The Sugar House

by Laura Lippman

  “Hey, that’s why they have saucers. Tess Monaghan.”

  “Nice to meet you.” His handshake was gentle, restrained. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “From—”

  “Feeney, mainly.”

  “Then most of what you know is true, and what isn’t true is at least interesting.” Kevin Feeney, the Blight’s courthouse reporter, was an old friend, his devotion to her exceeded only by his devotion to making stories about her more colorful. At least he didn’t put his fiction in the newspaper, unlike some reporters Tess had known.

  She asked for coffee and a pair of bagels, having skipped breakfast that morning. She had wanted to avoid meeting Tyner in Kitty’s kitchen. He wouldn’t approve of what she was doing. She wasn’t sure she approved, so she didn’t want to subject herself to anyone else’s doubts. But she needed Hank Mooney’s help if she was going to confront Arnie Vasso with anything other than her hunches.

  “I don’t have much time,” Hank said, turning a tree-stump-sized wrist to look at his watch. “Another day, another docket.”

  He was smiling, though, energy brimming out of him in much the same way his coffee had run out of his cup. Tess had thought a public defender would be more beaten down, struggling under a staggering caseload, wrestling with the realization that the only thing that really separated him from a criminal attorney was the salary. But Hank Mooney looked as if he couldn’t wait for his workday to begin.

  “Do you remember Henry Dembrow?”

  “He’d be a hard one to forget, even if the case hadn’t been in the news lately.”

  “Because of the Jane Doe angle.”

  “Yeah. And because she was a white woman murdered in Locust Point. Most of the people murdered in Baltimore are young black men, killed on the East or West sides. Jane Doe—”

  “Gwen Schiller.” Having restored the girl’s name, Tess was determined to make others remember it.

  “She was unusual in every way. I shudder to think how the case would have been handled if they had known who she was at the time. Her father probably would have been breathing down the state’s attorney’s neck, screaming death penalty.”

  Tess wasn’t sure if Dick Schiller was capable of screaming for anything. Any rage he could feel now was directed at the clinic. Gwen had been alive for six weeks after running away. Forty-two days, forty-two lost opportunities to change her destiny.

  “I understand you moved to have his confession thrown out, on the grounds he was denied counsel.”

  “It was worth a try. I was hoping he might be so high when they interrogated him that he was incapable of informed consent. Did you listen to the tape?”

  “I read the transcript.”

  “He sounds a little spaced out on the tape, but he’s not confused. If anything, I had the impression he thought he was being really crafty.”

  “Crafty?”

  Their food arrived. Mooney’s breakfast was surprisingly small, a glass of grapefruit juice and a toasted English muffin, which he ate dry. Tess had expected a Paul Bunyan-esque stack of hotcakes, maybe a Western omelet the size of her head. Mooney bit into his English muffin with a sound like someone’s spine cracking, scattering crumbs down his front.

  “Yeah, I know—the kid was a hardcore huffer. Yet Henry thought of himself as real smart, an operator. It was like he had some scheme he didn’t want to tell me. Then he got his own attorney, and it wasn’t my problem anymore. Hasta la vista, baby.”

  “Arnie Vasso.”

  “Really? I guess I must have known that at some point, but with my caseload, I don’t have the luxury of worrying about former clients. Funny choice. Vasso doesn’t know shit about criminal law.”

  “He knows enough to keep himself out of jail, unlike some other Annapolis lobbyists.”

  Mooney liked that. He laughed so hard he almost spilled coffee down his shirt front. “Point taken. Look, all I’m saying is that with my caseload, I don’t ask a lot of questions if a client says he’s got the money to hire a private attorney.”

  “Did Henry ever mention a bar called Domenick’s?”

  He shook his head vigorously side to side, like a dog shaking himself dry. Hank Mooney was really quite appealing, in his big-boned, shambling kind of way. Tess tried to think of female friends who might appreciate his charms. Jackie was too fastidious—she’d have bailed at the crumbs. And Whitney was secretly as much of a snob as her mother. The only reason she’d ever date a public defender was to torture Mrs. Talbot. Kitty’s taste was famously inclusive, but Kitty was lost to her for now.

