Tess decided to spend the next day doing some-thing truly novel-trying to earn a buck or two. After all, she had the day free. She couldn’t call on the two men who had been burglarized until the evening, given that she didn’t know where they worked.
Besides, she needed to make some money. And she had learned that getting people to pay what they owe was often the hardest part of her job.
She began with a visit to her biggest deadbeat, a fish-market owner who called himself Fuzzy, Fuzzy Iglehart. Tess preferred Mr. Iglehart, despite his repeated invitations to use his nickname. He didn’t call Tess anything, except for the occasional “girlie” or the Baltimore-generic “hon.” That was before he had stopped returning her calls two months ago. When he saw her coming down the aisle at Cross Street Market a little after 11 a.m., he looked around to see if there was an exit handy. There was, but the narrow side aisle was blocked by two elderly shoppers, so he sighed and stood his ground.
“How you been?” he asked Tess, as if they were old friends.
She countered with a more relevant question. “How’s business?”
“Awful,” he said. “Just awful. It’s where they got me, in this dark little corner, away from all the other fish guys. I don’t know who I pissed off, but someone has it in for me. Someone at the city, or in the management here.”
Fuzzy Iglehart began almost every conversation this way, telling her his troubles, proclaiming the city, the state, the world, and all their bureaucracies to be in league against him. When he had come to Tess’s office last summer, he appeared to have a point. A rubbery-limbed man had staged a spectacular slip-and-fall in front of Fuzzy’s Fish and tried to sue the city, only to find its liability was capped. So he had gone after the next pocket, Fuzzy’s insurance company, but the agent wiggled off the hook by pointing out the puddle was caused by a faulty refrigeration unit. Ah, but the manufacturer of the refrigeration unit noted Fuzzy had not installed it properly, thus voiding its warranty.
As in the old children’s game, the Farmer in the Dell, the cheese stood alone. Terrified of the legal fees that even a successful case might cost him, Fuzzy had a rare moment of clarity: He decided to confirm that the injured party was, in fact, an injured party. Within forty-eight hours of being hired, Tess had videotaped Mr. Slip-and-Fall building a brick patio in his backyard. She sent the would-be plaintiff a cassette, along with a short note explaining the penalties for criminal fraud in Maryland, and the case abruptly vanished from the docket.
That had been Labor Day and Fuzzy Iglehart had been her best friend, promising her free fish and a fix-up with his son, Fuzzy Jr., both of which she politely declined. Still, Fuzzy Iglehart had continued to proclaim he would do anything for Tess, absolutely anything.
Except, it seemed, pay her.
“January’s bad,” he said, launching into his usual litany of woe, his eyes fixed on some spot beyond her left shoulder. “It’s always bad, but it’s worse than ever this year.”
“You said last month that all you needed to do was get through Christmas and you’d be able to pay me.”
“Christmas was terrible this year. So cold.”
“It was one of the warmest Decembers on record.”
“See, that’s what I mean. Too warm. Who wants to eat oyster stuffing when it’s so warm out? Look, how about I give you a credit for what I owe you, give it to you in goods?”
“Because, as I told you last month and the month before that, I hate fish and I’m allergic to shellfish.”
“And you from Baltimore. Okay, how about I give you one of those old oyster tins? They’re very decorative. I got another one around here. They’re worth a lot. I seen it on eBay.”
“You gave me one of those in November and told me you’d make good after Thanksgiving.”
“But you like that kind of stuff, right? Old Baltimore stuff, I mean. You got that weird clock in your office, I remember. Fuzzy has a good memory.” He tapped his fuzzless forehead, retreated into a small storage area behind his stall, and returned with a row of stadium or auditorium chairs, four in all and extremely used.
“I got these from Memorial Stadium,” he said. “The president of the United States sat in them on Opening Day.”
“Which president?” Tess asked. “Which opening day?”
“Well, one of them. Christ, I don’t know.”
“All the seats from Memorial Stadium were removed under supervision and sold at auction last spring, in preparation for the demolition. Did you buy those?”
“Um, well, a guy… a guy gave ‘em to me, as a gift.”
“Where did he get them?”
“I guess he bought them.”
“The seats are cloth and they’re stamped school #201 on the back.”
Fuzzy looked, feigning amazement. “What do you know?”
Tess sighed. It was a given in her line of work that sometimes the client was as big a cheat as the person she was asked to expose. You had to be capable of thinking like a rip-off artist before you could imagine catching one. In fact, most of her clients were a little bent. She wondered if other private detectives had the same problem. Gretchen O’Brien, for example, with her no-doubt-shiny office and her claims to professionalism.
“I don’t want a row of old school auditorium seats. I don’t want another oyster tin-”
“How about an old Park’s Sausage sign, for that weird dog of yours?”
Now that was tempting, even if her dog was named for the other local pork product. She heard the old commercial in her head and felt a twinge of nostalgia. More Park’s sausages, Mom-puh-leeze? But no, she had to be firm.
“I want money, Mr. Iglehart. Cash, or a certified check, because you bounced a check to me in September, remember? Which is illegal, by the way. I could have taken out a complaint on you then.”
