Butchers Hill (3 page)

Tess shook her head, if only to indicate she
was listening.

"Sometimes I did contracting work
on the weekends, but I didn't have a state license for home
improvements. Oh yeah, they had themselves Public Enemy Number One,
right then and there, that they were sure of. Man goes out and paints
rooms and cleans gutters, doesn't have a state license. Lock
him up and throw away the key."

"I hear they've got a
warrant out for Bob Vila, too," Tess offered.

Beale swatted the air, as if
Tess's joke were a pesky gnat. "So now I have a
record. It's all I have. It's all anyone knows
about me. Used to be, people saw me on the street, they might say,
‘Oh there's Luther Beale, he lost his wife Annie to
the cancer.' Or, ‘Luther Beale, he works over at
the Procter and Gamble in Locust Point, he could afford a nicer house
in a nicer place, but he likes Fairmount Avenue, lived here all his
life.' You know what they say about me now?"

She waited a beat. "No, I guess I
don't."

Tess thought she saw tears in the corners of
Beale's eyes. "They say,
‘That's Luther Beale. He'd kill you as
soon as look at you. He killed a little boy one time, just for throwing
rocks at some cars.'"

Well, you did
.
But there was no percentage in antagonizing a prospective client with
the truth. Tess couldn't see any percentage in this
conversation at all. Had Beale confused her with a street-corner
psychiatrist? Or did he assume, as so many men did, that a
woman's primary function on earth was to listen to a man?
Maybe she could make some extra money that way, just listening to men
speak of their troubles. Forget phone sex. How about 1-900-UBOREME, or
a web page, www.tellyourtroubles.com.

"Mr. Beale, is there anything I
can help you with today?"

"Retribution."

The word, pronounced with great care in
Luther Beale's deep, growly voice, seemed to hang and shimmer
in the air. Tess envisioned it in black plastic letters on the marquee
outside one of those hellfire churches on the Eastern Shore, the little
cinderblock buildings that stood in the middle of vast cornfields.
Today's
sermon: Retribution. Don't forget Guild Ladies annual
scrapple breakfast
.

"Retribution," he
repeated. "A beautiful word, don't you
think?"

She thought not. "Vengeance is an
ugly business. You may have a legitimate grudge against the system, but
if that's what you're after, Mr. Beale, you better
find someone else to help you with it."

"You're an educated
woman, Miss Monaghan? A college graduate?"

"Yes, Washington College, over in
Chestertown."

"I would hope such a fine school
might have taught you the meaning of such a common word. I read a lot
in prison—the Bible, history. But I also read the dictionary,
which is one of the best books we have. No lies in the dictionary, just
words, beautiful words, waiting for you to make something of them. The
heart of retribution is tribute. From the Latin, to pay back. It can
mean to reward as well as to punish."

Beale was enjoying his little vocabulary
lesson. Tess wasn't. Several replies of varying degrees of
heat and wit occurred to her. But her aunt and her former employer had
repeatedly impressed upon her that running one's own business
meant eating several healthy doses of crap every day.

"Okay, so to whom do you wish to
make tribute?"

Beale twisted his hat, kneading the brim
with fingers as plump and long as the Esskay Ballpark Franks that had
given the greyhound her name.
Hot dog fingers and
ham hands
, Tess thought, then wondered why she
had pork products on the brain. Apparently her usual morning bagels
weren't going to hold her until lunch today.

"As I told you, I worked at the
Procter and Gamble on Locust Point. It was a good place to
work—decent pay, good benefits. The company shut it down
while I was…gone."

Prison, you were in
prison. For killing a little boy
.

"That was hard on folks, but the
stock went up, up, up. That was my retirement fund and I
couldn't touch it for almost five years, so it went up even
more. I'm a rich man by my standards, richer for not working
than I ever would have been working. I couldn't spend all
this money if I tried. And I've got no wife, no kids, no
family at all, no one to leave it to."

Tess nodded, although she still
wasn't sure what he was getting at.

"Now there was a television show,
before your time, ‘The Millionaire.' A guy named
Michael Anthony used to show up, tell folks they were going to get some
money. My wife and I always liked that show. I got to
thinking—maybe I could have my own Michael Anthony, someone
who could find the children, then help them out. Not with
millions—I'm not doing that well—but with
a thousand here or there."

"The children?" He had
lost her completely.

