Laura Lippman - Charm City

But hitting him was just a fantasy, and a stupid one at that. Tess opted to hide behind her book, rereading the scene in which the muleteers beat Sancho Panza.

"You'd rather read a book than talk to me?"

"I'd rather be set on fire than talk to you."

Wink dismounted, grabbing her left arm as if to balance himself, although his footing seemed sure enough. She tensed, hoping he could feel the clenched bicep, the long tricep beneath it.

"I guess you don't want to watch basketball games from the floor. It's a good way to meet good earners. Unfortunately, we tend to be married, us rich guys."

"From what I read in the papers, you're not so rich."

"Yeah, well, maybe I'll get richer, courtesy of the Beacon-Light . Maybe I'll have some of the Pfieffer family's millions before this is all over."

"Are you saying the newspaper libeled you? I'd like to hear more about that. I'm sure a lot of people would." The Blight editors hadn't asked her to probe Wynkowski's legal intentions, but it couldn't hurt.

"I'm saying they'll be sorry. Like you, honey." This time, he ran his index finger along the inside of her arm. "You listen to the Boss, or are you one of those younger kids who thinks you're too cool?"

"Actually, I like Springsteen." I'm just not queer enough to call him the Boss .

"Well, the Boss may have been from New Jersey, but he coulda been writing about Baltimore all these years. This is a town full of losers, baby, people who are so scared of the future, they end up talking about the past all the time. There's more to life than getting Barry Levinson to make some fucking movie about you. No one made a movie about me, but I'm going to be bigger than any of 'em. Don't believe everything you read in the papers."

A parting squeeze of her arm, then he returned to his satellites, who had been lost without him, bumping into each other and looking around. Relieved, they clapped him on the back, although a little gingerly, in case there was any moisture left over from his five minutes of activity. Paul Tucci glanced back at Tess curiously, then limped out after them.

That night, Tess and Crow tried to watch the 6 o'clock news from bed, while trying to protect the perimeter from Esskay, who circled them, intent on stealing their Chinese food or curling up on their pillows, maybe both.

"What a hedonist," Tess complained, rescuing a carton of General Tso's chicken from the nightstand just as Esskay tried to clamp down on it. Thwarted, the dog grabbed one of the pillows and carried it off into the corner, where she appeared to be making a nest. So far, she had kidnapped an old, stuffed bear of Tess's, placing it in the center of a pile made from one of Crow's T-shirts, tissue salvaged from the trash, and several pairs of Tess's underwear.

"Have a heart," Crow admonished. "You'd need pillows, too, if you were all bones."

"You're saying I'm not?" Tess asked in mock outrage. "Hey, turn up the sound. They're doing the piece on Wink."

The TV showed several television crews massed in front of Wink's fake Tudor mansion, an overdone confection of turrets and stained glass. Stock footage, Tess realized, shot the day before, when the Blight's story had run and all the TV reporters had camped out in front of Wink's property, waiting in vain for him to comment.

"What's the point of a new house designed to look old?" Crow wondered.

"I guess it's for people who have to have wainscoting, ivy, and a subzero refrigerator. Louder, please. I still can't hear."

The anchor's voice, so deep and rich it vibrated on Tess's cheap set, filled the room: "Channel Eight has learned tonight that Wink Wynkowski plans a news conference Monday to respond to the charges against him in the local press." The footage changed to shots from the gym-Wink pedaling, Wink thumping the heavy bag, Wink flirting.

"That's your arm!" Crow exulted. "I recognize the mole on your elbow."

"And although he took time out to sweat at Durban 's gym today, Wink assured me, in an exclusive interview, that he wasn't sweating the basketball deal." So the reporter had stolen the line after all.

Cut to a shot of Wink outside Durban 's gym, breathing clouds of smoke in the wintry air as he spoke into a microphone. Tess was thankful he had put a jogging suit on over his singlet.

"All I want to tell my supporters-and I know I have a lot of them-is to rest easy. I always knew we'd have people fighting us on this. I just didn't expect they'd be right here in my hometown." He paused, as if he expected cheers or applause, then remembered he was being taped for television. "You know, maybe when I wrap this deal up, I ought to look at starting a new newspaper, or convince one of the big chains to buy the poor excuse for the one we got. You know what they say about Baltimore? It's the biggest city in the country without a daily newspaper."

"What about those charges in the Beacon-Light , Wink?" the anchor asked, puffed up with pride at his daring. "Any truth to them at all?"

Tess rolled her eyes. "He's going to hit this one farther than the home run Frank Robinson hit out of Memorial Stadium."

"I can't comment on that now, but I expect to have a detailed response by Monday after talking to my advisers. It's a complicated situation and I have to keep my priorities straight, not get distracted. The game plan is, number one, buy the team, number two, get it here, and then, number three, I'll worry about those little dogs nipping at my heels."

"But what about the information on your, uh, youthful transgressions? Can you elaborate on that? Some people have noted that three years is a long time to send a juvenile away on robbery charges."

To Tess's surprise, Wink's eyes began to tear up in what seemed to be a genuinely spontaneous show of emotion. He started to speak, stopped, cleared his throat, and continued, almost seething and crying at the same time.

"There's a reason they keep your name confidential when you do things as a kid, you know. It gives you a chance to start over, get things right. And I did pretty well with the chance I got, better than most. Yet I get singled out. Is that fair? You gonna open up the records of every guy in town who went to Montrose? Because I'm not the only one, you know. I'm not the only guy in this town who needed a fresh start."

Tess and Crow were so mesmerized by this performance that Esskay was able to make another lunge toward the Chinese food, snaring a gnawed sparerib from Crow's plate. Her victory was short-lived: she began retching, the bone lodged deep in her throat.

"Try the Heimlich maneuver," Tess cried, panicking. Unruffled, Crow reached his hand down the dog's throat and extracted the rib, gooey with drool and sauce. Esskay stared at the bone as if she had never seen it before, then tried to snatch it back from him.

"Pavlov, indeed," Tess snorted in disgust, but her heart was still beating a little fast. "This stupid mutt can't learn anything. She can't even remember she almost choked to death on that same damn bone ten seconds ago."

"Oh, I don't know," Crow said, forgiving as always. "We all have things we desire even though we know they wouldn't be good for us. Don't you have a few spareribs in your life?"

A rhetorical question, one of Crow's flights of fancy, nothing more. To Tess's consternation, an image of Jack Sterling flashed through her mind-his blue eyes, the strange little sensation she had felt when they shook hands, as if he had caught a spark of static electricity from the carpet in the conference room and passed it on to her. Blushing, she hid her hot face in Esskay's hotter neck, stroking the dog until she was sure the telltale color had subsided.

"Ican think of five other things I should be doing right now. I really don't have time to be your tour guide."