  “Bars weren’t Henry’s scene. He was essentially a very solitary guy. No friends, no interests. I always thought huffing appealed to him because it’s a real antisocial high. You don’t need a buddy, you don’t have to go to a shooting gallery, or leave the neighborhood to score. He didn’t really care about anyone. Except his sister. He adored her, he kept telling me he was going to make everything up to her some day. Shit.” Another glance at his watch. Luckily, he remembered to put down his juice glass before he flipped his wrist. “I’m going to be late.” He waved frantically at the waitress, sideswiping a water glass, which Tess caught just before it tipped.

  “You go. I’ll get this.”

  “You sure? I don’t feel like I helped you much.”

  “Hey, you’re a public servant. You help the taxpayers every day.”

  Mooney smiled a little ruefully. “Yeah, I help you a lot. I try to win freedom for the guys who strip your cars, break into your houses. I get acquittals for the guys who are shooting each other over the drug trade in West and East Baltimore. I’m an Eagle Scout.”

  “You ever kept an innocent person from going to prison?”

  “An innocent person? I’m not sure there is such a thing. But, yeah, I’ve had clients who didn’t do what the prosecutors said they did, and I’ve gotten them off.”

  Tess smiled. “Then I think you’re entitled to at least one free English muffin now and then.”

  Tess found Arnie Vasso in the gallery above the Senate floor, watching with great delight as the Maryland Senate tried one of its own. Senator Hertel, as it turned out, had decided not to go quietly. He was forcing his colleagues to cast him out. The proceedings had excited the seasonally deprived media far more than they did the public. The press seats on the Senate floor were full, and cameras lined both sides of the chamber.

  But in the gallery, Vasso was one of only a few diehard political junkies drawn to the spectacle. He sat in the back row, arms folded across his chest, eyes bright with a strange hunger, as if he were watching some kind of blood sport.

  “Why are you wasting your time here?” Tess asked him.

  “It’s history,” he said curtly, not even turning his head toward her.

  “More of a tradition, if you ask me. It’s the third time it’s happened in the last three years.”

  He glanced at her, but his attention quickly returned to the floor. Senator Ken Dahlgren, the quasi-prosecutor here, was making a speech about his committee’s findings, and how they had reached the recommendation for Senator Hertel’s expulsion. Somehow he managed to reference the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and something about how the Maryland State House was the oldest legislative building in continuous use. Tess thought he looked a little waxy and unreal, like Dan Quayle caught in the headlights. But hers was evidently a minority opinion.

  “He’s good,” another spectator whispered.

  “The next congressman from the first district,” someone agreed. Vasso cocked an eyebrow, but said nothing. He obviously considered himself above such low-level political speculation.

  “I need to speak to you,” Tess said.

  “When they break.”

  “It’s about Henry Dembrow.”

  Vasso took his eyes from the Senate floor, but only for a moment. “When they break.”

  “I need to speak to you now.”

  “Your needs don’t interest me much. You want my time, get elected to someth
ing.”

  “It’s about Henry Dembrow.”

  “You’re repeating yourself.”

  “It’s about Henry Dembrow and a place called Domenick’s and the strange coincidence that the same Annapolis lobbyist stepped in and dusted off his barely used shingle when they needed help.”

  Had her voice risen? She could swear Dahlgren had glared up at the gallery, lost a step in his carefully planned speech, then resumed again. Vasso’s hand closed over her wrist and he all but dragged her into the hallway, as if he had been the urgent one all along.

  Once in the corridor, she took her arm back.

  “You’re proving to be a real pain in the ass,” Vasso said. “I’m sorry, I guess that wasn’t very PC of me.”

  He was trying to act jocular now, as if this were some joke between the two of them. People were passing through the hall, mainly secretary types from the offices on this floor, but Vasso was being careful not to draw too much attention to himself, or to her.

