Charm City Page 5

  Yet it was at Montrose that Wynkowski discovered his talent for basketball. When he returned to the community as an apparently reformed high school youth, his heroics for Southwestern High School in his junior and senior years helped erase memories of his unsavory past. Since becoming a wealthy man, he also has given generously to local charities. (See Basketball, 5A)

  “Well, you did it, Feeney.” Tess spoke out loud again. “Good job.” With a satisfied sigh, she read the rest of what could prove to be the obituary for Baltimore’s dream of a basketball team. Feeney was right, it had everything—crime and money. And wife-beating as a bonus! Feeney and Rosita had hit the allegation trifecta.

  Baltimore did not necessarily share Tess’s pride in Feeney’s work. As she went through the rest of her bureaucratic rounds that morning, she could feel the city humming and whispering about Wink Wynkowski in heated commiseration. Theirs was a unified lament: the basketball team might be lost to the city now, all because of that bad news Blight.

  “I don’t know why they gotta be so negative all the time,” she heard a man grumbling on line at the Never on Sunday sandwich shop, as she waited for a turkey sub with tomato, lettuce, and extra hots. “Be just like the NBA to hold a little bad publicity against a guy.”

  “They’re just looking for a reason to block the deal, those bastards,” the counterman agreed. “They hate Baltimore.”

  Everyone on line agreed to that, even those who had missed the rest of the conversation. They hated Baltimore. The NBA, Washington, DC, the suburbanites who had fled years ago, taking their tax dollars with them. The Eastern Shore, the Western counties, the lawmakers in Annapolis. New York, Hollywood, big business, little business, God, the universe. They were all in a league against poor little Baltimore.

  A woman’s piercingly clear voice cut through the camaraderie of victimhood.

  “Oh, spare me another day on the grassy knoll, folks. I am not in the mood. From there, it’s always just a short stroll to the Trilateral Commission and the worldwide Jewish banking conspiracy. Is it too much to ask for a moment of silence while I wait for a grilled cheese with bacon—no tomatoes, please, they’re like dead tennis balls this time of year.”

  The voice was familiar, the attitude more so.

  “Whitney Talbot,” Tess said, turning to inspect her old friend. “What are you doing this far uptown?”

  “Tess! I’ve been meaning to call you. Ever since you took up with that little boy, you never have any time for your old-maid friend.” This piece of information sharpened the crowd’s interest in Tess for a moment, but all eyes quickly returned to Whitney. Blushing and windblown, Tess was no match for this fabulous creature who looked like the patron goddess of field hockey.

  Whitney Talbot was as tall as Tess, 5’9”, but thinner. She wore her thick blond hair in a girl’s careless bob and spent $60 every six weeks to keep it even with her jaw, the sharpest bone in a body of long, sharp bones. It was her one flaw, if a Talbot could be said to have flaws. Rich and well bred, they tended toward quirks. Tess knew Whitney’s quirks well: they had been college roommates, crew mates, and competitors, vying in the secret way so many female friends do.

  Tess worked her way back through the line and threw her arms around her friend. Was she turning into one of those women who dropped friends when a steady man was around? But it had been such a wretched winter, a time for digging in, not going out.

  “Crow’s okay, but he’s just a boy,” she said. “No one can replace you, Whitney. Bring your sandwich back to Tyner’s office and eat lunch with me. We’ll catch up.”

  Whitney shook her head. “I need to get back to the Beacon-Light. Things are a little crazy over there today.”

  “Because of Feeney’s story? You know, my sources tell me—” strange how good that phrase felt, more than two years out of the business—“his story wasn’t suppose to run.”

  Whitney wasn’t impressed. She knew Tess had precisely two sources at the Beacon-Light, and she was the other one. “Did you hear it wasn’t going to run today, or that it wasn’t going to run at all?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Really, Tess, you know editorial is separate from the news side. I wouldn’t know anything about the Wynkowski story except that, as we like to say in my section, ‘This bears watching.’” Whitney was one of the paper’s youngest pundits, but she was well suited to the job, a born second-guesser.