"The ones who were there that
night. The ones who saw what…happened."

Tess tried to remember the news stories
about the Butcher of Butchers Hill. There had been much about his
victim—Donnie Moore, it was coming back to her in bits and
pieces. The media had worked hard to find something of interest to say
about an eleven-year-old who wasn't particularly nice or
bright, yet didn't deserve to be shot in the back for an act
of vandalism. The best they could come up with was that Donnie was a
work in progress. The other children, the witnesses, had been virtually
anonymous figures by law and custom. As foster children, their names
were confidential and the local media kept them that way during the
trial. The court artists hadn't even sketched the children on
the stand, if memory served.

"Why would you do this? Those kids
taunted and tormented you."

"And one of them was killed.
That's not God's justice. I may be right with the
courts now, but I'm not right with myself, and I'm
not right with God. I can't do anything for the boy who died,
except pray for both of us, but I might be able to help the others.
Scholarships, if they want to go to college. A car to get to a
part-time job. Help at home. I don't know. Doesn't
everybody need money?"

He had her there. Boy, did he have her there.

"So who are these kids? Where are
they?"

"Well, there was the chubby one.
And the twins, I remember their names. Truman, that was the boy, and
the girl was Destiny, I think. Then another boy, a skinny one who did
most of the talking."

"You don't have full
names?" She tried not to sigh audibly.

"No'm. They were foster
kids, lived with the Nelsons, a nice young couple that took in lots of
kids. They meant well, but they couldn't handle those kids,
couldn't even keep 'em in clean clothes. The
Nelsons moved away after the shooting, and the kids all went to new
homes. But they'd be eighteen now, out on their own anyway,
right?"

"If they were at least thirteen at
the time, they would be. But if they're still minors and in
foster care, they're going to be hard to find, even
with
names. Donnie was only eleven, there's no guarantee the
others were much older. We can't even expect them to have
drivers' licenses. City kids—" She had
started to say "poor black kids," but caught
herself. "City kids often don't, you
know."

"Oh." Beale thought for
a moment. "I think the chubby one was named Earl. Or
Errol."

"Errol?"

"Maybe Elmer. An E name with an L
in it somewhere, I'm pretty sure of that. Does that
help?"

Tess forced another would-be sigh back into
her throat. "Look, Mr. Beale, I have to tell you the odds I
can find these kids are pretty slim and, while it won't be
expensive, it will cost money, probably more than you ever dreamed.
You'll pay not only my hourly rate, but any expenses I have.
Mileage. Fees for computer searches."

"I can pay," he insisted.

"Before I can begin working on
your case officially, you have to visit an attorney named Tyner Gray
and ask for a referral to a private detective." She opened
her desk and pulled out one of Tyner's cards.
"He'll draw up a contract for my services. That
guarantees our relationship is privileged, which may not seem important
to you, but it's extremely important to me."

"It means you don't have
to talk to people about me, right?"

"Yes."
Maybe
.
Even Tyner couldn't guarantee that the cops
wouldn't challenge her on this some day. The trick was to
stay away from the kind of matters that interested cops, which she had
every intention of doing. "Tyner will charge you his hourly
fee for your visit. It may seem like a lot for not much work, but
there's no getting around it if you want me to take your
case."

"I told you, money isn't
a problem."

"In my experience, money is always
a problem eventually. You have to understand, this isn't a
fee-based result. I look, you pay. Finding people is easier today than
it's ever been. But not when you don't have their
names. You'd be surprised how many kids are named Destiny in
Baltimore alone."

"Destiny doesn't matter
so much. She's a girl."

Healthy doses of crap,
healthy doses of crap
, Tess chanted to herself.
"And why don't girls matter?"

Beale wasn't so self-absorbed that
he couldn't sense her irritation. "I
didn't mean—it's just that I'm
a man, and I'm worried about the young black men I see. The
girls sometimes find a way out on their own. It's harder for
the boys. It's hard to be a black man, but it's
even harder to get to be a black man, if you know what I
mean."

Tess knew, much in the same way she knew
certain facts about Bosnia, Singapore, and the Gaza strip. Parts of
Baltimore were foreign countries to her, places she couldn't
reach even with a passport. That was just the way it was, the way it
had always been, the way it was always going to be.

"Okay, I'll try to find
the boys
and
the girl,
once I figure out who they are. Let's say a miracle happens
and I located them all. Then what? Do you want me to arrange a
meeting?"

