Laura Lippman - Charm City

"Illegal greyhound races? Why would anyone go to the trouble of setting those up?"

"Wait," Spike said grimly.

The dogs disappeared on the far side of the track, and Spike provided a fake call while they were off-screen. "And as they move past the second post, it's Down on His Luck in the lead, with Bum Steer hard on his flank. Down on His Luck. Bum Steer. Down on His Luck. Bum Steer. Now Dead Last is making a move on the outside and down the stretch they come."

The dogs swung back into view and Spike, using the VCR remote control, switched to slow-motion. The picture was a little clearer at this speed and Tess could see the dogs straining toward the finish, almost a frame at a time, like an animated cartoon reduced to its individual cels. The dogs looked as Esskay had when Tess first met her-too skinny, with raw patches on the fur-but their power was truly impressive. Tess unconsciously hunched her shoulders in rhythm with the dog in the lead, neck stretching forward until the cords were visible.

Then, just a few feet short of the finish line, the leader collapsed. A broken leg? The other dogs parted around the fallen dog, still intent on the rabbit. Another one fell, then another. In all, four dogs collapsed on the track well short of the finish, dark stains spreading beneath them.

"I-I don't understand," Tess said, fearing she did.

"They get retired racers from some sleazy trainers," Tommy said. "Pay 'em twenny dollars a head, which is twenny dollars more'n most people would pay. Then these guys pay $200 to shoot 'em while they're running. Hit a dog, take home a set of ears. They haul the dead dogs off and bury 'em somewhere, somewhere secret. Don't matter if anyone finds them. Without the ears, there's no way to trace 'em."

"But not all those dogs were killed. Two are still moving." She pointed to the dogs' limbs, twitching as Esskay's did in her sleep.

"They put down the maimed ones," Spike said. "In some ways, it's the nicest thing they do. Now, hush a minute. The important part is coming up."

Tess watched as a group of men streamed onto the track, waving their rifles over the heads and dancing around the bodies of the fallen dogs. They were quite pleased with themselves. It is difficult, after all, to hit a target moving almost forty miles an hour. One man leaned heavily on his gun as he grabbed the lifeless body of one dog, and Tess thought she could read his lips. "This is mine! This is mine!" The face was a little blurry, but awfully familiar. There was something in the walk, in the set of his shoulders.

"Is that-?"

"Shore is," Spike said. "Now you know why we're gonna do it the way we're gonna do it. Keep us all out of it, but still shut ' em down. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Tess said weakly. She had held onto her breakfast, but not by much. "How did you come to have this tape, Spike?"

"Guy who runs this place is a friend. Was a friend. Ran a decent joint, wasn't my business if people wanted to come shoot ducks. That was legal, after all. But when I stopped by last March and saw this-well, I couldn't stand by no longer. That night, when the action had moved to the house, I took the videotape out of a surveillance camera and grabbed the ears I found in the barn. I knew he'd send some guys after me. I just thought I'd have a bigger head start."

"If you hadn't taken Esskay, too, they might not have been able to link you to the missing ears and tape."

"But she smiled at me, when she saw me in the barn," Spike said, smiling himself. "How could I leave her behind?"

"I guess it's as good a time as any for me to give you something," Tess told her uncle. She walked over to the store room and opened the door Tommy had opened almost two months ago. But the dog who bounded out was a different creature-glossy fur, bright eyes, the compleat hedonist. Esskay pranced around Spike, rooting under his armpits in search of treats. Just like she had with Crow .

"See, she's glad to be back with you," she said. Her voice didn't catch so much as it slipped.

"Aw, she likes me because I got the keys to the pantry. That's not real likin'. Anyway, how'm I gonna walk a dog, with my burn leg?" he asked, slapping the leg in question. "You do your old Uncle Spike a big favor and keep this mutt for now, okay?"

Tess smiled tremulously: Esskay was hers. She hadn't dared to hope for it. She hadn't even admitted to herself that she really wanted the dog. As she bent down to fasten the leash to Esskay's collar-a proper nylon one, no need for a heavy chain any more, not since she had broken down and purchased her first gun two weeks ago-she asked Spike a question that had nagged her for some time.

"Where was the tape all this time?"

"In the safe deposit box Tommy and I share. Whaddaya think I am, stupid or something?"

Tess laughed then, although laughing still hurt her ribs. Sterling's kicks had cracked two of them, keeping her off the water for much of this spring and limiting her other workouts. A fitting revenge for the former fat boy, always so covetous of her metabolism. Until she healed, she actually had to watch what she ate. She wondered if this would be much of a consolation to Sterling as he sat in the city jail, charged with Wink's murder and her attempted murder.

The police had found his fingerprints on the door to Wink's Mustang; the tox screens had turned up a prescription drug that matched the painkiller Sterling had been given for his on-again, off-again carpal tunnel problems. THE EDITOR WAS A KILLER. Juicy stuff, but the Beacon-Light wasn't giving the story much play, preferring to concentrate on Paul Tucci and his increasingly desperate attempts to land a basketball team. The Blight had left it to the Washington Post's media critic to chronicle Sterling's rise and fall. It hadn't been a particularly difficult story to report, despite the former editor's refusal to be interviewed. Raymond John Sterling had left a trail as bright and as slimy as a slug in the moonlight.

"No, Uncle Spike, I know you're not stupid," Tess assured him, holding her aching sides. "After all, you're the one who is going to tell me how to shut down this place without going to the police."

"I've just never felt the police really understand me," Spike said.

"They're such strictlers for detail?" Tommy added.

Tess hadn't planned on having Esskay with her when she'd made the 11 A.M. appointment with Lionel Mabry earlier that week, but there wasn't time to take the dog home. Maybe it was for the best. Mabry might have kept her waiting even longer, if it weren't for the snorting canine companion with the impulsive bladder.

"Miss Monaghan," Mabry said, entering the conference room. Not the grand one off the publisher's office-she no longer rated that; but a ratty one in the news room, the site of the endless editors' meetings.

"How you doing, Lionel?"

He seemed a little taken aback to hear her use his first name. "I am sorry it took so long for accounting to prepare your check-they raised a stink about some of the expenses you submitted. Something about a bill for a bracelet? But if you hadn't insisted on picking it up in person, you could have had it days ago through the mail. You didn't need to come down here again."

"The thing is, I have something for you," she said, holding out the tape, along with a letter explaining its contents, the circumstances by which it had been obtained, and a list of those people Spike knew frequented the hunting club. Lionel scanned it quickly. He was a quick study, Tess realized. A shrewd man, shrewd enough to let others think he was soft and unfocused. An act not unlike the dumb jock one she liked to pull.

"It's a good story," he said. "A very good story indeed. Generous of you to bring it to us. I know your experiences with the paper have not been exactly, uh, copacetic."