxicated.” Tull turned to Sterling. “Do you know how to find the next of kin? We’ll have to notify them.”

  “We should have a contact number down at the paper.”

  Tull stood to leave. His partner, a tall, graceful black man who looked like a dancer, had been standing all along, leaning against the kitchen counter as if he were just passing through.

  “You know, normally we don’t give the victim’s name to the press until we’ve made that call,” Tull said. “We can’t keep you from printing what you know, but it would be better if you waited until we talk to her parents.”

  “Under these circumstances, there won’t be a story. We don’t write about suicides unless they’re somehow public, or involve public figures.”

  “Well, for now, it’s not officially a suicide.” Tull looked at Tess, and she knew he was humoring her. “The M.E. will make the ruling on that. We’re going to canvass the building, see if anyone heard anything or saw anything. You can sit here for a while, Miss Monaghan, if you don’t feel up to driving just yet.”

  Tess smiled wanly at Tull. She did feel light-headed. Rosita’s broken body had looked disturbingly peaceful and composed, sleeping on its bier of brambles and blue grocery bags. If there was an argument to be made for suicide, it was the strange serenity in her face, more relaxed in death than it had ever been in life.

  As soon as the detectives left, Sterling got up and came back with a glass of water and two ibuprofen capsules from Rosita’s medicine cabinet.

  “I don’t know what good these will do, but I can’t help wanting to do something for you,” he said. “You’ve had a pretty rough day.”

  To say nothing of a rough night. She thought of telling him about her conversation with Colleen Reganhart, but it didn’t seem particularly important now. Her brain was stuck in a single gear, endlessly revving. She looked around the apartment—the strafing glance of the Kit-Kat Klock, the disappearing cowboy poster, the pizza box on the counter, the empty wine bottle, the piles of books and papers.

  “Pizza!”

  Sterling looked startled at her sudden interest in food. “Sure. We can go get pizza if you like.”

  “No, it’s the pizza box. There’s no delivery slip on it. When you order a pizza to be delivered, there a piece of paper on the box—trust me, this is one of my fields of expertise. Rosita was barefoot, in shorts and a T-shirt. Someone brought this pizza to her, Jack—used it to get in the door downstairs, so they wouldn’t look suspicious.”

  “And then sat down, shared a couple of pieces with her and tossed her off the balcony?” Sterling shook his head. “I hate to side with the detectives on this, Tess, but that’s nonsensical. She could have gone out and gotten the pizza, then changed.”

  “Okay, so where’s the box, the box of notebooks and personal artifacts she carried home from work? It’s not here, so someone must have taken it. And why would someone take it? Because her notes held the key to Wink’s murder.”

  Sterling made the same walk-through of the apartment she had already made, opening drawers and closet doors, looking under the sofa’s sagging springs. Then he picked up the pizza box, turning it slowly in his hands, as if the delivery slip still might show up.

  “I’ll go get Detective Tull,” he said at last.

  Sterling went back to the office to wait for Detective Tull’s call. Tess went home and tried to sleep, but she was too restless and ended up at the Brass Elephant. Although anxious to hear what the police had found, she could never sit in the newsroom, where she knew the skeleton staff of Sunday reporters would be wandering around, stunned and bewildered. Journalists had no language for their own tragedies. When it was one of their own, they could not make grim jokes or callow rationalizations, or call up relatives with that age-old assurance: it might be cathartic for them to speak of it. And they could not reduce someone they had actually known to the series of meaningless catch-phrases used for strangers. Smart but down-to-earth. Ambitious but caring. A quiet person who kept to himself—no, that was the code reserved for demented loners. At any rate, by any measure, Rosita Ruiz was not a good death.

  It was almost 8 o’clock when Feeney found Tess, an empty plate of tortellini in front of her. She had no memory of eating it. She could, however, remember martinis 1 and 2, and she was now on martini 3, using the discarded toothpicks to trace figures in the linen tablecloth. Curvy number 2s, which disappeared in a few moments, like the magnetic lines on those “magic” drawing boards you had as a kid.

  “First things first,” Feeney said. “Your uncle’s awake.”

  “And?” Her heart sky-rocketed, then plummeted to earth. Feeney was playing good news-bad news with her.

  “That’s all I know. Kitty called the paper, looking for you. Said Spike’s awake. His speech is a little slurry and his right side doesn’t have much feeling, but he’s awake. Keeps talking about the years, Kitty said.”

  “The ears,” Tess corrected absently. “Now what about Rosita?”

  “The box of notes was in the trunk of her car, and there’s nothing in them, not of any importance. And there was pizza in Rosita’s stomach.”

  “She was killed, Feeney, I know she was. By number two.”

  “Number two?”

