"Baltimore Blues" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lippman Laura)Chapter 7Tess dawdled the next morning, reluctant to show up at the boat house. When she finally arrived Rock apparently was already on the water, as she had hoped. She rowed her usual route. It was a glorious morning, a day to savor. Brilliant blue sky, light wind, crisp air. Indian autumn, Tess called it-a fake fall to be replaced by another wave of muggy weather any day now. Tess felt she could row the length of the Chesapeake, find her way to the Atlantic, and make England by lunchtime. She settled for a power piece back to the dock. Bursting with endorphins, she waited in the practice room, pretending to stretch until 8 A.M., when she finally gave up on Rock. He was off licking his wounds somewhere. He'd come around eventually. She skipped Jimmy's and ate breakfast at her aunt's kitchen table, feasting on leftover cornbread that Officer Friendly had prepared the night before, and reading the papers her aunt had left behind in a tidy pile. Tess worked from back to front, a childhood habit reinforced by her days as a reporter. When she had worked at a paper, she already knew the local news, so she saved it for last, reading features and sports, then the Michael Abramowitz, a lawyer whose amateurish but unforgettable advertisements made him an unlikely local celebrity, was strangled last night in his Inner Harbor office at the staid law firm of O'Neal, O'Connor and O'Neill, according to police. A suspect was arrested within an hour of the slaying, which police described as unusually brutal. Darryl Paxton, a thirty-three-year-old researcher at Johns Hopkins medical school, was to be held overnight in the central district lockup, then taken before a commissioner for bail review this morning. According to sources close to the investigation, Mr. Abramowitz was beaten and squeezed in a pythonlike grip, then beaten viciously. He also had bruises on his face, presumably from a fight with Mr. Paxton, who visited him at the office just after 10 P.M., according to a security guard's log. The body was discovered by a custodian… Shirley Temple. Tess felt her stomach clutch and saw the child movie star's dimpled face swimming before her, a ghostly apparition in pale blue. When she was a child-well, fourteen-she had broken her mother's Shirley Temple cereal bowl and blamed it on a neighbor's child. No one had ever discovered her lie. Twenty years later, guilt always evoked the same reaction-Shirley's face, followed by nausea and fear. She had never been good, but she had always been good at not being caught. She picked up the paper again. There was nothing new beyond that third paragraph, only boilerplate on Abramowitz and his career. Certainly, nothing was new to Tess. Even the style and the reporting were as familiar to Tess as a lover's kiss. In a sense, it was her lover's kiss. The article was the handiwork of Jonathan Ross, her sometime bedmate and a consistent star in the "But I know more," she said out loud. What Jonathan wouldn't give to know what she knew-the woman at the center of this triangle, the trysts at the Renaissance Harborplace, Rock's suspicions. She was the one person who could put it all together. With that thought she threw the paper down and called for Kitty, her voice thin and shrill. "Tesser?" Kitty came on a run, dressed in an Edwardian frock of white lawn, a white ribbon in her curls and white canvas Jack Purcells on her size five feet. The effect was a little bit flapper, a little 1920s Wimbledon, a little 1970s Baltimore, when anyone who wore shoes other than Jacks was ridiculed for appearing in "fish heads." Tess thrust the paper at her: "Remember my detective job? It was quite a success. I caught Rock's fiancée with her boss. Now the boss is dead and Rock's in jail." Kitty skimmed the article. "Did you tell Rock what you found out?" "No, I goaded Ava into telling him last night. She says it was sexual harassment. She had to sleep with Abramowitz to keep her job. The last time I saw her, she was on her car phone, telling Rock her story." Kitty was a quick study. "You need to disappear for a while," she announced decisively. "Take a little trip and don't tell me where. Given my relationship with Thaddeus, I'd prefer not to know too much so I won't have to lie if anyone comes looking for you." "I'll have to talk to them eventually." "Yes, you will," Kitty agreed. "But it wouldn't hurt to be unavailable for a few days while you figure out how you want to handle this. Take any money you need out of the cash register and leave me a check. I won't cash it unless I have to. Find a cheap motel or a friend's house, then call me collect from pay phones. In a few days we'll know where this is headed, and you can come home." Tess took the stairs to her apartment two at a time and began throwing clothes into a battered leather knapsack. Her friend Whitney's family had a house on the shore near Oxford, with a small guest house on the property's edge. She and Whitney had used it during college when they had wanted to get away. Rich friends had their charms. She would have to assume she was still welcome there, as calling Whitney would only further complicate things. Whitney worked for the The telephone rang as Tess was gathering her toothbrush and shampoo from the bathroom. She let the machine pick it up. A hoarse, familiar voice filled her small apartment with such force that the glass doors in her kitchen cabinets rattled: Tyner Gray, a rowing coach whose years of working with young novices had turned his voice into a perpetual shout. "Tess, it's Tyner; call me at my law office as soon as you get a chance. "It's not about rowing," he added, as if he knew she was