Baltimore Blues Read online

  Tess spent the weekend at the bookstore, trying to make up the hours she owed Kitty. Too soon it was Tuesday, time to take up her now-familiar post outside Eden’s Landing. Then Wednesday, Thursday. The days passed uneventfully. Ava walked to work, she ventured out for lunch, she went back inside, she went home. On Wednesday she met Rock for dinner, and Tess took the night off. Later, when she checked in with Rock by telephone, he said Ava still seemed edgy and evasive, ending the evening early with complaints of work and a splitting headache. Tess, hearing the ache in his voice, wondered if she should tell him about the shoplifting. But then it would be over and Tess, much to her surprise, wasn’t ready to quit.

  On Friday morning she sat on her bench outside Ava’s office and watched the cops rousting panhandlers. Beggars were not new in downtown Baltimore—Tess remembered a legless man at Lexington Market who had chased her down the street on his little wheeled cart when she was eight—but now war had been declared. The city had enlisted “safety guides” who patrolled the streets, making them safer and friendlier for those who asked only for directions. The street people called these guides the Purple People, a reference to their snazzy caps. Maybe city officials thought they would lose their new football team if the NFL found out Baltimore had panhandlers. Then again, it would have been a great name for the team: the Baltimore Beggars. No—the Baltimore Hollow Men. If only T. S. Eliot had died in Charm City instead of Poe, it could have been the Hollow Men instead of the Ravens.

  Most of the panhandlers went peaceably, including Tess’s seatmate, who had been prying a dollar a day from her with the same routine. But she didn’t ask the cops or the Purple People if she scared them, she just kept moving. “I know how not to get arrested,” she muttered to Tess as she hurried off, surprisingly lucid. “I’ll be up at McDonald’s.” Stunned, Tess watched her go. She thinks I’m one of them.

  A few feet away a gentleman in a shiny blue suit refused to yield his ground. Tall and skinny, he held himself with perfect posture, repeating: “I drove my car over here from the Eastern Shore, but the battery died. Now I just need four dollars for the bus ride back.”

  Tess knew the line well; it was a local favorite. Most people tried it and moved on. But this man would not give up, no matter how the cops cajoled or threatened. She was so entranced by this tableau that she almost missed Ava heading out the front door. She was heading toward the Gallery, briefcase in hand. But instead of one of her perfect suits—Tess so far had seen her in gray, black, red, and a stunning shade of olive green—she wore a plum-colored dress, a curious garment with a high neck and long sleeves. Curious, because it should have been demure and conservative, given its length and shape. Yet the dress exuded sex. What did Kitty call the style? A breakaway dress, made to be torn from the body with one deft movement.

  In the Gallery Ava started her stealing workout with a quick warm-up. Tess watched her admire the same silver necklace at Amaryllis, caress a cashmere sweater at Ann Taylor, then smirk and shudder at goods she would never deign to pay for, although she might consider stealing them. She loved to touch things. The tactile contact seem to bring more pleasure than the actual moment of capture, when another small, bright item dropped into her ravenous briefcase. Tess found herself eager to see what she would steal today, but after a quick trip inside Coach, where she stroked the forest green twin to her own lustrous black briefcase, Ava checked her watch and abruptly left the store, making a beeline for the lobby of the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, just as she had on the first day.

  Over the past week Tess had become quite adept at trailing Ava. She hung back at least twenty feet, her eyes focused on some spot two or three feet in front of her, her clothes dark and unmemorable. She no longer worried about her hair, although she wore dark glasses as an extra precaution. Primarily she counted on Ava to walk slowly and never notice people who were of no use to her.

  Today, however, Ava moved more quickly than usual, getting too far ahead. As Tess tried to close the distance without attracting attention, she smacked into someone, quite hard, and found herself staring into a man’s familiar face. Down into it, actually, for the man was short, not even up to her collarbone. Irritated and embarrassed, Tess looked at a face to which she could not put a name, despite a panicky canvassing of her past. College? Newspaper days? A bad date?

