In a Strange City Read online

  "So?" Cecilia was suddenly on full alert, back in activist mode.

  "Well, I thought that might affect what you say on the air tomorrow night."

  "I can't be overly concerned with property crimes when people's lives are at risk," Cecilia said.

  "I'm not asking you to equate the four crimes morally. I'm telling you the police think they're related. Doesn't that fact make the hate-crime scenario less likely?"

  "We have to draw attention to these issues however we can. Police treat gay men who are attacked the way they once treated rape victims." Cecilia was a rape victim, Tess recalled, and she had never hesitated to wield this bit of moral superiority. "We have to keep pressure on them, if only to ensure that future cases are taken more seriously."

  Tess wasn't sure if Cecilia was using the editorial "we," the royal "we," or merely the pain-in-the-ass self-important "we."

  "Are you saying it doesn't matter if you're right about the details, as long as you get your message out?"

  Cecilia blushed, unaccustomed to being on the defensive. "No, no—I would never say anything I knew to be false. But even if I'm wrong in the details, I'm calling attention to the bigger picture, if you will."

  At moments like this, Tess realized she could not quite vanquish her reporter persona. She had never confused working for a newspaper with being in the service of the truth, but she had been devoted to facts. Cecilia's blatant disregard of them was a kind of pollution. The world was stinking with urban myths and Internet-spawned apocrypha. People shouldn't get in front of television cameras and say things they knew might not have a jot of truth to them, just because they served an allegedly higher purpose.

  "Do you even have a police department source?" Tess demanded. "Or are you just making this up as you go along, figuring you're right until someone proves you wrong?"

  But they had both been trained in Tyner's trenches, and Cecilia was not one to fold in the face of combat. "Look, everyone knows Shawn Hayes was beaten by some homophobe he picked up somewhere."

  "Everyone knows," Tess repeated scornfully. "No one knows anything, because people manipulate facts for results, the way you're planning to do. How would you feel if the Christian right held a press conference, putting out rumors to promote its antigay agenda? You'd be livid."

  "Because they're wrong," Cecilia said, her face tight with the anger of the self-righteous.

  "Which is what they think about you."

  "For your information, Jim Yeager agrees with me. He told me he wants me on because he believes this was a hate crime. And he's pretty far to the right, so what do you have to say about that?"

  "I say Yeager will tell you whatever he needs to, if it means getting a guest for that stupid show of his. He asked me, too, you know. Only his pitch was different, all about Poe and literature. If he'll lie to get you on the show, imagine what he'll say once you're there."

  Crow and Charlotte, the apolitical, conflict-averse partners, stared at the table, like children stuck with quarreling parents. Tess's omelet was only half eaten, but she began counting out money, hoping she had enough singles to cover the tip, so she could leave and not return.

  "About the dog—" Charlotte began.

  "We'll take her," Crow said quickly. "She'll be happier with us. Just tell me when you need me to come and pick her up."

  "Why not now?" Charlotte asked.

  Fine, Tess thought. The arrangement was between the two of them; it had nothing to do with her and Cecilia. She managed a clenched-jaw good-bye, got one in return from Cecilia. Charlotte accompanied her and Crow outside, where they liberated Miata from the RAV-4. She was a shockingly docile dog, her mournful brown eyes seeming to say, Do with me what you will. Ah, well, Esskay had come into their lives with a similarly defeated attitude, and they had turned her into a narcissistic, hedonistic chowhound in less than a year's time.

  "Cecilia always thinks she's right," Tess fumed from the passenger seat of Crow's Volvo as Miata breathed heavily in her ear, uninterested in the passing landscape. "She's so principled, so sure of herself, so emphatic in her beliefs. She never entertains any doubt, never stops to think about how her principles might affect living, breathing people. Have you ever known anyone like that?"

  Crow smiled. "Oh, I think I have."

  Chapter 17

  Tess had a poetry-loving friend given to fits in which he rearranged Auden's famous edict about the inherent limits of verse. "For journalism makes nothing happen," Kevin Feeney would begin to intone, somewhere between martinis three and four. "For government makes nothing happen—thank God. For God makes nothing happen. For nothin‘ makes nothing happen."