standing there and could read her mind as well. "It is about a rower we both know well." The volume of his voice dropped to a husky whisper, still impossibly loud and piercing. "He asked me to call you, Tess. For some reason he thinks you can help him. Although, from what I know, it would appear you've done quite enough." His voice roared back to its usual volume, as if he were shouting a drill to her across an expanse of water. "Call my office, Tess. ASAP." Tess sat on the floor, a pair of underwear still balled up in her hand. If Rock needed her she couldn't run away. She wondered whether Rock was the best judge of what he needed. Or whom he needed. First he hired a fellow sculler to be his private detective. At sixty-four, Tyner Gray still had the lean, sinewy upper body of a lightweight rower. On warm days, when he was on the dock and took off his T-shirt, the college girls stole looks at his chest and arms. No one ever glanced at his legs, withered and lifeless in his sweatpants, almost flat. As far as Tess knew, no one had seen them since his accident almost forty years ago, a year after his Olympic victory. He had been hit by a drunk driver outside Memorial Stadium. "Did you get a workout in this morning?" Rock asked when Tess was shown into Tyner's office by his secretary, Alison, a ravishing blonde whose pearls were as big and round as the blue eyes she fastened adoringly on Tyner. "I hated missing practice." Arrested and charged at eleven, bailed out nine hours later, Rock looked good. Jail, or the lack of caffeine, had helped him get some rest for the first time in weeks. In fact he seemed almost serene to Tess. Whatever had happened, he still had Ava. Tyner sighed. "Rock, I know your perspective on this is you're an innocent man and some horrible mistake has been made. It doesn't work that way. I'm not sure you'll be allowed to leave the state for the Head of the Ohio, much less the Head of the Charles. You were lucky you had enough cash on hand to pay a bail bondsman." Rock looked stunned. Miss the Head of the Charles? Tyner now had his full attention. "Our biggest problem is that the police are satisfied they have the right suspect," Tyner said. "This is the kind of high-profile case they're pressured to solve quickly, and they're already congratulating themselves on what a no-brainer it was-and that's "Back up. I thought we all agreed I "Because you now work for me. You're going to turn over your notes from your ‘investigation' and, if anyone asks to see them, I'm going to argue they're privileged. Same thing if the police try to talk to you, or the state's attorney. I will show them our employment contract, dated September first-the day you contracted with Rock." "Am I really working for you, or is this just a scam?" "You're going to work your ass off," Tyner promised, grinning. "You are going to do things I hate to do. You are going to photocopy and fetch my lunch. You are going to take my jackets to the tailor if I tell you to. And you are going to conduct preliminary interviews with key witnesses, gathering the information I need to play what I call ‘tick-tock'-a little game designed to open windows for other murderers while narrowing Rock's opportunity." Tick-tock, Tyner explained, was Salvador Dalí's timepiece, liquid and flexible. Did Rock really go upstairs at 10 P.M., as the guard told police? Could it have been 10:05? Or 9:45? If the guard was lax about procedures such as calling up, might he have been similarly lax about timekeeping? Who else went in and out? Tess's job was to interview the security guard, the custodian, and anyone else, and-politely, sweetly, deferentially-create as much confusion in their minds as possible. "Tick-tock," Tyner said. "Open windows, find new doors and exits. ‘Did you happen to check your watch? A digital watch? Did you notice exactly what time it was? Of course you didn't, I guess; no one notices the exact time. Ten o'clock is an estimate, right, your best guess?' "‘Does everyone sign in, sir? Everyone? Does anyone ever sneak in? Never? Did you go to the door to smoke a cigarette or breathe the night air? Are you sure?' That's how you play. And our first player is Rock. Except I want him to be specific and very clear about what he did, and when. Tess, you used to be a reporter. Take notes." He threw a legal pad and a pen at her. Rock looked at Tyner's worn rug as he spoke. The beginning of his story was familiar, at least to Tess. Ava had called him about 8:30 P.M. That could be established with a log of calls from Ava's car phone; even Tess knew that. Ava hadn't told Rock anything on the phone, only asked him to wait at his apartment until she arrived. "Take your phone off the hook, sweetie," she had urged him. "Don't talk to anyone until I get there." She had arrived by 9:00. Ava told Rock how Abramowitz had forced her to sleep with him, claiming she would never find another lawyer's job in Baltimore if she refused. She figured anyone who had defended rapists and murderers could defend himself against something as ephemeral as sexual harassment, so she gave in. In return he promised her a brilliant future. Although the arrangement had put her on the verge of a nervous collapse, she had been handling everything just fine, until "this woman" had tried to blackmail her. "Totally untrue," Tess protested. "I didn't believe that part," Rock assured her. "I figured Ava didn't understand what our arrangement was and misinterpreted your conversation." Still giving Ava the benefit of the doubt, Tess noted. It had not yet occurred to Rock that Ava might be an accomplished liar. "I stroked her hair until she fell asleep," he continued. "I would look down and see my hand on her hair, and I would think that