Laura Lippman - Charm City

An interview in Spanish? Rosita had probably conducted it. On a hunch, Tess dialed the San Antonio Eagle again, and was transferred only twice before she reached Rosita's erstwhile partner.

"A.J. here."

"As in Alann Shepard?"

"No astronaut jokes, okay? I've heard them all in my time."

"I'm Tess Monaghan at the Baltimore Beacon-Light and I'm doing a background check on Rosita Ruiz."

If his face matched his voice, it must have the world's largest smirk on it. "What has she stepped into now?"

The Lone Star version of Feeney. Tess found herself warming to him, then remembered she was on less than wonderful terms with the real thing.

"Nothing that I know of. This is purely routine. I'm curious about your experience working with her."

"A ‘purely routine' background check six months after she arrives at the paper and less than two weeks after she has her first big story? I'll buy that. If history repeats itself, she'll use that story to jump to yet another paper, and leave the Beacon-Light to clean up behind her. Let's hope the Boston Globe or the Washington Post is smart enough to ask these questions before she signs on the dotted line."

"I talked to Ed Saldivar, but he wouldn't do anything other than confirm her dates of employment."

"Boy, you guys up there really are resourceful. You get a no comment and you stop digging. To think I was envious when Rosita moved on."

"I'm talking to you now," Tess said pointedly. "Obviously I haven't stopped digging. And you obviously have something you're longing to tell me, so why not get to it?"

There was a long pause. When he spoke again, the smarmy tone was gone and his voice was quieter, sadder.

"There's a lot I want to tell you. I want to tell you about invasion-of-privacy lawsuits, which can be as troublesome as libel suits any day. I want to tell you about big-eyed little girls who go up to barely literate Mexican women and say, ‘Oh, I know you're not talking to reporters, but may I come in for a glass of iced tea? It's such a hot day.' I want to tell you the way gossip works in the newspaper world-no one in Texas will touch Rosita, but some Eastern newspapers don't have any contacts here, so they don't know the whole story. I want to tell you that when a newspaper pays someone off for the crimes that appear under a double byline, the blameless partner never gets exonerated. I want to tell you all these things, but the out-of-court settlement came with a gag order, and I could lose my job for what I've already not said."

"Can't you tell me anything more? A few details, or some names?"

"Look, re-report the stories she's done for you. Talk to the people she interviewed, look at any document she used, trace her steps. My hunch is you'll find so much up in Baltimore, you won't need to worry about what happened here." A slight pause. "It's old news, anyway."

Tess heard a voice screaming at him in the background. "Hey, Earth to A.J. You got another call, can you take it, or should I have him orbit until you re-enter?"

"I'm getting off," A.J. said wearily.

"May I call you back?" Tess asked.

"Call me back? Lady, I've never heard of you."

Re-report Rosita's story. Without intending to, Tess had been doing that all along. She had spoken to the two Mrs. Winks, quizzed Feeney on what Rosita had contributed to the original story. She had studied the case files on the Wynkowski divorce, looked for police records that would confirm the domestic violence. In her bragging, Rosita had even provided a handy checklist of everything she had done, and Feeney had backed her up. Feeney got the financial stuff, but I got the stuff about his marriage and his gambling problem. If you listen to what people are talking about around town, it's my part of the story .

Tess drew a line down the center of a legal pad and created two categories-matrimony and betting. Lea had sworn Wink wasn't a gambler, but wives didn't know everything. She then called up the archived electronic copy of that notorious first story, preparing to jot down the names of Rosita's sources and call them back.

No wonder Jack and Lionel had been troubled: there wasn't a single person speaking for attribution in the entire piece, unless the information was so innocuous as to be meaningless. ("‘Everybody loves Wink,' said longtime friend Paul "Tooch" Tucci. ‘Even when they lose to him, they love him.'") At least Feeney had a trail of court papers to buttress his claim Wink wasn't liquid; Rosita had a friend close to Wink, or someone close to the couple . It would be impossible to double-check any of this. Which was probably the point. Rosita had learned at least one thing since leaving San Antonio: how to cover her tracks.

She read the story again, hoping for a lead to follow, anything. Here was the detail about Wink and Linda's bungalow in Violetville, the neighborhood that Jack Sterling had found such an incongruous place for a tough guy. "The wood-frame bungalow on MacTavish looked like the archetypal honeymooners' cottage from the outside, with its new plantings and fresh paint. But a source close to the couple said the honeymoon was over from almost the day the two crossed the threshold, as Wynkowski repeatedly battered his new bride."

The Blight had thoughtfully provided Tess with a city crisscross. Finally, a break. Half the residents on MacTavish, barely two blocks in length, had lived there when Wink and Linda were keeping house, according to the listings. The neighbors probably knew as much about the couple's marriage as anyone, Tess figured. Wood-frame bungalows, with their thin walls, were notoriously bad at keeping secrets.

Had violet ever bloomed in Violetville? It was hard to imagine now. The neighborhood was in the city's industrial southwest corner, barely within the city limits, an important distinction, for Baltimore is the rare municipality that lies within no county. It stood alone when it was rich, and now it stood alone in its poverty, a civic pariah. Violetville was one of those strange islands one found along the edges.

Still, it was holding on to middle-class status by the skin of its teeth. Streets with names like MacTavish, Sharon-Leigh, Benson, Clarenell, Haverhill-names with no connection Tess could discern-looked like John Waters, circa Pink Flamingos . Modest houses, green corrugated awnings, metal porch chairs, kitschy yard art that didn't know it was kitschy. Even the lighting was the same as Waters' early work-washed out, harsh, wintry. The old Wynkowski house-the "honeymooners' cottage"-was the seediest on MacTavish, as if Wink and Linda had left all their bad karma behind when they'd moved on.

Tess canvassed the block, working a loop that took her north, then across the street and south along the brick rowhouses, then north again, until she had arrived at the Wynkowskis' neighbor. Along her circular path, a few residents had remembered the telltale signs of a tempestuous marriage: bursts of noise, especially in the summer, when windows were open and voices carried. But nothing more. Everyone was happy to talk to her-Tess had the sense she was the most exciting thing to happen on MacTavish in quite some time-but their memories were blurred, or vague, and they had nothing but praise for Rosita. " Such a polite young woman ." By the time Tess reached the last house, she was bored and anxious to move on. She almost hoped no one would answer.

A wizened figure in a faded blue bathrobe answered the door while her knock still echoed. Tess stared down at a pink scalp and wispy white hair, which contrasted nicely with the baby blue robe and matching slippers. From this perspective, it was impossible to tell if the person staring at her sternum was male or female. The hair, while thin, was longish and untidy. A man overdue for a haircut? Or a woman who no longer took pains with her appearance?