Laura Lippman - In A Strange City

It’s as if we want him dying in the gutter, shivering from delirium tremens, Tess marveled. She hadn’t known Freud had theorized that early childhood trauma had killed Poe, or that impotence had been cited by yet another medical expert. How did impotence kill? She supposed a man might die of embarrassment, but only figuratively. She smiled smugly, a thirty-one-year-old in love with a twenty-five-year-old, unaware that she was once again flirting with hubris.

But her subconscious must have made the connection, for she was suddenly glum, pondering the case of the disappearing John P. Kennedy. She glanced at the phone books stacked at her feet, at the bookmarked “people finders” on her computer, at the CD-Roms that supposedly had everyone, even unlisted numbers. There were Kennedys, of course, many of them, in Maryland and Washington and northern Virginia and Delaware: John P. Kennedys, and J. P. Kennedys, and even one Pendleton Kennedy. But the ages were wrong, or the voices were wrong, or, in the case of Pendleton Kennedy, the gender was wrong. All were most convincing in their assertions that they had never met her. “Please remove me from your call list,” more than one person had snapped, mistaking her for a telephone solicitor.

Trust me, Tess felt like saying, I wish I were trying to sell you long-distance service or credit-card insurance. It would be more fun.

She studied the business card he had left. John P. Kennedy, dealer in fine porcelain. Appraisals, estate sales. If you want it, I can find it. The number listed didn’t even exist in Maryland, nor had it ever, given the prefix. She felt guilty, then stupid for her guilt. Should she really be expected to know every prefix in the state of Maryland by heart? The card looked professional, but anyone with a computer could make a business card these days. She had her own little stock of them, identifying her as various people in various jobs. Baltimore Gas amp; Electric “safety coordinator” was the best. Who wouldn’t let you into their homes if you said you were checking reports of an odorless gas leak?

The Porcine One had not seemed nervy enough to pull off such a stunt, but that had only guaranteed his success. What did it matter how smart you were, as Nora Ephron had once written, if others proved how easily you were fooled?

Tess flipped through the Yellow Pages, noting the many pages of antiques dealers. Surely, it would be more efficient to work by phone, calling up those who advertised large inventories of china and asking if they had any dealings with a pinkish, piggy man with short limbs. She glanced toward the windows of her office, which were barred and always shaded. The glare of a bright winter’s day peeked around the edges of the old-fashioned venetian blinds. The cold snap had snapped, leaving behind a brisk, tolerable day with a chance for snow.

Perhaps it was inefficient, but she’d rather be out there, going door to door. She could try the shops in Fells Point, her old neighborhood. People there knew her face, if not her name, from all the years she had lived there. They had seen her hanging out at Jimmy’s restaurant and her aunt’s bookstore, eating celebratory dinners at Ze Mean Bean and the Black Olive, running them off the next day along Thames Street.

Now she ran in a wooded vale, loved it, then worried about loving it. Pleasure was a double-edged sword for Tess. She was scared she was being lulled into happiness, only so someone could snatch it away from her again, like a dollar bill on a string. She liked a few more lumps in her mashed potatoes.

So bless John P. Kennedy then, or whoever he was, for keeping her life from being too smooth.

Esskay accompanied her on her rounds. The dog appeared to recognize their old haunts, although Esskay experienced the world primarily through smell and taste. Allegedly, she was a sight hound, and she occasionally spotted something moving that made her prick up her ears and quiver with instinct. Usually, the object of her desire was a blue plastic grocery bag or an old newspaper. In their new neighborhood, rabbits often crossed their path, but the dog was indifferent to them, possibly because they ran in jagged stops and starts across the grass, rather than moving smoothly along a track rail.

Still, Esskay was a good ambassador, especially in the red plaid sweater she wore when the temperature dropped below freezing. She drew people to Tess, and they answered questions without realizing it, their hands busy with Esskay’s muzzle and ears.

Yet Tess’s repeated descriptions of the Porcine One brought no signs of recognition.

“Fiestaware?” asked one man, a tall, rumpled type who looked as if he were perpetually filmed with dust. His shop was on a quiet block of Aliceanna, and so crowded with towering stacks of china that Tess watched Esskay’s switching tail with great anxiety. “I thought I knew most of the serious dealers around town, but he doesn’t sound like anyone I’ve ever done business with. Did he talk specifics? Did he mention anything he had ever sold or bought?”

“In Fiestaware and porcelain? No-wait, he did say something hypothetically, about a rare teal-colored gravy boat.”

The man shook his head, sad for Tess’s ignorance. “Teal is one of the new colors, you can buy it at Hecht’s.”

She walked up to Fleet, where the Antique Man, as he was known, kept a shop devoted to local items and curiosities. A giant ball of string, purchased for eight thousand dollars from Sotheby’s, had the place of honor in the window. Fashioned from the bits of leftover bakery string used in Haussner’s restaurant, it had gone on the auction block when the famed German eatery had closed a year or two back. The restaurant also had owned a world-class art collection, which had fetched millions. But Tess, like most Baltimoreans, had cared only for the ball of string and was happy when it found a home not far from its Highlandtown origins. Just looking at it made her hungry for Haussner’s specialties, potato pancakes and cherry pie.

But the Antique Man was out, on this snowy day. “We got a tip that the Beacon-Light beacon was found in someone’s garage,” said his helper, drawing out the last word so it rhymed with barrage.

“No way,” Tess said. As someone repeatedly denied employment by the city’s last newspaper, she wouldn’t have minded owning that particular artifact, a Bakelite replica of a beacon that had once sat on a small pedestal above the Beacon-Light’s front doors and then disappeared when the building was remodeled in the 1980s. “How much would something like that go for?”

“Thousands,” the helper said sagely. “If it’s the real thing. We’ve had false alarms before, and this one sounded a little funky. Still, he had to check it out, you know? It’s a civic duty, you know, like the iron pig.”

“The iron pig?”

“From Siemiski’s Meats, the sign that hung over the door. They were going to throw it away, practically, so he bought it. Now people come in here all the time, offer him big money for it, but he won’t sell. Some things belong to the city, not in a private home or museum.”

“Very civic-minded,” Tess said, and meant it.

Back on the street, she saw the flag flying above a rowhouse bookstore, Mystery Loves Company. One of the owners, Paige Rose, knew everything about everybody in the city, and she wasn’t shy about sharing her information. She was especially good on local politics, but she cut a broad swath through Baltimore, and it was plausible she knew or had met the Porcine One.

“Kennedy?” Paige furrowed her brow and stroked the cat perched on her lap. The cat was named Nora, and those customers who couldn’t figure out her brother was named Nick were probably in the wrong store. Paige was on a high stool behind the counter, keeping an eye on an odd-looking man more interested in the store’s warmth than its wares. He appeared to be sleeping on his feet, his nose almost pressed into the spines of new books in the “H” section-Hayter, Haywood, Henderson, Hiaasen, many of Tess’s favorites.