  “C’mon, Talbot. Don’t stonewall me. I’ve got photographs of you from college in compromising positions with a cigar, a boy, and a fifth of Scotch.”

  “The old edict about never being caught with a dead girl or a live boy doesn’t apply to our gender, dear.” Whitney frowned. “Then again, given the double standards at the Beacon-Light, the cigar alone could kill my prospects. Girls aren’t suppose to have fun.”

  “Is this the sound of one head banging on the glass ceiling?”

  Whitney didn’t smile. “Know where I was this morning? A soup kitchen on Twenty-Fifth Street. They start serving breakfast at seven-thirty A.M. and don’t finish until almost eleven most mornings. And today was a slow day, only two hundred people served. By month’s end, it’ll be three hundred. Some women stop by every morning with their kids, in order to stretch out their food stamps.”

  “Well, I’m encouraged to hear the Blight is taking an interest. You usually only write about hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa.”

  “Forgive me, Tess, but I hate doing all this bleeding heart social services crap. I’ve covered city politics, I’m fluent in Japanese, I had a fellowship in economics down at College Park. But I don’t get to write editorials about those things. You know why? It’s because I don’t stand up when I go to the bathroom!”

  Whitney’s outburst, while not particularly loud, filled one of those odd silences endemic to hectic public places. The men in line stirred uneasily. They might have wanted to envision Whitney in the bedroom, standing or sitting, but not in the bathroom. Tess had to admit the image didn’t do much for her appetite, either.

  “Turkey sub, extra hots,” the counterman called. Tess took the greasy brown paper bag, plucked a bag of Utz cheese curls off the metal rack, and turned back to Whitney, who was focused on her grilled cheese’s progress with bird dog intensity.

  “Call me, hon.” She had started using the local endearment ironically, only to find it a natural fit over time, Baltimore being an irony-free zone. Even its synthetic nickname, Charm City, had begun to take on a life of its own. “Crow doesn’t take up all my time. In fact, he’s so busy being a local rock hero, I have plenty of free week-ends and evenings.”

  Whitney nodded absently. But as Tess began working her way out of the crowded carryout, Whitney reached out and caught the sleeve of her coat.

  “Tesser?”

  “What?”

  “How’s your job? The investigator thing? Tyner keeping you busy?”

  “In spurts.”

  “Spurts.” Whitney laughed. Even her laugh seemed better than most people’s—rarer, richer, deeper. “I thought that was how Crow kept you busy. Are you licensed? Have you bought a gun? You know, if you want to go to a range with me sometimes—”

  “I don’t have a gun yet. You know how I feel about them.” Whitney, who had hunted ducks and doves with her father most of her life, and always kept her rifle handy, had tried to interest Tess in the sport during their Washington College days, to no avail.

  “I know, I know. But you should get a license to carry, since you’re entitled to one by law. If you had been carrying a gun last fall—”

  “I probably would have shot myself in the foot by accident.” And everyone who was dead would still be dead, she reminded herself, as she did whenever someone alluded to that malevolent September, to what might have been, and who might still be among the living. The little movie, the one that seemed to have been booked into her dreams for eternity, rolled again in her head, a trailer for that evening’s coming nightmares.

  “If you say so
.” Whitney gave her a kiss on the cheek, not one of those fake, airy ones preferred by her class, but an exuberant smacker of a smooch that left a pink smear of lipstick on Tess’s cheek. The crowd loved it. Quicksilver Whitney had already turned her attention back to her sandwich.

  “It’s getting too brown. Turn it, turn it, turn it!” she implored the short, swarthy man at the grill, who grinned goofily, as if her imperious orders were a declaration of undying love. “And would you be so kind as to cut off the crusts?”

  Chapter 5

  Never a cheery place, The Point was particularly bleak at twilight. Even the dusk’s faint light illuminated too much, accentuating the bar’s distinct charmlessness. Tess could see dust on the tables, the smeared glass in the jukebox, an odd assortment of stains on the floor. She couldn’t blame this on Spike’s absence. The truth was, the place looked marginally better under Tommy’s care.

  “So, Tommy,” Tess tried again, fixing herself a watery Coke from the bar nozzle. “How did Spike end up with a greyhound?”