  “The girl that Henry Dembrow killed was identified recently.”

  “So I heard. Nice bit of publicity for you. Lots of potential. Don’t fritter it away, looking for connections that don’t exist, or weighing yourself down with losers. Yes, I represented Henry Dembrow. As I told you, I do favors for people.”

  “Who was that a favor for?”

  “I believe I also told you there’s no point in doing favors if I’m indiscreet. Baltimore is a small town, everyone’s only one or two people apart here. I tried to help a kid in a jam. I helped a bar get its liquor license. No connection.”

  “You’re the connection.”

  Adamancy was all she had going for her. Vasso glanced over her head, back at the doors to the Senate chamber.

  “You’re spinning your wheels,” he said.

  “Is it true that Henry Dembrow was going to file for a new trial, based on inadequate counsel?”

  “He wouldn’t be the first man to wake up in prison and start thinking about ways to get out, and pointing fingers.” His voice had lost a little of its rat-a-tat slickness. “Henry watched too much television, he kept saying it was his understanding that I’d be able to get him out on a technicality because I was so ‘connected.’ I told him the only technicality I could find was that he didn’t want her to die, but if you shove a woman standing at the top of a flight of concrete steps, that’s intent as far as the law’s concerned. He made it personal, tried to threaten me, and I told him I’d do anything to protect my reputation. He backed off.”

  “Actually, I made that part up.”

  Vasso looked at her blankly.

  “The part about Henry asking for a new trial. But thanks for confirming that he was considering it. And that you would do quote-anything-unquote to protect your reputation.”

  Vasso brushed the lapels of his suit, as if he had been in a fistfight, and yanked the sleeves down over his wrists. Hand-tailored suits didn’t do as much for a man if he kept gaining weight after the fitting.

  “Can I give you some advice?” he asked Tess. “Take a branch off the family tree. Your father understands how things work, when to push, and when to walk away. Your father knows all about favors. Someone wants me to step in, do a little pro bono for some bozo, I’m fine with that. I didn’t do it for Henry, you get me, or his bitch of a sister. The real owner of Domenick’s doesn’t want his name on the license. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t live in the city. Maybe it’s because he has a criminal record. These are just hypotheticals, I hope you understand. But bar owners all over the city find ways of getting around the regs. I helped one out. That doesn’t make me the fucking missing link.”

  “Henry Dembrow died for a reason. Maybe Gwen Schiller did, too.”

  “Everyone dies for a reason. Everyone dies for the same reason—their heart stops.”

  “Then you’ll never die, because you’ve got no heart to stop.”

  Vasso smiled. Everything was a game to him, Tess saw, and the score was kept in dollars and cents. He didn’t believe in anything—Democrat or Republican, pro-life or pro-choice, right or wrong. Pay him, he was yours. If the American Cancer Society threw more money at him than the cigarette industry, he’d carry their water, fight for their bills. He could lobby for any side of any issue, as long as he was paid to do it. What some people called a devil’s advocate.

  “It slows you down,” he said, “caring too much. You’ve got a case tied up neat as a Christmas package. Henry Dembrow confessed to killing that girl. You found out who she was, and now everyone thinks you’re a fucking genius. A fucking genius with a nice rack. You should be out getting corporate accounts, not wasting time on looking for explanations that don’t exist. But I’ll tell you this much: I don’t know anything. I make it a point not to know anything I don’t need to know. Which is what makes me so smart.”

  He walked back into the Senate gallery. Tess caught a burst of oratory as the door swung open. Words, words, words, words, words. Everyone was so full of words down here.

  Tied up neat as a Christmas package. She wished Vasso had used a different image. Now she was reminded of Gwen, in the crime scene photo, that piece of rubber tubing tied in a bow at her neck.

  Like someone’s present, Tess realized.

  Tied to someone’s past.

  chapter 19

  YOUR FATHER KNOWS ALL ABOUT FAVORS.

