Baltimore Blues (24 page)

Cecilia nodded. “At an accounting firm.”

“Which means she can do VOMA’s tax disclosures herself, saving a few more dollars—for herself. It’s sleazy as hell, but I think she stayed within the law. If you took it to the newspaper, someone might write about it. But if I were you I’d just tell the other members what you know. I’m sure, as a group, you can reach a consensus about what to do with Pru.”

Cecilia didn’t seem to be paying attention. She beat Kitty’s desk with her tiny fists, making the fax machine and phone jump alarmingly. “Dammit. Goddammit to hell.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. This is arcane stuff. Not many people know how it works.”

“You don’t understand. I wish Abramowitz were still
alive so I could ask him. He filed the charter, he may have known something. I went to see him—”

“You went to see Abramowitz? What did he say?”

“Not much. He was dead.”

In her astonishment Tess unwittingly did a very good imitation of Joey Dumbarton. “But you weren’t on the sheet. No one goes up without signing the sheet.”
Or bribing the guard
.

“Look, when I want answers I want them
now
. I tracked Abramowitz down at his office, and he said I could come see him, although ‘client privilege’ might keep him from telling me anything. The guard let me up in exchange for my phone number. Not a real one, of course. But when I got up there, Abramowitz was on the floor, with blood everywhere, so I left. When I got home I called 911, but they had already been notified. If the police hadn’t caught the guy the next day, I might have told someone what I saw. But they had him, so I figured it wasn’t important. And I didn’t want to explain to anyone why I was there. I never want to testify in court again. And I wanted to keep VOMA out of it. Even if Pru is a crook, it’s a private matter. I don’t want to hurt the group.”

Tess pinched the bridge of her nose. She had a feeling she was about to get a tension headache. “Do you remember the time you went up to his office? I mean, more or less.”

“Ten-twenty, ten twenty-five.”

Great, they had lost fifteen minutes. Rock said he had been outside by 10:10, according to the Bromo Seltzer tower. Frank Miles had called the guard at 10:35. That had given them twenty-five minutes. Cecilia’s visit meant someone else had to enter the office, kill Abramowitz, and leave in less than fifteen minutes. Maybe ten.

“You know I work for the…suspect. He’s a friend of mine.”

“I figured that out. Give him my thanks.”

She got up to leave, gathering the fax papers together.

“Are you going to confront Pru? Or tell the rest of the group what was going on?”

“I think I’ll give Pru a chance to explain herself first. She was a good friend to me once. She did run the group; maybe she deserved a little money for it. Besides, being greedy’s not the worst thing in the world. Not even close.”

As Cecilia strode through the store, Tess saw Crow’s eyes following her appreciatively. She sensed a new crush forming and immediately wished he were staring at her again. She hadn’t expected much from Crow, but she had expected his adoration, from a comfortable distance, to warm her a little while longer.

The bookstore’s door, as if bewitched by Cecilia’s overabundance of energy, slammed shut behind her with a heavy thud. Tess jumped at the unexpected noise, then turned to Crow.

“The sound you just heard,” she told him, “was the sound of Rock’s case going straight to hell.”

T
ess had been to the state prison just once, under unusual circumstances. Were there usual circumstances for a fourteen-year-old girl to visit the Maryland Penitentiary for Men? In Tess’s case, it all began when she decided to dance. Her determination was born of a desire not to be a dancer, merely to look like one: to be small, one of those tiny, curveless adolescents, all ribs, eyes, and pelvic bones. Tess realized most dancers began small and starved their bodies to keep them in perpetual preadolescence, but she thought she might be able to work backward.

After 12 weeks of classes, even though she still had a convex stomach, the teacher insisted Tess join her dance troupe, which performed throughout the community. Flattered, Tess jumped at the opportunity, assuming the instructor had glimpsed something not even Tess could see. She had—a pair of promising biceps. Tess was recruited to dance only one part, a Comet can in the instructor’s own modern-day version of
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
. “It’s a big part,” the instructor promised. This was literally true. The Comet costume, more than six feet at full extension, was made of heavy painted canvas, strung on three Hula Hoops, so Tess could collapse and expand throughout the twelve-minute dance. For long stretches of time she had to hold her arms straight over her head, elbows locked, to give the Comet can
its full shape. Only a strapping girl with a lot of upper body strength could have survived in that costume.