  The performance was funny in a bar, after a few drinks. But on a bright cold January morning, when the apparent poet was Poe and the poetry arrived in an intricately folded note, the rhymes were nothing less than sinister. For the implicit threat was that things were going to keep happening until Tess learned to read between the lines.

  The day had started innocently enough. She had awakened to find two pairs of mournful brown eyes staring at her over the edge of the bed, and to feel twin puffs of warm doggie breath on her face, stereo smellivision. But while Esskay began romping excitedly the moment Tess blinked, Miata didn't budge. Tess wondered if the dog was worrying about the comedown in her circumstances. Until recently, she had lived in one of the grandest town houses in Mount Vernon. Now, after a stint in doggie jail, she was in this modest little cottage. No wonder her depression wouldn't lift.

  Eye level with Miata, Tess took note of the dog's elaborate collar for the first time—leather, with metal studs. Perhaps it was meant to make her look fierce, but the effect was of a society lady trying to punk out at some charity masquerade ball. The collar was too thick and it bunched up in the back, as if it couldn't quite rest in the thick muscular folds there. Could it be—? Tess unfastened it, turned it over, and found… nothing. Clearly, recent events were making her as giddy and paranoid as any Hardy Boy or Happy Hollister. Looking for clues on dog collars, she thought scornfully. Hiding notes in oyster tins. Really, wasn't it about time for Crow to sit up in bed and announce breathlessly that he thought he had seen smugglers wading through Stony Run Creek?

  With a rueful laugh at her own expense, she got up, threw on her sweats, and leashed both dogs. Esskay was only slightly perturbed to discover they had to share the morning walk with this mournful newcomer. And when Esskay saw how the other dogs in the park fell back at the sight of her muscular companion, she practically pranced in delight. Oh, a bodyguard. Why didn't you say so in the first place?

  Miata's gloom didn't dissipate, however, although Tess thought she caught a wisp of a smile on the Doberman's face when a small ratlike dog made a feint at the duo and Esskay lunged, teeth bared. A ferocious greyhound and a subdued Doberman. They made quite a pair.

  "There's a leash law, you know," she told the woman who ran forward to grab the ugly little dog-rat, screaming as if Tess were to blame for its aggression.

  "Only for those like you, who can't control their dogs," the woman said huffily. It was a familiar battle, if a new combatant, and Tess decided to move on. She wasn't sure if men had Napoleon complexes, but dogs definitely did.

  In winter, with the trees bare, the narrow paths through the park were open and one could see at a great distance. Tess found this comforting—no one, woman or beast or both, could sneak up on her here— and she walked farther than she had planned, all the way to the lacrosse museum on the edge of the Hopkins campus.

  Cold and hungry by the time she made it back to her neighborhood, she stopped at the Daily Grind for a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin, sharing the latter with both dogs while perched on the curb. Well, she shared it with Esskay. Miata appeared to be like one of those well-reared cloistered children who know nothing of sweet treats, who have been conditioned to clamor for carrots and regard chocolate with suspicion. She sniffed the muffin and turned her head. Esskay valiantly ate Miata's piece as well.

  So sh
e estimated that thirty minutes—no more than forty-five—had passed by the time she arrived home, to find a piece of white paper under one of her Toyota's windshield wipers. It couldn't be a flyer, given its almost origamilike folds. Besides, her car was the only one along East Lane that had been so leafleted. Tess plucked the note from its resting space with her gloved hands, wondering why she no longer rated the fancy stationery. Could she have more than one helpful stalker? But rose petals drifted from the letter's folds when she opened it, and the old-fashioned computer-generated font was the same as on the previous note.

  From childhood's hour I have not been As others were; I have not seen As others saw; I could not bring My passions from a common spring. And all I loved, I loved alone. Then—in my childhood, in the dawn Of a most stormy life—was drawn From every depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still: From the torrent of the fountain, From the red cliff of the mountain, From the sun that round me rolled In its autumn tint of gold, From the lightning in the sky As it passed me flying by, From the thunder and the storm, And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view.