  “I saw files she had in the computer—don’t ask me how, I won’t tell you. But there was someone, someone she called number tw
o. She thought this person killed Wink, although her notes didn’t provide a motive.”

  “So who is number two?”

  “I haven’t a clue. It could be Lea—she’s wife number two, although the notes suggest she’s number three. Or his first wife—if Wink is number one, there’s no reason Linda couldn’t be number two. If Wink had threatened to cut off her alimony because he needed to be more liquid…and there was something about enrollment records, and Wink and Linda were in school together after all—”

  Feeney placed his hand over Tess’s right hand, the one with the toothpick. Without realizing it, she had started drawing numbers again as she spoke.

  “She killed herself, Tess. It’s not your fault, but you’ll probably always think it was.”

  “I wouldn’t say Rosita was murdered just because I feel guilty.”

  “Why not? I sure wanted to think someone killed Wink. I was the one who encouraged Rosita to see if someone might have knocked him out with booze, then put him in the car. But how do you convince someone to drink himself into a coma, Tess? And if someone killed him, why would the murderer then call my pager and punch in Wink’s number?”

  “You interviewed all these people for the story, they all had your pager number. Besides, the tox screens aren’t back yet. If someone slipped him some kind of drug—I’ve heard about this tranquilizer from Mexico, they call it the date-rape drug—the combination could have made him lose consciousness. Or any strong sedative. He wasn’t a big guy, it wouldn’t take much.”

  Feeney’s face was unbearably kind as he squeezed her hand.

  “Tess, I know. I know what it’s like to be an indirect agent in someone’s death. I know what it’s like to be the one to find him—or her. I also know all the conspiracy theories in the world aren’t going to change anything. You’re going to need help with this. Maybe professional help, but help from your friends as well. Don’t make the mistake I did, pushing people away.”

  “I don’t have many people to push away right now. I broke up with Crow, and now Whitney and I are kind of on the outs.”

  “She told me. She called me today and made a clean breast of things. Whatever you said to her last night, it really hit home. But Whitney’s not a bad person, she’s just self-centered. She got lost inside her desire for something and she made a bad mistake, a mistake she’s learned from.” Feeney took a piece of bread from the basket on the table and swiped it through the rich sauce she had left behind. “Rosemary, that’s for remembrance. You know, she’s jealous of you.”

  Tess meant to give a soft, derisive snort, but the martinis had robbed her of any modulation, and the noise she made sounded more like an old man blowing his nose. “Right.”

  “You’re a free spirit, while Whitney is weighed down by so many things. Her family’s name, her money, everyone’s expectations for her. She hasn’t learned to live her life for herself yet. Maybe now she will.”

  The bartender came over and Tess asked for a coffee. Feeney asked for a beer and helped himself to another piece of bread. “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but there’s a sad little coda to Rosita’s story. She’s not Rosita Ruiz.”

  “Huh?”

  “Part of the reason it took so long for Detective Tull to call back tonight is that the contact number in Rosita’s file was for some family called Rodrigue in New Bedford, Mass. They kept insisting they had never heard of a Rosita Ruiz from Boston, although they did have a daughter named Rosemary, about the same age, working on the copy desk in Baltimore. She couldn’t be a writer, they said, because she never had any stories to show them. I had to get on the computer to figure it out. The Social Security numbers matched—the one assigned to Rosemary Rodrigue had started showing up as Rosita Ruiz’s number about two years ago, right after college graduation. But there was another Rosita Ruiz from Boston University—different Social Security number, now in a training program at some New York bank. Turns out Rosita—Rosemary—changed her name legally after graduation to match that of a former classmate, a Latina with stellar grades. Then, when employers checked her college record, it matched. That explains why she was inconsistent sometimes—she kept getting her two identities confused.”

  A long-forgotten detail managed to come to the surface in Tess’s martini-stewed brain. “Like putting on her résumé that she was a cum laude, when the real Rosita—Rosemary—was a magna?”

  “Yeah, that would fit.”

  “So why do it? I mean, why steal a life that’s essentially a lateral move?”

  “Apparently, she wanted a little of that affirmative-action action. Without a journalism degree and no real newspaper experience, she thought transforming herself into a disadvantaged Latina from Roxbury was the only way to kick-start her career.”

  “If Rosita—Rosemary—had been really smart, she would have had a sex change operation and appropriated the name and résumé of some Harvard boy. She’d have gotten ahead even faster as Roger Smith, Rhodes scholar.”

  “Touché, Tess. Touché.”