"I wouldn't mind meeting
them, but I guess they're not much interested in seeing me
again. No, you just find 'em and figure out what they need,
and what it might cost. I'll write you a check, then
you'll write them a check. I have to be anonymous in this. I
don't want to risk them turning down the money, out of some
strange sort of pride."

Tess jotted these instructions on her desk
calendar, although she doubted there was much chance Beale's
philanthropy would be rejected. That kind of virtuous pride was the
stuff children's stories were made of, not real life.

"If you give any one of them more
than ten thousand dollars, you can't be anonymous with the
IRS. There's a gift tax, you know. You might want to consider
setting up a foundation or nonprofit of some sort. Tyner can walk you
through the process. It might be advantageous, tax-wise."

"I'm not interested in
saving on my taxes. I am interested in—"

"Retribution, I know. From the
Latin. To pay back. A reward as well as a punishment."

Beale stood and looked at her. From the look
of his furrowed brow, he was trying to decide if she was mocking him or
simply demonstrating what careful attention she had paid.

"You're a smart girl,
Miss Monaghan, aren't you?"

She decided to let the
"girl" pass. This time. "I'd
like to think I'm reasonably intelligent, yes."

"But you're not yet
wise. Do you know your Bible? ‘Wisdom is the principal thing;
therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get
understanding.' Proverbs, Chapter 4, Verse 7."

The broad, sunny smile on Tess's
face could only be described as a
non
-shit-eating
grin.

"Before you leave, you should know
the getting of wisdom in this case requires a sizable
retainer."

B
y
the time Beale left, Tyner's card clutched in hand, Tess had
thirty minutes before her next appointment. She decided to take Esskay
for a quick walk, find a snack to tide her over to lunch, explore a
little more of her new neighborhood. She grabbed the leash from its peg
by the front door and Esskay was instantly alert, rolling off the sofa
in one fluid movement and tapping her toenails on the linoleum, happier
than Gene Kelly on a rainy day.

But this was a perfect day. Spring had
started out cool and wet in Baltimore this year, then settled into a
pattern of eerily exquisite days. Sunny, dry, not too hot, the tiniest
city gardens riotous with azaleas and then lilies that never seemed to
wilt or lose their blossoms. To top it off, the Orioles were playing
.600 ball. Naturally, all this Edenic perfection made the natives
nervous. The local wisdom was that good things always had a hidden
price, like those rent-to-own deals where you ended up paying a
thousand dollars for a three-hundred-dollar television set. Sooner or
later, the bill would come due.

Esskay stopped abruptly and Tess banged her
knee against the dog's pointy tailbone, hard enough to bruise
it. "What the—" She should have known.
The dog had stopped here every day for the past week, since the
unparalleled thrill of seeing a cat sunning itself on the windowsill of
this particular rowhouse. Esskay had already forgotten what she had
seen, but she hadn't forgotten the sensation.
Happy,
happy, joy, joy
, her quivering muscles seemed to
sing. Tess allowed the dog the moment, then flicked the leash.

"Walking means moving forward from
time to time, Esskay. Let's keep going."

They crossed the street into Patterson Park,
entering through ornate stone portals. "The city's
emerald jewel," an overwrought
Beacon-Light
editorial writer had once christened the park. Sure, a gem that had
fallen out of its setting and now rattled around in someone's
drawer, too expensive to insure or wear. Baltimore was full of such
inconvenient treasures. The city's standard solution was to
auction them off, or let them go to ruin, but there was always a
Save-the-Something group that interceded at the last minute, like the
mountie in an old-fashioned melodrama. Talk about hollow victories.
What was the point of citizens rallying to save, for example, the
beautiful old pagoda that rose here in Patterson Park's
northwest corner when the city crews wouldn't even cut the
grass on a regular basis. Just a week ago, a jogger had found a
woman's body in the overgrown weeds at the pagoda's
feet, her throat slashed, her face literally beaten off. The
Blight
had given it a paragraph on page three.
City
woman killed
. Tess knew how to translate this
particular bit of newspaperspeak, how to decode the clues offered up by
the story's very placement and brevity.
Drugs,
prostitution claim another deserving victim
. The
piece had caused an uproar in the neighborhood, but only because the
paper had placed her body in Butchers Hill instead of Patterson Park
proper. So bad for property values, those carelessly strewn corpses.