  Although short, the man had a huge head perched on a scrawny neck. His head was so big, and his neck so thin, that his head seemed to bob like a toy dog in the back of someone’s car. Tess gave him her warmest smile and heartiest “Hello!”, hoping his reply would provide a hint to his identity, or at least the time needed to fish for his name. But Big Head stared at her as if they had never met.

  They hadn’t. As he turned away Tess realized she had been gazing into one of Baltimore’s most ubiquitous faces, a visage seen so frequently everyone believed they knew its owner: Michael Abramowitz. His close-set eyes had stared out of newspaper pages and television screens for close to fifteen years. His ignominy began as a public defender, a loudmouth who bugged people by having far too much success with the accused killers and rapists he represented. Abramowitz liked to win, and although he had grown up as a poor relation—a distant cousin to a local fortune based on plastic slipcovers—he always insisted the wretched salary didn’t bother him.

  Yet when he quit a few years ago, he had gone after money with the same single-mindedness that had carried him through the public defender’s office. He became the drunk driver’s friend, the king of the slip and fall, the star of wonderfully campy commercials who noted, in front of a roaring fireplace, “Two wrongs don’t make a right. You may have done something wrong, but you can get the right lawyer.”

  Over the years the commercials grew increasingly bizarre, adding to his fame. He appeared with a Dalmatian and, for a brief time, a fake family. When a newspaper article revealed he had never married or fathered children, he switched to playing the banjo, a line of chorus girls behind him, all singing to the tune of “Sweet Sue.” “Ev’ry star above/Knows when push comes to shove/You’ll sue/Yes, you/Stars up in the sky/Tell you he’s your guy/Michael who?/Will sue.” His lumpy face and thick Baltimore accent made him a celebrity of sorts. The business made him if not rich, then obscenely comfortable.

  Yet just when people began to speculate Abramowitz could parlay his visibility into a successful run for office, he again confounded public expectations by joining O’Neal, O’Connor and O’Neill, that sedate stable of blue bloods who shunned publicity, except for the occasional “grip and grin” photo at a symphony party or a pre-Preakness event. Abramowitz had told reporters, affecting a Garboesque accent and the true wording of her Grand Hotel speech: “I just want to be left alone.”

  Perhaps he told the truth. Today he scuttled away quickly enough when Tess feigned recognition. She shrugged and pushed on into the hotel lobby, looking for Ava.

  No luck. She checked the board of events to see if there was some conference she might be attending. It seemed doubtful, unless Ava had suddenly become a forensic pathologist, the only meeting listed. She called the front desk from a house phone, asking for Ava Hill’s room. No one by that name was registered, a man’s prissy voice told her firmly. She turned abruptly away from the house phone and collided a second time with Mr. Big Head, Michael Abramowitz.

  Again Tess had to stop herself from smiling as if he were an old friend. Frightening, the intimacy television created with strangers. This time Abramowitz gave her a long, hard look. Tess wondered if he thought she was a chronic litigant, hurling herself into well-dressed people in hopes of a lucrative settlement. He said nothing, however, just turned and walked toward the elevator. He was an absurdly small man, except for that giant head, and Tess thought he must get tired carrying it around. Not even Rock’s body could support such a gargantuan head.

  The thought of Rock set off a series of small explosions in her brain. Abramowitz, Ava’s boss. Ava. Hotel lobby. Abramowitz and Ava. Not in the lobby, but upstairs somewhere.
r />   “But he’s so ugly,” she said out loud, drawing a harsh look from a young woman sitting nearby, a baby in her lap. The baby, a little boy in a white lace gown and cap, was not, in fact, particularly good-looking. Tess turned away quickly so the woman could not see her face, red with mortification and laughter. When she had contained herself she walked back to the bank of phones near the entrance.

  She considered what she had seen. Ava and Abramowitz. It was tempting to jump to the conclusion that they were here together on some illicit business, but what proof did she really have? For all she knew they were meeting a client in one of the suites upstairs, some Sims-Kever executive who still traveled in style, even as he cried poverty to his victims.