“I had an awful summer. Awful. Sometimes I think there ain’t no fish left in that bay.”
Tess thought the problem might be as simple as his stand’s name. Even if one wasn’t ichthyophobic, fuzzy fish didn’t inspire confidence. But she was in no mood to offer marketing tips to the small-business man.
“I’ll give you until February first, and then I’m going to have to call a bill collector. Which means I get less money, and then I’m going to be really pissed off. In fact, I may take a tumble right here, to make up the shortfall.”
She pointed at the puddle next to the refrigeration unit with the toe of her suede boot, careful not to make contact. “You could at least get that fixed. Haven’t you learned anything from all this?”
“Can’t afford it,” Fuzzy said mournfully.
Tess walked down the aisle, glad to be away from the morose stares of the dead fish on ice. How did people eat things with scales? Not to mention oysters, mussels, clams-and crabs. Crabs were the worst. Had anyone in Baltimore ever taken a hard look at its unofficial mascot? Tess was thankful for the excuse of her allergies. Otherwise, she would have been forced almost daily to justify her instinctive aversion to shellfish. She wondered if there was some contrary little girl up in Hershey, Pennsylvania, grateful to be lactose-intolerant because it got her off the hook for eating chocolate.
But Tess needed only a few steps for her appetite to revive. It was almost lunchtime, by her stomach, if not by the clock. She stopped at a sandwich stand and ordered a turkey sub, a bag of sour-cream-and-onion Utz potato chips, and a sixteen-ounce Coca-Cola, frowning when the counterman asked, “You mean a Diet Coke?”
“Regular,” she growled, miffed by the assumption that all women drank diet cola. “And extra hots on the sub.”
“I thought I was the only one who got extra hots,” someone behind her said. The guttural Baltimore accent-Ah thought Ah was the only one who got extra hots-belonged to a tall homely woman, whose daisy-patterned scarf didn’t quite cover the short red-pink hair she had coaxed around two small pin curls at her temples.
“A cheese steak can hold its own, but the turkey needs a little help,” Tess said agreeably, glancing down at the woman’s feet, curious to know the fashion choices made by a woman who wore pin curls in public. This extra-hots fan wore a pair of men’s Oxfords, broken at the backs and untied, and pantyhose that sagged on gaunt, bony shins. The hair suggested a South Baltimore housewife, making a quick trip to the market, but the shoes indicated someone who was homeless. Or a gentle lunatic, on the lam from an overworked family member who had dropped her guard, exhausted by the constant demands of caretaker duty.
“I sure would like me one of those turkey sammiches,” the woman said, staring openmouthed at Tess’s white-papered sub as the counterman slid it into a paper sack.
“You want a turkey sub? Or just money?” Tess preferred to buy food for panhandlers instead of handing over cash.
“I sure would like a sammich,” the woman repeated, eyes fixed on the sack now, literally smacking her lips. “I like turkey.” Ah lüke turkey.
Tess handed the sub to the woman. “You want the chips too? And something to drink?”
“The barbecue ones. And a Mountain Dew.”
Tess nodded to the counterman, who rang up another package of chips, another bottle of soda.
“You take this sandwich, I’ll wait for another one. You got a place to stay around here? Because-”
The woman had already scuttled away, the bag tucked under her arm like a football. Still, Tess felt good about her little burst of charity, until she caught Fuzzy Iglehart at the end of the aisle, smiling crookedly at her. Now that he knew what a soft touch she was, it would be even harder to collect.
Work, paying work, was still on Tess’s mind when she called on Tyner after lunch, to see if he had anything to throw her way. After twenty months on her own, she still wasn’t used to the ebb and flow of self-employment. Her taxes for last year showed a respectable income, more than she had ever made in the newspaper trade. But the house seemed to consume every dollar, and this year had gotten off to a slow start. January, to quote Fuzzy Iglehart, was terrible, and while February always brought a spate of work, it tended toward suspicious spouses staking out their partners on Valentine’s Day. Perhaps she was more dependent on her occasional spasms of publicity to drum up new business than she liked to think. Maybe she should have taken Jim Yeager up on his offer.
And maybe she should have a small hole drilled between her eyes, so what little common sense she had could dribble out once and for all.
“I’ve got some courthouse stuff-property records, incorporation records-that I could get my paralegal to do, but she’s snowed under, so I’ll throw it to you,” said a strangely agreeable Tyner. The relationship with Kitty had mellowed him, but Tess wasn’t sure Tyner was meant to be mellow. Without his usual astringency he was a bit like paint thinner that could no longer thin paint. “Easy stuff.”
“I’m no enemy of the easy buck.”
“So, what else is going on?” he asked her, trying to do the fond-uncle thing. But Tess, as she often reminded Tyner, had nine uncles: five on her father’s side, four on her mother’s. She wasn’t auditioning any new ones.
“Not much. You?”
“I went to a community meeting for Mount Vernon businesses and residents last night. People are concerned that there’s been no arrest in the attack on Shawn Hayes, and this rumor that it’s connected to the Poe killing only fans the flames. The gay men who live in the neighborhood want to know if the assault was motivated by his lifestyle. Everyone else secretly wants it to be exactly that.”