  Funny, how words echo, then change in their echoes. Dorie had said the same thing, only hours ago. Touché-Too-Shay-Tooch-Toooooooooch. Two. The number 2 man on Wink’s ownership team, his constant sidekick. She saw him limping into the Wynkowskis’ home, the apparent possessor of his own key. She felt his heavy bulk on her back. “I just figured he took some drug, because he’s such a sissy.” Wasn’t he, in the end, the one who stood to gain the most from Wink’s death? Linda’s lot hadn’t changed a whit, and Lea had lost so much ground she was almost back in Atlantic City. With three kids to raise, she would probably fall into the arms of the first man who promised to take care of her. And there was Paul Tucci, the man who had introduced her to Wink, the man who had always stood in Wink’s shadow, suddenly at the forefront and in the limelight. The soon-to-be team owner.

  “Drive me home?” Tess asked Feeney. “I’ll take the bus back in the morning and get my car.”

  “Sure.” He studied her face. “Peace will come, Tess. I don’t know when—I’m still waiting for it myself—but you’ll feel better sooner if you accept what’s really happened.”

  “I’m feeling better already,” she said truthfully.

  Chapter 28

  The first thing Tess noticed when Lea Wynkowski opened her front door the next morning was that damn gold bracelet on her wrist—even though Lea was still in her robe and nightgown at 11 A.M., her brown hair sticking up in tufts all over her head. She apparently had gone from the insomnia stage of grief to the sleep-all-the-time stage, a progression of sorts.

  “Tooch said I should stop talking to people, people I don’t really know,” she said nervously, fiddling with the bracelet.

  I bet he did. “This is important, Lea. I think your husband was murdered, but I need your help to figure out why, and who did it.”

  Lea twisted the bracelet around her slender wrist, staring at it as if it were a crystal ball that might reveal the right answers if you turned it often enough, in just the right way.

  “I don’t know,” she sighed. “That newspaper reporter was over here on Saturday and she said the same thing, but I haven’t heard back from her.”

  So she didn’t know Rosita—Rosemary; Tess would never get use to Rosita’s real, posthumous name—was dead. The television stations, like the newspaper, didn’t report a private citizen’s private suicide.

  “What did she tell you Saturday?”

  “Not much. She thought Wink was killed, but she needed proof. So I gave her what she wanted and Tooch was so mad when I told him. You see, I thought it was a good thing if Wink was killed—well, not a good thing, but better, and not just because we’d get the insurance money then. It would have meant he didn’t leave us, you know, me and his babies. But Tooch said the reporter was a liar who wanted to make more trouble for us, which is the only reason she wanted it in the first place.”

  “Wanted what, Lea? What did you give Rosita?”

  “The yearbook, the one I showed you.” Lea lo
wered her voice as if there was someone who might overhear her, although there was no evidence of anyone else in the big house. “I cut out that one page first, the one you saw. I was the one who wrote…that word on it. I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I hated her so. She didn’t deserve all that money. But the reporter might’ve thought Wink had done it, like you did—so I cut it out and put it down the garbage disposal.”

  Check enrollment records. Rosita’s memo to herself. Schools had closed Friday for spring break, making that difficult, so she had procured the yearbook instead, using it as a shortcut to something, or somebody. But the book hadn’t been in Rosita’s apartment, Tess was sure of that.

  “Do you know if Tooch—Mr. Tucci—went to junior high with Wink?”

  “Tooch? No, he went to parochial school before Loyola—calls it his sixteen-year stint in the Catholic penitentiary. The brothers at Mount St. Joe actually beat boys back then.” Lea’s eyes were wide at this story, which must have seemed as chronologically distant to her as the Industrial Revolution. “Can you imagine, someone hitting little boys?”

  Tess could. Worse still, she could imagine what little boys could do back.

  Spike was asleep when Tess arrived at the hospital for afternoon visiting hours.

  “You can sit with him if you don’t pester him,” the nurse said. “And if he comes to, don’t pester him with questions. The police just about wore him out.”

  “Fine with me,” Tess said. “I don’t think he has the answers I’m looking for, anyway.”

  She stared outside the window, wishing for a brainstorm like the one she had the last time she stood there, staring out over the parking lot and the ambulances. The brainstorm that had gotten Rosita fired. And now Rosita was dead, because of her own brainstorm. Check enrollment records. Tess had gone to the Pratt library, but the usually reliable Maryland Room did not carry junior high year-books. Meanwhile, the school administration offices on North Avenue had closed for spring break along with the schools. Tess was sure if she could only locate someone to ask, she would find that Paul Tucci, despite his proud proclaimations about parochial school education, had attended Rock Glen Junior High through eighth grade with Wink, transferring to Catholic school about the same time Wink had ended up at Montrose—right after the robbery in which the shopkeeper had died. Too bad she didn’t feel comfortable confronting Linda Wynkowski so soon after their last meeting. She might know if Tucci were #2—the second boy in that long-ago assault, but one with a well-connected father who could keep him from serving the same sentence meted out to the fatherless Wink.