  Pulling out the crumpled sheets Rock had given her a week ago, Tess dialed Ava’s office and asked for her secretary. A woman with an English accent came on the line. Interesting touch for a firm founded by three micks, Tess thought.

  “Miss Hill, please.”

  “She’s not available. May I take a message?”

  Tess began stammering, which was only partly an act.

  “Oh, wow, shit—I mean, sorry, but do you happen to know where she is? This is going to sound really spacey, but I’m this old friend of hers from, like, grade school, and we made these lunch plans and—would you believe—I forgot where I’m supposed to meet her. Could you check her calendar and see if there’s anything that might give me a clue?”

  The secretary sniffed disapprovingly, then shunted Tess into the vacuum of “hold.” She came back on the line a few seconds later.

  “Are you sure it was today? Her lunches are blocked out all month, from noon to two.”

  “I must have really screwed up. Does she have anything tomorrow? Does she have anything about meeting…Becky for lunch?”

  “No, nothing written down. Shall I have her call you?”

  “What? What? I can’t hear you. I must be in a bad cell.” Tess hung up the pay phone and picked up the house phone next to it.

  “Front desk.”

  “Hi, it’s me in the kitchen.” She figured the front desk attendant wouldn’t want to admit he didn’t recognize the voice of a fellow employee. “Hey, what room is Mr. Abramowitz in this week? I can’t read it on the room service slip and you know how he is if his food is cold. He always threatens to sue!”

  “He’s in 410. And you better get it up there fast. You know he expects the food to arrive no later than twelve-thirty. He doesn’t like to be interrupted.”

  Not enough, Tess thought. Not enough information with which to ruin your friend’s life. She took a deep breath and said: “So he can have dessert by one, right?” She barely recognized the coy, snide laugh she produced on cue.

  The front desk clerk snorted, then recovered. “Just get the food up to the room. They’re both here.”

  Chapter 6

  That night, Tess ran her hardest route.

  She ran along Boston Street and into Canton. Past the expensive condos thrown up along the waterfront when Canton had been touted as the next hot neighborhood. It had never quite happened, so only a few high rises squatted among the row houses, Gullivers in Lilliput. It would be sweet, Tess thought, if the residents awakened one day to find their expensive homes staked to the ground, swarming with those who now lived in their shadows.

  She increased her speed. Although the sun had gone down, it was still humid, and sweat poured off her. She had hoped a hard run would be cool and cleansing, but she felt sleazy and dirty, haunted by junk food and junk memories. The pizza slices and hot dogs of the past week oozed out of her pores, while her head was filled with unsettling images. She saw Ava pushing lingerie into her briefcase, saw the big head of Michael Abramowitz, floating on top of his tiny body like some unwieldy helium balloon, bouncing across the Renaissance lobby toward his assignation with Ava.

  She had been right in her instinctive dislike for Ava, but she found little pleasure in being right. How had she failed to anticipate this moment? For Kitty had seen it all too clearly. From the first Tess had hoped Ava was up to no good and relished the chance to prove it, thinking it would be a good and lucrative deed to break up Rock’s engagement. She had imagined what it would be like to trail Ava, and she’d come to enjoy doing it. She had killed long hours thinking about what she would do with the money Rock was paying her. But she had never imagined what it would be like to report back to Rock.

  The thought of Rock’s face made her run faster still.

  She couldn’t do it, not for any sum of money. But she didn’t want to give up the money. And she wanted Rock to know what she had discovered, just not the responsibility of telling him.

  There was only one way. Ava must confess, and Tess would have to trick her into it.

  Back in her apartment, showered and dusted with talcum powder, Tess dialed Ava’s number. A machine picked up. She started to hang up, then had a quick inspiration. She knew what could get Ava to pick up a telephone, assuming she was there and screening her messages.

  “Miss Hill?” she asked in the high, almost too-clear tones of a young college girl, the type of voice that goes higher still at every sentence’s end.

  “This is Denise at Nordstrom? I waited on you the last time you were in? Well, I wanted you to know we are having a very special sale on Donna Karan, a two-day preview sale for very special customers, and I just wanted to give you the details? We’re taking up to seventy-five percent off some of the fall suits?”

