The Sugar House Page 9

  “Pizza would be perfect. Maybe I’ll even be virtuous and get one of their low-fat pizzas, the kind they make with soy cheese, or whatever it’s called.”

  “You start eating shit like that, and I’ll disown you as a friend.” Whitney’s face was uncharacteristically grave. “You shouldn’t joke about our old bad habits. Do you know how lucky we are that we’re relatively normal, that we didn’t do lasting damage to ourselves?”

  “Relatively lucky, relatively normal, relatively happy, and driven mad by our relatives.”

  Like a dog with a bone, Tess worried the little bit she had, growling over it, turning it around in her mouth, trying to make it new. Jane Doe had said she worked at a place with a name like Domino’s. Tess had found three such places, but the girl wasn’t connected to any of them. Still, it was all she had. That, and Whitney’s insight, which told Tess more about herself than it did about the dead girl. How could she have missed the eroded back teeth? One couldn’t say she was in denial, exactly, more a state of amnesia. Had she forgotten how sick she had been? Was that a sign of health?

  She was driving out Frederick Road, near her parents’ house, to the address given in the liquor board file for Lawrence Purdy, owner of Domenick’s. True, the bartender had said Purdy was an absentee owner, sitting at home and collecting checks, but he might know something about his own operation.

  He lived modestly, this Lawrence Purdy, in a plain brick rowhouse on West Gate, near Tess’s former middle school. The house was neat, but the porch steps creaked ominously beneath her feet and the trim needed painting.

  A small, white-haired woman answered the door. That is, she opened the door, the chain still on, and peered at Tess through the locked storm door.

  “Yes?”

  “Is Lawrence Purdy here, ma’am?”

  “I am Mrs. Lawrence Purdy, yes.”

  Distinction noted. “Is your husband home, ma’am?”

  “My husband has been dead for almost a year.” She said this proudly, as some other women might announce their husbands’ lodge affiliations, or military service.

  To Tess, whose family was intertwined with bureaucracies at every level of government, it was not surprising that a bar license could be out of date. “So you now own the bar on Hollins Street, in your husband’s place?”

  “Mr. Purdy never owned a bar. He didn’t even take spirits.”

  They had conducted this entire conversation through the storm door. And, although the December day was bright and sunny, the wind was kicking up, blowing right through Tess’s all-weather coat. “Do you think we could continue this conversation inside, ma’am?” She had her billfold at the ready, and she flipped it open to her ID, anticipating Mrs. Purdy’s next question. “I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for a young woman who I think might have some connection to the bar. Your husband’s name was on the license as the owner.”

  Mrs. Lawrence Purdy shut the main door—didn’t slam it, just shut it. At first, Tess thought their conversation must be over, but then she heard a scrabbling sound on the other side of the door and realized that the woman was fumbling at the chain, her hands slowed and stiffened by age. At last, the door opened, and Tess watched as Mrs. Purdy worked the latch on the storm door.

  “It was not like Mr. Purdy to have secrets from me,” the woman said at last, as she led Tess into the dim living room. The house was dark, even for a rowhouse that was not an end-of-group. It was dark even for an older woman’s house, with heavy draperies over pull-down shades. A slight dent showed where Mrs. Purdy had been sitting in an easy chair when Tess had knocked, but not what had she been doing. There was no book or newspaper nearby, no bag of knitting or sewing kit. Tess passed her hand over the old-fashioned television set. Cold to the touch.

  Mrs. Purdy misinterpreted the gesture. “I don’t see as well as I used to,” she said. “Dust builds up.”

  She resumed her spot in the dent, while Tess sat carefully on the edge of an old-fashioned chair with a needlepoint seat. It looked fragile, barely equal to the task of supporting a real human’s weight.

  “It’s possible,” Tess said, “that the bar belonged to another Lawrence Purdy. Or that your husband owned it at one point, then sold it before he died.”

  “Was there money?”

  “Money?”

  “From the sale. If there was a sale, wouldn’t there be money?”

  “I was just…hypothesizing. I don’t know what’s true. I only know his name was listed on a license.”