Their first performance was at the jail. The smaller girls, the real dancers, got to be 409 bottles and Brillo pads and Lemon Joy, pointing their painted Capezios and twirling lightly across the dingy linoleum. Tess rose and fell, rose and fell, creeping across the floor in bare feet, which were black afterward. Still, it was not the dirty floor, jealousy of the daintier girls, fear of the prison, or even the anonymity of her costume that convinced her to give up dancing after one performance. It was the sudden catcalls of the inmates, when she emerged from her Comet can, a lush Botticelli among the less sturdy dancers, the sweat on her leotard an obscene blueprint of the erogenous zones of her precocious body. The futility of her plan clear, fourteen-year-old Tess hung up her Comet can.

All this came back to her as she circled the complex of prisons and jails east of downtown, trying to find the right entrance. By the time she reached Super Max, home to the state’s most dangerous prisoners, she was sweating heavily.

“Death Row?” she asked the guard, as she had asked at two other entrances, only to be turned away wordlessly.

“Ain’t no Death Row in Maryland, miss. Some of the guys are here, some over at the state penitentiary. Who you here to see? What’s your name?”

He checked his clipboard and sent her to yet another door, where a state officially waited eagerly to escort her to Tucker Fauquier.

“The guard at the other gate told me there was no Death Row,” Tess said, perplexed.

“No, there isn’t. Not like in other states,” the official agreed. “The guys are scattered around. If they’re a danger to themselves or—more likely—in danger from the other inmates, they go to Super Max. Otherwise they’re here in A-block. Tucker used to be over in Super Max in the beginning. But he’s a model prisoner now. Besides, so few of the others remember why he’s here. In prison time it was a generation ago.”

The official—Garfield Lardner, according to the photo ID clipped to his polyester jacket—was a breathless, pink-cheeked little man with a shiny bald head on which Tess could almost see her reflection. He searched her purse, apologizing for the intrusion, and barely passed the metal detector wand over her, apologizing again as he did so. She was touched by his concern and solicitous attention—until she remembered it was meant for someone else, the granddaughter of a politically connected seafood king.

The concern for security seemed to end once they passed through the various checkpoints and a series of anterooms. Lardner led her to a room with a long conference table surrounded by leather chairs. No bulletproof glass, no phone—nothing she would have expected from the prison movies she had seen. Just an ordinary, if slightly shabby, meeting room.

“The parole board usually meets here,” Lardner said. “On the first and third Wednesdays. No one should disturb you today. But Tucker can’t see you for much more than forty-five minutes. He has a meeting.”

“A meeting? With someone else from outside?”

“Oh no, it’s the leadership counsel. Just an in-house thing. He’s the secretary. Let me go get Tucker.”

As he scurried out, Tess called to him: “Will the guard be in here with us? Or will you post him at the door?”

Lardner stopped, as if this had not occurred to him. “We don’t usually have a guard at all. Do you want someone, though? I’m sure I could arrange it.”

“No, no, that’s fine.”
At least no one will be around to eavesdrop on my “sociology project
.”

She sat in the chair at the head of the table, then decided this would seem faintly authoritarian. She moved to the far side, to a chair in the middle. Should she stand when he entered? Offer her hand? Engrossed in the etiquette of the moment, Tess did not realize it had already passed her by. Tucker Fauquier was in the doorway, waiting for her to acknowledge him.