  "I didn't hear a thing," Crow said apologetically, when she spread the note in front of him on the dining room table.

  "Well, you didn't get in until late last night, because you were at the Point."

  Crow booked the occasional music acts that played at her father's restaurant-bar, and last night's entertainment had featured some minor legend of a blues-man whose name Tess kept blanking on. Tess liked music, but she never quite got what it was with boys and guitars. Just as little boys would reach for a toy truck if offered an array of things to play with, big boys' hands automatically grabbed guitars. Crow had at least three; Tess had even caught him in bed with his favorite, a 1963 Strat, one memorable night. Not playing it, just spooning it.

  "Yeah, but"—he yawned, wrapping himself around her and enveloping her in the warm, yeasty smells of recent sleep—"I do feel as if I'm supposed to fill at least some of the stereotypical masculine roles around here."

  "I'll settle for you telling me what this means."

  "I'm afraid it means your visitor is getting wordier yet more mysterious. The last note gave you a nice, explicit instruction. This one… I don't know. He's telling us he's not like other boys, but I think we could have figured that out on our own."

  ""The mystery which binds me still,"" Tess murmured. " "A demon in my view." Tell me I should turn this over to Rainer. Tell me I shouldn't worry about the Pig Man's threats—funny, even now I know his name I can't help thinking of him as the Pig Man. Tell me what to do, if you want to be the stereotypical alpha male in my life."

  "Tess, I don't want to be the alpha male, and I gave up a long time ago trying to tell you anything. You'll do what you want, when you want. You've got good instincts, when you don't think so much. What's your gut say?"

  She gave his question careful and literal consideration. "That a blueberry muffin is not enough to keep me going until lunch. And that I'm lucky to have a friendly librarian in my corner."

  "Kitty?"

  "No, I was thinking of my newfound connection in the Poe room."

  Daniel Clary agreed to meet with Tess, but not at the library.

  "I'm flattered to be your consultant, but I don't think I can rationalize doing this on the city's time," he told her over the phone later that morning. "It will have to be in the evening."

  "Should I come to your home, then?" Tess asked. When he hesitated, she realized how thick she was being—Daniel, scrimping on a librarian's salary, was probably counting on another free meal, maybe even a few Morettis. "I'll bring takeout. Pizza or Thai food or Chinese, or even Afghan: whatever you like. What do you like?"

  "Pizza, I guess. Anything fancy would be wasted on me."

  "I'll bring some beer, too."

  "That would be nice," he said, in the artless tone of a child who's trying not to reveal how much he wants a certain treat, and Tess resolved to procure something truly special, perhaps the winter lager from the Baltimore Brewing Company or a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

  Daniel lived in lower Charles Village, in a carriage house behind one of the few detached homes in that genteel-shabby neighborhood near the Johns Hopkins campus. The owner landlord, who lived in the Victorian-gingerbread main house, had lavished much attention on his domain, using a cunning combination of unexpected colors—peach and beige and pale yellow, with touches of violet and green—to great effect. The carriage house was meant to be a duplicate, not unlike a custom-made doll's house, repeating the color scheme of its parent. But the work here had been hastier, the colors layered with less subtlety. The result was a small sheepish place, a little boy tugging at the collar of his Sunday best and yearning for his blue jeans.

  Inside, the carriage house appeared much too small for broad-shouldered Daniel, who seemed to stoop when he stood to relieve her of the pizza boxes and lager. But the one-room house might not have felt so small if it hadn't surrendered a foot of wall space on every side to shelves, which reached from the floor to the ceiling. The effect was of a book-lined box, with additional shelves visible through the small archway that led to the kitchen alcove. Tess wondered if there were books in the bathroom as well. The books felt like three-dimensional wallpaper, the endless lines of shelves broken only by a small fireplace on the south wall. The rough pine floors appeared to buckle, just a bit, under the weight of all those volumes, and Tess could see gaps in the floorboards, revealing a dirt floor a few feet below. There was very little else in the room, just a table, two chairs, and a sofa, presumably one that opened up into a bed.

