Laura Lippman - In A Strange City

The last bit sounded as if she had memorized it from a textbook or a pamphlet. In a different mood, Tess might have appreciated the irony of being held up by this heightened sensitivity toward domestic violence. Tonight, all she could think was that Baltimore ’s social service agencies seemed to work best when they were thwarting her.

“Gretchen is my business partner,” she said, striving for a patience she didn’t feel. “We don’t live together. The house on Bayard is one of my uncle’s business properties.” Every time she repeated the lie about her relationship to Pitts, she sent a mental apology to her real flesh-and-blood uncles, feeling as if she had slandered them. “May I see him now?”

The doctor continued to regard Tess with skepticism. But there was nothing she could do, as long as the stories matched. Even Pitts was singing this song, for Tess and Gretchen had told him he’d be taken from the hospital to city jail if he didn’t do as he was told.

“Yes, I guess you can,” Dr. R. Massinger said, resigned. “It’s not such a bad break, after all; he was really quite lucky. But I should warn you, he’s a little groggy from the painkillers.” All the better.

Propped up on a bed in one of the curtained-off examining rooms, his left leg in a lightweight Flexicast, Pitts was not so groggy that he couldn’t show fear and irritation in one look.

“This is all your fault,” he announced, folding his arms across his chest.

“Your accident? I think not. The meeting in the warehouse? Most definitely. But then, none of this would have happened if you hadn’t been-what did Ensor say?-so damn clever.”

“I am clever,” Pitts muttered. “Cleverer than some people want to give me credit for.”

“You know what? I agree. And now I need you to tell me what you’ve been using all this brainpower to achieve.”

Pitts turned his head to the side, as if this conversation was his to end. Tess simply walked around the bed and put her face close to his, as close as she could bear. He smelled of peppermints and bay rum aftershave and sweat and something else-that full-bodied hormone-rich smell the body releases after a brush with death.

“I haven’t called the police yet. If you’re nice to me, tell me what I want to know, I’ll give your lawyer a head start on the cops.”

“That’s no big favor. The police have to let me talk to my lawyer.”

“Yes, they do,” Tess agreed. “But if you lawyer-up, they’re more likely to throw a couple murder charges at you. Now, you’ve got a warehouse full of what I suspect is stolen property, but I don’t think you’re actually capable of killing anyone. So talk to me, then your lawyer, and you’ll improve your chances of not being named a conspirator or an accessory after the fact in the death of Bobby Hilliard.”

He looked frightened. “Could they do that? Because I didn’t-I really didn’t have anything to do with the killings or the attack on Shawn.”

“They could do that.”

There was a stool next to the bed, and Tess took this as a seat, so she and Pitts were no longer nose to nose. His face seemed to relax-the lines in his forehead disappeared and his cheeks no longer looked quite so puffy-and Tess realized he was relieved, in a way, to tell the truth for once. Lying is exhausting, and Pitts, in his haze of painkillers, was tired of making the effort.

“I’m an antiques scout, a good one,” Pitts began, with a sigh at once weary and defensive. “Shawn Hayes had used me for years to scour the state, and beyond, for legitimate finds. But he and Jerold Ensor began to yearn for things that could not be bought or sold on the open market. They approached me with talk of a partnership-I would get them what they wanted, by whatever means necessary, and we would share in the ownership.”

“Why didn’t you just charge them whatever the traffic would bear, and count your money? Why did you want to be a partner?”

Pitts’s expression could not have been more melancholy. “In my line of work, you can’t afford to keep the things you want. Even if you make that once-in-a-lifetime discovery-the Ming vase at a garage sale- you have to sell it. It’s business. Do you think a person wants to collect cookie jars and salt cellars? No, I specialized in those things because they weren’t intrinsically valuable when I started out. Today frankly even the cookie jars are getting to be out of sight. Everything costs so much now. Little old ladies who would sell you a signed Stickley ten years ago for twenty dollars now want thousands for Montgomery Ward crap. I call it the eBaying of America.”

Tess didn’t disagree-she too had noticed this odd new greed-but it wasn’t a tangent she wanted to pursue.

“Where does Bobby Hilliard fit in?”

“I knew where many of the state’s contraband treasures were. I called it Baltimore-bilia, although that’s a slight misnomer, but Marylandia doesn’t have the same ring, does it? I knew who was rumored to have a lock of Poe’s hair, for example, or the Duchess of Windsor’s opera gloves. So did Shawn Hayes, for that matter: Those who indulge in this passion find they need to gossip about it, drop hints, show off to people they think they can trust. Otherwise, it’s like having a nightingale but always keeping the cover on its cage. And Shawn was smart. He realized if you steal things that have been obtained illegally, it’s hard for the victims to squawk.”

Pitts’s voice trailed off, although it was unclear if it was the painkillers that were carrying him away or some reverie about Marylandia. No-Baltimore-bilia. He was right, the second term was much better.

“But Bobby-” Tess prodded him.

“Bobby? Oh, Bobby. Well, think about it. I needed to have a buffer, my own scout. I needed someone who could inventory the homes I identified, pocket smaller items, and tell me what else was on view. Someone who could leave a window unlocked, inform me what kind of security system was in place or when the owner was going out of town.”

“So what did you do, run a classified ad in the Beacon-Light: ”Wanted, one kleptomaniac, flexible hours, glamorous associates‘?“

“You’re so droll,” Pitts said, and the chance to mock her seemed to sharpen him, pull him back from dreamland. “Sometimes, all one needs is serendipity’s nudge. One day I was in a consignment shop in Hampden, the Turnover Shop, and I saw Bobby pocket a leather-bound card box-not valuable, but quite lovely. He had good taste. I followed him. He was so grateful when he found out I didn’t intend to turn him in but had sought him out because I admired his choice. It was only a matter of time before I turned his gratitude into servitude. When I found out he was a waiter, it was perfect. It was easy to get him a job with a catering firm, one that handles a lot of the better parties. And, of course, when Shawn Hayes began talking up this certain catering firm, it began to get even more gigs. Shawn’s opinion on such matters carried a lot of weight.”

“Did Bobby understand what you were doing?”

“More or less. It seemed to amuse him. ”None of you deserve to own any of this stuff,“ he said to me at one point. His attitude seemed to be that if so-and-so had purchased something, knowing it wasn’t a legal transaction, then what was it to him if we transferred ownership to Shawn and Jerold? That’s how he spoke of what we did. Transferring ownership.”

“Nice euphemism,” Tess said. She wondered if logorrhea was a common side effect of painkillers. “So how long did this happy little crime wave go on?”

“Oh, off and on for four years. We had to space things out. Our victims may not be able to call the police, but we still had to be careful. We didn’t want a pattern to emerge.”