Laura Lippman - In A Strange City

Ah, it was her fault for listening to a television talking head. Why had she believed Yeager?

So she hung up the phone and went to the Pratt, because of a note left in her mailbox by some crank. She really ought to become a little more discerning. Especially given that no one was actually paying for her services.

But Tess would go a long way out of her way to end up at the Pratt. She loved everything about it, beginning with its name, which came from the merchant who had poured his fortune into it. Once, Baltimore had been full of places with similarly idiosyncratic names. Memorial Stadium, whose gigantic letters had promised it would stand forever as a tribute to veterans, was scheduled for demolition, the letters slated for storage. The airport had shed the delicious name of Friendship to become the boringly mundane BWI- Baltimore Washington International. Tess thought this was the saddest civic change since the Bromo-Seltzer Tower had lost the bottle at its top.

But the Pratt remained the Pratt and managed to hold on to its dignity, even as it moved into the computer age and tried to bring its ancient branches up to code. Tess liked the soaring atrium here at the Central Library, one of the few places that made her feel small. She liked the gold leaf, the portraits of the Lords Baltimore, the hidden treasures of the Maryland Room. Best of all, the Pratt wasn’t a hushed, somber place. Sounds bounced from the ceiling to floor and back again-respectful, librarylike sounds, but sounds nevertheless. In all her years of coming here, Tess had never heard a librarian say “Hush.”

She also had never met a librarian quite like the young man who sat at the Information Desk on this particular day. Her aunt Kitty had been a school librarian, so Tess was not given to bun-and-bifocal stereotypes. Still, she was not prepared for this ruddy-faced young man, who would have looked more at home on a rugby field or in a bar afterward, lifting a pint. Sweetly rumpled, with light brown curls that looked as if he had just gotten up from a nap, he brought to mind the bookish heroes Tess had encountered in her childhood reading. He was Louisa May Alcott’s Laurie, Maud Hart Lovelace’s Joe Willard, Lenora Mattingly Weber’s Johnny Malone, Jules from the All-of-a-kind Family books. His shirt was half in, half out, his fisherman-knit sweater was fraying at the collar, and Tess would bet anything one of his shoes was untied.

“My name is Tess Monaghan,” she began, in her sweetest, most optimistic manner. She had learned that if you acted as if a request was reasonable, it became just that. “I’m a private investigator, and my client”- well, sort of, maybe-“has suggested I do some research in the Poe room.”

His baritone was warm and friendly. His words were not.

“The Poe Room, like the Mencken Room, is reserved for scholarly research,” he said. “It’s closed, except for special events. I’m afraid private detectives don’t make the cut, although I’m sure whatever you’re doing is quite interesting. How does one become a private detective, anyway?”

“Look-I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

He thumped his nameplate. “Daniel Clary.”

“As in the creator of Henry Huggins, Ramona Quimby, and Ellen Tebbits?” Tess had loved those books when she was a child.

“She’s Cleary. I’m Clary.”

“Oh.” He may not look like the clichéd librarian, but he admonished like one. “Well, who has the authority to decide if I can have access?”

“I have the authority. I’m a librarian, not a receptionist. And there are other people waiting.”

He indicated the growing, restless line behind her.

“Of course, of course,” Tess said, trying to smooth things over. “I know I’m asking for special treatment, and I assumed someone in administration would have to make the call. Think of it as an appeal, through the court system. Who has the final say?”

“Our director, Carla Hayden, I suppose.” The court analogy appeared not to sit well with him. Daniel Clary still looked like a boy who had awakened from his nap, but now he was a grumpy one.

“Could I-” Tess reached a tentative hand toward his telephone.

“I’ll call,” he said swiftly, and punched in the numbers, turning in his wheeled chair so his back was to Tess and he could speak without her eavesdropping. She listened, instead, to the sighs of the people in line and remembered how she felt whenever she was stuck behind someone demanding special treatment.

“Tell her my name, Tess Monaghan,” she whispered to Daniel’s back. “And tell her what I do.”

He looked surprised when he revolved back in his chair. “She says you can go up, but under supervision. She seemed to know you.”

Tess smiled, but volunteered nothing. Daniel Clary didn’t need to know that the library director often shopped at Kitty’s store. Or that she was a dedicated mystery reader whose fascination with fictional crime had led her to quiz Tess on her professional life, when their paths crossed in Baltimore’s strange little social world. Crow had a theory that there were only a hundred people in Baltimore, maybe two hundred, and they were always running into each other: in the produce section at Eddie’s, the lobby of the Lyric Opera House, and Kitty’s store.

A silver-haired woman appeared at the desk and Tess assumed she was to be her guide. Instead, the woman took Daniel’s chair, and he grabbed a ring of keys from a drawer. Tess had been wrong about the shoes-both were tied, although one was held together with electrical tape-but she had been right about the shirttail, which was partially out of the baggy brown cords.

“I wasn’t trying to pull rank,” she said.

“But that’s what you did, isn’t it?” There was no malice in his voice, no residue of irritation, but he wasn’t going to allow her to alter the facts. He pushed the button between the two elevators, then noted that both were on the top floor, according to the old-fashioned dials above them. “Let’s walk.”

Tess still felt a need to appease him. “How long have you been at the Pratt?”

“Ten years.”

“It’s competitive, isn’t it, getting a job here?”

They were at the top of the stairs. He turned back to smile at her, pleased at the suggestion that his job was something to covet.

“Yes, the Pratt is still a desirable posting, even with private industry going after librarians. Most people don’t realize it, but trained research librarians are very much in demand right now. I could make a lot more money working somewhere else. But I became a librarian because I love books. And anyone who cares about libraries has to be thrilled, working at the Pratt.”

Tess knew the door to the Mencken Room was a lacquered sky blue, like a door in a fairy tale. But the Poe door was an ordinary glass one that opened into a somewhat ordinary room, a large study suitable for sipping sherry. Folding chairs were set up to create a makeshift auditorium, and Tess remembered she had been here just a few months back, for a reading by Baltimore’s unofficial poet laureate, Ralph Pickle.

“What do you need to see?” Daniel asked.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, suddenly feeling foolish. A note from some anonymous crank had pointed her in this direction and Tess had followed, meek and stupid as a sheep. “What’s here?”

“We have a few things on display, but it’s really a glorified meeting room,” Daniel said, indicating a glass case with a few Poe books and artifacts. “The archives are available only to scholars, as I told you downstairs. If you wanted something specific, I could arrange for you to see it. But you’d have to relinquish your backpack and any ink pens, and I’d have to stand guard while you read.”

“Of course.” She walked around, trying to look purposeful. “I guess even a scholar can be a crook. Especially a scholar.”