  Tess started to call Pat from her cell phone, then thought better of it. Vasso was full of shit, throwing out her father’s name with the same instinct that caused some street kid to insult your mother. Vasso was an old chauvinist who thought Tess’s daddy could boss her around. There were favors, and there were favors. The liquor board had a less-than-illustrious history, but her father had never taken a dime from anyone, never bent the rules for anyone. Well, maybe for Spike, here or there. But that was different. That was family.

  She felt as if her car were heading up 97 on its own. The Toyota seemed full of purpose, as if it always knew where it was going, while she felt lost and confused. Vasso’s words were like a slow-working poison moving toward her brain.

  Your father knows all about favors.

  The Toyota headed up Martin Luther King, but hung a left instead of a right, heading into the Hollins Market area. Winter light wasn’t kind to the neighborhood. She had to park several blocks away from Domenick’s, but she found a space on a small alley street. When she walked in, it was as if no one had moved in the days since she had first visited. Same bartender, same two young blond guys playing pinball, same old men in the booths, same lone woman in the corner.

  “I need the owner,” she told the bartender.

  “Not here,” he said.

  “Gwen Schiller worked here,” she announced to the room at large. No response. “Gwen Schiller, the girl who was killed by Henry Dembrow in Locust Point last year. Before she died, she told someone she worked here.”

  The only sound in the room was a pinball, rolling down the length of the table and past flippers, flippers that were not engaged. She had everyone’s attention.

  The woman in the corner lowered her newspaper and spoke. “People say lots of things. That don’t make them true.”

  “You the owner?”

  “I run the place.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “My name is for my friends. You going to be my friend?” Tess didn’t say anything. “I’m Nicola DeSanti. My husband was Domenick DeSanti.”

  “So you’re the real owner?”

  “I run the place,” Nicola DeSanti repeated, and Tess wondered how she was defining “place.” The bar, the neighborhood, the precinct, the ward, Southwest Baltimore?

  “How do you know Arnie Vasso?”

  “We move,” Nicola yawned, “in the same circles.” Tess couldn’t imagine her moving at all. Her dark hair had almost no gray in it, her flat brown eyes were shrewd.

  “What about Henry Dembrow?”

  “Never knew no Henry,” she said, and went back to her paper. The two blonds sauntered
out of the bar, as if responding to some signal Tess had missed. They made a point of getting too close, of brushing by her, and she caught their scent, body odor with an overlay of something pharmaceutical. The pinball machine gave off one last ring. Game over. Show over.

  “Gwen worked here, though.”

  “Never knew no Gwen.”

  “She might have used a different name.”

  “Might of.” Nicola DeSanti’s voice was mild, even agreeable. So why did she frighten her so much?

  “Would you at least look at a photograph of her, just to put my mind at ease?”

  “No,” Nicola DeSanti said.

  The waitress who had brought Tess her green pepper rings on her first visit came out of the kitchen then. She was wearing an ivory dress, semi-formal, and not quite right for any occasion. The dress looked as if it couldn’t decide whether it was intended for a cocktail party or a first communion. Some female instinct told Tess that a man had picked out the dress, a man who didn’t know too much about clothes.

  “What do you think?” Her question seemed to be for the room in general.

  “I think,” Nicola DeSanti said, “that you should go back in the kitchen and wait for your ride.”

  It was only then that the waitress registered Tess’s presence. She nodded, flustered, and backed out of the room. She seemed nervous in the dress, as if worried about keeping it clean. A legitimate concern in dusty Domenick’s, but wouldn’t the kitchen have more hazards?

  “Gwen worked here,” Tess said. Not a question this time.

  “I don’t think so,” Nicola said.

  “How can you know, if you won’t even look at her photograph? How can you be so sure, unless you do know Gwen already?”

  “Her picture was in the paper.”

  This wasn’t a cross-examination, there was no jury to which Tess could appeal, or point out the inconsistency in the woman’s conversation. She wondered if the waitress might have known Gwen, but she was so clearly new—Tess remembered how overwhelmed she had seemed, just carrying a tray, how she had dropped everything with a crash—that she couldn’t have been working here a year ago.