Charm City (2 page)

"T
he
years, I saw the years," Spike muttered, his brown eyes
glazed and unfocused, incapable of seeing anything.
"Years."

"I know, Uncle Spike, I
know," Tess said, patting his hand. But she didn't
know. The years must be his life, fifty-some years in all, passing
before his eyes. The cliché was a good sign, she decided.
Surely, if death were near, one could be allowed a little originality.

"The years."

Spike's face was mottled and
crisscrossed with tiny cuts, the liver spots that gave him a slight
resemblance to a springer spaniel overwhelmed by vivid purple-red
bruises. Only his pointy bald head, rising above the fringe of brown
hair, was still white and unblemished.

"Years," he muttered.

"I found him?" said
Tommy, the dishwasher from Spike's bar, who framed almost
every thought as if it were a question. This wishy-washy tendency,
combined with his thick Baltimore accent and talent for malaprops, made
him virtually incomprehensible to anyone but Spike. "About
two hours ago? I came by to get ready for the Monday night crowd? I was
going to peel some hard-berled eggs because the new cook
didn't show up, being so lacks-a-daisy as he is?"

"A robbery?" Tess had
not meant this as a question, but Tommy's inflections were
contagious.

"Yeah, a robbery, but we
don't have much money on Mondays, not once pro football is
over? That's why they got their dandruff up? They beat him to
a pulp?"

Tommy was right: Uncle Spike looked like a
plum gone bad, or a skinned, mashed tomato. Who did this to an old man?
But Tess knew. Amateurs. Kids. Idiots, the kind of crooks who were
giving crime a bad name. They didn't know from hold-up
etiquette, which said you didn't kill a guy in a tavern
robbery, and you certainly didn't try to beat him to death.
You didn't rob taverns at all, in fact, for the owner usually
had a sawed-off shotgun under the bar, especially if he had a
flourishing side business as a bookie. Spike had the side business,
Spike had the shotgun. Why hadn't he been able to get to it
in time?

"Numbers," he cried
weakly, as if he, too, were thinking of his bets, which produced far
more income than the bar. And then he said nothing, eyes fluttering
closed.

They remained frozen in this
tableau—Tess holding Spike's hand, Tommy on the
other side of the bed, rocking nervously, arms wrapped around his
body—until a young doctor came in and asked them to leave.

Tommy, all ninety-five pounds of him,
insisted on walking Tess to her car for her protection. There were
frozen puddles in the lot and the promise Tess had sensed earlier in
the evening was gone. March, with its morning rains and wintry nights,
suddenly seemed as bitter as baking chocolate.

"He has something for
you?" Tommy began, tentative even by his standards.
"Back at the bar? Before the paramedics took him, he said to
make sure to get it to you?"

"He doesn't expect me to
run the bar, does he?"

Tommy cackled and cackled, bent over double
at the thought of Tess running The Point, Spike's bar.
Between sputtering laughs, he even managed a whole string of
declarative sentences.

"No, not the bar. But
it's
at
the bar.
C'mon now, and I'll give it to you. But follow me,
okay? I got a special shortcut?"

They left St. Agnes Hospital and drove
through Southwest Baltimore to her uncle's place, using back
streets. Highways were seldom the fastest way to get anywhere in
Baltimore, at least not east to west, but Tommy's shortcut
seemed to be an unusually circuitous route, approaching The Point
through the winding roads of Leakin Park.

The Point was dark, shuttered for the night,
shuttered forever, perhaps. Tommy took Tess in the back way, through
the kitchen—the kitchen where she had eaten her first french
fry, her first onion ring, her first mozzarella stick, even her first
stuffed jalapeño. Those had been the base of
Spike's food pyramid, and who was Tess to disagree?

Tommy unlocked a storeroom and stood on the
threshold, peering into the darkness.

"There," he said
finally, pointing to what appeared to be a black bag.

"What?" Tess said.
Alarmingly, the bag began to move, rising on four sticks and walking
toward her, into the light. "What the hell is it?"

It was a dog, a bony, ugly dog with dull
black fur and raw patches on its hindquarters. The brown eyes were as
vague and glazed as Spike's, the shoulders hunched in an
uncanny impersonation of Richard M. Nixon.

"It's a greyhound? Spike
just got it this weekend?"