  Ava picked up. “Yes, I’m here. Do you have many things left in a size four?”

  Stunned by the success of her plan, Tess realized she hadn’t figured out what to say next. She fell back on the truth.

  “I’m not a Nordstrom sales girl. I’m a private investigator—a kind of one, anyway, and I’ve been following you. I think it would be in your best interest to meet with me.”

  Ava hung up. Tess called back and got the machine again, but she knew Ava was standing there, listening.

  “I have some information, Miss Hill,” she said, hoping her voice sounded cool and experienced. “Information about your…lunchtime activities. Information I plan to provide to my client if you don’t meet with me.”

  She could feel Ava waiting, considering, only blocks away. After a week of following her, Tess felt strangely close to her prey. She still didn’t like her, but she sensed something sad and fucked-up in her, which made her harder to hate. She wanted to hear Ava’s side of the story, even as she doubted she would believe it. But she did not tell her any of this, did not say anything more as she hurtled toward the beep and another disconnection.

  Ava picked up just before the tape on the machine ran out. “Sunday,” she said. “Eight P.M. I can’t meet until then.”

  “Fine. Meet me at The Point.”

  “The Point?”

  “It’s a bar, also known as Spike’s Place, out on Franklintown Road, near where I-70 dead-ends.”

  “I’m sure I can find it. I look forward to meeting you. I’ve never met a female dick before.” And she slammed the phone down again.

  Let her have this round, Tess decided. The next one is mine. She sat down at her computer and wrote two short plays, both for two characters. Tess and Rock, Tess and Ava. The only trick would be getting them to follow scripts they didn’t know existed.

  The next morning, an overcast Saturday, she grabbed Rock’s hand as they left Jimmy’s.

  “Take a walk with me,” she said. They had not talked about Ava at breakfast. They had been not talking about Ava for ten days now, which meant they had practically stopped talking. It was the only subject in the world.

  “Do you know something?” he asked.

  “Yes, but it’s hard to tell.”

  He swallowed hard, pale beneath his tan. Tess led him down the pier to a small bench overlooking the harbor.

  “I’ve been watching Ava off and on for almost a week now. I think I know what’s bugging her.”

  Rock’s eyes held hers, but he was incapable of sayin
g anything. He reminded Tess of an old dog, trusting a beloved master not to put him to sleep—unless the master absolutely had to.

  “She shoplifts. Little things, things she can’t possibly need. I saw her take underwear and camisoles, stuff that wasn’t even her size.”

  As she had expected Rock considered this good news. He sighed, the air escaping from his massive lungs as if he had been holding his breath for several days. It was bad, but it wasn’t as bad as he had feared. He could fix this. He could help her. He straightened up, ready to take action.

  “I bet there’s someone up at Phipps who knows about kleptomania,” he said, referring to Johns Hopkins’s psychiatric wing. Tess turned her face away so he wouldn’t see her smile. He was so predictable. Of course he had immediately jumped to the conclusion that Ava’s thefts were a sickness, and therefore curable. She had planned on such a reaction.

  “I’ve already done that. Dr. Hauer is the leading expert on this kind of disorder.” The lie stung a little, delivered so smoothly to a trusted friend, but the name was correct, taken from one of the media guides Johns Hopkins distributed to the newspaper every year.

  “I’ve heard of him. He has a great rep.”

  “Yes, he does. His advice may be difficult for you to follow, though. He says it’s important not to confront her about this. I told him what I had observed, and he said it’s his opinion she’s reaching a crisis point. If you’re patient, she’ll confide in you soon enough.”

  “But what if she gets arrested? It could ruin her career. She’d never be admitted to the bar.”

  Tess had anticipated this question, too. “I don’t think she will. Get caught, I mean. I saw her because I was already observing her, Rock. Clerks don’t watch her. She dresses well; she looks like a nice young professional woman. They’re too busy chasing around the kids playing hooky to watch someone like Ava. But if she is arrested Dr. Hauer said he’d be able to get the charges dropped. He does it all the time.”