Charm City (4 page)

"But there
is
more. Much more. Dark secrets. A rancorous first marriage. Bad habits,
the kind professional sports can't abide. How much would you
pay for this story? $39.95? $49.95? $59.95? Wait, don't
answer—what if we throw in a set of ginsu knives?"
He began to laugh a little hysterically, then caught himself.
"Trust me, Tess. It's solid. I wish my house had
been built on a foundation half as good."

"Then why won't the
paper print it?"

"All sorts of reasons. They say we
don't have it nailed. They say it's racist to cover
an NBA deal so aggressively when we let football, which appeals to a
white fan base, slip into town without a whimper. They say we used too
many unidentified sources, but some of the people who talked to me
still work for Wink, Tess. They have damn good reasons to want to be
anonymous. One guy in particular. The top editors told us this
afternoon we had to turn over the names of all our sources before they
ran the story. They knew I couldn't do that, I'd
see my story spiked first. Which was the point. They want an excuse to
kill the story because they don't trust us."

"Us?"

"Me and Rosie. You met her.
She's good, for a rookie. You ought to see the stuff she dug
up on Wink's first marriage."

"It's probably her they
don't trust, then. Because she's new, and
young."

Feeney shook his head. "New and
young is better than old and old at the
Beacon-Light
these days. Her. Me. Both of us. I don't know and I
don't care anymore. I'm tired, Tess. I'm
so tired, and it's such a good story, and all I want to do is
go to sleep right here on the table, wake up, and find out
they're going to print it after all."

"Feeney, I'm sure
they'll do right by you, and you'll have your big
scoop," she said, pushing his water glass closer to him,
hoping to distract him.
He seems to be settling
down
, she thought.
Maybe
the evening can be salvaged
.

Feeney lurched to his feet, martini glass
still firmly in hand. "This isn't about me, or my
big scoop!" he shouted. The other people in the bar looked
up, startled and apprehensive.

"Okay, it
is
about me," he hissed, bending down so only Tess could hear
him. He had drunk so much that gin seemed to be coming through his
pores. "It's about my career, or what's
left of it. But it's also about all that important stuff
newspapers are suppose to be about. You know—truth, justice,
the first amendment, the fourth estate. We're not suppose to
be cheerleaders, going ‘Rah-rah-rah, give us the
ball.' We're the goddamn watchdogs, the only ones
who care if the city is getting a good deal, or being used by some
scumbag."

He swayed a little as he spoke, and his
words were soft, virtually without consonants, but he wasn't
as drunk as she would have been on five martinis. His melancholy had a
stronger grip on him than the liquor.

"Feeney, what do you want
me
to do about it?" Tess wasn't the best audience for
a speech on the glories of journalism.

"Why, drink to the end of my
career!" he roared, toasting the room with his now empty
glass. The crowd, mostly regulars, raised their glasses back in fond
relief. This was the Feeney they knew, acting up for an audience.

"What are you so happy
about?" a white-haired man called out from the bar.

"Am I happy? Am I free? The
question is absurd! For it is a far, far better thing I do now than I
have ever done before!"

Feeney smashed his ratty cap onto his head
and swept out of the bar, the tasseled ends of his plaid muffler flying
behind him, martini glass still in hand. Tess was left behind with a
half-finished martini, Feeney's tab, and no company for the
tortellini she had planned to order. Feeney knew how to make an exit,
credit him that. Only the
Tale of Two Cities
allusion was the slightest bit off—too recognizable for
Feeney's taste. He preferred more obscure lines, like his
penultimate one,
Am I happy? Am I free
?
It was tauntingly familiar, but she couldn't place the source.

It wasn't even eight
o'clock and she was now alone, as well as ravenously hungry.
And Tess loathed eating alone in restaurants. A character flaw, she
knew, and a reproach to feminists everywhere, but there it was. She
finished her drink, took care of Feeney's staggering bill,
along with her own, then left. She could stop at the Eddie's
on Eager, grab a frozen dinner for herself, maybe a stupid magazine to
read in the bathtub. Damn Feeney. Her big night out had been reduced to
no company, one gulped drink, and a frozen low-fat lasagna.

But when she reached her apartment thirty
minutes later, the fragrant smells in the hallway came from her own
kitchen, not Kitty's. Her nose identified lamb, hot bread,
baking apples. She took the steps two at a time, leaping as wildly as
Esskay had that morning.

Crow met her at the door, wrapping his lanky
frame around her before she could take off her coat or put down the
grocery bag.