  “Oh.” The story no longer seemed of much interest to the woman. She was nicely dressed, Tess noticed, for sitting quietly in her own home, doing nothing. She had on a knit pant-suit, a style which Baltimore women of a certain generation still favored. And why not? The old-fashioned polyester was durable, washable, and the colors stayed bright. Very bright, in the case of Mrs. Lawrence Purdy, tropical orange, with a striped jersey beneath the boxy jacket. The fact is, someone could buy this outfit at one of the city’s retro stores and, with the addition of the right shoes, look incredibly stylish. Not Tess, because she wasn’t built to wear clothes that required irony. But someone thin, someone like Whitney, could pull it off. The thought of Whitney running around in bright orange double knit made Tess’s lips twitch.

  “Something funny?” Mrs. Purdy asked.

  “No. I admit I’m puzzled, though. You say your husband died a year ago.”

  “Of cancer.” This, too, was said with pride, as if it were a singular achievement. “Before he went on disability, he worked for the state.”

  “In what capacity?”

  The question confused Mrs. Purdy. “I don’t know if he had a capacity,” she said. “He just had a job.”

  “And, to your knowledge, he never owned a bar on Hollins?”

  Mrs. Purdy shook her head. “He was sick a long time before he died. Longer than the doctors thought. I took care of him here at home, me and a nursing service that our health insurance paid for. It was hard.”

  Mrs. Purdy had a classic Baltimore accent, a slippery sound of such distinction that it had defeated some of the world’s finest actors. “Hard” was “hahrd” in her prim mouth, while “home” was “hoooooohme.” Tess tried not to smile.

  “Is this his signature?” She handed Mrs. Purdy a copy of the license application.

  “Yeah, but who’s this?” Her stubby finger pointed at another name on the paperwork. Arnold Vasso.

  “Just his lawyer.”

  “Not our lawyer. Our lawyer is Sonny Cohen. Mr. Purdy always said you had to have a Jew for a lawyer.”

  Theresa Esther Weinstein Monaghan could not let that go by. “What about for your doctor and accountant?”

  “Oh, well, with these medical plans today, who gets to pick your own doctor? Anyway, I don’t know this guy. Never heard of him.”

  But Tess had, she realized. The name, Arnold Vasso, had slid past her because the lawyer hadn’t seemed important. Such documents always had lawyers’ signatures, but they were just hired guns. Tunnel vision again. But this lawyer was better known as one of the state’s top lobbyists. It made no sense for him to be involved in such a low-rent transaction. Arnold Vasso was so out and out sleazy he had achieved a kind of purity: He did everything for a payoff. Not money necessarily, he got that from the clients who paid him $400 an hour to represent them in Annapolis, where he was one of the top earners. Still, Arnold Vasso never scratched someone’s back without getting his own scratched twice.

  “Did your husband ever mention Vasso?”

  “I told you, I never heard of him. But I guess no one ever tells anyone everything.”

  “Let’s hope not,” Tess said absently. In her mind, she was already en route to Annapolis, where Arnold Vasso could be found any time the General Assembly was in session. Even a closed committee meeting, convened for no reason other than to railroad one of its own, would draw Vasso.

  After all, vultures don’t discriminate when it comes to carrion.

  chapter 9 />
  CANNIBALISM WAS CONSIDERED A PRIVATE AFFAIR IN the state capitol, so the joint committee on ethics was allowed to meet behind closed doors. Reporters, with few other legislative stories to chase this time of year, lined the hall outside the hearing room, waiting for breaks in the action so they could try to gauge the progress of the hearings. Tess took her place next to them along the wall, wondering if Vasso had come and gone already. She could check out his office, in one of the pricey, refurbished town houses near State Circle, but everyone knew that Vasso was never in his office. A good lobbyist never was. The reporters, most of them strangers to her, looked at her curiously, trying to figure out why a civilian would be camping here. She recognized only one, Tom Stuckey, the slight Associated Press reporter who had been in Annapolis longer than any of the elected officials. Well into his fourth decade in the job, he was the closest thing the State House had to an institutional memory, yet he remained remarkably sane. But she couldn’t tell the Beacon-Light reporter from the Washington Tribune reporter, a sad state of affairs indeed. Tall, rangy men in their thirties, they both wore navy sports jackets, khaki pants, white shirts, and moderately interesting ties. On the other side of the hall, the television reporters were similarly indistinguishable, whether male or female—glossy of hair, vacant of eye.