  “That blond girl sure is pretty,” he said, eyes fixed on the early news, on the television set bolted above the bar. “But I don’t like the black guy. How come it’s always a blond girl and a black guy? How come it’s never a blond guy and a black girl? You ever think about that? And who do you think makes the more exuberant salary, the girl or the guy?”

  “Exorbitant salary, Tommy. And I’m more interested in greyhounds right now. What was Spike’s interest in dog racing?”

  “We don’t have no dog races in Maryland?” he protested.

  “We don’t have world champion prizefights, either, but Spike has been known to take a few bets on those. Look, did he buy an interest in Esskay? Is he a partner with some out-of-state trainer? Or is he mixed up in betting on greyhounds?”

  “He didn’t want nothing to do with greyhounds,” Tommy insisted. “He said they were spooky looking? It bothered him to look at them?”

  “Look at them where? Where he got Esskay?”

  Tommy turned back to the television. Reporters were camped out in front of Wink Wynkowski’s mansion, a new house built in a pseudo-Tudor style out of place in a treeless subdivision. Apparently, Wink had not emerged all day, nor had he provided any response to the Beacon-Light’s allegations. The TV reporters’ only hope to advance the story was to get a reaction. They couldn’t duplicate the kind of reporting Feeney had done over the last several weeks. Besides, why look at some boring old court documents or chat up sources when you can chase someone across his own front lawn, screaming, “How do you feel?”

  “Be too bad to lose the basketball team because of the newspaper,” Tommy said to the TV screen. “Woulda helped our business?”

  “You seem awfully proprietary about things around here, Tommy. Someone might think you didn’t care if Spike never woke up.”

  Tommy plucked nervously at his lower lip. “You’re treading on thin ground, Tess. I don’t see where you get off, talking to me like that. I’m around more’n the rest of the fambly. More’n you.”

  “Where did the dog come from? Why was Spike beaten? How are the two things connected?”

  He turned away and began fiddling with the beer tap. The regulars were drifting in, providing Tommy with enough distractions to ignore her for hours. Slowly, with great ceremony, he shook miniature pretzels into wooden bowls along the bar, then slapped down coasters, which no one in the history of The Point had ever used. Behind the bar, Tommy looked as fresh as the coasters, in his bright yellow shirt and black pants. He even looked taller. Tess peeked over the Formica top and saw he was sporting a pair of high-heeled caramel-colored ankle boots with side zippers, circa 1976.

  “Spiffy shoes,” Tess said.

  “Oh, yeah, well, you know I can’t wear loafers. Thin ankles.”

  “Don’t those heels hurt after a day on your feet?”

  “You know what they say—a hard man’s day is never done.” Tommy looked bewildered when everyone laughed, but Tess suspected he was playing to the crowd. It wasn’t the first time she had heard this particular Tommyism.

  Esskay had also put in a hard day, shredding paper towels and toilet paper, gnawing on the pieces, then spitting up clumps behind furniture and in corners. Tess found a particularly large, soggy chunk in the center of her pillow. Her pillow, not the one Crow used, which was actually closer to the door. Did Esskay know which side of the bed Tess preferred? And if so, was this fealty, or a veiled threat?

  Later, after a hot bath, she was still plucking bits of paper from odd places when the phone rang.

  “Tesser! You told me to call you, so here I am, calling you.” Whitney, a little too hale and hearty. The rah-rah team captain persona was usually reserved for strangers, strangers Whitney wished to keep strangers.

  “Here you are,” Tess echoed, without much enthusiasm.

  “Can you come out and play?”

  “Now?”

  “Why not? It’s only eight-thirty, spring is coming, and I haven’t been taking enough people out on my expense account. They’ll lose respect for me if it’s under three figures for the month. Come be my recalcitrant source. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  Tess studied the wad of soggy paper towels in her hand. “I’m in my bathrobe and feeling kind of cranky. Can’t you buy some bourbon, bring it over here, and put that on your expense account?”

  She was counting on being refused. Tess couldn’t give Whitney a receipt or a credit card slip. She couldn’t even validate parking.

