Charm City (5 page)

"I know, I know. But you should
get a license to carry, since you're entitled to one by law.
If you had been carrying a gun last fall—"

"I probably would have shot myself
in the foot by accident."
And everyone
who was dead would still be dead
, she reminded
herself, as she did whenever someone alluded to that malevolent
September, to what might have been, and who might still be among the
living. The little movie, the one that seemed to have been booked into
her dreams for eternity, rolled again in her head, a trailer for that
evening's coming nightmares.

"If you say so." Whitney
gave her a kiss on the cheek, not one of those fake, airy ones
preferred by her class, but an exuberant smacker of a smooch that left
a pink smear of lipstick on Tess's cheek. The crowd loved it.
Quicksilver Whitney had already turned her attention back to her
sandwich.

"It's getting too brown.
Turn it, turn it, turn it!" she implored the short, swarthy
man at the grill, who grinned goofily, as if her imperious orders were
a declaration of undying love. "And would you be so kind as
to cut off the crusts?"

N
ever
a cheery place, The Point was particularly bleak at twilight. Even the
dusk's faint light illuminated too much, accentuating the
bar's distinct charmlessness. Tess could see dust on the
tables, the smeared glass in the jukebox, an odd assortment of stains
on the floor. She couldn't blame this on Spike's
absence. The truth was, the place looked marginally better under
Tommy's care.

"So, Tommy," Tess tried
again, fixing herself a watery Coke from the bar nozzle. "How
did Spike end up with a greyhound?"

"That blond girl sure is
pretty," he said, eyes fixed on the early news, on the
television set bolted above the bar. "But I don't
like the black guy. How come it's always a blond girl and a
black guy? How come it's never a blond guy and a black girl?
You ever think about that? And who do you think makes the more
exuberant salary, the girl or the guy?"

"Exorbitant salary, Tommy. And
I'm more interested in greyhounds right now. What was
Spike's interest in dog racing?"

"We don't have no dog
races in Maryland?" he protested.

"We don't have world
champion prizefights, either, but Spike has been known to take a few
bets on those. Look, did he buy an interest in Esskay? Is he a partner
with some out-of-state trainer? Or is he mixed up in betting on
greyhounds?"

"He didn't want nothing
to do with greyhounds," Tommy insisted. "He said
they were spooky looking? It bothered him to look at them?"

"Look at them
where
?
Where he got Esskay?"

Tommy turned back to the television.
Reporters were camped out in front of Wink Wynkowski's
mansion, a new house built in a pseudo-Tudor style out of place in a
treeless subdivision. Apparently, Wink had not emerged all day, nor had
he provided any response to the
Beacon-Light
's
allegations. The TV reporters' only hope to advance the story
was to get a reaction. They couldn't duplicate the kind of
reporting Feeney had done over the last several weeks. Besides, why
look at some boring old court documents or chat up sources when you can
chase someone across his own front lawn, screaming, "How do
you feel?"

"Be too bad to lose the basketball
team because of the newspaper," Tommy said to the TV screen.
"Woulda helped our business?"

"You seem awfully proprietary
about things around here, Tommy. Someone might think you
didn't care if Spike never woke up."

Tommy plucked nervously at his lower lip.
"You're treading on thin ground, Tess. I
don't see where you get off, talking to me like that.
I'm around more'n the rest of the fambly.
More'n
you
."

"Where did the dog come from? Why
was Spike beaten? How are the two things connected?"

He turned away and began fiddling with the
beer tap. The regulars were drifting in, providing Tommy with enough
distractions to ignore her for hours. Slowly, with great ceremony, he
shook miniature pretzels into wooden bowls along the bar, then slapped
down coasters, which no one in the history of The Point had ever used.
Behind the bar, Tommy looked as fresh as the coasters, in his bright
yellow shirt and black pants. He even looked taller. Tess peeked over
the Formica top and saw he was sporting a pair of high-heeled
caramel-colored ankle boots with side zippers, circa 1976.

"Spiffy shoes," Tess
said.

"Oh, yeah, well, you know I
can't wear loafers. Thin ankles."

"Don't those heels hurt
after a day on your feet?"

"You know what they
say—a hard man's day is never done."
Tommy looked bewildered when everyone laughed, but Tess suspected he
was playing to the crowd. It wasn't the first time she had
heard this particular Tommyism.