"But it's
black
."

"Most greyhounds ain't
gray, and you call 'em blue when they are." Tommy
spoke confidently, sure of himself on this particular subject.
"Some are kinda beige, and some are spotted, and some are
black. They say gray ones don't run so good, but
that's just a super-supposition."

"Was Spike going to race this
dog?"

"No, this dog is
retired
.
And she wasn't ever much good? Spike got her from some
guy?"

"What guy?"

"The guy he knows from the place
he goes sometimes?"

The dog looked up at Tess and her droopy
tail moved ever so slightly, as if she had some vague memory of wagging
it a long time ago. Tess looked back. She was not a dog person. She was
not a cat person, fish person, or horse person. On bad days, she was
barely a people person. She ate meat, wore leather, and secretly
coveted her mother's old mink. Fur was warm and
Baltimore's winters seemed to be getting worse, global
warming be damned.

"Why can't you take her,
Tommy?"

"Can't keep a dog in the
bar, health department will close us down? Name's S.
K.?"

"What do the initials stand for,
S. K.?"

"No,
Esskay
.
Like the sausage?"

"As in ‘Taste the
difference ka-wality makes?' and Cal Ripken, Jr., touting the
role of bacon in his athletic endeavors?"

"Yeah, it's her favorite
food, but she only gets it for special treats. Rest of the time, she
eats this special kibble Spike got her."

Five minutes later, Tess was in her
twelve-year-old Toyota, the kibble was in the trunk, and Esskay was
standing stiff-legged in the backseat, sliding back and forth with
every turn and whimpering at every pothole, which came roughly every
fifteen feet. Baltimore's streets, never in the best repair,
had suffered as much this winter as anyone. It didn't help
that the car behind her, which had its brights on, seemed intent on
tailgating her all the way to Fells Point. She ended up running a red
light on Edmondson Avenue, just to get away from that inconsiderate
driver.

"Sit! Sit down!" Tess
hissed at the dog, but Esskay just stared back at her forlornly and
resumed skidding along the vinyl covered backseat, hitting her head on
one window, then slipping back and smacking her rump on the other. But
she never barked, Tess noticed, never really made any sound at all,
except that almost imperceptible whine from the back of her throat.

The sun had just come up, weak and feeble,
when Tess opened her eyes the next morning. Strange, she usually
didn't wake this early in the winter, her one season to sleep
in. Spring through fall, when she rowed, she was up with the birds.
"And now you're down with Crow," her
friend Whitney had joked frequently, a little too frequently, over the
past few months. It wasn't clear if Whitney resented the
presence of a boyfriend in Tess's life, or simply found the
boyfriend in question somewhat ridiculous. A little of both, Tess
suspected.

But it was not Crow's long, warm
body next to her this morning. She rolled toward the middle of the
too-soft bed and found herself staring into the faintly cross-eyed gaze
of Esskay, the dog's untrimmed toenails digging into her arm,
her hind legs twitching spasmodically.

Tess propped herself up on one elbow and
glared, and the dog shrank back, averting her mournful gaze.

"Don't take this
personally, but you are the ugliest dog I've ever
seen."

The snout was reminiscent of a
dinosaur's, the long-jawed velociraptor, to be precise. The
legs were skinny, the hair thin and mussed in parts. There were red
sores on the rump and tail, and the watery eyes could not hold
one's gaze. The total effect was not unlike Tess at
thirteen—body too long, legs too thin, skin red and splotchy,
manner socially inept. But the dog's teeth were bad, too,
judging from the fishy, hot breath Esskay pushed out in quick, panting
gasps.

Muttering to herself, Tess pulled on sweats
and hiking boots to take the dog for a quick walk. The dog jumped up at
the sight of her makeshift leash, a long, heavy piece of metal that
Spike had probably been using to padlock his parking lot gate. But once
at the top of the stairs, Esskay balked, refusing to start down. Last
night the greyhound had declined to go up the stairs to
Tess's apartment, so she had carried her up two flights of
stairs, assuming the dog was too weak to climb. Now it appeared the
greyhound was opposed to staircases on general principle.

"C'mon, you silly
bitch," Tess said, grabbing the dog's collar, but
Esskay wouldn't budge, no matter how hard she tugged. She
crouched behind and tried to nudge her down, but the dog resisted, her
scrawny limbs surprisingly strong.

