Butchers Hill (12 page)

Jackie's story was at once
impressive and repellent to Tess. How could someone be that calculating
at eighteen? Yet the woman's confidence in herself had been
rewarded. Here she was, her life tricked out with the material
trappings of success at an age when many of her contemporaries were
still slacking. Tess knew now she had seized on the issue of
"Mary Browne's" age with such glee
because she couldn't bear to think that someone just a few
years older than herself, someone born without wealth or privilege,
could accomplish so much. But Susan-Jackie had tripped over her own age
only because that was the one part of her masquerade she
hadn't thought out. An uncharacteristic slip, most likely.

"So why did you come to me? Are
you worried your daughter is going to show up on your doorstep? Do you
want to launch some kind of preemptive strike, make sure it's
impossible to find you? It can probably be done, but I specialize in
finding people, not hiding them."

"I don't want to hide.
I'm not ashamed of my past." Well, well, well.
Jackie had a temper, one she couldn't quite control. Hands
shaking, she took several long, steady sips from her water glass. When
she spoke, she was in control again, her voice steady and smooth.

"As I told you, my mother died
within the past year. We had gotten to the point where we had some
contact, but I was little more than a human bank machine to her.
She'd call to complain about some crisis in her life,
I'd send her some money. Once she was gone, I waited to feel
bereft. Instead, I felt haunted, as if someone were following me. I
found myself blowing off appointments, driving around Pigtown and
looking at the young girls there. I kept thinking,
Are
you out there? What became of you? Do you hate me
?"

"Your daughter was put up for
adoption, probably with some nice middle-class family. She'd
have to be an awful ingrate to hate the woman who made it possible for
her to have a better life."

"I wish I knew that.
She'll be thirteen this summer. I wasn't much older
when I met her father. Five years later, she was inside me."

Tess wondered what it was like to be
pregnant. She knew only what it was like to fear it, to worry
obsessively over failed contraception, to count the days in the
calendar over and over again, calculating ovulation and wondering if
maybe, just maybe, the pharmaceutical companies of America had let her
down. Nothing was 100 percent effective. Then again, what if you
couldn't have a baby? What if you spent all this time and
money and worry preventing something that would never happen? Could you
get a rebate?

"Do you want to be part of your
daughter's life again? Because that's not something
I'd be party to. I believe your parents are the people who
rear you."

"No, absolutely not. I just want
to see her, know she's okay. What could I be to her, anyway?
I'm a little young to be a mother figure, too old to be a
friend. I'll put my name in the state registry and when she
turns eighteen, she can find me there if she wants. For now, if I could
just see her, even from a distance, and know that it all paid off,
I'd be happy. Blood tells. I made so many mistakes when I was
younger. I just want to know she isn't making the same
ones."

Another lost child, Tess thought, and this
one doesn't even have a name. She couldn't imagine
where to start.

"Will you do it? Will you help me
find my baby?" Jackie had dropped her detached, professional
tone. Her voice was urgent, almost pleading.

"I don't know. What
you're asking is pretty hard. Truthfully, I
wouldn't even know where to begin."

"There's this Adoption
Rights group that meets in Columbia every other week. We could go there
first, learn some strategies."

"It's not just the
‘how' part that bothers me. After all, I could give
it my best shot, earn some money without worrying I was bleeding you
dry. I'm still not sure I want to work for you."

"Why?"

"Because you tricked me, you
jerked me around. Okay, you got burned by some other detectives. But
there were other ways to figure out I'm legitimate. I
can't shake the feeling you liked that whole elaborate game,
that you really got off on your Mary Browne disguise. I feel like a
little mouse, batted back and forth in some cat's paws.
Besides, you're bright, you must have connections if you
worked for politicians. You can probably find out as much as I can,
even more."

"It's true,
I'm successful—more successful than you, for a
fact."

"Why, thanks for pointing that
out," Tess said dryly.

