Laura Lippman - In A Strange City

“So, you going to call the cops?” Gretchen asked.

“I’m going to have to, if you don’t tell me why you’re here.”

“Fine. They’ll charge me with burglary. I’ll say it was an honest mistake, that a client had told me this was a vacant property where he thought his soon-to-be-ex was warehousing some property.”

“Not a very good story,” judged Tess, who was vain about her ability to lie quickly and creatively.

“Good enough. Anyway, then I’ll charge you with assault, and by the time they get it all straightened out, we’ll both be out a couple of thousand in lawyer fees, but you still won’t have any answers.”

Tess got up and walked around the floor, toeing the flotsam and jetsam of Gretchen’s wallet. “Well, here’s one answer,” she said, bending down to pick up one of the scattered business cards, which identified one John P. Kennedy as a dealer in fine porcelain. “So ”John Pendleton Kennedy‘ paid you a visit, too. Were you sleazy enough to take the case? And did you get his real name?“

Gretchen sat mum as a surly child.

“I mean John Pendleton Kennedy, of course, not the Poe Toaster. I was at the grave site that morning and didn’t see you anywhere. So I guess you didn’t take the case.”

“Or maybe I’m better at surveillance than some self-taught amateur.”

“So you did take the case.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Actually, you sort of did. Where were you?”

A glare was her only answer. Tess imagined the dark street in her mind, saw the various clumps of spectators converge on the grave site. Yes, Rainer had said there were some witnesses who cut out, unwilling to give statements. She had a hunch that Gretchen wasn’t one of them.

“You took the job, but you weren’t there. What did you do-fall asleep, forget to set your alarm?”

“I went earlier in the day to check out the scene, figure out where the exits and entrances were. It’s a fairly common practice-not that I would expect you to know such things.”

“So you weren’t late, you were merely too early. Why didn’t you come back?”

Gretchen stared at the rubber toes of her Chuck Taylors. Tess wore Jack Purcells, which she considered vastly superior, an old Baltimore prejudice she had absorbed without questioning.

“It was the monument,” Gretchen said at last, with the air of someone who needed to confess, or at least justify herself. “The one out front, the place where they moved his body. It threw me off.”

“You were watching the wrong spot in the graveyard?”

“No. It said the wrong day. His own monument says he was born January 20. I figured-” Her mouth had started to form a sound, some soft and open vowel, but she caught herself. “I figured the client made a mistake. I mean, it was literally carved in stone, you know? I thought I was supposed to be there the night of the nineteenth, and he would come early in the morning of the twentieth. How was I supposed to know it was wrong? I’m a Pigtown girl. I was lucky to get through the general course at Southwestern High School and a few semesters at Catonsville Community College.”

Tess smiled at Gretchen’s clumsy attempt to play the class card with her. Her own father had gone to work for the city straight out of Patterson Park High School, and her mother had dropped out of College Park in order to marry him.

“Does your client-I’m sorry, what was his name again?”

Gretchen allowed herself a short snort of a laugh. “Does that work for you? I wouldn’t be surprised if it worked on you.”

“No harm in trying. You almost said his name but caught yourself. Anyway, does our fat friend know you screwed up? Did you break in hoping to find out what I know, because I was there, and to use my work to cover up the deficiencies in yours? Or is there something your client fears I have and wants to retrieve?”

Gretchen O’Brien turned her rather broad ass toward Tess and began crawling across the floor, gathering up her credit cards.

“I don’t have anything else to say to you. You wanna call the cops?”

“I don’t know,” Tess said.

“Can I have my gun?”

She pushed it across the desk but kept the ammunition.

“Well, you’ve got my particulars. They can always put out a warrant on me, if you like. I don’t care. But I’m not hanging around here.”

Gretchen stood up and grabbed her gun. She looked around the room she had come to search and found it wanting. “It was a long shot, anyway. You don’t know anything.”

“What would I know? Or have? What are we looking for, Gretchen? Tell me that much. It’s not much of a treasure hunt if not all the players know what they’re looking for. Is this really about a bracelet? Or maybe a Maltese falcon? What’s the rumpus? as Hammett would say.”

“He a cop?”

“A detective writer. People associate him with San Francisco, but he was born in St. Mary’s County and worked as a Pinkerton agent right here in Baltimore. I always heard The Maltese Falcon was inspired by the details on a building downtown.”

Gretchen smiled at her. “So that’s where you learned to do what you do. In books, and made-up books at that. Figures.”

She walked toward the door, moving a little stiffly, which Tess decided to count as a small victory. She turned back at the last minute, but only because she needed the key. Tess tossed it to her, and Gretchen caught it in her right fist, then let herself out. She hoped Gretchen hurt like hell in the morning, that she felt all sorts of unsuspected aches in unfamiliar places. Then again, Tess probably would too. The body never seemed to realize when it had been on the winning end of a fight.

The sheaf of faxes had fallen to the floor while she and Gretchen tusseled. Tess stooped to gather them. They were police reports, not only the assault on Shawn Hayes but two burglaries-and pretty humdrum burglaries to judge by the inventories of what was taken. Herman Peters must have sent them by mistake.

Told you so, he had scrawled on the cover sheet. When you look into these-assuming you’ve got nothing better to do-you’ll see why your friend is off-base.

Her friend. For a moment she thought he meant Yeager; then she realized he was referring to Cecilia, the perpetual activist. As she scanned the reports, she wondered idly how Cecilia would feel about that characterization of their relationship. Was she still Cecilia’s friend or merely a tool who had long ago ceased to be relevant to Cecilia’s various missions?

The report on Shawn Hayes noted he had been beaten quite badly, with a bat or something else made from wood, but the weapon had never been found. The burglaries seemed to have nothing in common with the attack or with each other. One was in Bolton Hill, the home of Jerold Ensor, who sounded vaguely like someone she should know about, one of those names that crop up on donor lists and the society pages.

The other was a name of no resonance, Arnold Pitts, at an address that didn’t register: Field Street. She had seen that street sign at some point, somewhere, but she couldn’t quite place it. The reports made the two incidents sound like penny-ante break-ins, with just the usual mix of fenceable gear taken-televisions, DVD players, a camcorder.

When you look into these, you’ll see why the cops think your friend is off-base. That assumed she was going to look into them. She wanted to whine to that unseen mother who seemed to hover above her at such moments, so much more powerful than any deity, Aw, do I have to? She really needed to find some paying work and leave all this behind.

But if these reports were Gretchen O’Brien’s quarry all along? With a sigh, Tess reached for her crisscross and phone book.