Abramowitz had touched her, too. It made me sick. And after awhile it made sense to get my bike and go down there, to the firm." "How did you know he would be there?" Tyner asked. "I didn't. Ava had told me he was always there, always working. I figured last night wouldn't be any different. And he was there, but he was watching the O's game. His office is like his own private sky box-it looks right into Camden Yards. If you turn on WBAL it's better than being there. He even had a beer and a hot dog. I think that made me even angrier, the idea that he was sitting up in his office, watching a ball game, while Ava was practically hysterical. So I told him-I told him what I thought of him, and how we could go to the EEOC and the state bar, maybe even the newspapers. He just laughed." "He laughed at you?" Tess asked. "He thought it was funny?" Rock thought for a moment. "It was a nervous laugh, like he was trying to think of what to say next. Then all these lies began tumbling out, about how he was trying to help Ava pass the bar, and she said she'd sleep with him if he could make sure she stayed on staff. She'd failed it twice and she had to pass the third time or she was out. That part is true, actually-she has failed twice. But she didn't offer to sleep with Abramowitz in order to keep her job. She would never have done that." "Did he say anything else?" Tyner asked. "He said, he said-" Rock closed his eyes, imagining the scene in his head. "He said, ‘I'm sorry.' And then he said, ‘But she really is beautiful.' That's when I hit him." The blow knocked Abramowitz backward on his Oriental rug and broke his glasses. The metal bridge cut his nose, and his head caught a corner of the desk, a superficial wound that bled copiously. Head wounds do that, Tess knew. They can look much worse than they are. "I stood over him and I put my hands on his throat," Rock said. "I thought I could kill him. I wanted him to know that, too, wanted to terrorize him the way he had terrorized Ava. I wanted him to feel as desperate and trapped as she must have. I held his throat in my hands and I looked him in the eyes. I even hoped he might piss himself." "Did he?" Tess asked. Tyner gave her a look of disgust. She had never broken her habit of asking any question that occurred to her. "No. He didn't even seem scared. Maybe because he once defended real killers, he could tell I wasn't one. He smiled at me and nodded his head, as if encouraging me. I pushed him back and his head caught the desk again, harder this time. I remember the sound-it was louder, less hollow than I would have thought, as if his head was very dense. He went down. But he was still breathing when I left. I swear he was still breathing." "Did you notice the time?" "Ten minutes past ten by the Bromo Seltzer tower, when I got back to the street," he said, referring to one of the city's more unusual landmarks, a ghostly clock tower with the letters of the antacid in place of numerals. "Definitely ten-ten." "And the log says you signed in at ten, but the security guard may have rounded it off," Tyner said. "So, ten minutes, maybe less, for a somewhat detailed conversation and a brief fight. You could have killed him in that period of time, but you would have had to have been very efficient. And there is still twenty minutes before the custodian finds Abramowitz, time enough for another person to finish your work." "But who?" Tess asked. "A disgruntled former client? A robber? One of his law partners? And isn't it awfully coincidental they happened to come along right after Rock had bloodied him?" "You're thinking like a reporter," Tyner admonished. "Or a state's attorney. It's not your job to solve this case or poke holes in my theories. All you have to do is help me gather enough information so I can go into a courtroom in four or five months and create a reasonable doubt about Rock's opportunity. Unfortunately, thanks to you, his motive is all too strong, so we're going to have to downplay that part of it. I want you to interview the security guard and the custodian as soon as possible. The security guard first-he's more important, as he's the one who puts Rock there at ten o'clock. I'll tell you later if there's anyone else worth checking out. By the way, it would help if you looked like a grown-up. Why don't you cut off that horse's tail hanging out of the back of your head?" "No!" It was Rock, not Tess, who yelled. Tess wore her hair long because it required less work. She had no sentiment about it. Rock obviously did. "Then put it up. Wear a suit," Tyner said. "Usually a criminal lawyer has to make his client over, not his assistant." "Your assistant? Excuse me, Tyner, but am I actually getting paid for this? I haven't heard anyone mention money." "Yes. You get to keep the money Rock paid you for your initial ‘investigation.' But I think your fees are a bit high, so you're starting with a debit of twenty hours. After you put in those twenty, I'll pay you twenty dollars per hour and twenty-five cents a mile." Shit, Tess thought. She'd have to work ten hours just to buy a suit. "As for you," Tyner said, turning to Rock. "No interviews. Stay away from Ava, at least for now. And, since you've already taken the day off from work, I think you should go straight to the boat house for a long workout. Do some drills, then go to the fort and back, with some pyramids thrown in for good measure. The Charles will come up before your trial, and I'm going to make sure you're there." A lawyer cum rowing coach. Maybe Rock had hired the right guy. Not many other attorneys in town knew the fall rowing schedule, or how to train for a head race. If only Tyner felt so kindly toward |
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