"But when it comes to dealing with
people who have power over me—especially
white
people who have power over me—I lose it. I either get all
bashful and tongue-tied, or I start screaming lawsuit. Neither approach
is particularly effective."

Tess had a strange sense of
déjà
vu
, as if she knew exactly what Jackie meant.
The principal at Gwynn's Falls Middle School, taciturn
Keisha, Beale's uncooperative neighbors, even the Nelsons.
They had thwarted her, been less helpful than they might have been, and
all because of
her
race.

"Okay, quid pro quo,"
she said.

"What do you mean?"

"I'll take your case,
but I want more than money from you. I want your help, talking to
people who won't talk to
me
,
on another case I'm working."

Jackie's look was contemptuous.
"You mean poor black folks, don't you? What, do you
think there's some secret language I speak that will get me
by? That some poor black kid is going to talk to a sister, who happens
to be driving a Lexus and wearing the kind of clothes I wear?"

"Maybe. I am willing to bet you
can convince a middle school principal that you're a
particular kid's next of kin, which is something I
can't pull off. That's a start. We'll see
how it goes from there."

Their entrees arrived and Jackie attacked
her
pompano en croute
with
a ferocity Tess found admirable, even familiar. She was bent over her
meal with the same intensity. But Jackie could concentrate on her food
without losing her train of thought.

"So, if I help you on this other
case, do I get a discount?"

"Nope," Tess said
cheerfully. "The wages of sin, for not being straight with me
from the beginning. Consider it a fraud surcharge."

Finally, Jackie smiled, but it was a cool
smile, even a little supercilious. "Good for you.
You've already learned one of the cardinal rules for the
small businesswoman. Don't give it away—unless you
have to."

"Did you ever give it
away?"

"No. But then I was good from the
very beginning."

T
hey
drove into the city together, although it would mean a long trip back
for Tess, who had left her car at Jackie's apartment. But she
needed to brief Jackie on the names of the children she was looking
for, the block where they had once lived, the questions to ask. She
also liked the unaccustomed luxury of Jackie's car, the
pampered feeling of being chauffered, although she didn't
mention this to Jackie.

It was the hottest part of the day and Tess
took a perverse pleasure in sending Jackie off to work Fairmount Avenue
in her high-heeled shoes. "I'd go with you, but it
would defeat the purpose," she said. "If they see
you with me, you'll automatically be less
trustworthy."

"I guess so," Jackie
said. "What will you do while I'm out?"
Apparently Jackie had not achieved her early success by tolerating,
much less welcoming, down time.

"I'll think about how
we're going to handle our next fact-finding
mission," Tess assured her.

She then spent the next hour trying to teach
Esskay to fetch, tossing pencils into the corner opposite her sofa. By
the time Jackie returned, favoring her left foot as if she might have
the beginnings of a blister, Tess had enough pencils stacked in the
corner to make a small bonfire.

"I'd forgotten how hot
those rowhouses get in the summer," Jackie said, taking the
can of Coke Tess offered and holding it against her neck and brow
before she opened it. "And how
nasty
some of them are. People who can't believe the way folks live
in Third World countries ought to try a tour of East Baltimore some
time."

"Did you find any leads on the
kids?"

"In fact, I did. Not much, but
something." Jackie smiled, pleased with herself. Why not? She
had succeeded so quickly where Tess had failed. That's why
Tess had recruited her, yet it still needled, this sense of barriers,
of places she could not go, people to whom she could never really
speak. She turned on her computer and opened up Luther
Beale's file. There wasn't much there, just the
notes from their initial interview, and a record of
yesterday's futile interviews with Keisha,
et
al
.

"Tell me what you've
got."

Jackie recited her findings as she might
have outlined a fund-raising plan for one of her clients: quickly,
efficiently, with few wasted words. "Two of the kids were
dead-ends. Salamon Hawkings and Eldon Kane. The neighbors
don't recall seeing them around here since the shooting, no
one knows what happened to them. But the twins, Treasure and Destiny,
never really got away. Officially, they're in the care of an
aunt somewhere over on Biddle Street, but the neighbors see them around
here all the time. The supposition is that they're actually
living here."

