Laura Lippman - Charm City

The Working Man's Bar and Grille was the most notorious of Fells Point's megabars, a sprawling warehouse on the waterfront. Its deck, strung with Japanese lanterns, had been part of the pretty lights that made the view from the Joy America so charming. Close up, the charm quickly dissipated. The bar's ersatz Marxist decor-machine parts from its paper-recycling past, the '30s-style posters of brawny working men and the real picket signs from famous Baltimore strikes-was incongruous, almost offensive, alongside five-dollar microbrews and margaritas at seven-fifty. And its college-kid patrons thought working with one's hands déclassé, although urinating in public and walking on top of the parked cars of Fells Point was apparently just another Saturday night.

Whitney was at the rubber-topped bar, designed to look like a conveyor belt. Colleen Reganhart was more or less on the bar, facedown, arms spread in a crucifixion pose, black hair fanning out into the dipping sauce from a half-eaten plate of Buffalo wings.

"She looks pretty docile," Tess said.

"Watch this." Whitney patted her arm. "Colleen, don't you think we ought to be running along now?"

Colleen raised her head a few inches, looked at Whitney with bleary eyes and said, "Fuck you, Talbot. You're the last person I want to see tonight."

"Tess is here. Didn't you say you wanted to talk to her?"

Colleen managed to pull her entire upper body from the bar and turned toward Tess. "Did I? Well, fuck you, too."

The bartender came over. It was Steve, Kitty's most recent dalliance. But Kitty had already dropped him, so he saw no percentage in being helpful to her niece.

"Look, Tess, I cut her off half an hour ago, but she won't leave and our crowd is starting to pick up. I can't have this broad taking up prime real estate and mouthing off at anyone who brushes against her. Blondie here said you'd take care of it."

Whitney raised an eyebrow. She didn't feel a bit guilty, Tess could tell. She might even be relishing the way she had interrupted her dinner with Sterling.

"My car's out front," she said blandly. "I need your help to carry her, then we'll drop her off at her apartment and put her to bed."

"How did you become the chaperone?" Tess said, tucking a hand beneath Colleen's armpit, as Whitney propped her up on the other side. Colleen didn't put up much of a fight, simply muttered a cursory list of curses as they propelled her to the door.

"Another favor for Lionel Mabry. He'd prefer his top people not to get arrested for public intoxication. She called him from a pay phone here an hour ago, threatening to quit one minute, then just threatening him . He convinced her to tell him where she was, then he called me and asked that I take care of it."

"With my assistance."

"I couldn't call anyone from the paper." Whitney glanced at Tess, taking in the good winter coat, the sheer hose and high heels, the upswept hair. "Although Sterling was welcome to come along. How was dinner, by the way? Did you make it to dessert? Did you have that whirligig thing they serve, with chocolate and cinnamon?"

"Let's just get this over with, okay?"

Sometimes Tess wondered if there was a single warehouse left in Baltimore still doing an honest day's work. Colleen lived in Henderson's Wharf, which had started life as a storehouse for the B amp; O Railroad. It sat at the end of Fell Street, a short walk from the Working Man's Bar and Grille, assuming one could still walk. Colleen never would have made it in her heels-the cobblestones on Thames Street would have brought her down in only a few steps. She passed out during the five-minute drive, forcing Whitney and Tess to carry the editor into her building like so much dirty laundry.

"She's on the sixth floor," Whitney said. "Harbor side, naturally."

"Naturally," Tess echoed.

Yet the duplex apartment they entered was simply a richer version of Rosita's spartan apartment, with almost no real furniture and not even one picture hung, although two rectangles wrapped in brown paper leaned against the exposed brick wall. Another woman on the move, Tess thought, so determined to get somewhere she never stopped and looked around at where she was.

"Should we try to put her to bed?"

"I don't want to carry her up the stairs," Whitney said. "Let's leave her on the sofa and help ourselves to her bourbon. I have a feeling that's one thing you can always find in Colleen's kitchen."

Colleen didn't have any bourbon, but she did have good Scotch and an unopened bag of Mint Milanos. Whitney broke the seal on both with great glee, then selected two mismatched glasses from one of the kitchen cabinets.

"We've earned it," she said to Tess, as they sat in the carpeted area where the dining room table might have been, if Colleen had gotten around to buying one.

"I guess you can put it on your expense account. Another favor for Lionel." She turned the phrase over in her mind. It was suddenly rich with meaning. "What was the first favor, anyway?"

Whitney studied Tess. They knew each other so well. Tess could see her mind working, trying to calculate how much Tess had figured out, which would determine how much Whitney had to admit.

"Getting you to come work for him, of course."

"And the second? There was a second favor, too, right?" Whitney didn't say anything.

"I'm guessing the second favor was leaving the envelope on my car, the one with Rosita's personnel file in it. Lionel wanted me to see it, but didn't want anyone to know where it came from. What did he want me to find, whitney?"

"Something. Anything." Whitney went into the kitchen and came back with a steak knife, which she used to slice open a Milano as if she were shucking an oyster. She then licked the chocolate from the inside. "He didn't know you'd do as well as you did, though. He was quite pleased at how quickly you got the goods on her. Lionel always suspected Rosita was trouble." She put the licked-clean cookie aside, then opened another one and began reaming the chocolate out of it. "I told him you would do a good job."

"So this didn't have anything to do with Feeney's story, did it? That was just an excuse, a way to go after Rosita. Mabry wanted to be rid of her, wanted to do an end-run around the union, and he saw this as an opportunity. Nail her for the story, or something else equally egregious, and he could fire her, or scare her out."

"Rosita was trouble, Lionel figured that out early on. He tried to put her back on the copy desk, but she screamed racism and sexism and every other ism she could think of. So he let Colleen pair her with Feeney, figuring she couldn't get in too much trouble working with another reporter. But she managed to. You've heard of rogue cops? Rosita's a rogue reporter. She'd do anything for a Page One story. Lionel had to get her out, and he didn't have time for her dismissal to grind through the union process. It was only a matter of time before the Beacon-Light ended up with a major libel case on its hands. Jesus, it almost did, Tess. If Wink hadn't killed himself, he could have sued the paper over that first story."

"But he wouldn't have. Wink paid his ex-wife hundreds of thousands of dollars never to tell anyone what had happened. He was humiliated."

Whitney shrugged. "He might have been willing to come forward now, because it would have undermined everything else the paper said about him, even the true stuff. I'm surprised he didn't think about that before he killed himself."

"Rosita says he was murdered."

"If Rosita said nice day, I'd check it out. She lies all the time, about little things, just to stay in practice. I swear, I've caught her in the most idiotic inconsistencies. What she majored in, for example. What part of Boston she grew up in. Who lies about stuff like that? She's crazy."