Esskay had also put in a hard day, shredding
paper towels and toilet paper, gnawing on the pieces, then spitting up
clumps behind furniture and in corners. Tess found a particularly
large, soggy chunk in the center of her pillow. Her pillow, not the one
Crow used, which was actually closer to the door. Did Esskay know which
side of the bed Tess preferred? And if so, was this fealty, or a veiled
threat?

Later, after a hot bath, she was still
plucking bits of paper from odd places when the phone rang.

"Tesser! You told me to call you,
so here I am, calling you." Whitney, a little too hale and
hearty. The rah-rah team captain persona was usually reserved for
strangers, strangers Whitney wished to keep strangers.

"Here you are," Tess
echoed, without much enthusiasm.

"Can you come out and
play?"

"Now?"

"Why not? It's only
eight-thirty, spring is coming, and I haven't been taking
enough people out on my expense account. They'll lose respect
for me if it's under three figures for the month. Come be my
recalcitrant source. I'll make it worth your while."

Tess studied the wad of soggy paper towels
in her hand. "I'm in my bathrobe and feeling kind
of cranky. Can't you buy some bourbon, bring it over here,
and put that on your expense account?"

She was counting on being refused. Tess
couldn't give Whitney a receipt or a credit card slip. She
couldn't even validate parking.

"Okay, but be ready to throw a
coat over your bathrobe. I want to sit out on your terrace, at least as
long as we can take it. See you in twenty minutes."

Tess's apartment took up only half
of the space of the two floors below. The rest belonged to a flat,
unremarkable roof, reached through French doors off her bedroom. A more
ambitious tenant might have filled this pseudo-patio with pots of
geraniums, or splurged on wrought-iron café chairs and a
matching table. Tess left two vinyl lawn chairs out year-round,
sponging them off as necessary. The harbor view was so spectacular it
seemed unnecessary to do more. Who needed fripperies like tiny white
lights in ficus trees with the neon Domino Sugar sign across the water
in Locust Point blazing red throughout the night?

Yet when Whitney arrived, she was in no
hurry to go outside.

"Do you have
any…?" she asked, sniffing delicately. Esskay
wandered over to see if Whitney was good for a few pats, or a morsel of
food. She stroked the dog's head, never bothering to ask how
or why Tess had acquired such an ugly beast. Incurious Whitney.
Reporting had never come naturally to her.

"Have any what,
Whitney?" Tess knew exactly what she meant, but loved to
torture the answer out of her friend, force her to say what she wanted.

"You know." Her voice
was now a stage whisper. "The little box under your
bed."

"My sweaters? Dust
balls?"

"Your pot. Your dope. Weed. Mary
Jane. Ganja. The 1970s smokable herb now making a comeback, as they say
in the
New York Times
every time they do one of those
‘Whatever-happened-to-marijuana?' stories.
Satisfied?"

"Oh,
that
.
I stopped making purchases when I went to work for Tyner, given
it's a crime. A condition of my employment." A
half-truth. Tyner disapproved of marijuana only because it hampered the
lungs' ability to maximize oxygen intake.

Whitney looked so blue that Tess took pity
on her. "I still have a little left, though. I've
been hoarding it."

"Well, dig it out. And
let's order pizza from BOP or Al Pacino's. Do they
deliver?"

"They do to Kitty's
address."

Within an hour, Esskay was nosing through
two grease-stained boxes in a corner of the terrace, searching out
stray bits of pepperoni and Whitney's uneaten crusts. The
night was not at all springlike, but Tess and Whitney, warmed by doses
of bourbon and pizza, were inured to the temperature as they shared a
second post-dinner joint. Time had collapsed. They could have been in
Washington College again, smoking on the banks of the Chester River.

The joint almost gone, Whitney improvised a
roach clip with a garnet stickpin from the lapel of her blazer.
"I like your boy-toy Crow, but I'm not sorry
he's away tonight," she said, coughing a little.
"I wanted to have you to myself. It makes me feel like
I'm nineteen again. That, and
this
."
Another furtive puff.

"I was thinking the same thing.
Except the nights were so black on the Eastern Shore and
they're so bright here. Have you ever noticed the city looks
faintly radioactive from here? It has this smudgy glow, from the
anticrime streetlights and all the neon."

"What did we talk about back in
college, all those nights we smoked and drank and talked?"

"Our classes, our love lives, our
futures. I was going to be a street-smart columnist and you were going
to be the
New York Times
Tokyo correspondent. You're still on track, at least. We also
played Botticelli. Remember?"