He was a small man, clean shaven, his hair slicked back with water. Tess had carried in her mind a picture of a
younger man, the man in the photograph with Abramowitz. Even scrubbed and cleaned up for the trial, that man, with his longer hair and bad skin, had lived up to expectations of a serial killer-pervert. This man had the pale, blue-veined look of someone who had not seen the sun for a long time. Yet it wasn’t creepy or unhealthy looking. In fact his skin was lovely, almost creamy, an advertisement for sunscreen and broad-brimmed hats. He had to be almost forty now, yet looked younger. Involuntarily, Tess brushed a hand against her own sun-coarsened cheek.

He smiled, and she tried but failed to find anything especially chilling in his face. The canine teeth, while unusually sharp, giving him a feral look, were straight and white. A dozen years ago news accounts had made much of this smile, suggesting it had been the reason he could so easily entice his victims. It was a pleasant smile, Tess decided, but not hypnotic. You couldn’t charm a bird out of a tree with it, or a young boy into a car. In fact Tess didn’t think anyone would ever notice Tucker Fauquier, not under normal circumstances. Perhaps that had been the problem.

“Mr. Fauquier, I’m Tess Monaghan.”

“Yes, they told me you were coming. They said you’re working on a school project.” His voice was soft and whispery, which only magnified the slight lisp Fauquier was trying to downplay.

“There must have been some confusion, Mr. Fauquier. I’m not sure why they told you that.”
Aside from Uncle Donald’s gossip along the phone lines
. “I’m working for a lawyer who thinks you may know something about Michael Abramowitz. Could you answer some questions for me?”

“About his murder.” It wasn’t a question. He seemed amused—by her manners, or by her deceit, which he seemed to grasp instantly.

“Something that might shed light on his murder, actually. Although, if you’d like to confess to arranging the whole thing, it would make my job easier, I admit.”

Fauquier smiled again. “I think I’ve made enough con
fessions in my day. They’ll have to solve this one on their own.”

He was in the chair across from her, almost preternaturally poised, rocking slightly. He had drawn one foot under him, which seemed an odd, uncomfortable way to sit, but it also had the effect of making him look taller. Tess could tell he was enjoying himself, enjoying the attention.

“I thought there was something you wanted to talk about, Mr. Fauquier. Something you promised to tell Jonathan Ross. Only you reneged.”

She had surprised him. Fauquier leaned back in his chair, pressing the heels of his hands against the table, showing off his forearms. They were slender, but the veins stood out against them, bright blue bas-relief. A weight lifter, Tess judged, one who lifted for strength and tone, not bulk.

“Well, then Jonathan reneged, too, didn’t he? He told me our interviews were off-the-record. Then he turned around and told you what I said. That’s a lot worse, what he did.”

He reminded her of a little boy, rationalizing away a petty infraction by blaming his older brother for a larger one.

“Not exactly, Mr. Fauquier. Jonathan told me he had been meeting with someone condemned to die, someone ‘twisted,’ who got in touch with him after Abramowitz died. That gave me a one-in-thirteen chance to guess. Someone else, a woman who worked with Michael Abramowitz, said he complained about one of his clients, also a ‘twisted’ gentleman convicted of a capital crime. The odds fell to one in three. Both men called you a twisted fucker. You liked to call yourself a twisted fucker. Mr. Ross and Mr. Abramowitz are dead. Is it all a coincidence?”

“Stranger things have happened.” He grinned. “I happened, didn’t I?”

“Tell me the story you were going to tell Jonathan, the one you wanted to tell before
you
die. It’s no good if you’re dead, is it? You need the story to be told while you’re alive. You want something, attention or time. Maybe both. I can give you one of those things.”

“I don’t care that much about attention, and I’m not worrying too much about dying right now.”

“You should. Maryland is losing patience. People want to see you guys executed—especially you. Ever since Thanos went, there’s been a lot more momentum. You could be dead by next summer.”

“Fuckin’ Thanos,” Fauquier said, as if commenting on the weather or the Orioles’ season. “Fuckin’ crazy Greek motherfucker. Just because he wants to die doesn’t mean the rest of us have to.”

She tried a different tack. Perhaps if she mixed up her questions, flitting from subject to subject, she could surprise Fauquier into telling her something, anything.