"I didn't expect to see
you here," she muttered into his scratchy wool sweater,
hoping he couldn't see how pleased she was. "I left
a message on your machine that I was going out with Feeney
tonight."

"I closed for Kitty tonight, so I
figured I'd let myself in and make some dinner. Worst case
scenario, you'd come home from your drinking date all giggly
and fun, I'd tuck you in, then eat lamb stew and apple pie
for lunch tomorrow."

"Trust me, Feeney was neither
giggly nor fun tonight."

Crow wasn't really listening. He
was kissing her brow and her ears, patting her all over, always a
little surprised to see her again, even in her own apartment.

"Your face is cold,
Tesser," he said, using the childhood nickname she had given
herself, a blending of her two names, Theresa Esther. A name reserved
for family and very old friends. Crow was neither of those things, not
in five months' time. He was twenty-three to her twenty-nine,
a happy, careless twenty-three, with glossy black hair almost as long
as hers, although usually with a green or red stripe, and a bounce in
his walk. It still surprised her that she had to look up to see his
thin, angular face, as if their age difference meant he must be
shorter, too.

"What do you think of the new
addition?" she asked, pointing with her chin toward Esskay,
who was staring at Tess as if trying to place her.

"She's cool. Kitty and I
took her out for a walk earlier, then made her some rice and steamed
vegetables. She's a very old soul, our new dog."

Tess frowned. "Our" was
a word to be avoided at all costs. Their rules of
engagement—more precisely, their rules of
disengagement—said no shared books or CDs, dutch treat for
all meals out, and no joint purchases of any kind.

But all she said was: "I
don't know why you made it rice and vegetables. I have a
twenty-pound bag of kibble."

"I like to cook for my
women," he said, pulling out her chair at the mission table
that did double duty as a dining room table and Tess's desk.
"Hey, did I tell you Poe White Trash has a gig
Saturday?"

"Where?"

"The Floating Opera."

"I guess this means I
can't request any Rodgers and Hart," she said,
trying not to make a face. The Floating Opera was an ongoing rave with
no fixed location, hop-scotching across the city—or, at
least, its more fashionably decadent neighborhoods—according
to a pattern understood only by its denizens. As a result, the F.O. had
none of the amenities of a real club, such as alcohol, food, or
bathrooms, and all the drawbacks: cigarette smoke, too-loud music,
too-young crowd.

"Rodgers and Hart," Crow
groaned. "We don't go in for that retro
crap."

"Elvis Costello sang ‘My
Funny Valentine.'"

"Tesser, Elvis Costello is old
enough to be my father."

"But not old enough to be mine,
right?"

He smiled, disarming her. "Was
Feeney's mood contagious? Or are you itching for a fight
tonight?"

"A little of both," she
confessed, and, embarrassed by her crankiness, scooped up her stew
meekly and quietly.

With dinner done, she put the bowls in the
sink, only to have Crow snatch them back for Esskay, who made quick
work of their leftovers. Crow patted the dog and thumped her sides. For
a skinny dog, she had a lot of muscle tone: Crow's
affectionate smacks sounded solid, drumlike.

"Is stew good for her, after all
that rice and vegetables?" Tess asked, remembering
Steve's dire predictions from the morning.

"Kitty had this book, in the
‘Women and Hobbies' section, on
greyhounds," Crow said, rubbing Esskay's belly. The
dog had a glazed look in her eyes, as if she might faint from pleasure.
"It said they usually need to gain weight after they leave
the track, so I don't think a little stew will hurt, although
the woman who wrote the book recommended making your own dog food, from
rice and vegetables. She also said you're suppose to put
ointment on these raw patches, like for diaper rash."

The dog shoved her nose under
Crow's armpit and began rooting around as if there might be
truffles hidden in the crevices of his fraying thrift shop sweater.
Crow laughed and gave the dog another round of smacks, then sang, in a
wordless falsetto, "
Rou-rou-rou
."

Esskay answered back, in a higher key, the
vowel sounds slightly more compact, "
Ru-ru-ru
."

"I'm not really a
Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy fan," Tess said, turning
on the stereo. Sarah Vaughan's voice filled the room,
drowning out the Crow-and-canine duet. "And I'm
beginning to feel like three's a crowd. Would you two like to
be alone?"

Crow walked over to her and gave
Tess's backside the same affectionate thump he had given the
greyhound. Tess was solid, too, but meatier, so her tone was deeper,
mellower.

"I'd put ointment on
your raw patches if you had any," he whispered. "Do
you have anything that burns, Tesser?"