"You called it Botticelli. My
family called it ‘Are You a Wily Austrian
Diplomat?' And you picked the most incredibly obscure people.

"Jackie Mason is
not
obscure, Whitney."

Tess's turn to inhale. It
wasn't very good pot. The mild buzz was giving her a mild
headache right between the eyebrows. Ever the good hostess, she let her
guest have the last toke. Whitney pulled hard on the stub of the joint,
then tossed the remains off the roof, to the graveyard of vices in the
alley below—broken bottles, limp condoms, Twinkie wrappers.

"So you had drinks with Feeney
last night," she said suddenly. "Did he say
anything of note?"

"You know Feeney. Sometimes you
can't get a word out of him all night."

Whitney snorted. "The only thing
you can't get out of Feeney's mouth is his
foot." She started to bring her fingers to her lips, then
realized the joint was gone and refastened the stickpin to her lapel
instead. "He told you about his story, didn't he?
That's why you asked me about it today."

"He told me it was on life support
and not expected to make it through the week."
Spike's face flashed in her mind, and she suddenly felt
guilty for her glib metaphor.

"It was."

"What happened?"

"Biggest resurrection this town
has seen since Jesus or our last crooked governor, depending on your
frame of reference. Spiked in the afternoon, it rose again that night
for one edition only, the final. But one edition was enough. The
Associated Press overnight guy moved it on the wire, which went to all
the broadcast outlets, and there was no turning back. Everyone in town
went with it, and everyone attributed it to the
Beacon-Light
."

"Why only one edition?"

"Good question. One of many being
asked around the office today." Whitney's eyes
locked on hers, steady and serious. "It wasn't
suppose to be there, Tess. Not today. Maybe not ever. Someone decided
otherwise."

"So what happened? You should
know, you're a lock for a Pulitzer for in-house
gossip."

"I'd rather have that
Far East fellowship, the one in Hawaii, or one of those Alicia
Patterson grants for young journalists," Whitney said, as if
"Pulitzer" was the only word she had heard. For a
moment she seemed lost in some private reverie, perhaps an image of
herself striding through the Orient, literally head and shoulders above
the populace. She blinked, returning to Baltimore, Tess, and the roof.

"As it turns out, I do know quite
a bit about this. I got it all from the big boss, right after I saw you
today. Editor in chief Lionel C. Mabry himself."

"Do I know him?"

"He came to the paper nine months
ago, lured out of semiretirement at Northwestern University. Ran the
Chicago
Democrat
in its glory days. Reporters call him
the Lion King, because he has this mane of blond hair sweeping back
from a high widow's peak. They also call him the
Lyin' King, because he has a tendency to tell you nice things
to your face, then go to the editors' meeting and stick
knives in your back. Long, elegant, quite sharp knives."

"Not
your
bony back, Whitney. Bosses always love you."

"The old bosses did. But Mabry
doesn't know my work as a reporter, and he's going
to have a big say in who gets the Tokyo bureau when it opens up this
summer. I'm on the short list, but I'm not a lock.
Not even close."

Whitney frowned. She looked baffled, much in
the same way she had the first time she'd attended a Passover
dinner with Tess's mother's family.
"That's not horseradish," she had
insisted politely, poking the tuberous root with her spoon.
"Horseradish comes in a jar." No one had dared
contradict her.

Tess poured more bourbon into
Whitney's glass. "You'll win him
over."

"Or die trying. I even used the
elevator technique on him today."

"What's that, some blow
job tip from the pages of
Cosmo
?"

"Well, it's not
fellatio, but it
is
a kind
of oral sex." Whitney hoisted herself up on the ledge and
sipped her drink, legs crossed demurely at the ankles.
"There's a theory that the most important part of
your career is the thirty seconds you spend on the elevator with the
boss—or in the hallway, or the john, but that last outlet
doesn't exactly work for me. It's prime exposure
time, and you should prepare for it in advance, the way you prepare for
orals in college, or the way you train for a race, so it's
all second nature."

"Prepare
what
?"

"Your tapes. Think of your brain
as a mini tape recorder. You need two or three tapes at the ready, to
drop in the slot at the first sight of the CEO. Editor in chief, in my
case. Each tape features a timeless question or observation,
demonstrating you are a motivated, loyal, dedicated, happy worker
who's willing to do a hundred and ten percent to make your
terrific place of work even more terrific."