“Why were you angry with Abramowitz?”

“Hey, he did a shitty job. I’m here, aren’t I? Then he dropped me, foisted me off on some other public defender to handle my appeals. He fucked me. I’m not sorry he’s dead, but I can’t kill anyone from here. Even if I could I don’t think Abramowitz would be my first choice.”

“Really? Who would you kill?”

“Ben.” The name of the boy who had watched him kill, the only one who had escaped. “I loved him, and he ratted me out.”

“Really? I thought you were going to kill him, too.”

“Oh, I was. But I was going to love him first. I loved all of my boys, but Ben was the handsomest. You know, Jonathan looked liked my Ben. I almost thought he was Ben, the first time I saw him. Of course, they tell me Ben’s in a mental hospital somewhere, but they won’t tell me where, which is a shame. I’d love to write him a letter sometime.”

Fauquier smiled, waiting for Tess’s reaction. She tried not to show how sickened she was, which she assumed was the point of his dreamy recitation. In a copse of trees almost within sight of Governor Ritchie Highway, Fauquier had strangled his last victim with a piece of red and white bunting from a roadside produce stand, then dismembered the body and buried it. Tess suddenly remembered a strange, stray detail from the trial. Ben had testified that Fauquier sang as
he shoveled. Cole Porter’s “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.”

She shook off the ugly memory. This was her only chance. Someone was going to figure out that Ed Monahan, seafood king, did not have a granddaughter. “There was a time when you thought Abramowitz was your best buddy. You told reporters you were lucky to have him. What changed?”

Fauquier, his arms still braced against the table, looked at his fingernails. He had a French manicure, Tess noticed, and there were no nicotine stains on his fingers.

“Suppose you did something?” he asked, his voice still dreamy. “Something wonderful. Your life’s work. And no one appreciated it, no one knew?”

She stifled a sigh. “Do you really think what you did was wonderful?”

“It was ingenious.” He leaned across the table toward her, eyes glowing happily. “A lot of people thought I started because of John Wayne Gacy, but I started way before that. I had killed my first one before anyone ever heard of that clown. I was careful. I was going to kill a boy in every county. Then I realized I needed verification, or how would anyone know? I was going to make Ben watch, then sign a little paper about what he had seen. Repeat, county after county, from the mountains to the sea. In the amber waves of grain. God bless America.”

“‘America the Beautiful’ is the one with the amber waves and the purple mountains’ majesties above the fruited plain. You’re mixing the two songs up.”

His eyes flickered. “What do you mean, ‘fruited’? You saying I’m queer?”

“Of course not.”

“’Cuz I’m not, you know. I was an artist. I shoulda been in Guinness, that’s what I was aiming for. You gotta have proof to get into Guinness.”

“I don’t think Guinness keeps tabs on serial killers. Besides, you topped out at, what, twelve or thirteen? You’re not even a contender any more.”

“Well, I certainly expected some movie producers to
come around, or someone who wanted to write a book. But no ever did. At least that’s what my Jew lawyer told me during the trial. I wonder now. You know, your lawyer controls who gets in to see you. My new lawyer, he doesn’t interfere. He doesn’t do shit. But Abramowitz could have kept all those people away from me, and I never would have known.”

A decade ago no one had wanted to read the details of his story. Of course, today there would have been two paperbacks on the shelves within weeks of Fauquier’s arrest, a television movie, and a horde of tabloid television reporters, ready to pay anyone for the tiniest piece of his story. Maybe Tucker Fauquier’s frustration was justified. He had been ahead of his time.

“What would you do with money anyway, assuming state laws allowed you to keep it? You’re never leaving here.” Even as she spoke she heard Jonathan’s voice, answering her question, prodding her. “
The money is leverage
.”

“How do you know what something’s worth if no one ever pays you for it? I told Abramowitz to find a buyer for my story. The best he could do was find someone to pay me $50,000 a year
not
to talk.”