  “Okay, but be ready to throw a coat over your bathrobe. I want to sit out on your terrace, at least as long as we can take it. See you in twenty minutes.”

  Tess’s apartment took up only half of the space of the two floors below. The rest belonged to a flat, unremarkable roof, reached through French doors off her bedroom. A more ambitious tenant might have filled this pseudo-patio with pots of geraniums, or splurged on wrought-iron café chairs and a matching table. Tess left two vinyl lawn chairs out year-round, sponging them off as necessary. The harbor view was so spectacular it seemed unnecessary to do more. Who needed fripperies like tiny white lights in ficus trees with the neon Domino Sugar sign across the water in Locust Point blazing red throughout the night?

  Yet when Whitney arrived, she was in no hurry to go outside.

  “Do you have any…?” she asked, sniffing delicately. Esskay wandered over to see if Whitney was good for a few pats, or a morsel of food. She stroked the dog’s head, never bothering to ask how or why Tess had acquired such an ugly beast. Incurious Whitney. Reporting had never come naturally to her.

  “Have any what, Whitney?” Tess knew exactly what she meant, but loved to torture the answer out of her friend, force her to say what she wanted.

  “You know.” Her voice was now a stage whisper. “The little box under your bed.”

  “My sweaters? Dust balls?”

  “Your pot. Your dope. Weed. Mary Jane. Ganja. The 1970s smokable herb now making a comeback, as they say in the New York Times every time they do one of those ‘Whatever-happened-to-marijuana?’ stories. Satisfied?”

  “Oh, that. I stopped making purchases when I went to work for Tyner, given it’s a crime. A condition of my employment.” A half-truth. Tyner disapproved of marijuana only because it hampered the lungs’ ability to maximize oxygen intake.

  Whitney looked so blue that Tess took pity on her. “I still have a little left, though. I’ve been hoarding it.”

  “Well, dig it out. And let’s order pizza from BOP or Al Pacino’s. Do they deliver?”

  “They do to Kitty’s address.”

  Within an hour, Esskay was nosing through two grease-stained boxes in a corner of the terrace, searching out stray bits of pepperoni and Whitney’s uneaten crusts. The night was not at all springlike, but Tess and Whitney, warmed by doses of bourbon and pizza, were inured to the temperature as they shared a second post-dinner joint. Time had collapsed. They could have been in Washington College again, smoking on the banks
of the Chester River.

  The joint almost gone, Whitney improvised a roach clip with a garnet stickpin from the lapel of her blazer. “I like your boy-toy Crow, but I’m not sorry he’s away tonight,” she said, coughing a little. “I wanted to have you to myself. It makes me feel like I’m nineteen again. That, and this.” Another furtive puff.

  “I was thinking the same thing. Except the nights were so black on the Eastern Shore and they’re so bright here. Have you ever noticed the city looks faintly radioactive from here? It has this smudgy glow, from the anticrime streetlights and all the neon.”

  “What did we talk about back in college, all those nights we smoked and drank and talked?”

  “Our classes, our love lives, our futures. I was going to be a street-smart columnist and you were going to be the New York Times Tokyo correspondent. You’re still on track, at least. We also played Botticelli. Remember?”

  “You called it Botticelli. My family called it ‘Are You a Wily Austrian Diplomat?’ And you picked the most incredibly obscure people.

  “Jackie Mason is not obscure, Whitney.”

  Tess’s turn to inhale. It wasn’t very good pot. The mild buzz was giving her a mild headache right between the eyebrows. Ever the good hostess, she let her guest have the last toke. Whitney pulled hard on the stub of the joint, then tossed the remains off the roof, to the graveyard of vices in the alley below—broken bottles, limp condoms, Twinkie wrappers.

  “So you had drinks with Feeney last night,” she said suddenly. “Did he say anything of note?”

  “You know Feeney. Sometimes you can’t get a word out of him all night.”

  Whitney snorted. “The only thing you can’t get out of Feeney’s mouth is his foot.” She started to bring her fingers to her lips, then realized the joint was gone and refastened the stickpin to her lapel instead. “He told you about his story, didn’t he? That’s why you asked me about it today.”