"Their own place? Who rents an
apartment to two teenagers?"

Jackie looked at Tess as if she were too
stupid to be believed. It was the same smug expression she had worn
when Tess showed up on her doorstep in Columbia that morning.

"They don't pay
rent," Jackie said. "They're squatting in
a vacant house. Their aunt shows up from time to time and makes them go
home. Sooner or later, they're hanging out here again.
Treasure has a taste for crack. He's on the
circuit."

"The circuit?"

Another look. "He gets his meals
at the soup kitchens in the area. Beans and Bread; Bea
Gaddy's on the days that Beans and Bread is closed. Destiny
doesn't go for that, though. She's a car
girl."

"What's that?"
Maybe if she admitted her ignorance of things, Jackie
wouldn't be so quick to condescend.

"Sort of an apprentice prostitute.
A guy comes along, offers her a ride. It's understood that
he's asking for sex and she'll get something out of
it, but she's not really a pro. Destiny has a taste for
Versace, the neighborhood ladies tell me, and fancy leather
pocketbooks. But she's got some come-and-go steady boyfriend
who provides her with the big-ticket items. The car dates are more for
walking-around money. And drugs for Treasure, I'd
bet."

"Versace? How does her boyfriend
afford Versace?"

"Why, I believe he's
what we call a pharmaceutical entrepreneur," Jackie said,
raising one eyebrow. "No one seemed to know his name, but
they wouldn't tell me even if they did. I don't
care who you are, people around here aren't going to go
naming names when it comes to the local dealers. People die for
that."

"How did you get the neighbors to
open up as much as they did?" Maybe Tess could learn
something from Jackie.

"I didn't bullshit them.
I told them I was trying to find the kids who used to live in the group
home, the one where the little boy was shot all those years back.
It's funny—people get shot and killed around here
every week, but everyone remembers the night Donnie died.
I'll tell you this much, they really hate the old man who
shot him."

"Luther Beale? What do they say
about him?"

"They say he's stuck up,
which is about the worst thing you can be in these parts. He thinks
he's better than they are, and he makes no secret of it.
People will forgive you for a lot, but not for that. Whatever you do,
you can't let people know you want more from life than they
do."

It occurred to Tess that Jackie might be
speaking from firsthand experience.

The school day was almost over by the time
they headed out to Gwynn's Falls Middle School. Again, Tess
coached Jackie along the way. Telling the truth was an okay system, as
far as it went, but it had limitations. The tough-cookie principal
wasn't going to divulge the whereabouts of her former
student, Salamon Hawkings, just because Jackie was a straight shooter.

"I'm to say
I'm from Arena Stage?" Jackie asked, puzzled.
"I thought I was going to be a relative. If I'm
going to make up a story, why not say I'm from the School for
the Arts? That's much more plausible."

"Uh-uh. Another school, even one
in a different jurisdiction, could track down a student in a single
phone call. So you're from Arena Stage, and you're
putting on an original work next season, with this really talky part
for a teenage boy, reams of dialogue to memorize, and you've
heard this Salamon Hawkings is a gifted public speaker."

"What's the name of the
play?"

"The name? Jesus, I
don't know, Jackie. Improvise."

"I prefer to plan things in
advance," she said primly.

I bet you do
.
"Okay, the play is called—" Tess glanced
to the side of the road. They were near the lot where an old amusement
park once stood and, just beyond it, the place where her mother had
bought produce from a truck farmer in the summers. He had graduated
from his truck to a small shop, then added seafood. The store had
burned to the ground in a mysterious fire a few years ago, and the
family had simply disappeared. Now a small cinderblock church stood in
its place. But Tess still remembered the hand-lettered sign that had
hung over the fish in their icy beds.