Laura Lippman - Charm City

How surreal it had been, standing in the alcove of safe deposit boxes with prom queen Linda as she'd told her story. A story, not incidentally, that happened to be the complete opposite of what the Beacon-Light had reported. When did you stop beating your wife, Mr. Wynkowski? Actually, she beat me. Oh sure, Mr. Wynkowski . Even the bit about Linda's agoraphobia had been made up. The only reason she never left Cross Keys was because she was a lazy eccentric without any friends.

As a dead man, Wink couldn't be libeled, not in this state. Yet he hadn't been dead when the story had first run. Maybe the widow Wynkowski had a wrongful death suit on those grounds. Unfortunately, Tess did not work for the widow Wynkowski, she worked for the Beacon-Light , and all her information belonged to them, even information that had nothing to do with how a certain story got into the paper, and everything to do with how screwed up it was once it got there.

Rosita's use of checkbook journalism had been a toss-up, slimy but not illegal. Paying and getting the story ass-backwards-Tess couldn't keep this to herself. Gee, if only Bertie had known the real story, she could have made so much more. Not as much as $20,000 a month, perhaps, but definitely more than fifty bucks. But Bertie, peering through the curtains in the darkness, had seen what she'd expected to see, and Rosita had found what she'd expected to find.

She finished off the dregs of her Coke, then put her car in gear. Despite having consumed almost 100 grams of simple sugars, she felt sluggish and still had a brackish taste at the back of her throat that the Coke couldn't wash away. Strange, she had thought victory was suppose to taste sweet.

Tess found Jack Sterling in the Blight's basement level canteen. The room's vending machines, the only source of sustenance in-house, gave new meaning to the phrase "strictly from hunger." Olive loaf sandwiches, tins of stew, lots of pork rinds, rock-hard Gummi Bears. And according to the lights on the soda machine, the only drink selections were practically fluorescent-orange, grape, and diet lime.

Sterling stared longingly at some of the dusty chocolate bars in the candy machine's metal coils, sighed, and resignedly settled on a bag of honey-mustard pretzels. Ever the gentleman, he offered the bag to Tess first, but she shook her head.

"I just had lunch," she said.

"I hope it was something elegant and fattening. A metabolism like yours is a terrible thing to waste."

"Well, it was from Eddie's," she said. "Look, remember when you asked me to talk to Wynkowski's wife?"

"Of course I do, Tess. I told you how much I appreciated that, what a relief it was to know she didn't think we were culpable. Perhaps I didn't stress my gratitude enough-"

"No, no, I'm not digging for a compliment. It's just-well, I didn't stop there. Some things she said made me curious, and I decided to look at Wink's divorce papers. And I noticed something odd in the file, so I went to talk to the first Mrs. Wynkowski." She decided to skip over the detail about Rosita's personnel file ending up on her windshield. That would only confuse things. "The next thing I knew, I was canvassing MacTavish Avenue in Violetville, trying to figure out who could have told Rosita about the domestic abuse, because it sure wasn't the first Mrs. Wynkowski."

Sterling tried to keep his voice even and calm, but Tess could tell he was annoyed. "I arranged for you to be able to come and go as you pleased so you could look into your uncle's beating, not so you could meddle in a story that the Beacon-Light is still pursuing. What in hell were you thinking? You could have compromised our coverage, or worse yet, inadvertently let it slip that the first story was published by accident."

Tess folded her arms across her chest, chastened and defensive. So much for the pat on the head she thought was her due. "Rosita had some problems in San Antonio. Someone down there suggested if I followed in her footsteps, I would find the same pattern here. I did, and I did. Wink never hit his wife, Jack, she hit him . Rosita paid someone for her information, and she didn't begin to try to check it out. I mean, she got a no comment, but she even twisted that to make it sound as if Linda Wynkowski was scared to confirm the story-"

Sterling held up a hand. "Slow down, Tess. Take a deep breath, start over, and tell me everything in straight chronological order, okay?"

And so Tess did-almost. She still held back the detail about the envelope she'd found on her car. Perhaps because it seemed a little sleazy, as if she'd been manipulated by an unknown source whose agenda was still unclear.

"I know I wasn't asked to do any of this," she finished. "But sometimes my curiosity gets the better of me. You were the one who asked me what I thought about that story, on a gut level, and I really didn't have an answer at the time. Now I think it was the combination of solid reporting and sordid gossip that made it seem slightly off. Rosita's work undermined Feeney's at every turn."

"Feeney is a friend of yours, isn't he, Tess?"

Uh-oh. "Baltimore is a small town of 650,000 people. Everyone knows everyone here."

"Do you know him the same way you knew Jonathan Ross?"

"No!" Shit, she was blushing. "I mean, we're friends. We have a drink from time to time, that's all."

"Don't you think it was an ethical breach for you to take this job, given your relationship with him?"

"Well, yes." Something in Sterling's gentle manner tempted her to tell the truth-it would feel so good to get some of those lies off her ledger. Besides, she no longer felt a need to protect Feeney, not after his behavior yesterday. Still, if she veered from the official version, things would get tricky.

"I was told he had an ironclad alibi for the night, so it wasn't an issue."

" You were told . Nice little wiggle phrase, there."

"What does it matter now?" she said, feeling a little desperate under Sterling's questions. She suddenly realized what a good reporter he must have been in his day. "Doesn't what I've learned today make it pretty obvious Rosita slipped the story into the paper? She's ruthless as hell."

Sterling stood up, crumpled his pretzel bag in his hand, and flicked it at the trash can for a clean two-pointer. "Your information doesn't suggest or confirm anything about the original incident. But I want you to come with me now and talk to Lionel about it."

"Why?"

"Because I think Rosita Ruiz's days at the Beacon-Light are coming to an end."

It snowed on Friday morning, a heavy, wet snow with fat flakes that stuck only to the grass, but it was enough to throw the morning commute into complete chaos, as cars spun out in anticipation of spinning out and the local schools announced they would start one hour late, two hours late, then not at all. Tess had tried to take the bus to the Beacon-Light , thinking it might be marginally faster, but the bus had been sideswiped, which was seen as a kind of open lottery in most city neighborhoods, and pedestrians began climbing on until it was standing-room only. Finally, a young security guard got on and held the doors shut, as thwarted plaintiffs surrounded the bus and pounded on its sides. Tess squeezed out the back door, letting a few more potential plaintiffs on in the process, and hailed a taxi. In fact, her neck and shoulders were sore, but she had a hunch it was the Blight , not the transit system, that was at fault.

Although she was twenty minutes late, the meeting in the publisher's conference room had yet to start. Five-Four and Lionel Mabry, who lived far out in the suburbs, were still en route, and Sterling was sequestered with Rosita. Colleen Reganhart sat glumly at the table with Guy Whitman, whose face brightened when Tess walked in.