Through her clothes, his hands sought out
the places where bones could be felt—the ribs below the heavy
breasts, the pelvis bones sharp in her round hips, the knobby elbows.
He pulled her blouse out of her long, straight skirt and stuck one hand
under the waistband, rubbing her belly as he had rubbed
Esskay's. With the other hand, he traced the lines of her
jawbone and her mouth, then moved to her throat and the base of her
neck, where he freed the strands of her long braid.

"Do you like this,
Tess?" She could only nod.

Sarah was running through the list of the
things she didn't need for romance: Spanish castles, haunting
dances, full moons, blue lagoons. The greyhound moaned to herself,
softly now, almost in tune. "
Ru-ru-ru
."
Tess's breath caught and she reached for Crow's
face. Sex would seem almost less intimate than this, and therefore much
safer.

"Tesser?" Crow held her
wrists, forcing her to meet his gaze.

She waited, apprehensive about what he might
say next. Afraid he would start lobbying to move in again. Afraid he
would say he loved her. Afraid he would say he didn't.

Sarah sang that her heart stood still.
Tess's was beating faster and faster.

"Let's go to
bed," Crow said.

T
he
Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration, like most bureaucracies, ran
inefficiently. Unless, of course, one was
trying
to stay away from work. Then it was suddenly a model of speed and
productivity. On Wednesday morning, Tess, desperate for five minutes to
herself, didn't even have a chance to take her
Beacon-Light
out of the plastic yellow wrapper before a cheerful clerk brought out
the batch of driving records Tyner had requested. Oh well, there was no
law against lingering here on a bright blue bench, drinking scorched
take-out coffee and watching the frustrated drivers and driving
aspirants. They, unlike her, were in a hurry and therefore must be
thwarted at every turn. It was MVA policy.

"I'll pay you ten bucks
if you've got a number lower than mine," a harried
businessman whispered to Tess. She knew the type, someone who was Much
Too Important, who rushed through every chore as if he were the
Secretary of State and needed to jump ahead of you at the dry cleaners,
or cut you off in traffic, because he was en route to board Air Force
One for some summit in the Middle East.

"I don't have a number
at all," she said complacently, smiling at the way he edged
away from her. Yes, only a real sicko would hang out at the MVA on her
recognizance, as Tommy would say. But Tess had been on the run all
morning, since the alarm failed to go off, putting her thirty minutes
behind. She had lost another thirty minutes when Esskay had decided to
throw up on the living room rug. Tyner, to punish her for her
tardiness, had sent Tess on his version of a scavenger hunt, with a
list of documents that required visiting five government offices in two
jurisdictions. Now it was almost eleven, her first chance to sip a cup
of coffee instead of dumping it on her lap in the car. It was also the
only time she had to call the hospital for an update on Spike.

"Still stable," said a
cheerful nurse, whose uncle presumably was not lying in a coma.

"
Still
stable. Isn't that a redundancy?" Tess snapped,
banging the pay phone down. She gulped her coffee, hot and strong
enough to provide a stinging pain behind the breastbone, then skimmed
the front page. Nothing of interest above the fold. Her eyes worked
down to the bottom of the page, the part usually reserved for features
and boring-but-necessary stories. Tidal wetlands, budget votes, welfare
reform. "Duty fucks," as one of her old editors had
put it so elegantly.

But Feeney's byline was anchoring
this particular piece of front-page real estate. And there was nothing
boring here, except for the headline.

R
ECORDS
, S
OURCES
I
NDICATE
W
YNKOWSKI
H
AS
P
ROBLEMS
by Rosita Ruiz and
Kevin V. Feeney,
Beacon Light
staff writers

"‘Checkered
past'?" Tess said out loud, prompting the vibrating
businessman to take a seat even farther away. "Oh, Feeney,
tell me you didn't write that line."

Otherwise, it was Feeney's story,
exactly as he had described it to her. How could he not have known it
was to run today? Was he that far gone? No, even drunk, he'd
have a sense if his story was going into the paper. Something or
someone had changed the editors' minds late last night. Maybe
one of the TV stations was close to breaking a piece of it, improbable
as that seemed.

• Wynkowski is an inveterate gambler, according to
  friends and associates, who has dropped large sums on sporting events.
  

• He had a tempestuous first marriage, in which
  police were frequently summoned on complaints of domestic violence,
  according to sources close to the couple at the time. He pays his first
  wife generous alimony because the damage inflicted by her years with
  him makes it impossible for her to hold a job.
  

• Wink's activities as a juvenile
  delinquent, which he has portrayed as harmless boyhood pranks, included
  a string of armed robberies while he was still in junior high.
  

"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.