  “Hertel’s only problem,” one of the newspaper reporters was saying, “is that he’s a white guy. They kicked out Larry Young, so they have to expel a white guy to make it all nice and even. Especially since Young was acquitted of the criminal charges.”

  “They already did that,” the other print reporter objected. “Gerry Curran, remember? They were already even-steven. This isn’t about affirmative action, this is about Dahlgren wanting to be a glory hog, trying to build up his name recognition for the congressional run.”

  “He’s not going to run for the first,” the other scoffed. “He likes sure things too much.”

  The two continued to argue, but it was a languid, no-stakes debate, its only purpose to pass the time. Tess smiled, remembering when a State House job had been her fervent ambition, back in her reporter days. Her bosses at the Star had worried her family was too connected to state politics. “It’s not that you’d be too nice. You’d go the other way, to prove you weren’t cutting anyone any slack,” the state editor had told her. “Besides, you’re young. You have all the time in the world.” The Star folded less than a year later, making the whole discussion moot.

  The truth was, she wouldn’t have been much good, although not for the reasons the editor had cited. Political coverage required schmoozing, a skill Tess lacked. Few females could do it. The senators and delegates feared, quite rightly, that women didn’t play by the rules, that they wouldn’t protect them from their own verbal slips. Once, Whitney had been at a hearing on proposed legislation intended to ensure financial support for battered women. A senator from the upper shore had asked, in his drawling country-boy accent: “Under this bill, could a boy go out on a Saturday night, pick up a gal, have sex with her, pop her in the eye, and then have to pay her support and give up his house? Doesn’t seem fair, does it?”

  The male reporters covering the story had let the comment go, but Whitney had written an editorial about it. The resulting fall-out had forced the chastened senator to work with the advocates to write a better bill, so it should have been a win-win scenario. But Whitney later told Tess that the senator was, on one level, right: The bill didn’t distinguish between violence in ongoing relationships and one-night stands gone bad. His question had been insensitive, but his eye for the law unerring. Whitney had won a little skirmish, only to lose an important ally.

  The double doors of the hearing room opened and the cluster of reporters perked up. The only person to emerge, however, was Adam Moss, the pretty-boy aide to Senator Dahlgren. The television reporters didn’t appear to know who he was—after all, he wasn’t in the face book of senators and delegates. But the print reporters trailed him down the hall, cajoling him in soft voices. Tess saw no reason not to tag along. It was a public building, she was the public.

  “You’ll have to ask the senator,” Moss was saying, his lovely mouth curved in a slight yet superior smile. “I’m not at liberty to speak for the record. The senator will tell you when he thinks the committee will vote.”

  “Then what?”

  “You remember the drill, how it worked with Senator Young. Although I think Senator Hertel, if recommended for expulsion, will see the wisdom in resigning, rather than forcing the General Assembly to kick him out.”

  “You’re saying Hertel has agreed to resign?” Tess admired the reporters’ technique. They kept their pads in their back pockets, as if this were still a casual conversation, but the tenor of the conversation had changed. The game was afoot.

  “There’s the senator,” Moss said, pointing back to the double doors, through which a steady stream of people now poured. The television reporters had clustered around Dahlgren, lobbying frantically for the live shots they needed to do at noon. “Ask him, once the television reporters are through. Or ask Hertel.”

  A short, round man scurried by them, his head down. He looked pale and utterly confused, like a prize hog who had just been taken on a tour of the abattoir.

  The print reporters loped down the hallway after him, leaving Tess and Moss alone.

  “You’re not a reporter,” he said.

  “I was.”