"Move, dammit! I'm not
going to ferry you up and down these steps every day."

Tess's words had no effect on the
dog, but they did bring her aunt out onto the second-floor landing.
Kitty was normally the kind of landlady one wanted on the premises,
with few rules and a high tolerance for noise and rowdy companions. But
she couldn't abide anything unpleasant looking, and Esskay
was clearly in trouble on that score.

"How's Spike?"
she asked, wrapping a teal-colored chenille robe tightly around her.
Her pale face was flushed, her red curls rumpled.
"I'm sorry I was out when you got in last night,
but I had to go to that meeting for local business owners.
We're still fighting the city over those megabars. And what
is
that
? The
world's largest rat?"

"It's a gigantic pain in
my ass, that's what it is, courtesy of Spike."

A short, muscular man appeared behind Kitty,
dressed in a plaid robe Tess had seen on many men in the two years she
had lived above her aunt. She knew this one only by sight—a
bartender at a new place on Thames, one of the so-called megabars that
had the Fells Point neighborhood in an uproar. But Kitty had always
been remarkably open-minded, capable of opposing a business while still
feeling kindly toward its employees.

"That's one of those
racing greyhounds," the bartender diagnosed smugly.
"How long you had him?"

Funny, how some men
project their own gender on everything, as if all living creatures must
be male until proven otherwise
.

"I've had
her
about twelve hours, give or take."

"Well, that's your
trouble, then. An ex-racer like this has never seen stairs, so you
gotta teach 'em. One foot, other foot. One foot, other foot.
My cousin had one once. You help 'em up and down until they
get it. They don't know about mirrors, either."

"All women should be so
lucky," Kitty murmured. "This is Steve, by the way.
Steve, this is my niece, Tess."

"Niece?"

Some women might have quickly told him that
Tess's father was years older, which he was. Tess's
aunt was the afterthought in a family of four boys, not even fifteen
years older than the twenty-nine-year-old Tess. But confident Kitty
merely smiled and nodded.

Tess squatted in front of Esskay and coaxed
the dog's forelegs down one step. The dog was amazingly
malleable, allowing her to pick up each foot, then set it down. But she
still wouldn't move forward on her own. One-two, forelegs
down, three-four, hind legs. Repeat. In this fashion, it took Tess only
a few minutes to get the dog to the landing, where she paused to catch
her breath. She was in good shape, but apparently nothing in her
various workout routines had developed the necessary muscles for this
greyhound walk-and-hobble. And the crouching position was hell on her
back and knees.

"What else don't they
know how to do?" Tess called back to Steve the bartender, as
she and Esskay started down their second flight.

"Well, they're kennel
trained, but not housebroken. You gotta crate 'em at first,
if you don't want accidents. Also, don't yell at
her if she loses control. They're real, real
sensitive."

"Aren't we
all?"

Tess was worn out by the time they reached
the first floor, but the dog was suddenly ecstatic, wiggling her snout
and pulling her lips back over her front teeth in a serviceable James
Cagney impression. Tess took her on a tour of Fells Point's
vacant lots, which Esskay found olfactorily fascinating. Tess dimly
recalled the city had an ordinance about cleaning up after dogs, but
she figured dog waste was the least of the indignities visited on these
sites, scoured by chemicals and toxins over the last five decades.

Intriguing aromas were drifting out of
Kitty's first-floor kitchen by the time they returned home.
Tess lurked in the hallway, fiddling with Esskay's leash,
hoping to be asked in, if only to forestall the long climb back to her
apartment. Kitty, like all Monaghans, assumed Spike came from the
Weinstein side of the family, but she had always had a soft spot for
him. She'd want to know more about his condition. Sure
enough, generous Kitty cracked open the door and beckoned them in.

Kitty's kitchen was an odd room
for someone who needed heels to top five feet. Everything was
oversized, so Kitty seemed doll-like by comparison. Tess had long ago
decided the effect was not incidental, as Kitty's latest beau
usually ended up preparing all the food. The beau also tended to be at
least fifteen years younger than forty-something Kitty, a clever
redhead who had avoided the sun while other women of her generation
were basting themselves with baby oil.