“I can’t believe people here are that hateful.”
“Not hateful, scared, and desperate to believe they’re immune from misfortune. They rationalize it can’t happen to them-because they’re smarter, more prudent, with better security systems. Because they’re richer, or they’re poorer. It’s funny. It’s not just rape victims who get blamed for being victims. I’ve noticed that people who fear certain things will turn themselves inside out, trying to find a reason it won’t happen to them. They often find that reason in the victim’s behavior. ”Oh, he went out late at night.“ ”She talked to strangers.“ That kind of thing.”
“Human nature,” Tess said, trying to find a comfortable spot in the ultramodern chair opposite Tyner’s desk, two thong-thin strips of leather hung on chromium bars. She had long suspected Tyner of choosing office decor that would make those who dared to visit as uncomfortable as he was. Tyner didn’t want people who could walk to stop being grateful for this fact, so his furniture challenged the spine and left one’s legs with pins and needles that had to be stomped out.
“It’s not just crime,” he continued, on a roll. “An old friend, a state’s attorney, has a little boy diagnosed autistic. So her inconsiderate pregnant friends quiz her about her diet, her lifestyle, her genes, and what form of birth control she used before conceiving. Here she is, on the verge of a nervous breakdown because of the stress level in her life, and all her so-called friends want is the assurance it won’t happen to them.”
“Well… people, Tyner.” Lord, he was chatty today. This was the kind of conversation Tess was used to having with Kitty. She feared some odd mutant was emerging from the relationship, a kinder, gentler Tyner. A Kyner!
“Yes, people. So the residents of Mount Vernon went back to their homes and businesses last night, reassured of nothing, other than Detective Rainer’s general incompetence. Meanwhile, I’m worried Shawn Hayes will stay on life support for more than a year and a day, which means his attacker will never face homicide charges. It’s a hard call for a family to make, but I hope they’re aware of the legal implications of letting him linger.”
“Assuming Rainer ever makes an arrest.”
“Ah, yes, Rainer. He took me aside last night for a private chat.”
Tess might have straightened up at this information, if the chair had allowed such movement.
“What did he want to know?”
“He wanted a reading on Cecilia. She clerked for me summer before last. Remember?”
How could Tess forget? Tyner’s decision to hire a clerk had forced Tess out on her own, long before she wanted to be. Even now, with Tyner’s faith in her proven, she couldn’t help remembering how it felt when she was exiled from this office. It was like riding her bike without training wheels for the first time, Daddy running behind and promising not to let go. And then Daddy did let go-and she had promptly crashed. But she got back up, the way everyone gets back up.
“So, what did you tell him about our old friend, the soapbox queen?”
Tyner was puzzled. “Cecilia drives go-carts?”
“No, as in, She’s always on a soapbox.”
“Oh. He asked if I could ”control‘ her, convince her to settle down and stop making so much noise. I told him Cecilia will keep yapping until someone listens. I then asked him point-blank if she was right, and he was evasive.“
“Evasive? That would represent a whole new level of subtlety for Rainer. He usually just stands there, mouth gaping open, when he doesn’t know how to answer a question.” Tess couldn’t help recalling Fuzzy Iglehart’s stand, the blank-eyed stares of the fish on ice.
“He’s a big fan of yours, too.” Tyner’s voice sharpened to its old acerbic bellow. “Why didn’t you tell me you were there that night? Why did you let me natter on about the murder in Kitty’s that day without sharing with me what you knew? I felt like a fool.”
Tess was so happy to have Tyner yelling at her again that she told the truth. “Because I knew you wouldn’t approve. I’m not sure I approve. At first, all I wanted to do was find the guy who tried to hire me and figure out if I should turn him over to Rainer and all those media jackals. But then it really got weird. It’s as if I have a client, but I don’t know who it is.”
She told him everything, glad to unburden herself, gladder still to have Tyner’s keen mind on her side. Crow was a more intuitive thinker-he picked up emotional currents that Tess missed-while Tyner was incisive and logical, interested primarily in facts. Like Whitney, he was disturbed by the attentions from Tess’s visitor. He also frowned when he heard about the brawl with Gretchen O’Brien.
“Two women, guns drawn, rolling around on the floor together,” he said. “It sounds like a bad porn film.”
“It sounds as if you know something about bad porn films,” Tess countered. “So what’s going on? A homicide, an assault, two burglaries, a sleazy private detective, and two mystery men-my secret friend and ”Mr. Kennedy‘ Assuming they’re not one and the same.“
Tyner was clearly struggling with himself. She knew him so well, she could see that he wanted her to drop the case, but he couldn’t shake his own fascination with it.
“The two burglaries-have you looked into those, tried to figure out what the connection is? You could drop by their homes, pretend to be-oh, a security expert who is making calls on burglary victims in hopes of selling them your burglarproofing service.”
Tess smiled. “I was going to hit them both on my way home tonight, but I hadn’t thought of a cover story yet. Maybe I’ll use yours.”
Silly to think she could ever have the last word with Tyner.
“You might as well,” he said. “Because it’s a sure bet you won’t come up with anything better.”