  He stared her down and she was the one who finally broke the gaze, if only because it was unnerving, gazing into that perfect face. Adam Moss’s confidence was unseemly in one so young. Looking at him, Tess found herself thinking inexplicably of the Vermeer exhibit that had come to Washington a few years back. Adam Moss had the same golden light in his face.

  “Do you find the legislative process so interesting, then?” he asked Tess.

  “No,” she responded truthfully. “I came here looking for Arnold Vasso.”

  “Are private detectives going to hire him to protect their interest next session? To ensure that people’s private lives remain as open as possible, so they can do their dirty little jobs?”

  She did not recall her job had been mentioned when they met at the Sour Beef dinner.

  “Vasso’s name cropped up in a file connected to my case. It’s a long shot, but he may be able to help me. If I can find him.”

  Moss checked his watch. “Try Piccolo Roma, over on Main Street. Vasso has a standing reservation. And he’s going to be eating alone today, because his lunch date is standing him up.”

  “Would that be you, or Senator Dahlgren?”

  “You ask too many questions. You should learn how to take what is given to you, and leave gracefully.”

  “Sorry, I don’t have your boarding school manners.”

  “But you could acquire them,” Adam Moss said. “Anyone could, with just a little effort.”

  Arnold Vasso’s regular table was in the window at Piccolo Roma, off to the side—visually prominent, but out of eavesdropping range.

  “Mr. Vasso?” she asked, as if she wasn’t sure it was him. The fact of a question in her voice would stop him, she figured. Arnie Vasso wanted it both ways, wanted to work behind the scenes and still be well-known as a fixer. He had an enviable kind of fame, she supposed. Unknown to the public at large, but a star within this tiny galaxy.

  “Guilty,” he said, his smile automatic, his hand shooting out and shaking hers, even though she had not offered it.

  “I’m a private investigator in Baltimore. I’m trying to identify a girl who might be connected to a bar on Hollins Street—”

  “I never touched her!” He threw his hands up in the air in mock innocence, still smiling.

  “I guess that would be funny,” Tess said, “if she weren’t actually dead.”

  Vasso had the decency to look embarrassed. “I’m sorry, when you said identify, it didn’t occur to me…I didn’t think you meant…”

  Tess waited, letting him twist and stammer a little longer.
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  “The bartender at Domenick’s said he didn’t recognize her from the sketch I have. I went to see the owner, only to find out he’s been dead for almost a year. The widow never knew he had a bar. And, although you were his lawyer at the license hearing, she never heard of you either.”

  Vasso looked around. A reflexive gesture for him. His eyes were probably always sliding from side to side, making sure no one more important had come into the immediate vicinity. Tess saw a bald man bent over a piece of paper several tables away, doodling on the back of a receipt with an old-fashioned fountain pen, but the restaurant was otherwise empty.

  “Let me buy you lunch.”

  “This really won’t take very long,” Tess said.

  “Better yet. Then we can talk about more interesting things. Look, I don’t like to eat alone. Since the rules changed, and I’m not allowed to treat our public officials unless they declare it on their ethics forms, it’s harder for me to find someone to keep me company. Please, have a seat.” He gave her a shrewd look. “It doesn’t hurt anyone to be seen with Arnold Vasso.”

  They were definitely being seen, and not just by the lunchtime crowd on Main Street, a mix of tourists and government workers. Tess had the feeling that the waiters were speculating on Vasso’s business with a woman who clearly was not one of his monied clients. Given the mix of people that Annapolis attracted, it was an informal town, so her jeans and turtleneck sweater were not out of place here. Still, she felt odd, sitting across from Vasso in his expensive blue suit. Expensive, but tight.

  “That guy over there?” Vasso asked out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Yes,” Tess said, glancing back at the bald man, who continued to doodle with small, tightly controlled strokes, as if he were working on an elaborate design.

  “Meyer Hammersmith. You know him?”

  “Know of him.”

  “I can’t believe he’s working for Kenny Dahlgren. Hammersmith’s a classic limousine liberal, while Dahlgren’s the kind of Democrat who’d be at home in the far right wing of the Republican party. Politics makes—”