  "I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a librarian has so many books, but this is a little overwhelming," Tess said, drawn instantly to the shelves, studying the spines of the books. Many of the titles were unknown to her, but those she did recognize were all nineteenth-century novels and histories: Dickens, Melville, Austen, Thackeray, Cash, Olmsted. Poe had his own shelf, as did Hawthorne and Longfellow. "In a good way, I mean."

  "Well, you'll notice I don't have many contemporary novels," he said. "Working at the library, I have easy access to the newest books, the minute they arrive. Why are you smiling?"

  "You just reminded me of one of my favorite writers, Philip Roth. In Goodbye, Columbus, the fatuous fiancée says something like, "Oh, but you must get all the bestsellers first‘ to the librarian-protagonist. The one who's romancing Ali MacGraw."

  "Ali MacGraw?"

  "In the movie," Tess amended. "It's not much good—the movie, I mean. But the story is exquisite. He wrote it at some unforgivably young age, twenty-three or something like that."

  "A story with a male librarian as its hero? I need to check that out. Would you believe I've never read anything by Roth? I guess I'm a nineteenth-century man, through and through. Besides, older books are cheaper than new ones, if you know what to look for—and where. This set of Jane Austen, for example"—he pulled a small green book from the shelf—"it cost thirty dollars, or six dollars a book, and I found it at this rinky-dink flea market, where most of the stalls sell baby clothes and imitation designer purses. Anew hardcover will set you back that much."

  "So you're a collector?"

  "Not a serious one, because I couldn't bear to own something I couldn't use. I never understood that particular compulsion." He flipped through the Austen, inhaling the pages' smell with as much pleasure as he had sniffed the pizzas. "The irony is, if I didn't work in a library and I had to buy new fiction the moment it appeared—and I confess, I am prey to the occasional fit of instant gratification—I'd probably have a world-class collection of modern firsts right now. Instead, I just have these old beat-up books that look valuable. Impresses girls, though."

  "Really?"

  He tried for a roguish smile but ended up looking merely bashful. "Well, some girls. The male librarian doesn't cut a lot of ice in a world where everyone else has stock options and new cars and condos with water views, but
there's a certain bookish subcult that is amenable to our charms."

  Tess, who had a matchmaking gene from her Weinstein side, made a mental note to throw Whitney into Daniel's path. Lord knows, she had enough money of her own to overlook someone else's lack thereof, and she did like books. Liked them more than boys, truth be told. She also shared Daniel Clary's outdoorsy bent—he had a ten-speed hanging in the corner, and a pair of cross-country skis in his umbrella stand, along with a thick walking stick that looked as if it had been made for bagging peaks.

  "I bet," she said, her tone light and teasing. She decided to say out loud what she had thought the first time she saw him. "I wouldn't be surprised if you had groupies who come to the library on made-up missions, just to talk to you."

  He blushed, but he didn't deny it. "So let's see this poem."

  She had photocopied the poem, although the original was probably so corrupted by her own fingerprints that this precaution made little difference. Still, she was trying to do the right thing, or so she kept telling her nagging conscience.

  Daniel sat at the old wooden table that obviously did double duty for deskwork and dining, scanning the page. He read quickly, even more quickly than Tess, who fancied herself quite fast.

  "Hmmm," he said. "And this was the second one?"

  "Yes. The first one brought me to the library and the sign on Mulberry Street. But it was relatively straightforward. This one has me baffled."

  "I know Poe's tales better than I do the poems, and the horror stories better than the detective tales. Still, this seems familiar." He got up and pulled a volume from the shelf, a black-bound book, small and frail-looking. "Yes, here it is. "Alone.""

  Tess looked over his shoulder. "It's all marked up; you've studied it."

  "The whole book is marked. It was like this when I bought it." He flipped through the pages. It was, in fact, full of underlines and hash marks, with an occasional exclamation point in the margin. "I would never write in a book, not even a new one. But, as I said, there's a reason these books are affordable."